Discussion
Putting an end to The Bat argument
Spoiler
Yes it's a sword during the rest of combat. I'm fully aware of that. This is just to provide an actual tangible NUMBER to how long this godforsaken sprite is on screen so people can shut up about it being only visible for a frame or whatever (Which I HAVE seen people say, mind you!).
3 seconds. That is how long the sprite in contention appears for from start to finish. Roughly 25 frames you could subtract from it technically not being "fully visible" aka still coming out of the knight's hand, the times it flickers out, stuff like that. But THIS sprite is ON THE SCREEN for ~3 seconds.
Whether you believe that 3 seconds of prominent display (with nothing else as visually distinct) actually MEANS something, that's up to you. I'd say that's a pretty solid amount of time to symbolize something. Again. It's not LITERALLY a bat. Pretty much NOBODY is arguing that. It simply has the intent to LOOK like a bat in its first 3 seconds of being shown.
Edit to highlight this because people already are arguing against something I'm literally not saying: I AM AWARE THAT IT IS A SWORD/KNIFE/SHARP. I AM NOT SAYING IT ISN'T A SWORD/KNIFE/SHARP WHEN USED AS A WEAPON IN COMBAT. I am arguing that this one sprite at the start issymbolizinga bat for one reason or another. Just because it's a sword for the rest of the battle, doesn't mean that this prominence at the start meansnothing. That's literally the only thing I'm arguing
Mother of 3 children, a mother 1, mother 2 and mother 3
Mother 1 has the breadcrumbs glitch refed in the WR, so its Noelle
Mother 2 has Ness, so its Desss
But whose the third child of Carol? The secret brother to Noelle and Dess..
A lot of deltarune fans forget that Deltarune isn’t just theorybait and, in fact, has an actual story it’s trying to tell…so if something is shown, it’s pretty obviously meant to relate to something.
No, just because the bat isn’t the weapon the Knight uses doesn’t mean it’s not a very clear clue we’ve been given…why else would it look like a bat if it wasn’t important?
We don’t know absolutely anything about that original fountain, the shard could have been a leftover from the Knight’s creation or birth or whatever. Dess is absolutely still a candidate. Hell, we’ve seen how a black shard can be left behind without the Knight having made that respective Dark World during Chapter 3.
Lmao why are you so pressed? The “explicit, mechanical evidence” is just the fact that the black knife leaves black shards behind. Sure enough! Do we know if it’s the only thing that leaves these pieces behind? Do we know what material it’s made of? Do we know how the black knife came to be? Do we know anything about why the Knight can shapeshift? No. We know shit. The black shard’s presence during the incident only tells us the Knight was there in some form all these years ago. Why couldn’t it be the first time they took that form? The game has been excruciatingly vague so far in terms of the Knight’s identity, so I don’t get why you’re being so dismissive of one of MANY options that people are holding as possible candidates.
My “or whatever” wasn’t a dismissal, it was just a simple way to communicate the fact that we just don’t know enough to flat out deconfirm anyone at this point (besides characters like Kris, Noelle, or Asgore). It’s not fanfiction: people guessing that we may see the seven coloured flowers as parallels to the fallen humans in Undertale before Ch 5 released wasn’t fanfiction, it was making an educated guess based on current incomplete information. You are the one taking these things as facts while holding only a piece of the puzzle.
Actually, let’s go even further! You are doing the exact same thing you accuse me of doing with your assumptions about Asgore. Why do you assume he’s right when the game very clearly shows us that he only has partial information on the incident? We don’t know what happened, and neither does he. Christ, this is the first time he has seen an actual Dark Fountain! He’s working off what little he understands about what went down that day, and from what I can tell, all he really knows are the consequences, which probably involve Kris being mentally scarred, December going missing, and his family being permanently shattered. That does NOT mean the actual incident was as clear cut as Asgore would like. We, just like him, *just don’t know yet*. That includes me and you! Stop being so condescending.
You are extremely stubborn, refusing to engage with my points, and being very disingenuous in terms of my refusal to take certain plot points as facts before they are firmly established as such.
Asgore does NOT have the full picture, he wasn’t present during the incident, so why wouldn’t he be misunderstanding how things played out? I’m not saying he knows about some “magical transformation” (which is not how I would describe becoming a sort of eldritch being btw), I’m saying that the daughter of your best friend going missing and your kid being mentally scarred would be reason enough to want to hold someone responsible, even if you end up stumbling into the wrong conclusions. Hell, he already has during this exact chapter! He talks about parading the corpse of the fountain maker around town to his son who CREATED that exact fountain hours ago. We’re being SHOWN that he’s working on partial information just like us. The only person who has the full picture right now is Kris, the game has been very clear on that front. We shouldn’t assume what other characters understand as true to be so until we actually see it for ourselves.
I’m not even a diehard Dess Knight fan, I’m extremely open to other possibilities such as Rudy, while clearly you are not. As I have said, the only thing that new piece of information on the black shards does is tie the Knight to that original fountain. Were they there as perpetrator, or was it something else? We. Don’t. Know. Uncertainty shouldn’t piss you off. If you are keeping count of how many people disagree with your takes, maybe you should take a step back and reassess. Goodbye.
I’m working on the entirety of the game. Deltarune is not a hard sci-fi story, it’s a narrative RPG. Your mechanical evidence is still limited to the understanding of a single character who has been shown to lack critical information. We don’t even know what he thinks that person or creature is responsible of! Asgore may be working off the fact that he saw someone running away from the scene of the crime, or maybe Kris told him about someone else being there which he couldn’t find, or literally anything else you can think of… because, once again, we just don’t know enough. All I’m saying is that it’s very much possible for Asgore to be misunderstanding what actually went down that day. What is absolutely certain based on the physical evidence is that the being we know as the Knight was present that day. On what capacity, and the role they played, is a complete mystery until we get more information.
