some really interesting stuff going on with susie "I want the eternity that my life has been robbed of" deltarune and noelle "I've spent most of my life unwillingly trapped in a past I can never actually return to" holiday
Obsessed with these Ralsei sprites because it's so obvious that underneath the carefully maintained veneer of plot-critical-support-NPC neutrality he is extremely full of passion about his interests and a general zest for life. He is not beating the rich inner world allegations.
the prominence of both 1225 & 1997 as recurring numbers is making me think 1997 might be one of the bunker codes. christmas 1997 could be the date of the dessappearance? that would put the current year in the 2000's which feels right. would reinforce spamton's weird mystery connection w/ noelle and his connection to the weird shit happening. not exactly sure how that would correlate 2 the symbols though, 1225 for the christmas tree makes sense, and there aren't other any connections that are that clear 4 the other 2. maybe 1997 relates to the badge? undyne's badge number? or the delta rune, something 2 do with the angel? i dunnooo
god. I haven’t thought much about undertale for years now but “chara is the last person you have to save” is CRAZY.
it’s like. they’re characterized as someone who’s ruthlessly efficient. of course they would choose to sacrifice themself—it was like a trolley problem, if it was between their life and the life of Every Monster in the Underground then the answer was simple. but then, years and years and years after their death, you can finally FINALLY show them that their family would’ve never accepted it no matter how many people they could save. it didn’t matter if everyone else in the underground went free because They would be gone, and they meant the world to their family in an utterly illogical way. undertale is about convincing a child who never saw any value in their own life that they were truly Loved.
I really, really love Susie and Noelle's dynamic in the Holiday Manor segments of chapter 4. Not just in a yuri sense, but specifically because there's this little meta game being done with Susie, Dess, and her memory + how it's preserved and like... the Idea Of Undertale in our perception as an audience.
Deltarune is "A game you can play after you complete Undertale", right? Toby calls it that himself. It is steeped in the expectations we have from that game. Its characters. Its plot points. Its motifs. The impact it had on us as a story, both from the audience's perspective AND from the creator's. Back when chapter 1 first came out, Toby talked about his anxieties regarding this new project, and being unable to "make us feel what we felt with Undertale".
Watsonianly, in Deltarune's story, there is this insanely intricate web of small town drama and trauma and history between Hometown's residents.
...and in barges Susie.
Susie who is the new girl. Susie who doesn't know anyone. Susie who has no respect or attachment to the "mythology" of Hometown, both in a religious sense and in the sense of the history of the people who live there.
Susie who, in the manor, says she "never played the original dragon blazers". Only Dragon Blazers 2.
To me she feels like a sort of implicit allegory for the new Deltarune fan? The one with ZERO attachment to Undertale. Because they never played it or because they played it afterwards. The one experiencing THIS story for its OWN sake.
She's unshackled by the core theme of nostalgia that binds every other character, because the objects that inspire it in Kris or Noelle or Hometown as a whole, they mean nothing to her. They hold no sacredness, no significance. So she tramples over them. A sort of desecration through cluelessness.
Which is EXACTLY what she does with Dess' memory! With her room, kept perfectly still and unchanged in the years since she disappeared, her guitar shoved in the closet to gather dust.
These are objects that MEAN something, that hold an incredible significance, to Noelle and to Carol and what and who it lost. They're something that (presumably) Carol preserved in an obsessive need to hold onto everything left of her daughter.
And it stagnates. It's frozen. It's no less dead, just because it is preserved.
...and it's precisely by desecrating that reverence that Susie is able to breathe new life into it. To create new connections with Noelle. To quite literally Make Art.
Waltzing into Dess' time-frozen room, not giving a fuck, plopping down against her bed waiting for us to make noise. You can see Noelle warn her to leave the room untouched, but she follows her shortly after. The ice melts.
Later, grabbing the guitar. playing it (badly!) but playing it for the first time in actual years. Making Noelle laugh. Reminding her of her sister.
It... kinda reminds me of the reverence we as an audience have for Undertale as the original source material.
