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<div class="bop top date"><h3><time datetime="2025-10-18T12:31H">10-18</time></h3>
<div class="bop-text">I'm getting more and more convinced Gaster started out as Kris' imaginary version of Dess that after a period of being the forgotten man became real (and maybe tweaked Deltarune into its current version).
The gumball door aligning is crazy. You find Gaster's door randomly with the right number. You find the Dess flashback using the right number. Dess disappeared. Gaster disappeared. Gaster fell into his creation. The Knight might be a shadow of Dess, and creates Dark Fountains. Gaster has holes in his hands. The Roaring Knight has hand holes. Noelle {{em|could}} have a hole in her hand... Does Dess have a hole in her hand? Or just a hand that went missing into the abyss before she fell all the way in?
Dess could have been wearing a green Christmas sweater for all we know! We don't know for sure Dess isn't green.

So what I think is going on is Kris created the forgotten man, who turned into Gaster, to try to solve the situation of Dess being gone, but Gaster went out of control trying to overwrite Deltarune with Undertale because he didn't know he was "fake", and this caused the monster/human war in Undertale, which looks more like the Roaring Knight and the Roaring in Deltarune. Then Gaster disappeared from Undertale because he was still similar to Dess and so they both disappeared. But he appeared in Deltarune as a narrator figure, and now Gaster saving Deltarune is in conflict with the real Dess coming back because Gaster can only exist when Dess doesn't exist but Dess can only come back when Gaster doesn't exist.
Finding the eggs and remembering Dess is still out there and Gaster is fake could stop Gaster existing and saving Deltarune, therefore it's an issue
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<div class="bop date"><h3><time datetime="2025-10-18T12:31H">10-18</time></h3>
<div class="bop-text">I had a theory that the pointed tail is actually a simple crack in the world, exposing the Dark World
that's how it extended "serpentine", and the children followed it
then Dess found it and somehow put her hand into it to investigate it. but she couldn't find her hand. subsequently she fell all the way in
but if Dess had punched the crack in the world deeper, she would have fallen into her own creation. so Kris made up Gaster to try to forget what happened to Dess, and have this dubious superhero figure that would supposedly save Deltarune. but then Gaster existing caused Undertale to exist, and Undertale started trying to destroy the Deltarune world by becoming real over the top of it.
Gaster disappears from Undertale either because Dess disappeared, or because he went to Deltarune and became the "narrator". so the conflict of Deltarune is that the real Dess could come back but Gaster would rather replace her because that's the way Kris made him. (I mean in the overall metanarrative as the narrator guy or stuck deep in the Dark World or something, but the idea of him manifesting in Hometown is definitely very funny.)
In light of this theory, {{caps|Friend}} being a hand makes plenty of sense. we don't know exactly what significance Kris' hand would have — did they put only their hand in, and chicken out on trying to rescue Dess? who knows. but it does vaguely make sense that to reflect the trauma of Dess falling into the darkness some kind of cursed shadow of a hand would show up, haunting Kris' imagination whenever they look at shadows. no surprises there, the only questions are why it's a cat, why it's a hand, and whose hand it is.
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<div class="bop bottom date"><h3><time datetime="2025-10-23T10:38:14H">10-23</time></h3>
<div class="bop-text">I don't remember when I first thought of this theory, but at some point, I came up with the theory that "<b>Gaster is Dess</b>" because of the Memoryhead. That sounds a bit like spaghetti, I know. But I will try to get through this idea as fast as I can. (Some of it technically requires a bit more evidence and connecting-of-facts, but I know I'd have to go make my own hour-long video to have space for that. Unfortunately for various reasons of equipment and energy I can't make videos any more.) <b>There's a snappy summary at the end.</b>

<b>A)</b> The Memoryhead looks a bit like a melty skeleton with six heads. It hands Frisk a "Bad Memory". Being an amalgamate, it is something else revived, but it's clearly not Undertale monsters, so what is it? Bad memories? Does the Bad Memory actually have a physical form, like maybe one of the spooky faces it attacks with? One of the Gaster followers is holding a face instead of a donut. Is that a Bad Memory?

<b>B)</b> Ralsei is determined to make a better ending for Deltarune which is "more favorable", while Narrator-Gaster wants to create "a better future". If there was somebody who lived through the original ending of Deltarune, that would presumably be a bad memory.

