So we should all, like… be nice to each other, right?
That's, like, the main… thingy? Of our religion, right?
Like, just be nice to everyone! We're all family!
No matter what kinda person or who they are!
Like, we believe weird crap but we're totally, like, welcoming!
You don't know who's gonna grow up to be a hero, right?
This is a lovely thesis statement for a faith. It's also, let's be honest with ourselves, demonstrably untrue – or, at the very least, Hometown is falling down on the job of living up to these principles.
We know who's going to grow up to be a hero – who already is one, actually – and Susie hasn't exactly been welcomed in, has she? She's on the outside, looking in, at first.
Undertale's Toriel isn't the most complex mother figure in games, but neither is she the simplest. She's doting, even a little smothering, after a lifetime of traumatically losing her children; as upset as she is, she doesn't cry when she tries to fight you, but regards you with quiet judgment instead; she cackles in manic horror if you reveal yourself to be a killer; she's divorced from the final boss, and treats him with continuous quiet distaste for his waffling and hypocrisy; she has serious trouble taking care of herself.
Deltarune Chapter One's Toriel is Crono's mom. Let's be honest with ourselves on this. She comes to wake up Kris and get them out of bed (just like Crono!) for a reason! She's a caring mother; she's a preschool teacher; she's comically, sitcommishly prudish; she's defined nearly entirely by her relationships with her family. Up until maybe Chapter Four, she has been read and treated as an unambiguous and uncomplicated Good Mom, a madonna to Carol's frigid career-focused Bad Mom virago.
I think the fact that we recognize her divorce from Asgore as an Undertale reference has distracted analysts from what it does to her character, and how that serves Chapter One's project with the Light World segments. Chapter One has a bunch of little details that are there to trouble our Undertale nostalgia and our dreams of a happy life for monsters on the surface: Alphys and Undyne don't know each other at all; Mettaton's a dysphoric voice behind a door; there's no Papyrus.
Toriel's divorce reads like just another one of those, at a glance, but it's also a violation of the etiquette of the JRPG mom. Your missing dad in a JRPG is a dead hero, or a missing hero, or secretly evil. Asgore skirts the line between "bumbling sitcom dad" and "abjectly pathetic," and Toriel left him, and he's kind of stalking her about it, and she keeps throwing his apology bouquets in the trash. There's little cracks in her image as an uncomplicated and forgiving preschool teacher. Which is a good thing! It makes her more interesting, and a complex character rather than simply the Good Mom.
It's important that she was the one to tell Susie she'd make friends. "You've got a good mother. It'd be a shame to make her bury her child." "One day, your mom's gonna get sick of you, you little freak." "Someone out there wants you. Promise." Toriel offers her access to safety, and food, and friendship, and community, and Susie envies Kris terribly because Kris has Toriel, Toriel's their mom, and so they must already have everything that Toriel told her she could have, safety and food and friendship and community. But if she just plays along with Hometown's faith (i.e. if she plays her role in the Prophecy), she can join in too, and then she'll have what Kris has. From the outside, looking in, it just seems obvious.
From our perspective, too, all the affection that isn't Asgore's overbearing hug, all the friendship that isn't Noelle's distance and ambiguity – comes from Toriel, who makes pie and is glad you're making friends. She's proof that your family loves you in this game, and that Kris's empty room is a personal choice/pathology rather than a sign of neglect or abuse. Her status as safe JRPG mom is what tells us that there's a circle of light for us to come home to after exploring the Dark World; her kidnapping in Chapter Three is a threat to the integrity of Kris's home and the circle of light it represents.
Toriel is the safe and happy status quo, even as we recognize more and more that Kris is experiencing severe, frequent medical distress via self-inflicted cardiac surgery; that they seem to be starving all day and binging at night and passing out in class on the regular; that Noelle doesn't really know that they're friends; that the mayor's inducted them into a suicidal Rapture cult. They aren't safe, or fed, and they don't have friends besides Susie and Ralsei even if they'd like to, and they don't have community. But they have Toriel. As long as they have Toriel there's something to come back to.
For Susie, Chapters One through Three, and the first half of Four, are a set-up: the world extends a hand to her and says, we messed up. You weren't supposed to be on the outside of this circle of light. You're a hero!
So here's a best friend, and another best friend, and a girlfriend – oh, no pressure, she'd be happy to just be friends if you want, but she's rich and pretty and popular and endearingly weird so you can relate to her. You can't afford to take her on a date? Here, an amusement park, and all the rides are free. Take her on the Ferris wheel. Here's a warm, safe home to spend the night in, and a mom (not yours, but she's The Mom of this story and she cares about you already!) who'll teach you to cook. Here's a pantomime version of Kris's parents' divorce with a big, goofy ersatz dad who's really just got his own abandonment issues you can fix; oh, you fixed the family and everyone's together again, you included, great job, Hero Susie! Come to church; here's a community to welcome you. Get lunch at the diner; here's a sundae on the house.
(Ignore that part that says "the exclusion of the poor and unwanted kids Darkness is natural and inevitable; sad at worst, but ultimately impossible to alter," that's like, standard boilerplate on these contracts. What do you mean, you don't have to take being thrown away? We gave you a moral lesson-dispensing servant; we dressed him up all cute and taught him it's his sacred duty to keep you entertained, even though he's just a scrap of shadow. Feel free to trash him whenever. You won't let him go in front and soak up all the nasty parts? You're sure? If you insist...)
The Chapter Four Dark World says, okay, you want this, right? You want in to the circle of light, the community of joined hands? You want to be a normal girl?
Here's what we're asking you to accept.
The Last Prophecy is a cipher for a lot of things, as of Chapter Four. The dead old man – a brief fantasy of a teacher who doesn't treat Susie like a problem to be solved, but one that fades on waking. The Church, again, but silent and in ruins where it was bright. The Titan. Almost dying to save someone who wasn't actually ever at risk. The Knight; the girl (though you don't know it yet) who disappeared, and no one talks about it, the girl who was at the center of the center of the world, the girl you describe in terms that sound like how you used to sound; the girl who was your best friend's idol and your girlfriend's safe haven, the girl who was like a hero, the girl who was like you, the girl who had everything, the girl who's gone. The alternative to Susie's own abjection is living with this – and accordingly the woman who welcomed her in from the cold has to present something Susie with something she can't accept:
The house is warm and bright. Toriel is drunk. We're asking you to accept that. There's music playing, loud and obnoxious and jarring. It's raining everywhere else; the night is dark and frigid and wet and there's no safe haven waiting for you. Toriel got your name wrong (it made you happy when she laughed at "Snoozie and Snoriel," but now it's ruined); she thinks you should sleep in her son's bed; Kris looks like they're going to be sick. That corner store guy is here and visibly uninterested in you rather than the prospect of getting his ectodick wet. It's warm and bright in here and there's food in the fridge. If you want the life you were promised, this is what you have to accept.
Susie walks off into the night.
