Labcoats and Lairs

for example: the reason the knight in deltarune seems to be such a lover of the cutscene-no-jutsu is diegetic - this means it exists in the world, not just for our convenience.

the reason for this is that dark worlds are allegorical for the process of "play" (stuff to look up: Huizinga, Salen, Zimmerman, "The Magic Circle", "Homo Ludens") - a playground world where everyone agrees with the same rules.

sidebar: "play" if children play "knights," then a cardboard tube is a sword because everyone agrees it is. if children play tag, then touching someone suddenly has magical significance because everyone agrees to it. the "magic circle" is the name these scholars give to that invisible boundary around a game. once you're inside it, everyone accepts the game's rules. this is what "play" means in an academic context.

in this allegory, the knight is an outsider who does not care about the rules - call it a schoolyard bully if you want - and for whom the play doesn't matter if they refuse the frame entirely. cutscenes are not bound by the "play". participating in the battles means participating in the "play" (there's many reasons why the action button is literally 'act', this is one of them).

your cardboard armor doesn't mean anything against a baseball bat if the person with the bat doesn't agree that it's secretly steel. being in deltarune's rpg battles means that you are being pulled into the "play", which is why in chapter 3 kris needs to basically fudge it to get the fight back into cutscene mode since they are in cahoots.

all the other secret bosses, by elaboration, do believe in and participate in (to some extent) the "playground".

Sabrina The Teenage Witch's Salem the Cat: I'm gonna force feminize Archie.

one’s character has no impact on whether they were/are a victim or not, victim status is not something that is only afforded to the palatable.