Kris is depicted as almost completely androgynous (pronouns, appearance, outfits) with no leaning towards masculinity or femininity, so the idea that they *have* to lean towards one or the other is bothersome to me

another thing i tend to think about with this. i also just think in chapter 5 there's a theme of care and dependency. the flowers have extreme guilt over being taken care of by asgore. flowery conceptualizes himself as weak and useless. in the dark world, his fantasy, he tries to return the care given to him to asgore to "make up for" asgore taking care of him when he should've died decades ago. it's an extreme example, but i also resonate with his feeling.

when your body or mind puts you in a situation where your reliance on other people becomes really explicit, you're trained by the world to see that as shameful or to see yourself as deficient. your efforts to ignore your needs just to avoid "being a burden," will leave you worse off. you punish yourself because of deeply internalized ableism.

regardless, even by virtue of being a living thing on this planet, you are already designed to need others. you have to listen to your body's needs even against a society that teaches you you shouldn't. you have to be okay with the fact that you have needs. sometimes your needs are different or are greater than the person next to you, and all you can do is listen to your body and turn to others when you need them. you're still a person when you need people.

when toby says this:

it's interesting to me how much he uses the language of deltarune to express this feeling. your hopes and dreams slipping away, and bitterness growing is literally the explanation we get for shadow crystals (and so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. it looked like glass). this is also the crushing feeling when you lose a sense of control when you're in pain, when you can't do things the way you want, the way you used to. but when you find yourself still able to fly, you do so because you've adapted. you've listened to your body. you've learned that listening to your body means changing the pace, letting yourself be cared for, letting yourself be helped.

yuyuko meanwhile wants to devour everything and everyone she sees because of the ayakashi's innate thirst for blood. it's also why she's so huge. (both in height and weight) pre-death yuyuko was much more soft-spoken and kind, and she could hear the evil voice of the saigyou ayakashi when she was alive, which terrified her to no end. when she killed herself she used her body to bind the tree on purpose because she was so afraid of it and how many lives it would claim if she didn't try to stop it.