#soulition

I mean for fuck's sake, people think it has something to do with JARUJARU for some reason? (by the way JaruJaru is a transphobic bitch and we don't condone a goddamn word he says)

It's why I, and the others on this blog/in this system, have been doing what we can to distance ourselves from the term. Instead we try to talk about a "Kris-focused Meta" that includes many different theories/readings/metanarratives that describe Kris's split relation to their SOUL, the only unifier is that, while they are not all strictly No Diegetic Player theories, they don't REQUIRE a diegetic player. All of our deltarune analysis centered around Kris and their SOUL is referred to as Kris Preservation Society (after the temp variable that holds the "Since chapter X" text on the stat screen). And this, likewise, is just ONE of many different Kris-focused analyses

Basically, we (ie., this system) are not using "one catchy name" to refer to all of this anymore, and instead approach each one as they are. Some focus on the existence of multiple narrators which relate to Kris's light and dark world forms. Others depict the SOUL as having an Angel/Devil Kris on their shoulders when making decisions. Others pay special attention to incorporating Gaster into the framework. Still others are okay with the player having a presence, but as an emotional connection to Kris's SOUL, rather than outright control. They're not all talking about the same things, or even interested in the same parts of the narrative, but it's all about centering Kris in the met

One day the whole of you, all parts of you, will be okay.

Always keep these in mind

(This does not affect my feelings about transfem Ralsei, I still think that should happen (and is definitely more likely to happen anyway). This is also independent from considerations of AMAB Kris which, while it will probably never be confirmed either way, I agree it makes more sense than AFAB Kris)

I do think it's patently ridiculous to pretend part of Kris's gigantic interlocking misery matrix isn't them "settling" for being vaguely nonbinary. Mancountry isn't Humancountry, for one thing, and the way Noelle talks about them is so rooted in transmisogyny that it entirely makes sense why my friends (most of whom are themselves TMA) find transfem Noelle distasteful.

So many transfems go through this. They get so thoroughly broiled in masculine expectations that they think, even when they can identify the problem, there is no way to truly escape. Ask how I know; one of the things I myself said, through tears no less, to one of the first people I came out to was, verbatim: "If it were as easy as just becoming a woman I wouldn't be so upset". It feels impossible to get out from under. You settle for "they/them", you settle for nothing more than degendering yourself, because you think the concept of masculinity itself is a taint that runs too deep to excise. On some level, when this happens the transfem is already recognizing a very real social reality: the human (or in Kris's case, monster) world will never forgive you for opting out of a privilege it conferred to you by birth; they'll never accept your full truth.

So you are economical with it. You grow your hair out, but not too long. You wear the least revealing or gendered clothes you can get. You accept your brother's hand-me-downs because his words were kinder than you expected and his presence is a shield, even in absence. You take every insinuation that you're creepy and a nuisance on the chin without a single voiced complaint. You don't take hormones even after you find out they exist because the rhetoric you keep hearing is constantly telling you that opting into femininity is theft, or more "wokely", a submission to the gender binary. No one ever tells you it'd be okay to start wearing bows in your hair. Nobody ever gives you permission to try out the other end of the common spectrum just for fun. Nobody will ever recognize the years of girlhood you lost, are losing, to being dead inside.

In the safety of the dark, in your own private room, you recognize that you "could" wear whatever you want. You still don't. Everything you've ever been told you are is a hot fire poker in your chest, whipped against your heart and SOUL like a cattle prod. Even your bravest self can't broach the idea.

It's very much both. The SOUL is you, and you are a part of Kris. Kris, who somehow knows exactly where you are at all times. Almost like they were following you every step of the way. Almost as if tearing you out accomplishes very little. The metaphor of the SOUL serves to soften the sheer visceral discomfort the sequences would cause otherwise.

Imagine Chapter 4's Holiday House visit without the supernatural elements. Then we have you and Kris wandering about the house in a dissociated haze after being told to fuck off and find clues. You find what you need. But the memories are too much. If you tell Susie the code, she will want to try it right away. It is not yet time for her to enter the shelter. They know that if you know they cannot stop you without hurting themself.

They shove you down. Shove you out. To the shadows, to the sunken place. Maybe they hide in the supply closet, maybe it's entirely just a box within your mind. You get lost in the dark of memories you aren't allowed to have, ringing around you like a song from far away. Suddenly you come to and you're in the kitchen, and your body is making chocolate milk. A phone call is already happening, but you can't quite make it out. You try to push closer, to better process what is happening, and you're shoved away again. Maybe you come back long enough to notice your body playing piano. It's really all Kris can manage without cooperating with themself.

Without cooperation, neither of you can fully command yourself. Who knows when, how, or how long it takes for you to stumble through the shadows in your mind into the basement, but you do eventually find yourself down there, a concrete space that sticks out amidst the delirium. And you flip the breaker switches, perhaps in half-recalled memory of doing so as a prank, once upon a time. Somehow, this is important; you aren't sure why. In the literal dark that follows you try to reach out to Susie and Noelle, but they don't recognize you. They don't realize it's you. They're saying some funny stuff about keeping you as a pet.

You follow them back-- or did they carry you back? Did the girls help you fumble your way back upstairs? Whatever. You're in the living room again. The code. The guitar. Dess's room. Upstairs. You can make your way to it from here. You remember that much. Who cares if Susie told you not to move or why. You can't comprehend directions, you're just a little mouse, or a little angel. A little light. A human thing. A red thing. A beloathed thing trapped inside Kris.

Kris.

Kris. They're always there. Even when you feel like you're entirely outside them, you cannot escape them. You get close to it again and they hurt you. They hurt themself. They hide in her closet and they do it over and over every time you think of taking the guitar. In your conflict you jostle the strings, and Susie finds them. Finds the guitar. They make another call and ensure that this setback won't interfere with what is already taking place.

At that point it's useless to fight anymore. Kris gives up and retreats back into the passenger seat. You stumble out of the closet, damaged. So much more wary of the person you have to share this body with. but what can you do, except what you thought was the right thing? You go to the church and you brave the darkest dark, and you prove you have the determination to come out the other side. Whether that's got Kris changing their opinion of you, you can't know for sure. Right now it feels like this night will never end.

It genuinely would be harrowing without the abstraction of the SOUL. It would be too real for a game that is trying to get its point across to kids without alerting overly protective parents. Quite frankly, it would get people saying even more disgusting shit about Kris, because now they know that they're mentally ill and for some reason it's okay to say bad things about the mentally ill. For as much as it aggravates me that people are willfully refusing to process the SOUL as a metaphor, I'll take it for now over the alternative. There would not be empathy for Kris in this moment if it were all mundane.