Send Me On My Way

* Kris has been pulling their soul out before we were even in the picture... and this is worrying

Kris already has the birdcage and wagon from before we showed up and flavour text tells us that it’s seen a lot of use, implying that the wear and tear is obvious and that its usage was frequent enough to show that. Another piece of evidence is the stain on Kris’s carpet beside it which Chapter 4 confirms is a bloodstain. Granted, it’s Susie that specifically points it out as such, we only know that it’s a stain of some kind. Normally I would chalk this up to just Susie making an assumption, but then they clean it together... cleaning bloodstains, especially really old bloodstains, out of carpet is no easy feat. The things that clean bloodstains are not necessarily the things that would best clean other types of stains, so I can only assume that this is blood.

But even beyond Kris already having the birdcage and there being a stain on the carpet, presumably from previous attempts to remove the soul, Toriel makes a rather concerning observation regarding Kris’s habits with taking a long time to wash their hands. She waves this off as ‘just something that Kris does, sometimes,’ but given what we’ve seen of Toriel from Chapter 4 and the concerning lack of foresight regarding the whereabouts of her own child (and getting fucking plastered with Sans while Kris is still gone at fucking 1AM – seriously, didn’t you at least bother to call their fucking cell phone or leave a message?), this makes things rather... concerning regarding this fact, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

And finally, we find out in Chapter 4 that Kris is in some sort of deal/bargain with some unknown entity that is speculated to either be Carol, the Knight, or potentially both, but as of now is unconfirmed and is entirely up for speculation based on what little evidence there is to draw any sort of conclusion. Either way, Kris has made a promise to someone and this seems to be related to the Knight and our possession of Kris in some way, given the context and especially with Carol singling out specifically the soul rather than Kris by saying ‘YOU are always welcome here anytime.’ She is aware of the soul, of us, and is invested in Kris because of it and given the nature of Dess’s disappearance and the undeniable fact that it’s tied to the bunker that Kris is terrified to be near, it’s undeniable that the Holiday family and possibly Asgore, given that he has a Black Shard which is only obtainable by defeating the Roaring Knight as far as we know, is involved somehow and we know that Kris is associated with the Knight in some way based on some flavour text and strange behaviours regarding Kris’s relationship with them (though, given that the ‘Hold Breath’ ACT prompt gives flavour text throughout the battle that is describing a panic attack, the Knight appears to be someone that Kris is both familiar with and scared of).

So, Kris has been pulling out their soul from before we were in the picture... and our connection to them seems to be something that they actively chose, whether it’s for their ends or because they were coerced into it isn’t certain, but either way... they were pulling out their own soul... and they put us in it.

* Kris’s depersonalization and why that matters

In Deltarune, there are major themes of depersonalization across the spectrum and across its many characters. Personal identity as a theme is very strong and is baked into every aspect of the game and narrative and especially in-character interactions and relationships. And in Kris, there’s so much going on with this specifically and I think this is a large part as to the reason as to why Kris has been pulling out their own soul before we were in the picture.

They were doing it as a form of self-harm.

Kris as a character is someone that has always struggled with their identity seemingly since childhood. They’re the only human in Hometown, all of the other residents being monsters. They were adopted by Toriel and Asgore when they were little (we don’t know how young, but we know that they were little enough to have been a young child, but we don’t know if they were adopted as a baby or as just a really little kid). They also grew up with Asriel as an older brother and that not only were Kris and Asriel very close growing up, but they were also close with the Holiday family, both families very much a second home to one another. Kris and Noelle were close childhood friends and the both of them often spent a considerable amount of time with December and Asriel before she disappeared. Since Kris was small, they had a penchant for mischief and cultivated a reputation for being ‘the weird kid’ or ‘the human’ which did much to isolate them and separate them from everyone else, even within their own family. They even wore a pair of red horns attached to a headband to fit in and feel more like a monster like their family. It’s clear that even as a child, Kris always felt like an ‘other,’ even with a family like theirs as loving and attentive as the Dreemurr family.

At least... before it fell apart.

We don’t yet know how long Toriel and Asgore were having marital issues and we especially don’t know if these marital issues were starting to show before Dess’s disappearance or as a result of it, but we know at the minimum that Dess disappeared when Noelle was a young child, even freezing up and losing a spelling bee to Berdly when December’s name was the word being spelled when she was young. Tenna’s flashback in Chapter 3 seems to imply that he had been trying to distract Kris from the fighting in the household for quite some time. Looking at the flashback given from Tenna as to how the family fell apart and how Tenna ended up alone in the Dreemurr household, the order of disappearance of each family member starts with December, Carol, Asgore, Noelle, and then Rudy, leaving Asriel, Kris, and Toriel left. This seems to imply that Dess’s disappearance had something to do with the family splitting apart or was at least the catalyst for it. And after Asriel leaves for college, Kris loses interest in watching TV or playing video games – one of the most common signs of depression. We also know that Kris and Noelle lose touch and don’t really talk or remain as close as they were when they were young, which is another common symptom of depression. And looking at Kris and Asriel’s shared bedroom, Asriel’s bed and side of the room is decorated in awards, personal items, and very clear signs of a person making that space their own.

All while Kris’s is... empty. This can imply one of two things – Kris, despite how close they were with Asriel, may see themself as living in their brother’s shadow or might resent him for leaving for college and leaving Kris behind in the Dreemurr household without him to confide in or talk to, having already isolated themself from everyone else at this point. Or, Kris has become so numb and so disinterested in things that once brought them enjoyment that they just don’t have any personal items or decorations or desire to display them because they just lack any feeling or justification for doing so, becoming disillusioned with their life and sense of self to the point of complete depersonalization.

And notably, Kris always has a knife on them that is not in their inventory that we cannot use or see at any point. And given how they react to when Susie grabs it in Chapter 4, it’s clearly a very personal item to them and not something that they entrust easily to someone. The fact that this knife is something that they always have on their person and has seemingly had for a very long time combined with all of this makes the implications of Kris having been ripping out their soul before this point... deeply troubling and I think is an analogy for self-harm.

* December Holiday might not be who we think she is... and Kris might be the only one who knows the truth

December Holiday haunts the narrative in Deltarune much in the same way that Chara Dreemurr haunts the narrative in Undertale... which means that her characterization could potentially be subjected to being delivered by unreliable narrators.

What I mean by this is that Dess is being treated in Deltarune the same way that Chara is treated in Undertale. They are both characters whose tragic disappearances set the story as we know it in motion, they are both characters whose losses divided the Dreemurr family and left it permanently broken and fractured, and they are both characters who are described as having rather abrasive or offputting tendencies and behaviours and have rather morbid proclivities. In Undertale, Chara was rather cavalier about death and danger and other such things and in life, tended to have a rather dominant personality in their relationship with Asriel and liked to frighten them and make them uncomfortable at times. In Deltarune, December is described to have been the one who was rather protective of Noelle to a rather elevated degree, even smacking Kris with a wiffle bat whenever they were using their typical brand of mischief to frighten Noelle. However, December also has a love for horror movies and watched them together with Noelle, seeming to have no issue scaring Noelle so long as she was there to comfort her and protect her.

Chara haunts the narrative in Undertale in every conceivable way, even implied to be literal as you are the one who names Chara at the beginning of the game, the game remarking on Chara being ‘the true name’ when you put it in at the start of the game. You wake up on a bed of golden flowers and every subsequent time you are referred to in-game by this name, it’s either by a flashback (after falling upon golden flowers, notably), through mysterious tapes that you find in the True Lab of Asriel and Chara’s childhoods that make some very crucial revelations about their relationship and its wider implications for the game at large, and by Asriel both as Asriel and as Flowey and it’s through the True Pacifist route that you discover that Chara was the first fallen human, not the human you were playing as – Frisk. You learn about the first fallen human when you finally reach New Home where Asgore is waiting for you, the monsters all telling you the tragic tale of when the Dreemurr family adopted a human that fell in the underground only for the human to fall ill and die, leading to Asriel absorbing their soul to cross the Barrier and lay their body there where the golden flowers of their village were and then were killed by the humans, believing that Asriel had killed Chara. This tragic event sets everything in the game in motion, the whole story revolving around this central conflict and how you influence its outcome while you play it and discover it.

But most notably, once you complete the True Pacifist route and save everyone, if you go back to the beginning of the Underground where you first woke up in and the golden flowers that Frisk first landed on, you get to talk to Asriel about Chara and have an honest conversation with him about them. Asriel admits that Chara ‘wasn’t really the greatest person’ and that they climbed Mt. Ebott for an unhappy reason, Mt. Ebott being somewhere that is rumoured to be a place where people are reported to disappear when they reach the summit (which has some rather thought-provoking implications for Frisk themself as well) and that Chara hated humanity. There is a lot that we can infer from this as well as the tapes that we can watch in the True Lab of Chara and Asriel as children, where Chara tells Asriel that ‘big kids don’t cry’ when he gets upset, laughs after Asgore is accidentally poisoned when they mistook ‘cups of butter’ for buttercups, and is the dominant one in the relationship between them as they leverage Asriel’s naïve trust and belief in them to get them to do what they want them to do. Asriel also admits that control over their body when their souls were fused was split amongst them and that Chara was carrying their own body to their grave and that when the humans attacked, Chara wanted to destroy them while Asriel was holding them back and caused their tragic death upon returning to the Underground. We also find out through the tapes that Chara poisoned themself by eating buttercups so that Asriel could absorb their souls and so that they could leave the Underground to find six more human souls in order to shatter the Barrier and free the monsters.

Chara’s personality and relationship with Asriel and the Dreemurr family as a whole is a notable one that is subject to a lot of debate within the wider Undertale community and has and continues to be to this day since the game’s release back in 2015, but why does this matter for December and Kris’s relationship?

December haunts Deltarune’s narrative in much the same way that Chara haunts Undertale’s narrative (in a very literal sense, but I’ll get to that in a moment). However, unlike Chara, Dess’s role is far less... definitive, at least until Deltarune is complete and Chapters 5, 6, and 7 are finally released. Unlike Chara whose role is definitive and final due to them being deceased, December’s isn’t... she isn’t dead, she’s missing. Her disappearance has something to do with the bunker, that much is definitively proven thanks to Chapter 4, and the bunker is confirmed to contain a Dark World – for how long, we’re not sure, but it is definitively a Dark World. We also know that she disappeared a very long time ago and that her disappearance fractured the Dreemurr family and put notable distance between them and the Holidays and left the Holiday family... extremely strained, to put it lightly, given Carol’s demeanour and attitude and how both Noelle and Rudy describe her behaviour and actions thus far. We only know about Dess and what she was like based on what Noelle and Rudy have told us about her, painting her as a rather protective big sister who was close with Asriel and Kris a long time ago.

However, while we’re exploring Dess’s bedroom in Chapter 4 while Noelle and Susie are distracted inside of the Holiday household... some very concerning things start to become clear to us as well as Kris’s behaviour revolving around us looking for clues on how to find Dess, or at least how to get into the bunker, which is undeniably tied to her in some way. While we’re reading the code on Dess’s guitar, Kris stops us from reading the whole thing and locks us away and if we continue to try to look, Kris will go to rather reckless and insistent lengths to keep us from learning that information at any and every cost. Many have speculated that Deltarune was going to be about finding Dess and bringing her back, but before Kris stops us from reading the code (one that is notably very likely and almost certain to be 1225 – referencing December Holiday, which was already a code used in Chapter 3 twice; once to open the path leading to Toriel and twice to get a secret in the B-Rank room that is directly tied to Dess, given that the theme that plays inside the secret maze room is very clearly her theme that had been teased before the release of Chapter 3), there are a lot of things that can be examined in Dess’s room that... paints a slightly different and rather uncomfortable picture.

Underneath Dess’s bed are army rations, guitar picks, paintball gear, ice skates, and a badly traced drawing of a dragon implied to either be a tracing of Asriel’s drawing in Kris’s house in the drawer outside of their bedrooms in the hallway or her tracing from the book that he borrowed from the library. In the box in the corner of her room by the lamp are two burnt lighters, rusted multitool knives, expired rations, walkie talkies, loose binoculars, a pair of shoes fit for hooves, violent comic books, paintballs, a cracked hockey mask, frayed yarn and buttons, Asriel’s retainer, and old mint cans with ‘unique leaves’ inside of them (implied to be marijuana or some other illegal substance). To the side of the box on the same wall is a violin, a flute, and a microphone, all of which look very expensive and very dented. And finally, just beside these items up against the wall closer to the closet, are rollerblades and a wiffle bat, to which the flavour text remarks that looking at these specifically makes Kris’s head hurt. Also important to note is that Dess has very similar star stickers beside her bed to the ones that Asriel has beside his and that she has his shirt in her closet (which... girl, why is your bed facing the wall?).

It’s interesting to note that Dess has a lot of things that belong to Asriel, most peculiarly being his retainer (which is a rather personal item compared to most and is the strangest thing to have belonging to him). Asriel’s side of his and Kris’s room while examining it doesn’t seem to have anything that would be implied to belong to December, which would be strange considering that as far as we know, December is currently missing and had been missing since Noelle was a child while Asriel is still around and has gone to college. We don’t know how much older Asriel is than Kris or how much older Dess is than Noelle, nor how much older Dess is than Kris or Asriel (though we do know that Kris and Noelle are the same age and are around fifteen/sixteen years old). The emphasis on army rations twice is rather peculiar, especially with one of those rations being expired in a box with lots of other items that are also implied to be rather old and worn, which seems to imply imply that Dess was in the army. Granted, it is very possible that she could have scavenged these items from the bunker in the past, but then why would she know the code for it? And why would the code be 1225, her namesake of the date of Christmas Day, unless she herself was the one who set the code? It could be that she was in the army very briefly and that’s how she learned about the bunker and how to change the code, but otherwise I have no other explanations for this. Maybe her mother was in the army previously and that’s how Dess discovered the bunker and how to access it. Other items in the room also imply that she was rather careless or perhaps violent with certain possessions, the wiffle bat in particular appearing as though dented, rather uncomfortably. Given the timeline, Dess had to have been eighteen when she was enlisted at the minimum and had to have returned at some point after perhaps being deployed or having been stationed or in service before she disappeared. Granted, this is a bit of a stretch and the idea of Dess having been an adult when she went missing wouldn’t make sense unless the age for joining the army is lower (doubtful) or she was a bit older than Asriel already, so the question of what the army rations imply is a bit up in the air. The illicit substances that she’s implied to have also seem to suggest that she was trying to self-medicate, she could very well have been at least maybe fifteen or sixteen when she went missing and was already unstable even before then. Ordinarily, it could very easily be chalked up to just Dess being a rebellious teenager, but combined with everything else paints... a darker picture.

Combined with the fact that Noelle casually brings up Dess hitting Kris with the wiffle bat to protect Noelle whenever they were scaring her with their mischievous antics, the fact that the bat is visibly dented and that Kris remarks on their head hurting looking at it, it seems like a rather specific detail to bring up in December’s room. There’s also something peculiar about the way that she’s talked about... which is to say that, outside of Noelle’s family, she’s not.

Nobody talks about her. Nobody. She’s vaguely alluded to in the Dark World and then directly spoken about by Tenna in Chapter 3, but otherwise, in the Light World... she seemingly doesn’t exist. Everyone talks about Asriel, people talk about Rudy, people talk about Noelle, people talk about Carol, people talk about the Dreemurrs. But nobody talks about Dess. Not even vaguely, not even bringing up any positive memories. This is... a very peculiar detail that strikes me as odd. The Dreemurr family seems unwilling to talk about her, Kris is quite literally under duress, Carol isn’t going to talk about her or elaborate in any meaningful capacity, and all we have left is Noelle and Rudy who only have positive things to say about her. The only other person who would know anything else about Dess who might have a more informed opinion about her is noticeably absent.

Just like with Chara, Asriel is the only one who might be able to paint an honest picture of Dess.

But aside from that... she doesn’t exist.

I can maybe think of three possibilities as to why. The first is that the entire town, after Dess has been missing for over seven years, has adopted a very ‘don’t speak ill of the dead (or at all)’ mentality and will refuse to talk about her even positively. Much like the Dreemurr household, to discuss it would be to acknowledge and shatter the illusion that everything is fine. No one is handling their grief healthily and Hometown is an extension of that. The second possibility is that discussing the circumstances around Dess’s disappearance is actively being kept secret and suppressed, either for nefarious reasons to do with the evil group chat that Kris is at the whims of, or for other unrelated reasons that may be important later. The third possibility that I personally find more interesting since it’s more consistent with the characterization of Dess that we have thus far and would create interesting conflicts with the story and characters as well as draw interesting parallels between Dess and Asriel and Susie and Kris, is that Dess was already something of a social pariah due to her concerning and offputting behaviour before she went missing and Asriel and Kris were her only friends in Hometown and when she went missing, nobody else really cared or missed her.

Combined with the seemingly uncomfortable fixation that Dess seems to have with Asriel specifically, the fact that the only other people who talk about her are Noelle and Rudy, the only other person who was close to her being notably absent (Asriel), and the fact that Kris is determined to keep us from learning how to access the bunker, thus leading to her in some way... this is all painting a very disturbing and uncomfortable picture of December Holiday from Kris’s point of view. We have no idea if Kris and Dess hung out or spent time with each other with just the two of them and because there is no one else around that would be able to tell us otherwise or would know, given that Asriel is at college and cannot confirm or deny this right now, I’m beginning to see echoes of how Chara haunts the narrative in Undertale in how December haunts the narrative in Deltarune.

Kris doesn’t want Dess to be found... because she had been abusing them.

If Kris resents Asriel for leaving them alone to fend for themself to go to college, then this resentment might also extend towards Asriel if Asriel also turned a blind eye towards Dess’s abuse of Kris, whether it be out of ignorance or wilful ignorance. If Dess had been abusing Kris (the uncomfortable fixation on Asriel could be a reason for this, perhaps jealousy or some other reason like Kris being human and seeing Kris as inherently more dangerous and overdoing her protectiveness over Noelle because of it), we don’t know if Kris tried to tell anyone, but Asriel would probably be the first person that they would confide in, seeing him as an authority figure and perhaps someone who could help. Or, as is very common with abusers, Dess could have convinced or manipulated Kris into keeping the abuse secret, isolating them and making them dependent and doubtful of their own perception as is a common tactic among abusers, especially within families. It is curious to note that Asriel has nothing from Dess while Dess has quite a bit from Asriel, so it could be that Kris did tell Asriel and he cut her off or confronted her about it, which led to whatever led to December disappearing and Kris being terrified of the bunker.

