uttheorist

[uttheorist]

Frisk's preferred pronouns are unknown. Not "left up to your interpretation by Toby", but also not canonically they/them (hear me out)

Frisk is a rather unusual child. Throughout the game, they were called by various nicknames - "my child", "kid", "human", "punk", "darling". None of the monsters Frisk encountered thought to ask their name, even the friendliest of them, until the very end of the game. Frisk didn't protest or correct anyone. This continued to be relevant even in those moments when Frisk was called by the WRONG name. That's what Flowey did throughout the genocide, and that's what Asriel Dreemurr, the God of Hyper-Death, did throughout the final battle of the True Pacifist. Frisk revealed their real name, thus confirming that their name was not Chara, only when Asriel asked their name directly. They never protested when they were called by the First Human's name.

Therefore, it is difficult to say whether they/them are Frisk's preferred pronouns. These are the pronouns that the monsters gave them without knowing the real ones, and with which Frisk was comfortable enough not to correct anyone. Nothing changed when Frisk gave their name - they still haven't told their pronouns.

However, it should also be understood that Toby never said that he was leaving Frisk's pronouns up to your interpretation. These are words that are often falsely attributed to him, which he has never uttered. Frisk has a name, and they have their own reactions to some things that don't necessarily match the player's reactions. Although I disagree with the statement that Frisk is NOT a blank slate character, they, like all JRPG characters called blank slate characters, are a silent protagonist whose behavior varies greatly depending on the player's behavior. However, they have SOME elements of canonical personality, and they have a canonical name.

Toby also has experience adding queer characters to the game. We have Alphyne, we have Royal Guards 01 and 02, we have Napstablook, Mettaton and Mad Mew Mew. Kris is the protagonist of another game from Toby, Deltarune, which in many ways continues the tradition of the previous one, they are very similar to Frisk, referred to by all others through the pronouns they / them. And this is despite the fact that Kris has been living among the same people for quite a long time, since childhood. And their pronouns, unlike Frisk's, are not in doubt - because others would most likely already know them if they were different. The opposite is possible, but extremely unlikely, and so far it does not deserve serious consideration at the same level.

NOR can it be said that if Toby had made a non-binary or agender character, he would have stated it directly somewhere on the Internet or in an interview, instead of creating confusion and causing controversy. Because he also never directly declared the Kris's pronouns. Kris's pronouns became apparent to the players because of the way Kris was called by other characters who know Kris. The only time Toby "corrected" anyone about Kris's pronouns was during the fourth hour of the Fangamer stream. It was a small careless correction that was easy to miss, directed at a person who at that moment just misspoke and called the protagonist the rest of the stream correctly. Toby said "They're stuck." not "they, not he" or "their pronouns are them." Toby also asked to skip the question about the ambiguity of the protagonist's gender in the interview. He carefully introduces LGBT topics into his games, but does not talk about them directly.

Frisk CAN be a non-binary character. However, this is not necessarily true. We don't know anything about Frisk's pronouns, and it's best not to repeat Asriel's mistake of confidently identifying Frisk with a word they've never introduced themselves to. After all, there is reason to believe that Frisk does not correct anyone, even when they are called by the WRONG name, or his FRIENDS repeatedly call him by various nicknames without knowing the name. The idea of the author of the game also remains unknown to us.

I usually assume that Frisk's gender has remained undefined for the same reasons that their background, hobbies, and worldview have remained undefined. To make it easier for players to associate themselves with Frisk. Frisk is very similar to other blank slate silent JRPG protagonists (who also usually have canonical names!) - the name, approximate age and appearance are known, but the options for choosing actions and dialogues are short, monosyllabic, diverse and variable. There is not much personality, but it is there in some moments. Undertale is not a JRPG, but a game primarily inspired by JRPGs, and very close to this genre in style and tropes.

The theme of player-protagonist association in Undertale is of great importance. For example, on the path of genocide, it turns out that Flowey and Frisk were actually motivated not by some perverted reasons like bloodlust, but by the same ones as the player - curiosity, boredom, detachment, lack of consequences. This allows the player to feel themselves in Frisk's place, to feel their guilt. Unlike games like OFF, Deltarune, Earthbound, Oneshot, Undertale does not have a clearly separated puppeteer and puppet, player and game character. And that makes the game special. There is only "YOU" - "the human". YOU, driven by perverted sentimentality; YOU, looking bored; YOU, who are not interested in toys in Toriel's house, who does not want to call the number of the fishing rod in Snowdin; YOUR name is Frisk. It was YOUR actions that brought Chara into the world.

Given the many parallels between Frisk and Chara (striped sweatshirt, silhouette, sprite names - mainchara and truechara, the color of the soul), and the fact that the game is initially misleading about the fact that the name entered by the player is the name of the protagonist, I think Toby initially tried to make the gender of Chara also vague in order to create players even more confusion. However, due to the fact that Chara is repeatedly called by people who know them well, such as Asriel, Toby initially unintentionally, but eventually quite consciously made them correspond to the pronouns they/them. After that, he decided to integrate the theme of non-binarity more deeply and explicitly into his new game, Deltarune, continuing the theme that appeared during the creation of Chara.

It is important to understand that this is just my interpretation, because these are exactly the arguments that I could follow when creating a similar game. I'm not going to confidently project my thinking onto Toby Fox's thinking. We don't know what Toby Fox was thinking when he created Frisk, Chara, and Kris, and we may never know. I just want to say that while Chara's and Kris's preferred pronouns are most likely they/them, Frisk's preferred pronouns are unknown to us to this day.

(If anything, the text was translated automatically, errors are possible, English is not my native language.)