I can't stress enough how Carol Holiday is literally the perfect antagonist for Susie! Not just because she's such a complex and multilayered character in her own right, but also because she embodies the opposing themes that Susie embodies!
Susie has always been a person with destructive and disruptive tendencies, and she still has them even after her little arc in Chapter 1. But while before her acts of destruction were because she believed she couldn't do anything to change things for the better, now she's doing them TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE AND BECAUSE SHE KNOWS THINGS CAN BE BETTER NOT JUST FOR HERSELF BUT FOR THOSE SHE CARES ABOUT.
She's the revolutionary who throws down the old regime so that those under its heel can actually prosper! She's the spring thaw that melts away the long, brutal winter. And that's what makes Carol's character all the more compelling! Because she embodies said long, brutal winter! She embodies the old regime!
She's dissatisfied with things as they are, just like Susie is! But unlike the RADICAL Susie, who embodies going forward, the REACTIONARY Carol wants to return things to a certain point in the past (and you can't blame her, given how that past was a happy one with her family and the Dreemurr family still intact). But just like all reactionaries, she can't or won't acknowledge that it isn't possible and that her attempts to force everything back are hurting everyone, especially her loved ones!
And we can see the conflict between Susie and Carol, and what they embody affects their relationships with Kris and Noelle. Both Kris and Noelle's struggles parallel each other in how they are both being forced to be people who they aren't. Forced to play roles that they don't want to play and are hurting them both! Forced to accept that the powers that they submit to know what's best for them, even more than themselves! And then Susie, being the great disruptor and revolutionary she is, comes into their lives and shows them that they don't have to!
They don't have to accept what's been imposed upon them! They don't have to be people who they aren't! They don't have to let Dess's guitar stay in her room never to be played again, or keep being a puppet for some heart-shaped cosmic horror! They can be true to themselves, and they should be true to themselves! They should be free to let loose and embrace their weird, unorthodox, and freaky natures! They should because...
...despite everything, it's still you!
P.S. Man, I can't wait to see how Carol and Susie duke it out over the next 3 chapters!
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