(One thing that sticks out to me is that the only thing that Asriel has that’s connected to Dess is the How to Draw Dragons book that he borrowed from the library, something that he shared with Dess while all of Dess’s keepsakes from Asriel are things that are his. The book itself also gives us an important clue – it’s overdue by 2684 days according to Chapter 2 and this roughly equates to around seven years and around four weeks. This is very likely how long December’s been missing, which would mean that Kris and Noelle would’ve had to have been at least eight or nine when Dess went missing and Asriel would’ve been anywhere from eleven to fourteen years old when she went missing. This could very well be the only piece of Dess that Asriel would still have, so it’s no wonder that he would refuse to return it now).

Now, there is a lot of speculation on who exactly the Roaring Knight is with common answers being either Carol or December herself. There is decent evidence to support both of these theories, so I can’t really give a definitive guess as to which one it is. December is the most likely answer, though I still feel like it’s too obvious of a guess at this current time. However, if December is the Knight... then that would explain a lot of things. It would explain why Kris is terrified of them, why they hold back damaging the Knight until either Susie, Ralsei, or both of them go down, and why they hold no resistance to being ‘knighted’ by them upon being defeated. There’s also the fact that the Knight initially holds and wields their blade almost like a bat and that many of their poses during the battle resemble figure skating poses, which is notable considering that Dess has ice skates in her bedroom alongside the dented bat. The Knight knows Kris and Kris knows the Knight... but we don’t. However, there is something that we do know – Asgore knows about Dark Worlds and Carol knows about the soul, about us.

I speculate that Carol has Kris involved in some plan that has to do with finding Dess while Kris is actively trying to stop Dess from being found. Carol likely knows about Asgore’s involvement with Dark Worlds and maybe even discovered Dess’s true fate through Asgore, the Black Shard that he has and him commenting that Toriel will ‘finally believe him’ leading me to believe that he knows what happened to Dess and who the Knight is, or has at least encountered it before. Asgore knows about the bunker as he pauses in the middle of eating when Susie mentions the code for it, but I don’t think Asgore knows about Kris’s involvement or that Carol had involved Kris at all. She may be keeping that secret from him, but much of this is just speculation on my end. I don’t think Carol knows about Dark Worlds and I don’t think Asgore knows about Kris and I think this will cause some conflict later down the line.

But either way... Kris themself has their own agenda outside of everyone else’s. We don’t yet know what it is, but they do have their own agenda... there’s something specific that they want that they don’t necessarily want us or even their friends to know. We see this in the boss fight with Tenna in Chapter 3 because if you do the Sword Route in Chapter 3 where Tenna reveals that he and Kris had made a deal of some kind, if you decide to fight Tenna during the boss fight at the end of Chapter 3, Kris will deal a significant amount more damage than if you didn’t play the Sword Route. Notably, this only happens when you complete the route, not when you discover that cutscene with Tenna. This seems to imply that the ending of the Sword Route itself is what leads to Kris lashing out harder rather than any negative feelings towards Tenna specifically.

We think that we’re ones controlling Kris... but the truth could not be further.

* We’re not the ones keeping strings on Kris – it’s the other way around

Much of Chapter 2 drives in the idea that Kris is chained to us and that they are being controlled by us, both by how we can force their hand in the Weird Route and their fight with Spamton NEO and how unnerved they are by it afterwards. And to be completely fair, it’s not like we don’t have an unethical and uncomfortable amount of control over them. They basically have no privacy, no control over how others see them because of our influence, no certainty that any of their relationships are genuine because of our influence, and we can see not only their thoughts but their friends’ thoughts as well and we have the capacity to completely ruin their life. Given how many times they take us out to get back some agency and control over themself, it’s completely understandable that they would feel trapped by being stuck with us controlling them.

However, the thing is... they still need us for something. Even at our worst in Chapter 4, they still choose us even when they hate us (and justifiably so, holy shit). They have their own plan that they’re putting into action and they have more agency than we think or gave them credit for prior to Chapter 4.

But the problem with Kris’s lack of control over their life and feeling trapped and manipulated and with no agency in their decisions didn’t start with us... our inclusion in their current predicament merely exacerbated what was already there. Kris is not just fighting against our control, but the control of the adults around them that make decisions for them or coerce them into making decisions that they don’t want to make. We’re not the cause, merely the symptom or an additional irritant to that cause. There is something specific that they want that they’re trying to achieve that they are keeping very secret and very close to their chest. Carol is clearly one of the other factors and given how long she’s been in their life, it’s very likely that Carol’s controlling behaviour extended to Kris even before we were introduced and might be why Kris is in this situation to begin with. We even get hints of this in Chapter 4 when eavesdropping on Susie and Noelle talking about an old photo with Kris and Noelle as kids on a Ferris Wheel and Noelle mentions that it was forced. The real question is forced by whom? If it was Kris, that would be rather odd for them to do especially as a kid and it would seem rather out of character for them, especially since at the top of the Ferris Wheel, they shake the car to frighten Noelle. For Kris to have forced Noelle onto the Ferris Wheel as a kid, that seems rather out of character for them to do. But if they were forced onto the Ferris Wheel by, say, Carol, them shaking the car could very well be an act of rebellion against this act of control even as a child, perhaps even as a way to make Noelle not want to hang out with them so that they wouldn’t be forced together, or maybe as a way of bonding with her under these forced circumstances since they’re ‘in the same boat,’ as it were. But much of this is just speculation on my end.

However, it is interesting to note that the Weird Route in Chapter 2 generally has a lot of themes regarding being forced into roles and acting in ways that are unnatural and unwanted. And, given that Chapter 2’s themes and structure generally revolve around Noelle’s struggle with her own self-advocacy and self-determination in regards to her relationship with her own mother mirrored in how Queen treats Noelle at the start of the chapter, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the implicit and subtle themes of forcing Kris and Noelle together into roles (which subsequently includes a lot of themes and symbols of marriage, which seems very intentional as marriage was originally a method of erasing the woman’s identity and making her the property of the man, which I don’t think is lost here) that aren’t natural to them and do ring with themes of forced compcishet that many queer teenagers go through, either being pressured by their families or parents or by society at large to conform to traditionally heteronormative lifestyles and relationships from a young age. It is fairly reasonable to read the Weird Route in Chapter 2 as representative or an allegory for forcing Kris and Noelle into a compcishet relationship, thereby erasing both their individual identities in favour of our own will and erasing their individual queerness as a result, Kris’s nonbinary gender being shifted to a traditionally male role as ‘the knight in shining armour’ and Noelle’s lesbian identity being erased in order to force her to be ‘the damsel whose only role is to follow the knight’ since that role is now being forced onto Kris. And given that if you go through with the Weird Route in Chapter 4 and force the ThornRing back onto Noelle, at the end of the chapter, Kris will get a call from Carol to confirm that Kris will be taking Noelle to the festival tomorrow (whom is obviously Carol’s preferred choice), and then will tell Kris that ‘Noelle is really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow,’ indicating that this is her preferred outcome.

(Also, interesting thing to note, if we’re to take the trans flag colour coding in Noelle’s bedroom in Chapter 4 as well as the pickles in her kitchen fridge, as it’s a very common craving for trans women undergoing HRT, as evidence that she’s transfeminine as well, this also makes Noelle a trans girl and thereby not cis either. I’m not sure how this factors into this reading very much, but it is interesting to note nonetheless).

Speaking of the Weird Route and Carol’s role in it, it’s important to note is that the voice that calls Kris at the end of the Chapter 4 Weird Route is not the same as the one at the end of a normal Chapter 4 ending. Carol’s the one calling Kris at the end of a Chapter 4 Weird Route but the other caller’s identity remains unknown, though is speculated to be Carol. Earlier on in Chapter 4 after Kris puts us in timeout for trying to look at the code for the bunker attached to Dess’s guitar, we can go into the vents and catch them on the phone with two other ominous voices – one in red and one not in red. We do not know the identity of either of these voices, though many speculate that the voice not in red is Carol because that’s the person Kris calls after Susie gets the guitar and soon after Kris tells them, the voice says they’ll be there right away and Carol arrives immediately after. The white voice talks about the next Dark World while the red voice insists that Susie must not get Dess’s guitar to prevent Susie from getting the code to the bunker. The white voice also brings up that in order to enter a Dark World, Kris needs to have a soul and that if they don’t have a soul, they cannot enter a Dark World (this is rather vaguely worded in the English version, but in the Japanese version, the translation makes it a bit clearer that Kris cannot physically enter a Dark World without a soul). The white voice also mentions a police sacrifice to take place next week and that something will happen at the church that night. Given the fact that Carol immediately dislikes Susie and forbids her from speaking to Noelle and banishes her from the household after arriving and confiscating the guitar from Susie, that also makes this sequence of events incredibly suspicious.

However, because of the Weird Route, we have to tentatively rule out that Kris is speaking to Carol, here... but we can infer that this is who has Kris’s strings and given Carol’s awareness of our presence, that she is certainly involved in some way. As Kris is leaving out their window at the end of Chapter 4 to follow Susie, the phone rings again and that voice reminds Kris about a promise that they made to it... as if Kris is already going off of the beaten path and needs to be reminded to stay on task... to be obedient.

Whatever agreement Kris has made, it has to do with us and it has to do with Dess... but Kris has their own agenda. We see evidence of this in Chapter 4 when Kris is listening to the conversation between the two voices – not participating, so they may be trying to get information out of them for their own ends. Kris needs us to go to the Dark World and there’s something in the Dark World that requires something of Kris specifically... something to do with the Knight and potentially Dess.

Chapter 4 also introduces us to the idea of Kris’s role in the prophecy, worded as ‘a cage with human soul and parts.’ Many people speculate that this was meant for us the players and that the vessel was who we were supposed to play as before our connection was hijacked and we were put into Kris’s body, which would be a reasonable reading. However, it also makes something else very clear to us.

We’re not in Kris’s body by accident. We were chosen to be in it. We were summoned for a reason. Kris is not our prisoner – we’re their prisoner.

* Kris’s soul is not our soul – the soul is merely a conduit for us to connect to Deltarune

It’s important to note that we can control Kris’s actions and where they go, but we cannot control what they think (and in some instances, what they say as they will find a way to circumvent our choices if they do not want to cooperate or for us to see something specific and all of the options we are given are from Kris’s perspective – we are basically given choices of multiple of Kris’s initial subconscious thoughts and then acting on them – which is existentially horrifying, but we’ll come back to that later). All of the options given to us when it comes to the choice UI are options provided by Kris. There is no such thing as ‘the soul’s choice’ because as much as Kris feels trapped by our overwhelming presence and influence, they have more control over us than we have over them. The only real power we have in these choice UI boxes is the power to make Kris’s intrusive thoughts actionable, giving them form. We can’t make these – Kris is providing these choices whether consciously or subconsciously for us (which is important to note, but I’ll get back to that later). So, these are thoughts that Kris genuinely has, all we’re doing is choosing which ones that Kris acts upon and they themself will have strong opinions on them depending on how they react to which ones we pick. As much control as we have over Kris, our control is extremely limited to their perspective and their point of view.

Between Kris having the soul and you being in control of it being implied and even somewhat confirmed to not be an accident, but an active choice highlights something interesting in regards to our relationship with Kris and their relationship with themself in regards to their conflict with their own depersonalization. There’s even some clever foreshadowing in both Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 when you talk to Catti and you discover that Kris and Catti used to study the occult together when they were kids and Susie remarks on how it’s rumoured that Kris and Catti tried to summon a demon, once.

Remember the specific wording here, it will be important.

Chapter 1 of Deltarune starts in a very peculiar and very specific way. The voice speaking to us, almost certainly Gaster given the voice’s method of speaking and its consistency with Entry 17 written in WingDings in Undertale, we can safely assume that this is Gaster speaking to us. When we launch the game with a fresh save file and he starts to speak with us, he asks us ‘are we connected?’ That is when the heart representing the soul appears in the black void, with Gaster responding with ‘excellent.’

This is when we’re allowed to start creating our vessel with all of the different options we are given. We’re given shirt choices, head choices, pant choices, fears, hopes, favourite blood type, all the good stuff that comes with making a vessel that we can put ourselves in. You even get a choice of telling Gaster your name and naming your vessel and if they’re the same name, Gaster will comment on it. Right from the start, the soul represents your connection to Deltarune and Gaster is creating a way for you to immerse yourself in it...

...until he’s interrupted by another voice, telling you that your vessel that you’ve lovingly made is discarded – no one can choose who they are in this world.

There is a lot of debate as to who this voice is that interrupted Gaster is, the only certainty being that this is a different voice that isn’t Gasters. However, as Tumblr user suzyundertale points out in their analysis, the Japanese translation gives us a notable clue as to who this voice could belong to. It would have to be a character from Undertale who is aware of the player and is able to communicate with Gaster by the simple fact that he is shattered across time and space and exists in limbo where no one remembers he even existed save for his followers. Given that criteria, there are not a lot of options. However, the Japanese translation gives us a very important clue as to who this speaking voice could belong to...

Gaster speaks exclusively in kanji and katakana, while everyone else in both Deltarune and Undertale speak in hiragana and katakana with very simple kanji that is sparingly used here and there. Gaster’s speaking style is very unique in the Japanese translation of the game – and for that matter, so is the other mysterious voice’s, the mysterious voice speaking in kanji and hiragana in contrast to Gaster speaking in kanji and katakana. There’s also Gaster’s use of ‘anata,’ which is a notably formal way of addressing someone, and the second person uses ‘omae,’ which is a more informal way of addressing someone. Not to mention that Gaster in general speaks very formally and politely in a lot of particular ways while the second person uses a lot of informal language, especially compared to Gaster. Given that Toby Fox is known to be quite fluent in Japanese and how much thought and deliberate intention has gone into the Japanese translations as demonstrated by his art books showing us his process in this regard, it’s extremely unlikely that this is an accident or a coincidence.

Because there is only one other character that speaks in the manner that the second voice does across both Undertale and Deltarune.

Chara.

Remember when I said to keep in mind the specific wording that Susie used when talking about Catti and Kris’s occult activities when they were kids? She said that it was rumoured that they tried to summon a demon and if you’ve ever done a second Genocide Route while playing Undertale, Chara describes themself as ‘the demon that comes when people call its name.’

And while Chara is referred to in-game as ‘the true name,’ you choose this name. The game itself does not change depending on the name you give it except for if you choose ‘Frisk’ and initiate the Hard Mode demo (which has never been finished and I don’t think was ever intended to be finished... which is kind of a shame, but I get it). This is not an insignificant choice because Chara both is and isn’t you. They are a very complicated character to dissect and I could make an entire essay about them as well, but let’s try to focus on Kris and why Chara is relevant here. I’ll get more into that in a bit, but this specifically is important. Because if this is the demon that comes when people call its name... and its name that can be arbitrarily chosen by anyone... and Chara is able to exist in the same place as Gaster, a being who is shattered across time and space... it may be entirely possible that us naming the vessel summoned Chara and that Kris may have accidentally summoned Chara (or purposefully, for all we know) and connected that thread, Chara discarding our vessel and attaching us instead to Kris.

Why would they do this? A form of punishment. ‘No one can choose who they are in this world.’ Chara is already established to be a jaded person who hates humanity and is a bit bitter, a quality that the player can push onto Chara to the extreme. Who Chara becomes by the end of the Genocide and True Pacifist routes is determined entirely by you, the player, and your influence effectively changes which aspects of Chara become amplified by the end of each run. It’s a struggle between the narrative and metanarrative, something that Chara would be invested in. And given that at the end of a Genocide Route, if you give Chara your soul to wipe your save data and start clean, your file is tainted forever. Chara is not evil, not even at the end of the Genocide Route. They may hate humanity, but they loved the monsters, their family, so much so that they were willing to die in an incredibly painful way in order to try and save them and set them free with Asriel’s help. They’re not the one that choose to kill monsters until there are none left – you are. If you do a post-Genocide Pacifist Route, Chara reminds you of what you did. They will not allow you to walk away with your hands clean as if you didn’t do what you did, you don’t get to pretend like you didn’t destroy the Underground before just because you could.

After all, there is one question that they ask before they ask for your soul when you return to the world that you destroyed, when you are willing to sit through nothing but howling wind in a black void in the once vibrant world that you reduced to emptiness out of morbid curiosity, when you come back to something out of a perverted sentimentality to the very thing you were so determined to squeeze the life and joy out of for the sake of satisfying your own need to see everything this world had to offer.

Do you believe you are above consequences?

If you select ‘no,’ they ask why you’re even here and then you have to sit for another ten minutes for the dialogue to initiate again. If you select ‘yes,’ they offer to restore the world in exchange for your soul. And once you agree... and once you complete a True Pacifist Route once more... you find that you are not above consequences despite what you had mistakenly believed before. You already destroyed this world once before, there’s no pretending like you didn’t... did you think Chara would let you forget that you killed all of the monsters that they once loved? Just because you could?

Since when were you the one in control?

Now, a note is that the line between you and the character you play as is not as sharply divided in Undertale as it is in Deltarune. Deltarune makes that division sharp and firm without ambiguity and while Undertale is not quite as firm... the division is made. It’s made evident in the end of the True Pacifist Route and the Genocide Route.

I’ll cover the True Pacifist ending since it’s much shorter and easier to delve into. Flowey doesn’t call you by the name you gave the fallen human until he becomes Asriel, God of Hyperdeath. Even when he talks to you directly during the neutral runs of Undertale at the end, Flowey still doesn’t refer to you by name until you complete the True Pacifist run and speaks to you directly for the last time. Granted, this is after he realizes that Frisk is their own separate person and that Chara died a long time ago... and yet, he still refers to you by the name you put in at the very end when he begs you to let Frisk live their life and to leave the game be. There is only only threat left to the peace left behind by you, the one being with the power to erase EVERYTHING... the very same being that has the power to reset everything is the very one that most likely put their own name at the start of the game as the name of the fallen human, the very being that has the power to shape the very identity of Flowey’s oldest and dearest friend, someone that he already had history with and has a story within this world that served as the catalyst for EVERYTHING that the game of Undertale is all about.

You... the very mirror of what Flowey became when he stopped caring about the world beyond outcomes and variables to satisfy his existential boredom and emptiness. You, the very person he has now come to truly understand and is now pleading with you not to make the same mistakes that he did.

