Susie (Deltarune)

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Character
Name: Susie
Occupation: High school student
Relationships: Kris (friend), Lancer (friend), Ralsei (teammate), Noelle Holiday (friend), Toriel (friend)
Fandom: Deltarune
Other:
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Susie is a party member in Deltarune. She is also the subject of one of Undertale's FUN events.

Canon Overview

In Undertale

Susie's Undertale counterpart, Suzy, is mentioned by the NPC Clam Girl who appears near Undyne and Napstablook's houses in a FUN event. Clam Girl describes Suzy as her neighbor's daughter, a girl about Frisk's age who lives in New Home, and says that Frisk should become friends with her, insisting that fate will find a way to bring the two together even though they don't know where she is.

Updates to Undertale give Clam Girl extra things to say about Suzy: In the v1.001 update, Clam Girl says that Suzy "might be why [Frisk] came here in the first place" in "life's grand scheme", and if approached again during the epilogue walkaround she will reassure the player not to worry that they haven't found Suzy yet, and that there is a limit to the number of things they can do today.

In the Nintendo Switch version of the game, which was released September 2018, Clam Girl's postgame dialogue changes again: She tells us not to despair that we haven't yet met Suzy because "the time you will meet her... is fast approaching". She then turns gray and vanishes with a sound effect linked to other Gaster-related characters, scaring the pants off the whole fandom.[1]

Learning about Suzy's existence also adds a bad drawing of three people with the caption "don't forget." (Deltarune's arc words) to Sans' basement.

In Deltarune

Susie is the problem student in Alphys' class. She arrives very late, even after Kris, and is sent by Alphys to go find chalk from the supply closet after Alphys discovers that all her chalk is missing. Kris is sent with her to keep her out of trouble, and sees Susie eating the chalk in the hallway. Assuming that Kris is going to tell on her and get her expelled, she threatens to eat their face so that she can at least get kicked out for "some real carnage", but swiftly backs down, making the excuse that Toriel is a good mother and it would be a shame to make her bury her child. She instead decides to get the chalk as she's been told, but expects Kris to do the whole group project the two have been assigned to work on.

However, the closet turns out to be broken, and dumps both Susie and Kris into the Kingdom of Darkness, where the two meet Ralsei. Susie shows no interest in fulfilling her duty as a prophesied hero, and instead goes off on her own, intending to leave; she only joins the party after Ralsei explains that some puzzles will require all three of them to progress, and will not listen to Kris' orders, automatically attacking the enemy in battle. Enemies that she defeats will count as defeated by the player's team, so the player must either warn enemies about her or put her to sleep to get the pacifist ending of Chapter 1.

While traversing the Card Kingdom, Susie accidentally befriends Lancer, who mistakes her threatening him for giving him pointers on how to be scarier. She defects from the party to be a bad guy with him after Ralsei chastises her on her bad performance as a hero and hurts her feelings. After this she appears with Lancer many times, hanging out with him and doing many ineffectual "evil schemes" together with him, making pointed remarks about how nice it is to be around someone who's actually proud of and likes her. She rejoins the party after the player bests her and Lancer in combat, but is inadvertently the cause of Lancer betraying the party and throwing everyone in jail when she talks about fighting his dad. Confronting Lancer over his betrayal, she decides to try to find a nonviolent way to deal with the King, and thereafter obeys player commands and can be included in group ACTs.

In the confrontation with the Chaos King, Susie saves Kris from him ("Get away. From my. Friend") and creates an opportunity for Lancer or Ralsei (depending on the player's actions) to end the conflict. After returning to the real world she suggests to Kris that the two of them return to the dark world again the next day before leaving school.

Susie cannot be found in the end-of-chapter-1 walkaround, but Kris' classmates all gossip about her, revealing that all of them except Noelle hate her for being weird and scary.

Susie and Kris return to the Dark World in chapter 2. During their exploration of the Cyber World, Susie becomes impressed by Ralsei's healing magic, and when the party splits up partway through the chapter she chooses to travel with him, whereupon the two become closer and Susie learns to heal from him (albeit badly). Susie also helps convince Berdly that there's more to the world than being smart, and teams up with him to save Noelle from Queen. Alone with Noelle, Susie reveals that she's never been mean to Noelle in gratitude for Noelle being kind to her once, and begins to become conscious of Noelle as they open up to one another. Susie also tells Noelle the events of the Dark World are only a dream, though later she says she wishes she did not have to conceal the truth.

After their adventures end for the day, Susie accompanies Kris around town. If the two meet Snowy and Monster Kid, Susie angrily defends Kris from Snowy making fun of them. When they arrive at Kris' house, Toriel invites her to stay and make pie, and the two form a friendship; later on Toriel has Susie stay the night out of concern for her safety.

As a high school student, she is probably between the age of 15 and 18. Like all of her classmates but Kris, she does not wear stripes. She complains of hunger throughout the events of Chapter 1, and a lot of the trouble she has gotten into in the past appears to be food-related; she has been banned from free ham sandwich day, for instance, and once got yelled at for tackling a soda machine. Despite her aggressive behavior, she is also socially awkward and easily hurt.

