#ghosttheory

I was actually a Knight-Knight truther, based on a theory I saw before Chapter 5's release. I'd love to give credit to whoever I'm talking about, but I essentially took some time before the chapter to pull back and focus on the narrative of the game as a whole and take the least interesting approach possible.

Now, though, my current belief has shifted. I'm going all in on December Knight, as I think most people are right now. Rudy Knight is suspect as a result of him falling down at the beginning of the chapter. Although Carol Knight can still apply on account of coming in very late to the chapter, we don't have anything like Tenna outright describing the Knight as late to confirm this.

My theory, which I intend to coin as Ghost Theory, is predicated on the following pieces of lore.

EVIDENCE

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 were intended to be released as a single package. As such, threads in these chapters build on one another strongly. I intend, moving forward, to analyze them as a unit in a similar way and emphasize threads that are common across this chapter.

A major worldbuilding aspect of these three chapters is the relationship between Lighteners, Darkeners, and those who exist in between. Chapter 3 focuses heavily on Lighteners and their experiences of the Light World when a fountain is not present- mainly in characters like Tenna and Ramb, as well as in Ralsei's dialogue at the beginning of the chapter. Chapter 4 then adds two interesting parties to the mix: the Old Man, the image of a Lightener given new life in the darkness of a fountain, and the Titan, which appears to qualify as something darker than a Darkener (as indicated by Ralsei's dialogue on how Titans are what goes bump in the night and pure darkness, implying Darkeners are distinct and not pure darkness). Chapter 5 then introduces the flowers, which exist in a state between light and dark. Flowery explains at the end of the chapter that flowers exist and are conscious in the light world- capable of dreaming and whatnot- but can achieve a higher state in the presence of a dark world. The delineation here has interesting implications, but I intend to take that at face value here.

Pink, the secret boss of Chapter 5, is what Ralsei refers to as a 'Ghost Lightener', wherein the body that who can only be assumed to be the former Mad Dummy possessed turned out to be a darkener once a fountain was open with desires that conflicted with the ghost. Although Ghost Lightener may just refer to the ghost type of Lighteners- Napstablook, the Dummy, Mettaton- it seems odd for Ralsei to clarify this to a ghost who would already understand that.

Thanks to Asgore, we now have near-confirmation that whatever happened to Dess happened in a Dark World.

With that understanding, I was doing the fight and thinking to myself... 'okay, this is cool, but why is THIS fight specifically Pink/Mew Mew?'

And then it clicked.

The Claim: Pink is relevant to this chapter because she's what happened to December, who will be revealed as the Knight in Chapter 6 as a Ghost Lightener.

Ralsei may also be a form of Ghost Darkener, or something of that like, but I will look more into that later, as Dess has stronger and more apparent connections. If I was to take a stab at it, Ralsei might be a halfway between the dark world and an even lower layer of fiction, but that's nonsense until I find some proper evidence.

So, what happened to Dess?

We understand that Dess is currently trapped in the code, as she spoke again in this chapter and described herself as "a collection of memory". She clearly lacks a means of impacting the physical world she once called home. This was my main hesitance in fully supporting Dess Knight, a theory which still has strong evidence. Namely:

The distorted Lost Girl motif in Black Knife, as indicated by KazooCat's Deep Dive into motifs in Deltarune. Although this remains disputed, I find KazooCat's explanation to be strong evidence of the Knight being a lost girl. The only lost girl we know of with antlers would naturally be Dess.

The bat in the sprite.

The Kris connections.

So on, so fourth. You've heard this one.

The main issue I've had for a while is that Dess Knight requires Dess to be in two places at once: as the Knight, and in the code. There have been rough answers along the Ghost Lightener lines, but none of them have had canon relevance until now.

With Pink, we have precedent for a Lightener's consciousness to possess a Darkener, and then to promptly repressed (as the body is).

Though Dess isn't a ghost in the Light World, something strange may have happened to allow her to possess or be possessed by something in the Dark World.

Pink represents a being from a lower layer of reality (Mew Mew) being possessed by a being from a higher plane of reality (Mad Dummy).

So Let's Make Some Leaps.

Dess' mind and body are separate at this point in time. Why? Because the Knight qualifies as a Ghost Lightener/Darkener pair. Dess was shoved out of her body by the Darkener (if I was to guess, an entity having to do with the pointed tail of hell, which only appears in dark worlds and is shown by Ralsei when talking about Darkeners) and now exists as a 'collection of memories' and consciousness in the code/Depths/a different layer of reality. This would diverge from Pink so as to not have Pink completely spoil the reveal, obviously with something having gone wrong to make the Knight instead. This likely resulted from a Darkener suppressing a Lightener in this way.

This could also be used to explain the Knight's appearance for the moment. Friend is black with a white outline, as is the knight. Though the Knight lacks Friend's distinctive eyes, it does share this unusual palette. Mad Dummy's presence likewise changes the sprite color of the Mew Mew body when they're together.

In Closing,