Freelance Artist | PNGTuber (for now) 🐰✨️ | DELTARUNE ERA
[[PLEASE DO NOT REUPLOAD OR EDIT MY ART~]]
SHADOWED PRINCE AU WEBSITE:
https://shadowedprince-au.carrd.co/#
Hello! My name is Dae (aka Daedelweiss/Daedel/Weiss/Ralsei's Mom™), artist, streamer, and sky goddess extraordinaire! I've been a freelance artist for a while now, making fanart, illustrations, comics, and animatics. I stream on Twitch at least once a week (usually Mondays). I love DELTARUNE/UNDERTALE, The Legend of Zelda (particularly BOTW/TOTK), Dungeon Meshi, and a whole lot of other things. I'm also making a webcomic of my DELTARUNE au called "The Shadowed Prince"!
You can read The Shadowed Prince starting here or on Comic Fury!
It also has an official website free for you to explore ✨
TAGS I USE:
#my ert - art tag
#dae doodles - anything doodle-y and not full rendered art
#dae asks - answered asks found here!
#shadowed prince au - for anything Shadowed Prince related. also have a tag for asks and fanart for the au!
#rebloop or #moot rebloop - reblogs tag! moot rebloop is for when i reblog posts from mutuals :D
I also regularly draw DELTARUNE and Ralsusie (big Ralsusie shipper). Will add more hashtags later for specific AU stuff that's not Shadowed Prince.
I should note that I do not allow reposts/reuploads, edits, tracing, use, or selling of my art in anyway shape or form. Using my art for something private like a Discord icon or printing one copy to hang on the wall is fine. Anything public like pfps or banners is prohibited unless you have permission from me. Comics dubs are allowed, however; as long as you link to my socials/website or, if you're dubbing Shadowed Prince, linking the official website AND the Comic Fury. Fanart and fanfics for Shadowed Prince are also allowed! (Please tag me if you do make anything Shadowed Prince!)
My official website has all my official socials so check on that if you feel like it! All my official accounts from other social media platforms are on there and the Shadowed Prince website. (except Twitt*r. I don't use that anymore :P)
If you are looking for "Life Mission: Save My Brothers", you can find everything about it on its website (linked on the title), including the comic. I have removed most of it from my socials as I've been getting so many comments and messages from people asking where it is when I am not working on it anymore. It is now cancelled and will not be coming back aside from unfinished scripts and plotline released sometime in the future. Please do not send me asks or replies or messages about it or I will block you.
Thanks for checking out my art! hope to see you around!✨
For those who frequent my blog and don't know, Vinland Saga is one of my favorite series of fiction out there. The anime itself was absolutely brilliant; it handles its characters extremely well, and the discussion the series highlights about the intersection of Christianity and Norse mythology in 11th-century northern Europe is extremely engaging and brilliant. Season 2 in particular was what grabbed me, with its slower drama and focus on Thorfinn's change after what happened to him in the previous season. It was a story I really needed to see at the time, and ever since that season finished airing I began following the manga, which ended last year. I already loved the way the story went, but over the past few weeks I've been doing a reread, which I just finished last night, and wow. This story managed to connect with me even more than previously, and so many parts of it stuck out all the more as being impactful and thoroughly interesting. So many character nuances that I hadn't noticed before popped out of the page, and after years of watching anime and reading manga I had so much more appreciation for Yukimura's beautiful paneling.
What I want to highlight in this post, however, is that this series handles its status as historical fiction incredibly well.
Yukimura wrote this series knowing that you could just look up the ending if you wanted to, and committed himself to the questions of history. Many historical moments are fitted into this story, not even just the Vinland expedition and its ultimate fate; it fills in gaps with the death of King Sweyn of Denmark, or makes use of King Canute the Great's famous tides speech to make a philosophical argument, for example. While the story is still overtly fictional, especially when it comes to characters that experience revelatory visions/dreams, or otherwise perform ludicrous feats of strength, it feels true to the sorts stories the source materials (the Icelandic Sagas, to name one) might tell.
