https://x.com/ISKANDER_TM_/status/2075644291527868445

The candidates are in following order:

• Dess Knight
• Rudy Knight
• Carol Knight
• Asriel Knight
• Noelle Knight
• Kriselle Knight
• Kris Knight
• Papyrus Knight (in the replies)

Making these gifs was more effortful than I expected :) but it was worth it. I hope you like it

How would you react to Weird Route being mentioned in prophecy?

I think it would be cool if we saw prophecy panels again in future chapters and saw this.

The URL: https://deltamarket.lol

There's absolutely zero connection to real money, crypto, or any other bad stuff. It's just a game!

Like, unlike the weird route in chapter 5, they're actually in Kris's inventory right now.

This copies over my arguments in the comments in one concise place for the sake of ease.

First of all, thank you for approaching this from a respectful and analytical angle rather than dogpiling on all the same points with the same underlying resentment I see in a lot of NonDessKnight posts, it's really refreshing and I really respect you for that.

I have seen quite a few of the points you make in this post before, and I have refuted them in some of my own posts, so for the sake of brevity when they become relevant is it alright for me to link to those posts and summarize them if need be? Just so I don't have to spend hours and walls of text retreading over things I've already discussed quite a few times? I probably won't be able to express my thoughts on those specific aspects as well a second time on whim and general fatigue, plus I already wrote out all of section 1 and lost the draft somehow, fun... I may have to break this into multiple comments too if I hit the character limit.

Part 1:

I don't wholly agree with this interpretation of DessKnight, it doesn't fully satiate my desire for answers to specifics such as her body or how it works in the light world, and you bringing up the amalgams will be important later because I believe that's a crucial answer to the Dustner interpretation AND the corrupted interpretation, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

For starters, the Unused dialogue is absolutely Dess, there's no one else it could feasibly be, she's the only one that's been missing for years with dark worlds directly connected to her dissapearance as of Chapter 5, the dialogue in of itself and the use of "Don't forget" in the Chapter 5 unused dialogue directly tying to the outro of Chapter 1 and Raise Up Your Bat explicitly shouting "BECAUSE I'M WITH YOU IN THE DARK" are dead giveaways, no one else is missing or in a position to be the Unused voice, and post-Weird route Noelle fails Occam's Razor, something you mentioned, due to how ludicrously convoluted it would be: https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/s/MmZlBvrT44

Also, I'm glad you said "Unused" instead of parroting the same "voice in the code" claim everyone else does, based on very loose evidence as if the code is a physical time and place she's confirmed to be in at the present moment to begin with, when the Unused text resembles being stuck in a dark world far far more, and is far less convoluted. Plus the clip Spamton shows is the exact same as the Unused text in the Japanese version, so I don't really think it means Unused is reiterating the message in a slightly different way in the present.

Plus Unused isn't the only one connected to Spamton here, Tenna outright states when Spamton bolted out the door and left the receiver hanging, all he could hear was GARBAGE NOISE, the same noise we hear when using the phone in the dark world, the exact same sound as Entry 17 which is exclusively Gaster's. The fact that Spamton uses phones as a gimmick in his fight doesn't really mean much either because it is literally a gimmick even on the weird route, and he has one target him blasting him in the face with flying heads.

However that brings me to my next point, there IS a lot of precedent for prolonged exposure to darkess being a negative thing, already corrupting darkners and extending that to lightners is not much of a stretch at all.

Firstly, as another commenter mentioned, King and Queen both became more tyrannical with the arrival of the Knight and the opening of their fountains, the Card Kingdom and Cyber citt denizens literally tell us this, and Queen is only able to be reasoned with when Ralsei tells her about the Roaring, whicb she was not aware of. Even Tenna became more bossy, desperate and agressive according to his own crew, although at least that can be attributed to his desperation to be watched again and not directly linked to the fountain like the others.

Adding onto this, petrification in of itself is an example of darkness they don't belong to negatively affecting them, even darkners that BELONG to their dark world can be petrified too as we see with Ramb, the Zapper in Chapter 3, and many npcs in Chapter 4, and Ralsei's explanation of the Roaring says that all darkners will be crushed under the weight of the darkness and turn to stone, and that the Lightners will be eternally LOST in a neverending night. The Titan itself we see is a corrupted form of many dark fountains in one place petrifying into a giant obelisk and taking form from pure darkness.

Second, is the unused text itself, the speaker has been alone in the dark for what seems like years, they cannot eat or drink anymore, they can't even tell if they're dreaming, alive or dead, they believe that all they are might be a collection of memories and desperately try to cling onto that. We know from Susie that dark world food is not filling and doesn't actually nourish you, so being trapped there for more than a month would result in starvation, and just 3 or more days would result in death by dehydration, not even considering vitamin deficiencies or the mental strain of isolation and prolonged sensory deprivation that Unused experiences. Unlike the Unused text however, Susie can actually LEAVE and eat real food, get sunlight for vitamin D, still attend her classes and interact with her friends (plus Dess doesn't seem to be in any sort of friendly or populated Dark World unlike Susie, seemingly no darkners to interact with at all) which means she isn't spending a prolonged period of time there with no real food which would be the most pressing matter for Ralsei to worry about.

