you know it's bad when even people who like suselle found the confession abrupt. Obviously, i am not that, so to me it was especially jarring, considering how even at the very beginning of 5, when the skinwalker is already in effect, Susie still makes a note to kris that if things go well, they'll get another chance to get the bunker code, only to become as obsessive of noelle later as noelle was of her in the earlier chapters (the most grating part of her character).

But not only does that happen, but there's several instances of weirdness that I continue to be indecisive as to whether they're intentional or not. This post lays out the argument about them being intentional; what they are and why they could be there.

Anti-Susie

upon seeing Susie wearing a ribbon i capped the sprite and sent it to a friend captioned: ABSOLUTELY NOT. While under the assumption Toby is just stupid I am deeply disappointed, the truth of the matter is in my file, Ralsei immediately pointed out that he thought Susie not to like ribbons. He points this out even *after* Susie has already requested to wear a ribbon, which is, in itself, a red flag.

Susie's opposition to ribbons was a core symbol of her as the prophecy-breaker; the person who enacted her will regardless of "fate". I believe if the skinwalker is present there intentionally, this abrupt, one-night turnaround is meant to bring attention to how out of character she is. This is the reason Ralsei, too, brings attention to it in-universe. And it is but one instance of Susie doing a heel-face turn on several aspects of her character.

Susie has not really demonstrated any specific attraction to any one character. By the end of chapter 4, despite the sequence in Noelle's house, she still isn't doting over her in any way that stands out from how she does with everyone else. Then in one night she's suddenly flustered and excited and nervous-- despite Noelle not being her first choice to the festival, which she points out to Noelle herself, while at her house. In the span of morning to dusk of one day, she calls her day with Noelle "one of the best days ever", says that it keeps getting better, and insists that she really, REALLY likes her back.

And yet

-During the date, Susie still brings up how it was special to be alone with Kris at the diner.

-Upon consuming the tree cake in the DW, which in its description is said to taste like joyful memories, Ralsei and Susie think of each other. If dating Noelle truly was one of the best days ever, why did she not think of the ice cream they shared, and instead thinks of the cakes Ral makes?

-Susie's "idea of love" is naive and confused at best; and she emphasises that it requires that someone like you first, implying a substantial aspect of her infatuation is Noelle being infatuated with her,

-Susie says she can't stop thinking about Noelle's... heartbeat. Not anything particular about Noelle's appearance, or personality. Just her heartbeat upon holding her. Weird.

But there's more. Despite Susie's emphasis on rejecting traditional femininity, the minute Kris (and the player) enter castle town immediate focus is placed on Susie's appearance -- especially on her failure to conform to femininity-- and her nervousness and excitement about dating noelle. This ties directly into the ribbon. Susie has always been depicted in suits and other "boyish" clothing. She has strong, assertive, loud demeanor.

Why is everyone in the dark world being so emphatic of Susie gushing over Noelle, Noelle's name being in her every breath?

When Ralsei first makes rooms for Kris and Susie, Susie's door is shaped like a crown. The crowns always stood out. Jokingly I said Ralsei was calling her his princess. Now it turns out Flowery repeatedly addresses her as a princess, and you can dress her as a princess. She never opposes this, nor is she particularly visibly upset about it.

Despite questioning Kris' red heart, she accepts exposition about UI elements without flinching.

She retcons her reason for bullying kris from the explicit connection to their family and Toriel in all prior chapters and Newest Girl Girl, to being about thinking Kris and Noelle were dating. So not only has her current self changed, but also her retroactive understanding of events.

And this, in fact, seems to intensify across the chapter: At the beginning she still tells Kris she'll search for the bunker code, but near the end all of her interactions alone with the flowers are to have shallow one note expositions about love with Noelle. When you first equip the ribbon on her, she wears it as a bandanna, and is later shown with it on her head.

Just, what?

Sequence Breaking

It is at this point that I bring up that 3-5 were originally meant to be all delivered as a single package. Under the presumption that this was intentional, then, was the intent for us to jump immediately from one to the next, and be put off by the abrupt change in tone and characterisation? Is Ral pointing out all the ways in which she acts off and things are off -- despite being consumed by it himself, on some level, meant to remind you of how things were just yesterday?

And if so, what happened in the interlude between 4 and 5?

