First Draft

Section 1.1 - Overview

        This paper will be structured in the form of a syllogism.

        P1: “Non binary” is not a logically meaningful descriptor for human beings.
        P2: Fiction must obey the rules of logic.
        P3: Deltarune is fiction.
        SC1: Therefore, Deltarune must obey the rules of logic. [P2+P3]
        C: Therefore, “Non binary” is not a logically meaningful word in Deltarune. [P1+SC1]

Sections 2 and 3 will correspond to P1 and P2. Section 4 will correspond to SC1, C and the addendum.

In order to rebut my argument, you must do one of two things. One is to show that one or more of the premises are false. The other is to show that even if all the premises are true, there is a possible world where the conclusion is false. Notably, rebuttals that do not actually attack my argument and merely provide extraneous information are invalid, since as I intend to show, if my premises are true, my conclusion holds no matter what else happens to be true or not.

        Now, let’s get into the paper, shall we?

Section 2.1 - Teleology

In his works Physics and Metaphysics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle describes four kinds of causes. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

The material cause or that which is given in reply to the question “What is it made out of?” What is singled out in the answer need not be material objects such as bricks, stones, or planks. By Aristotle’s lights, A and B are the material cause of the syllable BA. The formal cause or that which is given in reply to the question “"What is it?”. What is singled out in the answer is the essence or the what-it-is-to-be something. The efficient cause or that which is given in reply to the question: “Where does change (or motion) come from?”. What is singled out in the answer is the whence of change (or motion). The final cause is that which is given in reply to the question: “What is its good?”. What is singled out in the answer is that for the sake of which something is done or takes place.

For the purposes of this essay, the final cause, or “telos” is what will be necessary. When we ask for the final cause, or telos, of a human being, we ask “what do we exist for the sake of?” There are a multitude of possible answers to this question, and there may be multiple valid ones. However, at least one valid answer must be reproduction. As stated by Encyclopedia Britannica, “individuals having more-useful traits, such as more-acute vision or swifter legs, survive better and produce more progeny than individuals with less-favourable traits.” Thus, from an evolutionary perspective, at least one telos of any organism, humans included, is to survive and reproduce more organisms.

Section 2.2 - Human telos

        The process by which reproduction is accomplished in humans requires two roles. Because humans reproduce sexually, “reproductive cells from two individuals” are required “to form a third,” per LibreTexts. Thus, two roles are required in order to facilitate human reproduction. The first role is the one who carries the offspring to birth and contributes half of the required DNA; this is known as “female.” The second role is the one who provides the other half of the required DNA; this is known as “male.” As there is no third organism required to provide DNA, there is no third role in the reproductive process. Thus, human sex is necessarily a binary. Those who have a telos of gestation are female; those who have a telos of impregnation are male.

        Note that although some humans possess ambiguous reproductive organs, or are impotent or infertile, this does not lessen the validity of the category. To do otherwise would be to confuse epistemology with ontology. Just because we do not know which category any given person might belong to, that does not mean that he belongs to no category. This is especially true in this case, since being a member of one of the two categories is at least one telos of humans (though there may be and are others).

        Therefore, the term “non binary” is self contradictory. The only sense in which it would have applied is a sense in which it, by definition, can never be valid.

Section 2.3 - Gender theory

        Of course, 99% of readers will probably have scoffed at everything I have said up to this point. They will have already written this thesis off as a joke, claiming that I clearly do not understand the “distinction between sex and gender.” I will address those claims here.

        “Gender” is not a term that can be applied to humans in the first place. Gender is a linguistic term that refers to classes of nouns. Per Speechless by Michael Knowles:

By the end of that century, it acquired a primarily grammatical use, referring to male and female nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. For example, la pizza is a feminine noun in Italian, and il gelato is masculine, and neither fact implies that the slice or ice cream has genitals for toppings. “Gender” retained this grammatical sense almost exclusively for the next six centuries, until 1963, when feminists began to use the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as “a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes.”