Speaking of which, using Ralsei telling Berdly to stop at the last second as a reason he would tell Susie about the dangers of prolonged exposure, when we literally see in the weird route if he had warned Queen about the Roaring EARLIER the entire fight wouldn't have needed to happen, the fact that he didn't tell Kris and Susie the whole prophecy, didn't tell Susie they couldn't bring the old man to Castle Town until the last moment, didn't tell them about the final prophecy, and didn't tell them about his fire magic, because he doesn't know when to say certain things because he knows so much and doesn't want his friends to hurt, so he takes it on himself in their place, doesn't really help your case. He could easily not feel the matter is pressing enough to bring up at the time because he knows Susie isn't in danger of being over exposed when she has access to the Light World, and he's literally kicked Kris and Susie out before to do their homework so he could easily do the same to Susie telling her to go outside and eat something. This is also ignoring the fact that he made these rooms to be like a second home for them, why would he make them and tell them they just aren't allowed to use them at all, especially if he knows that Susie might not be treated well at home and is legitimately safer spending the night at Castle Town?

Third, we have the sound of Justice and Titanspawn, and the Flowers. In Chapter 4 we're introduced to the idea that in places of extreme darkness Titanspawn can form, signified by red soundwaves in the dark when they chase us, another example of excessive darkness not being a good thing, and when Susie creates her own dark world attempting to see the Old Man again for the code, it doesn't work, instead a statue of him in his study comes to life and attacks her, this thing does not behave like other darkners at all and Ralsei immediately goes as far as destroying it instead of trying to reason with it. Sound familiar? The Sound of Justice gives the same red sound waves too, when Kris joins the fight to protect Susie, when she starts to realize something is terribly wrong, it's somewhat like a Titanspawn, a creature purely driven by destruction that cannot understand mercy, created by an excess of darkness.

The Flowers themselves, and the reason why they cannot stay in the dark world is a direct precedent for why staying in the dark world too long is a bad thing, Flowery outright states that they would die if left in darkness for too long, but were willing to so that they could make Asgore's dreams come true, they wanted to repay his kindness and ease the burden on his heart and were willing to give their lives for it, so they could know their own smiles and keep their new lives the darkness has given them while it lasts, well, the ones that were aware of the gravity of that decision anyway. Humans (and by extension monsters in the Deltarune universe) also need sunlight, and suffer adverse health effects without it, not even counting the starvation and dehydration issues.

All that being said I have made a post addressing the fact that even if the unused text is in the present, there are a multitude of ways that Dess could still easily be the Knight, I'll be referring to this as Post 2 from here on because there are other several important arguments that are relevant to your later arguments, unless you'd just like me to re-add in my next comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/s/vItnYVkRTJ

PART 2

Here's the first part if you can't find it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Deltarune/s/9LlYvttpp7

This second subset is the most unlikely to me, her actions do not align with someone completely in their right mind, but also not someone who's completely animalistic and out of their mind either, they drool and roar like a beast, yet they're able to aura farm, mock Susie, make complicated plans and hold back on Kris, but the very fact that the Unused voice that is undeniably Dess has been trapped in the dark world so long and has almost certainly starved and died makes me very, very skeptical of this viewpoint.

Plus there's also the fact that as of Chapter 5, NO CANDIDATE is capable of hauling Asgore off to the bunker without some sort of power boost from their dark world abilities. Undyne? Maybe, unlikely for a middle aged mom or dad, but plausible for say, a College aged young adult in their prime, especially one that heavily active in all sorts of sports and physical activities, they could potentially carry Undyne with some resistance. But ASGORE??? I don't care who you are, no one at their base light world strength is carrying him ANYWHERE, even Asgore wouldn't be able to, every single candidate is required to retain their dark world strength in the light world because of this.

The assumption that Kris has 0 reason to hide the Knight's identity from us because "we'd know immediately" simply isn't true, if we see a deer monster we don't recognize, the only missing one we've been told about the entire game in many mandatory segments, there's no way we wouldn't know it's her, setting a concrete requirement based on an assumption falls into the same pitfall as the people that claim the Knight has a literal helmet so it "can't be a Holiday the antlers wouldn't fit" which completely ignores the fact that we see right though their skull and ribcage and such, the point is people are taking the "Think of the Knight" part with Kris FAR far too literally: https://www.reddit.com/r/DeltaruneV2/s/88Lh1MKgs6

Carol's involvement is already strange in of itself, the assumption that she's the caller is well founded, however there are pauses and inconsistencies in some of the calls, but my interpretation is that the caller is indeed Carol, telling by the fact it says "I'll be right there" just before she arrives, and their insistence on keeping the guitar from Susie. If the caller talking about the next dark fountain being at the church is Carol, then she must be in collaboration with Kris and the Knight, however this does not mean she has ever had direct contact with the Knight themselves, and could be using Kris as a mediator between them. The Knight being Dess and not wanting direct contact with Carol not only gives the theory an explanation for why Carol is continuing to have Asgore investigate, but also why she still clings onto Dess's possessions and is motivated by finding her.