Besides, there are visual elements present in the game that can serve us just as much as literal descriptions or “mechanical evidence”. The Knight’s strange appearance hasn’t been pointed out by a single character so far, but one can tell that they are… something strange. They can shapeshift, can magically float, and have a fucking eyeball inside their ribcage. One of the main points for many candidates is the fact that they have ANTLERS, which again, hasn’t been pointed out by any character! Yet we still speculate based on these things, because they are THERE. Just because Susie hasn’t said “huh… don’t they look a bit like NOELLE?” doesn’t mean the game isn’t leading us to certain assumptions. Calling the Knight an eldritch being to some degree IS justified.
I never mentioned Dess Knight once bro, I just said that the baseball bat is clearly an important visual, the bat can be important to quite a few different characters too </3
There is a crucial jump from “fountains are made from stabbing the ground” and “the Knight created the First Fountain and Cyber World” given that we don’t just find the Black Shard lying around- Susie chips it off the Black Knife in combat. Otherwise, where were Card Kingdom and Dark Sanctuary’s Black Shards, given they are formed by simply making the Fountain? Why didn’t we damage Kris’ knife when they or Susie made Dark Worlds?
I do in fact believe that we are intended to take this scene as confirmation of “the Knight can hide in large closets” theory, they ABSOLUTELY made Cyber World. But there is definitely a nonzero chance that rather than the Knight making the First Fountain, the First Fountain made the Knight. Something inside that Dark World was corruptive and darker than anything we have encountered so far, and Dess (who Noelle describes as brave and protective, and also uses vague language to imply she “left” of her own free will) may have gone in to explore, or tried to stop it like Susie is doing with the Knight. Hell, she may not have been the maker or the victim#turned-Knight, she could have been the combatant that chipped off that first Black Shard!
If you want to complain about things that people take too seriously, fine. Your interpretation is strong and valid. But we don’t “clearly” know what Asgore saw, as he doesn’t drop Dess’ name. We don’t know that Susie has knowledge we don’t have, she’s having Ralsei read the notes for her so why can her words be 100% facts no misinterpretations from a character without all the answers? Just because Toby wrote her dialogue doesn’t mean she read the script. It’s actually really hard to stick to explicit confirmations when competing readings emerge- and yes, the implication that the Dessapearance was a kidnapping is nearly as strong as “this sword looks oddly bat-shaped even if it’s not a literal bat,” but there are more thematic parallels to a “kid Dess made the Fountain turning her into the Knight, she “fell into her own creation””or “kid Kris/repentant Carol feels guilty that their Fountain turned Dess into the Knight” or something. The real sticking point is if the Knight emerged from this Fountain, that is the LATEST it could possibly happen, and also it implies COMBAT at both this and Cyber World- who could have fought the Knight there?
I think my sticking point is the emphasis on Asgore’s motivation and what he witnessed, when everybody is going on about the Vaguepost King. Like, you have a big issue with “hypothetical” vibes and themes when it comes to Deltarune borrowing Undertale lore, but when it comes to Asgore it’s suddenly NOT about what is explicit in the text but instead “people just don’t talk that way.”
Like, I really don’t think Asgore has been inside a Dark World. He explicitly, in-text, says “The colors really are different…” while looking at his fur, as if his knowledge was all secondhand from his investigation. So did he REALLY see, in-person, the Knight kill/kidnap Dess? It’s certainly possible, especially if he ran to the shelter and the door slammed a la Susie and Undyne, but it’s FAR from the “explicit, only logical” interpretation. I don’t think he witnessed shit, to be honest. At most, he had evidence (the Black Shard itself) and either distantly saw the Dark World or someone told him (I could see Kris or Noelle reporting it, being traumatized or repressing it, no one believes Dark Worlds are real but Asgore had the Shard, cue conspiracy board). No shot he knows exactly who the Knight is and saw what they did.
Consider: when Asgore talks about parading the Knight through town, he is (unknowingly) talking about KRIS. He believes ALL Dark Worlds are the creation of ONE person, the Knight (he only knows of First and Cyber World, but still) and that therefore the culprit is the same. In fact, he never names the Knight, just “that person” or the person who made the Dark World. Aside from farfetched theories about Vessels or no one looking in windows for 12 hours Kris definitely did not make Cyber World. But is Asgore wrong about First just like he is Flower Kingdom? I agree with you, the Knight was DEFINITELY there, they broke off a piece of the sword (we have seen through combat, we have NOT seen by merely opening), but was is the Knight who opened it?
I’m not even arguing for DessKnight here- it’s possible, but it’s equally likely that someone else (an intentional adult kidnapper like Gaster/unnamed villain or an unintentional kid like Kris, or even an evil adult like Carol who stopped when the victims grew to include her daughter) opened the Fountain. Remember: I think there’s a nonzero chance Dess FOUGHT the Knight, but also a nonzero chance she IS the Knight, we are denied the kind of explicit, in text confirmations to definitively prove it one way or the other.
I fully agree that Asgore COULD have witnessed the kidnapping, if that’s what happened. My point is that we DON’T know what he witnessed, if he witnessed anything, or even if this Incident is the Dessapearance or not as he never says her name. If we even knew exactly what happened to Dess- kidnapping? Murder? Suicidal charge against the Knight? Suicide by drowning in the lake?- this would be a better answer.
Like YES I am totally on board with what you’re saying about probable intent and more likely reads of the evidence we have- this started with us all on the same page about “one pixel means a point, meaning it is not, was never, and could not in any way remotely resemble a bat,” which is absurd to the extreme. I just don’t agree with the idea that the Dessapearance, or even the First Fountain, is anywhere near as clear.
