Brutal Critical

I'm not saying Dess = Chara, just like how Kris doesn't = Frisk in a direct comparison. But I like to imagine that certain personality traits of Chara would be evident on Dess: Self sacrificial/borderline suicidal tendencies, a disdain for humanity and adoration for monsterkind, the tendency to be very scary at times and lacking the self awareness to drop the act (or having complete awareness of how they come across to others, and they use their own "spookiness" as a threatening tactic), the violent urges/aggressive thoughts, the aura farming, too, of course.

This could also be an explanation of why Kris is so attached to Dess, Dess being the only other human in Hometown and knowing how Kris may feel + Being older than Kris could have meant she had some previous experiences dealing with being an outcast (especially since few people in Hometown seem to even remember/talk about Dess to Kris, they are always talking about Asriel but they never bring up Dess Holiday, and it could be to avoid making Kris upset but it could also just be that they're disinterested in Dess, kinda how no one is really all that interested in Kris themselves).

Keep in mind I'm not saying this is the only possible explanation as to why Kris has gravitated more towards Dess than Noelle or even Asriel- All of what I'm saying can still apply if Dess was just another deer monster.

I still think it's interesting that Kris seems so affected by Dess's loss, sometimes appearing a lot more upset than Noelle (something something "I know they might have been involved in Dess's disappearance" something something "I know they probably have survivor's guilt over whatever happened") and having the idea in mind that she was human like them puts an interesting perspective on the entire Holiday and Dreemurr drama:

What if, yes, the Holidays loved Dess, a whole lot in fact, but just like the Dreemurrs, they never really understood Dess?

What if, the Holidays first adopted a human child that would soon be named Dess Holiday, and then later they had Noelle, a pure deer monster?? And not only is she a pure monster, but she is also perfect in everyone's eyes? Polite, hardworking little Noelle, being both a sunshine in Dess's life but also the source of all her envy.

It's kinda like how Kris feels about Asriel, but their roles are flipped. Dess has to take care of Noelle and learn to let her envy not affect their relationship as sisters, and Kris is the younger sibling of a seemingly "local star"! They adore Asriel, Asriel is their best friend in the world but they also can't deny how jealous they are of all the praise he gets.

at this point i'm 99% sure that this theory survives not by cope, but by toby fox strategically leaving ambiguity to fuck with people.

For the longest time I've struggled to wonder why Dess, as a monster living in a town populated mostly by other monsters, would want to be a human. However, Deltarun Chapter 5 has made me realize why that may be.

A lot of people have begun to speculate that by going into the lake, Kris and Noelle have broken (through) some kind of barrier. Many have compared this to a quote from Alphys where she basically tells the player that a human soul isn't enough to cross the barrier alone: it takes both a human and a monster SOUL. If Dess was a monster, she'd want to be a human so she could leave the town, or she'd want to take Kris with her because she'd only be able to leave if Kris came with her. She's a monster, and they're the only human in town. The combined power of their SOULs would be enough to break out of the confines of the game.

Honestly, Dess could have also wanted to seal dark fountains, too, and she could have only done that with a human SOUL. The only human in down would have been Kris.

Now that I think about it more, if Dess was a human who was insecure about not being a deer monster like the rest of her family, I doubt she'd have so many red heart-shaped objects in her room. They resemble human souls. I feel like they would just make her feel really insecure about being a human.

I still believe Dess is a human though, I feel like I've supported it too strongly to say I don't now. Human Dess dies with me.

Here is more evidence and ostensible clues for Dess being the SOUL.

At the end, I will also state my case for my own Knight theory (it may not be “new,” and I doubt it is, knowing yalls crazy asses, but I’ve not seen it myself). The Knight is not necessarily a Kris-Noelle amalgam, or not merely so, but may in fact include the fusion of Kris’s body to Dess’s SOUL, or vice versa upon returning to Dess’s body in the shelter. Some of this comes from reading the 'description flavor text' as Dess talking to/for Kris (and possibly even to herself), which would explain Kris’s reactions in these moments. Dess speaking to Kris/herself isn’t *always* the case; almost always her voice leaks through in the later chapters when assessing objects directly related to her; think of this as a loose analogue to the dual narration of Frisk and Chara in Undertale’s Genocide Route (which, by the way, is delineated by, you guessed it, RED text.) It’s clearly not always Dess, and early on her voice is especially muted, but the potentiality of this lens alone opens up an entire potential secondary layer through which to read the entire game’s flavor text, often yielding VERY, VERY INT—ahem—neat results.