<b>C)</b> Kris already has bad memories from an earlier time {{em|in their life}}, as evidenced by the Forgotten Man and only being able to draw him as a bunch of scribbles behind a tree.

<b>D)</b> Kris' bad memories, at least the most important ones, are evidently about Dess. There are so many hints in Deltarune that everybody is trying to forget Dess such as the gumball machine and Carol not really talking about her despite being willing to spoil her with a bunch of discarded gifts, and so on. Kris and Noelle both have bad memories relating to Dess.

<b>E)</b> Dark Worlds are made from multiple people's thoughts or memories at once. Kris liked cards, Noelle feared plugs, Susie was just happy to see food. This is very very relevant when discussing the Roaring Knight and the Forgotten Man.

<b>F)</b> Simple abstract ideas or memories can become Dark Worlds: {{caps|Friend}} is suggested in the Chapter 3 cutscene to have been born from a shadow over Susie's room. That's nowhere near as tangible as a playing card. {{caps|Friend}} may as well be an abstract idea. Also, there are a bunch of hints of "bad memories" in Tenna's Dark World. Snow falling. Tenna showing a picture that includes Dess. The Sword Route minigame that is hidden. There are bad memories hidden deep inside the TV World, likely in all Dark Worlds.

<b>G)</b> The Roaring is the division between mind or bad memories and reality breaking down. The Dark World is a plane of imagination. The Roaring is the connection between the Dark Worlds and the Light World totally breaking down and darkness covering the world. The Titans bring the Roaring once they fully get out. The Titans will not appear by creating too many Dark Fountains, only by creating a fountain inside a Dark World. So what is a Titan? A Titan is something the Dark Worlds are effectively forming a barrier against and hiding. But look at {{caps|Friend}}, and the Roaring Knight. All three are drawn in stark black darkness. That doesn't mean all three are Titans or all three are Knights. That means stark-black darkness symbolizes bad things that are hidden. The Roaring Knight looks like that because it's a hidden thing bursting out from beneath the Dark Worlds.

<b>H)</b> Noelle's glitched egg (from the blog) was a trauma. Why would Tenna be trying to hide that he has a Pipis? What other things leave home due to happiness? Why is Kris finding eggs when we can see from these cases that eggs are clearly a negative thing? Because the Forgotten Man and the eggs are the trail back to something painful that currently refuses to leave home.

<b>I)</b> Undertale keeps trying to remind us of the idea of bad memories. Memoryhead. Sans having a few bad memories about not being able to go back. Alphys literally keeping something scary deep in the basement, which has six heads just like {{caps|Friend}}... or just like the Memoryhead. The deeply hidden Gaster events that are bad memories of Gaster supposedly vanishing or dying in a terrible accident. Asriel who has bad memories of Chara and dying and being left alone. Flowey making you {{em|remember}} bad timelines if you play the murder route. One of the strangest instances is the Riverperson acting as if not only do you not know who they are but the world specifically "forgot" their gender. Why explicitly point out that you don't know it, when there are already characters like Kris and Frisk that don't dwell on that?

<b>J)</b> Why does the Core have a Soul symbol on it? Why does it have "darkness totems" around it? Why does it weirdly look like the Core {{em|created}} Undertale with soul-dreams and darkness rather than just being a power plant?

<b>K)</b> Why is the Asriel incident in Undertale so similar in concept to the Roaring Knight? Why are they both a terrible monster that breaches through to the surface and scares the surface people enough for everyone to want the barrier between the two worlds to stay firmly in place? Why are they both characters that were clearly connected within Deltarune? Could it be that Undertale is "not supposed to be real" compared to Kris and Noelle? That Undertale Asriel isn't real and Gaster isn't real and the Roaring Knight isn't real equally, while all three of these are connected to The Roaring?

