He Who Avoids, the Evasive One

Yeah, yeah, I know. Clickbait title, but this is one of those things where I want people to bear with me and see the logic here. Something in Deltarune led me to realize there's one big commonality between all of Sans's appearances.

In Undertale, we see him taking various royal guard posts and odd jobs. This is relatively normal. It's weird, especially how he keeps being in various different spots across the game with no explanation, but he can just kinda teleport? Seemingly? So we just... accept it as being part of that. Sure, he's the one skeleton in an otherwise entirely dog themed area, but it's... dogs and bones, it sorta works.

In Deltarune, we see Sans in... six places.

We see him fixing the Cattenheimers' grill, acting like a maintenance worker.

We see him running the Ice Cream stand at the festival. That's fine, that makes enough sense.

And on the same street we see him taking the place of two other NPCs. Ones that should exist.

Noelle and Kris have childhood memories of riding the Ferris Wheel.

There's a picture of Toriel going hyper mode in the teacup ride in one of the scrapbooks in her house. Someone else, someone we never see, should be running those rides. It should not be one skeleton.

And, of course, there's his primary role in the game: the store operator.

The building exists. But the name is gone. Erased. If it was a cherished landmark- this would be a defacement. But it's not.

In the entirety of Deltarune's script, there are no direct mentions of Grillby.

The most we ever get is an indirect mention. * (A grill upgraded by Sans.) * (... but how important to Sans can a grill be?) There is something that hints that he and Asgore were once friends, even, though. After all, one of Asgore's flowers is an echo of Grillby, aren't they?

Every place we see Sans in is a place where another character should be.

Even when we see him acting as the final boss in Undertale's No Mercy run, he's using another character's attacks, along with his own.

In fact? I made this entire theory. Damn near this entire post. And then I remembered Sans talking about being a janitor, and looked it up. In Chapter 2, he says it himself.

* hey, what's up? * Hey, you the boss around here? * me? i'm just the janitor. * Then where's the cashier? * cashier? we don't have one. * Then who do we buy stuff from!? * me. * Then that makes you the cashier. * nope: i'm the janitor. * i'm just filling in.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

So, now that it's finally been outright confirmed that Shadow Crystals are lost dreams, and people might actually listen when I talk about the theory, I thought I might go over some of the stuff about them that we'd already figured out, especially since I've seen a lot of people not really understanding what Seam meant, or the mechanics of the Shadow Crystal's creation. Even at this very moment, there are scores of people who still think the Knight is handing out Shadow Crystals like fucking Santa Claus.

And, while I'm here, I'd like to refine my old theory on the topic. A lot of this post will be me restating stuff I already said back in January when I originally posted my Shadow Crystal theory but slightly better.

Crystal origins

Shadow Crystals appear with or on Darkners with a strong link to the broken dream of a Lightner. Spamton's crystal, for example, came from Mettaton's dream of having a new body. Seam tells us Spamton found the crystal inside the NEO body, which is the Dark World manifestation of the paint file that Mettaton drew his ideal body in. Because of his strong feelings about the drawing, and the broken dream attached to it, when the Dark Fountain was created, a shadow crystal was created inside it.

We know where Spamton, Mew Mew and Gerson's crystals came from almost for sure. Spamton's came from Mettaton's dream, manifesting in the NEO body. Pink's came from Maddy and her transgender dream, manifesting in the Mew Mew doll. Gerson's came from Alvin's dream of writing, manifesting in his father's dust.

The Knight and Jevil's crystals, I don't really know for certain. It's highly probable the Knight's crystal came from themself, since they are a Lightner, but it's hard to say what their dream was. After this chapter, it's basically confirmed that the Knight is the "fallen star" from the peculiar book, so we can apply all the bitter tears lore to them here. That's all super cryptic though, so there isn't really any conclusions to draw from it.

Jevil's crystal we have even less information about. The only possibility I've been able to think of is that he took the Shadow Crystal from Seam, who might have been linked to Asriel's dream, given they appear on his desktop. But we are long overdue for a lore dump on the school, with Ralsei and the Grand Fountain being located there, so we might learn more about Jevil then.

The strange someone's identity

While certainly no one handing out Shadow Crystals, there is definitely a certain someone who is suspiciously linked to them. The "strange someone" who met with Jevil. The mysterious voice over the phone who made a deal with Spamton. Gerson's feeling of "someone want[ing him] to use [the shadow crystal]".

