precociously demented

she/her • MAYA • 🏳️‍⚧️ asian lesbian • 19 • I block transmisogynists, zionists, homophobes, etc.

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

being able to go to work with hickeys and bite marks on your neck is a human right.

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

the bosses are allowed creampie while the workers are punished for a simple little hickey. in this essay i will examine sexual politics through the lens of Marxian analysi-

[giragirameganedan]

The most attractive female character design possible. They made this woman for me

[soup-mother]

There's obviously a huge disconnect from what a soldier actually is and does, and it's already hard enough getting people to acknowledge that a soldier is someone who shoots people.

But it's actually crazy just how genuinely deeply shocked people (including/especially soldiers) are when they learn that people actually shoot back at you sometimes and it's not just a one-way sorta deal.

[soup-mother]

A lot of the time "I never signed up for this" coming from an imperialist doesn't mean "I never signed up to kill people" it means "I never thought they'd start shooting back".

[dogpuppy]

[apricops]

*trying to pitch public transportation to Americans* it’s like a legal form of texting while driving

[cheese-is-great-btw]

She's taking them to the vet

[dogpuppy]

[demilypyro]

Pomni you can get that purple rabbit pregnant you just have to believe in yourself

[demilypyro]

[pansy2025]

goo goo dolls if they were in dune: and i don’t want the worm to see me

[mezzodical]

[jehovahhthickness]

Praying that $1500 randomly comes to you when you need it the most this year.

[jehovahhthickness]

Okay inflation is crazy.

We bumping up the price to $15,000 for 2026.

[0ddoblivion]

Decided to paint outside in a storm to see what would happen.

[0ddoblivion]

I gave her flowers so maybe she won’t haunt me.

[demilypyro]

Pomni you can get that purple rabbit pregnant you just have to believe in yourself

[tall]

[roxanneprogram]

Yo uh please tag undertale spoilers if you can

[possiblyaspara]

The Noelle Holiday Problem

Before anyone says anything, yes, this title is meant seriously, but no, this is not a post that is going to claim any part of Noelle's personality is somehow "problematic" or that she's a "bad character." If you're expecting hate for her, look elsewhere; this is a post that's been a long time coming about why I want to love Noelle when, despite her personality and relationships being solid to excellent, I think the narrative as it stands cannot do her justice. For this analysis, I want to analyze how the story balances three major aspects of her: her personality and relationships; her character arc; and her role in Deltarune's narrative. These parts of her are all what make her an incredibly appealing and popular character; she's cute, a bit pathetic, a gifted kid, strong, but put on a pedestal in such a way she buys into the idea that she has little inherent worth beyond that. Her arc, from what I can see of it, is concerned with her reconnecting with her strength and self-worth enough to pierce the veil that's been put around her. Let's talk about that veil.

Noelle Is To Be Protected

This is a recurring throughline of literally every interpersonal dynamic with her, and in almost all of those cases she is also painted as The Damsel. Berdly literally calls her his "damsel in distress" and acts the way he does in Chapter 2 out of a misguided sense of "saving her" and "repaying her for her affections towards him" (nice interpersonal skills there, buddy); Queen regularly plays with her status as the damsel to both make the heroes play along and, oddly, set up things for Noelle (the only possible reason she'd have to sic the Werewires on her in her room is to make Susie feel like her savior); Susie buys into the narrative Queen sets up and plays the savior's part in the story, though she lets up a bit on that at the end of Chapter 2. Kris doesn't seem to view Noelle as a damsel, given their history of messing with her and spooking her, but they are still very interested in protecting her, an act which both Rudy and Carol are promoting, albeit in completely opposite ways. Dess is painted from old stories as Noelle's original protector, whacking Kris with assorted objects until she feels they've been sufficiently punished for making Noelle cry. Everyone in Noelle's life saw her as someone to be protected from the world, someone to be preserved just as she is... and even now, after the events of Chapter 2, things haven't really changed. Rudy and Carol act the same way. Susie and Berdly both keep talking about protecting her from things, though Susie's concern is played straight while Berdly's is comedically ridiculous. In a normal route, Kris is pretty hands-off with her, but in a Weird Route, they're more devoted to protecting her than ever. No idea why the hell Catti's so particularly severe about protecting her from Susie, but that is present and very strongly felt. Noelle has gotten stronger in one way or another, but she is still The One To Be Protected.