<b>L)</b> The leap: {{em|Gaster always was a bad memory}}. Even before the Memoryhead existed. Everything about bad memories in Undertale is actually about Dess. That means that Kris and Noelle had bad memories (in Deltarune), then the Forgotten Man came to exist, then he somehow turned into Gaster or duplicated into Gaster and all of Undertale came to exist to hide the bad memories. This is the story being told in [https://undertale.fandom.com/wiki/W._D._Gaster#Main_Story entry #17]. Gaster is almost like some sort of imagined superhero created by Kris, or something like that. Overwhelmed, Kris steps over out of reality into unreality, directly into a reality where Gaster exists and is capable of crazy impossible technological feats. This is how Gaster "discovers" deep, advanced darkness. He didn't discover it, he came from it after Kris discovered it. He came from either the Titans and Roaring Knight layer or somewhere past it all the way to another side. And the other side became Undertale. Gaster is a weird distorted mirror of Dess, conceptually taking her place but different in all the details. Gaster was created because Dess disappeared, to fix everything as everything was getting worse. "[https://genius.com/Toby-fox-dont-forget-lyrics Don't forget, I'm with you in the dark]". So Gaster is formed from this weird sort of fantasy that not only is Dess waiting down in the deepest layer of stark-black darkness but she is actually super powerful and could fix everything if she wanted to. Why replace Dess with a skeleton man? I don't know. Maybe just to create something which looked nothing like her and would make it easier to imagine a better future.
But in trying to create a better future, Kris might have spawned a conflict between two parallel realities each trying to overwrite each other as Gaster tries to become real in exclusion to Dess but the real Dess tries to become real again in exclusion to Gaster, and the whole worlds of Deltarune and Undertale are fighting each other within Undertale, but within Deltarune it's just Gaster versus Dess, and Kris wanting to forget Dess but Noelle wanting to remember her and this turning the two weirdly into rivals instead of friends. The Weird Route is the player trying to "fix" things by making Kris make Noelle forget Dess but let Gaster be and kill the Roaring Knight (as well as Dess if those are two different entities) so no version of Dess will win and everything can just continue without her. Noelle is an "angel" in that she would stop "666" Gaster, despite Gaster not asking anyone to hurt her, just trying to make her forget Dess.

<b>M)</b> Knowing the Roaring is just one big crack in the Deltarune cosmos, where the Titans and {{caps|Friend}} are things at the bottom that must not break out, what if we're overcomplicating what the pointed tail is? What if the pointed tail is just a crack in the world? This would be the one past event that didn't connect back to Dess. The world just cracked one day, because not everything revolves around Kris and Noelle. The crack extended "serpentine", and nobody could stop it from growing. Then the children followed the "pointed tail" to find a weird hole in the world. Then Kris or Dess put their hand in and saw it disappear. Then Dess somehow fell into The Roaring and disappeared entirely. This kicked off the great chain of events around trauma and bad memories across Deltarune. Then the Dark Worlds became distorted by those bad memories, and the Roaring Knight formed from them to torment Kris and Noelle. The Roaring Knight isn't literally Dess, just bad memories ignored for too long. So long Kris and Noelle have turned Dess into a creepypasta in their minds that "surely" is angry enough to come kill them. The ThornRing and the Knight's hand holes are approximately the same thing, at different degrees. The Roaring Knight is the shared pain between Noelle, Kris, and Dess that got stronger and harder to avoid as more pain was put into it. Carol may have decided the crack had to be filled in somehow and the whole incident covered up. That part is an inference, but come on, she has a lot of power and she is seemingly making Asgore investigate the incident secretly. What I'm more confident in is that The Roaring and Dess disappearing are separate events that intertwined because the game (we're going Doylian now) wants us to see the two things as similar. The Roaring is just something that exists, but when Kris and Noelle tried to forget about Dess it turned into a metaphor for improperly trying to forget things you shouldn't be trying to forget that will come back to bite you if you do try to forget. "[https://genius.com/Toby-fox-dont-forget-lyrics Don't forget, I'm with you in the dark]."

<b>N)</b> If Dess did anything to accidentally punch the crack deeper, then she fell into her own creation.<br />Kicking off a cycle of various other people falling into their own creations. Kris fell into their own creation and got stuck creating and serving Gaster. Noelle messed with [https://deltarune.com/catpetterz/ Cat Petterz 2] [https://deltarune.com/egg/ until the egg appeared] and Spamton appeared and the Weird Route eventually became possible and she fell into her own creation. There might be more examples. Gerson is "good" because he's the closest thing to a real tangible Gaster, he fell into his creation writing books and died and fell in a second time but he only wants to help Kris and Susie complete the story. Maybe Gaster is a reflection of what every adult in Kris' life did for all we know, always trying to make them bury the pain and rewrite the narrative of their past instead of actually fix the problem.

