u/PaperaPina1103

Alright, where do I start?

The first thing I think I should talk about are Deltarune's main themes: freedom, letting go of the past and the importance of your choices. I think all of these themes deal with the same thing: freedom, but in the more general sense than the first theme's.

In the game, "Freedom" is usually intended as the lack of control over your choices and/or your life:

Jevil convinced himself he is free even tho he has been put in a cage, Spamton needs the strings he hates so much to avoid falling on the ground, Noelle (in the weird route) wants to break free from her day to day life, Kris doesn't want to be controlled by the soul etc.

The theme of freedom is NEARLY ALWAYS connected to the secret sides of the game: the secret bosses and the weird route. The only exception is Kris, as his hatred for the soul is totally present in the main side of the game as well.

The theme of "Letting go of the past", instead, is heavily featured in the normal route:

Tenna doesn't want to keep living his day to day life with Kris and their family, the king is reminiscent of the past, the flowers want to stay with Asgore like they always did (and Asgore doesn't want to let go of them), Susie lives in the dark world etc.

I want to specify, though, that I think this theme should rather be intended as "living in the present, in the real world", as the dark world isn't really Susie's "past" but rather what keeps her distant from her REAL life in the light world.

I think the theme of our choices is what ties those two themes up: the second set of characters tries to lock itself in it's "ideal world"... in a Dark World (like many others I also belive the dark world is an allegory for this theme). These characters try to be "free" from their surroundings and their situations. The first set of characters does the exact opposite: instead of locking themselves in their immaginary world, they try to BREAK FREE from the world and the situation they currently live in. However, all of these characters are tied by their inability to actually get away from the reality they have to live in. Some already gave up (like Spamton or the king), some are still trying (like Kris and WR Noelle, who may have succeded in the WR), some are still going trough the starting phase of their escapism (like Susie).

Currently, the only character who clearly deals with all of the themes is Gerson, who says our choices matter, that we are free and that the past has to go to make room for the future... If you think about it, Gerson appears in BOTH as a major character AND as a secret boss in fact.

There are at least two other characters, though, that I think will deal all of those themes: Kris, and the Roaring Knight. If you think about it, the knight is also both a major character and a part of the "secret" path of the game, as he is also a shadow crystal holder.

Now, I preaviously stated that the dark world is an allegory for the theme of escapism, but then, what is the allegory for the theme of freedom? Simple: the code of the game. I want to bring up the fiction theory.

Think about it: when you curl yourself up in your immagination to escape reality (the light world), you end in a lower fiction dimension: the dark world.

But then, what about when you try to barge out of the reality you are forced in? Well, you end in a higher dimension: the game's code.

Now, I want to state that I think the knight is Dess, and that would be the reason why I think they would deal with all of the game's themes.

My take on Desses disappearence is that she Chapter-5-Susied into the shelter and ended up never coming back. This would also create a nice parallel between the two. Maybe she went on adventures with Asriel as a form of escapism from her life, and him leaving for college was the last straw for her, but I think there is already a theory about this, so I won't divulgate myself too much into the reason why I think this happened. But there is an important thing I must state: I think that Dess died in the Light World while she was inside the Dark World, probably due to starvation in the real world after deciding to not wake up ever again due to depression.

Now, think about the fiction theory and the acknowledgement of the game interface in chapter 5: the world is a program made out of code. Imagine it like this:

A function checks if Dess is in the Light World to have her in the Dark World. But wait... She is dead! She isn't in the dark world, hell not only her soul, even her body is dust! But then, how can she be in the Dark World?!- (if you know a bit of coding, this would somewhat make titans functions that call themselves and thus use great amounts of the code.)

And so, the program crashes. And as a result of the error, she gets trapped in the code of the game: that is the reason why we have an unused dialogue of someone asking for help in the code: as many theorized, that's Dess, she is stuck in the code.

This probably ended up mutating her (maybe due to some Gaster shenaningans) into the knight.

Now, I want to throw in this post that I saw earlier:

https://preview.redd.it/l40y96knkuah1.jpg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad0a2f05e2c69067c5f2c9ee51c5f82f100290c1

This would make it all make sense: it would be logical for Dess not to be bound by different forms and to pass through the game's dimensions as she exists directly into the code, it would also explain how she would have opened the Chapter 2 fountain even though she is dead!

Talking about Dess being in the code... do you know what is the ONLY instance in the game where we can see the unused dialogue hidden in the code?

https://preview.redd.it/p2ipvvipkuah1.png?width=1057&format=png&auto=webp&s=3693486945dcb1e2dad9408c2cdc7af0d0b81882

A Spamton dialogue; specifically, a phone call. This further ties the things up, as the code is collegated to the theme of freedom. Incidentally, I think the dark crystals' true power is to alter your very own code: to get freedom, you defy the very dimension that is trapping you. The knight may be giving the crystals to break the barrier between the code and the other dimension, thus creating an even greater Roaring (and may want to bring the apocalypse to get everyone in her fantasy world or something as many speculate).

Now, about the ending of the chapter 5 weird route: ILOVETHEAMALGAKRISELLETHEORYbut I think Dess is a little more likely to be the knight, even though I could totally see it happen.

I think Noelle and Kris will access the code of the game by overcoming the boarders of the lake, and that the shelter, while it COULD end up bringing us to the game's code, will have a dark world at the start.

Why? Think of the program theory:

In a game, there are programmed and non programmed areas. The inside of an important building? Well, it most definitevely exists in the code of the game. But the other side of a supposedly uncrossable lake? Why would you need to program it? That's why overcoming it would break the game dimension and pass us to the code. In fact, I think the, or if there are more than a single one at least one of the dark worlds featured in chapter 7 will be in the shelter.

Well, those are the most important parts of my theory! Thank you for reading this much, sorry if it was a lot!