SCREAMING APE THEORY CONFIRMED

At Last, The Girl

Commission for @pochimitchi !! I based it off the dress from the mannequin and the princess ribbon

Other versions under the cut!

[WIP] drawing based on “The Accolade” by Edmund Blair Leighton (1901).

incoherent

I have been and always will be a fan of "dess was kind of a shitty person" interpretations. though.. not to get "too real"; I am a firm believer that the environment you are raised in is going to heavily impact who you are as a person. there's not really a world to me where how dess acts is not a direct result of how she is treated by her parents (and truthfully I can't really get into a discussion on "fault" without going on a tangent about, like, the real world structure of The Family, which I'm not really equipped to do and also would probably be far too serious for a silly deltarune post)

suffice it to say, dess' actions are as a direct result of how carol and rudy (and the other people in her life, of course) interacted with and raised her. I do think that she was "spoiled" to a certain extant, insofar as she was a Rich Kid who probably got basically whatever she wanted (I mean, did you see her CD collection? her inexplicable piles of shoes and expensive music equipment in her closet? I don't think she was left wanting for any material possessions), but I also think carol was always at least somewhat controlling in a way that would only become exacerbated later by dess' disappearance.

I think a lot about how noelle's appearance is enforced ("if you can get my mom to let me go grimdark?" "never seen noelle wear anything like this...?"), which I imagine was not a recent development. but I also think about how dess, noelle, kris, and asriel were allowed to do things like explore the forest or go to the graveyard at night together - or, at least, weren't so heavily monitored that it was impossible for them to do. so I think that dichotomy is kind of indicative of the change carol underwent post-dessappearance.

carol strikes me as someone who very much falls into the archetype of the, like, expectant parent. she's unwilling to view her daughters as their own people who can make their own decisions, and instead decides that she knows what's best for them (especially if the way queen treats noelle is anything to go by; which, hopefully we can agree, it is). she almost certainly became more of a helicopter parent after dess' disappearance, but I imagine she's always wanted her family to present a very uniform image - something dess in particular was very uninterested in.

I don't think I ever posted it here..? but a few months ago on the DUMB I mentioned how I read the flavor text associated with some of her instruments ("a violin, a flute, a microphone... / they all look very expensive, and very dented.") as kind of representative of this relationship. "violin" and "flute" don't really strike me so much as instruments dess would be interested in, certainly not interested in over things like her guitar or the drumset in her closet, and they're also presented as things she took very poor care of. these always read to me as instruments that carol felt were more "in line" with her expectations of her daughter, that she gifted to her as a way to "subtly" encourage her towards hobbies that she approved of. which dess was very much not a fan of, hence the poor condition. the microphone is an obvious standout in this case, so I definitely won't claim that that's the only reading one could have (certainly, I believe that dess was probably pretty careless with and had very little respect for random objects in general), but it does feel in line with their (speculated) relationship.

I definitely think you're right on the money about dess being impulsive. she's such an #ADHDqueen ("a rowdy and dirty girl"), and I think it's clear that she hated feeling controlled (which, of course, works well with all the wider themes in deltarune of autonomy and disempowerment). I would not be surprised if she and carol fought often, and if dess stated more than once her desire to leave hometown forever and never see carol again (perhaps directly to carol, perhaps only to the people she was closer with like asriel and noelle; though, clearly, in noelle's case it would have been softened a bit, becoming more "I want to take you somewhere else, somewhere nice", likely with only an implied "and never come back" that noelle missed as a child). her desires to be a musician ("posters for shows that may or may not have ever happened") almost certainly played into her desire to leave quiet little hometown as well. I doubt there were many people who really appreciated the kind of music she wanted to make, and I think she would have known that she would never "make it big" living in hometown, especially if carol had any say in it.

how cognizant carol was/is about how she hurt(s) her daughter(s) is up for debate - but I think I'm of the opinion that she's aware on some level that dess was in pain/noelle is in pain now, but she's not aware of the full extant to which she has hurt them, and thinks of herself as only ever doing what's "best" for them in the long term (even if it's something she knows will hurt them in the short term). this is where I think her parallels to queen could come to a head, with noelle standing up to her and telling her exactly how much her actions have hurt her, and insisting on her own personhood separate from how carol views her. I don't think carol will take this as well or accept it as quickly as queen does, but I'm confident that she will be given the opportunity to grow and change, and that she will (eventually) acknowledge noelle (and dess) as her own person that she cannot force to enact her own will.