Objecting to Knowles as a source is not a useful endeavor here, as he cites Etymonline and the Oxford English Dictionary for his information.

        It is true that in recent decades, some quack psychologists have attempted to appropriate the term “gender” to apply to humans. However, there are two problems with this use of the word as it is currently used.

        The first is that the hypothesis (that there is a concept called “gender identity” which relates to sex but is distinct) is unfalsifiable. There is no experiment that could be designed under which proponents of gender theory would ever be forced to admit they were wrong. If an experiment is done which demonstrates that a child of one sex appears to feel comfortable taking on the social roles of the other sex, proponents will falsely claim that this implies that “gender identity”, rather than conditioning, is what caused this behavior. If the opposite result is demonstrated, proponents will falsely claim that this implies that “gender identity”, rather than sex, is what caused the child to stick to his convictions. Consider the infamous John Money experiments on twin boys Bruce and Brian Reimer, which I assume readers are familiar with. Initially, “Money ‘consistently asserted’ that Brenda [Bruce]’s sex change and adoption of a new gender identity were both complete successes, providing solid proof for his theories. By the late 1970s, sociologists and psychologists were repeating Money’s claims as further proof of his theories.” (Walsh 2022) However, after the experiment was revealed to be a massive failure, the experiment was still used as “evidence” in favor of gender theory, arguing that Reimer’s failure to adopt a new identity is proof of the immutability of gender as a concept. Thus, the theory of the existence of gender as a coherent concept that applies to humans is completely unscientific as it can never be empirically proven or disproven.

The second is that the term “gender” as applied to humans has never been defined in a way that is not already covered by the term “self perception.” “Gender” is almost exclusively defined among progressives as “one’s innermost sense of self,” but that is already referred to by the much more objective and concrete term “self perception.” In any case, this means that any statement of the form “my gender is XYZ” resolves to simply mean “I perceive myself as being XYZ.” As previously noted, epistemology and ontology are not the same; your belief that something is true has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is actually true. Thus, “gender” has absolutely no power to describe reality. As a caveat, it is true that in matters concerning oneself, one might expect a person to be more authoritative on the subject than others. But this is not always true. Firstly, people can make conclusions based off of information they believe is true in good faith but is not really true; for example, if he was told something by a source he thinks is trustworthy but is really not. Secondly, a person can make a claim that is false if his perception of the world is not in accordance with reality, for obvious reasons.

Section 3.1 - The laws of logic

“Logic” is that which is true by definition. The objective of formal logic is to begin by using truths that are already known with certainty to be true, in order to determine what else must be true. Specifically, deductive logic operates by using true premises in order to find what else must be true (the conclusion) by definition if the premises are true. This differs greatly from informal logic, which deals with critical thinking and is subject to ambiguity and interpretation. In formal logic, all that matters is propositions, truth values, and conclusions.

Logic follows premises, syllogisms, and things which are true by necessity. Thus, anything which is validly deduced must be true. For a claim made by formal logic to be false, either (a) the premises must be false, or (b) there must be some way for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. There is no other option.

This is why I can state things with such confidence even with regards fictional worlds with “different rules”: there must still be meaning and coherence even in our imaginations.

Section 3.2 - Logical coherence in fiction

        The most common claim I get when discussing this topic is that “Deltarune is fiction, logic doesn’t apply to fiction.” This is false. Anything which can be deduced from first principles must be valid in any world, even fictional ones. And at some level, everyone recognizes this.

        For example, there is no fictional universe in which the statement “two plus two equals four” is false. The statement can easily be proven: “2” is defined as “the successor of one” or S(1), which itself is “the successor of zero” or S(0). Thus, 2+2 can also be written as S(1) + S(1), or, equivalently, S(S(0)) + S(S(0)), which in turn is S(S(S(S(0)))). This, by definition, is 4, because it’s what the number “4” means: the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of the successor of zero. For 2+2 to not equal 4, this would mean that S(S(S(S(0)))) is not S(S(S(S(0)))), or put more succinctly, 4 is not 4. Obviously, this is a meaningless statement. Thus, 2+2=4 can be demonstratively shown to be a true statement in all universes, even fictional ones, simply due to the meaning of the words “two” and “four”.

