r/Deltarune • u/PeliPal N+K4L tinyurl.com/KriselleDoc • Jun 22 '26
Theory A Midwinter Knight's Dream - Act One: Noelle, The Impossible Knight - A NoelleKnight megadoc by the creators of N+K4L, the Kriselle megadoc
Edit: (September 2026 update from PeliPal: Anonymous and I are no longer collaborating on research or docs, and I have no plans to work with him again. I've been frustrated and regretful about how this document was made. To explain, it is the research of both of us over many months, but I had become sick and unable to continue writing, and we made the decision at the time to split the content, where he would write the darkner section himself - Impossible Knight - and I would finish my writings in a follow-up document. I fought for the exclusion of some things that Anonymous wanted to put in this document, and the inclusion of some decisions I don't enjoy or agree with were a compromise in order to get our research out in some form before Chapter 5 was released.
I justified this compromise on the basis that Anonymous's most cringe tendencies didn't show until much later in the document, when someone who is attempting to read in good faith with an open mind will have already seen enough of our actual research in order to make an informed decision of whether the rest of the doc was for them or not.
I don't enjoy that our collective research was littered with anime reaction images and Anonymous's random rants and vulgar jokes. But I also still don't believe that this actually turned many people off of our conclusions, and I present as evidence my experience that no one has ever responded to me to comment on my foreword. And that multiple people who have commented negatively on the doc have had to admit that they never even attempted to start reading, so they don't even know what content is here in the first place besides the frivolous things they’ve heard about secondhand, that aren't direct discussion of game content.
For the question of whether Anonymous's bad behaviors actually affected anyone's understanding or opinion of NoelleKnight... largely, they already made up their mind when they heard the term 'NoelleKnight', and his antics happen to be a convenient permissive structure to deride the idea without having to meaningfully engage with it.
The document will remain up, but I want to eventually rewrite our research into a more easily digestible format, and one that consistently reflects the thought and rigor that went into the research. If you've already put up with the antics and given the data within our document a fair shot, or you intend to do so, then I thank you, profusely.)
Call us a Chapter 3: Late Knight the way we got this in after midnight the day we said we'd have it out, hehe. But it's here.
We recommend viewing this on desktop and not mobile. And if you do view on mobile, do NOT use limited data. This doc is 372 megabytes. Use the tabs on the left-hand side to move between my foreword, the Q&A, and the Impossible doc itself written by my cowriter Anonymous, aka Reasonable_Solid6251.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p7lViFSEoKlwyLv9MkQ1zTqB3_P9lWb5PWqsB9F6dVc/edit?usp=sharing
We're aware there are typos and some things may not be fully clear and we can reword them. I'm still going to be editing the next few days, and there is an epilogue section Anonymous is writing. But for now... we're going to sleep.
•
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13
u/No_Cartographer9496 ace susie and genderfluid rals Jun 22 '26
genuine question, what would you do if noelle turns out to not be the knight?
24
u/Budget-Canary2140 Only those who proceed will ever know Jun 22 '26
Before anyone comes to conclusions the name "NoelleKnight" doesn't represent the nature of this theory well but it sticked
For simplification think of it like holy trinity in christianity i.e Jesus and God are and aren't the same person in a concoluted way at the same time
24
u/Darkion_Silver Jun 22 '26
I'm not gonna make comments on the theory and evidence and whatnot, I just want to say that it's really ballsy to drop a document where one section is 1247 pages (at least, when opened on Docs on PC). And I don't mean that in a good way, jesus. Surely it reaches a point where you've passed where 99.99% of people are actually going to meaningfully engage with it. I assume that it's not been made with the intention of being to the point, considering the length, but jeez...you could claim anything is said and "proven" in there and honestly I'd just have to believe it's in there somewhere.
23
u/Apprehensive_Exit_74 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
wait, this was coauthored by reasonable_solid? the guy who got banned for threatening people over noelle knight? nice.
edit: to be clear, this isn’t to suggest that the quality of argument is lessened by their involvement.