Now, the divide between you and the game isn’t quite as sharp since Flowey calls you by name and it’s also the name you give a very important character in the game’s lore and story and is a bit logistically odd, but I think this is simply Toby not wanting to sacrifice the emotional weight for the sake of adhering to logistics. I also think it’s part of Flowey recognizing how much power and influence you have, acknowledging you not as Chara – his best friend that he had once idolized and put on a pedestal before he met Frisk and you through Frisk, admitting that they (and you) are the friend that they wish they had – but as you, the person projecting yourself onto the very game that you had grown so attached to... much like Flowey attached himself to Chara and projected onto them. And even if you didn’t give the fallen human your name, you’re still giving them a name that you’re choosing for them, imparting an identity onto them that you created.

Of course their name would be chosen by you, of course their identity would be shaped and changed and decided by you based on how you projected yourself onto them and how you played the game... Flowey did the same thing, once... when he used to be Asriel. He now understands you all too well to go back to his old ways.

You were all too revealing of a mirror for him to deny. And in the end, he pleads with you to not become a mirror of himself. To leave things be and let things go.

That’s the True Pacifist Route and how it draws the line between you and the game. But in the Genocide Route, it’s a completely different story. Right from the start, right from when you leave the Ruins empty and devoid of all life, Flowey refers to you by the name that you chose, comments that you’re not really human but soulless like he is, commenting on your ‘stolen soul,’ the mirror in the game says ‘it’s me, <name>’ rather than ‘it’s you,’ and some of the text for the flavour text is written in red (text... written in red... hm... interesting). Flowey even wonders how Chara is even able to come back to life and figures that they must have heard Flowey calling for them, likely referring to the beginning of the game when you name the fallen human (and once again calling back to Chara referring to themself as ‘the demon that comes when people call its name.’)

And at the end of the Genocide Route, when you kill everything and everyone... you are met with the very face of the first fallen human, the one whose identity you decided, a mirror of your actions and your power to shape the very world through your choices. Unlike with Flowey at the end of the True Pacifist Route, the way Chara refers to you holds no such ambiguity. There is a firm division between this character that you have named and whose presence you have shaped through your actions and choices – even at the end of it, there is still a firm divide between you and Chara.

“Your power awakened me from death. My ‘human soul.’ My ‘determination.’ They were not mine, but YOURS.”

This was a very long-winded way of tying the metanarrative of Undertale into the metanarrative of Deltarune (and I’m not even done yet, but I’ll save that for later). The real question is, then... why would Chara attach you to Kris’s soul in Deltarune, discarding a vessel that Gaster literally encouraged you to make to attach yourself to?

Simple – Chara knows what it’s like for their very being to be manipulated and controlled by a force just like you and wants nothing more than to make sure that you are not above consequences. Maybe they see a lot of themself in Kris (I’ll get back to that, I have a lot more to say about that). And given their philosophy of ‘no one can choose who they are in this world’ says something about their worldview more than we had previously assumed. Their ‘since when were you the one in control’ line of dialogue when you try and refuse to destroy the world comes to mind, since it’s rather ironic and almost mocking since you were the one fully in control... except for in the end.

Because you are not above consequences. They may not have been able to stop you... but they would be able to stain your ignorance and your memory forever.

So in Deltarune, we are not the ones in control... Kris is the cage.

So, why did I go through all of the effort to explain how Undertale’s relationship with the player ties into the game as a whole and what does it say about Deltarune’s metanarrative putting the relationship between Kris and the player front and centre? What meaningful context does this give to the overall thesis?

Both Undertale and Deltarune describe a soul as ‘the culmination of your very being.’ In Undertale, this creates a dividing line between you and the game, between both you and Frisk and you and Chara. Your soul is you, the player. That little heart is you.

In Deltarune? It’s... almost the opposite. Remember, there is sufficient evidence that Kris has been removing their own soul from before we were connected to Deltarune. We’ve established that Kris has struggled and continues to struggle with depersonalization, that they feel like an ‘other’ in their own body because of how much of an outsider they feel in every aspect of their life and how little control they feel like they have over it. This is also evidenced by checking the mirror, changing from ‘it’s only you’ to ‘it’s what they call ‘you’’ and then ‘that thing they call ‘you.’’ While this could be referring to the player, given that Chapter 4’s mirror comments that Kris is okay with being themself when standing next to Susie, it might be given a different reading that they really do feel this way about themself outside of you.

Because if the soul is the culmination of your very being... then that might explain WHY Kris was pulling their own soul out even before we were ever there.

It’s important to note that it’s not just any soul, but a human soul specifically. Kris is the cage of human soul and parts in the prophecy. Kris being human is integral to their role in the prophecy and the story and them specifically having a human soul, a soul being the culmination of your very being, is important to the narrative.

So, then... what happens when the culmination of your very being... is something you hate? If it’s something you wish you could deny? If it’s something you wish you could reject? Something you wished you could change?

But, unfortunately... no one can choose who they are in this world.

Kris was already struggling with a lack of control and lack of identity before we ever showed up. Them ripping their soul out is an act of self-harm, yes, but it’s also an act of control. It’s an act of demonstrating the minimal amount of agency they feel they have in a life and world where their choices never seemed to matter. They didn’t choose to be born human, they didn’t choose to have their family fall apart, they didn’t choose to be hurt by everyone, and they didn’t choose who they are.

But they can choose to reject it. So even if it hurts, ripping out their human soul, the very culmination of their being... them choosing to reject what they were born as, even in a small way such as this, is the only control they’re able to have. So, they’ll do it. If it means getting to choose something, then why not rip out this thing that they hate? This thing that defines them so cruelly?

Except now? Now, we’re controlling it. And this implies one of two things – either Kris’s real soul is missing and ours is replacing it or Kris’s soul is not a culmination of our being, but merely the conduit to which our connection to Deltarune is tethered. I choose to believe the latter because it’s more narratively satisfying and interesting both for the story of Deltarune and to Kris’s character. It changes the context of Kris removing the soul now that we’re attached to it.

Because now? Now, this thing is foreign and alien to Kris. At least before, their soul was theirs. It was recognizable, it was familiar, but now? Now, they feel even less like themself than they did before. Because at least before they let you in, their soul was theirs, but now it’s no longer theirs. Now they have to share it with some incomprehensible force that they can neither understand nor comprehend that through it, is making them foreign to themself in a way they didn’t even think was possible until now.

What was once an act of self-harm in service of seizing control and rejecting themself is now an act of reclaiming themself. They never realized how much of themself they actually liked and appreciated until your presence began to stifle it and oppress it in such insidiously subtle ways that only a very small handful of people even noticed that something was off about Kris. Horrifically, thanks to you, now they actually want themself back...

Because the alternative is to be forced to realize that people like the version of them that you pretend to be. The alternative is to be forced to realize that you’re better at being them than they are... that people like your version of them better than their own. To be forced to realize that your own doppelgänger is better at being you than you are.

And that is far worse than what they were suffering before.

* Kris’s relationship with Ralsei as an idealized mirror of themself

There has been a lot of debate and discussion in the Deltarune community as to what exactly Ralsei is supposed to represent or be a stand-in for. When Chapter 1 first came out, many had assumed that Ralsei was meant to be an insert for Asriel in the Dark World, as his name is an anagram of Asriel and he is revealed to be a Boss Monster like Asriel despite being a Darkner.

However, with the release of Chapter 2 and the romantic undertones of their budding relationship making something of a prevalent appearance, this speculation and debate only continued to grow. But there’s also the question of Ralsei’s relationship with us, seeing as he is clearly aware of us and even is able to shift our perspective away through initiating a cutscene to focus on Susie in order for him to have some privacy with Kris, both times in Chapters 1 and 2 with us coming back to them at the end of a conversation finishing with ‘so, that’s why...’ Another thing that players took note of is the tea that you can get for each character in the game, the amount that it heals saying something about each character’s relationship with the character that the tea is associated with. The highest yield is Noelle drinking Susie’s tea and healing her for 400HP. The lowest yields are each character drinking their own teas for anywhere between 10 and 40HP, which makes sense. There’s also Ralsei and Noelle drinking each other’s teas healing 50HP each, which also makes sense since they don’t know each other.

But then the next step up from that is Kris drinking Ralsei’s tea for 60HP and then Ralsei drinking Kris’s tea for 120HP. Many people have taken to seeing this as Kris not liking Ralsei or even hating him, citing Ralsei’s awareness of the player and overwhelming need to appease us as perhaps the reason for it. However, the flavour test for this is simply ‘no reaction,’ with Ralsei even remarking that he’s actually happy about that. So, it might not be that Kris dislikes Ralsei by this point and it might moreso be that they just aren’t completely comfortable with Ralsei at this point and don’t really know him that well, since it’s only in Chapter 2 when he starts to act outside of his role in the party and starts actually contemplating and questioning his role and starts to dip his toes into being more of himself, commenting that he’s not even sure what ‘Ralsei-like’ would even be, once again tying back into the game’s central themes around depersonalization and the determination of self-identity.

However, it may actually be more complicated than that as now seen in Chapters 3 and 4.

As pointed out by Tumblr user ofekma, numbers aren’t necessarily a good way to measure how much we like someone and Kris is a very secretive person, especially from us. We don’t truly know how they feel, we can only guess based on their behaviours and what other characters do and react to what they say that we can’t hear.

But that isn’t to say that Kris not necessarily being warm to Ralsei from the start isn’t unreasonable. Many moments between Ralsei and Kris initiated by us tend to feel rather awkward and not necessarily genuine, maybe even forced, while Susie’s interactions with Kris and Ralsei separately are far more affectionate and warm in contrast. Kris also consistently prefers Susie over Ralsei every opportunity that they’re able to choose outside of our control. It also takes more time for Kris to warm up to Ralsei than it does for them to warm up to Susie, but that’s likely because they see more of themself in Susie and are able to relate to her easier than Ralsei right from the start. She’s easier to understand from a personal standpoint than Ralsei is, but I’ll get to Susie and why she’s critical to everything that Deltarune is about.

The other thing, however, is Ralsei’s relationship with us, the player. There definitely is one and it definitely affects his relationship with Kris as a result, but it is very much ‘the elephant in the room.’ Because of our presence and our influence over Kris’s actions and responses, we can’t be fully sure as to whether Ralsei likes Kris or us and Kris probably wasn’t sure about that either, given that there are only two instances across both Chapters 1 and 2 where Ralsei is able to speak with them privately away from us and we have no idea what they talked about – one of those instances in Chapter 2 is even optional, so realistically speaking, Kris only has one guaranteed private conversation with Ralsei away from our eyes and awareness. With Ralsei being so focused on the prophecy, it’s hard to tell if Ralsei is being accommodating to Kris or us. Especially with how Ralsei is perfectly comfortable chastising Susie for her violence in Chapter 1, but won’t say a word of resistance against us no matter what we do. And given how he responds to some of the choices in later chapters, especially Chapter 4, it starts to read as him fawning and appeasing us rather than Kris.

In short, neither the player nor Kris can be certain as to whether Ralsei is genuine, leading to a lot of speculation that Ralsei was secretly evil or the real villain of the game (which is quite ridiculous in hindsight, but is sort of understandable given how unclear it was as to whether Ralsei was being sincere or not).

But we see in Chapters 3 and 4 that Ralsei’s desires to appease Kris, Susie, and us run far deeper than that. It’s not just Ralsei trying to get along and make himself useful, it’s that Ralsei doesn’t have any sort of personal identity or their own wants. Ralsei puts so much effort into everyone else that he doesn’t even eat the cake that he bakes for Kris and Susie, surprised at how tasty it is. And when Susie and Kris see Ralsei’s barren and empty room, with not even a bed to sleep in, they’re both upset in different ways. Susie is overtly upset, but Kris shows it by interfering with us talking to Ralsei for the first time since they met Ralsei. After Ralsei admits to having fears and worries and feels like he needs to hide them, or even that he's not supposed to have them at all, you’re given two dialogue choices – ‘please be yourself’ and ‘of course not.’ If you select ‘of course not,’ Kris will yawn at the end, preventing Ralsei from hearing the ‘not’ part.

I think this is when Kris actually warms up to Ralsei... because this is when Kris sees themself in Ralsei. This is when they understand Ralsei.

And this is also where Ralsei’s role in the Dark World and how he relates to Kris becomes a lot clearer. Ralsei isn’t just a stand-in for Asriel, in-fact there are two points in Chapter 3 where Kris goes to various lengths to point out all of the visual differences between Ralsei and Asriel to both Susie and Ralsei himself (even saying something that we don’t know that ends up making Ralsei blush, which may be some indicator that Kris is starting to at least reciprocate some feelings, at least enough to make him blush). It’s not like the connection isn’t there, but Ralsei isn’t meant to literally be Asriel. Which makes sense. We haven’t seen what Asriel looks like in Deltarune, so the only context we have is Asriel from Undertale, who is for all intents and purposes a completely different character with an entirely different role to play. That’s the version of Asriel we’re basing our assumptions on when it comes to Ralsei, so it should really be no surprise that our assumptions haven’t been entirely accurate.

Ralsei is a stand-in for the Dreemurr family as a whole... and I believe Ralsei is meant to be some sort of idealized version of Kris, perhaps an idea that they had a long time ago that manifested in the Dark World.

Because if you look at the way Ralsei behaves and treats Kris and conflicts in general at the beginning of Chapter 1 compared to the end of Chapter 4, a lot starts to make sense when you compare Ralsei both to Kris and Kris’s parents (thank you again Tumblr user ofekma).

On the surface, Ralsei behaves exactly like the Dreemurr family in a lot of aspects. He’s kind, supportive, loving, encouraging, and overly accommodating. He’s essentially the manifestation of the caretaker responsibilities and personalities of both Toriel and Asgore combined. He’s a very positive, warm, optimistic, and perhaps even naïve much like the Dreemurrs.

However, this includes some of their negative qualities... the main issue being their refusal to acknowledge that anything is wrong in front of Kris and to tend to just sweep things under the rug and brush over glaring issues that need to be addressed. This is distilled toxic positivity and it’s extremely evident in both Toriel and Asgore – and Ralsei, by extension. We see this when Toriel doesn’t see anything wrong with Kris washing their hands for half an hour on a regular enough basis that she sees this as nothing more than a peculiar habit of theirs (seriously ma’am, what the fuck?). We see this when Asgore insists on taking Kris and Asriel to dinner despite clearly not having the money to do something like that, given the abysmal state of his business and the fact that his fridge is empty. There’s also his refusal to move on and continue stalking and chasing Toriel after they’re separated, continually violating and ignoring her boundaries, and Toriel getting plastered drunk at home with Sans at 1AM while her child is out and she has no idea where they are (and locked the door before going to choir practice, preventing them from getting in their own home – seriously woman, AT LEAST CALL KRIS AND LEAVE A MESSAGE! YOU HAVE THEIR CELL NUMBER!)

Important to note, however, is that while Ralsei does exhibit this quality, he also exhibits both of the positive qualities outlined by Tumblr user prism-foregone in regards to their parenting styles and how they actually worked well and balanced each other out and why they are each failing now that they’re separated in different, yet distinct ways.

Toriel is good at taking care of Kris’s basic and immediate needs, making sure that they’re fed, at school, and a lot of the routine stuff that comes with taking care of a child. She’s good at the things that are regular and part of the routine and are immediate in front of her. However, it’s things outside of that routine that she’s not good at and when Kris isn’t in her immediate vicinity, she’s incredibly forgetful and scatterbrained to the point of borderline neglect at times, such as the aforementioned locking Kris out of their house without a key and not even noticing that they were gone past 1AM until she was already plastered drunk with Sans at home.

Yes, she absolutely deserves time to herself and to have fun, but this was irresponsible. This was so irresponsible that Kris and Susie are both visibly upset by this beyond the horrific experience in the Dark World that they had just come back from. Susie even yells at them after Kris goes to bed and she’s already left the house, and the extremeness of her reaction compared to everything else makes me believe that this is personal for her... perhaps her own parents are alcoholics and seeing this brought back some very painful and personal memories, potentially even a clue as to why we never see her parents or even where she lives.

Asgore, on the other hand, doesn’t really know how to do the basic tasks that come with caring for a child or even how to host them when he’s alone with them at his own place. He’s very awkward and doesn’t really know how to care for Kris in an actionable way or even what to do, he doesn’t know how to take care of the basics like Toriel does. However, he’s a lot more able to emotionally connect with Kris and is a lot more perceptive when it comes to their emotional needs, even noticing that something is off with Kris after the Chapter 4 Weird Route and checking in with them to make sure they’re doing okay. He even gives Kris a hot chocolate, something that we know is a comfort to Kris and is notable that it’s something that Asgore remembers and would think of when he sees that Kris isn’t themself. He’s a lot more emotionally attentive than Toriel is while she’s more attentive to their physical basic needs when it doesn’t stray from the routine.

It makes sense why they wouldn’t be able to take care of Kris as well as they did while together now that they’re separated and Ralsei has both of these qualities in spades. We see that in how attentive Ralsei is when making their own room, when making them treats with flavours for Kris, the way that he comforts them. Ralsei is like if both of Toriel and Asgore’s positive qualities were combined into one person.

But the refusal to acknowledge glaring problems openly and to try and brush them aside and hide them and shove them down in favour of ‘keeping the peace’ or ‘not wanting to worry anyone’ is likely the reason why there were issues in the Dreemurr household despite this and likely why they split... and why Kris wasn’t so quick to warm up to Ralsei at first.

Which is why it’s only when Ralsei is finally being honest in Chapter 4 when the dynamic starts to change. Ralsei isn’t able to pretend, anymore. Ralsei isn’t able to just hide and pretend like nothing’s wrong, he can’t just pretend like he isn’t scared of what’s to come and he can’t just stuff it down, anymore. He can’t effectively mask, anymore... and as soon as he drops the mask and we encourage Kris to comfort him, if we let them tell Ralsei that ‘it’s okay not to smile,’ Kris initiates a hug with Ralsei without our input for the very first time.

Because now... now, they get it. This is the real Ralsei, the person that is the distillation of all of the good qualities of their parents, everything that they wished they were, the idealized version of what Kris wished that they could be – the perfect monster sibling of the Dreemurr family that fits in with the family, with the town, everything.

And yet... Ralsei is faltering, too. Ralsei is struggling like Kris is... Kris finally sees themself in Ralsei in a meaningful way. Ralsei can stop pretending, can stop masking...

And Kris can finally give themself the support and care that they wished they had through Ralsei.

They see each other, now... they can heal each other, now.

