TodasLocas

With Deltarune Chapter 5 coming out tomorrow, I figured now would be a good time to post my current theories, especially considering what happened last time (we'll get to that). Basically, this is where I'm placing my bets so if I get any of them right I can PROVE that I predicted it. Because last time, well...

How I (almost) predicted the knight

I just want to brag a little bit because even though I didn't post it publicly, I. FREAKING. CALLED IT. Kind of. Not really...

To be honest, I am pissed at myself because I was a Dess knighter for the longest time, but then I switched to Carol knight, ironically, after watching the Device Theory by Mollystars. Check it out if you haven't, imo it's still the most cohesive, well put together Deltarune theory out there. But before I get into that, I also want to brag about calling bullshit on Kris knight. Or, more specifically, just go into my thought process. Consider this my resume for Deltarune theorizing.

There were several factors that made me seriously doubt Kris knight, the main one being the closet in the computer lab.

Why would Toby call attention to it? It's almost like someone had been hiding in there waiting to make a dark world. If they had made the fountain at night, when no one was around, why would they need to hide in the closet? We were with Kris from the moment they woke up to when they got to the Cyber World, and they were never in that closet. Add to that the fact that Berdly and Noelle already had their books out and it seemed like the knight made that fountain while they were studying. The timing just didn't add up.

Secondly, how come not a single person recognized Kris in the dark world? This one is pretty self explanatory.

Finally, and this is the big one, I didn't buy that Toby would show his hand that early into the story. I heard people say "it doesn't have to be a mystery" and my response was always "then why was it built up like one?" Andrew Cunningham in his response stream to his knight conspiracy video mentioned that his job as a theorist is to come to the most logical conclusions based on the information he's provided with. If Toby wants to misdirect us with dozens of red herrings, he's gonna win, because you can't use logic to figure out what is and isn't a red herring. To a degree I think this is true. This is Toby's story and he can do whatever the hell he wants. However, I also don't think Toby would lead us to think one thing and leave no evidence that we're being misdirected. We've seen that with the knight, Kris knight was the obvious conclusion, but it doesn't quite add up when you look through all the evidence. Looking at it from both a a logical standpoint and a story standpoint is likely to give you the best solution to whatever problem there is, even if the game is trying to mislead you. This will come up later.

Now, as for why I originally thought it was Dess. Despite the lack of logical evidence, it seemed completely obvious to me. I know we all had fun theorizing about FNAF, but that story was absolute nonsense and it was meant purely for us to theorize about. That meant that, for the most part, logic was the only thing we needed to solve it. And yeah, it was fun and rewarding, but Deltarune is a story first, not a puzzle. And when I hear that there's a character missing and we're wondering where they are, and there's another character that barely anyone has seen and we're wondering who they are, it was never really a contest in my mind. The answer to those two questions, based on how the story was being set up and my own experience with storytelling, were one and the same.

And then... the device theory. After watching that video and agreeing with pretty much everything it said, I thought to myself, "if Dess really is the knight, what would it mean to find her? Why is that the end goal of the game if we already know she's the knight? Plus with the voice in the code..."

Eventually, I came to the conclusion Dess being missing meant that she couldn't be the knight. So, if Kris isn't the knight, and Kris is looking for Dess by opening a dark world, the knight is probably someone who shares the same goal. And who would that be? Carol.

Carol has keys to the entire town, she was built up as an antagonistic figure, and she would have enough motivation to open up dark fountains to look for Dess, it all lines up!

And then the chapters came out. Here's my approximation of how that went:

What is that? Like, a titan?

Wait, the antlers...

Oh my god, I was right! I CAN'T BELIEVE I WAS hey wait a second-

Why would Carol be holding a bat?

Would she really be aura farming like this?

God dammit, it can't be...

MOTHERFU-

Needless to say, I have never been more enraged.

Who made the grand fountain?