I, personally, am fully of the belief that this person is Friend. They're one of the only people known to be able to travel between dark worlds, and the "garbage noise" on the other side of the phone is a file called "mus_smile", from Entry 17, to which Friend is tangentially linked thanks to its status as part of the DEVICE. Whenever someone else picks up the phone, there's no one on the other side, and the phone in the Z-rank room is unplugged. Friend is known to inhabit machines, like the vending machine in the S-Rank room and the MANTLE game. Spamton's glasses are coloured after its eyes, they appear in Queen's basement near the second Shadow Crystal, and in the MANTLE Game, where we're hunting for the means to reach the third. Also they are pink and yellow and a cat. Like Pink. But uh. That last one isn't really evidence of anything. Anyway, it's also a neat explanation for their name, "Friend". Jevil's friend, Spamton's friend, your friend.

Wait but if they aren't handing out the crystals then what are they doing

Short answer: I have no idea.

But I have some thoughts, and it can't hurt to lay down the evidence.

Let's go over all the confirmed things Friend (I'm just going to say Friend from here. Even if you don't think it's them, I'd just get tired of writing "strange someone" over and over) has done.

First of all, they met with Jevil. They told him about the nature of the world, and he went of the rails. At some point, he acquired the Shadow Crystal, before being locked away by Seam. Jevil also displays future knowledge, which may have been given to him by Friend.

They talked with Spamton over the phone for a long time, and gave him advice that made him into a big shot (likely more future knowledge), until Spamton was about to sign his contract with Tenna, when Friend said something over the phone that scared him, before ending their support and ruining Spamton's life. Spamton began praying to the NEO body, hoping it would make him big again, so there might be a link there. Interestingly, they continued to talk to him over the phone at least until he was evicted from Queen's mansion. Then, of course, they show up to watch us in the basement.

In chapter 3, they give us the OddController, and appear in the MANTLE game. Watching us, and attacking us in the ERAM fight. (I've heard people suggest before that Friend is trying to help us in that fight by dropping heals, but it actually doesn't even drop heals unless you've died at least once. So definitely trying to make the fight harder, but the chance for heals goes up as you die, so maybe they're lenient?) Personally, I think ERAM is Friend, so I'd add giving us the Shadow Mantle and provoking Kris into a fight to that list as well. They also probably appear in the vending machine, and smile at us, saying "Always at your humble service".

In chapter 4, all they do is pop up in a hallway, and give Gerson the feeling the someone wanted him to use the Shadow Crystal.

They do literally nothing in chapter 5 besides show up in a random corner and give us a whack.

It's hard to draw a motive from all this, especially all the Spamton and Jevil stuff. They have to have been playing the long game.

Based on Spamton's dialogue, particularly that one monologue about "[[Communion]] WITH [[Unintelligible Laughter]]", it seems like he and Jevil had similar deals with Friend, and possibly the Knight as well. He talks about surpassing Jevil, and is threatened(?) when he mentions the Knight.

The main question to be asking is, what did Friend get out of this deal? They made Spamton a big shot, gave Jevil forbidden knowledge, all that, but what did they ask for in return? It might be nothing. Maybe they did it for "free", and just had some hidden ulterior motive.

My only real working theory for their goal is that they're trying to test us somehow. Setting up strong bosses to guard the Shadow Crystals, encouraging Gerson to use his to fight us, and leading us to the Shadow Mantle to give us a chance against the Knight... But ERAM was pretty obviously doing that already. And it doesn't really explain why they would interact so heavily with Spamton and Jevil. Without knowing the terms of their deals, it might just be impossible to say.

Yeah that's about it really we still don't know that much about the shadow crystals

Yeah, I don't have a great explanation for why Friend's doing any of this shit. Honestly, this is still extremely similar to my original post. Pretty much the only development we got about the Shadow Crystals in chapter 5 was confirmation of everything I already knew. And, just like last time, I invite anyone reading to try and think of some possible motives for our strange someone. Maybe some Spamton lore experts out there will know what he was paying to be a big shot, idk. I didn't even read the Q&A or recheck the sweepstakes for info, might be something there.