Some may be tempted to bring up paraconsistent logic, which is so ridiculous it is not even wrong. If a thing X is not itself, then the term “X” loses all meaning because it fails to actually contain information. The proposition “X is not X” is self-refuting. This applies for ALL such propositions. If I ask you whether that hungry lion over there is locked up in his cage, and you tell me “yes, he is locked up in his cage,” you will not be able to use paraconsistent logic to defend yourself when he swings open the door of the extremely unlocked cage and eats me. Under paraconsistent logic, no statement actually means anything because the statement itself conveys no information. If “the lion is locked in his cage” is “true” even if the lion is not locked up in his cage, then the statement does not actually mean that the lion is locked up in his cage and thus is meaningless.

I’m not even going to start with those who bring up quantum mechanics and try to say that “but particles can be in two places at once!”. That’s not what superposition means. Even assuming the Copenhagen Interpretation is correct (which itself is a massive assumption), it just means that the wavefunction hasn’t collapsed and thus the question itself is ill-defined, per the Niels Bohr institute. Trust me; I actually study physics. That’s what I do all day. Go read Griffiths and then get back to me.

3.3 - Logic in Deltarune

        As established by the previous two sections, things that are true by definition must be true in all universes including fictional ones. No creator of any fictional universe can ever violate logic; he can certainly try, but will always fail because all valid propositions have to eventually resolve to either true or false.

        Thus, Toby literally does not have the authority to write self-contradictions or category errors into Deltarune, no matter how much he wanted to or how hard he tried.

Section 4.1 - Conclusion

        As previously noted in the introduction, my argument can be put in the form of a syllogism as demonstrated below.

        P1: “Non binary” is not a logically meaningful descriptor for human beings.
        P2: Fiction must obey the rules of logic.
        P3: Deltarune is fiction.
        SC1: Therefore, Deltarune must obey the rules of logic. [P2+P3]
        C: Therefore, “Non binary” is not a logically meaningful word in Deltarune. [P1+SC1]

        Any attempt to refute my conclusion must show either that one of P1-P3 is false, or that the premises could all be true and the conclusion could still be false. The second option, by necessity, is out. Thus, the only remaining option is to target P1 or P2. I have used evidence to demonstrate P1 is true and logical necessity to demonstrate that P2 is true. Thus, the syllogism is sound.

As we have seen, “non binary” is a self-contradictory claim and is a category error. Thus, it cannot exist in any universe, including fictional ones. As Deltarune is a fictional universe, “non binary” cannot exist in Deltarune. To attempt to make Kris “non binary” would be to say that “Kris is a human without one of the things that makes a human a human,” which is a self contradiction.

        Note that even if every single point raised by the “Kris is definitively non binary” crowd is assumed to be correct, their conclusion would still be false. Even if every single use of “they” by in game characters is an attempt to refer to Kris as “non binary”; even if the false claim that Toby “corrected” one of the sixth anniversary commentators was true; and even if one day, Toby claims that Kris is “non binary” in plain language, Kris still would not be “non binary.” Toby is not superior to formal logic or evolutionary biology; the universe does not bend to the whims of a single indie game dev (or, more to the point, his English fanbase).

        In conclusion, I have demonstrated through formal logic that Kris Dreemurr, the protagonist of Deltarune, cannot be “non binary.”

Section 4.2 - But then why call Kris a boy?

        Even after it is demonstrated that Kris is either male or female, there is still the decision of which he actually is. My conclusion aligns with most of the fanbase’s instinctual reaction, which is that Kris is a boy. When considering the game as a whole rather than in fragments and determining the path of his characterization, this is the most logical choice.