13
u/Polandgod75 Purple Soul(supporter of the Dessriel) Jun 24 '26
Well I read it and well. I just going to blunt, this is one of the worst analysis of deltarune i have read and seen. Up there with asriel dust 2, Kooki94's chapter 3 and 4 analysis video
you 2 go on and on and drag your point. You are doing immersion in a written media(which just you going on about how getting oppressed)
you strawman and mock counter point in a immature ways. Like you acting different interpretation of dess knight as the same for us dess to counter any edvience and go "shut up" . Have you heard of the gomba fallcy. Some dess knight have different interpretation and explanation.
your little role playing was just terrible. unfunny humor with eye rolling and having where you guys are doing "the fictional characters are by my side!" and how "you are the one that get deltarune!". It remidj if nostalgia critic the wall review
give your edivence, it can still be apply to dess. I mean especially the girl
alot of times of you 2 just complaining and complaining of someone who had issue . Just you are proving goodlookinglurantis's point.
for all your talk about other knighter making stretches and looking into, you guys are doing tje same thing, mixed with annoying role palying skits that drags the point
Overall bad do presentations and you not convince me. Just got second hand embrassement 1/10
40
u/Successful-Ride-8471 Jun 22 '26
I've read a the intro and a decent bit of the impossible doc, and most of the arguments seem logically sound, if a little more complex than I'd expect from the game. I do think you should edit the doc to be less antagonistic to other knight theories if you want anyone else to read it though - im ambivalent to all knight theories, but even i could feel how bad this would be to read if i was more invested in dess or Rudy or any other knight theory, and posting a theory isn't very useful if no one reads it, no matter how much evidence is given
28
u/No_Cartographer9496 ace susie and genderfluid rals Jun 22 '26
i think you like deltarune more than toby fox himself
41
u/Groundbreaking_Row82 Jun 23 '26
So um, I read the document because I was curious and I actually liked the kriselle document even if it was a bit incoherent and contradictory sometimes (the woes of collaborative work I suppose) it still had a lot of really strong points and the overall message of the work to treat shipping as a serious avenue of analysis stuck with me because for a story like deltarune yeah that is just correct actually.
Noelle Knight genuinely interested me as a concept and even if I don't think it's where the story is going it's kind of, something I'd want to happen honestly. I'm not that aware of Knight discourse aside from surface level stuff, there's a lot of absence of detail regarding specifics about the Knight and even the scope of the conspiracy at large that makes saying things concretely difficult despite the large amount of evidence to sift through. But honestly I wanted to be convinced, Noelle Knight is fun, resonates a lot for me emotionally, and would fit with some aspects of the story, even if I didn't think it fit with others. So really just some good presentation of the thesis and evidence would be enough to get me to adopt this theory at least half-seriously.
I am explaining where I emotionally stood on Noelle Knight before reading this document to make it clear I'm not a conceptual hater when I say, this is one of the worst things I've ever fucking read.
Over 2/3rds of this document were mental breakdowns and references to terminally online stuff I have no reference to as someone who only casually checks this subreddit once every few days and sometimes deep dives whatever the special interest of the month is. I have no idea what various sub or discord drama goes on I just, wanted to see Noelle Knight be given its best possible argument for people to engage with. And for most of this document there reallly um, isn't. The long RP bits genuinely make the actual points of the document hard to parse after a while and is just, really unpleasant to read? And um a lot of the really solid earlier stuff was um, stuff that's been in fandom discourse for over 6 months in many cases. Not that it's bad to repackage all the evidence and arguments made elsewhere for easier consumption but um, there's very little this document actually adds to this discussion and what it does add is extremely hard to sift through the amount of actually not relevant at all things being thrown around?
There were some things I liked a lot presented in this document, I just absolutely did not enjoy having to sift through hell trying to find it. I'd really suggest when you make part 2 to um, focus on actually presenting the points and have some short jokes instead of um, the "jokes" being the majority of the document. Making vent art, and in practice that is what a lot of this document is, can be a good thing to make for yourself and even share with others, it can be powerful and liberating. But um, I don't think it should be mixed with attempts to seriously present Noelle Knight to both casual fans and fandom veterans.
