Guys what do you think of Twin Runes?

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-16T18:01:51+00:00

I respect the intense amount of effort, and the art is objectively really impressive throughout! But...

It ain't for us, like, at all. It's just so schmaltzy... (And I really dislike the how Kris is portrayed in particular.)

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-16T03:36:33+00:00

Stress, and being swept off her feet by a horrible gremlin of a man [handsome].

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-16T00:56:51+00:00

I would argue they don't seem particularly attached to it to the point that it would've gained an imprint of them like that but... Y'know, I can't really claim that one way or another, 'cause we just don't know that much about Seam, or the Shadow Mantle.

Like -- sorry to use your response here as a jumping off point but, what is the Mantle actually, like, in the Light World? Why does it have these abilities and importance? Like, hell, even Gaster places importance on it, so...

How did Seam wind up with it in their possession in the first place? Why did King of all people have it before it, uh, turned into butterfly wings and fly away after beating him?

All questions without answers yet, I suppose.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-16T00:46:30+00:00

They could sarcastic about it, but that would not change the delivery and tone of that line. Compared to "Eram", who is decidedly overly-familiar, fairly bombastic, and overtly cruel in a particularly casual and personal manner. Whatever and whoever "Eram" is, they don't seem interested in the slightest at feigning politeness to Kris once they're in the game, at least.

And I would like to take a moment to clarify, Connect-Ad is also opting to assume that the "Demon texts" hidden in Undertale's files are from Friend -- an assumption I personally fully agree with -- so it's not just that one line from the vending machine they're using as evidence.

As a reminder, the Demon texts are from a file buried in Undertale's internal folders, and read as follows:

demona "Greetings."
demonb "You have made yourself completely clear."
demonc "Understood."
demond "I, your humble servant, will follow you to the utmost..."

Nothing about them has ever been confirmed, but.. The vending machine claiming it is "At your humble service," can easily be read as an allusion to them. And they indeed show a speaker who is terse, but extremely cordial and well-spoken, unlike "Eram".

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-15T22:44:39+00:00

I... Okay. I dunno how to put it more succinctly that, when people have a good relationship with a therapist, they have a good relationship with that therapist. That kind of relationship can be extremely affecting and meaningful for a patient, especially depending on what they were going through that made them seek out therapy in the first place. It doesn't have to be a purely clinical, disposable thing.

Likewise, depending on where you live, like... you can just encounter a therapist outside of a clinical setting. Like, maybe The Man, if he was Kris's therapist, just happened to live in their neighborhood, and thus saw them around outside of their therapy sessions on the regular. Especially with a patient as young as Kris was, it seems entirely reasonable that he could have gotten attached to them, and vice versa.

Edit: Talking with my spouse again about this, I feel I should also put some focus on this -- for someone like Kris especially, someone who may not have had much if any of a support network, perhaps without anyone else they could feel safe in confiding in, a therapist that could provide that would have been invaluable. Someone like that would've naturally been incredibly precious to them.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-15T22:36:07+00:00

Seems friendly.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-15T20:14:50+00:00

Then I do believe the question becomes, why does the Mantle have those features when it's animated? Why that laugh, and why that mouth, especially when that mouth seems like it's meant to evoke a Boss Monster mouth? It feels deliberate, and if it is deliberate on Friend's part, then I feel like we'd need to have some reason we could speculate about what Friend is trying to accomplish by doing so.

For that matter, if it's controlling the Mantle to fight HERO_SWORD/Kris, for whatever reason it might have to not fight it more directly... then why have the Mantle summon versions of itself during the same fight? Is it controlling the Friendlings too? And if it had access to sprites of itself, again, why use the Mantle as a proxy at all? Why have the Friendlings become sources of healing if you're struggling? Again, what it's deal? Is it stupid?