Now, I personally have not read these sagas, so I admit I am going off some hearsay, but I can comfortably make this comparison to a tradition of western history with which I am experienced. Herodotus's Histories, a text that is often cited as being foundational to the modern idea of a history, is known for taking some rather huge liberties. Conversations that occur within the text were impossible, and many chapters are stated to be local myths, but it was a story written acknowledging that it was less focused on the exact numbers and timings of history than it was on the people who existed within the world Herodotus described. He described his motivation for writing the history as being "so that time would not drain the color from humanity's deeds," and this is precisely the sentiment that aligns with the heftier fictionalization of Vinland Saga. Thorfinn Karlsefni's story in history did not play out the way it does in the anime/manga, at least for the first half. His backgrounds don't match, the dates misalign, but it's on purpose, and what the choices Yukimura makes to restrict himself to the potentialities and philosophies of the time gives the series that special "color" without ever losing out on telling a compelling story.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, really; I could talk for hours on all the parts that contribute to this "color," how the series interrogates gender roles, how it deals with the evolution of technology, how it advocates for a beautiful view of the world even in the face of cruel people, how it emphasizes the struggle of finding a place where you belong in a hostile world, and so much more. It's a very difficult series to get through at times due to the severity of the subject matter, and some chapters/episodes have left me genuinely disturbed, but if you're up for it, I cannot recommend it enough.
I’ve been meaning to round out the more central character-focused Deltarune essays for a little while, but honestly, Susie was paradoxically the hardest to write about. Perhaps because, at least compared to Kris and Ralsei, she’s simpler, and compared to Noelle, I don’t think she suffers from being in a narrative catch-22 that I can discuss at length. However, she certainly does suffer from similar issues to the other three when it comes to fandom perception, and in a very different way. Kris suffered from us vs. them mentalities and the inability to recognize them as a POV character; Ralsei suffered from a lack of analysis into the veracity of his statements and what he’s been hiding; Noelle suffered from a frankly shocking amount of babying by fans and/or replacement theories that disregard those around her; but Susie suffers from a little thing called mythologization. Broadly speaking, Susie is by far Deltarune’s closest equivalent to a standard protagonist. Kris and us are sometimes on completely opposite teams, and Ralsei is mired in mystery, misinformation, and misdirection, but Susie? Susie’s MO is to walk into a situation with Occam’s Razor in hand with the will to use it as much as she wants. If she can make her way through something, she’ll do it as simply as possible, and Deltarune fans clearly favor this. Many players will even claim her as the game’s best-written character, or describe her as “the true protagonist” of the story. Simplicity, in the mind of the fandom, appears to be a good thing.
However, the concept of a character doing something simply is far divorced from narrative simplicity, and Susie happens to be a character that is really, really good at playing into narratives that convenience her simplistic approach, whether or not that’s straightforward or even morally good. One might be tricked into thinking Susie is breaking things down and being the most explicitly non-conformist by her appearances and speeches, but at times, she can attempt to conform just as much as Kris or Ralsei, perhaps even more so. And what constitutes action can depend heavily on frames of reference. Let’s talk about it.
1. The Bully and The Broken Toy Nobody Wanted: The Bad Narratives
The part of Chapter 1’s story before the arrival at Castle Town establishes several crucial things about Susie. She is a bully that everyone in the class (sans Noelle) really dislikes, and is no stranger to abusing Kris with no prompting aside from what she herself offers. In the hall outside the classroom, she takes broad offense at Kris’s presence, and makes up excuses to lash out at them. She firmly asserts that she doesn’t really have agency in the most famous (and most misunderstood) single sentence in the game: “Your choices don’t matter.” People compare this to Flowey’s line from the start of Undertale, but unlike the soulless creature who has been numbed by his circumstances, Susie’s assertion is unsteady even in her own mind. Look no further than the moment Lancer attacks her and Kris atop the cliffs. Susie doesn’t simply run off, or use Kris as a shield as she jokingly does with Ralsei later in Tenna’s game; she simply yells out at Kris to run. You could read this as being in line with her statement about not wanting to make Toriel sad, but we see time and time again later that she is genuinely concerned, even if it only comes out of her in the heat of the moment.