<b>O)</b> I have absolutely no idea why Gaster is affiliated with Sans, or why Deltarune Sans is tirelessly guarding his house as if there's [https://www.reddit.com/r/Deltarune/comments/1nsc8pe/comment/nk1jgi7/ a Gaster door still in there] we aren't allowed to see. Did Dess manifest at Sans' house and decide nobody could know she wasn't really gone, while Sans lies that the person in his house is just his "brother"?? I have no idea what's going on in Sans' house. Sans' house isn't part of this theory. I mean, he's never been the main character anyway.

<b>So... here's the shorter version.</b>
A) The Roaring was a natural disaster before it was a psychology metaphor. The pointed tail was the first hint of The Roaring, and Dess fell into it.
B) Kris and possibly Noelle made up Gaster to try to forget Dess and turn away from an otherwise nasty future.
C) As narrator, Gaster wants Kris to complete the story without figuring out he was made to cover up Dess, because if found out he will disappear for real and can't create a better future.
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<div class="bop date"><h3><time datetime="2026-01-30T21:19:05H">1-30</time></h3>
<div class="bop-text">Ah, here's an interesting little point of evidence I forgot to mention.
{{b|D1)}}  Narrator-Gaster says "I have been looking for you, have you been looking for me" in the {{caps|Survey_Program}} announcement. Meanwhile Dess is described with the phrases "lost girl" and "find her"
It's weird Gaster would so deliberately point to something so associated with Dess if they aren't connected.
This is one of the many moments that makes me think Gaster is playing some weird game of trying to overwrite Dess and get "found" first
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<div class="bop date"><h3><time datetime="2026-01-30T03:16:26Z">1-30</time></h3>
<div class="bop-text">The summary: Undertale started out as Kris' attempt to imagine a world and totally escape reality before it turned into its own reality equal with Deltarune, and Gaster is like this imagined superhero god meant to stand in for Dess inside the imaginary perfect world. Because Kris thought Dess was really amazing and needed something to fill the void of her being gone they gave Gaster ridiculous powers and he then crossed over to Deltarune and brought the prophecy (and possibly the Red Soul, if we were to learn it's an artificial thing that no normal monster or human has) into Deltarune. Chara represents the timeline where Kris totally gave up. (Hence the scene where Asriel whines about wanting to stay a kid and keep things the same — that started with Kris/Chara.) Deltarune represents the timeline where Kris had to begrudgingly return to reality and keep living.
{{i|(summary part over.)}}

The story of Deltarune is the story of Kris trying to take the easy way out of life and the world's magical "collective unconscious" (Dark Worlds, deepest layer, Undertale) responding with Gaster horrifyingly turning their life and their world into a predetermined role-playing game. The major conflict which will determine the ending (or the variation of the "one ending" we get, that is) is whether we make Kris stop running away from the things they were supposed to do (which might include confessing they created Gaster and repairing their friendship with Noelle), or we merely go through the motions and follow the prophecy, usually always leading to the same tragic ending of the world tearing apart in the Roaring. But I think for some reason we can stop the Roaring if we find and rescue Dess. I think there's some sort of conflict between Gaster and Dess where you can rescue one of them but the catch is you have to kill or banish the other. If you complete the Weird Route and slay Dess, Gaster will appear for a moment and put the world back together and that's one version of the true ending. But if you go out of your way to rescue Dess the same true ending will happen except Gaster is gone and everyone is reunited. Any route that doesn't pick one results in the Roaring and no real ending.

