#ESPECIALLY in terms of timelines and the red soul and player involvement and like. whatever. perhaps he will tie it all in by ch7 but...

[mymarifae]

what do you think about the new girl page? seeing lots of divisive opinions on that one

mm. mmmmmm. hoooooooo boy ok let's talk about this. i guess.

to sum it up succinctly? it strikes me as bizarre. like, just bizarre. it's weird on multiple levels and fucks with established characterizations of susie, kris, AND noelle. it's messy and i think it was a poor choice. and for now i'm tentatively bonking toby over the head with a hammer (i will get into why it's tentative for now, rest assured) and i'm also bonking everyone praising it and immediately incorporating it into their views of the characters.

to break it down further...?

in and of itself, it's like. alright, we've got this indirect and yet very clear confirmation that susie was adopted/temporarily housed by (and is still bouncing around in the foster care system) a human family and has/had a "mother" who abuses/d her. so she's lashing out. she's redirecting her pain and trauma onto the one human in hometown. who was also adopted. by a family of monsters. a family that is kind and loving. that's not fair, why didn't she get to be a dreemurr, why did kris steal her chance, this isn't fair this isn't fucking fair-

she's a hurt, scared kid. and i don't necessarily think this is a. well i don't want to say "i don't think this is a bad scene to canonize" because it is a bad scene - it's uncomfortable and it caused me a lot of pain to read. but it's not like unforgivable, and it doesn't make susie a bad person.

i will never hold a grudge against a kid for lashing out when they were never taught love and kindness and acceptance. i will never hold a grudge against a child for being scared and hurt and so so so so angry at the unfairness of the world.

my issues with it arise from the way it just... doesn't... make sense. if susie was truly so horrible to kris, why were they so quick to trust her? hell, why was she so eager to be their friend? there should be a hell of a lot more tension between them. the things susie said to kris were genuinely pretty awful and can't be swept under the rug Just Like That.

it also completely contradicts the way chapter 1 is set up, where we slowly piece together that susie never actually bullied anyone. sure, the way the blog post is written makes it sound like she only went after kris when they were alone, but that kind of visceral hate isn't going to go completely unnoticed. i mean, noelle picked up on it before seeing the classroom incident, yeah? i feel like someone would have said something. and i feel like MK especially would have made one off-hand comment about how much susie seems to hate kris Specifically instead of just repeatedly saying that they've never seen her actually do anything bad, but, b-but, BUT she still sucks kris lol.

also, noelle's "i always thought susie can't be that bad!" comment makes noooooooo fucking sense if she saw this unfold. because she literally saw that yeah. she's that bad.

it puts kris and susie's current easy natural loving friendship in a very weird light, and i very much dislike how many people are jumping to accept it. yes, i also love depth in characters' relationships. i love layers and complexities and tensions.

depth =/= toxic. and that's what this blog post does. it makes it toxic. it makes noelle's crush on susie toxic and uncomfortable as well. (seriously: "maybe i should buy apple shampoo so she bullies me instead? XD" ?????????????)

now you will note that i said i am Tentatively bonking toby over the head with a hammer. there is another reason why i don't like people jumping to incorporate this whole mess into their understanding of kris and susie's friendship:

... how do you know this is a scene from our game's current timeline?

it's pretty obvious deltarune has some fuckery going on irt timelines and resets similarly to undertale. on that same note, i've always loved how quickly susie and kris Click, but it has always made me raise an eyebrow. because that is not two teens slowly realizing they have more common ground than they thought and slowly letting their guards down around each other. that is two already best friends reuniting.

the way i've come to understand it is this: in the very, very, very first instance of "deltarune", it took kris and susie a very long time to become friends. BECAUSE of what happened in the classroom and whatever else. they only began to trust each other a heartbeat away from the end of the world. and then they fail. and then the timeline resets. and they do it again.

and the... feelings, the vague memories and the déjà vu. they linger. distantly, susie remembers a time when they were almost friends. and as the timelines go on, again and again, they just build up. things begin to change. their stories become brighter and brighter, despite ultimately ending in the tragedy that [gaster] wishes to prevent. until we get to this point where susie feels like she should be furious with kris for Something, but she can't bring herself to. and thus our current timeline, the beginning of Our Game, is born.

i stand by my theory that kris and susie's friendship will be what prevents the roaring or the angel's heaven or whatever other apocalyptic events ralsei decides to tell us about later. the red soul's intervention has nothing to do with it. they have lived countless lives together. they know now, just intrinsically, that there's no one they can trust more than each other. they are best friends till the end.

and by god is it going to be a happy one.

toby still gets a bonk over the head if this is the case btw because i ultimately disagree with using "ogh. timelines." as character development but i'll accept it if it means this stupid blog post isn't real (anymore). otherwise, he is going to need to pull some fucking magic out of his ass to explain this properly to me because it literally demolishes 2 chapters of build up and development ABFNDBDKGKFGKFJKGKDG 👍🏾