2. The Disappearance of Dess

This is a situation we don't know a lot about, but what we do know is that the adults of the Holiday and Dreemurr families and Kris all seem "in" on what's happened, though they all likely have very different degrees of knowledge about it. Toriel seems distant from it to the point of coming off as purposefully ignorant; Asgore is obsessed with the truth; Carol is determined that Dess is missing but not dead; Rudy is trying to move on. Kris appears to feel some guilt about what happened, or something that's given Carol leverage over them in their dynamic. We don't know what Asriel knows about any of this. But Noelle? Noelle seems entirely unaware of what happened. Kris is just inexplicably distant. Toriel is just a friendly fellow choir member. Asgore is just her family's housekeeper. Rudy is just her warm, supportive father who seems terminally ill, the most stable figure in her life who's slipping through her fingers. Carol is her overly controlling and downright oppressive mother who seemingly never interacts with her own daughter at all save to tell her not to do something or cancel school because Noelle would have to walk in the rain. Everyone around Noelle knows a lot and won't share it with her for any of several reasons, but a very significant barrier of knowledge has formed around her. 3. Getting Stronger The idea of Noelle's weakness plays further into this disconnect between her and the world around her. The people around her tell her or have told her that she's weak, that she has the most value as a golden child, that she needs to be protected from other people or environments because she's just not strong. This is textbook learned helplessness, because she is not inherently weak, not even close. She's smart; perceptive; capable of asserting herself; puts the entire hero party to shame in terms of single capabilities in battle except for physical damage. What matters is that, at the start of things, she believed she wasn't strong, and her environment both bought into and reinforced that same narrative in a vicious cycle. Chapter 2's entire arc is how one might break that cycle. In the Normal Route, Noelle reconnects with Kris over braving some of her fears and weathering their pranks, which to me read as bizarre tests of strength given by a Kris that has bought into the narrative of protecting Noelle while simultaneously believing she is strong, and eventually manages to hold a normal conversation with her crush, stands up to Queen, and saves the day, her power revealed to her by those around her. In the Weird Route, we exploit Noelle's desire for strength against her, weaponizing her insecurities and putting into effect what the game hints as things Kris is afraid that they might do, though they'd never do those things because they're so unconscionable, and she saves the day because we exploited her into using her power in terrible ways that just happened to pay off against Spamton. Noelle has become stronger, but the world isn't there yet. This is just the first step of her journey.

So what does this all mean? Essentially, it is that Noelle has demonstrated an arc about surpassing her learned helplessness, which tends towards the idea that she will inevitably break the veil surrounding her and the truth. The truth that she isn't weak, the truth that she doesn't need protection constantly, and the truth of what really happened when she was little, the last of which promises so many answers to so much of what has been set up in this game's narrative. There's just one small problem to all of this: she is now too important. If Noelle fully develops, the major mysteries are solved. All the entangling alliances and different degrees of knowledge of those on the board turn from WW1 cosplay into a neat layout for us to understand. Kris, Susie, and Ralsei will all have to adapt quickly to the fallout in order to bring the story to its completion. Noelle is our narrative key, and her development is the process of undoing the lock. However, this lock cannot be opened too soon, or else so much of the story will become horribly rushed. We'd jump to resolutions for our main cast too quickly. The mystery would deflate and fall apart, leaving a basic trek to the end. This means that there are essentially two answers to this pacing issue: either a) we give Noelle a lot of filler time to flesh out her dynamics without giving them any weight, which is a horrible idea for a character so important, or b) limit her screentime in such a way that she can't intervene with the story. Toby clearly chose the latter, and I don't blame him for doing it. I'd much rather have a character make a lot of impact with little screentime and have it be effective than drag it out for no reason and dilute the effects of what is to come. But it's a catch-22, and it has repercussions. Noelle is thus incredibly, incredibly important to Deltarune's story... but only while she's around. Chapter 2's Dark World. The Holiday house. Nearly every moment she spends on screen is about her and her relationships. She holds the key, and thus will one day use it... but if she isn't around, she can't open the lock, can she? So Noelle barely gets mentioned at all outside of her onscreen appearances, being mostly there for a stray dialogue choice and a one-liner from Susie. She simply isn't around, and that starts to have what I find to be drastic effects on the things about her I should love. Her dynamic with Susie is one the game very clearly wants us to be invested in, and it promises a lot; it gives her a clear motivation, it demonstrates her narrative arc in effect, because it's always Susie's perceptions of her that her growth changes, and it's designed to be enjoyable. High school romances are very popular, and their dynamic certainly has good bones. But when we look at it in effect, they share a whopping two scenes together before Noelle's arc in Chapter 2 is done. They're pretty good scenes! I see why a lot, lot of people love their dynamic. It seems like this is the first step to a much greater journey involving their dynamic... except it isn't, because Noelle can't be around too much, so now Susie and her will interact once in the hospital and not so much as a mention will go from Susie in Noelle's way until Noelle is back on screen, and the game is cramming material in. I think this is why Kris and Noelle get shipped together so, so often, because so much of Noelle's roots and the "tests of strength" are done by Kris, so to establish that, she has to talk about Kris. A lot. We know she really wants to reconnect with them, and we're now in her house getting so much info about their history and watching it inform her dynamic with Susie, then now Carol's here, the sequence is done, and Noelle will be mentioned twice in passing for the rest of the chapter, which otherwise acts as though she doesn't exist.

My point of all of this is that I really like Noelle. Her dynamics are interesting, her arc is complex with great setup and framing through the characters around her, and her personality is excellent. I love this cringefail girl power deer, but I feel like the game has to work against her to function the way it wants to. I want to see her breathe in the narrative, get more simple interactions with others like we briefly got between her and Kris in Cyber City. I want to see her interact more with Susie; I want to see her feel good enough to start messing with Berdly; I want to see whatever the hell happens when her and Ralsei are in a room now that they won't pretend he doesn't exist. But as things stand, I don't think the narrative is built in such a way that can sustain us seeing more of this wonderful character without it breaking itself. Just look at how much she's set up as replacing Susie and Ralsei in the party, and completely takes Ralsei's place in so much of the most popular fan content. We know she's important, and want to see her do more, but as things are it doesn't appear she can do that without completely encroaching on other parts of the game, and that saddens me. I really hope Toby has figured out some way to play this dilemma to his advantage going forward.

[possiblyaspara]

Kris Dreemurr: POV (Nearly) Perfected

I have a confession to make: I think Kris might be the best-written character in Deltarune. I know the award goes to Susie in the eyes of most, and it's no secret why; she has a great personality with excellent dynamics, a great arc, and is commonly thought of as the game's most core source of pathos. But I believe Kris is just as much a source of pathos, if not more powerfully so, because of the use of several rather quite common writing tricks surrounding their character in terms of both the narrative and the moment-to-moment existence within the game's world that Susie, nor anyone else, could achieve, which the game leverages in quite interesting ways. Narration voice and choice of perspective are incredibly foundational parts of writing, and yet strangely I find the story's use of these parts woefully underdiscussed in terms of Kris's writing despite how masterfully Toby uses them. Let's talk about it, but first, a couple preliminaries. 1. Chapter 1's Ending

I firmly believe this moment to be one of the most widely misunderstood moments in the game. Kris stuffing the human soul we control (which I will be shorthanding to "us" unless further specified) and brandishing a knife at us is read as a twist: We thought Kris was little more than our avatar to control, but no! Kris is a human person with their own life with which we are interfering! If the player is observant, they will have seen this coming; the intro narration was interrupted to tell us we "cannot choose who we are in this world," and Kris is consistently referred to with they/them pronouns, something which a reader might originally pass off as something done to make it easier for an audience to project themselves onto the character whom we control, but is in reality a marker of their queer identity that further adds to their own uniqueness as a character. None of this is anything new, but I think the idea that Kris being their own person necessitates an "us versus them" narrative is inherently flawed. Kris here is establishing to us that we are not them, and brandishes a knife to cement that fact, but Kris is not the arbiter of truth, and stopping short at accepting their view of the Player-Kris dynamic misses what I believe to be a fundamental piece of their character: Though we are separate beings, we may be united in common cause.