The rest of Chapter 1’s Dark World segment paints a similar picture. Time and again, Susie ignores warnings, ignores what people say, and defaults to hitting things hard enough to make them an inconvenience. Her teaming up with Lancer puts this behavior on hold for a while, but it’s still her default, because it’s what she knows. Any attempts to claim that something else is happening are met with outright rejection by Susie, typically made by Ralsei’s naive attempts to sway her to goodness, and it seems this pattern will hold true when Lancer betrays her. Once again, however, her concern wins out, and her decision to not kill Lancer and agree to not kill King is a blank acknowledgement of the error of her ways. Her arc here is quite simple, and if you progressed from this point to the end of the chapter in a straight line, you’d think you have a good understanding of her. The bully with a soft heart who learns to show it.
But, once you leave the Dark World and go talk to her classmates, a shockingly different picture is painted before us. Susie wasn’t a bully like everyone claimed she was, except towards Kris in specific. MK and Snowy hate her for the most innocuous of interactions, where their lack of attempts to understand her make them believe she’s bad. Berdly talks bad about her, but we don’t get any substance as to what she did to him in particular. He simply expresses shock that Kris is okay. Jockington expresses a similar distaste. Temmie is mad because Susie told her that hardboiled eggs can’t hatch. Catti hates her guts for… some reason that never gets explained. Susie tries to give an answer in Chapter 2, but we’ll get there soon. All of these reasons to dislike her are incredibly stupid and close-minded, but what matters is what Susie took away from it. Her behavior for the first two-thirds of the chapter is recontextualized to be the new girl lashing out at those around her for not being accepted and buying into their lack of acceptance by abiding by her base impulses. Susie isn’t the class bully, she’s just Kris’s bully, but because the world around her paints her as the former, she acts accordingly, and propagates the same narrative by behaving worse. Her attacking all of the Darkners of Card Kingdom is proof of how deep-set this false bully narrative is.
The bully narrative isn’t the only time Susie makes false judgements based on the opinions of those around her and acts accordingly. In Chapter 3, we get an insight into why she acts this way: after a long childhood of ostracization, friendlessness, and a lack of a fixed home, she had grown closed off and isolated, and lashed out to match it. This is, simply put, conformity; she was assigned the role of “the bad girl,” the “toy” to be used and discarded by fickle or cruel peers, and, knowing little else, went along with it. Note that I say “little” and not “nothing,” for Susie was given several signposts. Not just Toriel’s kindness, but Susie explicitly mentions that she could make friends, and had done so before. The ostracizations were more common, the move in homes too frequent, and so it became more comfortable to assume that ostracization and distance would be the norm than seeking a better outlook, because the better outlook appeared futile.
To clarify, none of these choices Susie makes are something she should be blamed for; it’s reasonable, relatable even, for a person to give themself to loneliness after being burned one too many times. The point of the matter is that Susie had chances to be different, to reject the narrative that she was bad, that she was unwanted, unlovable, but did not, and let herself propagate it instead. It’s so deep-set in her that she still feels extreme guilt over her actions in the past and believes that she was fundamentally bad, even though she wasn’t. She was empathetic to Toriel, really not that mean to most of her peers, and behind her bluster concerned for the health of others. Her rationalizing not tearing Kris apart as “not wanting to upset Toriel” is simply what she thought her reasoning was, while the truth was so much simpler, so much more good-hearted. It’s pretty sad watching her self-deprecate over it to the extent she does, even when she offers moments where she did do things that weren’t good, such as the story about smashing the public piano. Even now, she believes that the bad narratives were the truth from which she is breaking away, and when failing like she does when trying to heal Kris, she backslides into this narrative. She has yet to cast off its shackles.