The evidence itself is supplementing a series of videos by soydesu, as well as providing slight pushback on the Kriselle Knight theory video by JRVanity. However, in broad strokes, these are both excellent theories and I suspect they are mostly, if not entirely, correct.

- Noelle talks about Carol collecting [red] heart pillows "for some reason." Noelle doesn't understand why. Why would that be, if her own mother LOVES (no pun intended) "red, heart-shaped objects" to the point of collecting them, the notoriously cold blue Carol collecting tacky red hearts, if the reason wasn't both personal and highly secretive? This in tandem with Carol using the red-color capital font YOU in "As you know, YOU are always welcome here" confirms that Carol both knows Dess is inside of Kris (a literal friend inside of them....) and that Dess's SOUL is the color red; Kris has both shown and identified Dess’s SOUL to Carol.

- The library book on 'how to care for humans' being checked out by "your mother" could very easily be Dess talking about Carol, not Kris about Toriel. The “other people” Dess sees in the photo who just by glimpsing makes her/Kris slam the book shut might even be her birth family.

- Her desk having "All the horror games you never got to play" COULD be talking about Kris being too young, but what if it's just a backlog situation? The Hollidays are rich. Dess surely owned a bunch of video games she never got around to playing, especially since she became preoccupied with Asriel and music and--if the Asriel/Dess/Seam prophecy theory holds--her adventures in the Dark World. Or, just as likely, it’s just Dess reminding Kris they were too young to play the horror games rather than Dess talking to herself (since this isn’t a dialogue option in which Dess “speaks”)

- The entire 'you couldn't find your hand' bit in Chapter 3 (which, I'll remind you, is accessed by Dess inputting her birthday into the lottery machine). This makes even more sense if it's talking about something that already happened and cost Dess her hand/life/autonomy than it does as foreshadowing for Kris losing theirs. This is because even moreso than piano (which you could at least *kinda* play one-handed), guitar REQUIRES two hands. Note that if, in Chapter Four, Dess's SOUL chooses "I'll never play again," Kris instantly starts gnawing their hand. This might be the single most 'Dess-voiced' line of the game. It implies Kris believes whatever happened to Dess/her hand was their own fault, likely caused by their (Kris's) own hand, given the motif of 'never being able to clean it off,' the Blue and Holy Water baptism allusions (which I address in Part Two), and the constant gag of Kris choosing not to use their hands whenever possible and instead simply stack holdable items on their head; Chapter Five's watering can draws explicit attention to this gag with Ralsei's "...Okay." line. The "I'll never play again" line isn't necessarily foreshadowing Kris losing the hand (though they might and I kinda hope they do, given the potential for a Kris-Susie piano duet at the end), nor is Kris necessarily grieving their inability to play due to the SOUL controlling them: no, it's just the pain of hearing Dess tell them "I'll never play again." This immediately causes Kris to want to inflict the same pain on themself they believe they're responsible for inflicting on Dess.

- In Chapter 4, the SOUL, upon reaching the Holliday family's basement, can short-circuit the breaker or cause the large stereo to play Lost Girl. Y’know, while Dess is literally lost, separated from her (i.e. new, not-her, Kris's) body.

- Don’t Forget is a female vocalist and a pianist. It is implied that Kris cannot enter Dark Worlds (let alone seal the Fountains) without her SOUL. The lyrics can be read as Dess comforting both Kris, “I’m with you in the Dark [World]”, and Noelle; the lines “and the places that you know seem like fantasy,” and “that’s still shining in the cold” allude to Noelle’s sense of depersonalization (“I feel like I’m watching my life through glass”; she literally tells this to them btw, meaning Dess hears exactly how her being ‘lost’ has affected her only—unless she had blood related ones but who gaf—sibling), and Snowgrave respectively (“cold” referring to the ice shit, “there’s a light inside your SOUL” likely referring to the fledgling red SOUL). The “promise” could be to Kris, or to Noelle, or both. The last line almost certainly is about them, perhaps simultaneously; and if what I’ll soon propose about the Knight’s identity is true, this could not be more literal.

