In case anyone missed it, I started a thread for further discussion on Kill Your Darlings:
Don't kill your darlings, just don't play favourites. Because I had more to say even if no one else did.
In my earlier post I struck out "the real meaning" because that's obviously wrong (or at least inconsistent with the thread I started, and we can't have that). But "real point" remains true. The point of any cutting, darlings or not, is to remove unnecessary text from the story in order to keep the story moving.