StressedShrimp

Susie's character this chapter, to me, feels like it's got excellent ideas for an arc and behaviors that would make sense coming off of Chapter 4's heels, but the way it's handled has sat ill with me. I felt Susie's character felt oddly disconnected from the main conflicts of the chapter, and I felt a tangible gap between where last chapter ended and where this one started. There were also many times (particularly regarding Noelle) where it felt like other characters were speaking for her feelings instead of letting her be the one to express things. Blue putting in poetic terms that she was always thinking about Noelle was particularly indicative. She didn't seem particularly invested in her friends, and made choices that felt more like they existed to spur on other characters' arcs than to progress her own. However, for the time being, I'm going to do my best to maintain a more generous reading of her to understand what we're aiming for with her arc, and suspend my criticisms.

In a word, I think what we're supposed to see from Susie is insecurity. Let's consider what happened at the end of Chapter 4. She and Ralsei have just had the biggest strain put on their bond yet with their misunderstandings and disagreements culminating in the bloody hand scene, where she puts on a front to comfort him so they can both hold onto their hopes for dear life. They got to this point because Ralsei failed to understand how to communicate better with Kris and Susie, and Susie then refused to let go of the Old Man and broke her promise to Ralsei for the sake of maintaining the status quo. Then, feeling utterly defeated, she goes back home with Kris, expecting an empty house and the one adult she trusts gone... only to find her drunk and partying with a stranger. She leaves, venting her worries, and the chapter ends.

Coming into Chapter 5, we find that Susie stayed the night at Ralsei's, helping him design his room, chatting with him, getting her hair brushed by him. I came into this chapter not liking this decision much because they were in such broken and fragile states after Ch4, especially since Susie back then seemed averse to seeing him again that night, and she acts unbothered by it. It's like nothing happened between them, except... well, as we'll see, Ralsei is now on a hair trigger for people stamping out on what he believes and likes about himself, and Susie acts... weird.

Something of note about Susie and Ralsei is that it's been established how much unconditional love they hold for each other; because the two of them collided so heavily at first but care about each other, this is essentially proof in Susie's eyes that Ralsei will always be a source of comfort. Him being her default in the absence of trustworthy adults and the uncertainty of her relationship with Noelle makes this behavior align. One might expect Susie and Ralsei to have sorted out more of their deal, but with the way they act in 5, it's more like that, because they have this love for each other, they left their emotional baggage by the wayside to accommodate and help each other. As such, it begins to come into greater focus why the two of them seem a bit distant; for once they've forgone direct emotional confrontation for pure comfort instead of their usual balancing act of the two, and thus haven't really addressed their issues. Susie and Ralsei act in lockstep for much of the Dark World moment-to-moment because, well, both of them seeing the truth and being open about it means they are closer than ever.

Many people have pointed out that Susie is rather... overprotective of Kris, to put it bluntly. She refuses to let Berdly peel them off from her and Noelle at the Festival for no substantial reason given, and when they're out of the picture, leaving herself and Noelle alone, most of their minor interactions get awkward and seemingly purposefully uncompleted (the ferris wheel, the strength tester). I actually find this behavior much easier to justify, because, well, let's take a look at where she and Kris started. Kris was Susie's only victim (yes, only. This chapter outright confirmed for us that nobody else was her victim and nobody cared that she bullied Kris, but I digress), but Kris unquestionably loves Susie. Doesn't matter what kind of love you read it as, it's love. Kris sticking by her side is proof to her that she has value in the Light World, that she has a companion whom she trusts to be there and steadily provide that value. If Kris is gone and their bond weaker, Susie's value system would start to fall apart, and after seeing Toriel, I think this has happened already, so she's holding them by a tight leash to make sure it stays. Especially since...

Until the beach scene, Susie has no guarantee that the Festival is a date between her and Noelle. She likes Noelle; if you backed out of the Weird Route this chapter, she reveals that she has had a bit of a distant thing for her for a while that went unacknowledged. Some people even take that to mean part of her bullying of Kris happened because of those feelings, which I find tenuous, but it's there. In Chapter 4, her "invitation" was triggered by spite to Carol first and foremost, so coming into this, she doesn't know where she and Noelle stand. Is this a date? Is she misreading things? Is what she feels for Noelle actually love? The beach scene going well appears to be an affirmation of these things: Yes, it was a date; no she didn't misread the situation; yes, it's love. After all, to quote Susie, love is predicated off of someone else loving you, isn't that right?

That line might give you pause. That's... not a very healthy definition of love, isn't it? To believe that love is a luxury only afforded to you by others? That you can't love someone for them and expect nothing in return, when love itself ideally is not a transaction? This moment, though optional, casts into doubt what we've just seen from Susie. She says it's love, but then she gives this definition; she claims to love Noelle, but has several scenes in this chapter all about her doing things to earn more affection from her, such as baking, arranging flowers, and wearing ribbons, something just last chapter she repeated wasn't for her, and clashes heavily with her presentation. Once again, she certainly likes Noelle, and perhaps it is love, as I suspect the game wants us to believe, but her conception is warped, and she trusts herself so little that she feels the need to change herself to gain that love.

All of this traces back to the heart of Susie's character, the core we witnessed back in Chapter 1. Susie's fundamental problem is that she believes she was a bad and worthless person. Ralsei, Kris, and now Noelle, whose newfound connection to her she obsesses over to the point of not engaging much with Kris, Ralsei, and the moral stakes of their adventure in this chapter's Dark World, offer her the chance to say "maybe I don't have to be bad anymore." But she doesn't understand that Kris cares about her no matter what, and very likely agreed with Susie's rationale for bullying them (most likely that they were an ungrateful child to a wonderful mother), nor does she really get the gravity of Ralsei's unconditional affection. There's a suspicious line of dialogue with Orange in the cafe interactions that, despite this affection and care, she doesn't understand that she didn't have to rationalize herself into being the outcast as she had at the start of the game. She says she's "trying to be better about [assuming she was broken]," but it's still there, a nagging voice in her head. It tells her that she must constantly earn love, must do things to earn her place in the world, that even though she's better she still must conform to others' desires to some extent to be accepted, when the people who know her best (Kris and Ralsei) love her the most for being herself. This is what she's thinking when she tells the Floradinn that love is transactional; if she doesn't make herself conform to the terms of another's love, she has no place in it.

So, looking back over 5, her behaviors begin to make a lot of sense. She obsesses over Noelle because it's one more source of value for her, bending herself over backwards to guarantee it because she needs to, and in the process doesn't really interact meaningfully with the people who already love her. She's too much in her own head about love being a transaction to really show love for the people she already holds dear without coming across as either overpossessive or unengaged. She holds this crisis over the priority of the shelter codes she was fixated on the night before, over the meaning of the Flowers' existence and the lesson taught to Asgore, Kris, and Ralsei, because right now she can't stand to see the transactions she believes she has engaged in break or strain more than they already have, unaware that love is something much more meaningful.