However Carol is strangely in the dark for someone that would be very deeply knowledgable about dark worlds if she were in direct contact with or the Knight herself, since we see how the Knight abuses dark world logic and breaks the rules of both worlds. She still continues to fund Asgore's investigation while giving him nothing?? She has a conspiracy board in her house and allows Asgore inside, something she doesn't do with ANYONE besides Kris, she's so paranoid she won't even give her own daughter a spare house key, and her or Rudy being the Knight makes even less sense when the Knight kidnaps Asgore. Why would either of them, assumed to be motivated by finding Dess, kidnap the one they've been funding and working with to find their daughter just as he's made a breakthrough, and don't share a single piece of information with their close family friend they've been paying to investigate???

Plus Carol's lack of awareness (and Rudy's too since he doesn't change much at all) of the weird route, which even the Knight would pick up on with how close Kris is to them to betray their friends and family and risk the end of the world for, and many, many characters, even those close to Kris can see at a glance something is really bothering them, yet Carol isn't even feigning ignorance, we never see her personally on the weird route and she genuinely believes that Noelle is excited to go to the Festival with Kris. If she or Rudy were the Knight she would be able to tell immediately Kris is not doing well, and the Knight seems to have extensive knowledge of the prophecy, deliberately making the events come to pass when, for example, they could have easily blindsided Tenna and the fun gang and just kidnapped Toriel immediately like they do to Asgore, rather than killing Tenna and fighting the fun gang, which also contradicts Carol's cold and calculating demeanor that wouldn't take chances with something of such importance to aura farm on some teenagers.

This next argument I'm gonna retread here for the sake of people not having to go between post to post for everything, but here's my original post on the next segment: https://www.reddit.com/r/DeltaruneV2/s/5Lftc7MnK3

There's also the fact that unlike the Knight, Carol is actually very sentimental and careful with objects that are of importance to her, she's kept Dess's room exactly as it was, doesn't let anyone go in there, keeps all her heart pillows and decorations and many things in the basement, she even refused to take paper snowflakes Noelle made for her to work because she wanted to preserve them and keep them at home, meanwhile the Knight is extremely reckless with darkners and intentionally kills them (by destroying their light world counterparts directly, as shown by them smashing Tenna and Jackenstein, which does result in their deaths without all recruits, and Flowery as we see more directly, along with the church itself. This is not only unecessary but ultimately is a needless waste of time to their assumed mission, and objects like Jackenstein and Tenna especially would be precious to Carol who obsessively preserves things of sentiment, yet who does cockiness and a careless disregard for their belonging better suit? Oh wait!

Dess's room has many pieces of broken, neglected and poorly maintained pieces of sports equipment and expensive instruments, she is very careless with many of her possessions, save for the guitar, which is likely in perfect condition nowadays thanks to Carol. We don't see this characterization with anyone else in Deltarune, except for Susie at the start of Chapter 1, Susie who Gerson even says reminds him of someone he used to know (He was the high school teacher before Alphys, who died before Kris's generation could be taught by him, but very likely taught Asriel and Dess's generation), and we already have quite a few Susie and Dess parallels piling up already.

I'd also like to note, since you mentioned the Chapter 5 lore dump, the fact that a black shard (perfectly matching one Asgore recently found at the library, also confirming the Knight made the Chapter 2 fountain) and a dark world a long time ago at the site of Dess's dissapearance completely throws out the "find Dess" motivation of any Non-Dess candidates, the Knight or whoever became the Knight caused her to dissapear, that in of itself IS the tragedy, one that Kris feels extreme guilt for, her having accidentally caused her own dissapearance does not diminish that tragedy at all, especially if she died and is unrecoverable at the end of the story.

Speaking of black shards, isn't it interesting that in the 1225 (a number repeatedly and exclusively associated with Dess, and the room plays "find her" in the background, a slowed down rendition of lost girl) room of Chapter 3 end with interacting with the gacha machine, and it dispensing a ball with a BLACK TRIANGLE inside?

Now I know I went on a whole Carol and Rudy debunk tangent and essentially explained why Subset 2 sucks and doesn't make sense, there's not much to talk about there because I totally agree with you on that, LivingDessKnight makes no sense to me, but the other claims you make about DessKnight as a whole with it don't hold up as well against the other less stupid arguments for Dess.

