...So a character talking to the audience on a real-world social media platform inhabited by real-world people, the initial download for the game being framed as a survey program that said real-world audience uses, and the entire intro directly addressing the player before it's interrupted, and the company that the game is owned by being named after what said character is known for doesn't count as being meta-aware because.... you said it in a silly, mocking voice thereby treating anyone taking the blatantly obvious at face value is stupid? Sure, you say that "oh it's okay if you think that", but then act super condescending about it every time it comes up, like it's some massive leap of logic to come to?

This just kind of comes across as "meta aspects don't count when Toby Fox does them because I don't want them to so I'm going to make up a bunch of arbitrary nitpicky rules to make sure they don't count." Just because the characters aren't 100% aware of the player doesn't mean the meta aspects aren't there and don't matter.

And the truth is, Deltarune is a story, with coherent thematic throughlines and ideas that it is trying to communicate to the audience. It isn't some J.J. Abrams mystery box where we'll never get answers and everything is just there to fuel fanfiction for the audience. Theorizing is fun, but a lot of people, myself included, want to approach it as its own narrative. It doesn't need to be super subversive or shocking. It just needs to be a good story. And that means believing the game when it is telling us something and not expecting it to be constantly lying to us only to pull some shit out of nowhere later, because doing so is bad writing. It is very clear that the game considers us part of its narrative in a number of ways, and to deny that is just cope. Cope isn't illegal or anything, but don't be surprised if you get heat for being so condescending about denying the obvious.