good and womanly

And I get that not everyone says that, obviously many people like them or don’t really mind. But it does make me sort of sad how little interest some people seem to have in lesbian love stories. You don’t have to like the ship obviously, but the constant brushing off and talk of them being doomed just feels so…saddening to me. This genuinely feels like one of the first times I’ve ever seen a sweet and wholesome lesbian teenage lovestory, because lesbians so rarely get to be portrayed as sweet and wholesome. And I get that other ships can be groundbreaking too, this is no hate against Krusie or Kriselle.

So I have a lot of thoughts about the characters, metaperspective and fandom of deltarune, which I decided to try to summarize here. Specifically I was talking to my friend about how I find it sort of frustrating that people keep calling things ”canon” when the thing in question has at most been hinted at. For example I saw lots of people saying that Kris liking Susie was canon after ch 5, which suprised me because I hadn’t seen it confirmed in my playthrough. When I asked when it was confirmed I was told that the scene in the bathhouse where Kris looks at Susie after she asks about their type can be interpreted as Kris liking her. And that’s a logical and valid interpretation for sure; but that’s the keyword here right? It’s an interpretation.

When I saw that scene my first thought was that Kris was way too busy to worry about dating, what with the darkworld and Knight and everything, and that that was the reason they looked exasperated at Susie. And I don’t say this because I dislike Krusie or anything, I absolutely understand why people ship them. But it is one of many interpretations right? So it’s not entirely canon, even if it’s reasonable.

And my friend pointed out that many players seem to project themselves onto Kris, and then sort of be angry when they’re not given a romance subplot themselves. Which I absolutely agree with, and have even seen people on here talk about themselves. But isn’t this extremely fascinating considering the themes of the game?

The whole point of the game is that Kris is a separate person from us. We are literally possessing them and puppeteering them through the world. This is done in direct comparison to normal RPGs where we sorta play as ourselves by taking over an already existing character. And the other characters play on this concept too- Noelle is a subversion of the ”Girl Next Door” cliché. The girl next door (which is the name of her themesong) is usually portrayed as this sweet, good-natured, safe-but-bland love interest for the main character.

But Noelle is more than this trope. She is sweet, but she also likes scary things and seemingly have a lot of suppressed anger. We might expect her to be our love interest, but no, she is in love with Susie! Another female character who could be a play on the trope of a more rebellious female love interest who stands in contrast to the girl next door. Together they create a love triangel where the usually male main character gets to choose between safe and exciting, comfort and rebelliousness.

But in deltarune, this story isn’t about us! And I think Susie and Noelle’s romance is an absolutely amazing subversion of this trope. They are their own characters, with their own likes and wishes, not letting the player completely immerse themselves in projecting onto Kris the love story they would want.

And isn’t that fascinating? That the whole theme of the story is freedom from us, but we still want to decide how the story goes! And in the worst case scenario - the weird route - we literally interrupt their romance to FORCE Noelle and Kris together in a way that uh…drowns them? It seems to me to be a very interesting meta-commentary on the way we view and relate to characters in media, made even more so fascinating by the fact that we as the audience is constantly acting according to it.

Anyways this got very long but I also had some thoughts about how many people here seem to prioritize romantic relationships in this story over platonic ones. Which is interesting too, because I personally find Kris and Noelles story to be a lot more compelling if it’s platonic. Something about growing up together and not knowing how to talk about the heavy things you’ve been through but still knowing each other so painfully well really gets to me. Susie too works almost better for me platonically with Kris, since they are two people who have always been outcasts but still found each other. Not strange then, that Kris might feel upset about thirdwheeling when they finally got a good friend again.