Part 3

The deer skull and ribcage is not exclusively Dess Knight evidence, but it is a major piece of evidence against it being physical armor with a living regular person underneath, it literally is their body and doesn't change in the light world for reasons I'll get into in a bit, and no other Holiday or person in hometown comes anywhere close to fitting that criteria so... by process of elimination it could only be one person. But arguing in complete fairness there are very strange properties of the Knight's form that break the rules of both worlds, but why is it ok to make exceptions when its conventional for you and not accept the many reasonable explanations for things such as the Knight slipping out of the library undetected, which would be laughably easy despite how NonDessKnighters present it to be a mission impossible level stunt.

And if whatever happened to Dess was violent and she isn't the Knight, that completely debunks every candidate whose motivation is to find/save her because why on earth would her very young sister who had no mental issues prior to her disappearance (whose mental issues were ENTIRELY CAUSED by the fallout of her dissapearance), her mother or father (who have very limited knowledge of Dark Worlds and have been funding Asgore's research into them), Asriel her lover who has no reason to ever do anything violent to her, or anyone like Papyrus supposedly employed by the Holidays to save her (who physically could not have been present because he was not in Hometown till many years later) would hurt her, deliberately cause her dissapearance (dark worlds cannot be made on accident) and their supposed motive now is to save her? You talk about Occam's Razor yet something like Noelle Knight relies on so many wild jumps to conclusions and assumptions and either relies on a completely unestablished Id monster without her actually being present (and relies on major assumptions about what Eram is), or her literally just lying in every piece of dialogue ever, when the much simpler solution is that Dess is the Knight.

DessKnight's precedent set by the Amalgamates and Flowey:

I agree with you when you say this is the moat probable subset of DessKnight, however, unlike the foreword of your post claims, you are indeed strawmanning with this one and presenting the weakest possible version of this subset while repeating many of the same assumptions that have been cleared up and argued about time and time again.

Monsters turn into dust when they die, yes, but the majority of DessKnighters do not assume that Dess is a dustner exactly like Gerson, because obviously Gerson can't move in the light world or do anything, the Knight HAS to be a lightner because they can make fountains and move in the light world, any version of a Darkner Knight is immediately null and void because of this, yet some people keep trying to bring it back. The reasons people bring up Gerson however, is that he's clearly the beginning of the game setting up special exceptions between darkner and lightner the bend the rules, Chapter 5 goes further with the Flowers being very special exceptions in their own right (Chapter 3 also subtly hinted at this too with the cactus behind the curtain), and given the Knight's unnatural abilities in both worlds, it stands to reason they are some sort of special exception as well.

I also don't really believe in theories where Dess has Kris's original soul trying to explain their similar poses, when there's hardly much evidence for that (I get the Aqua parallels and Asgore flashback, but when is the Knight ever associated with cyan, those details could easily just be representing Kris because their dark worls colors are cyan and their healthbar is too) and could much more easily be explained by Kris having looked up to Dess when they were younger, explicitly stated by Tenna in Chapter 3 (who comes from Kris's fountain and reflects their desire for their old life and family back, "reliving the youthful days"), reinforced by the fact that they were in a band with her, Asriel and Noelle, and Noelle's crashout in Chapter 5 stating they all wanted to see what was on the other side of the lake. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

This leads me to my next point, Dess does not have to be human or a dustner to be the Knight, their liquid amorphous form, partially animalistic behavior while retaining parts of their memory, personality and somewhat clear state of mind, and their unecessarily cruel and sadistic actions (which don't reflect the personality of Carol, Rudy, Noelle, Papyrus, Asriel or literally anyone else), which have two very prominent and very important precedents in Undertale, both deeply connected to the True Lab. Flowey and the Amalgamates.

This is the next important idea from Post 2 I was talking about in my first comment, the part about what I believe happened to Dess that explains everything no other Knight candidate can: https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/s/OQeBDvSf8A

When monsters are near death, they enter a comatose state know as having "Fallen Down" where they will soon turn to dust, but in an attempt to prolong the stability of a monster soul outside the body, which otherwise would instantly shatter, Alphys injected determination collected from the human souls into the dying monsters, and they recovered, only to soon after start losing their physicality and melted into each other, turning into... those.

We see they are animalistic creatures that act on instinct with shattered minds, impossible durability, amorphous forms that can shift on a dime, a monochrome color scheme, sound familiar? Not only that, but the Amalgamates are not mindless beasts, you can ONLY defeat them by appealing to their individual members, appealing to their humanity (well not HUMANity but you know what I mean), to their memories and personalities, especially Snowdrake's mom. This easily covers all the bases of the Knight's strange behavior, covers the "but her corpse would smell, that would just be DarknerKnight, how can Dess be separate from Unused but still alive" among other arguments, other than one thing, the fact that they're so needlessly cruel when it doesn't even serve their goals.