2. Cages and Cooperation

I want to challenge another phenomenon I see frequently underinvestigated or outright ignored, that being the following question: What is "The Cage" the Prophecy speaks of in Chapter 4?

I have seen generally two broad camps on this matter. Kris is always taken in as part of the First Hero, "The Cage, with Human Soul and Parts," but in different ways depending on what is thought of us. Some folks take Kris to be The Cage, and that we are the Cage's captive. Kris can, at times, remove us from their body to assert their own agency. Sometimes in this umbrella people theorize us to be The Angel as mentioned in other parts of the Prophecy and Ralsei's Legend, which is a massive can of worms I will keep to the side. Others take us to be The Cage, for we make innumerably many decisions on what they must do, whether in dialogue or moment-to-moment actions, within which they have some liberty to act. I contend that the "Kris-as-Cage" and "Us-as-Cage" interpretations are simultaneously true and false; the First Hero, the Cage, is both Kris and ourselves. We restrict their actions in so many ways and make them think on their feet to express themself, but they retain authority over us many times and can choose to completely remove us from their body in the Light World with far less restriction than we once thought. Sometimes, our influence puts them under our control, but other times the opposite happens. The Cage is The Cage because both of us cage each other; the First Hero is a single entity comprised of two distinct parts. From here on, if I wish to refer to ourselves and Kris as a singular narrative entity, I will say "The Cage."

With those ideas established, let's take a look at these writing tricks Toby uses to make Kris into an effective PoV character.

Narration and Dialogue

Kris's personality and thoughts often mixes with the game's narration. What proof do I have of this? Look no further than some of the basic interactions you can get in their house when comparing Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 1, the narration of various things is simple, almost frustratingly so. "Your bed." "Clothes drawer." "It's stained." "It's a red wagon with a rusty birdcage in it." These are matter-of-fact and simple; the value statements that come with a person's view of the world around them are conspicuously absent from many things, and much of Chapter 1's narration carries on in a similar style. Characters often remark that Kris seems generally uninterested or detached; most notably Lancer during the party naming session, but in general we don't see a lot of emotion from the narration. It is similar to how they conduct themselves during the Dark World; they are typically content to follow Ralsei's lead at all times, lagging behind the group and acting in ways that belie their little investment in the story so far, but this is a transitive state of mind. If one pays attention, there are hints about their feelings here and there, most often in the little movements they do exercise without our command: backing away from Susie in the hall; backing away from the closet Dark World; and, at the end of the chapter, rushing to block a volley of King's bullets from hitting Susie.

Now, let's look at Chapter 2. What happens if we, say, investigate the sink from Chapter 1, which once gave us very matter-of-fact dialogue? "It is not yet time to wash your hands." Where once there was simple description there now exists opinion, a drive towards some unknown end we do not witness until the chapter's very final moments. The narration takes on more purpose, and more of Kris's character as they become invested in the world; the interaction with Berdly's hideous, hilarious statue gives you narration text that is remarkably vivid and curious, which Noelle questions further and further until she tries to feign agreement, at which point the narration states the statue "seems to suck bad" and Noelle playfully yells at Kris for tricking her into saying it looks good. Kris's personhood trickles into the narration, and it's the same for dialogue choices. Look back at some Chapter 1 dialogue choices and you'll start to see more investment; you can be offered blase choices of "Neat paper, crumpled paper, LANCER paper" at times, but others you can get offered the prompt to hug Ralsei during the tutorial, or do things that make him confused, or mess with the group when Lancer offers everyone some mildly suspicious treestump salsa.

What's happening here is deceptively simple: though we cannot see Kris emote 99% of the time, the narration and dialogue choices seem to reflect their own thoughts and feelings (intrusive ones or ones they hate themselves for having, as is commonly speculated for why Snowgrave can be initiated), and as such we get surprisingly good looks into who they are. Because the world is thus presented to us in such a way, we too come to see things in similar lights, synthesizing our view of the world with Kris.