He doesn't understand why Kris is making fountains, he just has so much faith in them that he blindly assumes they have a good reason to.

This isn't what you say to someone in league with the enemy, it's what you say to someone making an innocently bad decision. Maybe he assumes the same thing that we did about Kris before Chapter three, that they just enjoy the fun adventures and want to have more of them, and aren't thinking about consequences. Both him and Susie see the hints about Kris, and both choose not to question it because they want so badly to believe that Kris would never betray them.

-Berdly will add Catti and/or Jockington to his love interest list. -The White Pen of Hope (tm) from the trailer will not, in fact, be the real White Pen of Hope (tm). It's a bit. Tricky Tony bamboozled us. -Reference to Apple Girlington and/or [UNTRANSLATABLE JAPANESE IDIOM] -Following a combat encounter involving Asgore, Susie will say something along the lines of "Damn, Kris, your dad hits like a truck!" -Asgore wanted to name Kris "Togore", and was shut down by Toriel -Mad Mew Mew in the Dark World -Jockington's beard will have unprecedented plot relevance -We will see what Dess looked like in a flashback, and it will be exactly like the designs we have. The fandom's sigh of relief will be heard from the moon. -Toriel will be too hungover to go to the festival -Most Knight theories will be dead in the water. Somehow, against all odds, Papyrus Knight will go on untouched

-No Berdly harem ending (yet)

-The White Pen wasn't even a pen, but it wasn't a bit either, do I get half a point?

-No Asgore fight is fine, but I'm still disappointed at the absence of an Asgore Truck Joke (tm), or Togore joke for that matter

-I can't see the end of the horizon...HATSUNE MIKU!?!

-The plot relevance of Jockington's beard remains inconclusive

-We continue to hold our breath about our punk deer's design

-Toriel was, in fact, kinda too hungover for the festival

-As for the Knight, let's see here...

--Dess Knight took a slight hit, but arguably not, with the black shard at the site of the incident either suggesting the Knight took her, or that the source of black shards is the same thing that made her the Knight, or something of the sort. Mysterious Circumstances Are Mysterious, fork found in kitchen

--Carol Knight seems a bit more of a stretch given she was unlikely to be left alone, what with her husband being in a coma and all

--Rudy Knight is dead in the water (seems to be a Holiday tradition), not that it had any real evidence before but he ded now

-- * It's a box labeled "Asriel Knight Evidence".

* You look inside.

* It's full of Dess Knight evidence.

--Papyrus Knight: Unchanged.

We just keep on winning, folks

And to Ralsei’s original naïve ideas of ‘how to be a friend’. Them thinking it’s a simple matter of always ‘being nice’ - paralleling ‘Relationship Mechanics’ in games that are mostly about choosing the friendliest and most placating options, and that's really all you need to 'max out' your relationship with whoever.

Only for them to realize that it’s more complicated than this as they grow closer to Susie, someone who absolutely is not the person who chooses only the ‘nice’ options all the time, and realize that they love her for it. But also at the same time, their sweet and passive demeanor seems to have pretty much failed to endear them to Kris, despite their best efforts.

That relationship only progresses when Ralsei stops trying so hard to be Lovable….

And then also Our Choices Don’t Matter meaning that there’s no Choice a Player can make that can meaningfully change Kris’s most important relationships. These relationships also don’t depend on simply picking ‘positive’ options (because if one likes Kris, that also goes hand-in-hand with liking some amount emotionally detached teasing and pranks). AND the most important moments of relationship development happen of Kris’s own volition, and they will rebel against words that are either too cruel or too sappy to their own taste. Which in previous Chapters was mostly a positive, hopeful thing. No matter our influence, Kris’s friends will always be Kris’s friends first and foremost. We don’t have enough power to ruin their most important relationships or to make their friends love them for something that they’re not.

But in this Chapter, there’s a new melancholy wrinkle added to it. Through the whole Festival Sequence, you’re presented with a bunch of choices that under standard ‘Game Logic’ might be expected to influence the relationships between Kris, Susie and Noelle - but in true Deltarune fashion, regardless of your choices, Susie and Noelle always start their romance at the end of it. But while this could be a heartwarming story about Cute Teenaged Lesbian Love triumphing over a manipulative Amoral Time God… the whole situation also makes it very clear that even if Kris was able to make choices freely, there’s nothing they could choose that would make Susie love them either. No matter how close they and Susie get, she just doesn’t seem to be attracted to them that way.