Just gonna say it right out of the gate, it was Kris. I'm surprised more people haven't come to this conclusion, but take at the 5 dark worlds we currently have, and how each of them start. Let's start with the 3 we know were made by the Knight.

Card Kingdom, a forest of purple grass and red trees.

Cyber World, a field of electronics overlooking the city.

The Church, walls of ornamental glass and complex architecture.

They all seem pretty appropriate for where their fountains were made. But then, let's take a look at Castle Town.

It's a long stretch of cliffs with titan eyes, piles of dust or ash, and those weird bobbly things that swing back and forth when you pass them. Now let's look at how TV World starts off.

It's the same thing. Do either of those seem appropriate for a supply closet or Kris' house? What's their thematic relevance? It's weird and otherworldly in a way the other 3 aren't. The fact that TV World is practically screaming at us to connect it back to the cliffs reads to me that the creators of both of these dark worlds were the same.

It doesn't even end there, though. Remember how Kris already had a save file in the cliffs before we enter?

It would make sense if they made that save file as they were making the dark world. As for why their name doesn't appear on other save slots when you do this, we'll get back to that later.

Last, there's Ralsei, the lone resident of Castle Town.

I don't think it's too controversial to say that Ralsei is Kris' red horned headband. But honestly, not much about this point changes if he isn't. It was made explicit in chapters 3 and 4 that Ralsei is not Asriel. I'm not sure how popular this theory is, but Ralsei seems more like what Kris wishes they were; someone who could live up to the expectations put on them by being in Asriel's shadow. Ralsei resembles a boss monster, which Kris already wishes they were, but he's also kind, talented, and generally very well liked. His name is even an anagram for Asriel. When talking to Kris, the people in Hometown seem to be far more concerned with Asriel than them. They're a lone human in a town full of monsters who loves their brother more than them, and they probably envy him for that. Ralsei is a version of Kris they think would be respected as much as Asriel, a version of Kris they could be proud of.

Now. Given that we know dark worlds are shaped by the vision of their creators, does it seem like the Knight could create a darkner like Ralsei? Does it seem like anyone could create a darkner with that kind of significance to Kris specifically other than Kris?

Why did they make it? My only guess is to create Ralsei because of the prophecy, but honestly it could be any number of things. Unlike TV World I really don't have any leads, especially considering that we don't even know how a grand fountain gets made. So for now I'll just say Kris made it for some reason and move on.

Chapter 5 Boss

Ok, here's a fairly quick one! Right now, general consensus is that Asgore will be the boss of chapter 5. There are several reasons for this, such as Gerson saying this about chapter 5 about lord of the hammer:

There's also the egg man saying this about what he does on Sunday, the day chapter 5 will take place:

These two pieces of evidence indicate very strongly that chapter 5 will take place in Flower King. Asgore runs the shop, and in addition, there are these three bits of the prophecy in chapter 2:

Internally, from left to right, they are named

spr_dw_church_prophecy_boss1_icon,

spr_dw_church_prophecy_boss2_icon, and

spr_dw_church_prophecy_boss3_icon.

This lead people to believe that boss 3 is referring to Asgore. I disagree. I think it's the flower.

Before you kill me, it's not because I like to be contrarian or because I just feel like Toby is misdirecting is. Yes, that part of the prophecy is clearly referring to Asgore, but there's one simple reason I believe it cannot be him.

Why in the actual FUCK do people believe Asgore would be willing to fight his own kid???

Asgore, in both Undertale and Deltarune, has never been portrayed as someone who would be willing to hurt his family for any reason. As Andrew Cunningham pointed out in his knight conspiracy video, Asgore's motivation for practically everything he does is his love for his family. What made him so complex in Undertale was his dilemma between doing what he believed was morally correct, and doing what he believed his people needed from him. Was it wrong of him to kill 6 humans? Absolutely. But it wasn't entirely selfish, and I don't believe he would be willing to hurt anyone for purely selfish reasons. He may trap himself in asylum, hurting himself by denying reality and ultimately destroying his flower shop "in an inferno of jealousy," but I cannot see a reality where Asgore willingly lets that jealousy boil over into resentment for his family to the point he is willing to hurt them.