2. Limited Perspective

Somehow, I see this talked about even less, when I think it's even more interesting because it performs a similar synthesis with regard to character dynamics. Let's take a look at the Fun Gang as a trio: after initially being fearful of Susie in Chapter 1, by the end, Kris has changed their mind about her, and sticks to her side like glue whenever possible. But during the course of the game thus far, Susie and Ralsei have grown close, too. They spend a huge chunk of Chapter 2 together without us seeing it, and by the time they meet up with Kris again, they've changed. Kris is still close with Susie, quite close, but both we and Kris aren't privy to how things happened. If you do the Shadow Crystal quest in Chapter 2, we get another moment of us and Kris being busy doing something while their friends bond without them, and if you follow the same quest in Chapter 3, you get one of the most poignant moments: Kris behind the counter in the dark room, watching their friends play games together without them while they follow where the Sword Route leads them. Make no mistake, we are kinda exacerbating this distance between them and their friends, but we're trapped in their shoes, too, and they could push against us more if they weren't a bit curious. What we see in this moment is quiet isolation, the sense that Kris has this insurmountable bridge between themself and the others that they want to cross. If we as the audience are invested, we want the same; our desires and Kris's have coincided, and when they feel pain and isolation, we feel it too.

I think this is so important and impressive because it helps to garner our sympathy towards them the more we learn about the particulars of why they feel isolated versus the way in which we feel isolated. We're isolated because those other characters are at a distance from us; we're missing interesting and fun character interactions, but we're limited in our ability to express ourselves, and we want more from this story we're enjoying. Kris on the other hand has been in somewhat self-imposed isolation for a while, and now that they're finally opening themself up to new connections, the distance they feel because we're inhibiting them, and the fact that their backroom dealings with Carol and the Knight are putting them at inherent odds with these same people with whom they desperately wish to grow close. Because we share their pain, we're more likely to sympathize with their struggle, and root for them more at the end of Chapter 4 when they make the decision to hug Ralsei while he breaks down or seem tempted to abandon the mission and stay by Susie's side, forfeiting their previous alliances for the sake of closeness with someone about whom they truly care and do not wish to lose. This also extends somewhat to Noelle; Kris's history with Noelle is extremely complicated, to put it simply, and we are privy to so little of it. However, through Kris, we understand their desire to protect her, be her friend, and sometimes leave her in the dark very well. Our reasons why are different, perhaps so much so that we'll be willing to throw away our unity to assert too much control over her and Kris in the Weird Route, but the ways in which the game communicates Kris's feelings to us lets us slip into their shoes and want to know more without necessarily overriding their personhood.

3. We Did (Not) Ask For This

One more major point to go: our sympathy with Kris and cultivation of mutual pathos comes with the relationship between what we want by taking part in this story, and what that action has sacrificed. As far as we can tell, Kris intentionally took us into their body, the opening narration somehow halted by an in-world force of which they took advantage to advance their own plans. But in return, they found their control greatly diminished, and oftentimes this can cause pains on their end about how much they can communicate themself to the people they care about. Meanwhile, upon entering into the game, we are asked to accept everything that will happen to us, and must agree to press on. It's creepy, but the game offers us a vessel for us to completely control, which we take as a promise of power which the story promptly rips away from us. We wanted full power and were denied. Kris wanted to be able to complete their mission, but was unready for what it meant and threatened us to try to assert themself per that scene at the end of Chapter 1. Neither we or Kris are the victims of this situation; we were both damaged, and though our struggles with each other might come off as an inherently big conflict, it's more like an unavoidable disagreement. We are not fighting them unless we choose to fight them, and they will not fight us unless they choose to. Because we are together, though their motivations and actions are often heavily divorced from us, we sympathize and are able to view the world of Deltarune through their eyes with a shocking degree of accuracy.

Why do I think Kris is possibly the game's best-written character? It's honestly rather simple: if you accept that they and we are not two mutually exclusive beings at war with one another, but two entities forced into the same space that each maintain their individuality, their character comes into such sharp focus that their pathos borders on overpowering. Watching the narration become more vivid and the dialogue options more expressive and sincere is tantamount to watching them become more invested in the people and world around them where once there was dullening, color-draining apathy at best. It's an incredibly powerful arc we can see with no spoken dialogue. That's amazing stuff, especially when we come from a place of picking up the story wanting to be invested. Us and Kris are carrying each other's investment; though we cannot read their minds, nor them ours, shall we see where we go next together?

[possiblyaspara]

Deltarune's Susie: The Spinner of Narratives

Hello again!

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.

Thank you for reading.