a gray copy of something else.

I have made a few assumptions here, but what I think is the biggest takeaway from these connections even if most of what I've said isn't proven is that determination and the depths are very important to the existence of goners and that goners are more nuanced than being just

the dark world. This does not always mean that the originator of this concept died or got removed, it just means that the copies had something that they come from, which is why both the vessel and Kris and Ralsei and Asriel can exist at the same time.

and dreams, which also explains why darkners have continuous personalities and relations with the world. Things like Friend and Eram, and Ralsei weren't always these dark world entities either, they come from some real concept in the light world getting copied and made anew in

be the strongest connection to keep surviving. Flowers, hammers, written words, bodies, eggs, machines, vessels, some way to hold the determination's meaning so that it doesn't all just evaporate into nothing. Objects, places, and communal memory are the ways to hold onto hopes

disappears though, I don't think they are literally gone, I think that is what shattering across time and space comes from. If you are forgotten in one place, then your memory will move to a place that has not forgotten you fully yet. Being linked to something physical seems to

exist, because their entire existence is defined by the memory of others. If others forget them fully, they literally disappear into nothing. The forgotten man is an example of a goner suffering this fate very directly, and how that fate gets prevented. After a goner completely

preserved, it is a range. I think that is meant to represent the central idea of Deltarune, "don't forget, I'm with you in the dark," and what the consequences of forgetting are with these goners. It's why some goners like goner kid are so fixated on a world where they don't

not truly know him, and so the memory has degraded greatly, leaving only the most basic features. It's like a printer only using black ink because it is out of all the other colors. A goner is not always monochrome because it entirely depends on how well their memory has been

is very close to the real Gerson because the person creating the fountain had a very good memory of him, he was filled the hopes and dreams and given a kind form because of this. In Susie's dark world though, he is known simply as the "old man" who helped her a bit. Susie does

differentiate things that originate from the Lightworld or are copies that come from dark worlds. The more a person gets reduced to their basic features by the dark world, the more they become this hell variant and closer to pure darkness. The Gerson from the original dark world

experiments with determination will lead her to the same discovery of eternal "life" as Gaster, and that she would take that path to run away from the problems she feels she is facing in her life. The way that things have "heaven" and "hell" variants is supposed to

of his family by dedicating the rest of his actual life by making that story. I think Gaster extended his life using darkness similar to how Alphys extended Asriel's life with determination. When the goners ask if Alphys will end up the same way, I think they are wondering if her

experiments. It's thematically similar to Gerson as well, because many people want to continue their legacy after their death by creating beloved things. Gerson found a way to survive after death metaphorically by creating Lord of The Hammer, but in doing so, neglected the rest

ways, and I think that the way that Gerson gets brought back to life is meant to echo why Gaster fell into his creation. I think Gaster wanted to live forever, and after seeing what dark worlds could do, he decided that life like that was better to allow him to continue his

series of entries a very strong parallel. Gaster was literally using the dark world as a camera to take snapshots of people. The fact that Gerson is the prime example of this process in many facets is important to note as well. Gerson is a character that parallels Gaster in many

inside. in this way, both Alphys and Gaster had arrived at very similar scientific discoveries by using determination in slightly different ways, which would thematically make the fact that they both made a

person and then making a copy, but it is not a perfect recreation. I have a suspicion that some of what Gaster's original experiments entailed was testing what happened when monsters fell into darkness and then got retrieved, or possibly even putting monsters who had fallen down

darkness works is that it echoes a will, so if a person were to fall into a large body of it, it would make sense that the darkness would sort of make a copy of their will, because that is all it has to work with. A goner then, is the result of darkness capturing a snapshot of a

defined surrounding this idea of water or liquid comes from the fact that determination itself is a liquid. When someone falls into darkness, it is like falling into a large body of water, except the "water" in this context is a form of determination. The way that