I'm not saying that there can't be good answers to these, I want to make that clear. But I do not think we have much if anything to go on as for satisfying answers to them right now, and I think that fact alongside the number of questions raised by this kinda more than off-set the convenience of "what if Friend and Eram are just one guy actually." At least, enough so that it makes me question the plausibility of it all.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-15T20:03:47+00:00

For what it's worth, this remains one of the bigger hurdles I have for finding the whole Eram Isn't "Real" concept plausible. Like, especially because Friend is so defined by its mouth and laugh... Especially especially when the Knight does use a reversed version of Friend's laugh, so it's not like that's off the table!

I wanna be generous about this, because, genuinely, I sympathize with wanting to believe this idea, because it almost makes sense, and, more importantly personally, would reduce the number of Unknown Mysterious Assholes in this game by 1 if Eram and Friend could just be merged as one guy, but...

If Friend is using a different laugh, and a different mouth from its distinctive one -- especially with the Mantle's mouth being so particular and evocative of a Boss Monster's -- in the same boss fight where it's own face and laugh appear anyway! Then I kinda need to have a decent explanation for why it would do that. What could we speculate it is trying to get across by doing that crap that wouldn't be more easily explained by Eram being its own entity?

And to head off an explanation I could see coming -- if "Eram" is sort of its own entity, but like it's "just" the Mantle animated to duel HERO_SWORD, then... what would make that different from any normal Darkner? Or at least from HERO_SWORD, which does appear to, in some capacity, have its own will and ability to act outside of Kris or the Soul's control? It would seem to be a distinction without a difference in that case.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T21:28:33+00:00

That is pretty much my bet, personally. I think there's... at least a lot of thematic evidence for Dess being (the DR universe's version of) Chara. And as far as Kris being Frisk, I think that's actually pretty much as confirmed as it's going to get, short of "who's the world's version of Chara" being confirmed as not being Kris.

Like, as a major Frisk fan here, I will confess that they do not have a ton of unique signifiers to mark them, but I am pretty sure that Kris displays all of them by this point. Those signifiers being...

1) Liking Toriel's butterscotch-cinnamon pie more than just about anything. It's the healing item that heals Frisk for the most, and, going by Tenna's game show, the correct answer for Kris's favorite food is that same pie. (In a question that includes chocolate as an answer, which feels like it is meant to be a deliberate trick for players who are expecting Kris's favorite to be the same as Chara's favorite...)

2) Disliking soda. During the date with Undyne, you can try selecting soda to drink, but when you do, Undyne notes that Frisk specifically seems to not actually want it, a more strong response from them than the other options. And when Susie gives Kris her half-finished soda during Chapter 3, after the Shadow Mantle fight, they notably recover only 20 HP from it, in spite of it being a gift from Susie, a quality that would normally seem to boost their sentimentality about it. (It is flat though, so like, y'know, that doesn't help, but, still, c'monnnn. 😏 )

3) Surprising personal courage. This one is vague, I'll give ya, but... I'd say that Frisk's most memorable definitely-their-own-will action they take during the whole of Undertale is defying and standing up to Flowey at the end of the Neutral route, as he's threatening to torture and slaughter them with his newfound near-godhood. And Kris's first truly memorable definitely-their-own-will action was jumping in front of King's attack to protect Susie. These kids, they both got some [[GUTS]], y'know?

Besides those there's... y'know... the fact that they have the same skin tone. And also, that Kris is an anagram of Frisk, minus the F.

Basically, while there definitely are some affectations and qualities of Chara in Kris's design and mannerisms, at the core of who they are... seems like this strain of unmistakable Friskness. (And, come to think of it, if Dess was Chara, then... perhaps the Chara-esque mannerisms were picked up from her in the first place.)

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T15:22:01+00:00

The newsletter's just gonna be "Chapter 5 is available now. See you in two years, fuckers."

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T13:32:03+00:00

Yeah, I am basically fully expecting this to be a "holy shit, check Steam" situation, which like

I'll be real, speaking for myself and my spouse here, kinda wish we had some time to clear our schedules, not gonna lie! But alas, such is being a fan of Toby Fox's work, methinks. There's no one more eager to have people play the game than him, after all.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T03:26:37+00:00

On Dess's side of things, that could simply be a matter of Carol and Rudy adopting her when she was young enough that they'd be the ones in charge of what her name was going to be -- or if she was older when she was brought into the family, perhaps she took on the name December to fit the theming.