In my "Off the Rails" Ralsusie analysis of 3 and 4, I posited that Suselle is the "love finds its way to the girl" event of the prophecy. At the time my hypothesis was that Susie was then going to wield the pen of hope and reject that for herself. That would be Susie of course; not the skinwalker. We also know now that the field of pink and gold being scorched by the flames of jealousy wasn't about Asgore and Noelle as I initially thought, but Ralsei feeling jealousy and apprehension of Flowery-- Interestingly, over Susie's attention...

But wait. The fields weren't scorched by the inferno of jealousy. Ralsei has fire magic, and yet he did not burn everything down. But he was substantially pettier and more bitter than his usual self, almost uncharacteristically so--

Things are Weird

The Weird Route has an alternate outcome. Kris and Noelle can drown in the lake. The screen fades to white, and they are forcefully rolled back to-- The suselle scene at the beach.

While it continues to play out, it is intercut with Noelle's awareness that she could not defy fate. That because the player did not input "Proceed" sufficiently quick, Noelle alone could not change the set outcome. Only the player, whom she understands as Kris, has the agency to oppose it.

She still romances Susie, but the intercut scenes and her prior monologue about observing herself going through the motions imply that in this instance, she is acutely aware that she could be free, and couldn't do so. These thoughts exist, but are not outwardly expressed whatsoever. Instead, she posits to Susie the question as to whether she should run away, sequence break-- and then turns the possibility back and refuses to do so, wanting to stay for Susie's sake.

When you use the Shadow Crystal while the party's all together in 5, you can see "Susie at a window, unkempt and glaring." Noelle describes watching herself as if from behind glass.

Susie's resolve at the end of chapter 4 is to defy fate at whatever cost, so that the final tragedy does not have to occur. She leaves Toriel's house and canonically heads to the Dark World.

And then the following morning, a skinwalker.

Here's the crackpot hypothesis: What allows you to reach SIDE B is your power as the player. Susie does not have this power.

Susie wants to defy fate. Susie tries to defy fate. The next day, who is at the Dark world is The Girl. The girl who wears ribbons. The princess. The girl that love finds its way to.

Susie says Ralsei is "chattier" when Kris is not around. Ralsei stood up to fate by obeying her command to remove his hat. The other thing that everyone is emphatic about in the DW, besides susie being utterly besotted with Noelle, is that Ralsei should be wearing a hat. The hat is forced upon him twice. Ralsei wanted to believe things should change, just as Susie did. She inspired key steps he took toward his own personhood. She was the one to urge him to make his room his. Ralsei believed. Ralsei stood up to fate. Ralsei broke the rules. The universe quickly reminded him that he should not do so-- Or Everything Breaks Apart.

Ralsei prays for Kris. Ralsei prays for Susie, and prays, desperate already, for things to change. They don't. Love finds its way to the girl. The princess with her heart crossed with hope. And her ribbons.

Quick final thoughts

This in itself is an appetizer for a grander theory about the prophecy and the game making sure things stay on track across all media that takes after the prophecy; from Dragon Blazers to Lord of the Hammer to Deltarune itself. The theory's being worked on with two very dear friends, but it's still at the workshop. This post is solely my thoughts, though they definitely were a part of it. Look forward to it being cooked! Needless to say there's lots of interesting stuff with this idea of the game "railroading" everyone by force so that things play out how they're "supposed to"...

Ok I'm kinda in theory hell so this may be me just going insane but this post made me think of something crazy. With the way the situation with Dess is now being talked about (the way Asgore worded it, it sounded more like a death and less like a disappearance, and Noelle refers to it as Dess "leaving" and not disappearing) and the way the weird route played out... What if we've been wrong the entire time. What if Noelle is the Knight?

Here's my thoughts: at the end of chapter 5s weird route, if you clear up the visuals, Noelle is no longer in water, and her face is lit up from below, most likely from the SOUL (the literal light in the darkness). We're then told to skip all the way to chapter 7 on what is likely an alternative route with Side B. What if, in the process of drowning and reaching whatever darkness lies under the lake, Noelle dies? I mean, her text is still in parentheses, suggesting she still can't talk or breathe wherever she is- she could easily suffocate, along with Kris! But the SOUL doesn't need air to breathe. It's not alive. And we just had an entire boss fight that highlights that lightner ghosts can coexist within the body of a darkner, and before we learned even lightner ashes can be brought back into darkner forms! And most of all, people have been desperate to figure out how the hell the Roaring Knight can move in the lightworld despite obviously being a darkner.