- On the Weird Route as a whole: the Player controls the SOUL, but Dess still seems to have some sort of apperception of what she and they are being forced to do. In this light, the Player torturing Noelle is also torturing her childhood friend AND her sister, even pushing our own responsibility for our actions ONTO Dess in the same way Kris blames themself for whatever happened to Dess/her body at the lake. The “please don’t” dialogue option in the Chapter 4 Snowgrave scene is even more powerful when you consider Kris’s body and Dess’s soul/consciousness are simultaneously being puppeteed, with Dess even literally positioning herself above the house’s piping to try and trap herself outside Noelle’s room. When Noelle asks “who would hear,” Dess also answers “Me.” Dess answers “Red” instead of “Blue” because Blue is the color of Kris’s SOUL. She then says “Black,” which uh… yeah. Knight.

- This is a small thing, but I never noticed Dess' guitar is described as “a *red* guitar”. My brain glossed over it because I’d not associated Dess with the SOUL until Chapter 5 (plus it just looks orange to me…) but that's pretty telling.

- When viewing the sink, the flavor text is "(Your hands are clean.)" Could this be Dess trying to comfort Kris, who sees themself as at fault for whatever happened to Dess, thus destroying both the Dreemur and Holliday families? They can 'never wash it all away' is a pure Kris moment, clearly, and this directly contradicts that. Kris wouldn't genuinely say this about themself. Dess is trying to tell Kris they're innocent/not at fault for whatever happened to her. Compare this to how Kris reacts when Dess says "I'll never play [music] again," which they react to by immediately closing their eyes and biting their fucking hand, perhaps the hand they used to harm Dess if we’re going the OMORI route. The Knight has giant holes in its hands like Gaster btw. It's uncanny.

- In the weird route, Kris and Dess are both, together, "trembling [when Noelle takes their hands]". This is because Dess remembers the lake: what happened. This also presents the possibility that Dess is no longer in control and in fact Kris is turning things back on them--asserting the same sort of agency that Noelle is, and THAT is why Dess's SOUL loses control during this pseudo lovers' suicide.

The Knight - Kriselle, or…?

The trembling hands is important. I think the Knight could actually be Kris and Dess fusing into one rather than Kris and Noelle like most people are jumping to assuming. It could also, technically, be all three of them. There’s clearly enough evidence to say Dess is the red SOUL. But because we know both Kris (eating the apple core for cyanide) and Noelle (she tells them outright) are suicidal, what if Noelle simply dies in the barrier passage, whether by drowning or by being absorbed by Kris/Dess (to save/spare Noelle—granting her the death she has chosen for herself, after telling and acting out that desire explicitly TO Kris—from whatever is about to happen to them, which they are ostensibly aware of to some extent given their cooperation with the Knight?). This would serve as a dark mirror to Pink and Mew Mew’s merging, showing the flip side of this process in which the two aren't 'made complete' in the sense of fulfillment, but are destroyed/de-individualized in the process.

This Knight identity (or lack thereof, ig) preserves both the Kris-Knight parallels and the Susie-Dess/Knight parallels, which is IMO important since Noelle finds comfort in Susie, seeing Susie as someone to move forward from her trauma of losing Dess with and through, specifically because of how Susie fills the void (their similar personalities are a major factor in the 'how/why' here) that Dess's disappearance/death left behind. This alao explains why Kris and Susie become as close as they do; Kris misses Dess too, not in the same way as Noelle but perhaps as strongly. Especially since Dess’s disappearance is implied to be something Kris considers their own fault, ‘destroying’ the Dreemur and Holliday families' lives singlehandedly; my theory is that the Catti-Kris demon summoning ritual summoned FRIEND--due to the 'tail of hell' shit--and whatever hell this raised led to Dess's body being destroyed alongside Kris's soul in her attempt to protect/save Kris from death.

The Weird Route also seems to link the SOUL event, the origin of whatever happened to Dess and now to Kris, to the lake (the Knight fight dialogue from Chapter 3 is almost ALL lake-related), which is where the SOUL begins (Vessel creation, Dess disappearing or dying at/in the lake/shelter below it) and is reborn through its connection (thorn ring, fledgling SOUL in Noelle's body) to Noelle’s monster soul, which is then used to pass the barrier into the shelter. However, this is where I think Noelle simply dying has the most evidence against it; between her line of “you actually changed” and wanting “wings” (which the Knight has in bird form), it does feel like either her body/monster soul remain in the Knight to some extent. Either that, or Kris/Dess use the bird form/wings as a homage to her.

Anyway, the underwater sounds Onion heard and got takoyaki’d for are likely the Knight/Dess’s body quite literally SOULlessly playing music, exactly like Kris is wont to do in their fleeting spare time.

The parallel with Kris and Noelle falling out of bounds in Deltarune, much like Gaster in Undertale, should not be overlooked. Especially since the two very clearly seem to be falling INTO Gaster’s creation or lab or whatever the fuck he’s cooking in the shelter. As for what happens to the fused Kris (and Noelle?) body/bodies and Dess’s SOUL after they pass the barrier into the shelter during Chapter 5’s weird route: there are options. Are they working with/for Gaster by kidnapping the main characters from Undertale so Gaster can either recreate his original world or return to it (say, in exchange for Gaster promising Kris and Dess to re-swap their bodies with the proper SOULS, or reset Hometown to before Kris summoned FRIEND, or to simply let the three die and rest peacefully) if Gaster succeeds? Well… who knows man it’s fucking Gaster

This does make me wonder about the purpose of the vessel. Could it be Gaster’s way of “recapturing” the SOUL by creating a husk to the exact preferences of the Player, we who control Dess’s soul, thus making us/it more receptive to Kris’s body? Was that Gaster testing Kris-like forms to see how her SOUL would take to them, and us to her? Who knows, man

Tying this to Chapter 3’s Dess Room scene: it’s worth noting the balls in the Green Room lottery machine. Balls are somewhat significant as a motif for Gaster, GONERslop, etc. The Knight transforms into a ball. Jockington (who is likely FRIEND and/or a GONER but I have another post on that) is obsessed with games/sports: especially sports with balls. FRIEND’s tail is made of balls. The Ball of Junk, which Kris’s hand shakes when being forced to drop it. Onion is cooked into, specifically, takoyaki balls. These balls in the Green Room’s RED machine are red and white, the colors of Noelle’s and Dess’s SOULs. Inside the Dess room, you find Dess’s guitar pick in a smaller BLUE machine, one which has zero balls in it; this most likely represents Kris’s SOUL. Its lack of balls, to me, suggests that the Knight’s power (or just the reality of animating the likely-dead and/or decaying body of Dess) means Kris’s original SOUL is either mostly or entirely GONE. USED-UP, you might say… Okay that’s enough Ramb-ing out mb

Anyway the Knight being Dess fused with Kris (and Noelle) explains the 'how' of Kris and Noelle being ‘used up’ in SWORD route; Kris is barely hanging on without a SOUL to begin with. And while their body is seemingly in better shape than Dess’s, that’s a very low bar. On the subject of Dess’s physical body/corpse: this idea of the Knight being a dead-yet-conscious entity also inverts what was established in Chapter 5 through the liminality of the flowers: a living-yet-unconscious entity (i.e. in the Light World, they function subconsciously as all non-human assemblages of matter operate, by virtue of lacking the intellectual capacity for inauthenticity: like sleepwalkers driven by the biological imperative. Pink somewhat already foils this idea, as a ghost animating their inanimate figurine, but again, the Knight serves as the foil-to-the-foil: fusion as abomination rather than unification; as self-erosion and de-individualization, rather than as spiritual and emotional completeness like with Pink and Mew Mew's fusion.

If all that remains of Kris and Noelle after the Weird Route suicide is Dess's soul, now augmented by Noelle's monster SOUL and the connective tissue of her thorn-ring-inherited fledgling red SOUL, this explains why the Knight looks more like Dess rather than Kris or Noelle: it’s her body, or what’s left of it. This especially works if her corpse ended up in the shelter and was reanimated and/or somewhat preserved that way… perhaps using Kris’s SOUL? It would explain why the Knight fights with a sword; these are weapons Kris trains with during the previous four chapters prior to fusion, which would perfectly mirror how Dess’s soul allows Kris to play guitar in ch3 while they cannot play piano using it during ch4–even despite the Knight’s mannerisms retaining their Kris-ity. Uh, Kris-ness. Krismas. Happy Hollidays.

It would be quite the inversion for Weird Route to have Kris’s (and Noelle’s?) bodies contain Dess’s SOUL, only for their SOULs to end up contained *by Dess’s* body, no?

PART TWO: The Red SOUL, the Knight, the Influence and Motivations of W.D. Gaster, and Us

i think dess opened that original fountain asgore found himself in, leading to her disappearance. the details, the how and why, are obviously all unknown, but since the old fountain and the cyber world were seemingly opened by the same person, presumably the knight, i think this is a reasonable assumption.

ralsei is also confused because "i thought the knight only showed up alongside the heroes" but perhaps that's true, if the original fountain maker was a still human dess. but why?

i think the key lies with the weird route. in asgore's flashback at the end of the chapter, the sound effect from the player putting the thorn ring on noelle plays. if the weird route was parallel to whatever happened to dess, then it would be helping us prepare for the reveal and give further context to something really fucked up that can happen in this universe. some otherworldly force pushes dess to the limits of her world, of her "game", until much like noelle she has justified it as something good, leading into her being warped into the knight. what if something like the knight, all powerful within the scope of the game, is what noelle will start to resemble in chapter 7?

my other reason for thinking these story beats run parallel is because of how in the normal route noelle talks about her desire to leave and dess leaving in the same breath, clearly comparing them. there's a chance she is also alluding to feeling suicidal here. but in the weird route when she goes on about feeling trapped and pushes herself to "do something crazy", which is both her feeling like she's taking autonomy of her abuse and justifying it as necessary, and then i look at dess, who with the limited knowledge we have, was clearly a rebellious teen with a strict mother and i think hm. could similar feelings have been at play here?

and of course, kris being there for both. there's a good chance that original dark world is the shelter one.

i also think this would be a decent explanation for what state the knight exists in. the behavior of the knight and what we know of december holiday has a big contradiction until we get more information, but it clearly has a personality and autonomy. it is petty, it makes seemingly unplanned choices like opening the second fountain, and it aura farms up the stairs. i cant see it as just dess' waterlogged undead corpse. dess having been psychologically tormented like noelle was and then transformed could explain how the knight is both still dess and so warped beyond recognition.

The flowers said at multiple points how Asgore needs a human hence their “human” appearances. The human Asgore really needs is Dess because if he can get Dess back everything will be ok again (which isn’t true but that’s what he thinks).

This also ties into the theory that Kris/Ralsei/Susie are not the heroes in the prophecy. Instead it could’ve been Asriel, Dess, and another darkner we haven’t met perhaps. Another piece of evidence for this is Ralsei’s shock at previous dark fountains. He said something along the lines of how they can only appear when the three heroes show up. Meaning if it happened before, the heroes should’ve been there, but the Fun Gang was not.

"Who really died that day? And who came back?"

Welp. I've got that Deltarune brainrot again, so I once again return to this website to dump my garbage pile of shower thoughts.

While I don't watch "theory videos", some speculation has passively osmosed its way into my mind, leaving me to dwell on their implications. And it feels like in the process, I've stumbled upon a huge secret hidden in plain sight.

What really sells me on this theory is the family photo and Dess’s room filled with shoes that no one else in her family would realistically wear. The family picture parallels Kris wearing fake devil horns to blend in with monsters, so from a storytelling standpoint, Dess could be a parallel to Kris: someone forced to wear fake antlers, not by choice, but because she was expected to “fit” the role of a monster.

Anyway, here's my take on Dess`s appearance:

So i've been musing on this for quite a bit now, and the more i think of it the more i can't unsee the connections between the weird route and all the forgotten man stuff with the egg rooms. Consider:

They both involve isolating Kris from the fun gang (Kris with Noelle in the weird route, Kris on their own in the egg rooms). This is most noteworthy in ch4, where you have to literally run the other direction susie is going to get to the stained glass room (and thus the ROOTS and therapy rooms) from the second sanctuary.

You need to get to the dog dumpster to continue their respective routes (you need to get in here and back out for chapter 2's egg roo, and spamton hides out here in the weird route and you need to get to him to get the thorn ring.) Also note the graffiti of the scarlet trees the forgotten man hides behind is right next to the dumpster spamton hides in.

The ARG alludes to and hints at both of them (referencing Ice Palace from the mantle minigames of board 2, among other things, and the webpage with a punch of stained-glass windows hinting at how to get to the ch4 egg room).

FRIEND connections to both (mantle minigame for weird route, and its theorized that the special egg Noelle gets in /egg/, that it itself is theorized will hatch into FRIEND if we take into account /rain/, is from the forgotten man, as you get to that page from a web page featuring the familiar scarlet tree, /man',, not to mention its likely FRIEND is tied to whatever trauma Kris is repressing as represented by said egg rooms due to the whole "lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail" from the roots room. Also Cats from Cat Petters hatches from eggs).

The Phrase "Aren't you forgetting something" appears in regards to you not getting the previous board's key in the mantle minigames (the full phrase is "aren't you forgetting something importent?"), as well as thrice in the spamton sweepstakes (/d_a_m_n_y_o_u_t_e_n_n_a/, /windows/, and /window/) as text you see on the tab, one of which is a reference to the sword route again (and even leads to /icepalace_glaceir/) while the other two are hints at how to get the chapter 4 ROOTS room (which is how you get the chapter's egg).

CH3 has a guide, or at least something to hint at, both the weird route and the egg rooms (mantle minigames for the former, the forgotten man's schedule for the latter).

They push, but not force, you to go down either a pacifist or violent playstyle (Weird route I don't need to really explain, snowgrave go brrr, and you're locked out of the chapter's egg room if you go down it, and you're locked out of the Nowhere if you fought the Ribbicks earlier in the chapter).

The way to go down them is both hidden and obtuse, often requiring a guide to go down them (Egg route gets it worse than WR, but the latter is still difficult to go down without a guide on hand).

It's also noteworthy that Miss Mizzle refers to love as being made of eggshells, which is interesting to note in the context of LOVE (Levels Of ViolencE) and its ties to one of the prophecy panels in chapter 4 "LOVE FINDS ITS WAY TO THE GIRL". A Rudinn also brings up that Castle Town's LOVE is cracked if you didn't recruit anyone from chapter 3. The philosophers also state that the answer is LOVE, seemingly to the questions that they speaking about, which also feels relevant.

On a thematic level, both the eggs and the weird route as a whole seem tied to the concept of video game secrets, more specificity glitches and exploits (the weird route is very much a creepypasta-esque twisting of the game tied to a character who has a habit of finding secrets in video games, and to get the eggs you literally needs to go to the deltarune equivalent of the backrooms to get them). Its also notable people have compared the eggs from the eggman to the error handler glitches such as bad egg.

Unlike the Shadow Crystals which can be progressed retroactively (i.e., if you played save file 1 up to chapter 4 and got the chapter 2 and 4 crystals, you can go back into chapter 1 and 3 and get their shadow crystals so you can find them in the hole in the wall in castle town), the Weird Route and the Eggs can only be progressed Linearly (i.e. you can play the game up to chapter 3 on save file one, replay chapter 2 for the weird route, and then continue to chapter 4 and now its the weird route now, same for the eggs, in that you can't collect them retroactively).

What does all of this potentially mean. Well i have an idea for awhile now that the Forgotten man and collecting his eggs are key to their own "route" alongside the Weird Route (possibly the "good ending" counterpart to the Weird Route, ala pacifist to genocide). After all, if the PlayStation achievements are to go by, Gaster sees the Eggs as an issue (how or why is not truly relevant here, if i have to quess its completely outside of the knowledge of the prophecy unlike the weird route which, if we use the mantle minigames as a base, is a "forbidden path" or is the original, intended prophecy itself), so clearly they are not too unimportant. But what makes them not too important?

My first though as far as the "not too important" half of the egg's description is that the eggs themselves aren't the important part of the egg route. They essentially a glorified progress counter and nothing else and when you get all five the forgotten man will pop into the plot and do something.