You can also add to it the way the Flowery Final Boss plays on the ‘Power of Friendship’ bit that’s generally expected at the end of a Pacifist Run…

Where Flowery has his own Recruits that instead seem to team-up with Flowery and against you, regardless of your choices. Because the cute little ACTs you did to Recruit them were nice and all, but were they really enough to make them truly love you more than they already loved Flowery and the other Flowers? More then they loved their Dark World?

And then there’s Flowery’s whole thing. Like in many other aspects of their characters, he and Ralsei are two sides of the same coin. If Pre-Character-Development Ralsei is like someone who tries to please and befriend everyone in an RPG, Flowery is someone trying to powergame his way through a dating sim. His (and the other Flowers) constant showering of Asgore with admiration, gifts and ideal hang-outs/dates that are all just perfect for him are partly just trying to repay Asgore for the kindness he’s given them and making him happy… and also to try and make Asgore choose Flower Kingdom and his Flower Family over Hometown and his Light World Family.

As much as Flowery teases Ralsei over their jealousy of him, his behavior often reveals that he’s jealous of Kris, for being part of that family that has, from his perspective, have given Asgore nothing but grief, and yet he still seems to love more than the Flowers. Kris is a living demonstration of how his gifts and dedication to Asgore is secretly just as ‘useless’ as his fake made-up overpowered stats. Flowery is also well aware that Kris is the one that opened the Fountain in the first place, and that they seem to have some sort of hidden agenda that’s not beneficial to their dad, and Flowery still feels like Asgore will always choose them over him.

And, well, the resolution to the Flower Kingdom arc is a mixture of that (especially considering how much he was motivated into exploring the Dark Worlds out of a belief that it will magically make his family life ‘go back to normal’…. Literally pushing the Flowers away for the sake of that goal...)

But also, it’s kind of a matter that Asgore does absolutely love the Flowers, just not in the way they wanted to. The Flowers wanted Asgore to love being around them so much, he’d choose their fantasy even if it means their deaths, but Asgore loved the Flowers so much that he wanted them to live.

And in way, that’s also kind of a mirror to Kris’ situation with Susie. She definitely loves Kris, they just feel like she’d never love them the way they’d want her to.

And then, the way Pink interacts with the whole Dating Sim Pastiches adds in some wrinkles of important nuance. She’s the one notable occasion (well, outside of the other even bigger exception we’d get to in a moment) where the Gamification of Relationships is actually useful, both for the Player to progress and beat the Fight and for Pink’s Body and Ghost to solve their relationship issues. In a way, it’s kinda like saying “Well, of course, just because you can’t make anyone love you, that doesn’t mean Choices don’t matter at all in relationships, obviously. Making Choices of consideration and healthy communication is important.”

And even then, part of the resolution is Pink’s Ghost accepting her Body’s needs even if it means she won’t necessarily have her all for herself. She there’s still there’s this undercurrent of accepting that you can’t make people love you the way you want them too.

But, of course, the biggest and obvious exception of the concept of ‘You can’t make someone love you’ is, well, the same as what seems to be the biggest exception to the concept of ‘Your choices don’t matter’, and that’s the Weird Route, of course.

The Weird Route is the one exception to the idea that we and our choices can’t have a meaningful affect on Kris’ relationships, and it very intentionally uses a lot of the Tropes and language of, like, going on a Romance Route with a character in a Video Game, complete with a supposed ‘climax’ when said NPC decides to invite you to the big romantic Festival, and it also uses every storytelling tool in its disposal to showcase how it’s utterly creepy and manipulative and wrong.

It’s adding to the point of ‘you can’t make people love you’ with ‘also, even if you can make people love you, you probably fucking shouldn’t”.

But I suppose, in many ways it is still a case of one not being able to control how people love them…

Susie had a whole thing about hiding her tail, right?

And it's clear that Susie is actually empathising with Orange with her situation.

Susie trying to reassure Orange that it's okay they aren't human or look like the others...

And this one is the most interesting, because it seems the whole thing about "pretending to have the odd one fit in" clearly upset Susie here. Normally, Susie isn't someone that would resort to back to "beating up enemies" like in Ch 1, but its clear that she didn't like the direction of how things were going that she forces the group to act in this way.

