Honestly, if you'd let me talk about the shadow crystal boss of chapter 5 for a moment~...
...Does anyone know if Cutie New Mew Magic has the Freedom/Jevil/Battat motif? Cause I can't find it anywhere in the song.
The only peep i've personally heard of it was in the Trashy Trio fight. An optional fight. A JOKE FIGHT. IN THE CASTLE TOWN OF THE CHAPTER. Which has NO significance to the rest of the story. AND THE MIKE TRIO SHOW UP.
This makes me feel like we led ourselves to believe the shadow crystal fights would be more formulaic than we thought;
The fans thought to be a shadow crystal boss, you needed:
The shadow crystal (obviously, though shadow crystals didn't exist on chapter 1's release)
The freedom motif
Some form of secret key just to get to the boss fight (citation needed)
Some form of nihilist viewpoint? (Jevil certainly has it in spades)
Have some form of connection to the knight(, or at least refer to them by name, as does Jevil when you beat him up, and as spamton in his shop does)
Refer to a player-to-player-character allegory (ala spamton's bossfight) (not a widespread belief)
Utilise a new soul mode (spamton uses the yellow soul mode, Jevil was discounted on the grounds of being the first in the group)
Grant a new weapon for violent victories or an armour for pacifist victories
The fans took what was similar between Jevil and Spamton and overextrapolated the natures of the rest of the methods to obtain the other 3-5 shadow crystals
But the criteria fell apart soon after chapter 3 and 4 released; we're STILL arguing which of the Knight or ERAM count as 3's shadow crystal boss.
I guess you could say the same thing about what we thought the weird route would look like -- I certainly thought it'd be the same thing every chapter; that you'd emotionally manipulate a new schoolmate into committing unspeakable murder to vast swathes of darkners until judgement day in chapter 7.
But you can't pursue the weird route in chapter 3 (unless you count sword route), chapter 4 only changes a little, chapter 5 doesn't even enter the dark world, and chapter 6 is skipped entirely.
It's the same with the shadow crystal route, considering the knight, pink, and Gerson; sure there's still new soul modes in two of them, but Gerson is the only one of the three with the freedom motif, all three offer the same equipment after the battle, and pink offers up to 3 of 6 of that chapter's finest equipment that you can pick and choose.
Then again, once we noticed that seam told us there were only 5 crystals in all, we thought we noticed a pattern in the two bosses between The Knight and Gerson, that being both bosses offer a new weapon for Kris and Susie respectively , and thus we primed ourselves into thinking the fifth secret boss would both revolve around Ralsei and give him the greatest scarf in the game.
And come chapter 5, yeah he gets a scarf alright. He, uh, gets something at least.
I believe it was common to think Gerson saying the "Field of Pink and Gold [...] Is charred in an inferno of jealousy." Would entail the setting of chapter 5 literally being set ablaze at one point, when it only pointed to the metaphorical conflict between Ralsei and flowery (Ralsei's fire shock is the closest we've gotten to a literal interpretation of the passage)
...so that must be it. Every time the fans had an agreed-upon theory of everything, it became vastly disproven by actual canon:
When all we had was the first chapter, the creation of dark fountains was unheard of. Some of us genuinely thought that the rest of the game would follow a genocide path of the light world.
When we first acquired chapter 2, we noticed a pattern between both of the shadow crystal holders, and set down a strict rubric for the future that was dismantled as soon as the knight showed up 3 chapters before she was supposed to.
By the time 3 + 4 released, the only thing we knew for sure that the next ark fountain was at the flower king. The festival was textually supported by the weird route ending, so there weren't any theories about that.
Now that we have all 5, we have no idea just what the future has in store for us. There's certainly no prophecy panels that we can confirm mention chapter 6, and Gerson says nothing about chapter 6 either. The only thing we know about 7 is that something happens that threatens the end of a life or the world with no choice of a third option.
Either our theories inadvertently impeded on toby's team's creative processes by the sheer fact that utilising fan work without compensation is illegal, or Tricky Toby and his Fae Friends were 8 steps ahead of us this entire time.
And, if I may bring this back to what I said I'd discuss, Pink is imo the best refutation of formula possible, a true epitome of "all your theories are wrong, nya". She has banger music, yes. She has a new soul mode, yes, but chapter 5's final boss has one too. Pink is ABSOLUTELY a curb stomp and a half, but NONE OF US would have guessed she was chapter 5's secret boss since we only had the first four chapters to go off of.
Chapter 5, despite having most in common with Chapter 1, is the pinnacle of "we never would have guessed that"
We never would have guessed that the final shadow crystal boss would have been a catgirl
We never would have guessed that the 7 flowers would have been much more than props
We never would have guessed that Asgore would not fight us, nor that he would be able to force us out of the dark world without one
We never would have guessed that flowery would come back as a twink claiming to be Asgore's college roommate and/or amicable ex boyfriend
We never would have guessed what chapter 5's "weird route" would entail
We never would have guessed that Chapter 5 would be anything like it ended up being.
...
And we never would have guessed that deltarune even existed.
...or that toby was working on it even before UNDERTALE.
