Anyhow after all of the level-headed theorizing, we reach here. In the words of a certain Undertale character, welcome to my special hell:
In chapter 5, TasqueManager prays like so:
Catti dialogue from 4 that mentions immolation (as a joke, mind! but still. Bits(tm) can be foreshadowing, it's funny to do.)
There's a bunch of stuff that I could say about Catti's ties to funny image_friends but suffice to say that the image_friend face from Battat's minigame utilizes a face that has the pink/magenta eye be the same color as the pink on Catti:
So. The Cat Petterz Friend specifically has palette similarities to Catti.
Catti dialogue from chapter 4:
Jockington dialogue from 4:
Also Jockington dialogue from 4:
Some other Jockington stuff that's relevant:
So uh. Here's where this gets incoherent:
There's an unused/placeholder in the code that's relevant to what I think spr_nondescript_room_hands is in the general DEVICE framework:
https://tcrf.net/Deltarune#.231:_Enemy
Notice how the 'Enemy's sprite is a Rudinn, which is a snakelike enemy. Some of the other names it was changed to include Echidna, which while it Can be a homestuck reference, is the name of a mythological half-snake monster that lives in a cave.
The acts are also interesting:
spr_nondescript_room_'s alternate name might be DEVICE_ENEMY / IMAGE_ENEMY if it ever shows up in Deltarune, and my fervent belief is that if it does, it will not be aggressive to Kris under normal circumstances, as a direct foil to image_friends being continually described here and there like this:
"* Being a friend doesn't make you
them YOURS! Those teeth, they
BITE!"
So, if there was an Enemy... then... just because it's an enemy doesn't make you them YOURS, either, in the same way that Jockington neutralizes the hex from Catti. As a mercy.
All the same, Remember: if Catti and image_friend motifs are deliberate...
... So what happens if you hurt one of the image_friends?
What if you "have" to?
This isn't even going into my 'I think that Rudinns, Rudinn Rangers, and Floradinns being shaped like that is because the creator of those Specific Dark Fountains has /STRONG/ feelings/memories due to a prior encounter with Hands. Thus the funny snakey enemies that keep having a similar motif and shape, that are usually relatively easy to convince to do things, and are kinda silly."
... Isn't it funny how there's an item that serves as a mirror/counterpart to the DogDollar, the Glowshard?
Something that spares Rudinns instantly?
Isn't it super funny that there's a 'useless' defense item called the DogWidow that you can make in Chapter 5, the same chapter that has an image_friend potentially bite you?
Idk. This is very much me doing this:
