Deltarune Speculation on December. This started out as a joke post comparing Dess and Laura Palmer, but quickly spiraled into something else, which is... strangely fitting.
Having watched Twin Peaks after Deltarune chapters 3 & 4, it really does kind of change my entire view on Dess and Asriel's places in the story, and how our expectations of them have been sort of tee'd up in a way. And it also made me think about how much people can build a narrative in their own mind.
When it comes to Asriel, people always talk about their experiences with him, whether it's Alvin talking about how he would apologize for Kris' "sins" in their childhood, or Pizzapants talking about how good of friends they were.
And it's a really bittersweet experience because, for us, the last we saw of Asriel was him either sacrificing his existence for monsters in True Pacifist, or getting obliterated in the No Mercy Route. It also makes it seem more and more as if eventually, we'll get to see him and talk to him in Hometown.
The Asriel that we know is the boy who tried to help his sibling fulfill their wish, died for it, and became a Soulless Husk for it. But we still have hope for him being "Good" when he comes back, because that's the "Asriel" that you know, the one that's in your mind, the one that either dropped the facade and begged for mercy in his old voice, or the one that tended to the flowers grown above their siblings corpse.
But then, you get Dess. Or rather, we really do not get Dess.
The December Holiday that is present in your mind, at this moment, is one that has been influenced by one of 3 things:
The Surface Level / The Game - Noelle and Rudy's dialogue, certain items in her room, and overall just the way that the game treats her, like a hole in the lives of the Holiday's and in a way, the Dreemurrs that seems to just suck in everything around it.
Beneath the Surface / The ARG - The clues laying around the Deltarune website, the blogposts from Noelle, her being mentioned in the alarm clock dialogue, and everything around the sweepstakes. And lastly, the dialogue in the source code.
The Splash / Other People - Every piece of Dess fanart, Dess headcanon, Dess shipping, Dess fic writing, etc. etc... Every single attempt from people to try and "Rebuild" Dess from the few pieces we have of her, and filling in spots with their own interpretations. All of those have influenced you, in some way, shape, or form.
All of these things have made people draw several conclusions about Dess, whether it's from how much we have of her in the background, or how little we have of her from the game itself.
She occupies a space akin to that of being the Neighbor of Gaster & The Forgotten Man.
We, and this is a fact, do not Know December Holiday.
We have never seen her. We have never talked to her. We have never fought her. In Undertale and Deltarune, she does not exist in any interactable way.
With Asriel/Flowey, we fought him, knew him, and heard his story. But December is someone we know very little about... but because of the nature of UTDR, and people's desire to know more, we want to know more.
We want to know her, we want to see her, to speak to her... to Find Her.
And I truly do wonder whether or not that will lead to good things.
I truly wonder if December coming back into the story, from wherever she is right now, would really be good for her or for us.
The desire to know more, the desire to take it upon ourselves to "Save" people. In Undertale, this desire lead us to being able to "Save" a lot of characters, including Asriel. To bring him back from the brink of his "God of Hyperdeath" form.
But as has been made abundantly clear in Deltarune, this world does not operate under the same "Rules" as Undertale. Monsters can have "Determination", but is it really the same as ours?
And if we do somehow manage to "Save" Dess, then what would happen?
Undertale was a much more magical world than Deltarune is, so if Asriel did come back somehow(Which he wasn't able to for long), it would not be as ridiculous.
But the world Dess lived in is not the one that currently exists. People have grieved her, mourned her, and moved on. December has been left in the past by almost everyone, and those who try to find her, or find the truth just seem to get pulled deeper and deeper into a pit that they can't find the bottom of.
And we are victims of that too, we try to assign "Truth" to the questions we have about Dess, even though that's not within our abilities. We find pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and apply them to hers, and think that just because the pieces "Fit Together", that they're solved.
But the fact is that the more we keep trying to solve the mystery of December Holiday, the more we will find ourselves being pulled into a pit of falseties, misunderstanding, and disappointment when we find out more. And eventually, we'll find ourselves so immersed in the depths of these falseties, that we'll forget what was real and what wasn't.
(TO BE CLEAR, I am not knocking on or hating on headcanons or the idea of them, I just wanted to point out the parallels between how people in Twin Peaks always talk about Laura as if they knew her even though they didn't, and how it can be said that we're doing the same for Dess even though we don't know her, and it just kinda spiraled from there!)