        Most of the UTDR community has this weird hang up where behavior is completely uncorrelated with sex, even though this is obviously not true, and more to the point is not actually good storytelling or characterization. What little of Kris’s characterization we have strongly points to him being a male:

• He hid under the bed to prank his girl best friend who is afraid of humans under the bed. This is basically the definition of “boyish” behavior. Obviously not all pranks and not all circumstances would necessarily be “boyish,” but this particular prank in this particular circumstance is self-evidently boyish.
• Kris is the loner in class who constantly brandishes a knife in secret. Men are much more violent than women, and according to the New Jersey Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Protection, teenage boys are especially more violent than teenage girls. Kris’s behavior matches the “male loner” archetype much more than the “female loner” archetype. According to the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, teenage boys who are lonely tend to lash out, withdraw silently, and externalize, as opposed to lonely teenage girls who tend to verbalize, internalize, and intensify efforts to connect. Kris’s behavior obviously matches the former.
• Kris obviously lives in the shadow of his older brother; basically all of the Chapter 1 hometown segment was meant to juxtapose the two. Yes, obviously a younger sister can have a close relationship with her older brother. However, specifically living in his brother’s shadow in the way that Kris is shown to is basically exclusive to siblings of the same sex since the social roles and sex-exclusive strengths of males and females tend to diverge rapidly around teenagehood.
• Kris’s relationship with Noelle is meant to be a reflection of Asriel and Dess’s relationship. Firstly, we have some evidence that Asriel and Dess were dating prior to her disappearance, and there is also evidence that Kris and Noelle will be dating together by the end of the game. (Someone else did a whole doc on that; I won’t repeat all of the evidence here). Secondly, Kris, Noelle, Asriel and Dess’s combined escapades as described in the chapter 2 “December” room paint a pretty vivid picture of Noelle as a mini-Dess and Kris as a mini-Asriel, which works much better if Kris is a boy.
• Dess hits Kris with a wiffle bat when he pranks Noelle. Look me in the eyes and try to tell me that Dess would do that to a little girl. Maybe to a rascally little boy, but not to another little girl.
• Kris wears a boy’s clothes to church: a collared shirt and slacks, rather than a dress, skirt or really anything resembling female clothes.
• Burgerpants talks to Kris without the reservation or hesitation; in other words, the exact way we would expect if he were talking to someone of the same sex. He wouldn’t talk with the cadence or straightforwardness he does if he were talking to someone of the opposite sex.

Here’s the thing. Each of these pieces of evidence, individually, is not all that strong in determining that Kris is a boy rather than a girl. However, when put together and analyzed as a coherent whole, Kris is obviously being characterized in a masculine fashion.

Section 5.1 - Bibliography

“43.1b: Types of Sexual and Asexual Reproduction.” Biology LibreTexts, LibreTexts, 23 Nov. 2024, bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/General_Biology_(Boundless)/43%3A_Animal_Reproduction_and_Development/43.01%3A_Reproduction_Methods/43.1B%3A_Types_of_Sexual_and_Asexual_Reproduction.

Ayala, Francisco Jose. “Evolution | Definition, History, Types, & Examples | Britannica.” Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Dec. 2025, www.britannica.com/science/evolution-scientific-theory.

Bor, William, et al. “Are child and adolescent mental health problems increasing in the 21st century? A systematic review.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 48, no. 7, 14 May 2014, pp. 606–616, https://doi.org/10.1177/0004867414533834.

“Facts about Youth Crime: Fast Facts on Youth Justice.” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 12 Aug. 2024, ojjdp.ojp.gov/research-statistics/about-crime-data-juvenile-justice-facts/fast-facts.

Falcon, Andrea. “Aristotle on Causality.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 7 Mar. 2023, plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/#FourCaus.

“Gender - Etymology, Origin & Meaning.” Etymonline, Douglas Harper, www.etymonline.com/word/gender. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

Knowles, Michael J. Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. Blackstone Publishing, 2021.

Skaarup, Gertie. “The Copenhagen Interpretation.” Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 24 June 2020, nbi.ku.dk/english/www/institute/history/the_copenhagen_interpretation.

Walsh, Matt. What Is a Woman?: One Man’s Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation. DW Books, 2022.