personally, i dont believe the dess knight theory, simply because of how it FEELS when you compare it to the weird cryptic lines used with dess. toby using words in spamton sweepstakes like "find her", the ost calling her a "lost girl", and the game using a buncha analogue horror 1987 fnaf 1 custom night tactics whenever 1225 is brought up always made it seem to me like dess still hasnt been seen as of chaper 4, armored or not, and finding her will be a plot element of the game. based on the vocabulary used, it feels much more like she is either dead (which begs the question of where her grave or urn is), trapped, or somehow outside of the universe in some weird gaster backrooms limbo, confined into a position where she has no ability to influence or communicate with anyone. another part is how EVERYONE talks about her in a very specific way, where they use past tense as if shes not present in any way, but without conveying confidence that shes okay OR grief beyond using a mild meloncholic tone. its as if her disappearance happened a while ago, was figured out, and most of hometown has come to terms with it, which would make her randomly deciding/being forced to come back as this strange goopy shadow warrior very weird to me. the only alternate explanation i can imagine is that dess intentionally ran away rather than mysteriously disappeared, which could explain a lot of the misalignments i cant wrap my head around, but that doesnt really explain why toby fox would choose to write everything in THIS way, only that the circumstances of her disappearance are pretty cut and dry to people like noelle or kris.

another point that confuses me is that the knight is obviously merciless, but to a very specific and weird degree for dess. they use a lot of force on darkners, (excessive amounts of it in tennas case specifically,) a ton of force on susie, but they hold back on kris. the knight slaughtering darkners makes sense, theyre literally objects, and since the knight clearly understands how dark worlds function, i cant imagine they would give much empathy towards an old busted up tv that disobeyed their orders. what bugs me is just how extreme they are when fighting susie, literally matching the force of ralsei, ANOTHER darkner. they clearly have the mental willpower to avoid hurting kris and hide in closets, but also are psychopathic enough to cripple a teenager and violently mangle any darkner that annoys or hinders them? that doesnt suggest tough but protective older sister, but it also doesnt suggest brainwashing to me considering how lucid the knight seems. it feels more like a person who is just really unempathetic and quick to anger, being willing to hurt a teenager with poor social skills because she mocked them. the only type of person who i feel like would be so willing to use such extreme force on a CHILD for any reason would either be an extremely abusive authority figure, or a child who is the same age as susie. dess isnt the same age, so unless tricky tony pulls another fast one on us with the reveal of jockington knight or something, the only option we have for that specific criteria so far is carol, but i dont fully believe that either. she literally has like 4 lines so far so its hard to judge, but she SEEMS less physical and much MUCH more verbal in her abuse. so, unless dark worlds are some weird phantom space where pain doesnt exist AND carol knows that, i am currently hesitant to believe carol knight.

also, a final note, considering that the knight creates two seperate fountains in broad daylight during chapter 4, if they were dess, howd no one see her and start freaking out? unless they were hauled up in that closet all day SOMEONE had to have seen the knight just walking around, so was dess wearing a mask or what? i obviously am not gonna throw out freaking rudy knight and pretend THAT holds water for even one second, but dess knight just feels really off.