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[zixzs-ajk]

THE INEVITABLE OPINIONATED SUSELLE RANT PIECE NO ONE ASKED FOR

hey you wanna see me speedrun losing all my followers I'm putting this here as a long-ass 1,600-word examination for why I don't ship Suselle, 'cause that's bound to go over great, lol. But yeah! Now whenever people react to me being critical of the gay doe, I can point them towards this. AHEM.

Foreword: This is the in-depth openly opinionated analysis that I often want to avoid with shipping, but for the sake of discussion and transparency, I’ve tried specifying why Suselle as a ship is not appealing to me personally. The following is not made to shame anyone for liking Suselle, or to apply broad labels, or to shill my own ship preferences or anything like that; it is a look at why Suselle is not interesting and a low-point of Toby Fox’s writing in my eyes. I do not care what other people ship one way or the other and will perpetually advocate for any constructive and creative expression that people have fun making, whether it’s fanart or fanfiction or what have you. These are the words of some random cis bi guy on the internet who’s WAY too invested in a fictional video game involving a gay anthropomorphic doe and her crush on discount bootleg Rule63!Barney, so don’t take it as a personal attack or anything like that. Okay? Okay.  

I find Suselle to be poorly written and executed, with the chief offending reason being that it is excessive and too characterizing without enough build-up. Noelle obviously does not know Susie well enough to warrant such an extreme crush on her (she asks what Susie is like and about her interests, which most people I know would cite as the prerequisites for developing attraction towards someone). When we get into the game, we’re not given any first-hand chemistry or idea of how they interact with each other prior to Susie’s arc in Chapter 1, leaving the majority of any established canon off-screen and less tangible as a result; it’s akin to being told “these two characters have good chemistry” rather than being shown that directly in any exposition or first-hand encounters. It also makes their subsequent shows of chemistry (i.e. the Ferris Wheel ride) feel a little forced; it’s cute, sure, but it doesn’t really feel earned given how little else Susie and Noelle have interacted up to that point compared to how intimate they behave during the actual sequence itself. There’s a dissonance between Noelle’s grounded behavior with Kris compared to how head-over-heels she acts around Susie, and it doesn’t mesh with her personality in a way that feels convincing. 

I define Noelle’s crush as “unhealthy” for a number of reasons; the most egregious example she's known for is for ignoring Susie tormenting Kris as seen in the Sweepstakes, but events like her falsely saying she should be behind Susie to look at her "tail" or generally fetishizing Susie's bullying come to mind as being other offenders. It’s established she doesn’t quite know a whole lot about Susie, relying on this idea of her as a “tormentor” or bully for her most memorable bits of dialogue despite Susie contradicting that idea well after (and even sometimes during) Chapter 1. Noelle’s characterization feels stunted when such a significant part of it is dedicated towards her crush on Susie, and it detracts from the depth of her that we get to see when exploring the City with just her and Kris or the mystery of her mother and Dess. I feel when you have a character who’s most remembered for fantasizing about Susie pushing her over and laughing at her, at a point in the story when it’s already established that isn’t even what Susie’s actual personality is, then it makes it hard to just see it as a “harmless teenage crush.” 

To the people saying “that’s just how teenager crushes are,” A) that’s anecdotal at best and a deflection from the fact of B) It being a “stereotypical teenager crush” does not defend it from being poor writing and actively detracting from Noelle’s depth. Explaining why a character acts the way that they do does not change how that character acts, and Toby just as easily could have given her a more nuanced and distant crush with proper development instead of the immediate fixation Noelle currently has. Her crush isn’t treated as some character flaw and is often portrayed sincerely, giving the effect that we’re narratively expected to go along with her antics and be endeared by how prominently Noelle talks about Susie. I personally don’t find this satisfying, and I would prefer the idea of Noelle learning that Susie isn’t the kind of person Noelle thinks she is and going from there (a confrontation of “why do you want me to bully you?” or an actual natural interaction where their two personalities can play off of each other would do WONDERS in this department). It is entirely possible to portray a teenage crush in a satisfying way while still making it realistic in terms of how they’re inexperienced with love; look at Lumity from The Owl House for the most immediate example. 