If anything, I think Chekov's soul flowers are the most likely candidate for chapter 5's boss. Asgore is trapped in asylum, possibly with his own creations that only encourage his jealousy and denial. This doesn't take into account the possibility that they might mind control him, possess him, what have you, but there is currently no evidence for that so for now I'm going to say that Asgore's love for his family overpowers the one other piece of evidence that he will willingly be the boss if he knows Kris is there.

A second chapter 3 fountain?

What the fuck is up with that other fountain in Chapter 3?

Like, it's so much farther away from the dark world than any others have during their final bosses. And then, immediately to the left:

So, here's my take. This is not the TV world dark fountain at all. It's the shelter fountain.

I mean, in every other chapter you walk to the left of the fountain from the fight to get to the actual fountain, but they're in different rooms. The break between them implies some sort of spacial difference. But in Chapter 3 it's just... right fuckin there. The only other dark fountains we know are active at this time are the grand fountain and the shelter fountain, and Ralsei would definitely have recognized the grand fountain. It's so far away, it has to be the shelter fountain.

Who was phone?

Carol. Like, obviously.

Why does she speak differently at the end of the weird route?

I don't fucking know, why does the voice on the phone say "I'll be right there" seconds before Carol shows up?

The game really emphasizes through Noelle that Carol, by all accounts, should be at work. And yet, here she is back at the house. I've seen people brush off this evidence as "weak" and "purely circumstantial," which absolutely baffles me. To quote Andrew Cunningham, "coincidences happen in real life because there is no god." When someone off screen says they're going to do a thing, and then a character comes on screen immediately after and does the thing, I wouldn't call it "purely circumstantial." That is the story telling you explicitly that they are the same character. Normally I'm all for looking at little details that don't mach up and using that to doubt the conclusions a story wants us to come to. But in this case, Occam's razor wins. The solution that requires the least assumptions is most likely the correct one, and the only assumption that needs to be made for Carol being the voice on the phone is that Toby has some other reason for changing the way her dialogue appears on a weird route. Meanwhile, if Carol isn't the caller, that means that Kris was on the phone with some other entity that has a vested interest in keeping the guitar away from Susie, tells Kris it will be right there, and either fails to make it, says "there" to mean somewhere completely different, or shows up without literally anyone noticing. Meanwhile, Carol, who had no idea any of this was happening, shows up at the house for an unrelated reason and takes the guitar. If anything, I'd call that circumstantial. If Toby decides to prove me wrong, I would have had no chance at coming to that conclusion in the first place because it's not the logical answer (though I'm sure he could make it make sense), and if anyone wants to convince me otherwise they will have to explain every single one of those holes in the theory which, so far, I have not seen anyone do.

Everything ends at chapter 6

With the way Gerson talks about Lord of the Hammer, how the Egg man talks about his schedule, and how Seam talks about the shadow crystals, it really seems like the main story is gonna wrap up around chapter 5, with chapter 6 functioning as a climax of sorts. So what is chapter 7? This one is a long shot and I don't have much backing it up, but I feel like getting to chapter 7 is, partially, the function of the weird route. I think all 3 saves will need to have specific conditions met to unlock chapter 7. This is my other main idea for what "only one ending" really means. If I had to place bets it would be on the former, but I do think this one is also fairly likely.

The weird route and the prophecy.

I'm just gonna come out and say it. No, the prophecy is not the weird route.

A lot of people point to parts of the prophecy like "the queen's chariot cannot be stopped," "the lord of screens, cleaved red by blade," "love finds its way to the girl," and the unused "coldwater fell from the sky" as things that either only happen in the weird route, or are alluding to it. They also point to the shadow crystals showing things that are very weird route coded, and the fact that the prophecy doesn't change when looking through it.