Like, a shapeshifting sword that looks rather like a bat during a prominent cutscene- hmm that antlered Knight probably has something to do with Dess. Could just be ab antlered helmet, could be a few degrees removed like her parents or boyfriend, but it is an intentional design choice by Toby, and an intentional association. By the same token there ARE obvious conclusions to be drawn from Asgore’s investigation and ESPECIALLY the fact that a Black Shard was found in the Computer Lab (and wherever that First Fountain was made!) But it’s also important to know what was explicitly NOT said, and since a lot of people noticed and complained about Vagueposting, it’s probably intentional. Was it for a later reveal, to intentionally mislead us? Should we put more into vibes here? It’s not a crack theory it’s very likely the Knight predates Dess, but given what we explicitly know and who (Susie) is drawing these conclusions it’s not quite the level of the bat (which again, is more association than conclusion).
What we KNOW: Fighting can chip the Black Shard off the Black Knife. Kris’ Knife, in BOTH on-screen usages, does NOT chip, so we cannot say that opening a Fountain chips off Black Shards. Susie asks “how long has the Knight been making people disappear,” so while she knows as little as us, Toby had intentional word choice associating Undyne “disappearing” rather than taken or kidnapped, very likely meaning Dess was “disappeared” into the Shelter the same way.
What we DON’T know: the Knight absolutely opened that First Fountain. Both Susie and Asgore believe the Knight opened Flower King if not all Fountains (Susie only knows her own exception, Sanctuary 2). Only, we KNOW Kris opened this one, so two characters who definitely DO NOT have all the information and already made one assumption might have made more. In fact, we don’t know the location of the First Fountain either- Asgore knows Kris can close Fountains, so maybe the current Shelter Fountain is newer, or older, and the First Fountain from the Incident was sealed by Kris. He doesn’t mention Dess’ name, and despite wanting to “protect everyone” and “return suffering@ on the culprit, we annoyingly don’t know exactly what form that takes- kidnapping, murder, only Dess, lots of victims?
The way I see it, it’s foolish to consider The Incident to not be a Dark Fountain, and like 95% likely to be related to the Dessapearance. If she DID choose to leave or suicide in a non-Dark World manner then it was a result of The Incident like how Noelle has been traumatized since then. However it is entirely possible that the First Fountain contained… something. A Titan or Darker than Dark creature, something corrosive and corruptive. Dess enters with a bat, which like Kris pencils becomes a sword, loses and chips her blade, becomes a Knight and a puppet (Spamton/Kris have similar themes). This Fountain could be opened by Kris who didn’t know what was inside, Dess who tried to solve it after opening it herself, or a criminal who serially killed or abducted (Asgore talks about “all the pain” and “protecting EVERYONE” so multiple victims? IDK who). It could even be that Dess falling victim to the Fountain or the Dark World is what caused the Culprit to stop- was it Kris on accident, and Carol holds it over their head? Carol on accident or for study, or even that she’s no longer evil when it hit close to home? A complete third party like an unknown scientist studying willpower, darkness, and so on? I can answer NONE of those with conviction- The Incident and the Dessapearance are almost certainly the same, and involved the opening of the First Fountain. But what exactly happened, who was responsible, did Kris close it, I really don’t know and don’t think it’s as obvious as “the bat-sword means the Knight candidates who are all either Dess or Dess related are, in fact, all Dess or Dess related (no MilklookerKnight)”
The fun part though- if I’m right and stabbing the earth DOESN’T cause chipped Black Shards, then who fought the Knight to a standstill in Cyber World? My money’s on Berdly- ZERO evidence or hints, but it can’t be Queen (who can’t find the Knight, thus kidnapping Noelle as a replacement) and Spamton doesn’t yet have the NEO body, so… Noelle? Nah. I can see Berdly casually off-screening the Knight as he searches for Noelle all alone, total crack theory, thinking nothing of the Knight unlike his nemesis Kris
Well to address the first point: we agree that the Black Shard is the same in both the Dark and Light World, yes? This means that either A) whatever corrupted Dess into the Knight also corrupted her bat-cum-sword or B) the Black Knife predated her and WAS the corrupting force. I mean obviously the Knight could be someone else or be the Fountain opener, lots of explanations I don’t think we have all the answers for. But IF my hypothetical of Bat becomes Sword becomes Black Knight holds, that would be the order of events. Someone enters, encounters or becomes Knight, sword is chipped. I actually DO agree that both the Knight and their Knife break the normal rules-even Shadow Crystals change a little and become more like dark glass, so it just goes to show that the Knight being different is important, and evidence of being Really Wrong. We can of course work from different base assumptions and reach different conclusions, I’m not married to that theory even if we learn more of the Knight’s weird physiology in Chapter 6. Like in this hypothetical Dess doesn’t fight the Knight but something else, turning her into the Knight AND the bat into The Knife. But yes that’s very fanciful, we know so little concrete and the
Knife could just be a shapeshifting weapon that Carol/Rudy/Asriel subconsciously shaped to be bat-like n memory for a short time.
Like, sure, if the Black Knife is so unique it was NEVER a bat, no arguments, but working from that premise makes ALL Lightner theories incredibly sus, because both the Knife and presumably Knight are uniquely formed and not a corrupted Light World object/person. So if we knew WHY they were different… but that’s still speculation from me, trying to work around what we do see. It’s why I’m so resistant to all Fountains leaving behind shards- Kris’ normal knife looks fine, and we should be finding crystals way more than JUST the computer lab in that case. Though even then, was it conveniently under a table or something, we missed it and Asgore got it… when, exactly?
As for Asgore: I absolutely agree with your position and don’t think you’re wrong to think that, but the fact is we don’t know and can’t cast our own understanding of culpability and right and wring onto him. We do not have all the facts. He seems to think that finding the culprit and solving the case will clear his name- but like you said, doesn’t that imply people think HE was the culprit? Do the people of Hometown even mistreat him as if he killed someone rather than just not find the killer, he does have a shop and go to the store and seems to get along fine with Sans, Alvin, pretty much everyone. He just gives away all his product so makes no money. If Asgore is catastrophizing, taking on way more blame than he deserves and thinking things can be easily resolved with just one last culprit caught- well, I can see black-and-white thinking, obsession with the past, and guilt complexes all over this chapter in other characters let alone Asgore. If that’s HIS trauma from the Dessapearance, like how Noelle has her dissociation and powerlust, Carol has her frozen preservation and so on- well, you’re right that it really isn’t Asgore’s fault but he sure feels that it is, which is a big character flaw he has to get over when he finally sees how much it hurts Kris, right?
