Darkner species headcanons post (with pictures!)
Hello! Well, here I go and lay down my thoughts about Darkners here, because I really love them. This post is made at January 2021, so these might be deconfirmed by the full game, however I am using them for now and for our AU called Thus Spoke The Prophesy (TSTP)
I was quite conflicted about connection between Light World and Dark World, whether you could kill the darkner by destroying their object in the Light World, so I decided to go with as much liberty here as I could! Proto Fountain helps the darkness to have shape, whereas isolated, it is a substance that is ready to start properly existing but needs some sentence, some perception.
I like to imagine that Seam was ‘born’ with a sick/missing eye already, because the plushie was missing an eye at the moment of giving them shape. Don’t copy damaged objects, folks! However, what happens with the object AFTER Darkner exists concerns this Darkner very little, if at all…
I struggled on what to make out of Ralsei’s parents… I assume DW!Toriel doesn’t exist because it is not likely Asgore would ever let go of his ring, and objects that are actively wanted, used and loved elude darkness and can’t become a Darkner. Ralsei might just have one parent…
I used to think that because there were many Rudinns, they were number cards, but ended up with a better solution. Since they resemble Kanotynes’ Jack of Diamond card - they all are Jacks! I like to think that Rudinns we met are all children of the current royal Diamonds couple! Applies to Hathys as well.
So to conclude, even if there is just one deck of playing cards in the entire Hometown - that is still enough to have dinasties and more than one royal family of the same suit - same for chess pieces! Because number cards have no real appearance - their best shot is to resemble face cards… unless this chunk of darkness becomes something else instead. Number Hearts might as well turn into inanimate metal objects and have shape just for the heck of it.
Heeeeere it is! Life in the Dark World goes on by it’s own strange logic, Darkners are not quite like us and I chose to not apply same biology rules as we have to them. Basically, if a kid asked you where do babies come from - what fairytale or evasive responce would you come up with? That is probably what ACTUALLY happens in the Dark World!
The most you can get is nonsexually happening pregnancy since it is an E-rated concept anyways… Think of how many kids know what is pregnancy if they’re expecting a younger sibling in the family. Or how there are pregnant Barbie dolls but no Ken dolls with dicks. With Spade suit, it is not important which parent gives a “birth”, since both will have belly mouth pocket dimension.
This bit is concidered my “official” headcanon, more ‘biological’ concepts and such go into AUs, speculations and what-if scenarios because I try to keep open to alternative ideas anyways.
Darkners don’t make a conscious choice what to be born as, they are born on what piece of darkness that turned into them aligned more with. And so, they can’t just decide to use another template entirely. Their liberty ends at altering their outfits as long as they are still recognizeable, because more often than not, Darkner’s clothes are also part of their body! Like Rouxls’ strange merged boots-pants and gloves-sleeves, like Diamond Queen’s hood-hair, like how many plushies have their clothes sew-in and irremoveable.
Like shown in this example, status change can cause them to change physically too. Something similar happens with K. Round, although it is mostly because you can actually power-boost a checker piece in the game of checkers.
I like to imagine that in Deltarune verse, playing cards also used to be drawn differently long time ago… So yeah, watch me draw young Spade King more greyish and froggish soon! Within change of appearance of the object of same concept in the Light World, a Darkner can look a bit more like it too - so Spade Queen can’t just start looking like Heart Queen card as she lives longer, but she can start looking like more modern Spade Queen card. However, it doesn’t work with individual objects like plushies, dolls, pieces of concrete puzzle, individual art and craft objects… Only with “concept” things.
Spade King’s life purpose was connected to Lightners that came before Kris and Susie… well, that gotta sting! Darkners that refuse to complete their purpose just to remain immortal are controlled by the closest current darkner to a Grim Reaper - such as tarot Death, Ace of Spades, etc… Similar to how Light Worlds cryptids such as Riverperson or Sans come from kind that controls boss monsters who refuse to ever have children for immortality and puts particularly disturbed Red SOULs and Ghosts to peace. Dark World aspires for balance too, save for people infected with Chaos.
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