* Chara and Frisk are to Kris what Asriel is to Ralsei... but there’s more to it than that

When I say Asriel is to Ralsei what Chara and Frisk are to Kris, I am specifically talking about Undertale’s iteration of Asriel rather than Deltarune’s. We have not seen Asriel yet and we can only get some information about his personality and his bond with Kris through what others say and the environmental storytelling that is available to us to examine. Asriel’s iteration in Deltarune is likely very different than the one that we’re familiar with from Undertale and there are a lot of things in the game that support this idea, especially with how Kris reacts when we try to draw parallels between Asriel and Ralsei and how quick they are to reject the idea that they’re similar.

So, the version of Asriel we’re comparing Ralsei to is Undertale’s version of Asriel – not Deltarune’s.

With that out of the way, let’s get into why that’s important.

Kris’s narrative comparisons to both Chara and Frisk are... interesting, to say the least. Kris draws a lot of parallels to the both of them, but is also vastly different from the both of them. There isn’t really a clear ‘version’ of Kris in Undertale and the closest thing we can get is Frisk almost being an anagram of Kris, but even that isn’t completely perfect either. So, let’s draw the important parallels between Kris and their human counterparts in Undertale before we analyze the parallels between Ralsei and Asriel.

Let’s start with Kris and Chara, the humans that fill the role of ‘Asriel’s sibling and adopted human child of the Dreemurr family’ and ‘extremely offputting human child wearing green with morbid fascinations and somewhat violent tendencies whose true motivations remain nebulous.’ Kris fills the narrative role in Deltarune that Chara fills in Undertale. They have similar appearances and they have similar circumstances in their respective stories. Note that I said similar and not the same. Chara came from what we can certainly assume was a broken and unsafe home among humans, which led to them climbing Mt. Ebott in order to disappear and falling into the Underground to meet Asriel and the Dreemurr family and find a new purpose, a new motivation for living, and to be adopted into the family as their own. Kris was adopted by the Dreemurr family in Deltarune, but was likely adopted when they were young and Asriel is older than Kris in Deltarune while the age difference between Asriel and Chara in Undertale seems to be close or almost nonexistence. Given how similarly they look, it’s clear that we are meant to draw obvious parallels between them on our own, a lot of things between them eerily similar, especially when we only had Chapter 1 to go off of and it ends with Kris throwing the soul into the birdcage, them getting out of bed, pulling out a knife, and smiling wickedly directly at us, drawing a very similar situation to the post-Genocide Pacifist Route cutscene if you decide to have Frisk stay with Toriel.

However, we see in Chapter 2 that this is meant to be a fakeout. Chapter 2 opens with the fakeout that makes us think that Kris is going to hurt Toriel... only to hard cut to the morning where she scolds them for eating all of the pie that she had made the night before. This dispels that connection immediately, however it doesn’t not draw a parallel between Chara and Kris and this is where I’m going to make what I think is a well-reasoned assertion.

Kris is what Chara would have grown up into if they had a chance to live past their childhood.

Chara died when they were a child. They died before they could have a chance to grow up, before they could have a chance to heal, to move on, to grow past the horrible things they had grown up with before falling into the Underground. Much of the Pacifist Route can be reasonably interpreted as the player helping Chara to heal and move on, Toby Fox even remarking during the Undertale 10th Anniversary Stream that during the Asriel Dreemurr boss fight that there’s one person left to save – Chara. We’ve assumed that that line is in reference to Asriel, but with this additional reading... it’s very well both.

Kris and Chara are very similar in a lot of ways in terms of personality. They both have a rather morbid sense of humour, they’re both incredibly mischievous, they like pulling pranks and messing with their peers and friends, and they also like to scare people sometimes. However, Kris seems both less stable than Chara and yet more well-adjusted – which makes sense, Chara was a child when they died... Kris is currently a teenager. Though their stories are not the same, it’s reasonable to assume that Kris is what Chara could have been if they hadn’t died young... if they had the chance to grow up and move past the trauma that they’d suffered.

However, another parallel that gets drawn is also a metanarrative one as well. I said that the fakeout in the beginning of Chapter dispels the assumptions that we had of Kris based on our knowledge and experiences with Undertale, but it also refutes those assumptions by doing so as well – Chara and Kris are both their own people outside of us. Despite the assumptions we make of them and the blame that we try to shift onto them based on our own actions and influence, they are still their own people even when we have control and influence over them. The only difference in this regard is that Chara was never the vessel for the player, merely a detached soulless presence that we connected with upon waking up in the Underground in Frisk’s body when they landed on Chara’s grave in the Ruins. Chara was merely the ghost haunting the narrative whose presence was haunting us that we were actively influencing during the game, but we were not controlling Chara... we were controlling Frisk.

Which leads me nicely to my next point – Frisk is the parallel to Kris as ‘the vessel for the player to experience the world through.’ This is where the differences between them become especially apparent because how Frisk and Kris are connected will directly connect to how Ralsei and Asriel are connected.

Kris and Frisk are the vessels for the soul to experience the world through. We don’t find out that Frisk and Chara are separate entities (nor that Chara was the first human that fell into the Underground, not the player despite likely putting our own names into the game) until the end of the Pacifist Route. But the fact of the matter is... both Frisk and Kris are still their own people outside of us, though our control of them and influence does change the world around them in significant ways. The main difference between them is that we don’t know who Frisk is or even what their history is or what their life was like. Despite never seeing Chara, we know their whole story, and yet we know barely a thing about Frisk, the actual character that we spend the entire game with.

And yet, despite having complete control over Frisk and Frisk having no complaints or resistance to us, we know nothing about Frisk. Well... not nothing. The main differences between Frisk and Kris is that Frisk is still a young child while Kris is a teenager and Frisk seems to be a willing vessel and Kris, even if they invited us in and willingly decided to be the cage that contains us, is actively combative towards us. But even still, Frisk does have opinions and their own small hints of agency outside of us. Frisk doesn’t like soda as they will make note of it in Alphys’s fridge, but will not take it and will instead opt to take the pack of raw noodles, and if you choose ‘soda’ while at Undyne’s house, Frisk will make an unpleasant expression that Undyne comments on. Frisk also doesn’t find the Amalgam of Snowdrake’s mother very funny while the narrator, presumably Chara, does and even is surprised by the fact that Frisk isn’t laughing at her while the narrator (again, presumably Chara) finds it incredibly funny.

(Important to note that the ‘narrator Chara’ theory is still subject to a lot of debate to this day within the Undertale community and there is a lot of proof both for and against it, but as of writing this, we do not have an official answer as to the nature of the narrator in Undertale or whether or not it’s Chara. However, it’s more thematically interesting and consistent for me to consider it the intent and with this specific example, the narrator’s reaction is too consistent with Chara’s personality when they were alive for me to dismiss it as not intended to be their thoughts somehow, so that’s the assumption that I’m operating from).

Frisk is perfectly content being the vessel for the player, though the reason for this could have multiple answers. It could be that Frisk died upon falling and the soul is us giving their body life until they’re strong enough to live without us. It could be because Frisk is simply a child and thus doesn’t fully understand the ramifications or the situation that they’re in because they’re a vessel for the soul. Or it could be another reason entirely. We know so little about Frisk, and yet they’re still their own person outside of us.

And this is where the intersection between Frisk and Chara and where they intersect with Kris properly comes into play. Kris is what would happen if Chara was the vessel for the soul, for the player instead of Frisk. Kris is taking the metanarrative role of Frisk as the vessel for the player while also filling the narrative role of Chara as the sole human in a population of monsters adopted by the Dreemurr family and the sibling of Asriel, likely coming from less than happy beginnings with an offputting and morbid attitude.

Now, we talk about Ralsei and Undertale’s version of Asriel. Asriel was Chara’s brother, but they saw each other more like best friends than siblings and even though everyone refers to Chara as a member of the Dreemurr family and as their child, the way that they talk about Chara and the way that Chara seems to see them is... complicated. They never really refer to Chara in such blatant familial terms, even speaking about them as if Asriel is their child and Chara is ‘someone they used to know’ while Asriel and Chara consider each other best friends rather than siblings. It’s a very complicated and layered relationship and it seems to go both ways, given the ‘Mr. Dad Guy’ sweater that clearly seems to have been made by Chara for Asgore since it would be strange for Asriel to refer to Asgore that way and has special flavour text between routes.

But in any case, Asriel had a very high opinion of Chara. Chara was the very dearest person to him, above even his parents and in every form he took. Even as a soulless flower, even as Flowey at the end of all of his existentially apathetic destructive routes that he took in the world of Undertale with his determination and his power to save, Chara was still the most important thing to him. Chara was still the driving force behind everything that he was doing. The one throughline that drove him on every route in Undertale. Asriel did everything that Chara said and asked, believed in them even when he had doubts, and held them up on a pedestal for countless years even to this day. Chara was his other half, the only other person in the entire world who could ever understand him, a piece of him that was forever lost when Chara died because of him. A piece that Asriel was so desperate to get back and keep.

And then... at the end of the Pacifist Route when you defeat Asriel and save him and even talk to him again at the beginning of the Underground in the Ruins where you first woke up... he’s finally being fully honest about Chara. He’s finally accepting everything that happened and is willing to let it, and them, go. He admits that Chara wasn’t the greatest person and that they weren’t flawless or even as great of a friend as he thought... or wished. And he only learns this... through you. Through Frisk. If not for you and Frisk, Asriel wouldn’t have been able to come to terms with everything that happened and the complicated and flawed person that Chara was when they were alive. Asriel even admits that you and Frisk were the friend that he wished he had... the friend that he thought Chara was and wished Chara was.

But then... once you finish talking to him, he implores you to leave him in the Underground. Without his soul, he’ll go back to being Flowey... he’ll stop being ‘himself’ and he insists that you spend your life and your effort on the people who really love you, the people that are more worth sticking around for than he is. He insists that you leave him and just... forget about him entirely. There is a sombre resignation in him that echoes in his counterpart in Deltarune and if you keep trying to talk to him, he’ll eventually only be able to say one thing.

Don’t you have anything better to do?

Ralsei... is a very clear reflection of this version of Asriel as much as he is just as much the manifestation of both the positive and negative aspects of the Dreemurr family as a whole and an idealized version of Kris that they might have wished they could be. But this is why Ralsei seems so familiar to us despite Kris not seeing much of a resemblance between Ralsei and Asriel. Asriel in Deltarune is a different person than he is in Undertale... and that’s the version we know.

And Kris’s (as well as our) relationship with Ralsei is a reflection of Frisk’s (and our) relationship with Asriel. In-fact, Ralsei’s character arc throughout the chapters that are currently released mirror Asriel’s character development during the Pacifist Route, perhaps even Undertale as a whole in a more broad sense of his character rather than the precise sequence of the events in the game. Asriel and Ralsei start out as incredibly optimistic and hopeful and joyful at the start of the journey, putting their respective ‘person’ on a pedestal at the beginning. They are both overly accommodating and rarely raise objections, even if they have them, and will follow their person through whatever it is their person wants... no matter how destructive or potentially harmful. They both experience a form of depersonalization that has wide-reaching consequences for the both of them, though it is in vastly different ways and contexts.

Asriel’s depersonalization was acquired when he was resurrected when a flower that his ashes were spread across was injected with raw determination, giving Asriel life... without a soul. He was alive, but he didn’t feel anything. He was empty and hollow. He had no compassion, no love, no empathy, no joy, no sadness, nothing. He was completely empty and devoid of any reason to persist other than the basest self-preservation instincts, the only fear that he’s able to feel for himself. Him realizing that he had the power to save and reload further dissociated him from who he once was, becoming Flowey the more and more detached he became from Undertale as a living and breathing world and realizing how rehearsed it all really was, nothing more than lines of dialogue and predictive outcomes and nothing more. Flowey was no longer a person, no longer Asriel... only a hollow shell of who he once was and the mirror of the detachment of the players once they see everything that Undertale has to offer and wring it dry of all of the joy and enjoyment that it provides.

Ralsei’s... is something that he was born with by his very nature. Ralsei is a Darkner, a being born in the dark from the imaginations of the Lightners in the dark recesses of their minds. Ralsei has no purpose other than to fulfill the prophecy and appease the Lightners. He only exists to serve them, to fulfill a role, he isn’t even supposed to be an individual person outside of this. He was created for a purpose and he only exists to fulfill that purpose. From his inception until now, Ralsei isn’t a person with his own ambitions and desires and identity... he’s only a vector for the prophecy and a servant to appease the Lightners and keep them happy. He only exists to serve them... that’s all he is.

Or... at least all he was.

The throughline between Asriel’s relationship with Frisk and the player and Ralsei’s relationship with Kris and the player is that in both instances, we are the ones who help them discover or rediscover their identities, their very personhoods. It’s through our actions while controlling Frisk in the Pacifist Route in Undertale that help Asriel come back to himself, that help reunite him with the version of himself that he had lost when he became detached from the world that he was a part of. We help him reclaim himself, even if he ends up sacrificing himself in the end for everyone else to resign himself to being Flowey forever (and yet still not going back to his old ways, instead pleading with you to not make the same mistakes that he made – he may not be Asriel again, but he now remembers what it was like to be Asriel... and he’s not willing to lose it, again).

Unlike Asriel, however, Ralsei seems to have a separate relationship with Kris and with us, but regardless, still important to him. Unlike with Asriel, we’re not helping to restore Ralsei’s personhood and identity, but we’re helping Ralsei realize that they have one. That they are not some servant to be thrown away once he’s outlived his use, that he’s a person that has connections, feelings, opinions, things that he cares about with real connections with people who genuinely care about him. And it’s through both Kris and us that Ralsei is able to achieve this.

Kris doesn’t really give their own input on Ralsei himself without our input until Chapter 3. It’s only then that Kris starts to show their own opinion and acts on their own behalf in regards to Ralsei outside of our choices and influence... so the relationship that Ralsei has individually with Kris and with us are both equally important, especially when Kris’s choices align with ours. And the choices that align with Kris’s are the ones that affirm Ralsei’s personhood – the ‘please be yourself’ option when Ralsei asks if a Darkner should be feeling the way that he does when he confesses that he’s started having selfish desires like having his own room or even having his own plushies and the ‘it’s okay not to smile’ option when Ralsei breaks down after Susie discovers the end of the prophecy and reassures him that it will not come true when Kris kneels down and hugs him of their own volition. Ralsei even emulates the same self-sacrificial and dismissive behaviour that Asriel exhibits in Undertale when Ralsei insists that Susie and Kris should just ‘forget him and make some real friends,’ viewing his presence in their lives as a result of his depersonalization as a detriment to their happiness in much the same way that Asriel did.

But we weren’t able to save Asriel... Asriel remains as Flowey and doesn’t join the others on the surface and there’s nothing that either we or Frisk can do to change this. However... we may be able to save Ralsei... and it’s something that both we and Kris want. By the end of Chapter 4, they see themself in Ralsei, they understand Ralsei, and they clearly care about Ralsei. They are suffering from the same struggles, they are each other’s mirror and never before have they looked so accurate to each other as they do now... and they may only become more and more alike as the chapters go on.

Neither Kris nor Ralsei would be able to have this without us, however. Kris needs us in order to even enter the Dark World. Without us, they would never have even met. And as combative as Kris is with us for very understandable reasons, if we’re not going so far off the beaten path that we end up hurting people like Noelle and Berdly, Kris isn’t as antagonistic towards us. Most of the time, they’re either just annoyed with us or tolerant, but unless we go out of our way to validate and act upon their more unpleasant and violent intrusive thoughts, they don’t actually hate us that much. After all, with how much of a positive influence both Ralsei and Kris have on each other (and Susie as well, but she has a different role to play that I will get to in just a moment), it’s clear that Kris finally has something of a kindred spirit in Ralsei in a vastly different way than Susie... so, in an odd way, it’s through our influence that they’re able to even meet and find each other. And as the chapters go on, they start to heal each other... they start to understand each other... they’re filling the holes in each other’s chests that are labelled with their own respective names and this would never have happened without us.

But to that point, it took Kris two chapters to start to properly warm up to Ralsei and act upon their own volition and opinion of him without our input and demonstrate that it is a positive one – or, at least an encouraging and supportive one. Kris didn’t really know Ralsei until then and couldn’t really tell if Ralsei was being sincere or not. Now, Kris understands Ralsei... so, now they actually care about and trust him. They know him, now.

Kris doesn’t know us. They don’t even know who or what we are, they can’t even properly comprehend us and the eldritch horror that we are to them. We are a nameless and faceless being whose motivations they can only guess through our actions and our choices, motivations and intentions that are subject to change at a moment’s notice. Kris didn’t hate Ralsei before they knew him like they know him now, but they weren’t as antagonistic to him in the beginning as they are to us now.

But then again... Kris wasn’t antagonistic to us in the beginning. In-fact, Kris is more antagonistic to us in Chapter 4 than they ever were in chapters prior. It could be because we’re starting to learn things about their ultimate goal that they don’t want us to know, which is causing them to panic more and more and try to keep us from knowing with more desperation. And yet... there has to be more to it than that. The more time Kris spends with us, the better they should be able to understand our intentions and motivations logically speaking, and yet they’re more antagonistic towards us the longer they know us.

Yet... we don’t have a voice. We don’t have a face. We don’t have an identity. Ralsei was at least someone before Kris started to understand him and warm up to him of their own volition, but we are as faceless and voiceless and incomprehensible to them now as we were before. Perhaps maybe even more so than before – and even worse, our presence in their body is making them foreign and alien (and even preferable, in some cases) to those that knew them before.

They don’t know us, but they didn’t know Ralsei very well at the start either. In-fact, we and Ralsei were operating at the same position in Kris’s mind at the start of Deltarune... and now, those positions have shifted, leaving Ralsei and us on different positions from each other now than at the start because of how things have developed and what Kris has experienced and learned. What we and Ralsei mean to them has changed... and that’s what changes Kris’s treatment towards Ralsei and us.

It’s not us personally that Kris is actively trying to fight... it’s what we are.

* Kris doesn’t hate us – they hate what we represent

From the very start of Deltarune, we don’t know what to expect. Most players who play Deltarune (and especially played Deltarune when it was shadowlaunched as SURVEY_PROGRAM on Toby Fox’s Twitter presented as a gift from Gaster) would have already played Undertale, even though it’s not required in order to play Deltarune (although encouraged). Thus, most players that start Deltarune would play it like Undertale. They more or less know what to expect.

However, even before we get the fakeout with Kris at the end of Chapter 1, we get plenty of subversion of our expectations based on our experiences with Undertale right from the start. From the mysterious voice that interrupts Gaster during the vessel creation screen at the beginning of the game saying that ‘no one can choose who they are in this world’ and Susie telling Kris ‘your choices don’t matter’ when she’s bullying them when we meet Susie very much hammering in the antithesis to Undertale’s thesis being the weight of the player’s choices.