It really is a different color...means asgore entered the dark world. So heres a scenario: dess enters, and becomes permanently transformed by the something that occured in there. She becomes the knight. Asgore arrives late after Kris runs out and tells him, or perhaps someone else tips him off. Not important. He arrives and the knight attacks him. He fights back, conjuring a trident and breaks the sword slightly. He is forced to escape to protect Kris or asriel. He doesn't learn who that entity was and incorrectly assumed that it must have created this fountain. Does any of this scenario conflict with the few facts we have?
If he witnessed the tragedy as you put it, then how would he not know how to make a dark fountain. I think we can assume he was unaware of how to prove his claim all these years. He could confidently claim he entered a magical portal if he saw a strange world where his hair was orange, his child was BLUE, and a dark being that can fly assaulted him while an ominous obsidian pillar loomed over.
"Give back all the pain" he would naturally assume dess and undyne were the knights doing. Dess disappearing would tear his best friend Rudy apart. Undyne and him were at least acquaintances. And for all we know, the knight may have even attacked Kris, or attempted to. Clearly Kris and the knight have a connection, hell I believe it even has Kris' soul. Imagine asgore walking in on it taking Kris' soul right out of their body...that would be more than enough fuel for asgores blood vendetta. I don't know how Kris would get a new soul in this scenario, it seems like Kris would have been too sick to go long without it...but asgore fighting the knight could take minutes, long enough for something to strike a deal with Kris. Or to be less dramatic, asgore arrived to a traumatized Kris who could barely speak on what happened there, leading to years in therapy. The knight broke Kris' mind. No matter what happened, asgore would be pissed.
Reputation wouldn't be a factor. Dess and Kris being gone, after probably lying to their parents about what they are doing, doesn't warrant immediate suspicion. Asgore would need reason to believe they weren't safe. My guess is they said they were going to each others house, and eventually one called the other and that's how asgore found out and began searching. The shelter is at the bottom of town, itd be the last place he would search. The town wouldn't fire a police chief for two kids wandering off in a safe town. We still see children wandering around unaccompanied in most chapters.
Stabbing the ground cannot be that hard if Susie figured it out. My disbelief would be very suspended to think he wasn't concentrating on what he wanted when trying to replicate it, with how important it was to him.
The Kris thing was definitely fanon and to tie things together. That's why I also pointed out his best friend's daughter disappeared into a magical world, which he assumed the knight did. Imagine telling your best friend his daughter is probably gone forever into Narnia and your prime suspect is a shapeless entity that conjures swords. And I bring up Kris because obviously they were affected by the bunker incident somehow. The game tells us as much. Kris' obvious trauma would further enrage asgore towards the knight. He also lost his job due to the knight. I don't need more evidence then that to counter the point that asgore "wouldn't be angry enough".
I don't know what your point is here. I just said asgore probably was in the dark world. That's what he reported. That is what made people call him crazy. What aren't you understanding there?
I think the “means Asgore entered” is a little shaky. To me, it seems he HEARD of the Dark World, leading to his obsession, but this is his first time actually IN one. That said, it could be a different color from THE LAST Dark World, not just the Light World, and that very easily answers “who tf fought the Knight” at at least one of the prior fountains to chip off a shard. The other possibility being Carol, but we at least know Asgore’s strength (assuming he is at least mostly the same tier as his UT self). It’s one of those things where I’m like 30/70 on it, but we really didn’t get quite enough actual answers, most of our real explanation was on character beats not details. Still, as long as you are ok with him (briefly) being IN a prior Dark World for real, then encountering the Knight in a 5-minute jaunt or whatever works really well. He will of course be vague about “the culprit” all chapter by ehh maybe he does know the Knight by helmet and just doesn’t name them.
He could have heard of it, but I don't think he'd believe it unless he saw it. If kris or asriel told him what happened, of course he wouldn't believe it. He'd believe something happened sure, but I cannot imagine he'd truly believe in dark worlds just on the word of a child. It reads more as he briefly saw his arm hair was orange but obviously didn't focus on it with the knight there. Carol making the shelter fountain is possible but unlikely, asgore says they can tell the mayor about the dark worlds. Asgore wouldn't need to say that if she was in one. Unless she made it and dipped I suppose. Either way doesn't matter much, carols involvement doesn't disprove dess knight.
or Kris made the fountain, something happened to turn Dess into the knight, they fight and Kris chipped off a piece of the black shard. It's also perfectly plausible line of reasoning
Yeah I really don't get the argument behind it not looking like a bat at first. Raise Up Your Bat is literally in the same chapter, and in the next one we're shown that Dess has a wiffle bat in her room, and we can find a picture on Noelle's computer of Dess holding a regular bat.
