Kris (Deltarune)

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Character
Name: Kris
Occupation: High school student
Relationships: Toriel (adoptive mother), Asriel Dreemurr (adoptive brother), Asgore Dreemurr (adoptive father), Susie (friend), Ralsei (teammate), Noelle Holiday (classmate), the Player (extraplanar babysitter?)
Fandom: Deltarune
Other:
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Kris Dreemurr is the primary player character of Deltarune.

Canon Overview

Kris is the only human living in Hometown, and is the youngest child of Toriel's household. We are placed in control of them after somebody[1] interrupts W.D. Gaster's vessel creation sequence. After oversleeping and being taken to school by their adoptive mother, they are too late to find a partner for their group project and are sent to go find chalk with local problem student Susie. However, the supply closet turns out to be broken, and ends up dropping Kris and Susie into the Kingdom of Darkness, where Ralsei tells them that they are legendary heroes foretold by a prophecy and must save the world with him. Together with Ralsei they travel through the Card Kingdom, becoming closer to Susie along the way, and defeat the Chaos King in order to return home.

The next day, Kris returns to the Dark World multiple times, first to visit Ralsei and situate the Card Kingdom residents in Ralsei's castle, then to investigate the Cyber World in the Library's computer lab. After going on an adventure to stop Queen with Susie, Ralsei, Noelle, and Berdly, they bring Susie home with them in the light world, where Toriel hits it off with Susie immediately, then invites her to stay the night after a mysterious incident where she finds the tires of her car slashed. Late in the night, when both Toriel and Susie are asleep in the living room, Kris wakes alone and creates a Dark Fountain in the middle of the room.

Kris has a save file that has apparently never been saved, which is overwritten by the player the first time we hit a save point.

Unlike Frisk from Undertale, there is a great deal of incidental information to be discovered about Kris while exploring Hometown and during Dark World adventures. As they never have any dialogue outside of the choices they provide, however, the player must pay close attention and infer from anecdotes and hints as to what they are implied to be feeling and the meaning behind their behavior.

Dialogue from townspeople implies that usually Kris is very quiet and withdrawn, and that under the player's control they are more talkative and outgoing than usual. They apparently sleep a lot, eat a lot, and are late to or absent from school a lot; Toriel criticizes them for being lazy and makes them walk home from school after their adventure, telling them that it will build character. They are suggested to have a great deal of affection for Asgore, approaching him without player input and quietly sneaking the egg W.D. Gaster gives them into his nearly empty refrigerator. They also come to care deeply for Susie over the course of chapter 1, shielding her from the Chaos King's attacks and becoming angry at Monster Kid for badmouthing her.

As a child they were apparently very close to Asriel, constantly tagging along with him and doing pranks with him that they generally got the sole blame for. (Noelle recalls having fallen victim to such pranks many times, as well as the as-yet-appearing-in-name-only Dess beating Kris up with a wiffle bat another time they tried to lie to her.) The diner bunny especially recounts Asriel still taking Kris out to QC's and buying them hot chocolate after church even after the siblings' parents got divorced and the family tradition fell apart. Unlike their adoptive mother and brother, though, Kris has zero interest in Christianity and does not participate in church; according to Alvin the pastor they are only interested in drinking the "sick fruit juice".

Their favorite candy is implied to be marshmallows: The Dark Candy item is marshmallow-flavored, if allowed to smell the scented markers in Toriel's classroom they go for the marshmallow one, the QC's hot chocolate is filled with marshmallows, and the Ball of Junk item that contains all of the Dark World inventory smells like marshmallows.

Kris is much more submissive to the player than Frisk and Chara and can be forced into doing things they don't want to do. Usually the player only finds out that they did not want to follow an order after the fact; the only order they actively resist is discarding the Ball of Junk. Beginning from the end of chapter 1, Kris has developed an alarming habit of temporarily ripping their soul out of their body and yeeting it into some nearby container when they want to do something without the player interfering, such as eating an entire pie or making their Dark Fountain. As of chapter 2, only Noelle realizes that Kris is under some other being's control, and she only does so under very specific circumstances.

While Kris' exact age is unknown, Toriel's mention that they will be going to college like Asriel in the near future means that they are a high school student, and therefore probably between 15 and 18 years old. They are the only student in their class who still wears stripes. They have lived with the Dreemurrs for at least eight years, and as a very young child there was a period when they did not understand the extent of their differences from their adopted family, wondering when they would grow horns and hoping they could learn to use monster magic. Reminders that they are human and different from everyone else in Hometown appear to upset them.

In the Hometown segments, their hair and skin color are the same as Frisk's. In the Dark World they are depicted as having pale blue skin and dark blue hair.

Kris has a hidden cameo in Undertale: If the rainy area of Waterfall is visited in Debug Mode, Kris' reflection appears in the puddles instead of Frisk's.[2]

Fandom

As a character either unique to the world of Deltarune or very, very different from their Undertale counterpart, Kris is the subject of all kinds of wild speculation amidst fans. Their depiction in fanart with a silly tone often uses them as a stand-in for the player, mirroring the artist's reactions.

There is also a trend of drawing them together with Frisk and Chara, naming the trio "KFC" for the joke potential.

