Toxicity and Hypocrisy within the Deltarune Theory Community, or A Case for Carol Knight
With the release of the fifth chapter of Toby Fox's second RPG, Deltarune, the theorycrafting community within the fanbase has found itself in a position where, due to the chapter' principle focus on character growth and gameplay mechanics, there are fewer pieces of information to speculate over than previous chapters. This anomaly in the story's progression has, understandably, led to some division within the fanbase on what direction the plot is heading, and while healthy discussion within a fan community is nothing to be alarmed by, it is of my belief that the post Chapter 5 Deltarune fanbase has become more hostile than it has been since the heyday of Undertale - specifically in regards to the consensus on the identity of the Deltarune's primary antagonist, The Roaring Knight.
Deltarune's third and fourth chapters gave the players their first look at The Roaring Knight, a shadowy figure with a massive sword and a bad attitude, who along with the protagonist Kris Dreemurr, is responsible for the creation of the Dark Fountains we are tasked with sealing in each chapter. Fans were quick to note that the Knight's large antlers tie it to the Holidays, a family of wealthy reindeer-like monsters within the hometown (named Hometown) of the game. More specifically, some of the more die-hard (or "Deltarotted", as we affectionately call ourselves) fans noticed the Knight's potential connection to December Holiday - the family's eldest child - who has been mysteriously absent from the story thus far, only mentioned through stories shared by her father Rudy and her sister Noelle. The consensus post-chapters 3 and 4 quickly became that the Knight - sporting a sword that resembles a baseball bat (matching December's interest in whiffle ball), rebellious demeanor, and large antlers - is the December Holiday. Case closed. This mentality is the general consensus among a large portion of the Deltarune community, to the point where discussion of other Knight candidates are entirely shut down.
However, there is another candidate for the identity of the Roaring Knight that is equally plausible within the context of the story; yet all discussion surrounding this candidate has become completely offensive to the ears of the community: the mother of the Holiday family, and mayor of Hometown, Carol Holiday.
Carol, along with the Knight, was formally introduced with the release of chapters 3 and 4 after being teased in prior installments. Her introduction occurs when - upon acting independently of the player - Kris Dreemurr makes a phone call to an unknown person to inform them that Susie has acquired the guitar from December's old bedroom, which hides a code to the bunker south of the town in which the operations of the Roaring Knight are implied to take place. The voice on the phone states "I'll be right there." Within minutes, Carol comes home early from work (something noted to be uncharacteristic of her) furious, taking the guitar from Susie before looking inside the sound hole where the code is stated to be. Carol then demands that Susie leave the house, and reassures Kris that "YOU are welcome here at any time." (The word YOU is stylized in all caps and red text in game.)
This moment, along with the facts that Carol stores a large black katana similar to the Knight's black sword in her room, Carol's pointed antlers and shoulder pads matching those of the Knight, and her having some kind of control over Kris, might serve as damning evidence that Carol could be the Roaring Knight; if it weren't for the fact that the fandom has mitigated her role in the story to that of a red herring based on a handful of flimsy pieces of 'evidence.'
A popular counterpoint many Dess Knight believers use against the Carol Knight theory are that it would be too obvious, and therefore bad writing. This point stems solely from the fact that there is more hard evidence towards Carol Knight than Dess Knight, and that Toby Fox's character of Gerson Boom saying that a story is poisoned by "too much predictability" is a smoking gun against the idea of a character with an antagonistic role like Carol having this strong a setup, that it would go against this writing philosophy that Fox holds. This line of thinking is used as a thought-terminating cliché (something that will come up often in this essay) against any use of Occam's Razor when discussing Toby Fox's work. This insistence that Toby Fox has to to make the Roaring Knight's true identity a plot twist due to this philosophy completely ignores the numerous twists already present within the story: the nature of Gerson Boom's dust acting as a Darkner in chapter 4, Kris making a Dark Fountain at the end of chapter 2, even the presentation of the Knight's reveal in chapter 3 all serve as unpredictable twists within the story. It seems completely illogical that every important story beat within Deltarune must be an unexpected twist, this would muddle the storytelling into an exhausting mess of "gotchas" where a plot twist is to be entirely expected at every moment, and thus be completely unrewarding. Carol's reveal as the Knight being set up heavily in the story wouldn't constitute poor writing, it would be considered a payoff by the audience of any other work of fiction.