Gaster is dark and ominous because Dess is dark and ominous, if more in a 'metalhead' way. He's a skeleton because subconsciously Kris couldn't stop thinking she was dead and as a kid may have been fuzzy on whether monsters leave behind skeletons (this is the purpose of the kid near the alley wondering about skeletons). His door is in between two brothers because Dess was somebody's sibling. Green is a possible color for Dess along with red (or gold or silver or white or any 'wrapping paper' color; this point is weaker than the others). Gaster disappeared from Undertale's world in an accident because Dess disappeared from Deltarune's world in an accident (which would imply Dess went somewhere specific, but I think that's possible). Gaster became the narrator because Dess (possibly) narrated the line about the vessel being discarded. The only thing that notably doesn't match between the two is that narrator-Gaster seems to have godlike powers, at least on the level of being able to copy and delete save files. Here, I'd go out on a limb and say Deltarune's story actually foreshadows Dess doing something that matches this too. I think part of why Dess disappeared — speaking thematically, not literally — is that she was trying to boldly take control of the universe and stop the Roaring. Dess seems tough, she seems like she could be the hero if all she has to do is pull off a feat somebody else couldn't do. So I think the Shadow Crystals and Bitter Tears are leading up to that reveal. That although Dess did fall out of Deltarune's world accidentally, she deliberately decided she had to take advantage of her position to stop the Roaring, but she had to do it alone with nobody to help her. "Tears" and "darkness is water" are starting to make more sense, aren't they? Dess thinks that after suffering enough she can save everyone and do the impossible, much like her imagined counterpart W.D. Gaster. Kris hoped basically for her to succeed at this, and in a way {{em|correctly predicted}} her trying to pull through on her own. But for some reason her plan might not actually be working, and so it might turn out to be more effective to save her from her place of suffering and somehow halt the Roaring together. I'm not totally sure why it works that way but my thoughts are this: A) Noelle being crucified on a hand = Dess stabbing herself with the pain represented by the Shadow Crystals unnecessarily B) as much as Dess may think she's as powerful as a darkness god that embodies the whole game universe and its mechanics, she just isn't, so she can't truly do what Gaster could do.

(I also had a theory Dess was actually a trans man, based on the eggs seeming to lead back to 'a forgotten person or incident' and every hint about Gaster or the forgotten man being just the words "man" "him" "another him" and the Knight hiding in closets more than once (who does that?). Like, why is the pronoun "him" so important as a hint Kris is supposed to go rescue Dess? But I'm not totally sure on that one because there are a couple things that contradict it, like the voice in the code. I did make an AU about it anyway because the notion of finding Dess below the Dark Worlds and he's just this shadowed ominous science guy that looks a lot like fandom depictions of Gaster was really funny and interesting to me. All of that Gaster-ForgottenMan-Knight stuff is definitely leading to somebody having a gender or orientation secret, though if it's not Dess I can't begin to guess who or what it really is. I'm looking forward to seeing how that AU is different from the real Deltarune Chapter 5.)

I will post the evidence for just the "Gaster is Dess" part <s>below</s> [above]. All of this had reasoning behind it but... I can't explain all of it here, so yeah, just the evidence for the 'strongest' part of why Gaster is based on Dess.
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<div class="bop bottom date"><h3><time datetime="2025-11-08T16:40:15H">11-18</time></h3>
<div class="bop-text">[...] Ralsei makes a very explicit connection between him and all Darkners — I think a lot of the weird stuff connected to Ralsei is actually just hints about Darkners. Do several characters have their own Ralseis? Of course, because the Dark Worlds are just made of multiple people's memories, and they all generate Darkners, and in one sense those are their "Ralseis". Is Ralsei about interpretation? Of course, because all Darkners are about people's interpretations of things. Susie couldn't interpret Gerson the right way so naturally, Darkners are made of interpretations.

That said there is definitely something going on between Ralsei, Toriel, and the Knight. People have noted that Ralsei looked shocked it wasn't possible to beat the Knight and maybe at the fact Kris was only trying so hard. But Seam and Narrator-Gaster totally know it's hard to defeat the Knight. If Ralsei's whole job is to know the Prophecy but Seam knows it better, then what's going on? The Knight is absolutely hiding things from people, and in my opinion Kris is letting them.
While Ralsei fights the Knight Toriel is dreaming. But in one of the versions of Chapter 2 Queen says Noelle shouldn't wake up and should be in a deeper dream. Chapter 2 is where a bunch of information about Dess starts dropping; both Noelle and Berdly mention "December", both of them more or less while talking about their pain.
So it's almost like knowing about Dess is very bad and if Toriel knew... whatever it is... it would be harmful, so even the Knight doesn't want her to wake up. This has made me think knowing about Dess is linked to Snowgrave, that that's at least like, the worst possible result. So what I think is that in Chapter 7 Kris is being pushed to erase Dess from existence or just kill her if she's still there, but Kris doesn't want to. You could force them to but most of the time they will try everything to avoid it. Some fraction of Darkners are a manifestation of that fear. Especially the pitch-black creepypasta ones (Friend, Titans, Knight, Shadow Mantle boss) and that mirroring deer, but maybe even Ralsei. Ralsei is just more positive about it, constantly telling people the worst outcomes won't happen.
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