However, this philosophy is not just relevant to Deltarune being something of a subversion of Undertale (to the point of Deltarune being an anagram of Undertale), it’s also the undercurrent to Kris’s entire worldview. This also gives us a clue as to why Kris is immediately fond of Susie despite being bullied by her (and her falsely assuming that Kris hates them and is waiting for a chance to get her in trouble and get rid of her) and why Kris isn’t so quick to warm up to Ralsei. Susie validates Kris’s worldview by telling them that their choices don’t matter, something that they already feel and believe, so Susie reaffirming their nihilistic perspective in a way that doesn’t feel like pity or like she’s lying to them is oddly validating to them. Contrast it with Ralsei who asserts to Kris that their choices (or the player’s) matter and it’s not hard to imagine that this rings incredibly hollow to Kris to hear.

That being said, we now know that Kris’s involvement with the soul (and thus, us) is more than likely voluntary and not an accident. They were likely coerced into doing this, which would still make their worldview make sense even if they chose to contain us in their body.

But then if they voluntarily invited us in... they don’t hate us when they meet us. At first, they don’t know who we are or even what we are until they invite us into their body, until they put us in our cage.

We don’t get much telegraphing as to Kris and the player being separate entities until the end of Chapter 1, playing much of the game like we would play Undertale... with one exception.

There is a moment when Ralsei, Kris, and Susie are imprisoned in Card Castle by Lancer in Chapter 1. Susie is kept in a separate cell from Ralsei and Kris, but Ralsei shifts our perspective away from Kris and Ralsei by asking Kris to ‘close their eyes and imagine what Susie’s doing’ and after we’re finished helping Susie solve puzzles and reunite with Lancer, we cut back to Kris and Ralsei and see them at the end of a conversation with Ralsei saying ‘so, that’s why...’ This is the first moment that a divide is made between Kris and the player and that Ralsei knows about the player and knows that we’re separate from Kris. They have another moment like this in Chapter 2 as well, which has led to a lot of speculation and debate within the Deltarune community with some even speculating as to Ralsei having ulterior or even darker motivations and maybe even favouring the player over Kris.

However, with the release of Chapters 3 and 4, this is confirmed to be extremely unlikely. Which means, retroactively, we can now get a more accurate reading of what these moments mean now that we have Ralsei’s characterization in Chapters 3 and 4 for context. Especially with Ralsei having another moment like this in Chapter 4, in an especially insistent fashion, and seeing Ralsei walk away from Kris as the screen fades to black. This is the first time that Ralsei wants privacy from the player not to talk to Kris but for himself.

It’s extremely unlikely that Kris understood what exactly they were signing up for when they agreed to house and harbour the soul, the player. So, waking up being controlled by the player must have left them a bit confused and reluctantly allowing the player to string them along. They have their own plans and expectations, but they couldn’t have predicted what it would have been like to be in this position and was likely confused once they entered a Dark World for the very first time and then met Ralsei. And, while Kris isn’t entirely comfortable with Ralsei when they first meet and it takes them a little bit to get more comfortable with each other, these sparse moments when Ralsei gets some privacy with Kris is now more than likely an effort on Ralsei’s part to try and inform Kris about the position that they’re in as well as give them a chance to inform Ralsei. These moments are very likely Ralsei trying to be more honest with Kris in a way that isn’t influenced by the presence of the player and for Ralsei to get a more honest picture of Kris without the player there to influence them. Kris may not see it that way, but with what we now have of Ralsei’s characterization for Chapters 3 and 4, this is most likely the case. And as the chapters go on, Kris gets a lot better at understanding their relationship with us and how to control what we see and do and what our limits are with and without them as well as what their limits are with and without us. Ralsei informs Kris about their position and Kris uses these revelations to better understand their relationship with us in order to better get us to do what they want.

But that doesn’t mean they have to like the position that they’re in because of us and they make their displeasure known to us whenever possible but unless we’re doing a Weird Route, they don’t outright hate us.

They do fear us, though... and they do hate what we are. But the thing is... that changes between chapters the more they understand us and what we are in relation to them and their world. And this is reflected in each chapter’s secret boss. Each chapter has a secret boss that, once defeated whether passively or violently, will yield an armour or weapon of some kind depending on which route was taken as well as a ShadowCrystal that will be important once five are collected (one for each chapter).

Each one of these secret bosses reveals something about Kris’s relationship with us and how it informs their position in their life... and it changes each chapter with each secret boss.

The first one in Chapter 1 is Jevil, once the loyal jester to the Card King, Lancer’s father. He was once the loyal jester until he spoke to someone who caused him to go mad. According to Seam, the shopkeeper in Chapter 1 who knows the most about the ShadowCrystals and was once close with Jevil as the court magician, speaks about when Jevil met a ‘strange someone’ and ever since then, began to change. He started saying ‘bizarre things that didn’t completely make sense – but didn’t completely not make sense, either.’ He began to see the world as a game and everyone within it as players, and for his madness, Seam had to lock Jevil away in the castle dungeon. However, from Jevil’s perspective, Seam locked everyone else away, leaving him as the only free one. Although Seam didn’t pay too much mind to the mad words that Jevil was spewing, they couldn’t shake the odd sense that Jevil was making, and so their worldview grew ‘darker yet darker,’ another motif commonly associated with Gaster because of Entry Number 17 which leads people to believe that Gaster has something to do with each secret boss (save for one). And thus, Seam becomes just as nihilistic and little matters to them now as there doesn’t seem to be much purpose to life from their perspective, now.

But Jevil is very interesting in how he seems to take delight and joy in his newfound nihilistic revelation. It’s important to note that nihilism as a philosophy is neither joyful nor despairing – it’s simply the idea that nothing in life matters. Some find this philosophy freeing, like Jevil, but others find it dispiriting like Seam, Kris, Susie, and others. But regardless, Jevil’s newfound revelation that everything is only a game, perhaps the world of Deltarune in a literal sense, is something that gives him freedom and is something he takes delight in. After all, if nothing truly matters... then are you not free to do whatever you wish?

Although Kris doesn’t have much of a personal relationship with Jevil like the other secret bosses (and whether or not you defeat or even meet the secret bosses doesn’t change anything about the outcomes of each chapter), his purpose as a reflection of Kris’s view of things and their position is an important one. While Jevil’s presence doesn’t change the outcome of Chapter 1, it does change the context – albeit, only subtextually.

Because if Deltarune is only a game and everyone in it is a participant... if you know how to play the game, then are you not free? Do you not have more control? Are you not able to manipulate the game that you are a part of it you know it’s a game?

This gives context to the ending scene of Chapter 1 where Kris throws the soul in the cage and brandishes their knife, grinning at us wickedly before the screen cuts to black. While they don’t have to meet Jevil to do this, meeting Jevil does give this scene new context. Without meeting Jevil, it’s mainly Kris just messing with us (as evidenced by the fakeout beginning of Chapter 2 afterwards) and telling us that we’re not the ones in control. But with meeting Jevil, it’s also Kris telling us ‘you’re the one in the cage, I’M the free one here.’

And much like Jevil, Kris initially uses this revelation to fake us out and trick us, scaring us and making us think that they’ll hurt Toriel before realizing that they just wanted to eat the pie that she made. Kris is a known prankster and delights in frightening others for a joke. This is very in-character for them to do, even to us (maybe as a way of asserting their power and authority over us).

However, in Chapter 2, we become introduced to Spamton... and Kris isn’t so enthused with their newfound freedom anymore.

Unlike Jevil, whose form of nihilism is freeing and jovial to an almost manic degree, Spamton is desperately trying to break his strings. His appearance as a discarded marionette doll compared to the other Addisons makes the puppet motifs with him that much more unnerving and as soon as he’s introduced to Kris (unavoidably, this time), Kris is immediately uncomfortable with him. Spamton was an Addison like the others and was rather successful after getting a phone call from someone until one day when he lost everything and fell into obscurity, the phone left hanging from the receiver only broadcasting ‘garbage noise’ (evidently, Kris is able to hear this ‘garbage noise’ by making a phone call in the Dark World and the sound that the phone makes is the same noise that plays in Entry Number 17 in Undertale, which is another tie directly back to Gaster and thereby strengthening this connection).

After Spamton loses everything, he then becomes obsessed with breaking his strings, even determined to take Kris’s soul in order to do it. Despite this, however, Spamton also tries to encourage Kris to be more than just ‘a heart on a string’ and during the Spamton NEO fight, if you try and take the pacifist route, Spamton will realize that Kris (and us) are trying to help Spamton by breaking his strings so that he can be free and he won’t be a puppet anymore, celebrating the power of friendship and eager to spread his wings and fly as Kris cuts the final string...

...only for Spamton to fall lifeless on the ground, unable to live without the strings that keep him bound. He’s even crestfallen, accepting that his only purpose is to be a simple puppet... and yet, he gives you his strength in the hopes that Kris, Susie, and Ralsei will be strong enough to break their own strings and becomes the Dealmaker in your inventory. However, after this fight, Kris is visibly unnerved. Ralsei naturally tries to brush it off to not make Kris worried, but Susie can tell that Kris is afraid and asks if they’re okay despite Ralsei’s attempts to try and sweep it under the rug.

If you say ‘yes,’ Susie knows that Kris is lying when you say that. If you say ‘no,’ Kris shouts it. Kris is frightened of what Spamton represents to them... what we represent to them. Because sure, Kris can temporarily exist without us, and for a decent amount of time without much difficulty as evidenced by Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 in the Light World. But permanently? Kris sees themself in Spamton... and what they see frightens them because of what it potentially says about them. If Kris is nothing more than ‘a heart on a string’ and Spamton cannot live without the strings that bind him, then that means that Kris doesn’t truly have control over us despite caging us and limiting us. Kris may be able to interfere with us in a limited capacity, but without us to drive the story, to drive their decisions, their actions... Kris may be nothing more than a puppet... and puppets need strings to live, to exist.

The idea that as long as Kris has a deal to uphold, they need us to survive... is horrifying to them. Not only is our influence over their life and relationships oppressive and terrifying, not only is the idea that people like our version of Kris more than theirs terrifying, but that combined with the idea that Kris cannot survive without us until their deal is upheld?

Once again, the ending of Chapter 2 remains the same regardless of whether we fight Spamton NEO or not, but the message is the same. Kris is once again asserting their agency over themself by containing us and restricting us, but it’s not to trick us or fool us for the sake of some mischief... it’s a desperate bid to regain some agency back after making this bargain. But with the fight with Spamton NEO as context, this is Kris saying to us ‘I’m not a heart on a string and I don’t need you.’

We don’t know what Kris does other than slash Toriel’s tires, but in the Weird Route, we find out in Chapter 4 that Kris takes Berdly to the hospital and stops to talk to Noelle to reassure her that it’s all a dream and remove the ThornRing from her, telling her not to talk about it otherwise we’ll hear. Even though Kris can’t completely stop us from going through with the Weird Route in Chapter 2, once Kris isn’t under our control, they go out of their way to undo the damage we did, to at least give them both a way out and us a chance to take back what we did and not cause more harm to their life and friends. I’ll talk more about Chapter 4 in a moment, especially in regards to the Weird Route, but I have more to say about this.

But with all of this for context... it’s no wonder they don’t want to cooperate us... among every other possible understandable reason that exists, such as the lack of privacy they have while we’re controlling them and our ability to make them act on their worst instincts and intrusive thoughts that they’re uncomfortable and ashamed of.

Speaking of which... let’s talk about Chapter 3. There’s... a lot to talk about in regards to Chapter 3 and what this means to Kris.

Chapter 3 has its own Weird Route unique to itself and, as far as we can tell, is self-contained. You don’t need to do the Weird Route in Chapter 2 to do this one and the only thing it does is make Kris deal more damage to Tenna during the boss fight upon completing it and getting Kris the ShadowMantle which reduces damage taken by darkness and star attacks. This route is called the Sword Route internally in the game and makes references to the Weird Route in Chapter 2, but is not otherwise connected in any other way. And technically speaking, you can defeat the Roaring Knight at the end of Chapter 3 without obtaining the ShadowMantle, it’s just far more difficult to achieve without it. But while it can’t be counted as a secret boss because it doesn’t reward you with a ShadowCrystal upon completing it, given how out of the way it is to do and how it’s treated, I’m counting it as a secret boss for the purposes of narrative analysis in regards to Kris and their relationship with us and Deltarune itself.

In order to complete the Sword Route in Chapter 3, you need to get an S-Rank in every mini-game before the mini-games are permanently sealed off at the end of the chapter and you’re no longer able to play them. You get access to the S-Rank room, go backstage, and play the original version of the Zelda-inspired mini-game between the contests which plays more like a traditional Zeldalike RPG. You kill every enemy in the game to become stronger and then access secret areas in order to get the keys needed to progress to the next level of the game once getting S-Rank in the next challenge.

The second level is the one that makes the most allusions to the Chapter 2 Weird Route, Kris having to kill not just every opponent, but having to obtain the Ice Mage and freeze some enemies with some rooms even explicitly saying ‘the forbidden path began with ice magic.’ Once you find the final door within the Ice Palace and unlock it with the Ice Key, the following narration is given within the game:

“The Ice Key was used up. She [the Ice Mage] was used up.”

And upon entering the opened door, we get the following dialogue from the mysterious shadowy entity that had been taunting Kris in the dark in secret rooms with black text saying ‘see you soon’ and ‘are you having fun?’:

“Well done. You found my secret hiding place. But there’s nothing here... is there?”

Wander in the dark, you’ll find an object similar to a Save Point. Interact with it... you get the following narration and dialogue:

“You got the Shelter Key.”

“Oh, you found that, too! Perfect, just perfect... Thanks for all your hard work, Kris!”

“You were used up.”

Kris reacts visibly to this... and is noticeably pale.

This moment can be recontextualized by the Chapter 2 Weird Route, but the message that Kris takes from this is all the same. The only difference is that it’s not just them, but others are implicated, too – namely Noelle, the Ice Mage being the stand-in for her. But regardless, the meaning they take from this is the same. Once they see their deal through, once the agreement is fulfilled, once they’ve accomplished their purpose... they will no longer serve a purpose.

Once they’re finished... once they’ve outlived their use... they will be used up.

The final level of the Sword Route holds all of the keys to the puzzle that complete Kris’s understanding of us and our relationship with them and the world they live in, but also their relationship with themself... and they do not like what they see. The final level is very reminiscent of Cyber World in the section where you have Noelle with you, but you don’t have the Ice Mage with you this time. This isn’t the only difference, however...

Because there are no enemies on this level. This is also the only level where Susie and Ralsei are with Kris... and the only way to progress is to kill both of them. Kris visibly flinches when we do this, going pale just as they did when they were confronted by the phrase ‘you were used up.’ Kris is visibly uncomfortable playing these games, but proceeds anyway under your guidance and control. They may flinch, they may not be enjoying it, but they will cooperate...

Until you reach the bunker. Even playing a fictionalized version, Kris will resist going to the bunker and you have to force them to approach it. Even in a fiction within a fiction, they are terrified of going in the bunker. It may be within the interests of their benefactor(s) to not allow anyone to get access to the bunker, but they themself are terrified of it even without that motivation.

This... this is where the meat of it all is. Kris is finally confronted by the shadow creature within the bunker, referred to internally as Eram and Nightmare, within the darkness... and it has this to say:

“Kris... oh... Kris... Isn’t it fun, Kris? Playing around like this... that’s why you’re searching for them, aren’t you? The SHADOW CRYSTALS... and the SHADOW MANTLE that I’m holding! Do you honestly think it’ll get you what you want...? ...no, part of you is just... enjoying this, isn’t it? [Post-Chapter 2 Weird Route exclusive dialogue: The same part of you that enjoyed yesterday. Knowing you could say it wasn’t really you.] Oh, don’t make that sour face. I can see in the dark, you know! The question is... Can you?”

The boss fight begins, but there’s... already a lot to unpack. In order to analyze this, I want to come back to the thread I connected with dialogue options being provided to us by Kris as well as the idea of Kris having violent and intrusive thoughts that they explore in fictional scenarios that we are capable of making them act on and how that relates to Dess. It’s notable that this boss fight takes place in a fictionalized recreation of the bunker, the place that Kris is terrified of that is undoubtedly tied to Dess. The fact that Eram is commenting on Kris secretly enjoying the violence they are committing in this fictionalized setting as if it’s some sort of reflection of Kris as a person seems deliberate. In today’s climate of internet and media culture, we’ve circled back around in this wave of purity culture to something like mass Catholic guilt, the idea that your thoughts and secret desires, the things that you keep internally but do not act on are somehow an admission of guilt. The idea that the things you enjoy in a fantasy or fictionalized setting is somehow a reflection of you as a person is a very pervasive idea nowadays and this is especially harmful to those who are plagued by intrusive thoughts, such as those with OCD and AVPD and the like. Moralizing the thoughts you have that you keep private or the things you enjoy in a fantasy or fictionalized setting like a video game is incredibly damaging... and all too common these days.

Kris is visibly uncomfortable by the implication that they enjoy violence, especially with the additional Weird Route dialogue if you’ve completed Chapter 2’s Weird Route. With the fact that this is taking place in the bunker, a place tied to Dess that Kris is scared of, and that Dess is evidenced to also be rather violent and have violent inclinations and interests of her own, there is reason to believe that Kris associates their more violent intrusive thoughts that they keep private with Dess. And if the idea that Dess had been abusing Kris is true, it makes this assertion by Eram a lot more uncomfortable for Kris... because it cements the idea that Kris even having these thoughts in the first place, regardless of if they act on them or only indulge in fictional settings where no one actually gets hurt, makes them just as bad as her.

But the thing that makes this worse for Kris is that... we have the power to make Kris act on those intrusive thoughts. We have the power to make that nightmare a reality for Kris, which may be why this entity is internally referred to as Nightmare. This may be Kris’s nightmare made real – the idea that even Kris’s innermost thoughts, their violent tendencies that they don’t act on and keep private, that even having them makes them a bad person, an unworthy person. Without us, Kris can keep these thoughts private, Kris can keep control and not act on these intrusive thoughts.