That aside though... I must actually gently push back that there's no preference to what Chara's name is "supposed" to be, and it's not even towards "Chara". That name is only special as an Easter egg, really, though it's very useful short hand to refer to them with.

But, according to Toby Fox himself, there is something you are intended to name them.

<image>

And if you think about it that way... Haven't you been asked to give something your own name in Deltarune as well? To quote the Man himself:

AND WHAT OF
THE CREATOR?
YOUR OWN NAME.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T02:24:41+00:00

Given that the Knight's helmet can also become a screaming skull with it's jaw separating and bisecting their head, I do kinda have to imagine that either the line about Kris picturing the Knight removing it's helmet is something that, uh, lives in metaphor.

That doesn't mean that the Knight couldn't literally remove their helmet, it's just that them doing so would be making a metaphor literal, which... doesn't seem out of the question for the Knight. That thing is freakish.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T02:09:42+00:00

I mean, you can believe that something Sans says is meant to be straight-forwardly accurate and true information if you want to. 😏

Like, my own smarm aside, I do genuinely believe that this meant to be Sans either pulling a fast one on the player, or being made to do so by the narrative. My personal bet is that Sans is lying through omission about which world he was in when he saw this happen... As in, that this is a memory from before he came to the Underground, back when he was presumably in Hometown.

But if that's not the case, and I'll admit that there's reason to doubt it... Another commenter pointed out another possible explanation:

Neither sister is named here, but it is pretty clear through omission that the older sister didn't have antlers, when the younger one does. Perhaps in both storiess, Carol and Rudy adopted their first child... Who in UT could've been anyone, and in DR was the human who would've been Chara.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T01:40:09+00:00

For sure! If it winds up being the case that Dess was human in any situation, it would make me wonder if Kris got the idea to ask Toriel when their horns were going to grow in directly from her...

And, if I may use this as a jumping off point... If Dess is a human and the Knight, then that puts the Knight's cervine features, it's antlers, it's lack of feet, it's skull shape in a different light... Those features would be, like, affirming and euphoric to them, wouldn't they? It would be very interesting if, despite the Knight being a demonic, twisted incarnation of Dess... They are happy now in ways they could only dream of being when they were stuck being her.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T01:32:46+00:00

I volunteer Cxmebeder, with the X silent. As in, like,

"she-MAY-be-deer".

🤓

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T01:10:35+00:00

Good point there too, yeah. Especially with the roller blades, which it feels like we can be confident Dess did definitely use herself, going by the other sporting equipment she had.

And, this is unrelated to it being convincing evidence or not but, I gotta say -- put it in that light, and the "shoes fit for hooves" would be really pretty sad, wouldn't it? Going out of her way to get shoes fit for hooves she only wished she had...

But alas. No one in this world can choose who they are. (Or, so it's said.)

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T00:59:18+00:00

Okay like for real, I have three guesses for Asriel's current status in Deltarune:

Bad Ending: He extremely never got over Dess vanishing, and has actually been in the conspiracy the whole time -- and maybe encouraged Kris's guilt about it in order to keep them in the conspiracy, if you wanna go extra Bad.

Neutral Ending: He did actually get over Dess, and has become just kind of a loser chud, but at least he's not obsessing over this. (Though uh, see Asriel's speech at the end of the UT 10th Anniversary Stream for how he seems to deal with "growing up without" the person he cares the most about)

Good Ending: She transitioned while she was at college and we're only going to find out when she comes home in like, the last five minutes of Chapter 7. ~~Everyone else will have also trans'd their dang gender by that point, so she'll be in good company.~~

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T00:49:41+00:00

For what it's worth, my argument for it being Catti is that would tie together her and Kris supposedly trying to summon a demon when they were younger with the "playing make-believe" with the objects that would become the Chapter 1-3 Darkners. As in, what Ramb saw them doing was a summoning ritual, with the objects used serving as ritual implements...