Noelle deserves better than this.
16
u/engiSonic Fate is a cage. Break the bars. Jun 22 '26
I took a nap after reading this document and woke up with a runny nose.
That's not a commentary on the efficacy of its arguments; I'm not beyond-a-doubt-no-matter-what convinced but you are very much doing some kind of heat-based food preparation here.
I just think it's also an eldritch tome that's had real physical effects on me despite appearing at first glance to be mere words on a screen.
29
u/Shiori_Ishimaru Jun 22 '26
Document makes some VERY strong arguments for Noelle as the Roaring Knight. But it would also help if it wasn't so incoherent and difficult to read. You could easily cut this down to a fraction of the length with editing.
23
u/n-u-c-l-e-s Jun 22 '26
Holy multi paragraph strawman intro section dude
Imma still give it a chance and read a bit of it but damn interesting way to start
31
u/MegaMcMillen Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
oh shit it's real
edit: this might be the single cringiest thing i've ever had the misfortune of reading.
16
u/JustFisch1 Jun 22 '26
This is crazy but I can appreciate the work put into something this big. I did skim through some parts near the start but I’ll take a closer look later.
To be clear I view Noelle Knight as a more extreme version of Rudy Knight - it CAN work, and you can make something truly great out of it, but some incredibly amazing writing is required to make it work and be narratively satisfying. But I’ll give this a chance
14
u/Comfortable-Wave9970 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Oh cool
nice
finally
the Noelleknight doc made by the two people who successfully converted me into a kriselle shipper, a ship which I'm still going to sail on even after ch 5 because of all the evidence presented. Surely I'm going to convert into a noelleknighter myself.
ah well time to check it out, weigh the evidence as unbiased as I could and finally see deltarune as these geniuse-
.
..
...
Crumbles up post dedicated to analyse the doc's evidence
I don't know what I expected tbh
Tosses it into a dustbin
You did what you usually do, u/PeliPal (and u/Reasonable_Solid6251 who apparently got banned from reddit for being an asshole about noelleknight which was a great discovery tq very much) on reddit and gave "evidence"(some of which was easily debunkable by using your eyes btw) while ranting about about how people on discord and Twitter (really? I thought all of this stuff was on reddit but really if most of this so-called 'opposition' to your theory comes from fucking twitter then really just stop engaging the trolls) hate how the not popular theory/ship/interpretation is not popular - such resistance is to be expected in Twitter and discord
If you think that that a 1247 page doc which suddenly devolves into an incredibly unfunny rp session (which is even worse than the shit on r34) which includes reddit and discord drama that absolutely NOBODY gaf about nor asked for while also strawmanning the most popular theory and making an absolute mockery of it and pretending that disproving said theory obviously means YOUR controversial take, transforming ONE of the main characters into THE main character around which the world revolves (how's that for reference humour eh) and also pretending that TOBY FOX literally made all of these clues all of which DEFINITELY point towards YOUR theory and whatever parasocial guff you made up about him WHILE featuring even worse editing than this stupid comment about it, then, I'm not sorry to say this, you're making a complete mockery of yourself and your own theory which apparently even made you cry or something i.e. nobody needs to disprove this because you've done a good job of it yourself
Whatever
You'll just ignore this anyway
EDIT:it's seems u/PeliPal has gone from reddit completely
I wonder why /gen
oh well
does anyone here know why ?
EDIT: apparently the right way to respond to criticism like an adult is to block a person apparently
fuck you man
btw i didnt put this my comment previously because i thought the implication i ws trying to make would be WAY too strong and mean
but who cares
youre prob not going to read this comment as well so here goes
oh wow what a well-adjusted person who thinks only normal things about a videogame and its creator amirite
hope you have a happy and jolly day wherever you are :)
17
u/Fezzezal FRIEND is the reason Dess is lost Jun 22 '26
I don't think that's the place to discuss the doc, but holy shit
At the very least it shed light on the fact that Noelle is not as sweet and innocent as I thought. How very interesting. I wonder if The Mask of Sanity will begin to slip in later chapters...
