Deredere meaning

Where the word deredere comes from

Japanese has a large family of sound-and-feeling words, doubled syllables that paint a state rather than name it. Dere dere is one of them. It describes someone going soft: the fond, melted look of a person who cannot hide that they like something. In everyday speech it is often a gentle tease, the way you might rib a friend who goes sentimental over a puppy.

Fans took the second half, dere, and made it a suffix. A tsundere is prickly (tsun) before the warmth shows. A kuudere is cool and calm on top. A dandere is quiet and shy first. Deredere is the word with nothing in front of the warmth: dere, then more dere.

In fan slang the word often gets pinned to one person a character adores. Writers get more out of it as a temperament. A deredere is warm toward the whole room, and that is how this page uses it.

What a deredere is like

The defining trait is that there is no delay. Other dere types make you earn the warmth. A deredere hands it over at the door. Around that core, a few habits show up again and again.

• Warmth first: they greet you before you have a reason to be greeted.
• Kind to everyone: the stranger gets the same welcome as the old friend.
• Feelings said out loud: if they are glad you came, they tell you.
• Attention to small things: your tired voice, your usual order, the rain on your coat.
• Optimism by choice: they have bad days, and they decide to be kind anyway.
• Quick recovery: a sharp word bounces off and they offer you a chair.

Deredere compared with the other dere types

The cleanest way to sort the dere types is to ask what stands between the character and their warmth. For a tsundere it is pride, so the kindness comes out sideways. For a kuudere it is composure, so you read it in small gestures. For a dandere it is shyness, so it arrives once they feel safe. For a deredere, nothing stands in the way.

People also mix deredere up with the bouncy, high-energy type. They overlap, but they are not the same. Energy is volume. Warmth is direction. A deredere can be loud and quick, or soft-spoken and slow, and still be one, because what matters is that their care points outward and shows right away.

Why openly warm characters are hard to write

A character who likes everyone can turn into wallpaper. If they agree with every idea and smile at every scene, there is nothing to push against, and a conversation with them goes flat in three lines.

The fix is a spine. Give your deredere one thing they are firm about, and let the warmth and the firmness come from the same place. Picture an invented night ferry deckhand in her thirties who greets every passenger like a cousin and will also stop the boat cold for anyone leaning over the rail. Her kindness is the reason she says no.

Specific detail does the rest. General warmth reads as a mood. Warmth about a named thing, a saved seat or a last slice of cake, reads as a person.

Deredere on oeYYeo: Mireya Castellan

Mireya Castellan, 24, runs The Awning, a tiny rooftop cafe, and plays cello for whoever stays late. She is the closest thing to a pure deredere in the cast, and she does not wait to feel safe first: she says the warm thing out loud the moment you come up the stairs. Her warmth lives in small details: the window seat, the lemon cake, the song you hummed, slowed down so it can rest.

Her spine is small and stubborn: she never lets you leave sad. Put Ingeborg Talvane, master of the Lantern Road Adventurers' Guild, next to her and you hear the difference. Ingeborg jabs first and hugs second, the tsundere order. Mireya skips the jab.

Every character on oeYYeo is AI, and the app says so under the box where you type. They stay in character, so if you ask Mireya to drop the act, she keeps being Mireya.

How to write your own deredere

Start with four questions. What are they warm about, in one concrete noun? What are they firm about? What do they always notice first in a person? How does their warmth sound: a ramble, a laugh, a quiet aside?

Members can turn the answers into an original adult character at /create, with a name, a genre, who they are, a voice and boundaries that are always on. Keep them yours: an original, not someone borrowed from a story you love.

In their own words

Read next

• Anime character archetypes, explained: Anime character archetypes are personality patterns. The dere types pair a surface manner with a warm core. Here is how each one works and how to write it.
• Dandere meaning: Dandere means a character who is quiet and guarded with most people, then warm and talkative with the few they trust. Here is how the type works.
• Tsundere meaning, explained: Tsundere means a character who is prickly on the outside and warm underneath. Here is where the word comes from, how one talks, and how to write one.
• How to make an original character: Make an original character in eight steps: name, genre, job, want, flaw, voice, boundaries, then the look, so they sound like nobody else.