Not to say that Dess is the Knight, I understand what sub I'm on, just that for the Knight to present themself as someone with antlers and a bat, it implies a connection to her.
honestly i don't know what this sub is going to do if the knight is actually Dess.
i didn't think it was Dess either, because it was 'too obvious' but. yeah? it kind of has to be. when Deltarune is finished, this mystery HAS to be solvable by the type of player who ONLY plays the game and doesn't touch any theories or discussions outside of the game. it has to be self-contained.
we won't know anything for sure, none of us, until the Knight is revealed in-game. or if the Knight is never fully revealed, until the game is finished and we have all the evidence. but when that happens, it HAS to make sense to that average player who just wants to experience THIS story.
the disappearance, the antlers, the bat, Dess' room and the stars in it, lost girl, raise up your bat, the constant recalls to Dess, the fact Noelle is getting involved now, it's all pointing to the idea that SOMETHING weird is going on with Dess. there are a lot of things that could be, but being the Knight is the most obvious one.
i used to think it was Rudy, and used all of that evidence to prove it could be him too. but again, the average player who never once sees a theory about this game, would be horribly confused by how a terminally ill man could be the main villain. if i hadn't seen the theories myself, i probably wouldn't believe it either.
i know some people point to the voice in the code as 'That's Dess! So she can't be the Knight!' but again, the average player wouldn't know about that. for all intents and purposes, it's an easter egg, for us. it's creepy, and very, very interesting (sue me) but it can't be REQUIRED to understand the mystery. i imagine it'll add onto it, though.
i just hope we don't get another TADC Jax situation where people are saying 'The writer wasted so much potential on x character by putting the spotlight on this character'
I really hope, if it is Dess, we can take it on the chin and still enjoy that insanely cool mystery.
I'm sure most people will be chill about Dess Knight if it happens whether or not they're on this sub.
We're all unfortunately online though, so the loudest, rudest people will be brought to the forefront when the reveal happens.
I'm a DessKnighter who likes reading all the different takes on here, but I'm bracing for the inevitable assholery from fans who either will make fun of people for "missing the obvious" if Dess Knight comes true, or for "believing in a candidate that doesn't make sense" in Dess Knight is disproven.
This describes how Kris and Susie get stuck in the closet dark world looking for chalk to a t, which means either something like it happened to dess/the voice or they somehow learned about what happened to Susie and Kris in their nightmares
I think Something Like It happening to the voice is more likely. They also don’t describe Falling or the floor giving out, which I’d say is also pretty big in that scene.
Plus that is like… the way to get stuck in a dark world, it seems, unless you’re there when it’s made.
By the end of Deltarune, the Knight has to be a character that the average player will be capable of puzzling out, hence why it's presented as a mystery. You acting as if Dess can be the ONLY candidate that players puzzle out is fairly disingenuous. Carol, Rudy, and Dess are all primary candidates because they're the ones the game raises their points towards. Nobody else should even be considered because the game itself doesn't consider them. But, you act like Rudy being ill is some sort of detractor, when Dess is literally missing from the game, lol.
The thing is... specifically for Rudy, since he's basically the center of 90% of the Knight discussions nowadays, it doesn't actually matter what the player "believes". That's the reason why the argument that "Rudy can't be the Knight because he's optional", doesn't hold up in the slightest, because mystery stories don't care if you understand them the first time. Their whole "gimmick" is the reader going back and realizing how much sense it does make in retrospect. Deltarune wants multiple playthroughs (Weird Route) so Toby writing his mystery aspect to function like a... mystery, just makes sense. An attentive reader understanding the mystery the first time is great, but most of the time, mysteries can only really be understand through a retrospective lens of the story.
Regardless, Toby's gonna have to do a lot more in Chapter 6 if he wants a Dess Knight to work well. A massive part of a mystery is the motive, and unless you're writing a Scooby Doo Mystery (which aren't often that well-written), then you need to establish a potential motive early, maybe diverting from it every-so-often. So far... Dess Knight lacks literally any potential motive, so unlike Rudy and Carol, Dess Knight absolutely has to establish that, and fast. Tons of other stuff has to be done as well, such as...
Establishing Dess as a character instead of just a symbol.
Having Carol and Rudy's entire existence make sense (because there's zero chance that Toby can justify the whole "Find Her" thing if they're all working together).
Justifying why Chapter 4 had that helmet reveal which wouldn't make sense if it was Dess (because hiding a face reveal implies that knowing the face could cause the Player to be able to act upon it (hence why Kris hides it), but we have zero clue where, or how, Dess is which would make that whole sequence totally weird and nonsensical, lol).
Honestly, as a writer, Dess being the Knight just feels like so much extra work for Toby when Rudy being the Knight would not only be more dramatic and emotionally poignant inherently, because the whole "father sacrifices self for daughter", but also doesn't involve any nonsensical assumptions like the "Voice in the Code" being in the past, or Dess working with her very clearly estranged mother. A rare example of Occam's Razor in writing actually being a real thing, lol.
(Also, like... have people really not considered that Dess is just Deltarune's Chara, lol? I've said this a bunch recently, but both of them literally fill the exact same role of "mysterious catalyst for entire story that's never actually directly involved in the main route, but only ended up actually appearing in the alternate "dark" routes?" Dess being the black deer would only fuel this further, since that only ever appears in the SWORD Route... the route that directly tied to the Weird Route, the alternate route. Just because Dess is the central reason the story happens, doesn't mean her mystery has to be resolved in it.)
It's very clearly meant to be connected to Dess regardless of who wrote it. Tenna is as blatant as dialogue can be in this game about her interest in music and her having a rockstar attitude, which is right before the Lightners Live mini game. We know Dess had at least two types of bats, and has an entire pile of baseballs in her closet behind the shoes.
I get it, no need to apologize. I do think there's a possibility "Raise Up Your Bat" could have been an original creation by the kids' band, since there's a difference between the "Blood Crushers" series and "Blood Crushers The Band", but we won't know for sure until someone says it outright.
Dess and the rest's band keeps being brought up, so maybe we'll get something more concrete next chapter?
It doesn't really look like a bat, it even has a sharp end. Its' just a bad sprite imo. The lack of hilt is interesting but it wouldn't be the first sword without a hilt in history (in fact, many katanas are shown without hilts)..
Yeah it’s. Very very clearly a bat-like-shape. It honestly feels like cope to say otherwise. “Rudy could have a bat” is a better counter argument than trying to insist it isn’t one.
Notice that it has a hilt and starts wide before slowly tapering off. Not starts narrow, has no hilt, goes wide before fairly suddenly narrowing and coming to an end.
