all right so. another post, this time asking What The Heck Is Up With Susie This Chapter?
i fully trust that there's a reason for this (and have a bit of my own thoughts on the matter), but did anyone else notice the weird inconsistencies with susie in chapter 5? here's a list of things i noticed that felt weird:
she can wear ribbons now. that's nice for gameplay reasons (esp with this chapter's secret boss, where you're heavily disincentivized to use healing spells & you want to be spending ralsei's action on Lovely Boy), but it's kinda weird for her characterization. if it were just this, i'd say "awww look she's grown more comfortable with herself!" but....
adding onto that, she's chill with being called Princess by flowery. that feels weird/ick for a number of reasons: 1) due to how GNC she is, and this is really feminine; 2) it could easily be taken as something derogatory, but she's chill with it; 3) given what types of other games this chapter is referencing, it has the implication of removing her agency. think about classic JRPs; do those princesses... do anything? do they have agency? no. but that's susie's whole thing. she breaks the rules, she won't let herself be controlled, she goes against the grain. but not this chapter (more on this later)
she ditches ralsei and kris to find flowery & does not intuitively understand stuff that's going on with them. she isn't able to empathize with them. that's a First.
she doesn't get mad when presented with the possibility that ralsei could be doing way more than she currently does. she doesn't even question it, despite how much she pressed her last chapter about it. she's just like "oh sick you can do fireballs". she also just casually accepts what flowery tells her about the metanarrative of the game and does not ask ralsei for more information. moves on. it's very strange.
i really did not expect her to be so gung-ho on noelle stuff this chapter, given how chapter 4 ended. i thought she was going to struggle to be present for her date because of how distracted i thought she'd be by the prophecy & knight. i even had it on my ch5 bingo that she'd end up unwillingly ditching noelle partway through to handle dark world stuff (ironic in retrospect, given how it actually played out). instead, all she can think about is noelle. everything is about noelle to her. even at the very end of the chapter, she brings it back to noelle. this is coming from a girl who intentionally used noelle's crush on her to get access to her house in search of a code in chapter 4. this has been building, true — but not to the point where every one of susie's thoughts revolves around her.
susie has begun to take kris for granted. in previous chapters, she expressed insecurity over kris' presence for many things, becoming awkward or shy whenever she would say "well, of course you'd be there". and she always explicitly said that of course she and kris are sticking together. she's continuously nervous about and surprised by kris really wanting her around all the time. she (and noelle!) even think to themselves that it would be easier to be alone together if kris were with them. this chapter? she seeks none of those affirmations. and the chapter ends on her literally shutting the door in their face, not allowing them entrance into her "home" when they have so eagerly welcomed her into theirs.
and speaking of the end of the chapter, it's very strange for her to single out kris and name the dark world as their thing. this is something a lot of players are able to recognize, noting that kris remains a constant for susie between the dark and light worlds, but susie herself does not. her friendship with ralsei is just as meaningful to her as her friendship with kris. ralsei is not a fantasy or escape for her. ralsei is very, very real. it would make more sense if she brought her into this conversation, but she doesn't. ralsei is depicted alongside all the other darkners in the dark world. she is not treated, for the first time ever, as someone more meaningful than the average darkner to susie.
we need to remember that susie is very, very scared of losing the One Good Thing she's gotten. she's deeply protective of Kris, Ralsei, Castle Town and all her other friends, and she doesn't want other people butting in on it because that might mean she loses it. it's why she's so reluctant to let noelle join the party in chapter 2 despite liking her. it's why she's so protective of the dark world. it's not really about the escape, the fantasy, as much as that is a huge motivation for her; at the end of the day, what susie cares about most is her friends. the bonds that she has, against all odds, managed to form.
these behaviours are weird for her. passivity is not susie's style; she is not the type to sit back and let stuff happen or go with the flow. she isn't the type to accept the role other people want her to play. her whole arc last chapter was about believing in herself and gaining confidence! it was emphasized to her, over and over, that she has the power to change fate! that she can write her own story. that she can become more than what the prophecy has designated her to be.
yet in this chapter, we see that susie is, more or less, going along with the prophecy. heres a couple things to note about the prophecy and how it depicts her: 1) the depictions of her as "the girl" are significantly more feminine in appearance than she normally is (styled long hair, dress/robe); 2) the language is very passive. "love finds the girl", not "the girl finds love". "the girl, with hope crossed on her heart", not "the girl who crossed hope onto her heart". its passive. what did we note earlier? this chapter, susie is more okay with femininity and she is taking a strangely more passive role in the narrative.
so, here's my take.
in this post, i talked about the "intended narrative" as written by Gaster. here's a screenshot in case you dont wanna go read it:
one of the things i noted was that suselle is clearly meant to be part of that "intended narrative", something that will inevitably happen regardless of anyone's actions. something that, perhaps, Gaster is pushing towards. in-universe, Gaster has written a story, and this is part of it.
what im now wondering is... is this somehow a Gaster influence on the narrative?
is he speeding up, Somehow, what's happening? have these relationships not progressed to the satisfactory point yet? is he developing them faster in order to reach the level expected for these arcs?
idk how the hell he would even manage to exert influence like this (perhaps because we finally had a titan unleash last chapter? it unlocked something?), but it's at least plausible. im doubtful that kris did or said anything to make her distrustful during the night (we do get confirmation that they jumped out their window, but given that susie slept in their bed in castle town, i'm really doubtful that they managed to talk to her about anything substantial).
i dont believe this is just OOC writing from toby. i trust him too much for that & the quality of the work up to now (and including Everything Else in chapter 5, too) speaks for itself. so i'm wondering what this shift in susie's behaviour could mean, and i don't really believe that she's just falling far too deeply into escapist fantasy, either. perhaps that's it, but all these things still nag at me if so.