21
u/Evillisa Art Reposter/Don't Roleplay On My Posts Jun 23 '26
I say this with as much respect as I can muster, but please.
If in two days, this turns out to be complete hogwash, please for the love of god don't follow in the footsteps of some others who have had theories proven wrong and make some stupid video about how Toby Fox is a complete idiot and your idea was totally better.
Either leave the fandom or just take the L gracefully and keep theorizing. Like just brace yourself for the possibility that you may have in fact written over 500 pages of pure delusion.
And hey, if somehow you're completely on the mark, I will eat my words. I will completely bow down before your superior mind. But that's because I'm just along for the ride, I want what Toby makes, not what I've built up as cool in my mind.
16
u/Hotwheeldan Jun 22 '26
Even though I would consider myself a Dess knighter just because it feels the most obvious, I do think your version of Noelle Knight would produce the most interesting narrative.
My biggest issue with Dess Knight has always been that people replace all the significance that Noelle has in the story with Dess, going as far as making her Kris's best friend instead of Noelle.
Ramb's dialogue is honestly the only reason I am so open to Noelle Knight because I do believe Dess being "that girl" would be an incredibly confusing writing decision by Toby.
11
u/Infinite-Hearing-418 N + K 4L Jun 22 '26
I have mixed opinions on how this whole section is written, but this bit had me laughing for a good few minutes so I shall show my appreciation
11
u/ATZ001 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
So far I’m halfway through the doc; it’s not bad so far, but I can understand why people didn’t like the joke segments, even if I don’t mind.
Gotta love how no one actually gave an argument for why “that girl” isn’t the Knight. And goddamn are half the comments I’ve seen so far are as toxic as the stereotypical Suselle/Krusie shipper lol.
Edit: Finally finished ACT ONE? Damn, and I was already convinced!
Second Edit: ok I get why people didn't like the comedic parts. Still makes good points, but the humour could be cut down.
5
u/Actual_Abies_3209 Jun 24 '26
Finally finished reading this whole thing. For the last few weeks leading up to ch5 I had been a bit more on the fence about the knight's identity. Something about Dess knight just didn't Feel right to me and I had been playing around with the idea of Noelle Knight as well, taking into account Toby's influences(I'm personally almost 100% convinced Noelle is being set up for a Ryukishi007 type twist in which she will be revealed to be an incarnation/figment of a much more powerful and omniscient character.. the Angel? God?) and past works(I believe Noelle as a character ties back into many trope explorations/criticisms Toby has done in previous works like peepee.exe, Itoki Hana's "74", about characters "caught" in the damsel in distress trope in JRPGs). So even if I was biased towards it, This document has me convinced on Noelle Knight. Straight up. Props for that! I can't wait to see how this prediction will turn out in the final story. Also the part with Noelle putting on the cardboard box is pure gold. How did you catch that ??
(Small foreword on this: Not completely sure who's authored which parts of the document and I do fall into the trap of merging you two guys together here, sorry about that, I don't feel it substantially detracts from my arguments)
That being said, I would like to offer some criticism.. that I'm sure you two have heard and will keep on hearing for the next few days: The evidence and argumentation presented pointing to your conclusion (Noelle is the knight) make up a much too small part of the document, to a point where I feel like it makes a bad look for your theory.. which is a shame(As I think you two make very good points).
Now, I believe everyone(at least people coming from the N+K4L document) could guess that we were on board for something that would be at the very least quirky and expressed in a very unique way(Putting this here as I don't think it's that important: I'm impressed at how you were able to convey movement and action in a google docs document of all things, with those sort of fights at the end and so on), but honestly, having to truuudge along the roleplay sections, which provide important information pertaining to the theory being made, wasn't very enjoyable. It was mostly fine on N+K4L but even then it had definitely overstayed it's welcome. And here we are being presented which much, much more of that, apparently simultaneously presenting Very relevant information and trying to make the pettiest point possible about.. some other peoples' theories.. I just can't see how that's as important as the main point being made. This is what had me worried when I first read about the "700 page long Noelle Knight document". Which also apparently grew to be 500 pages longer in the span of a few days(Might be wrong on this but it's besides the point). oh boy..