Another talking point used to "debunk" Carol Knight is that the Knight's personality differs from what we see of Carol's personality. Upon closer examination, this could not be further from the truth. With the information we can obtain about Carol around hometown - as well as her extremely limited screen time - the player can deduce that Carol is a powerful, sword-wielding, quick-on-her-feet leader of her community; having enough skill to reduce the crime rate of her town to zero without the help of the police department.
Still, some players argue that Carol is not "smug" enough to be the Knight, who consistently taunts the party and laughs in their faces. I'd argue this is completely in character for Carol, who bids Kris farewell from her home with a sly grin on her face, and an insinuation that she is knowledgeable on the nature of Kris and the Soul. Let it also not be forgotten that, even if Carol were not particularly smug, the Dark Worlds serve as a reality where characters can fulfill their fantasies: Kris becomes the tactical party leader, Susie a shonen anime-esque protagonist "with hope crossed on her heart", Noelle a powerful mage who can cast spells from her favorite video game. If Carol were deeply suppressing a desire to be a smug badass, the Dark World would be the perfect place to adopt this persona when enacting her scheme.
Speaking of scheme, one thing the Carol Knight theory has that the Dess Knight theory lacks is a solid motive. The idea of December being the Knight seems to primarily rely on "vibes", she is a badass teenage older sister rebel, and this, understandably, has an allure to the primarily teenage fanbase of Deltarune. Carol, on the other hand, would have a reason to be opening Dark Fountains at risk of ending the world. We learn from chapter 4 that if one has the proper materials, they can pattern a Darkner after a deceased loved one. If I may theorize for a moment...
Carol Knight may entail that Carol, with the assistance of Kris, is opening Dark worlds around the town with the intent of searching for the dust of her missing-presumed-dead daughter. The way she would be able to see if this is the right location is, of course, if a Dess Darkner were to appear in that Dark World. If there isn't one, Kris will seal the fountain, and the next will be opened. This would not only explain what the mysterious promise Kris made to Carol is, but it would also give motive to causing the Roaring: the world being covered in darkness means Dess can walk the earth again. It also gives a meaning to the phrases "Lost Girl" and "Find Her" that loom over the soundtrack of the game. This is a far more reasonable explanation to those phrases than the goalpost shifting I see among the Dess Knight community, that "Lost Girl" means she has "lost her way" and that we have to help her "find herself", or something similar that bends the definition of the phrase so far that it becomes completely meaningless.
Of course, this theory I have put in place will receive the ever too common criticism that it takes away Dess' agency, and makes her a "damsel in distress" trope, and that to deny Dess Knight as a theory is to somehow be misogynistic. This is another thought-terminating cliché thrown around within the community to anyone who believes the Knight could be someone other than December, and it is completely preposterous. The existence of a missing or dead child who happens to be a girl in a story is not a surefire way to deduce that an author holds violently sexist beliefs.
And yet, this is one of the most popular talking points when it comes to refuting any alternative theory regarding the Knight's identity. This echo chamber held by a majority of the Dess Knight believers of the community makes it impossible to discuss any new evidence, and even leads to ridiculous mental gymnastics to erase contradictory facts from the narrative in their minds. I see a lot of people denying the fact that the person on the phone with Kris in chapter 4 is Carol, their evidence being that the voice is presented with a different kind of dialogue box and sound effect than Carol is presented with later on (and at the end of that chapter's "Side-B" route), so therefore they must be on the phone with the Knight (I will get to why this belief in and of itself contradicts the mainstream Dess Knight theories in a moment). Could it not just be that, in the normal route, Toby Fox wanted to build suspense, and so didn't reveal who the caller was immediately, thus choosing to give the dialogue an eerie effect, and that he didn't need that effect in Side-B due to the earlier phone calls not taking place in that route? Surely not every single element of the game is diegetic down to the presentation of text.