Ignoring the fact that the prophecy panels doesn't necessarily need to be taken literally and many of these have an interpretation that could easily apply to the normal route, there are two crucial details that most people overlook:

1. Deltarune was not initially supposed to be released chapter by chapter.

Think about it, why was Toby so hesitant to do that at first? I think it's because the weird route is meant to be played after the main route. It involves so many weird exploits, including the player doing things they would not normally do to other characters. If the full game released all at once, why would an average player, who wasn't privy to all the things us terminally online deltaheads perceive as common knowledge, decide to do a weird route?

2. The average player will never find the weird route.

The weird route is not what is being foretold in the prophecy because the weird route is us trying to break the prophecy. If we break the prophecy on a normal route, why would anyone do a weird route? What would even be the point of adding it? It doesn't make any narrative sense at all for there to be this secret evil route that is so hidden that people thought it was fake at first that doesn't even do anything. So, why would an average player do a weird route?

Because they've hit their breaking point.

They've seen the ending of the game, the ending of the prophecy, and they don't like it. They want to find a way to change it, and after playthrough after playthrough of failure, they're willing do do anything, including hurting the game's characters, to do it.

But here's the thing. There is a reason there's so much debate over what parts of the prophecy actually mean. "Love finds its way to the girl" could mean the girl is Susie and she gets to do a bunch of lesbian shit with Noelle, or it could mean the girl is Noelle, and "love" is actually "LOVE," level of violence. Coldwater falling from the sky could mean noelle using snowgrave on Berdly, or it could just mean that it snows in hometown. The prophecy is vague on purpose.

Deltarune has only 1 ending. I have a few theories on what this could mean, but one of my strongest ones is this:

No matter what you do, no matter what route you take, the prophecy will unfold, and the ending will be the same.

So, what is the ending we're trying to avoid?

The end of the prophecy

I've seen a lot of people doubt that the prophecy ends with the grand fountain being sealed, and I think those people are very cool and I'm glad they're questioning things but I also think they haven't thought about it hard enough. Or, too hard. Let me explain.

A major piece of evidence people doubt this theory is because of this line from the prophecy:

"Worlds." Plural. If we had to seal the grand fountain, wouldn't that mean destroying the dark world? Probably, but consider that there are more than two worlds within the logic of Deltarune's universe. There's the light world, the dark world, and according to the device theory the device layer. But also, there's our world. Lighter than light, the Angel's Heaven. Perhaps something in the story will put our world in jeopardy as well. (if you're asking how, it's toby fox, who fuckin knows)

However, the main reason people doubt the theory is because of this line from Susie:

So people immediately think that it has to be something Ralsei specifically has a vested interest in stopping, and given that he doesn't really value darkners or himself at all, he would do it in a heartbeat.

What people miss is that it's not Ralsei saying this. He never said "obviously I would never let that happen," Susie is projecting that feeling onto him. Obviously, from her point of view, Ralsei wouldn't want that. If she was in his position, she certainly wouldn't. She's even been trying to encourage him to see that value himself. She knows he has trouble valuing himself and other darkners, but he's also encouraged her to be nice to them, to recruit them to the town. If he's been doing that, clearly he values darkners to some degree.

But here's the thing. Ralsei does care. Not necessarily for the other darkners, but for Susie. Ralsei knows how much these adventures mean to her, how much they've improved her life. That's why he's so worried about Susie seeing the prophecy, why she's so focused on making Susie happy, why he wants Susie to not get too attached to the darkners. Susie doesn't want it to end, so neither does Ralsei. After all, darkners are meant to serve lightners.

And also I feel the need to point out, and I'm truly shocked I haven't seen anyone point this out yet, RALSEI DOES CARE ABOUT HIMSELF.

I've seen this sentiment that Ralsei doesn't care about himself at all, that he is completely fine with whatever happens to him so long as it makes the lightners happy. This, to put it lightly, is complete bullshit. Why? SUBTEXT. SUBTEXT EXISTS. As much as I hate to say it, your English teacher was right. The author was trying to convey more information than "the curtains were blue." Because, spoiler alert, THAT'S HOW WRITING WORKS.