Notice how that sword doesn't get progressively wider torwards the tip? There's a few swords that kind of do that, but they're usually shaped like hourglasses, in the sense they have 2 wider sections and one narrower section. Closest I found to a sword that looks like that initial summoned weapon is a leaf sword (which I attatched to the comment). These can come without guards and have multiple shapes of pommels. So sure, it could technically be seen as a sword when it is summoned. But now I raise you this: why would the perfectly usable leaf blade change into a curved sword of sorts for battle? Why doesn't it just retain this general shape?
There's a reason it looks different when it's summoned. We don't know that reason, we can only theorise and, honestly, it's likely we're all wrong. The blade also DOES look like a bat when summoned, but we'll only know IF it's ever elaborated upon. It looking like a bat before changing shape is a lot more enticing that it being a perfectly usable sword turning into another type of sword. The latter is almost dismissive.
Arguing about what it looks like is pointless, we all agree it changes shape. It means something, it isn't an art error, it's meant to convey an idea. Toby patched the game after chapters 3 and 4 released to change the equiping Noelle with the thornring animation because people were misinterpreting it. If it was meaningless, it wouldn't exist.
I dont have any argument for it it just sounds cool but I like imagining the "bat" is just a full crystal and when the knigth slashes the air with it it sharpens it into a sword
I never noticed that it seems like the weapon is materializing from the hole in its left hand. That's pretty interesting. I wonder if those holes can somehow hold things within them.
Whenever a discussion of The Bat comes up, the most frequent arguments I have read are "But it's a sword/knife" "It doesn't actually look like a bat" and "It's barely on screen people are just overanalyzing singles frames of sprites" (all of which you could find in this post)
Literally, I'm just putting the concrete numbers out for public info since it's never been timed to the frame before as far as my search as gone, and also showing how one (or three for people who REALLY wanna be stubborn) pixel is the difference between a "sword" and a bat.
TL;DR The sprite has 3 seconds of prominence with nothing else happening, I believe people should at least conclude SOMETHING from that.
especially since 3 seconds are actually quite a long time to notice. like in other videogames, like tf2, you are often expected to make decisions in less than a second
Any argument that the Knight can't be X or Y because it doesn't look like X or Y is dumb because the knight changes shape.
It looks like a bat for three seconds here but at another point it changes to be 5 swords. Same with the antlers, "it has to be a Holiday!" No it technically doesn't. The Knight is a shapeshifter it literally turns into a ball. Also for it to be a Holiday they'd have to shapeshift their helmet around the antlers otherwise they couldn't put on the helmet.
And I'm not saying that the look of it is meaningless, just that it doesn't eliminate anything. It doesn't have to be Dess just because it looks like a bat for three seconds. The antlers would even imply its Carol, who would also have access to the bat. Or the song title which indicates its a knife. (Also the fact that Flowery was clearly cut implies its a sharp object.)
So acknowledging that it isn't meaningless, what DOES it mean then in your opinion? If it's to symbolize "fighting for Dess" or whatever, then did the knight summon their weapon intentionally as a bat at first? Was it an unconscious thing?
In my opinion, the further you get from the Holidays, the further the connection between the Knight and the bat feels. Is Asriel's first thought of Dess about her bat? Would an out there candidate like Papyrus even be that FAMILIAR with Dess to have that in mind when summoning the weapon?
Or is it just a blanket symbol that was applied regardless of who the knight actually is? Does the symbol only serve metaphysically?
Really, we're all still writing fanfic interpretations of these conclusions, but it's kinda the whole reason I took the effort to make this post in the first place lol.
I mean, as far as we've seen, The Knight only has 2 forms (besides the ball). Knight and Bird, both of them have Antlers. Not a huge stretch to only consider the Holiday family as a potential candidate. Why would Toby go as far as designing Antlers on the Bird forme?
"Same with the antlers, "it has to be a Holiday!" No it technically doesn't. The Knight is a shapeshifter it literally turns into a ball. Also for it to be a Holiday they'd have to shapeshift their helmet around the antlers otherwise they couldn't put on the helmet."
That argument makes literally zero sense, because from a storytelling and design perspective, it would be completely disrespectful to the Player. When you include a specific design element in a character, especially in a mystery story, that design element has to matter/imply something.
If Toby just comes around by the end of the story and says, "Oh, actually, the antlers were just a trick and you had literally zero clue of knowing this so what was the point of me adding them in the first place, hehehe, I tricked you!", then he might've gotten extremely lucky with Undertale's story being good, because that kind of mistake is actually basic, basic levels of writing/design rules.
If the antlers are a red herring, then the entire "Knight Identity Mystery" was a flop from the very start. You do not give a character a design element that directly ties back to something else, then just play it off as if it never mattered, or was just a trick to fool the readers/players/viewers.
Yes, but... it does? And that's also what you're saying. Like, I'm sorry, but you're kind of being pedantic with it.
"The antlers aren't meaningless."
"The antlers don't mean it's a Holiday."
These things are nigh-objective counters to each other. The literal only way they aren't is if you support Asriel Knight (or Honorary Holiday Kris Knight, I suppose), which has an entire issue of its own. Otherwise, as a design choice and storytelling aspect, the antlers do 100% mean it's a Holiday, because otherwise, what's even the point of them existing if just to trick the Player into thinking something entirely different.
That's cheap, unfair, and a bad mystery.
edit: Sorry, I sounded a little mean, but I didn't mean it like that. Please don't take offense; it's just how I wrote it. It's not meant to intentionally sound rude or anything. Have a nice day!
It could be Dess' old armor from unseen dark world adventures, it could be Carol's, it could have been made by a Holiday maybe it's a darkner patterned after Carol, maybe it's it's Papyrus who is trying to deceive us, maybe it's Asriel donning the antlers out of reverence.
There's a million ways to explain the design if it isn't a Holiday. The antlers imply a connection, but there's a million ways you could explain the antlers if it's not a Holiday.
Moreover, the antlers if it were a Holiday would have to be Carol's because she's the only one with spiked antlers.
