Oliv kinda fainted

[[You can also read this from Google Docs]]

So, I’ve been thinking about this theory ever since August last year (yeah that long), and now with the new Chapter’s release date announcement I feel I need to get this theory out NOW, since I believe it has some great points to keep in mind going into Chapter 5. This document is divided into 3 theories and 4 acts in total, most of them accompanied by an “Extras” section with points that I feel further add to their respective act  while also not making the main points harder to read through than they already are.

The theories: [Printer Theory]: My personal favorite, it analyzes some points about Goners that I think people haven’t focused on enough and might be important to the future of Deltarune. Covered in Act1 and Act2. [Dark Knight] (or [Fax knight] as a funnier alternative): Goes over what implications Printer Theory could have on the nature of the Knight and Deltarune as a whole. Covered in Act3. [SoulBinding]: More of an addendum to the previous two on what I think could be going on with Souls in Deltarune. It’s a simple idea that’s able to stand on its own and works as more of a conclusion over some points presented in Deltarune. Covered in Act4.

[Printer Theory]

Act1: Undertale and the Goner Maker:

I believe there is an element of Undertale’s world that we might have not revisited with the newfound knowledge from Deltarune, one that gives basis to this entire theory: Could goners be made out of darkness? To start, let’s take a look at the Goner Maker Sequence from Deltarune. It’s presented as something strongly related to darkness from the use of IMAGE_DEPTH as the background (a texture that has been constantly used as a representation of darkness, like the Dark Fountains themselves) and its guiding voice (most likely Gaster). Here, we create a duplicate of Kris, one with tiny differences from the real one, yet still identifiable as a “copy”, I believe the Goner Maker is using darkness to create copies, and that this exact process also existed in Undertale, being used to create the Gaster followers. This idea stuck with me  when in the 10th Anniversary Stream we looked back on New Home, a literal monochrome copy of The Ruins. I believe Gaster discovered darkness in Entry Number 17 and, since as a royal scientist his task was to help the monsters break the barrier, planned on using the Goner Maker and darkness to create copies of monsters and this way, with enough copies, they could gather the power to break the barrier. Obviously as we know, something went wrong, and the only copies we got to see in Undertale were beings who didn’t quite feel real.

Act1 Extras:

-In Undertale when a Gaster follower is on screen the cellphone stops working, similar to how in Deltarune we can only hear garbage noise when we use the phone in a dark world (something weird about Undertale when you’re near a follower is that the phone does work if you call Toriel, maybe this is connected to the “Toriel is true” variable from the sword route, or maybe it’s just clumsy coding).

Act2: Deltarune and the Copies:

With the concept of goners being made of darkness and the usage of the Goner Maker to duplicate people on the table, we can now move on to theorize further in the context of Deltarune. On Chapters 3 and 4 we see even more information that might point to the relevance of goners; On the egg room of Chapter 3, one of the 7 Flying Aces describes Kris printing cards to cheat, saying how “copies are monochrome” and “[they] colored each of us in with care”, which implies so much about the concept of goners as a whole, we saw Clamgirl changing from colored to monochrome on the switch release and these two lines have been running on my mind ever since, specifically with Deltarune’s themes of  layers of fiction, that with Dragon Blazers or the Tenna games. With all of that introduced, there is a little pattern I’ve noticed I’d like to show: First, with Kris: As mentioned before, the first ever screen of Deltarune is the Goner Maker, the process of creating a duplicate of Kris one that is rejected and discarded. Then with Ralsei: People have already theorized that he might be some kind of Gaster follower, and if we take into consideration these concepts of “painting copies”, how his name is an anagram of Asriel, and the fact that Ralsei says he didn’t choose to have his knowledge in Ch4, it’s not a stretch to say Gaster (or someone with similar abilities) carefully created him to fill the role of The Prince of Darkness. All of this points to him being a colored copy. These two copies I would call Normal copies, just like the Gaster followers they resemble the original person and they can be painted to look just like any other monster/human with time and care. Now I’d like to also propose another form of copy. What if there is an error in the process? What if the copy comes out wrong, like a computer file getting corrupted?. Gaster would be the main example of this, with the Goner Maker potentially being his last creation, we could theorize this also was the machine he “fell into” as described by one of his followers, and as obviously this wasn’t planned the duplication process got corrupted and created two broken beings instead, taking into account the 67 Theory this holds even more weight, I could go as far to believe that the ”6” Gaster is the voice we hear throughout Deltarune, and the “7” Gaster could be Eggman or someone else (further on the extras), these are the result of a corrupted copy, someone hidden in the code, almost forgotten by everyone else, with a duplicate who looks like them, but isn’t quite them. To finish this part of the theory, in the last screen of Ch4 we hear Gaster talking about “his Deltarune”, what I believe his intentions are, specifically with these new ideas about  the Goner Maker, is that he wanted to do his own version of Deltarune with his idealized version of its story, how? By creating a duplicate of the original. Hence the pointed tail luring the children, Kris, Asriel and Dess, to enter  the bunker, so they could be the protagonists of his new story. This process also failed, culminating in the vessel being rejected and someone with their own will being forced to cage the player, Dess disappearing, and overall the general state of the world and story of the Deltarune we know.