To the people saying her crush is a form of escapism given Noelle’s familial circumstances (Rudy in the hospital, Dess being absent, Mayor Holiday likely being neglectful), I agree that’s a good potential point, but that isn’t a theme Toby actually explores in the game despite how much I’d like it to be. There’s plenty of potential and I could see that route being explored in future chapters, but with what we have, there isn’t any tangible theme of Noelle wanting a point of stability among her personal life. Most of her crush is framed as Noelle simply adoring Susie and attempting to get closer to her without having much emotional investment or details to get invested in ourselves, and while I’m all for cute antics, the frequency of how often we’re reminded about “HEY NOELLE REALLY LIKES SUSIE AND HAS A CRUSH ON HER” makes those bits of dialogue seem more obsessive than endearing. Some dialogue from Rudy frames Kris as being the one to “look out for her,” if anything. 

This is the part that’s more difficult to navigate and has attracted the most hostile ire. I hate that I feel the need to clarify this, but obviously, I am in no way homophobic or otherwise against queer relationship representation in media. I mean, hell, She-Ra, Owl House, and Steven Universe have some of my favorite ships of all time, and they don’t get much gayer than that. I myself have been bi and out about it for the better part of my online presence, and I’m eternally grateful that I live in a space conducive to being able to express my orientation. However, I’ve seen time and again instances of people having knee-jerk reactions to accuse others of homophobia just for criticizing any part of the media that even tangentially connects to the LGBTQA+ community, and Noelle’s crush is no exception. I have stated “Noelle being male would alter people’s perceptions of her behavior towards Susie,” and more than a few reactions were quick to assume bigotry at play or it being an “attack on sapphics.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect something like that; based largely on what I’ve personally seen and experienced myself, it seems to be a go-to for internet communities, and doubly so for fandoms with prominent LGBTQA+ presences. 

Yes, I’m confident that the general public would be far less endeared by Noelle pretending she should be behind Susie just to look at her “tail” if it was a male doing that in the same space. I have seen people blast Berdly for his sudden and comical attraction towards Susie near the end of Chapter 2, and then see those same people turn around and praise Noelle despite being just as Susie-oriented in largely the same fashion. Often, when a male character is pining for a female character to an extent that is overtly problematic, the male is seen as a creepy individual and rarely succeeds in wooing the female character, as it has the most narrative satisfaction. Gravity Falls and Adventure Time come to mind as media rife with examples. Being a member of the queer community does not magically make Noelle’s behavior endearing, nor does it excuse Toby for writing her like that, and people being so eager to justify her crush as “just being a teenager thing” sometimes feels like a result of “having to defend a queer character.” You don’t have to defend or justify a characters’ actions just because they’re queer, and being critical of the actions of a queer character is not automatically homophobic. Ironically, criticizing and examining the actions of a queer character against generally heteronormative standards is less problematic than giving queer characters separate standards, I find. 

And that sums up my thoughts on the current state of Suselle! It’s worth reiterating that I still lightly enjoy the ship and have seen copious pieces of incredible work created as a result of it; I just don’t personally like it on a narrative, critical level. At the end of the day, I don’t care what people ship, and being the purveyor of Goats and Dragons for 3+ years I care even less about what is or isn’t canon. If you disagree with all of this and think Suselle is the cutest and most well-realized relationship in all of media, cool! I genuinely mean that; whatever makes people happy and produces some of the cutest goddamned fanart I’ve ever seen can’t be objectively bad. But if you’re going to so rigidly be against actually analyzing and being critical of a fictional gay doe, then it can be largely debilitating for actual discussion when the go-to responses are so inflammatory and missing the point of what makes a character generally interesting and well-realized.