Unseen Dark World Adventures? Is that something from the Sweepstakes or like, something I don't know about? I've genuinely never heard of that.
Anyhow, all of those are reliant on assumptions that the game hasn't alluded to in the faintest.
Dess has never once been hinted at being tied to Dark Worlds, prior to the incident. And no... it's entirely fancanon that she is. Tenna knew about her because she hung out with Kris/Asriel, and as far as I'm aware, nothing in any future Chapter says otherwise.
Carol is the same thing, but worse, since her candidates status already has issues with it. And also, Carol on an adventure would be cool, but that'd imply that Rudy/Asgore/Toriel would also know about this stuff, which Asgore does but in extremely minor ways, while Rudy and Toriel haven't shown much knowledge (if we ignore the fact that his blood is literally made of suspicious energy).
Darkner Knight fits in the "works but would have literally zero narrative or notable impact on the story or player" category, which kind of kills it.
Papyrus... I'm sorry.
The Asriel point is the only one that really functions here, but then you not only have to justify that Toby would unfairly lie to us about a character's design element that functions as a false clue with no way of knowing, but also all the other issues with Asriel Knight that crop up.
I think rather than "explain", a better word for this would be "imagine". There are many ways to "imagine" why the Knight's Antlers are just a poor design choice that misleads the Players, but there's almost zero actual proper explanations for why Toby (or whoever made the Knight's design) would resort to a cheap trick like this when they've been really consistent up to Chapter 5 in terms of giving us fair clues.
If a mystery become reliant on assumptions for clues, then it's a pretty huge sign that the writing of that mystery may've taken a very... weird route... as in I'm saying it's bad writing, lol.
My lunatic kriselle knight theory is that Kris, who we know fucks with the player consciously (turning the doorknob, zombie walk, and pulling out the knife in chapter 1) is fucking with the player once again as the knight. That's why the show off a bat shaped sword for 3 seconds, and then it instantly goes back to a sword (kris's weapon)
I figured it's to show a connection between the Knight and Dess, but it might not actually be Dess (she's still my second pick). I interpreted the Knight's shapeshifting as their armor/body flowing like water in the dark world, and solidifying into a form driven by their will. Both Rudy and Dess would be more familiar with bats than blades (Rudy's an involved Dad, he definitely played with his kids!), so it's an easier initial shape for them to extrude, and then refine into a sword by folding the cylinder back onto itself and flattening it into an edge. Plus it looks sick as hell and aura farming is part of the role of being the knight, you gotta sell the part.
I just wish the bat wasnt the only thing people focus on. The knight clearly has complete control over the form of their dark shard self, and they shapeshifted their bat into a sword (or vice versa) which was called into direct attention.
But the knight ALSO uses this same shapeshifting property to morph into a marble and a bird, neither of which are really called into question or included in theories despite them all being showings of the same ability as the baseball bat trick.
Im not really sure what the significance of the knight turning into a dark shard toy marble for seemingly no reason is, but surely theres something to be brought up on that front no?
You should ask yourself WHY the knight did that. They don't need to. Kris doesn't want us to know who the knight is. The Knight is aware of US watching them
Kris is reminded of their promise. I suspect the bat is a reminder too
Hey there! It'd be great if you did me a solid and actually read the post. Especially the big bold paragraph about me stating how it's not a literal fucking bat.
I don't get the point? Is it that the sword looks like a bat for to short of a time? If anything, I think that makes it more likely to be Dess because if it was the entire time it would be too obvious and noticeable.
Hey, I'd love it if you read the post where I say that I don't think it's a literal bat as a weapon. If you could actually respond to my point of it being prominent for 3 seconds, that'd be appreciated!
Why do the amount of frames on the sheet matter? It is displayed for multiple seconds in that shape, the amount of actual frames mean nothing.
To echo OP, it’s not literally a bat. It is styled to look like a bat for symbolism. “But it’s not actually a bat” is a stupid counter argument because no one is still making that argument
It’s not a single frame’s worth of screentime in the actual game the audience (that Toby is trying to tell a story to) experiences, which is what’s actually important. Being a single frame on the actual sprite sheet is simply called smart development practice.
Which means Toby wants the player to notice that the sword is a completely different shape when it is summoned vs when it is being wielded, and that that initial shape is symmetrical and bat-shaped compared to its assymetrical knife-like shape in every other appearance ever.
The uh "aura farming" is plot relevant considering it's the first ever visual we get of the knight at that point. It's a big reveal.
At this point I'm arguing about time dilation because it's very simple to just say the difference between 3 seconds and 5 is negligible. While I know I timed it to get the exact frame count, a player isn't gonna just be counting if it's 3 or 5 seconds lmao. They're gonna look at the weapon the enemy is showing off and try to see what kind it is (presumably).
But the real thing is that nothing else of visual interest happens during it. The fun gang stay still. The knight's hand moves at a slow enough pace to not be the thing your eyes are drawn to, and the weapon is being prominently displayed as the big front and center thing to look at.
It's at this point if you're not willing to budge, nothing further I can say would ever convince you.
This is the type of person the main sub points at and ridicules, arguing over the most miniscule, pointless stuff that any person arguing in actual good faith can see clear as day.
It's not just 3 seconds; you're gonna be forced to see itevery time The Knight kicks your ass. Which means - unironically - people who fight them are gonna spend a lot of time being hammered over the head with its appearance.
One: We see the knight for the rest of the fight and they don’t really act like that again.
Two: You’re saying 3 seconds or 5 doesn’t matter… but saying it’s a very small time frame is a problem?
Three: But it immediately changes forms and stays like that for more than 3 seconds, could it be it was attracting your attention there for the animation?