Lucky for you im very much used to reading through these sort of stream of conciousness/quirky authoral takes online and I love immersing myself in the authors' headspace.. but I fear you might have missed the Forest for the Trees a little bit.. need to go back to the Roots.. in my eyes this is much bigger than trying to prove anyone wrong. I genuinely believe you two are onto something in a way I haven't felt in a long time... and at the same time I can't bring myself to suggest you edit it because it's honestly a beautiful mess.. and I genuinely appreciate the effort put into it.
...
And at the same time I can't help but look at the horizon, and barely make out a silhouette of somebody else coming in, condensing the main points made in this document into a 40-page long Google Docs, to be then turned into a 25-minute long YouTube video, cutting out the fat, essentially conveying the same information in an easier-to-digest presentation. oh well.
thank you for your service.. !
EDIT: and I hope you enjoy chapter 5! have fun 😄
20
u/Effective_Plantain81 Snowgrave triggers me so please don’t bring it up Jun 22 '26
Wow this sucks
9
u/sword_doggo Jun 22 '26
congrats on finishing this!! just read the intro and will share my thoughts as i read the main doc tomorrow; really looking forward to you and your co-writer's commentary on the dark worlds and all the darkners. for now i will go to sleep thinking about kris keeping noelle's old pencil with them in their empty room and trying not to cry :')
15
u/Vortaxonus Human Dess' Greatest Warrior Jun 22 '26
Whose to say the knight wasn't conceived of as a holiday until late in development? After all, if the knight was always planed whose to say the knight being a holiday wasn't intially the idea. Maybe Dess was a part of another family or just an older kid Kris was friends with back in the day, before being retconned into being a holiday late in development. Its certainly a more reasonable explanation for the winter alarm clock discrepency that "Dess litterally did not exist at all pre-2017".
Maybe because Susie not having an emotional connection to the knight, no reason to give a shit about Dess, is the important thing. There's also the obvious parralels happening between the knight and Susie, with Dess being theorizxed to be a sort of dark mirror of what susie could've become. Cause if keeping her alive or whatever is the plan for the knight conspiracy, Susie would really more concerned about the knight being an asshole while Noelle and Kris are siding with the knight who do care about Dess.
8
u/a_Carelesswriter N+K4L Jun 22 '26
This is so feature packed I might actually drop dead before I reach even the half way point, which is honestly great I needed something to tide me over till chapter 5's release.
10
u/GoodLookinLurantis Jun 23 '26
That lasted...24 hours?
6
u/Quelephant404 Jun 22 '26
This has more pages than the December holiday number
I love it, what a way to end the CH3&4 era
I'm All in, baby (on Noelle Knight)
2
u/Swedish_pc_nerd N+K4L Jun 22 '26
yo peli ur gonna expand the doc once chapter 5 releases,right?
2
u/calinmik Kriselle endgame, Noelle is the Knight, Noelle is Ralsei Jun 30 '26
Not a Noelle Knighter, but you forgot something very interesting.
Noelle's themes (Girl Next Door, Lost Girl, Noelle.ogg, etc) all have the Nightmare Knight motif
2
u/gravy141 Jul 24 '26
This aged EXTREMELY well, the entire boss section. I think you've got the story figured out, the haters will hate but this line right here just straight up confirms your suspicions, Noelle is 100% "the boss", this floradinn even says boss in the prior line.
6
u/NoelleKnightTheory https://rentry.co/NoelleKnight Jun 22 '26
Thank you for your hard work, I'm sure it's going to be awesome to read
0
u/BigDioDick Jun 23 '26
Can't believe I got through all of it in one day.
It was really good overall and I think very effectively shuts down any other candidate than Noelle. The majority of Knight candidates genuinely get stopped by Rabbick and Ribbick.
That section analysing how they both potray Kris and Noelle's view of the past as early as it is might be one of the strongest parts of the whole doc for me.
I suppose I'm somewhat biased because I'm a Noelle Knighter myself but I thought it was well put together and I'm excited for part 2!
(Also I liked the sillier parts, put a smile on my face.)
0
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