2. The Hero and The Good Kind Of Scary: The Good Narratives
One might be tricked into thinking by the game that Susie’s turn to good is the outright breaking of the above-discussed “bad narratives” of her life. It’s no doubt she’s changed, tremendously so; Lancer, Kris, Ralsei, numerous Darkners, Noelle, even Berdly to an extent, they’ve all helped her grow and change, but there are more narratives to her existence than the one she’s internalized so deeply she can’t imagine it being false, though her present actions don’t follow it. Her life in the present follows other narratives, and these ones, while much better for her self-image, are perhaps just as dangerous, and more insidious. I identify two narratives placed upon her that deserve this title. First, the narrative as prescribed to her by several parts of the story, most notably the Prophecy, as a “Hero.” Second, as described by Noelle, the girl who is “the good kind of scary,” or “the girl who doesn’t care about anyone.”
Susie the Hero is a very interesting narrative to tackle because, in contrast to the Broken Toy narrative, the Hero narrative takes up much of her screentime as she is in the present. It begins in the fight against King, where Susie takes the action to save Kris from a devastating attack, revealing her eyes in a moment that symbolizes her character growth thus far. In that moment, she becomes the hero of the party, saving Kris and Ralsei’s lives, whether it be in tandem with Lancer’s timely arrival in a pacifist playthrough, or buying time for Ralsei to use Pacify in a violent playthrough. This serves two effects: for one, it makes the truth of the bully narrative feel all the more hollow because we know more about Susie’s potential goodness, and for another, it sets up how Susie will approach this story going forward. Chapter 2’s main plot is, frankly, all about Noelle, but the way in which Susie responds is very interesting. Noelle is framed by Queen as the damsel in distress who gets kidnapped a comedically large amount of times, and Susie jumps right in to fill the trope, becoming the hero meant to save the damsel in distress. Every time Noelle is captured, Susie is the one jumping in to challenge Queen’s authority, playing right into the setup Queen has made to make Noelle happy. Susie isn’t uppity and about this narrative in the way Berdly is—who directly namedrops it, in case you hadn’t noticed—who dismisses Noelle as just the damsel in distress, but her repeated motivation of “we’re here to save Noelle!” still means she’s playing along. Once again, here it’s not necessarily a bad thing; she’s getting to have a fun adventure with her friends, she’s getting to connect with a girl she’s interested in and who has the biggest, gayest crush on her, but it’s important to acknowledge what she is implicitly doing here.
It doesn’t stop in that Dark World, either. Susie dismisses the thought of telling Noelle and Berdly the truth after lying to the former in the dream because, as she reasons, it would put others at risk when the world is in danger, and it’s her responsibility to save others. It’s heroic in the most basic sense, but it might not be very good, per se. Berdly has changed as a result of the events of Cyber World, but tries his best to not acknowledge it when he couldn’t turn his face away if he knew it was real. Susie seems disappointed that her heroism comes at the cost of getting to know Noelle better (We’ll come back to what’s going on more with that in a bit). No matter what, though, this choice of Susie’s does look a bit dubious in even generous interpretations when you think more about it. Noelle wants to heal Rudy in the way she could heal Kris in battle, with just a little spell, and being denied knowledge means being denied a chance to help her from potentially losing another family member. If you did a violent route, Berdly’s arm got badly burned in the fight against Queen, and that arm will remain paralyzed in the Light World. If he could go back, maybe his arm could be healed. The decision to adhere to the numbers of heroism’s looking a little iffy.