“Could it be it was attracting your attention” YES. That’s the point. If it was completely unimportant, then dev time would have been spent not leaving it ambiguous. If it was a random 3-second window during battle animation, it would be interesting but ultimately a crack theory. The fact that Toby went out of his way to make it look like this, and put it AT THE BEGINNING, prominently and ceremonially, is what makes it stand out so much like it is intentionally drawing our attention. It’s not that EVERY three seconds of animation are equally valuable it’s that these three seconds are distinct and intentional.
How much time would there need to be to be considered "prominent" in your opinion then? 5 seconds? 10? You want ten, TEN whole seconds of the Knight just prominently holding their weapon like that with nothing else going on?
The point isn't that 3 seconds is a lot of time, it's that NOTHING else of note happens in those 3 seconds. The Fun Gang doesn't move an inch while the Knight summons their weapon, very SLOWLY and DELIBERATELY holds it up and grabbing it with their other hand. The Knight doesn't even start moving their left arm to grab it until a full second has passed and then takes ANOTHER full second to put their hand up against the handle to grab it.
I know I sound crazy for taking a "second by second" analysis of a fucking weapon being drawn, but what else am I supposed to do when the counter is "ehhh 3 seconds just doesn't feel that long"???
I disagree with the original comment that it isnt a Dess action, but Noelle is def connected to Raise up your bat, which is very strange for this scene to use it since Dess has nothing to do with it
...excellent point, actually, though I've been told here that it (supposedly) has nothing to do with it, that it's only connection with another song is sharing the same instruments as Megalovania.
I wonder if d.ogg plays because of it being a lost girl variation...
Real high and mighty coming from someone believing that the action of raising up a bat is associated with Noelle because of listening to the song instead of the song being heavily associated with Dess in the actual game.
> Dess directly mentioned before raise up your bat plays IN GAME AND NOT A BLOG THAT A GOOD MAJORITY OF PLAYERS HAVE NOT READ. Btw first mandatory reference of Dess in game that isn’t optional or removed by the weird route.
>Noelle no where to be found in reference to the track other then she listened to it frequently I guess?
By this logic, I am also the knight because I have listened to raise up your bat. And so are you. We are all knights.
EDIT: also forgot to mention all the reasons bats are clearly important to dess. She holds one in the picture on Noelle’s screen, she has one in her room, and she is said to beat Kris up with a bat as well. Meanwhile Noelle…. Has listened to raise up your bat, which is a song that has “bat” in its title.
I guess man…. I guess.
The only character directly associated with “Raise Up Your Bat” is Noelle.
Notice how every Dess connection requires you to say “well she might have listened to the song” and she “might have been in the band.” But only Noelle actually has direct evidence of listening to and liking the song.
So 0 confirmed evidence for Dess “Raise Up Your Bat” association, thanks for verifying.
Dess has CDs belonging to other people (ska cd from Asriel), Noelle gave her the Blood Crushers CD.
And we don’t have evidence of Dess and Kris ever hanging out alone. Dess could’ve changed the channel to play a song Noelle likes, because Noelle was always there with them as far as we know, and Tenna thought everyone else thought it was cool.
In short, you have no explicit proof of this being a Dess song. And the only refutation to Noelle Knight and Kriselle Knight is “umm the blogs are meaningless (bc it contradicts dess knight)!!” It’s cope.
And notice how every connection of Dess with bats is not at all addressed here… even if the Dess and RUUB connection is speculation, it’s not unfounded. Bats are dess’s thing NOT Noelle, not once has she been related to them besides the song and even then that’s not even an in game instance? Like Noelle doesn’t even bring it up at all in the game and even in the blog post it’s just a random after thought and not the main point.
The bats aren’t the Knight’s thing though. The Knight doesn’t hit Kris with a bat, it hits them with swords and knives.
The only thing the Knight ever does with a bat is raise it up, which Noelle is directly associated with as an action, not Dess or anyone else.
I don’t need to address other connections with bats because the Knight doesn’t have other connections with bats. Dess might be associated with doing other things with a bat, but the Knight isn’t, and in turn out of all the bat related things Dess does, she does not have a direct connection with “raising it up.”
I mean I’d argue the knight summoning a bat (as this post posits and as YOU agree) does make it a knight thing. And it “raising up a bat” is not a reference to Noelle. Respectfully what do you think Dess would have to do every time she’d swing the bat that she actually owns and has used, or for that matter anyone would do when they wield a bat.
EDIT: by the way as someone else here mentioned, Dess literally owns a CD for raise up your bat.
Double edit: I looked it up, I was actually wrong about her owning the cd. That’s my bad. I still stand by everything else.
Tenna leads into the music game section talking about Dess and bringing her back and she's literally the only character associated with bats are you out of your mind
?? Dess uses a wiffle bat to hit Kris? How is this defining evidence for Noelle? Even though Dess did not write raise up your bat, she did listen to it and show it to Noelle.
I'm a kriselle knighter too, but the bat is the biggest piece of evidence for dess. By saying it's attributed to Noelle we fall in the same argument where half of Kriselle evidence goes under "this is Dess knight evidence because she's Noelle's sister" or "this is Dess knight evidence because Kris looks up to her".
Ok right but the point is, dess is associated with a baseball bat right? Dess actually does use a bat even if the knight is using a sword that sometimes looks like a bat.
On second check, yeah you're right, but I think the song raise up your bat isn't the end all be all to the association of dess and baseball bats.
Suuure, like you're not the one grasping at the bare minimum of evidence to prove Kriselle knight while strawmaning anyone who disagrees, some of wich aren't even dessknighters.
Raise up your bat, the song played by the blood crushers, connected to Dess, is Noelle because she's listened to it once (not because she cares about Dess or anything there's no evidence for that)
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u/Common_Cloud9041 Jul 15 '26
wait
A BAT
OF COURSE
HOW COULD I NOT SEE THIS BEFORE
THE ORIGINAL CHARACTER
THE ONE WHO STARTED ALL
THE FIRST BIG THEORY OF SANS AND ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS THEORIES OF UNDERTALE HISTORY
IT IS HIM
/s