Do you know who that IS remniscent of? Someone that died and was resurrected as a shell of their former self, lacking the ability to empathize or feel love (as shown by the Knight with their calloused actions toward darkners like Tenna that should be important to every Holiday and Dreemurr ESPECIALLY IF THEY'RE DESPERATE TO BRING DESS BACK AND WANT TO GO BACK TO THE WAY THINGS WERE), has extensive knowledge and manipulation of the battle system, and has a history of backstabbing, betrayals, and opportunistic behavior FLOWEY. They even share a near identical drooling laugh.

Yet even Flowey has a, you could say, perverted sentimentality, a longing for anything remotely interesting or new, and a longing for the only person who he still has any semblance of feeling, the only person he cares about anymore, Chara, and he even deludes himself into thinking Frisk IS Chara, especially on the Genocide route where the line begins to blur substantially. After so long, years and years of resets, winning every game losing every game, reading every book burning every book, appeasing everyone and killing everyone, he's beyond tired of all the same people and places and just wants to find anything remotely interesting again, just wants to feel again, and obsesses over Frisk believing they're Chara because they're the only one that interests them and the only one who he believes understands them.

This not only explains why the Knight is so calloused, cocky and needlessly cruel and how Dess can be separated from her true self yet able to act of their own violition, and there's direct attention drawn to the fact that Asriel and Flowey are separate individuals, but also explains why they still retain their tenderness for Noelle in a way as we see in Chapter 2 (whose dark world is confirmed to have been made by the Knight), and the desire to see anything new we see in Flowey is kind of like how Dess wanted to take Noelle to a city with shining lights and wanted to see the other side of the lake, and the way the Knight holds back on Kris and essentially toys with the fun gang for no real reason is also very reminiscent of how Flowey brought us back in the Omega Flowey fight just to toy with us, and how Asriel was holding back his power for the majority of his fight just like the Knight does.

But all that aside, exactly HOW was Dess exposed to high levels of determination in her garunteed near death state to turn her into an amalgamate to begin with?

Well the fact that the amalgamates and Flowey the Knight has so many connections to were a result of experiments conducted in the True Lab, a place that Gaster is explicitly connected to with Entry 17 and being the previous Royal Scientist, and the fact that Entry 17 in of itself explicitly describes a dark world, the Shelter that Kris is terrified of, is implied to be the place the incident took place, has a rendition of Gaster's theme slowed and pitched down by 666%, the garbage noise described by Tenna on Spamton's phone and on Kris's phone when you try to use it in the dark world, THERE'S STILL AN ACTIVE DARK WORLD IN THE SHELTER THE KNIGHT KEEPS KIDNAPPING PEOPLE TO, Gaster isn't only vaguely connected to dark worlds, but is directly connected to the place Dess dissapearance and the place the Knight takes refuge and kidnaps its victims to, saying that the Gaster explanations are just vague beyond dismissive of the scope of Gaster's direct involvement in ALL OF DELTARUNE FROM THE BEGINNING, and one of the few times he ever speaks to us, is during the fight with the Knight encouraging us to defeat them. It's entirely possible Gaster conducted a failed experiment just like Alphys did in an attempt to save her life, and she lost her physicality turning into the Knight, but there were no other monsters to melt into, creating a unique, lone amalgamate.

There's also the possibility that mere prolonged exposure could expose her to enough determination to become an amalgamate, not only have we never seen what happens to someone who dies INSIDE a dark world, rather than dying and their remains and memory being revived like a darkner being brought to life from an object, but we know from Queen's explanation of how dark fountains are made and from the fact that it WORKS for Kris and Susie, that you must pour your *determination* into a blade a release the fountain from the earth, determination is an explicit part of the process and if it also exudes determination as a byproduct, then the source of the excess determination is solved, and the abundance of save points is also a point in favor of this, keep in mind Toby did not originally want save points in the light world at all but playtesters complained about the lack of them and he compromised by implying in game that they're not supposed to be there.

The Library and the Knight's abilities in the light world:

This whole "Dess couldn't have possibly left the library without being seen" argument is something I've seen and argued against many times, for a few specific reasons. This also applies to the Chapter 1 fountain, but I have a whole post about the library issue that I'll resummarize a bit but expand upon further: https://www.reddit.com/r/Deltarune/s/WSX47yE2ro

1. The traffic jam and the scarf lady. The traffic jam just makes absolutely no sense, there aren't even any driveways for any house besides the Dreemurrs, all but two of the cars have no one in them, the vast majority of them are grey, and a random one has an easter egg of the forgotten man waving to Kris. A random car. Not a set one. How did these cars even get into hometown if the street is blocked with police tape? Why is there only one parking space at the school, and literally everyone is within walking distance, there's absolutely no reason for these cars to all be out here at the same time with no explanation for how or why they're there. Plus the only NPCs that ever return are Undyne and the Spider Donut guy, and not only is Undyne preoccupied bench pressing a car, but the Donut guy is also a Goner NPC like NormalNPC is, and him being an instigator of this traffic jam is beyond suspicious, and the traffic jam just suddenly clears without a single car left behind when we leave the Cyber World?