So my theory. Noelle and Kris die, and along with the SOUL, create the Roaring Knight. Now with the powers we have but no longer attached to the player themselves (so far, as we have yet to have any control over them), the Knight decides to go back in time and force Side A Kris to help them start The Roaring under the accusation that they were involved with both Dess' AND Noelle's death. I'm not sure of the exact motivation Why they'd do this outside of Noelle's obvious desire to break free and Kris' equal desire for autonomy culminating in them doing something harebrained like that, or perhaps their formation of the Knight completely corrupts them. But I think this can even explain why the Knight acts like Dess without feeling too ooc, since besides Asriel, Noelle and Kris were the closest to Dess, and arguably would be more likely to emulate her since they were younger.

Since I've seen no one else say it, I'm going to: I do not like how much love was focused in this chapter. Not in an "eww ships" way, but... Undertale showed us that LOVE and love are separate things. And it feels rather ominous how chipper and joyous most everyone was this chapter, especially Susie, after last chapter. I mean hell, even as frustrated as Ralsei was, they weren't acting like someone who had faced a titan literally less than 24 hours ago either!!

I didn't want to make a whole separate post to talk about the weird route, but I actually want to address it too bc it actually goes into a very harebrained theory I have to why everything is all weird.

First to address it, I Don't think Kris and Noelle drowned. This is connected to a theory someone else made before the chapter even dropped (I can't remember who now, damnit) that the lake is not a true lake, but a stretch of liquid darkness that separates Hometown from reality. They had good evidence to back the idea up, but ofc I can't remember it now, so. Just trust me on this ig. But, with Noelle's history of breaking games and finding glitches, I think she did exactly that; she broke the bounds of her own game, her own reality, using Kris and the SOULs power. That's why she keeps yelling at Kris even when their faces are in the water, as they are Literally glitching out, drowning but not drowning, essentially clipping out of bounds. And I think that's where the Side B for chapter 7 comes in- I don't think Kris and Noelle truly broke out of the game itself, but just their version of reality, into Side B. Whatever it is. I don't have much speculation on exactly what that Side B is exactly, but I think we're following Kris and Noelle into whatever it is.

What does that have to do with the normal route? Well, piggybacking off the idea that the world of Deltarune is a game within itself (the CRT static doesn't completely overtake the screen, suggesting we are seeing someone else's perspective Within Deltarune), it suggests to me at least that someone could be messing with code outside of our reach to get the outcome they want. We already see how attached Gaster is to "his" Deltarune, enough to even talk to us about it in game And on Twitter, and I don't think he'd very much appreciate deviation from his desired vision. So, what if he just... Changed things?

It seems like a copout for bad writing, and maybe it is, but I have a little too much faith in Toby to suddenly fuck his whole game up this close to the finish line. This is 10 years in the making- he's had time to think about what he's doing and what he wants to convey to us players. And it truly doesn't Feel like too far of a stretch to think Gaster is messing with things, because we already know he has; him messing with things is the whole reason the SOUL is even around in the universe of Deltarune, and I'd even argue he may have made the prophecy as well, seeing as he is obsessed with the Deltarune. But my thoughts go farther than that, too- I think I know How Gaster is messing with things.

Does anyone remember fun values?

If you're not a huge Undertale nerd (or don't use up precious brain space remembering Undertale lore), you may not know what fun values are; a fun value is a random number between 1-100 that is selected in reset, and controls the possibility of several rare events. Notably, most of the fun events somehow relate back to Gaster, and it's these events that we learn the most about Gaster, and likely the only time we visibly see him. Deltarune has no fun values as far as I know, but with how connected the two universes are, I wonder if Gaster's connections to the fun values weren't a random choice made to drop lore tidbits, erspecially since fun values only slightly alter the reality of Undertale without making any crazy changes. It also makes me wonder if fun stands for something, just like LOVE and EXP have alternate meanings? I couldn't imagine what it could be, but it's another innocuous word that's attached to an important part of Undertale, just from the code this time. Especially since it's attached to resets and not just fresh game files, which means in some way the fun value is conscious of timelines.