#loser dess

[alicelufenia]

Prepared a bingo for my Chapter 5 predictions. A quick summary of them beneath the cut:

Golden Flower - should go without saying, it's basically a free space (though it'd be real funny if there was nothing lol)

Dess Knight Confirmed - it's getting to where the Knight's identity should either be revealed outright, or hinted so heavily it's impossible to deny anymore

Susie: SOUL is a friend - I am anti-"Susie doesn't know the REAL Kris" and rather the issue is going to be her getting used to the idea that there's another part of them, that is also a friend

ROARING Starts - even if as a cliffhanger

Ralsei Inferno Theory - always bet on it

Castle Town Sleepover - I have a suspicion Chapter 5 will take place over 2 days, making it the perfect opportunity for Susie and Kris to finally sleep in their rooms

Kris/Noelle Ferris Wheel Ride - whether normal or weird. Either way, it's gonna get weird

Weird Route Doesn't End - No softlocks, no game crashes, no Fuck You from Toby. The bad shit happens, see you in chapter 6. No getting out of this early

Loser Dess Confirmed - Dess wasn't as cool or as popular as we've been led to believe

ICE PALACE Dark World - aka the Holiday House. No reason multiple fountains can't be opened this chapter. This could serve as its own sequence or as a cliffhanger

Carol gets Snowgrave'd - One of two possible Snowgrave targets

Noelle Crashout - And it's going to be justified, you can bet on that

Noelle Opens a Dark Fountain - According to Queen's power point, her three candidates for Lightners besides the Knight opening fountains are Kris -> Susie -> Noelle. Kris has opened one, Susie's opened one, it's Noelle's turn and she has until the end of chapter 5 to do it

Knight gets Snowgrave'd - The other Snowgrave candidate. Look, the first person Snowgrave'd was literally a Knight in glow-in-the-dark armor, Dess has glow-in-the-dark stars in her room, Kris is definitely being co-erced by the Knight. This is like Snowgrave target #1 with a bullet in my book. And it's going to be heartbreaking. No one is happy with this

Weird Route Cannot Be Aborted - Because SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL? More practically, what would it even look like if it was abandoned? Noelle goes back to normal after [REDACTED]? If anything, this marks the first chapter onwards where the plot is following Noelle's lead, similar to how Normal Route is Kris following Susie's. To quote Queen about Noelle, "She Has Already Awakened Too Much." Time to see what that means

Carol/SOUL Badtouch - I won't beat around the bush here. Just as Kris ripping out the SOUL is an allegory for self harm, any instance of someone ELSE doing it to them is an allegory for sexual assault. And you know someone has to have shown them how to do it at some point, or else forcibly put the SOUL in them after whatever was done to it pre-chapter 1. For this, I'll count it whether it's merely implied in dialogue, or shown in flashback/present time

Noelle/Susie Ferris Wheel Ride - Of course we need the suselle version. Bonus points if this also is weird and awkward, if not for the same reasons as the kriselle one

Asriel Secret Boss - This one I haven't seen predicted much, just considering. The last shadow crystal boss was a Dustner, why not a Lightner who almost certainly has an important relationship to the Knight/who the Knight was

Kris's SOUL Confirmed - By which I mean, the game quits beating around the bush and confirms this red heart is, and always has been, Kris's human SOUL. Yes, this has technically already been confirmed in chapter 4, but not enough people remember or rationalize away what "Kris's SOUL" even means, so let's make it unavoidable now

Vessel Noelle Debunked - aka the only weird route prediction the fandom has managed to make. Let's kill it dead. See above about when you were the one in control

Rudy Dies - This probably could even become a motivation for Noelle to create her dark fountain

Apple Girlington Secret Boss - My personal favorite final shadow crystal boss candidate, so much I'm making it double or nothing and predicting she's the extra boss rather than just a cameo or miniboss appearance. It would be so wonderful!

Plural Kris Confirmed - Related, but not necessarily the same as, confirming the heart is Kris's SOUL (like I said, that's already technically been confirmed). I mean there is more lent toward Kris themself being two people in one. We see hints of it in the egg rooms: Entering MANCOUNTRY as Light World Kris, emerging from behind the tree after getting the egg as Dark World Kris. The entire art therapy session is depicting a dissociated state where Kris's hands seemingly move on their own to draw something the rest of them can't recall, which includes their hand picking up the 4th egg. There's other things too, like the single tall sink that was cut in half to form a smaller sink and its "clone", the flower cut in half in chapter 3 (A FLOWER... HALF OF THE PETALS ARE MISSING. HALF OF THE STEM IS MISSING. HALF OF THE MIDDLE IS MISSING. YET, IT STANDS.) The fact the chapter 1 narration says there's "not much to say" about the Dreemurr residence cactus, but in chapter 4, the narration which is formatted differently, in parentheses this time, reads: * (It's a cactus. It loves you, but mainly shows a sharp side.) This one is probably open to so much interpretation, and 95% of the fandom wouldn't know a plural character if it tossed them in a birdcage, but I have confidence the same writer who made three-people-in-one Clover and the "I'm not feeling very Pluey today" Fake Mike Trio (3 people who timeshare the identity of "Mike") will provide for those who have eyes to see

Kris trolls Berdly at Festival - Probably the prediction with the lowest stake. I see too many people either say Kris despises them, or Kris really likes them (both think they are spiting the player about it) I wanna see Kris be a vindictive little bitch about Berdly "replacing" them in Noelle's life, handling it exactly how you'd think a 15 year old would: badly

Noelle Enters Dark World - This one better happen or I will cry. On either route, please

[gloogy]

loser dess is true because no one whos actually cool would ever hang out with asriel

[alicelufenia]

[Image 1: * Spamton turns to the audience and laughs. * Spamton appeals to the audience with a festive jig! * Spamton begs to the audience. Spamton prays to the audience. * There is no audience.]