Act2 Extras:

-The idea of Gaster creating a story based on Hometown could be interpreted as a  parallel to Gerson’s Lord of the Hammer book series, both creating a world based on the prophecy. -In Ch4 when Susie is at the Dreemurs’ house, Kris and Susie talk about the similarities between Ralsei and Asriel, I think this is meant to point into the direction of Ralsei looking like a copy.

-Calling back to Undertale once again, the machine in Sans’ secret lab seems to be related to both Gaster and Deltarune, and since we also see the “don’t forget” picture after talking with Clamgirl, I think this machine might be Undertale’s Goner Maker and the picture is of the three characters meant for cloning, Kris, Asriel and Dess. (important to note that it’s not specified if Frisk knows the people in the picture or not, as opposed to the picture we see before talking to Clamgirl). -For the sake of simplicity, I’m considering Deltarune’s Gaster to be the original person and the Eggman to be his copy, but I will be the first to admit this is a bit reductive and needs a lot of assumptions. BUT, I would also like to add that, given how Kris draws him exclusively with graphite on the Chapter 4 egg room, despite having colors available for painting the tree over it, and the explicit use of the word, I think it’s safe to say that the Eggman is monochrome. I do like the idea of the Eggman in the dark worlds being a representation of Kris’ suppressed memories, so for simplicity’s sake I consider the Eggman to be connected to this “7 Gaster”. 

-Also in Undertale the goner kid room is room_water7. Water. Seven. A bit funny isn’t it. (About Deltarune being a copy, I strongly believe that Hometown was the base from where the duplication was going to be made, and the process failing is what caused the story to be forced to be played on Hometown. Other interpretations exist and I don’t think I could confidently say one way or the other, but for simplicity’s sake I believe in the general idea of “Gaster’s Deltarune was meant to be a copy of an existing story/place”)

[Dark knight theory]

Act3: Where this becomes a knight theory:

I am going to be honest, the main reason I separated between acts and theories is because  this act specially relies on my personal vision of “what I would like” for Deltarune to be. In comparison to Printer Theory, this one I'm not entirely confident in fully believing, but what are theories for if not for having a little bit of fun hehe.. When we look at Gaster’s characteristics that define him as a corrupted copy (acting as if “trapped in the code/out of the game's reality”), it turns out it's quite similar to a different character who also seems to be disassociated from reality, hell yeah Dess is also a corrupted copy. If the Dess we see in the code is “the original Dess” in the same way the Gaster that is “trapped in the code” is also “the original Gaster”, then it'd be safe to assume that the Knight is, instead, her copy, I know this might sound a little silly on paper “the Knight ISN'T Dess, it's a COPY of her lol” BUT TRUST THE PROCESS! Let's, for example, look at The Knight’s horns, the entire Holiday family has round-pointed horns (except for Carol, but Carol Knight is out of the picture) and we can see in the Ch3 flashback scene Dess clearly has the same rounded horns as Noelle and Rudy, while the Knight has pointy horns, which is very easily explained by of goners being slightly different from their original base.

Another detail I would like to add, remember the “demon core” mentioned in “Raise Up Your Bat”? And remember how the Knight seems to have some kind of “core” when it roars? What if this is supposed to allude towards the Knight being just made out of darkness, and that's why it can simply pass to the Light World like alluded to in the end of Ch3? Which, under these theories could again point to the Knight being a goner. On top of this, we can also add the apparent contradictions of the Knight's behavior if it was Dess,, which this theory fully amends while also keeping all the points original Dess Knight has. But by far the strongest argument holding this together and what made me initially come to this conclusion, is how both Kris and Asriel would have needed to be targets set for copying in Gaster's plan to create his own Deltarune, it's obvious to me that the process would have also included the other person who was likely at the Bunker with the other two, and since the strange things she has going on are so similar to Gaster, I came to the conclusion that there was no other option other than she had to have been copied into what the Knight is.