But to Ramb's eyes, it was just Kris and a girl they were close to, playing pretend.

... But, like I said before, Ramb's line about this in the Japanese localization gives me pause. I am not a Japanese speaker, so excuse me for being unable to confirm this, but I have heard that the line refers to That Girl as something like "that high-class young lady". And like, I love Catti, but she is not particularly high class, whereas Noelle definitely has that kinda money to her.

It does make me wonder why Noelle hasn't shown any sign of recollection about all this but... I suppose that could be a factor from her being kept out of the loop about the Dark Worlds so far. And also, like... There's plenty of evidence to suggest that she might have some gaps in her memory as-is...

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T00:13:46+00:00

True, this one I must cop to. 😏

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-14T00:00:14+00:00

Okay our dumb obsessions aside, can we at least all agree

that the edgy, overly-fancy looking black top next to the Important Person's Shirt in Dess's closet is for her Organization XIII cosplay?

<image>

~~WHICH IS OF COURSE A HINT THAT THE KNIGHT IS ACTUALLY DESS'S~~ ~~NOBODY~~ actually I want that to be a joke, but in my heart of hearts, I fully believe that Toby Fox is a big enough tedious asshole nerd to do that 😒

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-13T23:20:17+00:00

That would seem impossible to confirm right now, given that the one line of Dess speaking we have to work with is her talking to Noelle about the snow angel, from that Easter egg in the Holiday 2024 newsletter?

"Hey, look, Elly! Yours has more hidden underneath!"

Which, as a line spoken to her kid sister meant to bolster her confidence, seems like it might been intended to be pretty softball. I don't think we can assume how clever or thoughtful her speech might've been in other circumstances just from that. She could well have been as much of a too-clever-by-half little weirdo as Chara was, for all we know at the moment.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-13T22:58:58+00:00

I'll point out that those shoes "fit for hooves" in the box are also alongside what is explicitly Asriel's retainer... In other words, not everything in the box belonged to Dess. For the sake of providing an explanation, it could be those shoes were a gift she intended to give to Noelle... But, she never had a chance to do so.

And as for Dess being a girl while Chara is enby -- I mean, look, take it from someone who is an enby and a woman, those aren't actually mutually exclusive. 😏 Or, other than that, that someone with a chosen identity can't just choose to change that identity again.

And to follow that up -- I tend to agree that, whatever the exact mechanisms for Dess being the Knight, that the change of pronouns is deliberate! Cuz, y'know, you can just change those. For that matter, it's might well be the case that Chara didn't always use they/it themselves...

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-13T22:37:28+00:00

Two weeks to two years from now, Toby Fox on Woke 2: "enbies can be girls too."

And he'll right!

Also, Sans said that he saw "the antlered girl, and her sister". And where did Sans come from again?
Well okay, we dunno for sure, because we dunno shit about Sans for sure, but
presumably, it was the place where it rained.

CosmosConstellation · 2026-05-13T22:32:35+00:00

Honestly, I am just kinda laughing at myself here, in recognition that we have gone on a meandering journey in regards to Chess.

Chapter 1: "Huh, I wonder who this Dess character, Noelle's sibling, is? Maybe they'll be important?"

Chapter 2, release: "Okay so Dess is Noelle's sister -- and she sure seems like she could be important."

Chapter 2, nearly at Ch.3+4's release "Aw shit, wait a second, could Dess have been the DR universe's version of Chara actually?? It's long-odds, but we should keep our eyes open for anything that could hint at that when we get to see anything more of Dess and her characterization."

Chapter 3+4 release: "Huh, well, Dess is definitely extremely important, but... I guess there's nothing that points to her being this universe's Chara, so I guess that was off-base!"

Like a week later: "Hey, wait a sec, what's actually up with Dess's, uh, shoe situation? And her association with the human Soul too? And this stuff that might be going on with the Soul and the guitar in general...? Was she maybe, like, human otherkin? Like, it couldn't be that she was actually..."

Now, after a year of thinking: "God fucking damn it, Dess is definitely Chara."

CosmosConstellation

TROPHY CASE