hello patch i hope ur having the most fantastic mornevenafternoon. currently thinking about the instances where healing spells Miss in deltarune. in chapter 4 when susie is trying to get through to the gerson who is allegedly a statue, and then with ralsei and flowery. two things about them.
first, since we got to see it clearly it appears that the spell didn't work on flowery because it was fatal damage done to his light world form (okay it doesn't HAVE TO be fatal there are some success stories with regrafting flower stems but my coping is besides the point.) so it makes me wonder if susie's healing also missed because that was indeed the real gerson, not a statue. and he was, yknow, dead.
then i started thinking about ralsei and susie, two very lonely characters trying to reach out to the first adult mentor figure they'd managed to meaningfully connect with only to immediately lose them under sudden, traumatic circumstances. and i felt inclined to inflict it on someone else. pay it forward or whatever.
Hello, Blue! Sadly, my week hasn't been great, but that's for largely personal reasons. Things are starting to get better, so I'm hoping that I'll be back on form in the next few days or so!
Yeah, the parallels between Gerson and Flowery are interesting, aren't they? Both mentor figures of sorts to Susie and Ralsei respectively, though they have completely different temperaments and methods to each other. Susie clearly adored Gerson, and I'm certain the feeling was mutual, as evidenced by their immaculate teamwork against the Titan. But, I don't necessarily know whether Ralsei might have had the same sort of bond with Flowery - after all, for much of the chapter he saw the golden flower as something of an upstart muscling in and flaunting his powers because he could, heedless of the consequences. I think there may have been an understanding of sorts there, at the end, and doubtless Ralsei was rather saddened by Flowery's passing, but it seems to me at least that there wasn't that same degree of trust and closeness as their was between Gerson and Susie. Certainly, Flowery's death didn't exactly hit me in the same way that Susie pleading with the Sound of Justice to listen to her did.
As for the healing missing both of them, from a purely mechanical standpoint that's probably what happens when a healing spell isn't directed towards a valid target. It brings to mind the "Cutscene death" in old JRPGs like FF5 or FF7, where the conventional methods for restoring a character from death don't work because of plot. In this case, Flowery had taken so much damage from his encounter with the Knight that his light world object was damaged itself, thus making him unable to maintain his form in the dark - so here it's certainly more justified, I'd say.
As for Susie trying to heal the statue... I actually can't remember that happening, haha. I'd have to replay Chapter 4 at some point and get back to you!