Dark Knight from a narrative perspective:

Really, the reason I love Dark Knight theory so much is mostly from how it makes the Knight a much more interesting and complex character by being a copy of Dess and from just how much it fits in the narrative. In this framework, Carol and her whole conspiracy is searching for a way to bring Dess back, which is why they haven’t just started the roaring yet since I strongly believe Carol wouldn’t want to bring the end of the world just because, what she’s doing instead is find her daughter. The Knight plays its part as simply a tool for Carol’s plan, since a Holiday would know it’s not really their Dess. In this context, the story would build up to the Knight being like a “Fern from Adventure Time” type character, a duplicate trying to find a self-identity while constantly reminded they’re made in the inescapable image of a defined Other, much like what the goner kid talks about in Undertale, dealing with the idea of being born into a world in which you are nothing more than an “extra”, which then is why the Roaring would happen! The Knight on their own would reject the Holiday’s directives to avoid the Roaring, and continue on their own volition, trying to keep going as much as they can through the Roaring’s eternal night while destroying the world that never housed them. The themes that surround the Knight’s arc, in this theory would perfectly complement the motivations and themes presented by the Delta Warriors, too: With Kris, it parallels the themes of autonomy and control, Kris having their body controlled by the Soul, and the Knight controlling someone else’s body. Kris feeling like their brother’s shadow would also complement the Knight’s being seen as just a copy and only being known as a contrast to someone else instead of their own worth. With Susie, they would end up playing a similar role in the story as the people who try to change it, they both would feel rejected by the world, fearing losing the only things they have left. Rejecting the idea of a written story for them and forcing it to change. With Ralsei, they would complement each other simply by being darkners, and therefore not being quite “real”, following up on the idea of not choosing to be who they are and being forced to serve and follow a mold created by other people. And, my personal favorite one, with Noelle; having the Knight be made of darkness, it would elaborate on Noelle accepting grief and finally letting go of her sister, as the Knight is a version of her who exists, that it’s alive, but only in a fantasy that will never be truly what that person meant for her, which is especially important for the person most connected to the themes of submerging into fiction and nostalgia to learn. With all of this I also really like the idea of these corrupt copies being also a some sort of metaphor for death. Gaster and Dess, for me, represent the process of a silent loss, with that loss’s denial being what keeps these characters alive by, in Dess’ case, having a copy figuratively dragging her corpse around and not letting the memory of her rest in peace. This interpretation of the Knight  feels, in the end, personally extremely interesting and profound and I just feel it resonates with the game’s themes much better than any of the  popular Knight candidates.

Act3 Extras:

-The Knight is described as a falling star by that one book in Chapter 4, this could be a representation of the Knight being made of, or otherwise fundamentally coming “from” darkness, and thanks to the demon core or whatever Gaster did, they “fell” into the light/real world.

[SoulBinding]

Act4: What the Hell Is With the Souls:

A line that bothers me in Deltarune it’s this one from the book about souls in the library that says “but even now, the true function of [the Soul] is unknown” as if just generally saying “there isn’t much known about them”, this could just be explained by the different magic systems and worldbuilding between Undertale and Deltarune, but I think this is a bit more than that,, I think souls works very differently from Undertale. I believe souls in Deltarune have to be earned and they represent a being’s determination, the route we choose is, also, choosing who from the cast is going to develop a soul by the end of the story. In Ch4 while sealing the fountain Susie is described as having a smile that “shined on in front of [Kris], [...] as if all the darkness had been blown away”(which could be from the reflection of the Fountain but ya’ know, symbols), meanwhile in the weird route we see ourselves implant a part of us into Noelle, and contrasting these two candidates who might develop a soul, the demon core would be a soul of darkness, this being the instrument for the Knight to be present in the light world.

Credits

Thanks for reading this theory! I am no big figure in the Deltarune fandom, so taking care to read all of this is a huge honor, so thanks a ton! A little shoutout to my friend BoiledBronze, who by saying my theories were trash I overanalyzed them and worked on perfecting them (hehe), but also for pushing me into doing this and helping me redact this and spreading this theory around. Thanks, pal!! Thanks also to the Deltarune theorizing community being the channels I most watched Deltarune theories and helped into forming this theory.