I've been watching a lot of deltarune theories on youtube since that helps me with writing my own theories, and the dissonance of it is insane to me.
Like picture this: You are me, you are looking forward to seeing Papyrus in the new DR chapters, they release, the one thing that hints at Papyrus' existence is now dead silent. "Sans' brother" cannot even be mentioned anymore. You would naturally be like "What the hell is going on with Papyrus, this is crazy has anyone talked about this? Is there any speculation?" and you go look at what people are saying and basically no one has mentioned Papyrus at all.
Instead, it feels like the entire dr theory and analysis community are all pointing at some fucking creepy smiley face and going "Oh my god guys, it's the final boss! Friend has solved deltarune! Friend is the Key! Friend will help us unlock everything! All mysteries lead back to Friend! FRIEND IS GASTER!!!!"
And you look inside to see why people think Friend is so important and they're like "They've appeared during two secret boss sequences, and one easter egg fight dedicated to and filled with references to niche fan theories, they're yellow and pink which we are now sure is super important! They're a cat (how are you so sure, they also appear in a form similar to endogeny) and the tail of hell is made of balls which is an obvious reference to the (directly stated to not be canon or critically important) spamton sweepstakes blog posts from Noelle about cat petterz!"
Like yeah maybe Friend is important but like. I feel like the one major character from Undertale who still hasn't even spoken in DR, who was foreshadowed to appear and hasn't, who is mentioned and implied less and less with every subsequent chapter, ALSO HAS TO BE PRETTY IMPORTANT? Like what is the build up for???? Watching DR theories and analysis where all this emphasis is given to this fucking nothing creature built on coincidence and speculation while Papyrus is often not even mentioned is making me insane. I feel gaslit.
If Friend really does turn out to be nothing I won't mention it online but know the levels of I told you so contained in my body would be lethal to anyone else.