The Dark World is slowly creating characters and locations like how an author creates his story. How things become recontextualized as the story moves forward is an effect by the Dark World as it expands with fountains. The perceptions, projections, and experiences by the Lightners is matching with and against the Dark World as if it were a chess match. The Dark World reacts to the Lightners memories and plays with it in hopes of catching them off guard, but to say how malicious the off guard catch by the Dark World is ultimately is hard to say. The Dark World could be testing (You), or maybe it's trying to learn something about itself as it keeps rewriting itself. Maybe it's about the Dark World trying to learn itself, but whatever it could be, it is judging us and it will lay its judgement upon us.
Gerson, a being of the Light World, while also being a character seemingly resurrected by the Dark World, is the character that defines this meta-narrative struggle of the entire game with his battle against Susie. He is the balance that understands it all, and he plays with Susie on who she is to help better her. Her struggle will become the vocal point, she must learn to embrace the darkness while not letting it destroy her. This will be the ultimate challenge that reinforces everything that the game has been saying, and will eventually say. The reader not being able to embrace the story that is the Dark World means that they will never charge past their own personal struggles that created the Dark World in the first place.

>playing w/ a couple friends
>one is brand new to the series, and is more a friend of a friend
>one is a neet, and how i know the new guy
>neet is saying to skip every sidequest until uvhm and over-explains things in ways that are clearly overwhelming to new guy
>will argue with me about inane stuff like which type of shield is best, or when i try to answer new guy's question in a concise manner
>example: new guy is playing siren, and asks what type of guns he should look out for. i suggest smgs should be his primary (but not only) focus since maya has good synergy with them and her skill tree reflects that. neet says, "uh well ackshully she can use anything and she's really good with snipers because she can hold things still, but she's also good with ...", to the point where the guy's question isn't answered at all
>neet does not think this is the case or that he's even incorrect after i bring it up afterwords
>i suggest to let new guy play at his own pace and try things out for himself
>he's kind of receptive, but it mostly translates to, "ok everyone be quiet the audio log is playing"
>we have to sit there in uncomfortable silence for the whole thing until it's over without progressing the quest any further, like when you go over to your aunt's as a kid and her cooking sucks, but nobody is allowed to bring it up and everyone has to pretend it's fine, and then your parents insist you all stick around for dessert
>new guy is clearly getting burnt out and slowly becomes less and less available to continue over the next few days
>"we just need to get him hooked bro he's getting bored because we have to keep explaining everything to him"
>clueless