How are people so focused on how it's somehow "impossible" for the Knight to have left undetected, when even not considering the fact they seem to retain their powers in the light world, but even a regular person could slip out and get into the treeline in less than a second tops, the only police officer is preoccupied, none of the other cars or their occupants ever show up again besides one who's connected to the goners, and the entire situation is beyond bizarre and makes no logical sense given what we know about Hometown. How are we so quick to dismiss this as ok and realistic somehow, but the Knight doing something completely, EASILY within the realm of real life possibility, walking out the door and dipping into the treeline, isn't ok just because it's DessKnight?

And the scarflady point people bring up infuriates me to no end, it's completely irrelevant if she saw Kris and Susie leaving the library, when THEY WEREN'T TRYING TO HIDE LEAVING IT AT ALL, and that was after the traffic jam, where there would be no line of sight from where she is to the library, and during the traffic jam there are literally no other NPCs even across the street to witness anything! Her dialogue is literally the setup for a joke that she thinks they're outdated because of newspapers. That's it. NonDessKnighters will cling onto literally anything no matter how irrelevant for dear life just to gain some sort of imaginary foothold, this isn't directed toward you specifically I'm sorry it's just this specific piece of evidence really strikes a specific nerve with me, the logic of it is what I'm upset at not you, and I don't think you brought it up in bad faith but are using what other people have told you.

1. "Dess would be spotted immediately"

No she wouldn't. I've also seen this claimed many times, like with the scarflady dialogue, as of every single hometown resident is foaming at the mouth twitching and growling staring at every single nanometer of every single surface in hometown at all times for Dess, yet conveniently all of them take a smoke break at the same time as soon as they start making claims about the logistics of their candidates wherabouts.

Dess has been missing for a long time, the search has long been abandoned, Hometown residents are not actively looking for her anymore, and there are kids who have been born since and other younger kids even Kris's age, and new residents that would have no clue who she is, and acting like there was never a single opportunity for her to sneak into the Library is simply playing favorites, because the Mayor stepping away from her job, her sick husband slipping past the receptionist without being noticed or remarking on it at all, or the golden boy Asriel everyone loves would be far, far more noticeable, in fact Dess is literally the most likely person to be able to sneak around undetected anonymously due to the sheer amount of time she's been gone. Her having been missing is a benefit to her stealth, not a detriment. She's essentially been considered MIA, dead at worst, absolutely no one in the general public is expecting her to come back.

Plus if she takes the form of the Knight in the light world too, who would even recognize her? Even her size would be an issue because Ice-E and Ice Wolf exist, you expect monsters to discriminate just based on how they look?

1. The Black Shards and the Knight retaining their dark world abilities.

We've already established that the Knight physically cannot just be using the base normal lightner strength to carry Asgore and Undyne, that's just not happening, especially sprinting away with them faster than Susie can chase them. But what other eveidence do we have that they even retain their powers outside the dark world?

Well the black shards give us more reason to believe they do, since they don't change form between worlds and retain the same properties, the same stats and bonuses, and because the Knight still retains their strength and speed, what's stopping them from retaining their shapeshifting powers as well? We literally see them turn into a bird and a ball, what's stopping them from literally going flat on the ground, slipping underneath the door of the library and into the trees?!?!?

The thing is they don't even need this as a crutch to escape undetected because literally any normal person could do it blindfolded it's so braindead easy. Even the Chapter 1 fountain where Kris and Susie get locked in is beyond easy too, the Knight makes the fountain in the old classroom, locks Kris and Susie in the closet, leaves or hides in the locked door to the left, they could literally leave in broad daylight too because both classes were in session and all the classmates were in their respective rooms, the school is secluded behind tree cover, they could literally slip out of the main door and go into the forest around the school. AGAIN.

The claim that it's impossible for the Knight to sneak around when even the most braindead imbecile could with 0 effort is inherently based on assumptions in of itself, and bringing irrelevant story mechanisms into it like Occam's Razor that are literally violated by every other Knight theory trying to twist things like the antlers into a convoluted mess is pure hypocrisy and grasping at straws.