[Image 2: Tenna: * ... WHERE... WHERE'S THE AUDIENCE? WHERE'D THEY GO...? WHERE ARE THEY!?]

[Image 3: * (You, Dess, your brother, and Noelle performing on stage.)]

Chat I'm starting to think the punchline is going to be there was no audience

[alicelufenia]

By far the funniest follow up to the "unique leaves" line is if Kris wasn't being coy, they really were just "different uniquely shaped leaves" that Dess collected during her outdoor explorations

She's still totally a stoner loser, just not one who was shit at hiding her stash

[gloogy]

i think the point of dess is to have a character who, just like our main characters, feel trapped by the town she lives in, her family and society at large. but she isnt part of the fun gang. for whatever reason, she never had the hope, in herself or each other or the world that the fun gang has. she doesnt just give up on the idea of escaping the prophecy, her hometown, she begins to actively enforce it as the ur-antagonistic figure. sure, maybe she cant be saved. maybe she doesnt have what it takes to change the prophecy. but hey, if someone else does, just maybe theyll change things enough so the roaring will really destroy everything.

[gloogy]

reasons to believe in my loser dess reading (only partially serious this is just off the top of my head)

-i made it up

-noelle doesnt connect the 'metal/rock' CD to dess in any way. like zero indication or hesitation that its at all something that reminds her of dess. also dess is connected to acoustic guitars, not electric guitars, thats susie's instrument and electric guitars are much more associated with metal and rock. reading too much into it? maybe

-dess very clearly spent a lot of time playing video games and movies. yes this is a genuine point. her monitor is visibly an older, boxier model and the games and movies are all in cases, like CD-DVD games, movies, etc. this to me seems like indication that she was definitely on the web before it was ubiquitous with everyday life.

-AGAIN, DO YOU SEE THE MASSIVE PILE OF GAMES AND MOVIES SHE HAS??? SHE WAS SPENDING A LOT OF TIME ON THE COMPUTER AND NOT IRL

-punk rock CD's in her room and all the converse-style shoes in her closet. pretty clearly meant to evoke a more rebellious image but not exactly goth or emo? hell, a lot of her rebellious side seems pretty contained to her room with the way literally no one talks about it.

-the burnt lighters, army rations, multitool knives, walkie talkies, binoculars, the weed, the violent comic books, the paintball gear? yes, more proof of rebellion with undertones of, GASP, a violent, maybe even dangerous side?!?

-Rollerblades and Wiffleball bat very clearly used to chase after and hit Kris. do you seriously think stuff like this was an isolated incident? being willing to hit a kid hard enough they remember years later and instinctively their head hurts?

-shes never mentioned by anyone ever and like in my other post, when she is mentioned, she is only called 'cool' in a very mocking manner.

-Dess and music and sports. oooh boy. okay lets consider all the different kinds of instruments and sports she clearly was pushed to try and do or attempted but practically ALL of these objects, the instruments and gear? theyre broken and dented. compare that to the guitar and ice skates and paintball gear, which are all notably not mentioned to be dented or broken in any way. idk maybe we're meant to go 'oh damn this is a girl who tried a lot of different things but had trouble finding something she was good at! i wonder if that has any parallels to her social life, where it seems like her only friends were her little sister, the boy next door and his younger sibling!

overall dess seems to be someone with eccentric, some potentially violent interests not really fit for someone in this town. she seems to be a big movie and video game fan, probably a regular or maybe even an avid user of the internet due to having a computer in her room with the era the monitor seems to be from and made posters for concerts that never happened. probably for her.. 'band', named after a movie franchise, that really only existed to herself and maybe her very few friends. she seems to have been someone who LIVED in fantasies or LITERAL escapes from hometown, if we can assume her survivalist supplies to imply she spent time either in the forest or at the shelter. its no wonder shes so drawn to and practically only exists IN the dark worlds now. she also had a hard time finding what she was good at and who to fit in with outside of her own family and the dreemurrs, both of whom are deeply rooted in hometown itself. she was willing to harm a kid bad enough they remember it viscerally years later but was also remembered by that same kid as someone they looked up to. she seems very much to be a lost, rowdy, odd girl, trapped in a place she doesnt fit into or really wants to be.

am i right? uh. no. probably not. but chapter 5 will probably give us a lot more info on dess and then we can update this entire idea and see where we went wrong! isnt that cool!

[gloogy]

i do genuinely think people are missing the point of Dess having an old computer with a massive stack of video games and movies next to it. in a game about young adults and children visiting a parallel reality to escape from, deal with and process the stifling world they live in.

[gloogy]

DESS WAS A LOSER AND SPENT A GOOD CHUNK OF TIME ON THE COMPUTER THATS WHY SHE HAS ALL THOSE MUSIC AND GAMES NEARS HER COMPUTER AND ITS AN OLD MODEL THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR HER CHARACTER UNLIKE THE OTHER STUFF PEOPLE MAKE UP