La Luna Medusa

nightmares

another thing i tend to think about with this. i also just think in chapter 5 there's a theme of care and dependency. the flowers have extreme guilt over being taken care of by asgore. flowery conceptualizes himself as weak and useless. in the dark world, his fantasy, he tries to return the care given to him to asgore to "make up for" asgore taking care of him when he should've died decades ago. it's an extreme example, but i also resonate with his feeling.

when your body or mind puts you in a situation where your reliance on other people becomes really explicit, you're trained by the world to see that as shameful or to see yourself as deficient. your efforts to ignore your needs just to avoid "being a burden," will leave you worse off. you punish yourself because of deeply internalized ableism.

regardless, even by virtue of being a living thing on this planet, you are already designed to need others. you have to listen to your body's needs even against a society that teaches you you shouldn't. you have to be okay with the fact that you have needs. sometimes your needs are different or are greater than the person next to you, and all you can do is listen to your body and turn to others when you need them. you're still a person when you need people.

when toby says this:

it's interesting to me how much he uses the language of deltarune to express this feeling. your hopes and dreams slipping away, and bitterness growing is literally the explanation we get for shadow crystals (and so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. it looked like glass). this is also the crushing feeling when you lose a sense of control when you're in pain, when you can't do things the way you want, the way you used to. but when you find yourself still able to fly, you do so because you've adapted. you've listened to your body. you've learned that listening to your body means changing the pace, letting yourself be cared for, letting yourself be helped.

*everyone is having a meeting* Gula, walking in late: “there’s a mouse in the library”

Aced: “did you kill it?”

Gula: “nah.”

Everyone: “ok????”

But I've thought about it some more, and I've come to realise there's more going on here than we're being shown - indeed, considering the way that Deltarune only permits us to witness certain moments within its narrative while skipping over others, and how our limited perspective is itself tied to Kris, it becomes obvious in retrospect that there have been key moments in the development of Susie's feelings to which we have simply not been privy. For instance, all we see of her in Castle Town is her getting ready for her big date, but we haven't seen the preperation leading up to that moment. We haven't seen her and Ralsei discussing it, as doubtless they did while Kris wasn't there. For all we know, they could have spent the entire night hyping Susie up for this date, and we simply wouldn't be any the wiser.

And yet, even this isn't the full story, because once again our perspective is tied to Kris's, and so in a sense we see what they see. And so, after spending the full day at the festival with Susie and Noelle, and then falling asleep on the bench next to them while they talked for HOURS - hours we did not get to witness, mind you - we are seeing not just what the game only permits us to see, but also we're seeing this development the way that Kris themself is seeing it - as a bewildering escalation of Susie's feelings towards Noelle that have seemingly come out of nowhere, and are now threatening to sweep her entirely out of their reach. We are witnessing Suselle as this all-encompassing event that's seeping into every single aspect of their time in the dark world - see how Susie won't flirt with enemies if instructed to (ignore Pink), and that she'll suddenly wear ribbons after spending four entire chapters refusing to, and how she's constantly being called away in the service of deepening her devotion to Noelle.

And if we witness all of this, coming from the emotional gut-punch that was Chapter 4's conclusion, and feel slightly knocked off-balance by how rapidly this relationship has blossomed... well, wouldn't you say that perhaps we are being invited to consider this development through the eyes of somebody who may well not have wanted it to progress so quickly, so suddenly, so violently? Are we not being invited to perceive this through the eyes of somebody who, despite everything, still isn't quite ready to let go of their friends, and fears above all else being left behind and forgotten about?