Dess antlers, and driving in my car - The post-Ch3&4 era of DR is uniquely defined by pressure to form, and to reflect, fandom consensus. Because of that, the Ch5 era could be defined by disappointment about 'retcons' and it being 'pointless to theorize'
You may have seen theories, character analyses, and even just random discussion about the game's story which include some variation of the phrase "I am assuming DessKnight to be true."
And you may have seen even more instances where someone outright refers to the Knight as just 'Dess', or vice versa, referring to Dess as just 'the Knight', where that qualifying statement hasn't been given. As a theory, as an answer to a question, as a comment, as a joke - it runs across all contexts.
Like this fucker who posted this comment, who does she think she is...
(Yes, I'm talking about something I've done in the past as a former DessKnight theorizer, which gives me first-hand experience to both perspectives)
The association of all kinds of Dess depictions to the Roaring Knight - pre-disappearance, AU Dess, post-return Dess, doesn't matter - is so pervasive that even fanarts which do NOT try to make relevant commentary on the idea of Dess being the Roaring Knight, which don't include the Roaring Knight at all, often still put these giant bent antlers on Dess's head:
When the only information we have for how her antlers would have actually appeared comes from this silhouette:
Now, why would that be the case? Even if DessKnight were to turn out to be true, we don't have any indication that her antlers would have become 'Roaring Knight antlers' at some point before the rest of her body followed.
And no other Holiday gets this treatment with their antlers. They are not assumed to have some stage where they become larger and bent, where they become 'Roaring Knight antlers'. The below image is one of the exceedingly few I have ever seen of the other Holidays getting the giant bent antlers, and it was drawn by the artist to explicitly point out this gap.
This is not a callout post about artists who give regular deer-monster Dess RK antlers or any other Roaring Knight elements - I have friends who have drawn such art, I have favorited a TON of such art and will likely continue to do so, and I am a believer in people being free to hold any headcanons or theories they want and to reflect those in any art they make.
Rather, this is a plea to keep in mind that...
Even things that were NEVER intended by their makers to be propaganda!
Because there's a continuous feedback loop here - the more that people experience fanworks and conversations where DessKnight is assumed to be true, the more likely they are to assume that the case for DessKnight being canon has already been made and that there is no room for debate, and the more that DessKnight gets reflected in works and conversations.
This is not something artists are intentionally trying to feed into! It is a sociological phenomenon, it's a human response to repeated exposure to the same stimuli in environments where that stimuli is rewarded and other kinds are downvoted, or aren't even produced because other people begin to self-censor their own ideas out of fear of negative responses.
And EVERYONE in this community - and I do mean EVERYONE - has been subjected to repeated, prolonged depictions of DessKnight assumed to be true. Because it is a commonly occurring detail of one of the most famous and most derived works, maybe even THE single most famous work ever produced by this community:
Admit it, you heard the lyrics in your head
This has real effects on how we process information. Even before I switched sides, I was noticing issues with the way many of my fellow DessKnighters would argue in favor of the theory - they would be caught off-guard by the most inoffensive questions, requests for evidence, appeals to consider other possibilities, and they would seem to get frustrated that they felt so strongly that DessKnight was canon, but because that feeling came from DessKnight being a cultural anchor of the fandom instead of from doing their own academic rigor, they could not articulate to the other person why that would be the case, other than that 'it simply is'. They didn't actually know the information and arguments as thoroughly as they assumed they did.
And then they would insist that the other person was just being a contrarian troll.
By now, I'm used to being called a contrarian troll about my beliefs about Deltarune's romance storylines. It doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, and there are more people backing me up...
But I'm only starting to get used to being called a contrarian troll when I talk about my newfound skepticism that Dess could be the Knight, where I find much less purchase in the community, because the pressure to conform to DessKnight is many times larger than shipping wars. Some people will act surprised to hear this, but DessKnight is the single strongest example of 'fandom consensus' this game has ever had.