With us? We’re able to make their worst fears real. We’re able to confirm to them the very thing that they’re most afraid of – that they really are just as bad as their innermost thoughts that they keep private, that even having these thoughts in the first place makes them a danger to the people that they care about. Because being accused of secretly liking the things that we make them do... they can’t deny it. They had the thought in the first place that you then acted on... they provided the option in the first place. How can they possibly refute that? How can they possibly say otherwise when the whole reason you are able to commit violence through Kris in the first place is because they provide the option for you to do so to begin with?

Would that not be proof that the very worst of them... is them? Even if they don’t act on it?

This is already a lot for Kris to grapple with, but this continues even further after the fight with Eram and we successfully beat it and obtain the Shadow Mantle. Interestingly enough, this part of the game is the only time that Kris being defeated in-game results in us being defeated as if we died in battle, but not being forced to the Game Over screen, simply starting over at the last checkpoint.

But that’s not enough... Eram has more to say about Kris:

“There! That’s what I wanted to see! Flickering red, like pretty little flames... Your eyes can’t hide it, Kris. Without play... the knife grows dull. Haha... well, enough of that! We both have work to do! So, if you want this MANTLE, hurry up and take it... If you can reach it!”

Without play... the knife grows dull.

Kris may have violent thoughts and may express them through video games as an outlet and may get enjoyment out of violence in a fictional setting, but this is... normal. The fact that Eram is pathologizing and moralizing this aspect of Kris is what makes them continuously uncomfortable as they play this game. There is a lot of speculation on who this entity could be. It could be the Shadow Mantle itself, it could be Ramb playing with another controller backstage with Kris, it could even be a representation of the Knight...

Which... if the Knight is indeed Dess... it makes what they say to Kris a lot worse for them. Because if the Knight is Dess and Dess has been abusive to Kris and Dess went missing in the bunker and became the Knight somehow... then this makes what Eram says to Kris so much more harrowing to them.

Because if all of this is true, this is Dess mocking Kris and telling them ‘you’re just like me... you’re just as bad as I am.’

But the real meat of it all and the entire reason I was motivated to write – checks word count – over 20,000 words of analysis into Kris Dreemurr from hit indie game title Deltarune by Toby Fox of Undertale, Homestuck, and Earthbound hacking fame is because of this moment right here. Because the chest containing the Shadow Mantle in the game is too high for the little game avatar of them in the game to reach. They simply cannot reach it. The only other path to take is to the right...

If we go to the right, however... it doesn’t lead to another room in the game... it leads outside of the game – directly to Kris themself.

This right here... this specific moment... is the entire reason I wrote all of this.

Up until this point, Kris had no idea what we are. We were a faceless and voiceless entity attached to object that they already hate because of what it represents. Our presence has taken that object and warped and perverted what it represents so much to Kris that they’ve realized that they’ve taken their own soul and what it represents for granted. They had no idea what we were and even if their position with us was voluntary, they still hate what we are and are afraid of what we are. They didn’t understand what we were...

Until this moment. Because this moment? When you leave the game and come face-to-face with Kris wearing their own face? They finally understand what you are... and it terrifies them. They finally understand what they are to you and what their world is to you.

Before, you were just a faceless and voiceless object that oppressed their own voice and will with your own, creating a mere facsimile of them with their own likeness like a mockery of them. But now... they’re staring into a fucking mirror.

In this context, you finally have an understanding... they finally realized what Jevil and Spamton meant... this is all just a game to you, just like that was just a game to them... you’re not so different after all.

And somehow... that revelation is far far worse than anything they could have thought possible.

At the sight of you, Kris drops their controller in fear. You approach... and you’re able to do one of four things. You can appear to them, but walk off-screen immediately. You can approach them, but stop after they start backing up and let yourself walk off-screen. You can approach them and back them into a corner, but let yourself walk off-screen. And finally... you can walk up to them, back them into a corner... and attack them with your sword and have them fall backwards onto the ground.

Regardless of what you do, you regain control of Kris and you can have them walk into the game to then finally open the chest and obtain the Shadow Mantle since Kris is tall enough to reach it unlike their in-game avatar of themself. Afterwards, they pick back up the controller that they dropped and Susie will enter the room and talk to Kris. This is when what you do changes... with one exception.

If you attack Kris with the sword, their title will change from Ice Blazer (obtained after finishing the second level upgraded from Blazer after finishing the first level, both of which specify that Kris ‘specializes in sword attacks’) to Sheathe, which specifies that Kris’s ‘breath quickens around swords.’

Susie will approach and ask what Kris is doing all by themself playing this game. It’s during this moment that you can actually come back up with Kris and Susie while she’s talking and depending on what you did prior and what you do here... it will cause Kris to react in a number of ways. Pressing the Z button is both to confirm and to attack with the sword, which will cause some problems if you’re trying to avoid hurting or scaring Kris (many players accidentally attack Kris to give an example of this). If you swipe at Kris and Susie with the sword, Kris will yank Susie back and pant heavily with fear afterwards, terrified for Susie’s life at your mercy.

Otherwise, the other options will yield the same result. Susie will ask Kris if they’re enjoying themself. If you say ‘of course, games are fun,’ Susie will comment on how sweaty Kris is, indicating that they’re so afraid that they’ve been sweaty and pale while talking to her. If you say ‘no,’ Susie will take the controller from Kris and turn the game off and tell them that they don’t have to play it. Either way, Susie will give them a flat soda. You can either choose not to emerge or to emerge. If you didn’t attack Kris and you emerge to be with Susie and Kris and you don’t attack them here... Kris will look over at you. You can swing your sword around while you’re navigating the choices, but as long as you don’t attack them, Kris will just... keep looking at you quietly while Susie’s talking. If you pick the ‘yes’ option, you’ll just walk off-screen.

If you pick the ‘no’ option... when Susie takes the controller and turns the game off... you disappear immediately.

There’s so much to unpack here. This adds a whole other layer to what Spamton represented for Kris and how their fight revealed something about you to them. You’re not some demon, you’re not a god, you’re not a ghost, you’re not this thing inside of them anymore... you’re a player. This is a game to you... and now Kris understands your pathology a whole lot better. They now understand what your role is and what their role is. If they attain the Sheathe title by you attacking them, this terrifies them even further. Not just because of what you can do on the whim of a button press... but because of themself.

Because just as easy as a button press as it was for you... it’s just as easy for them. Suddenly, the sword they’re holding is a whole lot heavier... and the consequences far more reaching for being careless with it.

Kris isn’t just a puppet on strings. It’s not just that Kris cannot live without you attached to them until their goal is complete (and by extension, their use will be outlived and then they will be cast away to rot much like Spamton was), but if you don’t play the game... if you don’t perform your role in the game of Deltarune with Kris as the protagonist... they and the world that they live in no longer even exist.

As soon as you stop playing the game... Kris’s existence, their life, and their world completely ceases to be. They don’t just need you to live. Everything that they know and understand now requires your participation to even exist or progress.

This is the power you hold. This is what you are... and it’s something that Kris understands and understands well... and it’s something that absolutely terrifies them...

But they do understand it... and although their power is limited, knowledge is power... and by limiting your knowledge, so is yours.

I had so much to say about Chapter 3 and still more to say about Chapter 4, but what I have to say about Chapter 4 is shorter as Chapter 4’s secret boss isn’t actually all too relevant to Kris themself, but I will touch on that because there is something there that relates to Kris. It really is such a shame that all of the optional secret stuff doesn’t change the endings of each chapter (which exception to Chapter 4, but I’ll get to that) because since it plays out the same, the only thing each secret outcome does is just add additional context to the ending. Without the Chapter 3 Sword Route, it simply ends with Kris trying to keep how to get into the bunker secret. With the Chapter 3 Sword Route, Kris now understands what we are... and while Kris will be able to figure out ways around your power as a player, they can really only stall you... deep down, they know you want to see what happens and you will.

So, all they can do is stall you... and they will do whatever they can to keep you away for as long as possible, even if it’s futile.

And finally, we get to Chapter 4. Before we get into what’s most interesting about Chapter 4 in regards to Kris’s relationship with us and the additional context provided by Chapter 3’s Sword Route and how it relates, I still want to continue this theme of each secret boss representing Kris’s changing perspective on us and what we represent to them. And Chapter 4’s, while not especially relevant to Kris (and I’d even argue is less relevant to Kris than Jevil), he still is somewhat relevant to Kris.

Chapter 4’s secret boss is none other than the late Gerson Boom himself, revived in the Dark World by a hammer kept in his son’s desk in the church in a glass container with Gerson’s dust spread inside. The Hammer of Justice himself. Gerson’s relationship is mostly to Susie and her role in everything in regards to fate and the prophecy, but I’ll talk more about that in the final segment in regards to Susie herself.

Instead, I want to talk about Gerson’s relationship with Kris because while it’s rather minimal... it is there. When you have tea with Gerson about halfway through the Dark Sanctuary part of the chapter, the way he talks to Kris changes depending on your choices... and it’s marginally different than how everyone else talks to Kris. First, Gerson isn’t a Darkner but a manifestation of the memory of Gerson as a Lightner. In-fact, unlike Jevil, Spamton, and the Knight, Gerson outright rejected the ShadowCrystal even though he has it, therefore rejecting the nihilistic worldview that the others take that we’ve seen so far. This is consistent with his characterization and philosophy that stories can be rewritten and reinterpreted and that you don’t have to follow them to the letter – you can make your own story, you can write your own ending, you can decide how a story ends. He is effectively the antithesis to everything we have known so far, a rejection of the idea that nothing matters. He bonds well with Susie and take a mentor role to her throughout the chapter, his approach very effective with her and nurturing her growing hopeful outlook in contrast to her nihilistic one that she started out with in Chapter 1.

So, naturally, what he has to say to Kris is different than what the likes of Jevil or Spamton say to them. Gerson will ask Kris to close their eyes and put some sugar in their tea. If you choose not to drink the tea, he will instead offer you an apple – of which Kris voluntarily eats after Ralsei offers to hold it up to them so that they can eat it better. A notable difference between the normal route and the Weird Route is that normally, Kris will eat the apple until nothing but the core is left while in the Weird Route, Kris will bite down all the way to the core, leaving a bitter taste in their mouth. This can have a twofold representation. It can both represent how trying to squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of something can end up leaving a bitter taste in your mouth when you have nothing left but the bitter parts, even poisoning the experience for you as apple seeds are filled with cyanide and represent Kris being so desperate for control and to be free of you that as soon as they have agency free of you, they overdo it and bite all the way down to and past the core in a frantic need to savour the freedom they’re able to have in this fleeting moment.

What Gerson says to Kris is also different between routes as well. Gerson doesn’t say anything additional on a normal route. However he does have something to say on a Weird Route before he puts the sugar in Kris’s tea or gives them the apple... and it’s telling:

“...You’re really just going through the motions, huh? Something tough’s going on with you... I can tell that sorta thing. And now, you still gotta go through your day. Still gotta talk, fight, do homework... I bet it all feels pointless, don’t it. It’s almost an insult that the earth’s still turnin’... but don’t you give up. Even if you gotta do those motions... Trying to find something, anything in them, that means a little something... ya hear?”

It’s very interesting that this comes after what can feasibly be considered ‘the point of no return’ where we can damage Kris’s relationship with Noelle and her grip on reality irreparably. This happens after Kris goes through the effort to throw us into the bathroom garbage can and BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF US in rage and fury for what we do to Noelle THROUGH Kris and depleting TEN HP after they’re done kicking the shit out of us. This moment of Gerson going out of his way to try and comfort them after all of this... is interesting to me.

Because everyone else that comments on Kris’s odd behaviour acts wary of Kris, acts scared of Kris... but aside from Asgore comforting Kris after leaving Noelle’s home, Gerson is the only other person that tries to reach out to Kris to comfort them. Not just comfort but... try and inspire hope in them. Gerson sees that Kris isn’t okay and is struggling, Gerson sees Kris as a person that needs help and offers it in the best way that he can. There is no doubt that Kris feels hopeless with the agreement that they still have to carry out despite our demonstrated capacity for cruelty and how that reflects on them, helpless to our whims and control over them and our determination to ruin their life.

And yet... Gerson offers hope despite it all. This is the most genuine and human moment that Kris has had with anyone while suffering under our duress... and I have no doubt that this means something to them going forward because this is the only chapter with a different ending because of the Weird Route. That is significant... and I will talk about why in only a moment.

But this is what Gerson represents in terms of Kris’s relationship with us and our relationship with them and the game, both in and out of the Weird Route. The capacity for hope... and the capacity for change. The hope that choosing differently will change fate and lead to a different outcome. That even under the weight of insurmountable forces that seek to control the outcome, Kris’s own will is strong enough to change fate and break free of the forces and chains that control them. That they can change fate... and by extension, how we influence it.

Alright, let’s finally talk about the Weird Route in Chapter 4 because it has so many interesting implications for the future in regards to Kris’s relationship with us and how it might progress leading into Chapter 5 because I believe our choices here will have significant ramifications going into the next chapter.

During Chapter 4, Kris ejects us from them and locks us in a room in Noelle’s house to prevent us from interfering with their plans after we go into Dess’s room and try to read the code for the bunker on her guitar. In the normal route, Kris just locks us in a room and goes to eavesdrop on the phone call mentioned earlier in the kitchen, drinks chocolate milk, and then plays the piano after catching us and locking us up again. Most of Chapter 4 spent in Noelle’s house is Kris actively trying to stop us from acting on our own and interfering with their plans and whatever it is they’re trying to do (and honestly, they need a break from us... they need enrichment).

However, in the Weird Route... it’s a slightly different sequence of events as instead of Susie asking Noelle if they can work on their project at her house, Noelle is the one who asks them to come over specifically to talk to Kris. It’s when Kris tries to lock us away the first time that things deviate and Noelle asks Kris to talk to her in her bedroom alone and Kris throws us in the room with the empty gift boxes and goes to talk to Noelle at her request.

If we go through the vents and arrive in her room, we can listen in on their conversation and it’s here that we learn that Kris visited Noelle during Chapter 2 when they left their house with us locked in the bathroom to try and reassure her that it was all a dream and take the ThornRing from her and promise her that they’re trying to protect her. We’re unable to get into her room thanks to the vent blocking our entry within...

Until Noelle asks a question, giving us an opportunity to enter.

HERE is where something very interesting happens. Whenever we’re given dialogue options, Kris says them out loud. They sound odd, Noelle even describing it as though they’re ‘talking through a speaker,’ but they will say it (even if they will sometimes not cooperate given the ‘of course not’ option when Ralsei asks if it’s normal for a Darkner to feel the way that he does). If we select ‘proceed,’ Kris will say it out loud and we will be in the room within reach of Kris and we can take over their body again and make their choices for them. We get multiple opportunities to abort the route even now, but this is the first chance... and it’s significant.

Because if we select ‘please don’t,’ Kris... doesn’t say it out loud. Noelle internally comments on Kris staying silent and doesn’t continue, simply glad to ‘have them back.’ This is the only time that a dialogue option we’re given doesn’t result in Kris saying it.

Which can only mean one thing – Kris wasn’t directing that at Noelle, they were directing it at us. And depending on what choice we make... I think it will have reaching consequences for Chapter 5.

Aborting a Weird Route in Chapter 2 has a very specific outcome. If you progress through the Weird Route to the point that you get the ThornRing, but don’t equip it to Noelle and abort the route afterwards, you are then able to craft a very specific weapon called the Twisted Sword by fusing a ThornRing with a PureCrystal, an item that we cannot yet obtain that is speculated to be the result of obtaining all five ShadowCrystals. This means that there is an item that can be crafted only through aborting a Weird Route in Chapter 2.

What this moment means is significant in regards to Kris’s relationship with us as the player. Without Chapter 3’s Sword Route as context, this is merely a desperate bid on Kris’s part to plead with us to not force them to hurt Noelle again. But with Chapter 3’s Sword Route as context... this is Kris reaching out to us as an equal, as someone who understands what we are and why we’re doing any of this. This is Kris pleading ‘I understand why you’re doing this, I know you just want to see what happens, I know this is a game to you, but this is my life – so as someone who understands you and what you are and why you’re doing this, I am begging you please don’t do this.’ This isn’t the only point where you can abort the route (and if you enter the room, but linger before reuniting with Kris, they will grab her and run out of the room with Noelle before you can get the chance to get to them, also aborting the route), but this is the one point where Kris is talking to you, pleading with you to choose not to.

Depending on what you do here, it could change the course of Chapter 5. If you choose to listen to Kris and abort the route here, Kris is going to realize that not only can they communicate with you, but they can reason with you. If you choose to abort the route here, I think Kris is going to try communicating with you from the beginning of Chapter 5 through the dialogue options to try and figure you out and maybe even figure out how to work with and cooperate with you. If you didn’t do a Weird Route or aborted a Weird Route in Chapter 2, I think Kris is going to try to communicate with you either close to or at the end of Chapter 5.

And if you go through with the Chapter 4 Weird Route despite everything... Kris won’t fucking bother. They are instead going to be your adversary, they are going to make you getting what you want as difficult as possible and they are going to do everything they can to stand in your way.

One last thing I want to talk about before touching on the ending of Chapter 4’s Weird Route compared to the normal route is your answer to Noelle asking ‘who’s going to hear?’ You can either answer with ‘...’ or ‘me.’ If you are to take this literally, it doesn’t make sense for this to be an option for Kris to even give. We are not them, they are not us. That divide is sharply drawn and the only power we have is through the options Kris gives us through their thoughts.

...but if we are to take it to mean that ‘me’ refers to the version of themself that they hate, the version of themself that we bring out by acting on their worst impulses and their most intrusive thoughts, the ugliest and most dangerous version of them that we make real by playing the Weird Route... then this is the culmination of their self-hatred and what we represent in the Weird Route to them.

‘Me’ isn’t us in a literal sense. It’s Kris accepting what we represent to them when we force them onto the Weird Route, resigning themself to it – the parts of themself that they hate the most, the worst version of them that you made them into. It’s why they’re willing to hurt us even though it hurts them... it’s why they kick the shelf holding everyone’s prayer candles in the church if we try to pray to Noelle, Susie even commenting that Kris’s candle is there, too.

On the Weird Route, they do, in-fact, hate us... but they hate themself just as much.

Important to note that you are still capable of aborting past this, but only to a point... because once you make it undeniable that the Dark World is real and what happened to Noelle wasn’t a dream... Kris has no choice but to force your hand and deny you a choice in concluding what you intended to do to Noelle. Because if Noelle learns that Dark Worlds are real and that what happened was real... she will interfere with Kris’s plans... and whatever it is that Kris wants is more important than anything...

So, they’ll force you to see it through once you make it impossible for Kris to fix it... but they’ll hate you for forcing their hand for the rest of the game.