We know that Kris' whole thing is about how they feel different from the rest of the town for being the only human in a town full of monsters, right? Orange seems to be a reflection of this, yet it's SUSIE, not Kris, who empathises with Orange the most here, out of all of the 7 Flowers. They even have a whole thing about them being HUNGRY when we first meet them, and Susie has food insecurity.

The whole hiding the tail thing, humans not having tails, Susie trying to reassure Orange that it's okay to be different.

Guys. Do you not realise what this is all implying?

Could Susie have lived with humans...?

That's why Susie was triggered when they tried to pretend to be a mouse to make Orange fit in. Because that's what happened to her. Susie says that those who usually tried to be friends with her often did it as a joke.

Holy shit.

Orange is a parallel to younger Susie just like how Aqua is a parallel to younger Kris. (And note that cyan and orange as considered opposites/complimentary in UTDR with the whole "moving vs staying still" mechanics of the two.)

There's also the fact that Orange is the one who ends up becoming besties with Pink. Pink being the Kris + Player parallel... Orange and Pink is Susie and Kris. oh my god.

Just a minor thought that occurred to me last night, but...

Many of us always assumed the Knight was crying here

So I'm trying to remain skeptical here (in large part because I'm ALSO in theory hell and actively going insane and also still heartbroken at having to say goodbye to the flowers please Toby let us see them again at least in the epilogue I can't not wave at Green again please), and I am a bit unsure on the exact details (I'd imagine there might be some Dess in this big ol' Knight Soup we're cooking)

BUT LIKE HOLD UP

I was never a fan of Kris Knight as we had it at the time (the Chapter 2 fountain being made with Noelle and Berdly inside just seemed pretty open-and-shut to me), but if Kris is part of this Knight Soup (I promise I'll stop calling it that) it would explain their Dark Worlds being so similar to the Knight's

AND ON TOP OF THAT a timeloop of some sort would also explain the very first meta-fuckery mystery from Chapter 1: Kris' save file, which we overwrite shortly after entering the Dark World

There is also some indication that the Weird Route is canon to Undertale: When Sans asks Susie to draw her friends in the Normal Route, she can draw 4 people: Herself, Kris, Noelle and Ralsei (though I believe the latter is choice-dependant?). But in the Weird Route, she always draws Ralsei and leaves out Noelle. And the "Don't Forget" note in Sans' lab in Undertale only has 3 people.

I'm also currently considering whether the Weird Route is actually in the prophecy after all, but only metaphorically: What if the Tail of Hell IS the Weird Route itself?

"Lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail. The poor children!"

We assumed this was about Dess' disappearance, and maybe it was. But it also hits a bit different now, no?

The Tail in the prophecy panel is segmented. As the many pieces, the many parts of the Weird Route. The many opportunities to deviate. All those times we select IceShock, every time we click "Proceed", one could see those as a circle that makes up the tail.

And at its tip, a point. With which to pierce a shell. To break through the boundaries of this world.

The Normal Route is the tale that must be followed. The Weird Route is the tail that must not be followed.

This would also partially explain how Ralsei DOES seem to be aware of the Weird Route and some of its implications, but also refers to it as a deviation from the prophecy that might make things worse: It's metaphorically part of the prophecy, but its consequences are the threat we face in the first place

The plot of chapter 5 was that Ralsei had crippling depression and didn't want to live or be a hero anymore. So a chalk outline of Chapter 1 Ralsei walks in and introduces himself as his clone, Ralmsei. The rest of the chapter was just Kris and Susie following Ralmsei around and listening to him, trying to figure out how to help Ralsei. There were no enemies and no other NPCs, it was all Ralmsei all the time.

The Light World section was a murder mystery, but Kris is a teenager so they couldn't do anything about it. So you just walked around and occasionally found Asgore doing things before going "C'mon, Kris, you know you shouldn't be here. Go home now, ok?" and teleporting you back to Kris' room.

I then woke up (still in the dream), relieved it was just a dream, but I was like "Of course it wasn't real, we haven't even had the Gaster Twitter Takeover (tm) yet" and immediately went back to sleep (which is the least realistic part of all this)

I then proceeded to dream of people on Tumblr and Discord going:

"Guys. ☐☐☐☐☐☐!"