By Wunderscore7
This question which initially sparked this WILL OF ALL LIGHTNERS theory (formerly known as box theory) was a very specific interaction that happened during the middle of the game.
You are able to give a plushie to any of the main characters. And what’s interesting about this is that the plushie inside of the box changes itself as soon as you open it. When you give the plushie to Noelle, the plushie becomes a plushie of Noelle, when you give it to Berdly, it becomes a plushie of berdly.
How does this happen? Well it would seem the only plausible speculation is that quite simply the plushie changes itself depending on the will of the player/Kris.
After this initial tiny theory, I started thinking about how many places in the dark world it seems are influenced by the lightners own experience.
Firstly, I must begin by stating how basic of a take it is to say that chapter 2’s dark world and Noelle are inherently tied together for some reason. For one of the biggest examples of this we have the sockets in the basement where we find the NEO body.
https://deltarune.com/icepalace_glaceir/
These plug sockets are quite literally a weird manifestation of what Noelle had talked about in her blog post. She imagined the socket had a face, and in the dark world where she’s in, It became one.
Another wildly interesting manifestation of the lightners upon the dark world is the bosses
( main and secret ).
I couldn’t do nearly a good enough job at explaining it as this video does.
But TL;DR there are a lot of similarities between the main casts mother and queen, please watch that video before continuing to reading this theory.
I could also not have a good enough documentation of the similarities in between spamton and berdly as there is in this document.
[ note to Wunder, change this to the webpage version when written]( Just to clarify, I only want you to believe in the fact there is a connection, not the entire rest of this crackpot of a theory )
Jevil also has some similarities (although weaker) to Susie, namely that they both use isolation as a sort of coping mechanism, and that they both have an immediate on-screen affinity for each other ( additionally Jevil literally becomes Susie’s tail/KNIFE )
Additionally, a character which is slightly relevant is poppup. Which seems to change its ads depending on the clicker. The Jaru video is a very good compilation of this.
Okay so CHAT, it’s time for the weird route.
Firstly, this is the biggest example of our will being imposed onto this world, and due to this,
The dark world has a massive impact.
A list of the things that get effected:
While all of those might have been known to you, you might be a little bit confused about THE BOX. Well basically in the room before the giant berdly statue, there’s a box there. This box is seemingly a representation of Kris’ personality, a representation of their joy for carpentry…i guess.
During the weird route, where kris’ own will ceases to exist, this box also ceases to exist, being removed entirely from the route
After this, due to the wills of the dark fountain changing so drastically, Rouxls Kaard seems to become stoned much faster.
SO what does this entire thing mean? What is the actual point™ well I think it parallels a non-diegetic element of Undertale incredibly well. The ability of the game to adapt itself to a player.
A piece of really smart game design that Undertale implements is that the game adapts to your playstyle basically:
During a genocide route, where the player is more aggressive and wants more fights, the game rewards them with more fights, harder fights
Meanwhile in a pacifist route; where the player is kinder to the monsters, the game rewards them ith funny interactions and more, such as the dates you get throughout the game.
Within this theory about how the dark worlds adapt to your decisions, it means this aspect of the storytelling is now implemented fully and diegetically.