Finally, the reason why the ending of Chapter 4 is different if you go through with the Weird Route than if you don’t. It’s important to note that the main differences between the Weird Route and the normal route is how much Susie is able to interfere with it. It’s interesting how much of the Weird Route just... cuts Susie out. So much of the Weird Route ends up preventing Susie from getting involved or changing the outcome in any meaningful way, she doesn’t even get a say in any of it. Given how much Susie is able to influence and change normally, this is rather peculiar...

Which ties back into what Gerson says to Kris after this point.

On the normal route, after Susie leaves and Kris goes to bed while Toriel and Sans are downstairs continuing, Susie will eventually come back to yell at them both and will leave again, looking back up to the house towards Kris as the screen splits to focus on both Susie and Kris, with Susie lamenting that ‘we’re not going to let that happen... are we?’ while notably looking back at the Delta Rune that’s displayed above the front door. Kris is about to follow Susie when the phone calls them, reminding them of their promise.

But in the Weird Route, Susie doesn’t come back... Kris is instead interrupted by a phone call from Carol, confirming with Kris that they’re going to the festival with Noelle and telling them that Noelle is looking forward to seeing them tomorrow. This is the only time that the ending of a chapter has changed based on our choices... and it’s one that omits Susie from it.

Because if Susie were to catch any wind of anything happening in the Weird Route... she would not let it happen. That’s how strong her agency and self-determination is, to the point that the only way to prevent her from interfering is to cut her out entirely.

Which leaves Kris... alone. They can’t rely on Susie to change the outcome of this, they can’t rely on her to try and stop you or prevent you from doing what you intend to do, and they can’t rely on her to protect Noelle from you...

So, without Susie... it’s up to them to stand in your way and change the outcome... it’s their turn to change fate.

* Susie is the heart of Deltarune and the key to everything

For as much hinges on the player, for as much as our importance is emphasized by the story and the major players within it, for as much as both Kris and Ralsei need us... we aren’t as important as Susie. Even though we are the ones that drive the story and Kris needs us to progress, the world itself no longer existing if we don’t play... without Susie, there is no story. Because she is the one that sets Kris’s true path in motion. Because yes, while they would not have become friends if not for us, it’s the things that Susie and Kris do independent of us that makes them really friends.

And without Susie, there is no story... there is no future... there is no hope. It’s even no exaggeration to say that Susie is the most important person to Kris at every part of the journey from beginning to the end.

Even at the beginning when they are at odds, they are still important to each other.

While they are initially at odds in Chapter 1, they are far more similar than either of them realize. Both of them are rather nihilistic at the beginning, and yet Kris seems to be more comfortable with Susie than with Ralsei based on what we understand about them in Chapter 2. Susie bullies them, though it’s clear that it’s because of her own personal issues (we never see her parents, for example, so it’s clear that there’s some sort of sore spot there). She fixates on Kris’s mother and we find out in Chapter 4 that Toriel saw Susie crying in the graveyard and took her out for a meal at the diner to get to know her. There’s a blog post that Noelle posted during the Spamton Sweepstakes titled ‘the newest girl’ where Noelle is talking about when one day, Susie was threatening Kris by commenting on their apple-scented shampoo and biting into an apple to warn them about what will happen to them before throwing it at them... because Kris was laughing at her and actually caught the apple. And took a bite out of it. Which only made Susie angrier at them, grabbing them by the shirt and telling them that one day, their mother’s going to get sick of them and that once she does, someone might make them disappear and she’ll realize how happy she is without them.

They don’t say anything for a moment... but when they do, they say it so quietly that Noelle doesn’t hear them. But whatever it was, it causes Susie to stop and change her demanour... and she runs out of the classroom as fast as she can. We don’t know exactly when this happens, but given the timeline of events and how Susie’s attitude towards Kris’s mother changes between this blog post and the beginning of Chapter 1 and the context that we get from her in Chapter 4, I think it’s safe to say that whatever it was that Kris said to her was the reason that Toriel found Susie crying in the graveyard that day. That combined with whatever it was that Kris said to her changed how she acted towards Kris, if only slightly.

Because what she says after threatening to bite Kris’s face off after shoving them against a locker is a different tone than what she says in Noelle’s blog post. She says that Kris has a good mother and that it would be a shame to make her bury her child. The contrast between how she viewed their relationship before and after is rather prominent. Given that we never see her parents and don’t even know where she lives and her reaction to having her own room and living space in Castle Town provided by Ralsei, it’s clear that Susie’s relationship with her parents is... complicated. And likely very strained. She goes from thinking that Kris’s mother will get sick of them and will be glad that Kris is gone if they disappear and how much better her life would be without them to knowing that Toriel would mourn Kris if something happened to them and she had to bury them. In either case, Susie’s mentality frames Kris as ‘the bad kid’ or as a burden in Toriel’s life, but her perspective changes from seeing Kris’s presence in Toriel’s life as a burden to their disappearance being a burden to her instead.

But either way, what she says to Kris in Noelle’s blog post... sounds a lot like projection. She even comments in later chapters about how all she ever really was was ‘the bad kid’ and that’s all that she thought that she was good for before meeting Kris, Lancer, Noelle, and Ralsei.

And yet Kris... doesn’t share that resentment towards her. Kris reacts jovially to Susie’s initial teasing, almost like they interpret it as some form of play, and they don’t resist when Susie handles them roughly or threatens them. They even act shocked when Susie suggests that Kris has been waiting for an excuse to get rid of her ‘like everyone else,’ Susie even commenting on it. This line alone says something rather meaningful about how she views herself. At the beginning of Chapter 1, Kris and Susie are at the same place emotionally... and they both are steeped deep in the abyss of depersonalization and nihilism.

This may be why Kris is so quick to attach to Susie compared to Ralsei even though her relationship with them has been antagonistic until the end of Chapter 1. Ralsei talks a lot about hope and about how much their choices matter and to someone like Kris with the worldview that they have at this point and how little control they feel that they have in their own life... these words ring hollow.

While with Susie... she simply says what Kris already believes to be true. ‘Your choices don’t matter.’ And for someone like Kris, someone like Susie is someone who is very real, someone that they understand very easily despite the circumstances that they’re in, and someone who isn’t going to give them false hopes or empty platitudes. Even though Susie is hostile towards them, Kris trusts her, maybe even likes her. And for someone like Kris, it’s easy to see why. Kris can trust her to be honest about what she thinks and what she believes, Kris can trust her not to lie to them about the circumstances around them, and Kris can trust that whatever it is that she says isn’t a lie or said out of pity... she validates them and what they believe to be true, even if it may not be the healthiest perspective at the beginning.

But the thing is, as she changes... so do they.

Because even though Susie shares Kris’s nihilistic worldview, Susie doesn’t let anyone else tell her what to do or what to be. She resists Ralsei’s view of her as a hero up until the end, resists every attempt to get her to obey the whims of what the prophecy demands. She is effectively someone who can’t be tamed or controlled, even by us. Our control is limited to Kris and only Kris. We can make them give commands, but that doesn’t mean that Susie will obey them. Ralsei will, of course, but even Ralsei has opinions that he won’t agree with and will refuse certain things no matter how much we try and force it. Our control only extends as far as Kris (and I will talk about Noelle in a moment because she is incredibly important).

And this is why Susie is the heart of Deltarune and the key to everything that the game is about, the prophecy, the end of the game, her character arc is the driving force for everyone else’s. Even though Kris is the protagonist, Susie is the force of change that drives the direction that the story goes in... which is why her change in character is so crucial for her bonds with others in the story.

Because even though she struggles and outright refuses to bond with Kris and Ralsei... she does make a friend in Lancer. And this one action is what cements her role for the foreseeable future. This bond between them is the very thing that forges who Susie is, the very thing that helps Susie to completely shatter her own nihilism and feelings of depersonalization and grabs her own power for herself... which is the very power that inspires the greatest changes in everyone else, Kris included.

Susie and Lancer, despite being polar opposites in attitude (with Susie being very intense and brooding and Lancer being extremely goofy and silly), they are very similar in a lot of ways which bond them closely together. In the same way that Ralsei and Kris are mirrors of each other and thus help each other heal and grow, Lancer and Susie do the same for each other. Lancer is the son of the Card King and the prince of Card Castle. His father is ‘the bad guy’ and follows the whims of the Knight and while Lancer does his best to be ‘the bad guy’ like his father, he is frequently a disappointment to him and is mistreated and disregarded. Lancer is looked down on by his father and seeks validation everywhere else, including Roulx Kaard and, when we arrive, Susie.

Because to Lancer, Susie is the ultimate ‘bad guy.’ She’s scary, she’s cool, she’s intimidating, and she does whatever she wants and doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. And at first, Susie thinks that Lancer is ridiculous and silly and is just as antagonistic towards him as anyone else. However, it’s when she encounters him again after he takes some notes from her and then asks for her approval and her opinion on his approach. It catches her by surprise that Lancer actually looks up to her for being the rough, prickly, and aggressive person that she is because she’s never had a positive reaction to it. And Lancer has never been positively acknowledged for his efforts by someone that he admires, so it’s through this that they bond rather quickly and immediately, with Susie splitting from the party to spend more time with Lancer and commit more ‘evil deeds’ with him to hinder Kris and Ralsei’s march through the fields and the Scarlet Forest. None of it really puts Ralsei or Kris in danger so much as inconveniences them, but it’s the first time that either Lancer or Susie are genuinely having fun and bonding with someone that appreciates the other for their unfiltered and raw selves. It’s notable that the entire reason that Susie rejects the idea of ‘being good’ is because ‘being bad’ was all that she thought was good for.

Which is why, when Ralsei and Kris beat Susie and Lancer in a fight to determine who gets to join who’s team, Susie and Lancer actually get along with Kris and Ralsei once they start travelling together, even talking sincerely for a brief stint as they walk towards Card Castle together. Because even though Susie and Lancer were ‘the bad guys,’ Susie made a genuine connection with someone... Susie met someone that genuinely liked her even though she was very aggressive and violent and impulsive. Someone that genuinely admired those qualities in her and liked her.

It’s not just that Susie made a genuine friend, though... it’s that she realized that it’s possible for people just like her for her. That she made friends with someone that she genuinely cared about and wanted to protect and see happy like Lancer. It’s what begins to put the idea in her head that she’s capable of being loved... that there are people she can genuinely be friends with... that she doesn’t have to just be ‘the bad kid.’ Being with Lancer made her realize that she is actually capable of being kind and that others can genuinely be kind to her in return. That kindness does actually have power in her world.

And it’s what starts her journey towards rejecting the idea of being ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but just being... Susie. To not have to put on a face or a persona to either protect herself or resign herself to what others have decided that she is.

That she could just be real... and be loved for it. That being ‘Susie’ is something worth caring about.

Which is why it’s such a heavy blow to Susie that Lancer betrays them and locks them up in the dungeon of Card Castle. Because for once in her life, she thought that she had something genuine. She thought that she found a real friend, someone that liked her for every part of her that had brought her pain and rejection before. Someone that she understood and was like her, someone that knew what it was like to be looked down on as a disappointment and had no real friends, since everyone else in Card Castle is forced to listen to Lancer by his father (Susie even going out of her way to say that Lancer doesn’t need them, that he can hang out with ‘us,’ including Ralsei and Kris in her worldview that includes Lancer – even if she makes fun of and belittles Ralsei and Kris at this point, she still prioritizes them being included and not left alone... like Lancer or herself). This is the first time that she’s happy, and the first time that she’s made someone else happy. And it was all... a lie. It’s no wonder that she attacks Lancer out of fury and rage for it, believing that none of it was ever real.

But even still... Lancer can’t bring himself to hurt Susie, preferring to just let her destroy him than hurt her. And Susie, despite herself, can’t bring herself to kill him either... even though she’s hurt by him, she has effectively been changed by being friends with Lancer. She can’t bring herself to harm the first and so far only real friend that she’s ever had... she can’t sever that joy that she felt, even if the betrayal hurts. She just begs him to get out of the way, but Lancer refuses because he doesn’t want Susie and his father to hurt each other.

And once Susie realizes that Lancer is still her friend, that what they had is still genuine and always had been... that he was trying to protect her, she relents and softens. She’s not angry, anymore... she understands. After all, she had been protective of him this whole time. And since Lancer’s afraid of Susie and his father hurting each other, Susie wants to protect him, too... and agrees that she won’t hurt him. She’ll just talk to him, much like Ralsei and Kris had been doing (if you had been doing a pacifist run). Susie is considering different approaches now that there’s something else at stake for her.

This furthers her change in Chapter 1... the idea that she could hurt someone like Lancer out of anger and lash out and have them still care about her, still choose her. It doesn’t fully sink in just yet, but it starts to change her approach. It starts to make her more willing to trust Kris and Ralsei at this point, more willing to try doing something different than what she had been used to doing her whole life. It starts to make her realize that she can be more than what she had believed that she had to be... that she was good for.

She starts to realize that she can decide for herself what it means to be ‘Susie’ and that she has options. She can choose for herself and be cared about no matter her choices because she’s Susie.

And being Susie... means something.

But it’s during the battle with the Card King that truly cements Susie’s heel turn. Lancer’s father threatens his life to Ralsei, Kris, and Susie when they try to talk to him and when Lancer finally manages to break free, the fight begins with the Card King referring to himself as ‘the bad guy’ to them.

Once the battle is finished, however, Ralsei takes pity on him thanks to his faux remorse and heals him, giving the king the strength and power to defeat them and take advantage of their surprise. He knocks them all down with his attacks, but despite this, Susie still resists and tries to get up, only for the Card King to try and attack her again.

And this is where Susie cements her decision to abandon her nihilism and her own form of depersonalization. This is the moment that Kris and Susie are truly friends.

Because Kris reacts immediately and leaps up to protect her with their shield... and they do this without our input.

Susie is shocked by this, shocked that Kris would protect her after everything that she did to them, after having bullied them and had been so uncooperative and combative with them. They still protect her, and they do so without you doing it... this is their decision, they care enough about Susie to protect her. Susie might not think of them as her friend, but Kris cares enough about her to consider her their friend.

And this when her heel turn is complete and decisively so. The king knocks them both back down and knocks Kris away, lumbering over to them to pick them up and prepare to destroy them away from Susie and Ralsei. The king is an intimidating and aggressive figure, but it’s what he says to Kris that makes what this represents clear to us. It’s when he picks Kris up, about to end them, and mirrors what Susie said to Kris at the beginning of the chapter when she pushed them into the locker.

“Quiet people PISS ME OFF.”

It’s this moment when Susie makes her decision. The Card King is the representation of the version of her that she had to be because it’s what everyone else decided that she was, what she had to be in order to protect herself, what she had to be because she didn’t believe that could be anything else – didn’t believe that she was good for anything else. This is the version of her that she’s rejecting by protecting Kris, someone who has decided that despite everything she had put them through, protected her and chose her. Despite everything, Kris believed that Susie was someone worth protecting... no matter what.

She rejects the nihilism that she once resigned herself to, rejects this false persona of herself and embraces what she now knows she’s capable of being, what she now wants to be.

“Hey. Get. Away. From my. Friend.”

This is the first time we see her without her hair obscuring her face. And this is the version of her that we see from now on going forward. This is what she chooses. This is what she decides that she wants to be. This is what Kris and Lancer and even Ralsei have both seen in her and what she now sees in them and is choosing to embrace.

Susie is rejecting being ‘the bad guy.’ And in doing so, choosing to be ‘a friend.’ She doesn’t have to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because that doesn’t really mean anything to her, not anymore.

But a friend? That does mean something to her, now... and she doesn’t have to be a ‘good’ kid or a ‘bad’ kid to be a friend because her friends like her for being Susie, regardless of whether she’s the good kid or the bad kid. She doesn’t have to change who she is to please them... she only has to embrace who she already is, who she wants to be.

And whatever it means to be a friend? That’s up to her, now. Whatever that means, she’ll do it her way. Because all she needs to be in order to be a friend... is to be Susie.

Now, being Susie means something... it’s something worth being.

This doesn’t mean that Susie goes soft or even starts being ‘nice’ in a traditional sense. She doesn’t abandon the way that she is, aggressive, impulsive, rash, intense, these are all things that are part of who she is. She just doesn’t have to fit them into the idea of ‘the bad kid,’ anymore. She can just be herself and express these qualities in ways that she actually wants, ways that are more natural and genuine for her and those around her that appreciate and care for her for who she is. Even Ralsei concedes that his method of extending everyone mercy doesn’t always work, taking responsibility for the king attacking them thanks to Ralsei healing him. However, Susie pushes back and admits that she wasn’t fully right in her method of fighting and pushing everyone away and antagonizing them all the time. She comes to a more nuanced understanding of how she wants to approach things, now that she has a more robust and informed perspective on relationships and what she actually wants out of them.

Sometimes there’s people you have to fight because they just don’t want to talk or accept mercy or kindness... but if you never let your guard down, you lose out on making genuine connections with people and could even end up hurting the people you care about in the process.

This is the beginning of what Susie’s role in everything is as a vector of change. Once she decides that she can choose who she wants to be and that she gets to define what it means to be Susie, her influence on others immediately starts with Ralsei and even Kris. Despite our control and influence, what Kris and Susie have is real and genuine. The both of them started at a similar position and are growing at the same time. Even though we don’t really get the sense that Kris’s worldview and perspective is changing much, it’s easy to see how fond Kris is of Susie and the positive impact that she has on them... how much they care about and value her presence in their life and especially on this journey. Even if we don’t get any direct references or dialogue regarding Kris’s thoughts about this, it’s clear to see that Susie’s growing refusal to accept anyone telling her what she gets to be and what future she gets to build is inspiring them.

Because at the end of Chapter 4, our perspective is split between Kris in their bedroom and Susie outside of their house after she finishes yelling at Toriel and Sans. And it’s after she leaves and walks away that Kris starts to exit the window to follow her... only to be interrupted by the phone call reminding them of the promise they made, of the agreement they’re still upholding.

As if to remind them not to stray from the path that has been decided for them... as if choosing to follow Susie means choosing to decide for themself what they want...

And whoever Kris is beholden to cannot allow that to happen.

But it’s not just Kris that Susie’s infectious newfound hope bleeds into, Susie’s self-assurance and newfound passion for her sense of agency bleeds into everyone else that she holds dear. It influences Kris, definitely, but it also starts influencing Ralsei, especially in Chapter 2. It starts when Kris, Ralsei, and Susie are fighting against the Sweet Cap’n Cakes and Susie learns S-Action and forces Ralsei to learn R-Action so that Kris isn’t the only one that can act or tell them to act, even if Ralsei doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t resist. And it happens again when Kris is given a choice as to whether to go with Susie or Ralsei.

