❌ susie fears change in general and is resorting to escapism to turn her eyes away from reality
✔️ susie fears losing what little she has, embodied by the fact that her home life and reality are so terrible, that fiction (castletown) is the only solace she has. susie's life is marred by loss and a sense of helplessness when it comes to being able to protect what little happiness she can gather before the world cruelly rips it away from her time and time again
a defense of susie, a defense of fiction
susie's socioeconomic status is something that's always been integral to her character, but post-chapter 5, i think it's nigh impossible to discuss her as a character without touching upon the very real class and racial divides that make up her backstory.
susie is a child of poverty, who lacks access to basic needs such as food security, parental love, or safe shelter. she has moved her whole life (likely as a result of being a foster child), has no discernible ties elsewhere in the world, and has difficulty with adults and authority (likely as a result of being continuously failed by adults and/or due to being justice involved).
susie is also incredibly perceptive of race in ways that most of hometown's residents aren't. i touched upon this in a prior post talking about susie's question regarding humans or monsters to kris, but imo susie 'seeing race' is proof that she was once in a position in her life where she always had to contend with the fact that she was a monster. it's easy to be 'race blind' (or in our world, 'color blind') if you are the majority, but when you are the minority, it is MUCH harder to do that despite what everyone else around you says. kris feels the human version of this while it's likely that susie felt the monster version of it, because both of them perceive these difference acutely.
and it's likely because of this that she puts on a tough front/bully persona because 1) that's what people 'assume of her' based on her looks (the racial allegory is not even an allegory at this point) and 2) it's the only way she can protect herself, because believing she's not someone who deserves to be ostracized means dealing with the inherent unfairness of the world that pushes her into those margins. embracing her persona is her way of coping when she has so little agency or power over the circumstances surrounding her life
after all, isn't it so much easier to say 'i deserved that because i'm a piece of shit just like everyone thinks i am' and believe you had some measure of control than to ask 'why did they do that? was it because of me? did i do something wrong?' one leaves you with the illusion of control, that you MADE someone think badly of you because of your actions, rather than leave you with icy cold questions about why the world treats you this way.
in other words, you cannot simply translate the desire to resist change from other characters over to susie. you simply cannot. and if your framework allows you to do this, you are failing to perceive the ways in which she is marginalized in hometown, the narrative of deltarune, and the very real societal critiques that toby is presenting in the story.
because one thing often gets missed in these discussions that susie is resistant to change or that she's surrendering herself to escapism
and it's the fact that susie is the one who changes the most in deltarune. she is THE greatest benefactor of the dark worlds and fiction as a whole.
dark worlds and fiction have helped susie tremendously. her adventures with kris and ralsei have helped her become more confident, understand who she is, and develop herself as a person. just as people change when they read something that resonates deeply with them, so too does susie through the dark worlds.
and like, susie doesn't fear change in a general sense. she doesn't desire to go back to the past, like holding onto an old TV. she actively pursues a better future such as when she gives tenna to someone who will love him, because that's precisely the journey she's been going through herself. she changes others around her because she too is changing through the narrative of deltarune.
(as a side note, tenna's fate is a GREAT moment to compare susie and the knight, who're character foils. tenna represents the past and where susie chooses to give him a new future, the knight cuts him down entirely)
what susie fears is - due to how her life has been punctuated by loss and helplessness over said losses - losing what little happiness she has now. susie wants to PROTECT what she has, because she's so used to losing it. the final prophecy and the threat of the knight kidnapping people keeps susie alert that losing the peace she has now is a very real possibility.
like look at what gerson says when susie says she wants things to last forever
if susie's desire for no ending was 'we must trap everyone in stagnation because i can't let the dark worlds go', why the fuck would gerson tell her to hold onto it as her pen of hope?
susie's desire for things to go on forever is actively encouraged by gerson, and why?
because he recognizes that susie is someone who has always had to let things go, who has always felt powerless as the few joys she's had in life slipped through her fingers like sand
he's encouraging her to have the strength and hope to hold onto what she loves and protect it (dragon and their trove of treasures moment). in this moment in time, dreams and fiction (the dark world analogies) are motivating susie to give her the power to believe that she deserves happiness and that the world shouldn't just take it from her like it's always done
similarly, when susie talks about her hope for each day to be like the last, she's not saying 'i want us to be trapped in a groundhog day loop'.
no, susie is saying she wishes for a life where she doesn't have to be scared of losing what she has
and this 'dream' is called 'silly' by her, because to susie, a sense of predictable normalcy and stability is a fucking dream!
again, susie has not had stability in her life. she hasn't had friends, she doesn't have food, she hasn't had stability at home or at school... if you've ever been in poverty or known anyone in a similar situation, you know what this feels like. so OF COURSE wishing for a future where each day is filled with happiness and friends is a silly dream to her.
and when the light world shatters her hopes of that through toriel's behavior, she retreats to the last remaining shelter she knows despite knowing very well that she's probably sleeping on the floor of a dusty supply closet
this poor girl simply wants some stability in her life. she wants a place to call home. she's not rejecting the light world, but the light world has rejected her and has continuously rejected her. she isn't losing herself to fiction, she's finding solace in it. those are two VERY different things!
that's why going up to susie and saying 'sorry, change is a part of life, you're surrendering yourself to escapism' is so goddamn tone deaf it drives me insane lol
because in these dark times, your daydreams and your imagination are sometimes your only solace. ffs, people in this very fandom do this by indulging in fandom activities to escape from the harsh realities of the world we live in. and that's not a bad thing, just as it's not a bad thing for susie. i'm sure many of us had our lives changed for the better due to undertale and deltarune!
caring about fiction isn't a bad thing and susie caring about the dark world isn't a bad thing, because the power and hope we gain from works of fiction ultimately help us in reality!
in all this, imo it's so easy to see that susie's fear is not of change indiscriminately, but about falling back into instability, resetting to 0, losing everything and everyone she has come to love thus far. this is especially more cogent if the final prophecy deals with her death.
like isn't it so telling that her dream isn't something grand like kris's whatever-conspiracy or potentially destructive like noelle's: no, susie dreams of a mundane life, just as she looks into people's houses and wonders if she could ever live a life like that.
she fears the end precisely because she expects it, because it's always happened to her.
because everything she has ever loved or cared about has always disappointed her, left her, or disappeared.
because in all her life, losing everything over and over despite her best efforts has always reinforced to her that her choices have never mattered.
and how poignant is that because susie is actually...
just as susie believes darkners are real because of how they've impacted and changed her, so too have players been impacted and changed by the characters of deltarune, seeing ourselves in them or expressing our deepest thoughts through them as if they were real.
just as susie wishes for no ending to her adventures because she fears what lies past it and whether things would be the same, so too do players fear the end of deltarune and whether the fandom would be the same.
this doesn't mean we as the players of deltarune are 'against change' or 'succumbing to escapism'
no, we simply fear the unknown and the loss that will inevitably happen and that is the same fear susie holds.
and what susie wants is to be able to have the power to protect the things she loves, to be able to hold onto these things that she hasn't ever had in her life, to be happy
and similarly, we as the player must believe in another ending, that these characters will find happiness at the end of the story.
that's the synchronicity that'll give her and us hope to face change and the end.
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