You guys do not understand how much Noelle being a character that Deltarune actually focuses on, seems to be treating as integral to the plot and interesting enough to explore means to me as a person.
So often do I see the trend in media to have a "nice girl" character be a supporting cast member, if even that much, and have mostly no complexity otherwise, or just being glossed over by the narrative. I can guess that it is because 1) such characters can seem uninteresting at first, as they refuse to engage in conflict, and conflict is the driving force of a narrative and 2) they can be easily instrumentalized for the main character, whenever they need some sort of support or friend.
As someone with an alarmingly similar familial background to Noelle's (controlling mother, absent and ill father, rebellious older sister (didn't disappear though thank god, but did leave the house early bc we have an age difference of 12 years, and conforming & peace-keeping me), her story is incredibly important to me. I'm mentioning the family thing because this type of family system tends to produce people pleasers and rebels respectively. It's an actual thing. There's a whole therapy method for it, it's called IFS (integrated family systems). So to me, her crashout in chapter 5 of the Weird Route didn't come out of nowhere at all! I see a lot of people who reacted to that scene be somewhat baffled and sometimes not picking up on some things that I personally feel so much, because of the similar experience. I think whenever we talk about Noelle, a major keyword should be "fawn response". I believe that proper media representation of people who show fawn response is very important, because it is so difficult to recognize, partially due to the fact that it keeps being socially rewarded everywhere you go (it's very convenient to others!), and partially due to that mechanism's goal being maintaining the appearance that everything is alright, in order to protect oneself from conflict/emotional abuse. It is also very often misunderstood and misinterpreted, and I think that is due to the lack representation and education on the subject. No, people pleasers aren't manipulative and antisocial, and no, they are not the kindest people either. Yes, family structures and dynamics do play a big part in it. My brother in Christ, I implore you to read a book on that. These 3 factors contributed to me only realizing the severity of my own mental health situation and the toxicity of my family like 24 years into my life. I think stories like these are very important, and shouldn't be sidelined for yet another tragically self-destructive character (I'm looking at YOU, Ragatha and Jax). Kidding. I do like what they did with Jax, even if I wanted more Ragatha exploration & development and it isn't my place to decide what story any creative should write, but yeah, I wish we had more stories that explored the fawn response and people pleasing!
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