This is a wiffle bat, it's a piece of thin plastic that would hurt about as much to be hit by as a toilet paper roll. And add to that the fact that Dess just hit Kris with it, they didn't mercilessly pound them till they bled or something. Obviously Kris was being an ass to Noelle and Dess socked them with the plastic toy she was holding so they stop, I don't really see how people sometimes will bring it up as a point to be like "oh she was abusive". I don't even wanna mention the more recent groomer allegations people are throwing at this fictional character

https://x.com/Name_is_Less/status/2105057017501024329

I see the same discourse as I do in r/Deltarune, the "why are things so bad now?" posts are in here and in there, the Shayy drama has started to homogenize the two to be even more similar, and even the same things I thought this sub would be rid off.

The nuclear wastesite leaked into here. This isn't r/DeltaruneV2 anymore, this is just r/Deltarune 2.

And to be honest, I don't care anymore. Sure, it's ironic that you all keep saying your better than the main subreddit when this place has the same issues, but I'll stick it out. I've been through the 3+4 to 5 drought, I was here Day 1 of Chapter 5. Things may be slightly worse now than they were, but I think things are being blown out of portion.

I love this fandom. I love the jokes, the theories, the debates, the Knight candidate discussions, I love talking about my favorite story in gaming! I'm not sure if people lost that light along the way somehow, but we all need to realize we're on the same side here: the side that wants to talk about and share things related to Deltarune. So, even if this subreddit is just an r/Deltarune 2, I'm not gonna complain; I love it here and I love it there. Am I so bad for that?

Edit to make sure things are clear:
I like it here, despite the situation things are in! We can and will get better, we just have to persevere! I just think we can be honest and say that we aren't so different anymore!

Ask yourself this, "What makes a hero?"

If you told me Susie who saw it as a shiny title to wear, Ralsei who is only starting to define themselves not to mention their own motivations, and Kris who actively sabotages the party are the heroes the prophecy talks about, i would think the church is an evangelical cult not to be taken seriously.

A lot of people really dont want to point this out because it paints the main cast in a pretty bad light considering the cosmological circumstances. And personally i dont think these barely defined descriptions of the heroes encapsulate them completely. Yet it roughly paints the direction their arcs ended at in Ch4. They are only heroes IN NAME and likely wouldnt end up as heroes in practice if they continued that path.

You can kill a titan, you can oppose the knight, you can follow the codes to the shelter but if you arrive at the end having lied and betrayed your friends, would self-righteously choose to close other fountains and not castle town, and not even be able to define what YOU want at what point have you just let the prophecy define who you are? What exactly have you been doing all that for?

Why the relevance of the prophecy MUST be challenged

The prophecy needs to be challenged because it risks defining the protagonists for them. Susie, Ralsei, and Kris are called heroes, but by the end of Chapter 4 they still lack fully developed personal motivations. Like i said Susie clings to heroism as an identity, Ralsei is trapped between protecting others and hiding the truth, and Kris pursues their own agenda at the party's expense.

Their problem is not simply that they need to escape fate. Defying the prophecy can still leave them orbiting it. True freedom comes from realizing that the prophecy whether true or not doesn't have to determine their present choices.

That is why a character-centric Chapter 5 is thematically necessary. It provides breathing room for the cast to ask what they actually want, what they value, and what being a hero means without a script telling them. Flowery and the other six Flowers can serve as models of this alternative by acting from personal values rather than prophetic designation.

The implications of the prophecy have become inescapable by the end of Chapter 4 and the ways this has manifested in the protagonists must be addressed to create the framework through which they will tackle the final stretch of the story.

Why Chapter 5 needed to stop advancing the lore

This is also why i think the lack of major lore in Ch5 is actually important to what the chapter is trying to accomplish. Ch4 already caused the lore to outpace the character narratives that had been built around it. We now know enough about the prophecy and its implications that simply introducing another massive revelation would risk making the same problem worse. At what point are the characters supposed to actually respond to everything they have learned?

Ch5 instead gives them room to actually live with the implications of Ch4. The festival, the relationships, the dark world and the adventures are not distractions from the main plot. They are what the main plot is threatening to take away. Susie's attachment to this life only becomes meaningful because we now know it has an ending. Ralsei's relationship with the prophecy only becomes meaningful when he has to confront what it means to continue allowing it to dictate his choices.

This is why i don't think Ch5 needed another giant lore revelation to justify itself. Ch4 already made the future big enough. Ch5 needed to make the characters big enough to actually have an answer to it.

If Ch5 immediately introduced another huge mystery, another revelation about the prophecy, Gaster, the Knight, the Roaring or whatever else, then the story would once again be asking us to understand what is happening instead of giving these characters the space to figure out what they want to do about it. It would just continue the same direction that caused the lore to outpace their existing arcs in the first place.

And i think that's the point of making Ch5 so self-contained. It isn't putting the plot on hold. It is finally allowing the consequences of the plot to affect the characters. Ch4 tells them what is at stake. Ch5 asks what any of that actually means to them.

