So, my knowledge of Deltarune lore is way too limited which means this analysis might have a lot of inaccuracies, for that I apologize, but something that is interesting for the Lightners and Darkners that you have mentioned in one of your analysis posts is that Lightners use and abandon the Darkners and this is a reason why King distrusts and hates them.
When you mentioned the card kingdom, Kris and Susie âgetting boredâ or âmoving on after their adventureâ, it reminds me of children playing with their toys and imagination. And well yeah, Kris and Susie are kids, the world they are sent into is based of toys. So, in my opinion, the Darkners are kind of a representation of childhood imaginativeness but that has been devalued. Itâs not about childhood memories displayed in the toys and game but more like a temporary entertainment until children find something else replacing it. Thatâs what King hates the most of the Lightners, I think, that they see the Darkners are buffoons or dance monkeys, itâs dehumanizing.
Your post also reminds me of the premise of Toy Story, that a toyâs duty and purpose is to be there for their kid no matter what although itâs more profound when it showcases the bond between a child and their toy, using Andy and Woody and the gang as the biggest example, but also other onesâ like Stinky Pete thinking his self-worth relies on being sold like any other toy, or Lotso becoming cruel and possessive of other childrenâs love and attention after being replaced by Daisy.
And as I said from the beginning, this analysis will have lots of inaccuracies because of my limited knowledge of Deltarune. Iâm thinking more of the Lightners as kids that have neglected their toys and only use their imagination to be entertained instead of having a more meaningful relationship with those elements that are so emblematic in childhood. However, the relationship between Lightners and Darkners seems to portray more the consequences of injustice and oppression than the disconnection/neglect from a kid toward toys and games.
Again, I might be wrong in a lot of things about this.
I mean... a lot of the Darkners we have met have been ones based on different forms of entertainment, toys for Chapter 1, internet and computers for Chapter 2, TV and video games for Chapter 3. And imagination is obviously a huge part of how Dark Worlds operate, as Ralsei explains them as being the sort of magical logical extreme to your imagination running wild in the darkness.
And then of course, Chapter 3 also established the connections and relationships between a few previously-introduced Darkners were a result of Kris' make-belief games when they were younger.
And Deltarune does take a lot of inspiration from other 'living inanimate objects' fiction like 'Toy Story' and 'The Brave Little Toaster'.
I think as an assessment of King's whole deal, this is pretty accurate. But... this is maybe not as all-encompassing as you're making it out to be?
Chapter 4 gets away from the concept of entertainment and childhood altogether to focus on a Church Dark World instead. And even connecting the Darkners of Chapters 2 + 3 to a 'more meaningful relationship with imagination' is a bit thematically complicated seeing as these Darkners are a representation of the internet, television and various computer/console games, and these things have a very different relationship to imagination than toys and plushies do.
I think more than anything, Darkners symbolize... well, the thing they literally are to us - Video Game NPCs and enemies.
It's a meta thread that starts all the way back in Undertale. In that game, a lot of the Lore goes on to explain how and why Monsters, as a species and culture, act 'like' Video Game Enemies. How their obsession with Puzzles formed, how their more magical nature makes them disappear into dust once they are killed and allows for the existence of instant-healing-food, why they have so many cool magical attacks but they are still easily thwarted by one kid as long as their LOVE is strong enough...
Deltarune does some similar things with the Darkners, with the Video-Gamey nature of everything being chalked up to the general weirdness of the Dark Worlds...
...And the focus here being on the level of 'reality', narrative importance and agency. With Darkners all being created with some sort of 'Purpose' related to their function as Light World objects - meaning that their existence is usually based around helping Lightners in some way and that they are thus dependent on Lightners using them to feel truly fulfilled...
Plus this idea that Darkners are basically like... a collective hallucination/dream of the Lightners currently inhabiting that Dark World and are 'not real' on some level, all of that means that on a metaphysical level, Darkners are 'less important' than Lightners are.
And also this set 'Purpose' and the way they are based on Light World Objects severely limits their agency and free-will, sticking them on a set 'path'. While no one can choose who they are in this world, and everyone is railroaded on some level by the Prophecy, Darkners are especially bound by their role and lacking in choice.