Check out this line:

Check out this line:

Yeah, obviously the sentiment behind them is that he doesn't think he has value and doesn't want anyone to truly care about him. But let's look beyond what he's actually saying here and look at the subtext I was talking about.

Why doesn't Ralsei say these things confidently? Why isn't he 100% confident that darkners don't have feelings and don't matter? Why does he seem sad when saying it? Why does it seem like his ideas about what darkners are is conflicting with his own desires? Why is he saying it like, moreso than the lightners, he's trying to convince himself of his lack of worth? Like he's trying to repress his feelings? As someone with self worth issues, this is what it can be like. It's not that I lack any sense of self worth, it's that I'm afraid of it. I feel like it's a bad thing that I shouldn't have. I can't speak for everyone with self worth issues, obviously, but the way it's portrayed in Ralsei is eerily familiar. People often focus on the "would he" of sealing the grand fountain, because yeah, he would obviously do it in a heartbeat to save the lightners. But what gets ignored is the question "does he want to?" And the answer to that is, of course, no. As much as he tries to suppress it, he doesn't want things to end.

I'm genuinely not mad at anyone who missed this or doesn't agree. I apologize for being sassy about it, but I feel like you can only buy the main argument against this theory if you're only looking at the surface level text, which I don't want people to do. If you genuinely want to analyze a piece of fiction you need to be able to look past that which I want people to be capable of doing. And look, I'm not perfect. I miss a lot of subtext too. Most of the time I'm the one on tumblr looking for people to explain the subtext for me. This is just something I get very passionate about and I need to express my raw feelings about it somewhere. I love y'all :)

3 more small pieces of evidence before I discuss the implications of this being the ending:

Ralsei's continued insistence that Kris and Susie don't get too attached to the darkeners, him wanting to make Susie happy (it's a temporary escape for her so he'd better make it count), and Susie's desire to let the adventures continue forever.

The song "Last Prophecy" that Kris plays on the piano feeling like a goodbye to Castle Town.

That door in the castle that we're obviously gonna go through at some point. What could be behind it other than the fountain?

Anyway, this theory makes sense thematically as well. Deltarune, at least in part, is about examining escapism. Not necessarily critiquing it, but delving into the things it can and cannot do for you, as well as the idea of just how "real" it is. We've built up Castle Town, gotten attached to everyone living in it, so having to destroy it would genuinely be a tragedy.

It would also line up with the game itself ending. Kris and Susie need to sever their connection to the dark world just as we need to sever our connection to Deltarune, "banishing the angel's heaven."

The right when the guy saying that gets shot: "He was just speaking his mind, why couldn't we just have had an honest civil discourse? So much for the tolerant left."

It has never been about condemning violence.

As someone who loves writing and would like for it to be their job, I need everyone to know (a majority of tumblr users probably do, but for those who don't) that THIS IS THE WORST SOLUTION TO AI WRITING IN SCHOOLS I HAVE EVER HEARD.

I have autism. I'm not diagnosed, but if you know me it's pretty obvious. For a long time I was not given the help I needed (and not properly diagnosed) because I was high functioning enough that my issues flew under the radar. One of those issues was my ability to hold a pencil, which, although I didn't know it at the time, is a common symptom of autism. It's the thing my teachers were most concerned about, and to this day I cannot handwrite without my hand cramping because I was never taught the correct way to write. I don't move my wrist when I write, just my fingers. You can see how this can become painful. Combine this with the fact that my school system axed our cursive curriculum a year after I started it and if I lived in a world without computers or typewriters that would probably have been the end of my ability to write anything.

That's why typing was such a game changer. It's so much easier on my hands, it doesn't tire out my brain after two minutes. I went from dreading writing assignments to getting excited about the prospect of getting to put my thoughts down on the page in just a few years. If I were to go back to college for anything it would be creative writing.