However the Dog Dumpster being a key room for both the Egg Route and Weird Route makes me think back on the Thorn Ring and how it can be made into the Twisted Sword. You see currently the actual purpose of the currently unused Pure Crystal, likely the reward we get from Seam (or whatever other cat in the area) when we get all the Shadow Crystals. The only currently know use for it as an item you combine with the Thorn Ring to create the Twisted Sword.

So what if, instead of the Pure Crystal having a different use than being needed for the Twisted Sword, what if there was a different way to get the Thorn Ring. We Know that from the Forgotten Man's schedule that he will "harvest the wheat" in sunday, Flower King is a very likely (if not a lock) for at least one of the dark worlds, and datamined responses from noelle to the various items in chapters 3 and 4 implies noelle might be a playable party member in chapter 5. So the circumstances are aligning in a way for the reward to getting the Thron Ring via the Egg Route are there.

It has to be either Noelle or Dess, and honestly, I'm inclined to believe that it's Dess. Bringing a laptop home from the library to play pretend with Kris feels like something she'd do. Though at the same time, Noelle does have an affinity for tech, plus Queen already takes an interest in her in the Dark World.

While the rest of Hometown (or at least the adult Dreemurrs/Holidays) views Kris and Noelle as the classic childhood friend pair, it's curious how little Noelle actually features in Kris's own dark world. Tenna doesn't mention her at all (outside his flashback which was about when both families would gather). Noelle really only appears in the Sword Route as the white cloak; a symbol of Kris's anxieties around getting close to her again.

Meanwhile the rest of TV World is filled with references to Dess. The guitar minigame. The ribbick that refers to “a lost and lost and lost girl.” BALLGAME. The code to watch music videos is 1225. And of course there's fighting the Roaring Knight in front of a dang Christmas tree.

If I had to make a rough guess at how the relationships formed, the timeline would go something like:

Having Dess as a babysitter in the earliest days, leaving plenty of time to form play routines like Card Kingdom vs Cyber World.

Occasional playdates with Noelle, Kris starts pranking Noelle and getting clapped back by Dess. Kris learns they can Command attention from both sisters this way.

Noelle and Kris spend more time as a group with their older siblings, their exploring adventures start.

Asriel more and more becomes the golden child, and Dess spends more time on her interests trying to figure herself out. Noelle becomes Kris's designated playmate, “match making” attempts really start ramping up, along with the pranks getting more intense and personal. Kris either stops wearing their horned headband, or starts to doubt their horns are coming, and develops a negative self image. May or may not have started “pretending” to rip out their SOUL here, or actually did once and played it off as a prank when Noelle caught them.

Despite all efforts, Kris actually starts developing feelings for Noelle around here. Dess has become like their older sister and they begin to model her more and more. Whether she realizes it or not, she teaches them what it means to be strong.

THE TROUBLES. Dess disappears, Angel knows what happens to Kris, Noelle either wasn't involved or quickly repressed it. Kris might resent this.

Kris undergoes art therapy, ends up repressing their trauma. Parents fight more, Kris escapes into tv.

Divorce, more tv, playing video games with Asriel. Uses games as an outlet for their frustrations, but it doesn't seem to help. Probably starts “playing” with the power strip around this time (i.e self harming). Asriel notices some things, but Kris keeps the worst hidden from him.

Asriel leaves for college. Kris loses interest even in tv, though occasionally plays games against Berdly to see him whine about losing. Probably becomes involved with Carol's Bunker Gang around now. If the birdcage and wagon hasn't shown up yet, it does now, scavenged from childhood play things that haven't been used in years. The cage sees its fair share of crashes. MAYBE the closet dark fountain is made now.

I didn't even register that the reason Noelle is barely present in Chapter 3 is because Kris made the Dark World. They probably don't even think about Noelle all that much anymore despite their childhood, and if I remember correctly, Noelle herself mentions that the Ferris wheel ride (and their friendship by extension) was more of a forced thing.

Their admiration for (and memories of) Dess are definitely felt all throughout it, though. To go on a brief tangent, I'm of the belief that Susie and Dess are similar at least in temperament, and I believe that part of what draws Kris to Susie could honestly be her reminding them of Dess.

Also I just really love the idea of Dess babysitting Kris. Ramb is honestly probably talking about the games they played during these times.