As for my previous statement that the idea that the Knight being the caller is impossible under the popular Dess Knight theory, a prevailing belief under said theory is that December Holiday is dead, and the Knight is a Darkner version of her, much like the Old Man in chapter 4. Ignoring the fact that the Knight enters the Light World in chapter 3 and that this theory is therefore debunked within minutes of the Knight's debut, Dess Knight believers seem to ignore the fact that phones do not work in the Dark Worlds. In order for the Knight Caller revisionist theory to work, one has to not only ignore the reveal that Carol is the caller, but also deny the popular explanation as to why nobody in Hometown has seen the mayor's missing child moving around Hometown in broad daylight.
Because of this over-correcting from the community, Carol has been reduced in the public eye to an entirely irrelevant character who solely exists to divert attention away from the "true theory", and countless strands of unaccounted for evidence towards other candidates like her sit waiting to be discussed: why would Kris open chapter 5's fountain if not because the Knight is occupied at that moment (Rudy being in the hospital and Carol with him)? How does one explain the first Dark Fountain from years back being made by the Knight make any sense if Dess is the Knight? I could continue. The fanbase has become incredibly dismissive of any candidate besides Dess, to the point where they become hostile if you propose another candidate. To them, Carol is "boring" and Rudy is "stupid" and you lack Le Media Literacy and hate women if you think either have any evidence towards them, despite the fact that so much of the evidence towards December Knight rely on trivial things like which hand December's computer mouse is made for, and a sound effect that's triggered to play in game but is muted in its actual occurrence, thus rendering it completely pointless unless datamining. Fans who ardently believe in Carol Knight will be mocked by the fanbase on Twitter, I have even seen the community drive one of these people (who I will not name for the sake of their privacy) off the app for months because they became the laughingstock of the fanbase for daring to believe something other than Dess Knight. It's deplorable the way the community acts when you try to discuss alternate theories in a respectful manner!
Finally, I must simply state that I am of the opinion that Dess Knight has not been built up enough by the story. Mentions of Dess/December as a character primarily exist in optional dialogue in Hometown, mandatory references of her boil down to three instances (the word December being uttered separately in chapter 2, in my opinion, does not count.) There were ample places in chapter 5 for her to be mentioned by name, especially Asgore's monologue at the end of chapter 5, where instead he skates around what happened on "that day" to prolong the mystery; the chapter release schedule has now begun to halt the progression of the games seemingly main mystery. Now, any revelations about Dess being the Knight will suffer the same fate as Asriel in Undertale: she will be referenced a dozen times within the final moments of the chapter, making it painfully obvious that she will be shown in a few moments in a lackluster payoff that is carried by the emotional weight rather than a satisfying conclusion to a mystery. This type of reveal works with secondary characters like Gerson Boom and Father Alvin in Chapter 4, where fans can easily be caught up to speed before the conflict if they missed dialogue about them in the earlier chapters; but a multi-chapter long secret identity about the main antagonist cannot be revealed satisfactorily this way. Players should not be punished for not reading every line of dialogue about one character, and be given assistance for another. However this reveal happens will therefore be lackluster for both casual players and diehard fans.
If the aforementioned scenario plays out, fans will deflect criticism by saying that "Deltarune was never meant to be a mystery", and Toby Fox will not receive any criticism for repeating the weakest part of Undertale's story. If December is the Knight at this point, Fox has a lot of heavy lifting to do. And - might I add -if this style of rushed reveal of the dead child being the villain at the end is intentionally meant to parallel Undertale, does that not fall under the same category of "predictability" that so many fans loathe?
As the vitriol and hatred of conflicting ideas within the Deltarune fanbase becomes seemingly endless, I implore the reader to express any beliefs about the story that may be different from what is popular. Speak out for those who are being insulted for having an opinion. Part of the joy of theory crafting should be discussing various potential outcomes, not eliminating them with thought-terminating clichés and ad-hominem attacks.
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