DELTARUNE CH5 SPOILERS!!!
My theory on Dess's disappearance :)
If this is sorta "fork found in kitchen," sorry! But, I was thinking and thought this was really interesting.
For a very long time, I thought that Dess was the knight, but now I'm not as sure. I think Dess truly is missing, but she's stuck inside the code of the game, which she accessed by going to the bottom of the lake, much like Noelle in the weird route. Stick with me! :)
In the weird route ending (both abandoned and not), Noelle takes you to the edge of the lake, until you seemingly drown. The further you go into the lake, though—even before you start to drown—the color starts to change. I think if this lake was simply just the lake, it'd stay the same color, right? Especially considering the lake is somewhat of a mystical figure to them; Noelle says the line,
"Tell me to grow wings...and let's fly out of this stupid town! To somewhere that no one has ever been before!"
...right before they go off in the chapter 5 weird route. They're quite literally "crossing over," and Noelle frequently has symbolism with angel wings. To me, it feels like what's beyond this lake is moreso what's beyond this world.
I'm gonna take a little left turn here and talk about Dess! :) Let's say, for the sake of this, that the "original heroes" theory (as I'll call it) is true—the one in which Asriel, Dess, and Seam were the original three heroes before Kris, Susie, and Ralsei. I wish I could find the screenshot of where this is said, but it's brought up in chapter 5 that there was a dark world before our current three heroes, and that the Knight can only appear when there are three heroes. So, the implication is that there had to have been a team of three before our team of three.
Maybe, something similar happened to these heroes that happened to Kris and Noelle. Maybe, Asriel and Dess also found out that there was another layer beyond their world, much like how Noelle is realizing not only the difference in "Kris"'s actions, but also that due to game coding, she literally has to do everything that Kris says. She has to get stronger.
In the abandoned weird route, Kris gets out of the lake, and we're unsure where Noelle went. If this is what happened to Asriel and Dess, maybe Asriel got out, but Dess didn't. So, did she drown?
I don't think so! In every chapter, there's this dialogue found within the code (the one above is the one from chapter 5.) I think that this is Dess talking from outside the confines of what's in the visuals of the game—out of Hometown, but not out of the entire code of Deltarune. That's what I think lies beyond the lake, hence the change in color! This would also explain the dialogue with Onionsan.
Doesn't this remind you of the lostgirl.ogg thing? Plus Dess's inclination to music?
Maybe because music is seen as one of the things that grounds you the most? In the sense of how usually for dementia patients, songs are what stick in their heads the most, or when to study, people use musical mnemonics to recall information better. Maybe music is just what resonates with Dess. In a greater sense, too, this explains why Toby Fox would've highlighted that she was a musician.
Going back to the idea that Asriel maybe had a snowgrave-like situation with Dess (note that I don't think it was snowgrave—I mean, I think they moreso were just driven crazy by the realization of the higher power that is the soul), the fact that she doesn't even remember how she got to this world reminds me lots of the dialogue Noelle has in relation to the weird route.
It's almost like she blacks out when Kris is commanding her to do something. Maybe, something similar happened to Dess?
I also thinks this plays into this ending shot, as "Side B" is what the weird route is sometimes called within the files of the game. Maybe, this is a glimpse into the "code" that Noelle is now in, as well?
Would love to know what you all think! ♡