Her proposed name for the main characters' team is "The $!$! Squad".

In an interview, Toby stated that Susie was originally inspired by Maya Fey from the Ace Attorney games, but as her character developed the only remaining Maya-like trait Susie retained is her undeserved bad reputation, much as Maya is constantly accused of crimes she didn't commit in that series.[2]

Fandom

Fan reaction to Susie is mixed between players who loved her instantly (e.g. big tough scary mullet butch! cool!! attractive!!) and players who took some time to warm up to or still dislike her based on a hatred of bully characters.

Toby posting a page of early concept art for the party[3] resulted in an influx of fanart of Susie with her concept art hairstyle. Toby later commented in the Undertale 6th anniversary stream that he scrapped this hairstyle because it made Susie look too young.

Some fans affectionately refer to her as "edgy Barney" after the children's TV show character Barney the Dinosaur, a purple T-rex.

As a very hungry character, inevitably Susie features in a lot of vore/cannibalism fetish-themed fanwork.

In canon, Noelle can be seen raising the question of whether or not Susie has a tail under her jacket; some fans draw her with one and some without. This speculation is answered in Chapter 2.

Fan Theories

Before Deltarune's release, the identity of Suzy was a point of wild theorizing between fans for years. At one point Toby stepped in and clarified that she is not the yellow soul human,[4] which was initially a popular theory.

Susie's extreme omnivorousness and large appetite are the subject of much fannish speculation and concern, as her varied and sundry Noodle Incidents become less funny and more worrying once one notices that they are all food-related. Different possibilities theorized by players are that Susie's species of monster naturally eats wacky things, that Susie may have the eating disorder pica (an uncontrollable urge to eat things that are not food; chalk is one example listed on Wikipedia's article), or that Susie is just not getting enough to eat on a daily basis due to some sort of issue with her home environment (poverty or homelessness, abusive parents, etc). Her mention that she was once a box for Halloween, and her absence during the end-of-chapter walkaround, also suggest that she may have some sort of problems at home. Her reaction to Ralsei giving her a room of her own in his castle, and then her behavior while visiting Kris' house, lend more credence to this theory.

Still on the topic of Susie and food, Noelle can be seen wondering whether Susie is an obligate carnivore (cannot survive without eating meat). Susie's mention of a "free ham sandwich day" seems to indicate that Deltarune's monsters can and do eat meat, but in Undertale all monster food that seems to include meat is revealed through flavor text to be a vegetarian substitute, with the notable exception of Toriel's snail pie. If Noelle's obligate carnivore headcanon turns out to be correct, this may imply that Undertale's Suzy also had some form of insectivorous diet.

Common Pairings

  • Susie/Kris (Krusie)
  • Susie/Noelle (Suselle)
  • Susie/Ralsei (Susei)
  • Susie/Kris/Ralsei (Krusei)
  • Noelle/Susie/Kris (Kruselle)
  • Noelle/Susie/Kris/Ralsei (Kruseille)

Wank

Susie/Kris vs Susie/Noelle ship warring is Deltarune fandom's first ship war, and mostly involves Suselle fans attacking the rival ship as "stealing" representation from lesbians, based on fan assumptions that Noelle's crush means Susie/Noelle will be endgame. Transphobia is also involved, with assertions that a F/NB ship is "less gay" than a F/F ship due to the characters' genders being different, or "basically hetero" despite that Kris is nonbinary.

There is also a plethora of shipping fanart where Kris and/or Noelle are depicted as flustering Susie into being more traditionally feminine or dominating her, which is criticized as missing the point and being unnecessary, due to Undertale being completely devoid of that type of gender essentialism and the atmospheric elements of it present in Deltarune because of its Christian atmosphere being presented in a negative light. Roleswaps of Susie and Ralsei that also give them a personality/class switch face fan criticism for the same reason.

Susie also occasionally gets character bashing for her early-game behavior; fans who dislike her tend to project their feelings onto Kris and suggest that Kris does not actually want to be friends with her/has been forced to be nice to her against their will by the player and/or plot, despite canon evidence to the contrary (such as their shielding her from the king and referring to her as their friend in conversation with Toriel).

Fanworks

Fanfic

Fanart

Meta

Archives and Fannish Links

References

  1. ^ Undertale Switch - New Gaster Follower (Clam_goner) - God0fTacos :v, uploaded 19 September 2018 (retrieved 17 December 2018)
  2. ^ 『DELTARUNE Chapter 1』が2/28に配信決定 via Nintendo Hello! Indie World, 14 February 2019, retrieved 14 February 2019
  3. ^ Original DELTARUNE concept art of the main characters from 2014 or 2015??? The file was just called "THE FUN GANG" - Toby Fox on Twitter, posted 15 November 2018 (retrieved 17 December 2018)
  4. ^ suzy is not the yellow kid. - Toby Fox on Twitter via Internet Archive, posted 24 September 2015 (retrieved 17 December 2018)
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