Chapter 4 is where things get really noticeable, however. Face to face with the text of the real Prophecy, not even the version Ralsei had given which she at first dismissed then welcomed, she finally feels included. The Prophecy, this immutable fact of the world, assures her that she has a place, that her good values exist and matter, that she will do something great, that she will prove herself to be a better person. It’s a relief from her doubts, proof that her new hero mentality is good, that she is good. In the Second Sanctuary, she practically spells out that this is the antidote to her poor self-esteem. But if you look closer, there are similar issues with the bad narrative. Breaking the Prophecy is portrayed as futile in just the same way as she had once believed escaping isolation was futile, and for the whole chapter, Susie doesn’t grasp the dangers of the Prophecy. She doesn’t break any of the panels intentionally until the very end, and that only occurs after she misunderstands the significance of Ralsei’s warning to not go ahead of him. Her attachment to the idea of heroism blinds her to its significance, and the bloody hand scene is the moment it finally sets in to her that the hero narrative she spent the past few chapters upholding was not an inherent good. She merely attached herself to the hero narrative because it provided so many goods to her that it became convenient for her to follow it. The bit with the puzzle before Jackenstein directly spells out how much she enjoys the convenience.
What’s going on with Noelle should not go unaddressed, either. On the Ferris Wheel, we get to see what attaches Susie to Noelle, and what in return makes Noelle affectionate towards Susie. For the latter, there is an important stake here: what Noelle says is, in essence, a guideline for her to have external affection. The bad narrative of the bully is transformed into the good narrative of the scary girl, and hence made something good for Susie to follow. To be clear, this isn’t encouragement for Susie to go back to bullying Kris; neither she nor Noelle like the fact that Susie did that, but Noelle finds comfort in the idea of being treated in a similar way provided that she be cared for after the fact. In short, Susie is being offered a way to recontextualize parts of her badness into something good, something she can use to feel good about herself and provide comfort to someone she likes. Isn’t that a good thing? Yes and no. That aspect of their relationship by itself is generally good for them, but things get complicated by the existence of this same narrative. Susie showing her complete self might, in her eyes, be a turn off to Noelle, for Susie only knows she’ll be given affection if she follows the narrative’s template. Knowing this, the lie she tells Noelle isn’t just a heroic act, but an attempt to preserve this source of affection without risking rejection. It also plays into the narrative everyone sets up around Noelle as someone to be protected from harsh truths or pain, which is itself a whole can of worms. This isn’t the end of their dynamic, which we’ll get to discussing in the next section, but it’s very important to acknowledge exactly how many narratives are being preserved in this dynamic. They appear good to Susie, but looking at whether they are good for both of them in truth, the results look a bit grim.
3. Who Susie Actually Is: Beyond Narrative
Of course, Susie does more than take part in narratives. She sets up and propagates the narratives of her life, following ones that are physically or emotionally convenient, but she isn’t a slave to these narratives. She exerts a great deal of agency many times throughout the story, and many of her best moments arise from when she isn’t acting in accordance with any narrative. Her development at the end of Chapter 1 is not, as discussed above, a breaking of the bad narrative, but the realization that she can do more than strictly adhere to it. Her character dynamics become extremely tangible and interesting the moment she strays a bit from the perceived narrowness of these narratives, though she doesn’t break them. Her and Kris go from bully and victim to straight-up best friends the moment they confirm that her growth in Card Kingdom was more than a dream (which, in hindsight, makes her decision to conform to narratives and hide the truth from Noelle and Berdly more frustrating; imagine what they could achieve knowing the truth about how they all feel!); her and Lancer connect very, very quickly over the idea that being “bad” doesn’t necessitate loneliness; her and Ralsei bond extremely quickly and intensely once they leave behind the “bad guy” and “good guy” narratives respectively.
