could you possibly explain the kris got molested post. i don’t want to say theory because that sounds fucking stupid but im really curious about what you mean
yes absolutely. i still want to comb through the game again and make a more comprehensive post about what i mean but i have most of the screenshots i need for my main points on hand already. take this as a sort of general survey of the topic
to get very basic for a moment, kris's character is defined by their autonomy being taken away by people who are much more powerful than they are. as of chapters 3 and 4, this includes:
the player, or "the angel," which we can take as a cosmic force taking hold of kris in both metatextual and literal readings
carol holiday, a close family friend who kris has known all their life and is seemingly exerting some sort of control over them. carol is not only a powerful adult in the personal realm, but also the most powerful person in the entire town
the knight. assuming that this is dess, or that kris thinks it's dess, this is another close family friend influencing kris through either manipulation or literal control based on their history/kris's loyalty
so without even looking at anything else we already have a teenager being physically controlled by three forces, two of which are essentially older family members who have a great deal of influence over both kris and the entire community. this isnt even my point, though. just necessary context for why the other stuff im gonna point out comes off a certain way.
disclaimer: the original "kris got molested" post i referenced wanting to make was literally just gonna be a compilation of these screenshots with a poorly edited screencap of the "holy shit. charlie got molested" scene from always sunny in philadelphia. so i am not providing analysis here really and almost none of these screenshots are even connected beyond the vague notion of "holy shit. kris got molested." just setting them out and explaining why they haunt me and walking away. okay moving forward.
i now present the line that has haunted me the absolute most since playing chapter 4:
this is about asriel's church clothes. this isn't a gender thing let me just get that out of the way. it doesn't come off to me as a religion thing, either. these clothes do not fit kris and never have fit kris. there would never have been any illusion that kris should wear them. they are Boss Monster Sized. they fit susie and asriel. as for the religion bit, here is the flavor text from inspecting kris's discarded church clothes:
innocuous and silly and normal kris-style narration. there is no "power" attached to kris's own clothes, but there is to asriel's.
here's another set of implications that make me itch:
the obvious takeaway here is that carol has some sort of fixation or need or use for kris's soul, the part of their body that they routinely target for self harm and that allows an external force to take full control over them. the visible tension in kris's sprites here also unnerves me. we really don't see them react like that to anyone other than. um. carol and toriel and asgore. they consistently shrink away at their touch and look uncomfortable with them doing things that they don't react to at all when it's coming from other characters. which, is probably fine.
i also find the forgotten man's presence in chapters 3 and 4 very...heavy, in this regard. in chapter 3, you find the egg room by having kris say that they are a cheater and that they are going nowhere. in chapter 4, you find the egg room by having kris state that they did not miss anything, which causes the organikk to accuse them of being a liar:
the egg room here is "art therapy," where kris attempts to draw "what they saw behind the tree." they are unable to get a coherent picture out and cover it up with a painting of a tree instead. i do not think it is incidental that the lead-up to this is a religious authority telling kris that they are a liar for claiming they "didn't miss anything." it's generally accepted that the forgotten man is some sort of childhood trauma for kris that has since been buried. the fact that they have to be called/call themself a cheater and a liar to access it makes it difficult for me not to read this as an allusion to csa.
that is not even to mention the text you get from using the sink after art therapy:
you can never wash it all away. okay that seems fine. not the first time kris has been seen to have a handwashing fixation, either.
returning to dess/the knight: there appears to be a misconception that kris can only recieve the "sheath" title if the 8bit kris tries to attack susie after exiting the game. i did not know that 8bit kris could even do that, and i still got that title. here's how:
sheath is...self-explanatory, i think, in terms of why i think it relates here. it's concerning in any case. i include the screenshot of kris getting knighted/kneeling to the knight for, similarly heavyhanded reasons.
speaking of heavyhanded. i'm going to close up the post with this:
do i think kris got textually, literally molested? i mean, kind of. im not gonna say no they did not because i straight up cannot even entertain the idea of viewing this character without sexual abuse in mind. but that's not really my point. my point is that kris is the most thematically molested character of all time
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