And when you also consider the way Darkner Personalities can be affected by the emotions of Lightners and act as representation of their problems and/or of people in their lives. Basically meaning that they were kinda created to facilitate the Lightners' character arcs...
All of that makes them... kinda like a Video Game NPCs, stuck to a set path, existing for the sake of the story and adventure and character arcs of the Players (the Lighters), who are more 'real' than they are, and they will get left behind once the Real People have gotten the fill of playing around in their World. Only that Darkners are also sapient and can be conscious of their situation, and the game explore how existentially terrifying it is to be this sort of being. Similar to how Kris' situation explore how existentially terrifying it is to be a Player Character instead.
There's King, who has been hurt and abandoned by the Lightners who saw him as a mere toy they could put away in a classroom once they were done with him. He was created to only feel happy when being part of a Lightners' game, but he learned how unfair and, yeah, dehumanizing this relationship can be. And the only way he found to try and break away from this system is to become a bitter and miserable tyrant and tries to destroy all Lightners.
(With the irony being that by trying to deny his previous identity as a friend or playmate to Lightners, he still embraces an identity dependent on the Lightners' perception of him.
By simply shifting from being a metaphorically-video-game-friend to a metaphorically-video-game-bad-guy, he is still kinda stuck in that NPC Existential Nightmare.)
There's Ralsei, who internalized and accepted the idea that he's 'less real' and 'less important' so much that it made him a self-sacrificial wreck who devoted his entire existence and personality to just pleasing his friends. Who struggle with intense feelings of guilt every time he has any sort of ""selfish"" thought, who basically has no idea who he actually is, who has already accepted that one day he'd get thrown away once he stops being useful for Kris and Susie's stories.
There's Spamton, who is bound to a Purpose that makes him ontologically doomed to misery, failure and isolation. As the Darkner incarnation of Spam Mail he is bound to desire fame, money, success and all the other sort of things spam mail tends to talk about, but also to be an utter failure because Spam Mail is by definition obviously scammy and generally thrown away. He was willing to do anything to try and defy his miserable fate (including some pretty horrible things in the Weird Route), but it only ended up destroying him.
And obviously, as we're kinda watching Susie slowly realize the nature of Darkners and how they work, she has constantly refused to accept the idea that Darkners are any less real or 'narratively important' than she is.
On some level, this is kind of a metaphor to a Player who fully emotionally engages with the story and characters of a game, allowing themselves to see its world and people as 'real'... on another level, maybe Susie is right that Ralsei is just as real as she is, because they're both just video game characters.
Also, of course, I don't think this whole thing begins and ends with "hey what if a Video Game Character was self-aware of the fact they only existed for the entertainment of beings who were more 'real' than they are would that be fucked-up or what?", the Darkners' situation is also used as a stepping stone to other metaphors and real-life emotional situations. Most obviously how Ralsei's view of Darkners and therefor of himself is used to tell a narrative about overcoming toxic selflessness and figuring out your own identity that can be relatable to many people in the real world.
And while Spamton's lack of control over his own identity and life is a lot more literal than anything anyone can experience in real life, it still function as an evocative metaphor to, like, someone who obsessively pursue a false version of 'success' and empty capitalist status symbols because it has been sold to them by societal forces much bigger than they are.
King's situation is implicitly paralleled with Susie's, and Susie explicitly makes that parallel with Tenna, too.
As part of her viewpoint that Darkners and Lightners as equally as real, she thinks being abandoned by the Lightners who were supposed to grant them Purpose is not that different from being a 'real' lonely kid no one wanted to play with. And I suppose, in a way... you can say a young child's 'Purpose' in life is to play, the same as a Toy or Television Darkner, and that being ostracized denies it to them.
I mean, I said above that since Darkners are dependent on Lightners for their fulfilment and happiness, that inherently makes them less 'important' in the metaphysics of the universe... but maybe Susie's counter-answer to that is simply "everyone is dependent on others for their fulfilment and happiness, dumbass. It comes free with being a social animal".
I do think the Video-Game NPC metaphor is the main thing going on with Darkners, but it is a very multilayered thing, with a lot of other aspects to explore.