Their Undertale cameo sprite was discovered by dataminers soon after Undertale's release, and was a subject of puzzlement for a long time, like many of the other viral Deltarune previews. They may have been one of the inspirations for the fan character Chisk, a fusion of Frisk and Chara.

Some fans tag them as "Kris Dreemurr", but it is unknown whether they still use Asgore's surname in canon or if Toriel changed the whole family's names after the divorce.

To the frustration of many, like Frisk and Chara before them, Kris is commonly misgendered by transphobes and ignorant fans despite only being referred to with they pronouns in-game. During the Undertale 6th anniversary livestream, Toby corrected his fellow commentators whenever they used the wrong pronouns for Kris (and other canon theys such as Seam), much to the relief of these frustrated fans.

The wrestler Kenny Omega cosplayed as this character for Wrestle Kingdom 13, as part of the Kenny's Quest event that he had Toby and other Undertale asset contributors create a collaboration video for.[3]

Fan Theories

Kris is generally considered to be the equivalent to either Chara or Frisk in Deltarune's world. Fans who theorize them to be Chara's counterpart point to the colors of their shirt in the Hometown sequences and their adoption into the Dreemurr family (not coincidentally, fans who think Kris is Deltarune's Chara tend to be of the "Chara and Asriel are definitely canonically siblings" school of thought). Fans who theorize them to be Frisk's counterpart point to their real-world equipment (a pencil and a bandaid) being similar to Frisk's stick and medical bandage, their overworld hair and skin color, their dark world costume including a pink and blue cape (sometimes drawn by fanartists as Frisk's shirt), their skill with the Flirt command, and the fact that their favorite candy is different than Chara's (though they do still seem to like chocolate as well).

There is also the matter of their name: As Susie's name is different in between the two worlds (her Undertale counterpart is named "Suzy"), some fans suggest that the two characters may have switched name lengths, and "Kris" is an anagram of "Frisk" with the F missing. If, therefore, Kris is Deltarune's version of Frisk, this begs the question of whether they chose a different name based on their different life experiences (maybe just doing the best they could with a shorter character limit), or whether "Kris" is Frisk's deadname. Different fans interpret this different ways.

How their personality ought to be interpreted is also up for debate. Based on Rudy referring to them as "creepy" and their having played pranks on Noelle as a young child, some fans believe them to be violent and evil and better off controlled by the player. This has sparked wank, with a great deal of eye-rolling and complaining from other fans who point out the unfortunate implications of depicting mentally ill teens as evil and cite that the exact same debate was had over both Chara and Frisk in Undertale fandom.

Other fans point to their isolation from friends, oversleeping (which has apparently been happening since before Asriel left for college), and overeating as suggesting that they are severely depressed. Their equipped Bandage is sometimes interpreted by fans as meaning that they, like Frisk and Chara, are implied to be self-harming.

In addition, the barrenness of their side of their bedroom, especially compared to Asriel's being covered in trophies and personal belongings, leads some fans to worry that their relationship with Asriel is currently less rosy than townspeople remember it being when the two were younger. Possibilities range from Asriel having been Kris' only close friend pre-canon and his leaving for school exacerbating their depression; to sibling rivalry having developed between them, possibly exacerbated by Toriel's favoritism; to Asriel secretly abusing them emotionally, physically, or even (in very dark fanwork) sexually behind closed doors. This line of theorizing may be Jossed in the full game if Asriel ever has a direct appearance.

Fans who prefer to interpret Kris as evil tend to portray Kris' bad behavior as having destroyed their relationship with him, either from their dependence on him being toxic or (again, in very dark fanwork) their trying to seduce him.

Disconnect between the villainous Kris and villainous Asriel brigades can cause confusion in each group's readings of the other group's fanwork, especially in dark fanwork that frames their relationship as incestuous.

Toriel's behavior being softened in chapter 2 as well as some of Toby's statements during the livestream seem to indicate that Toriel was not intended to be as toxic a parent as she appeared to some based on the events of chapter 1. However, parts of chapter 2 such as the design of and flavor text in Kris' Dark World bedroom still indicate a rift between Kris and their adoptive family.

Whether the end-of-chapter-1 stinger is Kris rejecting the player's control or Chara hijacking their body for unknown reasons was a subject of intense fan curiosity until the release of chapter 2. As of this time, the new stinger-inspired debate about Kris is whether they were the Roaring Knight all along, or whether they are able to make a Dark Fountain because Queen explained the process to all the main characters earlier in the chapter, and what their motives are in either case.

Common Pairings

  • Susie/Kris (Krusie)
  • Kris/Ralsei (Kralsei)
  • Asriel/Kris
  • Susie/Kris/Ralsei (Krusei)
  • Kris/Noelle (Kriselle)
  • Noelle/Susie/Kris (Krusielle)
  • Noelle/Susie/Kris/Ralsei (Kruseille)
  • Kris/Kris' Red Soul

Fanworks

Fanfic

Fanart

Meta

Archives and Fannish Links

References

  1. ^ Who discards the Wonderful Creation - suzyundertale on tumblr (retrieved 9 December 2018)
  2. ^ Undertale Reflection (Debug Mode) - Faxz, uploaded 8 September 2016 (retrieved 16 December 2018)
  3. ^ FUCK he was dressed up as Kris. - Yuri_Librarian on Twitter, 4 January 2019 (retrieved 14 January 2019)
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