And so wept the fallen star

Orkay! ☝️ new ones. 👇 old ones.

So from the way Darkners in Chapters 1-3 talk about their past, it mostly seemed like Dark Worlds operate on what I labeled as ‘Neverending Story Logic’. Dark Worlds only come into existence when the Dark Fountains are opened, but they are created with histories and memories as if they always existed.

That seems consistent with how most Darkners operate and think. Since they always acknowledge the Dark Fountain created the world they live in, but they also remember a past that clearly stretches long before it was opened. But... there is one problem... the main wrinkle in this interpretation has always been what happens when the Dark Worlds interact with one another... before one of them was even created. Like Jevil’s knowledge of Queen

And Spamton’s connection to Tenna and Mike.

These mentions happen before the Cyber World and TV World Dark Fountains have opened. These people aren’t even supposed to exist yet, right? And if you say they did exist on some level of reality… that would create its own set of questions, considering how much the Dark Worlds we’ve seen have been affected by the minds of the Lightners who venture into them. How could Queen exist before Noelle and Berdly got into the library considering she’s very much a representation of Noelle’s mommy issues?

The explanation I went with until now is that Darkners can have memories based on interactions with other objects from outside their Dark Worlds and remember these objects as Darkners, but these memories are not as… defined. People in Card Castle remember that there was a Queen because of past contact between the Serial Number Q5U4EX7YY2E9N Laptop with objects from the Abandoned Classroom, but most of the details about her were undefined and hazy. Until Queen was actually created by Cyber World’s Dark Fountain, at which point her goofy and wonderful personality was retconned into the past and memories of everyone in Card Castle as well.

Obviously that theory wasn’t perfect either (Spamton’s beef with who we now know is Tenna seemed rather specific to be just a vague blank-space to-be-filled with the TV Darkner’s true personality later), but that’s the best way I could make sense of the way Dark Worlds worked at the time.

Now, Chapter 4 gave me the puzzle piece I’ve been missing, because every Dark World we’ve seen has been part of the Prophecy…

… there seems to be an element of predestination involved.

We see a very clear small example of this with the different Dark Sanctuaries. The Darkners that populate Susie’s Second Sanctuary…

First appear petrified in the First Sanctuary.

Petrified because they’re from a different Dark World and don’t ‘belong’ in the First Sanctuary… Even though the World they are ‘from’ doesn’t even exist yet. Because Susie’s creation of the Second Sanctuary was preordained by the Prophecy. Just like the creation of every other Dark World we've seen. So preordained that when the Darkners that would come to populate it were brought to life by the first Fountain, the metaphysical laws of the universe already knew they belonged in another, future Dark World and they ended up petrified.

A... sorta similar thing is happening with the memories of every Darkner who has interacted with a Darkner from a different World. When the Card Castle Dark World was created, Cyber World’s Dark Fountain has not yet been opened and Queen was still an inanimate laptop. But since Cyber World is destined to be created in the Prophecy, King and Jevil and anyone else who has interacted with Queen through Kris’ games already had their memories of Queen, exactly the way she would come to be created that night.

Queen was formed from the Computer Room’s Dark Fountain and the minds of Noelle and Berdly once they got stuck in there… but these events were so predestinated to happen that Card Castle’s Dark Fountain could just… create everyone’s memories of Queen before she was truly ‘real’.

Same thing with Tenna’s and Spamton’s whole thing. Tenna was just an inanimate TV when Cyber World’s Dark Fountain was still flowing, but Kris creating TV World was already preordained by fate. So Tenna’s part of Spamton’s backstory was written into everyone’s memories as if Tenna had always existed too.

trying to be like them

The Ferris Wheel

Scene redraw