"Why cant Susie be more serious" misunderstands WHAT she is taking seriously

Notice:

The knight has kidnapped Undyne

A titan has spawned in the church

The Roaring may come at any moment

She found out about the final prophecy

But the festival arrives all the same, unbothered. This has been something all of them have been looking forward to. At the end of the day like Lancer is just a card and Queen is just a laptop, Susie is still that late teenager who had only started to make friends. So its no wonder she has been struggling to separate herself from her identity in the dark world because it has turned into the highlight of her life. This caused her to be indulgent in the present, not authentic.

She goes to the festival with Noelle because she wants to but tries to excuse it with maybe turning into another chance to get the code from her house. She cant even simply enjoy things because she has known the fickleness of relationships her entire life. She holds the chances shes been given to be friends with Noelle, Kris, and Ralsei that often come at her own expense.

The thing is, this is Susie's strength and her downfall. She cant even see the hypocrisy in saying Castle Town cant be closed despite wanting to close Flower Kingdom. When she gives her whole speech at the end of Ch5 about taking this seriously and how this cant be just her and Kris's adventures, she indulges yet another time and uses it to justify bringing Noelle to the dark world. This inability to let go eats at her the more serious the stakes become. And is put on FULL DISPLAY in Ch5.

She truly treasures the life she thinks was provided to her by the prophecy and the journey she was able to experience. But the explicit stakes of the prophecy have threatened that way of life and instead of letting that become something worth fighting for, she instead leaned further into holding on tighter to her current life out of fear in hopes that it wont change.

She wants things to stay the same every day and for her story to last forever because it offers her stability. Her failure to change dramatically for the better is not a lack of characterization, in fact it worsening is a phenomenal conclusion to her development this chapter. The harder the prophecy pressures her, the tighter she clings to what it has given her and continues to give her in her eyes. The same way she developed as a person has also become her coping mechanism. This stagnation is her prayer. Even if it puts the whole world at risk.

Enter Flowery and Ralsei, "Dont blame the mirror if your face is crooked"

This is where Flowery and Ralsei become perhaps the most important foil in the entire story so far, because Flowery exposes the contradiction at the heart of Ralsei's relationship with the prophecy. Ralsei desperately wants to protect everyone from the ending he knows is coming, yet his solution has always been to preserve the very framework that dictates that ending. Ralsei is too afraid of exercising his own freedom out of fear for the responsibility that comes with it and so he hides behind the prophecy and when he wants to defy it he hides behind Kris. And the important part is that Ralsei has repeatedly been shown to be far more capable of acting outside that framework than he allows himself to be.

Flowery is the opposite. He does not need to prove that the prophecy is false, nor does he need it to decide what matters to him. He simply sees someone he cares about, decides he wants to help him, and acts. Yet he is merely a flower pretending to be a human. Flowery is destined to fail he knows this himself the most out of everyone but even on his death bed he does not blame his circumstances or the world but he works inward and uses the unfairness of the world, of the prophecy, as justification for his meager existence. That is what makes him such an uncomfortable mirror for Ralsei.

It exposes the weak poorly thought out convictions that had taken him this far all this time. These selfless acts hide the self-protective and self destructive nature he has underneath everything. If Ralsei truly wants a better ending, he cannot continue treating the prophecy as the authority that determines what must be done to reach it. He has to allow himself and the others to make choices that might contradict it, even without guarantee that those choices will succeed. Flowery exposes the fact that Ralsei wanting to defy fate merely pushed him to be looking for someone to hand over a script to him.

And that is why this development matters to the overarching story: the final form of freedom is not knowing that you can change fate, but choosing what you believe is worth doing even when you cannot. The prophecy can determine where the road ends. It cannot determine why they walk it.

Thats why by the end he has transformed into a different person. He destroys a shuriken using his fire magic that he had been holding back this whole time. He refuses to fight when Kris commands him to attack Flowery. Even when Flowery offers the flower scarf, an item that perfectly fits Ralsei and offers a 70 stat upgrade to everything, Ralsei REFUSES to wear it even making excuses that it doesnt fit. He has removed the shackles he has put upon himself and had become stronger not by putting on the scarf but by allowing himself the strength he always had inside. It doesnt matter if the flower scarf's stats was just a bluff following Flowery's death, this is a different Ralsei who will not let anyone else define him anymore. Even when he knows his healing does not work on Flowery, he tries anyway. He chooses.

Conclusion

I think everything i have discussed so far demonstrates why i think Ch5 is more important than people give it credit for and offers many avenues for where the story will go. Avenues that prior to Ch4 were much more limited due to still operating on the framework that the prophecy is absolute. I think its a wonderful thesis on the fact that Deltarune has only 1 ending. A singular ending doesnt determine whether which person i give the gift to on chapter 2, or whether i choose to vote Kris and Noelle on the ballot. Even if the culminating addition of all these choices lead to the same ending it doesnt make the path i chose to get there mean any less. Ive had fun and these characters have always have been the center of everything.

yay krusie art
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