That is, it is an idea which is not explicitly stated in the game but is still assumed to be so valid, so sound, that it is not only a basis from which to extrapolate other theories from, but that all other possibilities must be capable of fitting inside it without contradiction.
It sounds like a safe bet, but realistically, it's an all-in gamble that doesn't really have any benefit. There is no intellectual value, no moral value, no anything, from obtusely being 'so-and-so theory's strongest soldier' - especially not if you want to present yourself as being capable of deriving literary value from the work. DessKnight has no shortage of 'strongest soldiers'. And I might joke about being 'Kriselle's strongest soldier', and people might say that about me, but I try to be careful in qualifying that the things I say might not pan out, and that I am open to other possibilities, because my chief concern is to see a more mature, more scholarly level of critical analysis of this game.
This DessKnight all-in is often combined with another fandom consensus that 'Susie is the main character'. And because of that, there is now a very strong feeling in the fandom that the main arc of the game is to be about 'Susie vs Dess, who was taken by a big evil cat into the shelter and turned into the Knight'.
People see Susie and Dess as foils to each other, where Susie is being compared against Dess by other characters and that there are attempts to mold Susie to be 'more Dess-like', and both of these happen even without intentionality or awareness. And I believe that to be the case, I believe that to probably be true - but the more importance you place on that as a supposed principal, guiding theme of the whole game rather than just one of many pieces of parallel characterization, the more likely you are to escalate into that 'the game is Susie vs Dess' narrative. You are more likely to insist that Susie is 'the main character' and Dess is the Roaring Knight. These feel like they naturally prop each other up, they seem to be symbiotic.
(Annoyingly, it rarely comes up that Susie is also being compared and molded around Asriel at the exact same time - put in Asriel's clothes, offered Asriel's bed, taken to the diner in Asriel and Kris's Saturday tradition - because that is less exciting than 'Susie vs Dess')
But if one piece of this narrative fails to materialize, then the other is also likely to fail.
And then - frustrated at having believed these things so strongly for a year or longer, more strongly than anything that has ever been theorized for the game before now; frustrated at having been reassured by your peers over and over that you all know the truth that the uncouth rabble deny out of their jealousy, and possibly frustrated at remembering you said things like "the game wouldn't make any sense if DessKnight isn't true" - you might feel inclined to then say:
"There's no point to theorycrafting because Toby will just subvert expectations again."
You may not experience introspection that some ideas could have been assumed too quickly and too rigidly. You may not experience introspection that evidence which seemed to be pointing to one possible outcome could actually have pointed to another outcome just as strongly, or even moreso.
If somehow, someway, the Knight turned out to be Noelle... then everyone who said "the Knight makes Noelle's scream when hit for over 100 damage, which confirms that Dess is the Knight because they are sisters" (which the madimoyzel writing this post has ALSO done before) would feel quite silly... and possibly no wiser for the wear, if the understanding they come away with is "Toby changed DessKnight because too many people guessed it. We had it right and he changed it, because he doesn't respect his audience"
I am not saying "you shouldn't believe in x" or "you shouldn't draw x"
I don't mean to say that my ideas are right and yours are wrong. I don't think that I have any special insight into the annoying dog.
But I want to appeal to people to try and step outside of their current perspectives and consider whether it is healthy and appropriate for the fandom to coalesce around ideas with so little variation, I want to appeal to you to consider how much your beliefs about the game may have been shaped by content that is not official.
I would always like for people to re-examine whether something they believe is actually evidenced, but when people feel so strongly that it is evidenced and they don't need to do any more research, then my appeal is moreso for people to try and maintain a degree of mental and emotional separation between "what the official game content is, right now" and "where I hope and dream that the game is going." DessKnight is NOT confirmed, it's just your expectation that it will be in the future.
I'm more concerned about how many people insist that 'the game would suck' or 'not make any sense' if their beliefs weren't true than I am about converting them to my own beliefs. I'm possibly wrong about many things, because there are a great deal number of things to possibly be wrong about. I wish I could psychically impart that idea on the community.
Posted May 8, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC