cover art for break me in easy, the debut 1974 album of paul mccartney's gay cousin paul ilikemenccartney, tragically underappreciated in his time because of the subject matters his songs dealt with (gay sex mostly)
Talk About The Symbolism Behind The Cloth Mother And Wire Mother References.
Duality is a reoccurring theme throughout Deltacable, be it through character duos, dichotomies or parallels.
Chairiel and Yule in particular are meant to serve as parallels to Toriel and Carol, though this was a bit of a blind guess since I made Yule before we knew what Carol looked or was like or what Toriel's role in the canon chapters would be
Darkners (at least in this AU since I'm doing a LOT of fanon stuff), don't exactly function with same rules as Lightners would,
A lot of them either don't eat, nor do they age unless the Lightner they're closest to does as well, (Particularly why Mike and Asgore are very much in sync, and Tena's age follows Kris', since they grew up together (Yes I'm changing their name to Tena with just one N because it's less annoying than having to clarify every time which Tenna I'm talking about. Makes it easier to talk about their relationship with Ralsei too).
All of this to say that, sustenance, in the form or food or electricity isn't mandatory for a Darkner's survival unless that is part of who or what they are, like Mittens and the entire Cooking Channel crew being centered around food, but Channels like Klieg's or Rayne can do just fine without.
Unless their Light World form gets damaged (See Fresnel being a broken lightbulb and Klieg being a functioning one that replaced him). Food-related darkners (Oven, Fridge, Microwave, Utensils, etc) have less of a focus on feeding themselves and more on assisting Lightners with feeding.
But as we've seen through Susie in Chapter 1, eating food in the Dark World does not seem to fill you. Meanwhile Lancer's dialogue eating the dark candy and the salsa personally leaves me a bit unsure as to whether the food is or isn't doing anything for him or Darkners as a whole or if they even actually need food to survive. Looking at Rouxls' dialogue points to a strong Maybe, but I think I'm more focused on trying to make things consistent with what I do have.
Having set up all these loose ideas for this AU, made it so that the Wire Mother & Cloth Mother duo wouldn't completely make sense in the food sense, but with Yule being the fridge, it made sense that she'd fit that role.
Since Kris was the one to open the Fountain, I imagine that the Darkners would be shaped after their subconscious perception of others, if that makes sense? (Which is partially why Mike is a LOT like a Asgore and Kris finds their simmilarities to be uncanny)
I feel like the average take-away that people take from the Nature of Love experiment is "Cloth Mother good" and "Wire Mother bad", but it obviously goes a lot deeper than that
The entire point was that children need both affection and sustenance to live.
Chairiel the cloth mother brings that sort of energy, she smells of cinnamon, she is soft and loves napping, and yet, she also has a few connections with Seam as they both share this kind of nihilistic view of the world around them. I want Chairiel to feel "hollow" in that sense, not through any fault of her own, that's just what she's like, and we can't really control how our parents treat us.
I want Chairiel to feel like Kris' subconscious perception of Toriel in a way, with the "food" (or lack thereof) meaning being a lot more symbolic, since it's not like Kris is getting starved or anything. They perceive Toriel as taking care of them, being loving in the motherly sort of way, but there just feels like there's something missing.
Yes, Toriel is there for them, she loves and takes care of them, but she doesn't fill that need of being perceived and acknowledgement of what's truly happening with Kris.
Yule mirroring Carol is interesting to me, considering what we've seen in ch4 (Most of the canon ch4 is canon to Deltacable as well). Yule is the fridge, she is cold, but she has the food, she can sustain you on a physical level, and with sustenance being more symbolic for being perceived.
It makes me think of how Carol seems to be aware of the Player's Soul and is likely one of the few people who really knows what's going on with Kris (Just like Yule was the only one to know of Host's plan to open the Omega Fountain).
Much like Carol (At least in my interpretation), Yule does have a genuine love for her family, but she can also be physically distant and not really all that present on an emotional level. Not out of disdain for those she cares for, it's just in her nature to be icy.
Though unlike Carol, Yule is very gentle and soft-spoken, but that's more due to her being created before the canon ch3 than anything else x) Kris feels like Carol knows what's going on, they're clearly all in kahoots, but neither Kris nor Noelle seem to have a closer emotional bond with her. Kris feels seen, but this perception is anything but comforting.
However, unlike Toriel and Carol, who seem to have had some sort of history we have yet to see, Yule and Chairiel are always together, and combining their traits, they do become genuinely good mothers to Pail, and whatever lacks between the two of them, is always helped together by Mittens, who is characterized over and over as being someone who often puts herself in these mediator peace maker sort of positions (Particularly between Rayne and Klieg), but with her wives, she just wants to bring out the best in everyone!)
Art by C_Cesar on Artfight
Idk I'm not exactly sure what point I'm trying to get to, I just started yapping and I guess this happened
I'm sorry if the word salad is a bit too confusing, I kind of just type in a train of thought sort of manner :')
cat paul would stare at melissa silently before slowly starting to back away, probably praying to cat jesus that she just wouldn't pay attention to him. -🐈⬛