Think about it. Didn't Toby have to calm everyone down when he released chapter 1 and reassure us that playing Deltarune would leave the ending we got for undertale untouched? Because people would be preventing themselves from interfacing and experiencing and CONNECTING with a new story, with a new piece of art, out of fear of it affecting... the one they'd already experienced. the one in the past, the one they'd already finished and closed and left to sit untouched on their desktops ever since.
This aspect of Susie is the thematic beating heart of chapter 4. It's the potential, the fire Gerson sees burning in her eyes.
And it ties back to Susie's own trauma and abuse and her being forcefully cast as the villain. Someone bad, broken, not good enough. Someone who should keep her nose out of things outside of her range.
Her confrontation with Carol when she snatches the guitar from her hands... sure she might not know the history/the context/the """sacred texts""", and that CAN isolate her and negatively affect her ability to navigate the social situations in Hometown (and allegorically her artistic output. she can't play the guitar, the piano, or write or that well), but she HAS value. Her perspective has value just by virtue of being new, original, revolutionary, her own, something SHE and only she can bring to the table. And those can improve through practice, dedication, and support.
Total knowledge and reverence for Dess' memory and the past has frozen the Holiday family (and Hometown as a whole) in the past. It's locked them in stasis. they know how things were. they know how things "should be". they cannot deviate. every week they worship a prophecy that dictates their past, present and future.
"Only then will the worlds will be SAVED". But should that really be the goal...? When you save a game, you preserve the things you've already done in it. The only thing you can do is overwrite it or start again. It's an inherently cryogenic process.
...In the game MOTHER 3, The Dragon is a mythological creature slumbering under the crust of the earth, kept in its sleep through 7 magic needles. The needles can only be removed by someone who knows the move PK Love, when its power is needed. Once the last needle is removed, the Dragon will follow the heart of this person, good or bad, by bringing on the apocalypse and destroying the world.
This is fantastic. I never saw Susie in this way before, but you're absolutely right! I myself have not played Undertale, though I have experienced it via lets plays and essays and the like, so while I am familiar with the "sacred texts", I wouldn't say they hold quite as much relevance to me as they might for someone who actually experienced them firsthand.
In my case, I think this has manifested in my love for Ralsei, and my relative indifference to Asriel. If you'll indulge me a moment, I'll explain below!
I think it's historically been quite easy for people coming from Undertale to see Ralsei as a knock-off of Asriel, and the game doesn't exactly make it difficult to do so - between their anagrammed names, their status as young princes, and their general appearance, there's a lot of fodder for comparison there. Even the way their narratives mirror one another - both stuck in a dark subterranean realm while their friends and loved ones dwell in the light above, without them. And their respective "tutorial" fights, too - "It's kill or be killed" versus "no-one has to die." - a point of contrast that serves only to enforce the comparison in the minds of many.
But there has always been a sense that Ralsei exists perpetually under Asriel's shadow - both his Undertale and Deltarune counterparts. And the same is true in-game too. Noelle, who is steeped in the history and customs of Hometown, and who we might see as an allegory for the Undertale player, sees Ralsei only in terms of his similarities to Asriel, and says as much in that very same scene in Dess's room you mentioned. But Susie, who doesn't have that shared history, sees Ralsei as entirely his own person, separate from what came before. By engaging with him as he is, and not through comparison to another, she is able to bring out his own unique character and thus bond with him... which then allows him to come more into himself and bond with Kris, too.
What's especially interesting about Kris is that they will take pains to point out the differences between Ralsei and Asriel when prompted to, which suggests an intimate familiarity with the features of both - appropriate, when considering that one is their adoptive brother and the other is (very likely) some aspect of their childhood desire to be more like their family. Perhaps that's the example we should take when it comes to Undertale and Deltarune - acknowledging the ways in which they are similar while respecting their differences. In that way, Ralsei and Asriel are a microcosm of how the two games are seen by the fandom at large.
Apologies for the tangent, but I just wanted to say how fascinating your perspective here is, and how it's further enriched my understanding of Susie's character, so thank you for that!
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