And no matter what choice you make, Susie decides to take Ralsei with her, once again exercising her newfound passionate agency by deciding that she wants to hang out with Ralsei, much to his protests. This is the point in the game where Kris is able to travel with Noelle, and where the player is able to initiate the Chapter 2 Weird Route, but I’ll talk about that in a second once I’m done with talking about Susie’s relationship with Ralsei because Susie’s agency and refusal to let anyone force her to do something that she doesn’t want to do is very relevant for Noelle.

But this time of Ralsei spending time with just Susie away from Kris and the player is instrumental in Ralsei’s development. Ralsei’s perspective has been a rather sheltered and rigid one, one where pacifism was the correct path and anything less than unwavering kindness and accommodation was wrong or mean. But it’s only with spending time with Susie that he realizes how limited his perspective was and comes to appreciate Susie for who she is, abrasiveness and all. But Ralsei also impacts Susie as well, even teaching her how to use healing magic (it’s not very good and costs a massive amount of TP at this point, but this does become more relevant in Chapter 4) while Susie teaches him sarcasm. Despite how much they’re polar opposites of each other, they’re each a very positive and encouraging influence on each other once they let go of the idea of the roles that they’re ‘supposed’ to fill and are able to just... be themselves.

Ralsei comments as such in the Acid Tunnel of Love in Chapter 2 once Kris and Ralsei are separated from Susie:

“Kris... hey, Kris... is it s-strange to say... It’s nice spending time alone with you like this...?”

(Notably, if you say ‘I feel the same way,’ Ralsei will turn directly to the player when he answers with ‘I’m happy hearing you say that, Kris...’)

“When we first met, I... I was so nervous about first impressions. I even hid my face so you wouldn’t see... ‘How do I even be a friend...?’ All I have to do is be nice... is what I thought. But I’m starting to realize, being friends... Is more than that, isn’t it? Susie... sometimes she isn’t nice at all! She’s selfish, she’s rude, she’s sarcastic... But... Isn’t it wonderful that she’s... her? Is what I... started thinking, today. And of course, Kris. It’s nice that... you’re you.”

We can see rather clearly how similar Ralsei and Susie actually are, because their core struggle when they first meet each other is actually the same... just in different directions. Neither of them really knew how to be friends or what it meant to be friends, Ralsei having this rigid shallow view of what it means to be friends and Susie rejecting the idea that she was even capable of it in the first place. They both had rather rigid views of themselves, even. Ralsei has even chastised Susie for a lot of her behaviours in Chapter 1, but here in Chapter 2? Susie hasn’t changed much. The only difference is that she’s happier and more emotionally open and honest and more confident in herself, but her actual personality hasn’t changed.

And yet... Ralsei admires her for it. The very things that he once chastised her for are now things that he finds endearing and appreciates now that he’s had a chance to spend time with just her in a more natural and organic setting where they can just... hang out and spend time with each other and rub off on each other. It’s as if Susie having proof that she’s worthy and capable of being liked and loved by others just as she is and doesn’t need to be something else to be accepted makes her so confident and self-assured that it starts rubbing off on others... and it starts rubbing off on Ralsei, how sure she is in herself and how authentic she is now that she’s embracing every aspect of herself with her whole heart.

If you choose to answer with ‘it’s nice that Ralsei is Ralsei,’ he’s not quite sure what to make of that. No one has ever said that to him before us and he doesn’t really have much of an opinion on that. He’s new to all of this, so it’s all a huge learning curve for him. He isn’t even sure what being ‘Ralsei-like’ even means for him, since he doesn’t have much of a sense of self to begin with, clearly trying to be accommodating to both Kris and the player during this conversation in an effort to appease both.

And yet, it’s this self-assuredness in Susie, this raw and unfiltered sense of self that she’s newly imbued with and fully embracing and spreading to others that Ralsei starts to really latch onto as a positive quality of Susie’s... which is something that continues to change him.

Because this continues throughout Chapters 3 and 4. When Ralsei explains to Susie that he isn’t real and can’t go to the festival with her and even suggests that she just forget about him and make some real friend, Susie refuses to accept that. She refuses to accept a reality where her friendship with Ralsei isn’t real, that he isn’t real, and she does so in her typical abrasive and aggressive way. Susie rejects the idea that Ralsei can’t be a part of her life or her world so vehemently that Ralsei simply can’t refuse her, even though he knows that no matter how much he wants to, he can’t join her in the Light World. His opinion of her changes more and more, he sees so much goodness and brightness in her more and more... and in an odd way, in Chapter 4, Ralsei starts becoming more like Susie was like at the beginning of Chapter 1 when they first met. Susie refuses to accept the idea that her choices don’t matter and that she can’t decide what her future looks like and that her destiny is already decided while Ralsei is resigned to it, having tried to fight fate and seeing with his own eyes that none of their choices mattered... that nothing changed.

But he still holds onto that feeble hope... because of Susie.

Ralsei had been hiding the final prophecy from Susie throughout all of Chapter 4, which had been causing some friction between them that comes to a head during the Second Sanctuary after Ralsei saves them from the Gerson statue and Susie snaps at Ralsei for how much he’s been keeping from them... and he breaks down, confessing to being afraid of all of the things that he knows and being afraid of saying them and Susie is... so gentle with him. She reassures him that she doesn’t have to see the final prophecy and trusts him if he needs to go on ahead to prevent her from seeing it, she’s willing to make that sacrifice for him upon seeing him break down and scared like that. Despite having initially been rather mean and callous towards Ralsei when they first met, after Chapter 1... Susie becomes Ralsei’s biggest advocate even in protest of him personally, outraged at the idea that Ralsei doesn’t think he deserves a bedroom like they do and so upset at the idea of his room being empty while their rooms were full that she promises to fill it to the brim with furniture and various things that would be his. Having a room of her own personalized for her was very important, so seeing him give himself so little (not even eating his own cake that he made for them) makes her so adamant in compensating for that on his behalf. She refuses to let him neglect himself the way she’s been neglected just because he thinks he should be... he deserves to have things that are his, a room that’s his.

Their relationship and each of their respective character arcs influenced by each other culminate in Chapter 4 once Susie discovers the last prophecy, having run ahead of Ralsei and Kris after defeating the Titan and rejecting it. I’ll come back to this at the very end of this whole thing because that’s going to be the most important thread when it comes to concluding this.

But regardless, while Ralsei is profusely apologizing to Susie for having allowed her to see the last prophecy, Susie doesn’t get angry at Ralsei the way she got when Lancer betrayed her in Chapter 1, further testament to how much she’s grown and changed since then. She instead has this to say:

“Shut up. The hell are you apologizing for? You’re worried about THAT!? Seriously!? ...this stupid prophecy? Like something like that would happen. I wouldn’t let it happen... Kris wouldn’t let it happen... And obviously YOU wouldn’t let it happen. So... Why wouldn’t you laugh? It’s just stupid. So stop crying, ‘k? Everything’s gonna be all right.”

Ralsei is... stunned. Completely taken aback. Which is understandable, given the way that she’s been from the start until now and with how excited she was about the prophecy and how much it had already predicted, so knowing the truth... Ralsei didn’t expect this reaction from her. But it’s interesting to see that Susie was so attached to the idea of being chosen for something important, that she was chosen to be a hero when all her life, she had never been chosen for anything, the only thing that she was good for was being ‘the bad kid.’ This prophecy had meant so much to her up until this point.

Until it makes a decision about her future that she doesn’t like...

But she’s not angry. She doesn’t get angry, she doesn’t lash out, she doesn’t attack, she doesn’t even yell. She just... rejects it. Without hesitation and without any reluctance. Once again, she refuses to accept an outcome that she didn’t decide... she refuses to let someone else determine who she gets to be or what she gets to do. She refuses to let someone else decide what her future is going to be.

And Ralsei... is undone. He’s had a taste of what Susie’s capable of and how much she cares about him before in Chapter 3, but this? This is what makes him see something incredibly special in Susie... this is where Ralsei truly realizes how much he admires and looks up to her. How much he cares about her... he is utterly in awe of her despite himself. She’s changed so much... and thanks to her, so has he.

He wasn’t scared, before... but now he is. And he has hope anyway... and this is what he has to say afterwards:

“Susie... she’s... She’s a really really nice person, Kris. How can she be so kind...? ...how? I’m sorry, Kris. I’m sorry I didn’t say the whole prophecy at first. I just... I thought if I said something different... If we did something different... If we were just kind enough... Perhaps by the time we got here... it would change. But... but no matter what we do... Our fate... is already decided.”

He breaks down briefly and apologizes for taking up the attention, but comfort him... and he’ll confess to his most honest feelings:

“I... I’m scared. It’s getting harder and harder to just stand there smiling all the time. To be the one pretending I’m not afraid, too. But... I... Being with you two... I... The more I’m with you two, I realize... Friendship... isn’t just... About being happy all the time. It’s something far, far greater than I could’ve imagined... I... I want to. I want to believe again. I want to believe... it can change! That there isn’t just one ending! Susie’s hope... Her naïve hope... It’s... infectious, isn’t it, Kris? ...So, until we see fate with our own eyes... Let’s believe, too.”

Everything to do with Susie, everything that Ralsei admires about Susie... everything that makes Susie Susie... is what makes her so kind. Her refusal to accept a fate and an identity that she didn’t decide, her adamant refusal to accept that nobody else is undeserving of being cared for, undeserving of a home and a place of belonging, Susie’s refusal to compromise the things that are important to her and her own sense of self once she embraces and accepts that her very nature and future is her own making... this is her greatest strength. This is the source of her kindness. This is what makes her the freest and strongest character in the entirety of Deltarune. And it’s what she encourages in others. She refuses to accept that Tenna and Ralsei’s fates are to just be thrown away, insists that ‘you don’t have to take being thrown away.’ She advocates for Noelle’s and Ralsei’s agency and autonomy. She stands up for Kris when Toriel and Sans are being negligent and irresponsible towards them, for Noelle when her mother is being overly controlling towards her, and for Lancer when his father is trying to hurt him. She bonds so easily with Gerson because he sees how strong she is and believes that she can make her own fate. She refuses to believe in a future that she doesn’t decide, refuses to accept that her story even has an ending at all. Her unbreakable sense of self, her unshakable resolve and conviction... she inspires it in others.

And it’s what will help free Kris. Because even with us there, they have a bond and a friendship that is real and genuine and theirs. They act of their own accord, even without us, especially when it comes to Susie. They share secret messages, little looks between each other that only they know and we don’t. And once Susie finds out about us... once she realizes that Kris has been sharing a body with us... once she realizes what it means for Kris to be the cage in the prophecy... she won’t falter.

Susie is an advocate for the self, an advocate for the truth, an advocate for self-determination... why would it be any different for Kris just because of us? If anything, it would only further motivate her to help Kris to reclaim themself and be free of us... or, she might even try and understand us and try to have a relationship with both Kris and us. It’s hard to say, but regardless... Susie will have Kris’s back no matter what. If she’s unwilling to accept that Ralsei isn’t her friend because he’s ‘not real,’ then she won’t accept that Kris isn’t her friend just because they’re sharing a body with us.

No matter what... she won’t turn her back on Kris. No matter what.

And finally... Noelle. Noelle is a lot like Ralsei in a lot of ways, but also not quite. Ralsei bears a lot of weight and responsibility and deals with it by being overly accommodating and being a people pleaser while Noelle... has learned that appeasing those who are in control over her is the only way to keep herself safe. Noelle even comments that Kris is the only person in her life that she feels like she can say no to and given the new context that we have thanks to Chapter 4, it’s easy to understand why. Ralsei’s actions aren’t motivated by a psychological need to survive like Noelle’s are. Whenever she feels as if she’s in danger, her first reaction is to fawn, to appease the threat to make them not harm her or target her. She fawns when Carol returns home and confiscates the guitar from Susie, Carol’s reaction so uncomfortable to Susie that she’s visibly terrified. She also fawns when we are forcing the ThornRing on Noelle in the Chapter 4 Weird Route towards Kris, her reaction mirroring the one towards Carol exactly.

As outlined by YouTuber Daryl Talks Games, Noelle’s mindset is one that is known as ‘learned helplessness.’ It’s the idea that because you’re struggling with something that everyone else accomplishes easily, you learn that your efforts aren’t even worth trying because they would be of no consequence. Why bother trying if it doesn’t change anything? This is the position that Noelle occupies, and given the controlling environment that she’s grown up in, it’s easy to see why. The biggest example of this is in the Chapter 2 Weird Route. When we’re able to travel with Noelle in Chapter 2, we’re able to exert an amount of control over her uncharacteristic of anyone else. Not by directly controlling her, but through subtler manipulation tactics.

Remember what I said earlier about our control only extending as far as Kris’s can as a person? This is what I mean. Kris can’t make Susie wear something that she doesn’t want to and Kris can’t even make Ralsei do something that he doesn’t want to either. Even someone as people pleasing and accommodating as Ralsei is will refuse and resist something if he doesn’t want to do it. But Noelle? Sure, she can resist, she can refuse... but only to a point. Because in an environment as controlling as that of her own household’s during her upbringing, Noelle never really had much of a choice. This is where the fawning response comes in, when appeasing the threat is better than resisting them. Learned helplessness ties into this. Noelle is only able to refuse Kris, and us, a certain number of times before she gives in and relents. Susie and Ralsei never had the upbringing that Noelle had, which is why Noelle is the only one that the player can control through Kris.

In a home environment like Noelle’s, she learned that she doesn’t get a say in her choices or what she wants. She frequently lets the people around her make her choices for her, agrees to things that she doesn’t want to agree to just to appease them, and will avoid conflicts at all costs if she can. Kris is the only person that she feels like she can say no to, which may be the reason she’s missed them so much despite her mother likely being the person that tended to force them together when they were children. It may have been forced, but Noelle does genuinely like Kris and care about them as a friend... even if she may feel like that feeling isn’t reciprocal.

But regardless, Kris is a safe person for her... because Kris understands that feeling and doesn’t want to put her through that.

Because if Kris is the only person that has ever been safe to say no to, then that means that every single other person in her life has treated her ‘no’s as invitations for negotiations. Her voice never had weight or meaning, her boundaries were never something that were hers to draw, merely arguments to have. Her agency was never something that belonged to her, something to respect... merely something to debate. Boundaries were never lines to be drawn... merely terms to challenge.

Noelle learned that her ‘no’s were nothing more than invitations to debate her own rights and agency in her own home, that her own personal comfort and choices were secondary to the desires of everyone else that had power over her if they were even considered at all. And when you learn that your ‘no’s don’t carry any meaning... why try and refuse, anymore? Why bother trying to be or do what you want when you don’t have a say? Why bother trying to fight... when it would be easier to just do what they want? It’s all the same outcome anyway, isn’t it? At least if you just keep your head down and do what they want, you don’t have to make it a fight every time.

Why bother trying to have an identity or a choice when it was always up for debate? When it’s been made clear over and over again that it’s not up to you? Why bother trying to fight it when it would be easier to just... accept that your life, identity, and choices never belonged to you?

Isn’t it easier that way? After all... they clearly know better. Why would you doubt them?

This is why we’re able to control Noelle. And this is also why Susie is often sidelined or excluded entirely from Noelle’s side of the Weird Route in both Chapter 2 and Chapter 4. Susie is Noelle’s complete opposite in just about every way, save for their shared morbid interests. Susie is the type of person that Noelle wishes that she could be, unafraid, bold, unyielding, so sure of who she is and so uncompromising when it comes to who she is and what she wants. Noelle wishes so badly that she was like that and it’s what she finds so attractive and compelling in Susie.

And it’s why Susie is excluded from the Weird Route in order for us to maintain control over Noelle. Much like her other friends, Susie advocates and sticks up for Noelle much in the same way. She stands up for her when Berdly calls her and she reluctantly agrees to go to the festival with him, even though she doesn’t want to, and Susie snatches her phone and tells Berdly that she doesn’t want to go with him. When Noelle asks Susie why she did that, Susie makes that observation and bluntly tells her that ‘you don’t wanna go and some people just don’t get it until you scream ‘NO’ at them.’ Once again, Susie advocates for Noelle’s agency and self-advocacy much like she had embraced for herself. And when Carol arrives and tells Susie she isn’t welcome and tells her she’s not allowed to talk to Noelle again, knowing that Noelle was about to ask her to go to the festival moments prior, Susie doesn’t take Carol undermining Noelle’s agency and choices well and tells her right to her face that Susie is taking Noelle to the festival.

It’s almost like Susie is making a conscious effort to spread her own character development with the other people in her life that she cares about, like she’s trying to impart the lessons that she learned onto others because she wants to share the positive impact that it had on her with them... like she’s trying to pay it forward and leave as much of a positive impact as she received.

What makes Susie special and what makes her so important to Deltarune and to everyone in it is what makes her different. She starts out at the same place as everyone else – nihilistic, believing that her choices don’t matter, that her identity isn’t her own and that she only exists as what everyone else defines her as, and resigned to that bleak worldview. And yet... she’s the one that pulls herself out of it, makes the choice to take her own fate and identity and decide for herself what it means and what she wants it to mean, and extends that advocacy to those that she cares about just like she did for herself when she was shown unconditional support and acceptance from someone not much different than her.

She’s the one who has changed the most and has had the biggest influence on those around her and the one that drives the story. She’s the one that refuses to let anyone else decide for her who she is and what her future is going to be.

Susie is the breaker of chains. She’s the one who’s going to free her friends and change their fates. Her inclusion in the prophecy has already changed its course...

Recall that with each pane of the prophecy in Chapter 4 that gets broken and shattered, that pane reappears elsewhere to be read again. Even if it’s broken, it will simply reappear where a pane would next spawn. For the most part, they spawn in order. At the very end of the chapter, when Susie discovers the last prophecy, she breaks the panel that motivates her to reject the prophecy and the fate illustrated upon it, even causing her hand to bleed after breaking it. After talking to Ralsei and reassuring him, she walks on ahead towards the fountain to wait for Kris to join her in order to seal it.

The next panel has already materialized since she walked past it to the fountain... and it skips the part of the prophecy that she had just broken. She has rejected the fate illustrated for her and has decided to substitute her own, has chosen her own fate for herself in direct opposition to it... and fate has recognized her decision. Whatever happens to Kris, Noelle, or Ralsei... it cannot happen without her.