To digress for a moment, her and Ralsei’s bond is a perfect example of how important it is for Susie to look past the narratives around her. In Chapter 3, her desire to follow the hero’s role and go off to seal the fountain meets an obstacle in the form of Ralsei’s desire to slow down and enjoy his time with her and Kris. Ralsei asks to take part because of his clearly sharp pain at not being able to accompany the two of them to events like the Festival, life events that will supposedly stick in their heads for a long time to come, defining their relationships going forward. Following the hero’s role would dictate that Susie move on and seal the Fountain before other people, most notably Toriel, risk getting involved, but Susie doesn’t do that. Susie does what she does best: be a good and caring person who looks after those around her. She sticks around to help Ralsei enjoy himself, and both of them reap the benefits. This is Susie the Good Friend in action, the narrative Susie does get to spin for herself. She doesn’t take part in something that tries to define her externally. She doesn’t follow it for convenience. She acts in a way that fits who she is as a person, and the narrative thread comes after.
This special narrative, the one Susie has created, is what lets us see her for who she truly is, when she doesn’t give into her flaws, doesn’t accept external ideas as truths, doesn’t try to cut through matters. This is the ennobling power that lets her know people and others know her. This is what she gets to exercise with Lancer in Chapter 1, what she gets to exercise with Kris all the time starting in Chapter 2, what she exercises with Ralsei even when we aren’t around to see, and what she’s starting to try to do towards Noelle, too, even if she’s hesitant at the time. Just look at what the other three have shown her: that she is a person who can get along with others, trust others, look out for others, and learn more about herself from others. The Susie who gives into her flaws and hides behind the narratives she latches onto for convenience wouldn’t befriend Lancer, wouldn’t move past her guilt to connect with Kris, wouldn’t discover parts of herself she didn’t know existed with Ralsei. The end of Chapter 4 is an all-time low for her: her perceptions of the “good narratives” of her life have shattered or are crumbling down around her, many of the connections she holds close risking fracture at the seams, but she doesn’t give in. She is at her lowest point, but she is not alone, and she is thus open to greatest change.
Hello hello! Apologies that this chapter is a good bit late! I've had a lot of (positive) life stuff happen to me and was inspired to step up my style. I feel so tired but working on this episode is so so fun, in experimenting the new style >:D
Big shocker! This comic is also in Comic Fury! PLEASE COMMENT TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE COMIC! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! Also will stream on Twitch in a few hours to talk abt and answer questions for the new episode... AND celebrate my birthday!!! My birthday's tomorrow but the rest of the weekend is dedicated for private celebrations. I HOPE Y'ALL ENJOYED THIS ONE!!!
Now if you'll excuse me. I'll pass out for a hundred years.
( 🌷 please do NOT reupload, edit, trace, use, and/or sell 🌷 )
Hello hello! Apologies that this chapter is a good bit late! I've had a lot of (positive) life stuff happen to me and was inspired to step up my style. I feel so tired but working on this episode is so so fun, in experimenting the new style >:D
Big shocker! This comic is also in Comic Fury! PLEASE COMMENT TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE COMIC! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! Also will stream on Twitch in a few hours to talk abt and answer questions for the new episode... AND celebrate my birthday!!! My birthday's tomorrow but the rest of the weekend is dedicated for private celebrations. I HOPE Y'ALL ENJOYED THIS ONE!!!
Now if you'll excuse me. I'll pass out for a hundred years.
( 🌷 please do NOT reupload, edit, trace, use, and/or sell 🌷 )
Hello hello! Apologies that this chapter is a good bit late! I've had a lot of (positive) life stuff happen to me and was inspired to step up my style. I feel so tired but working on this episode is so so fun, in experimenting the new style >:D
Big shocker! This comic is also in Comic Fury! PLEASE COMMENT TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE COMIC! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! Also will stream on Twitch in a few hours to talk abt and answer questions for the new episode... AND celebrate my birthday!!! My birthday's tomorrow but the rest of the weekend is dedicated for private celebrations. I HOPE Y'ALL ENJOYED THIS ONE!!!
Now if you'll excuse me. I'll pass out for a hundred years.
( 🌷 please do NOT reupload, edit, trace, use, and/or sell 🌷 )
