Does Susie Have Human Ears? (Theory)
This is going to be my first-full fledged theory about Susie being half-human, And I might as well start with a bang. If you've looked at my profile, you would have seen this coming, though you might still be confused as hell. And I don't blame you! This shit is weird.
Not to worry, I won't dunk you in the ice bath right away. We'll build up to the main course, starting with mostly reasonable stuff and ending with the delusions.
As a reminder: Everything I talk about in this theory ties back to Susie's coping mechanisms and how they stem from her body dysmorphia. I think it's important to hone in on Susie's physique because it makes up the core of her character. The only difference between what I spoke on in those posts and what I'll discuss here is the level of speculation involved. It's a theory, so it's gonna have speculation derived from circumstantial evidence. duh
We on the same page? Good. Let's start.
Your body is not something you have much control over, moment-by-moment. There's something to be said about long-term change, but at this juncture, you're stuck with what you get.
when I say that Susie's body is the center of her psyche, it's because Susie is a character that desires control over every situation she's in, and her body acts as the antithesis to that sentiment. It's not something she had ANY control over, and yet, she still needs control.
So if you were to ask me how someone with this mindset would square that circle, I would probably say something along the lines of "Use what you can to cover as much of your body as possible" and oh hey look at that
Yeah, Susie hides her tail. We know that. But I don't think that's all her outfit is in service of. You have a character with a textual pattern of hiding her undesired characteristics... and she's covering her entire body. It's not a stretch to say that her body insecurities extend not just to what's been positively implied by her in-game, but to the negative space of what she omits.
And, as I've said, revealing more of her characteristics is a sign of growth for her. Her showing her eyes at the end of card kingdom illustrates this. You could even say that her sleeveless vest is representative of how she naturally feels more capable of vulnerability in the dark world- something we also know is textual given the tea party conversation from chapter 4.
Keep a bookmark on these ideas, they'll come in useful when we have to discuss those potential characteristics. But what could those be?
Real quick before that, let's talk about the part of her that isn't covered:
In theatrical magic, misdirection is a form of deception in which the performer draws audience attention to one thing to distract from another. It's a manipulation of interest done with the knowledge that the average person has a limited amount of information they can focus on. If they're looking Here, they're not looking There.
Most magicians use a wand or some other prop to engage in misdirection. Susie uses her big ol' mouth. She may be bad at magic, but she's a wizard when it comes to this shit.
We've covered how Susie spends Chapter 1 externalizing her sense of worthlessness by behaving in a threatening manner. She uses her mouth to re-enforce this image of herself, threatening to bite of Kris's and lancer's face. She does it in "the_n3w3st_g1rl_g1rl," with Noelle calling her teeth out as 'horrible'.
What's important here is that each time, she makes a biiig show out of it. Her demolishing that apple in a single bite, picking up kris and lancer, getting real up-close and personal? Yes, she wants to scare, but it's also about constructing a physical facade alongside a psychological one. It's performance! She is waving her wand around, drawing focus to what she wants others to concentrate on.
I think this is interesting, given how clandestine she is about herself otherwise. It shows that her body insecurities are not all-encompassing; they are selective. There are the parts of her that "make sense", and there are the parts of her that don't. When Susie goes "This is what I am," its implicit complement is that what she doesn't emphasize is not what she is; so don't look.
Again, you have to fill in the negative space. A Susie never reveals her secrets, but we sure can guess.
Ever since I started thinking about Susie being mixed, I've asked myself: What's the forest that we're missing for the trees? This misdirection, her concealment, Surely it's in service of something- but what?
I couldn't find an answer that was satisfying and all-encompassing. Her tail's not exciting enough on its own, in my opinion. Maybe she has little underdeveloped wings on her back? Cute idea, and would explain the big ass vest, but there's no evidence for it and it doesn't contextualize the rest of her attire. Same thing with her shoes being fit for humans- no real signifier for that.
For a good while I was at a loss. I didn't really know where to go with it, and it kind of discouraged me. nothing felt substantial enough.
Until one day, I decided to do a replay of Deltarune after Chapter 4 released. During the aftermath of beating Spamton, Susie said a line that I completely forgot about:
Goosebumps are an afterthought, even in real life. They're a vestigial response to stimuli that's only associated with humans because of the little lumps that appear on our skin. They show up when you're cold, they show up on Redditors when the new Marvel movie trailer comes out. That's about it.
I'd imagine in a society of humans and monsters, they're even more insignificant. In Kris's situation, especially. 'Goosebumps' is a term incongruent with furry animals, and meaningless for reptilian ones. The average monster wouldn't know what they are or even notice them.
Susie actually notices that Kris has goosebumps, recognizes what they are, and knows what they mean for a human. She doesn't do it through some sort of active recall either, It's just intuitive. Yet another moment where Susie is able to empathize with kris by clocking one of their weird little idiosyncrasies from the monster community they live in.
"Okay, but surely this doesn't mean she has human skin. This is probably behavior she recognized from growing alongside humans," My idiot self thought. "Surely in upcoming chapters, this will be addressed. She'll have some moment where she mentions having scales or something, and I can stop being stupid."
Not to worry, we do get a mention of scales in Chapter 5! From Susie, Even! Here it is:
...Are you goddamn serious.
She uniquely identifies a scale trimmer. Great! Good job. That is a tool that would be associated with reptilian monsters. How does she want to use it?
Do you understand how easy it would have been to write a normal line of dialogue about this? Here, I'll fucking do it:
If Toby wants to indicate that Susie doesn't have skin, then he's not trying very hard. Her prominent lips and freckles aren't doing her any favors either!
More importantly, I think it's REALLY fitting for her attire. I don't think there's a better way to highlight Susie's body confliction than to have her enveloped in it. She is quite literally stuck in her own skin, and her clothing is the resultant.
Piles and Piles of Parallels
Before we go crazy mode, I want to talk about the characters paralleling Susie and how they tie into her body issues.
We'll start with Orange, as she's the most direct example. I'll assert that Orange is meant to parallel a young Susie. A girl with a chip on her shoulder, eager to dish it out but not so much to take it. And more importantly, She's fully on display. She's not attempting to hide any part of herself, and still loudly insists against any sort of protest that she is 100% human.
Obviously a very insecure person. And who could blame her? She doesn't look like any of the other 'humans' around her!
Orange manages this insecurity in similar ways to Susie. When we first see her, She's behind a paper veil, puffing herself up into an intimidating visage (that does not work at all). She's also very physical, looking to "beat up" anyone that pisses her off. Sound familiar?
There's much more we could link, but in service of time, I think there are two important things about Susie that we can take away from Orange. The first is her tendency to project. She insults others off of their appearances, assumes their emotions, the works. I think the purpose of this was to make Susie's projection about her body issues textual through her parallels to orange. Put a pin in this- We'll bring it up later.
The second is Orange's tail. Of course, there's the whole spiel about Ralsei saying "humans don't have tails," and Susie's response to it, yadda yadda. That's level 1 shit. you already know about that. In fact, I don't think even this line is sufficient in paralleling Susie's relationship with her tail. It provides context for why Susie hides her tail around humans, but not why she hides it around monsters.
What I think is more interesting and better explains that relationship Is a hidden dialogue exchange that I didn't even know existed for like a month. If you backtrack to the room where you first meet orange in person, you can see why she doesn't like Netskies:
Netskies are foxes. They are not humans, nor do they present as them. Look at the line they use to hurt her feelings- They don't make fun of her for having a tail, they make fun of her tail being small. This is completely at odds with the framework that Ralsei picked on Orange for! It's "You shouldn't have a tail" Vs. "Your tail is too small." And yet, Orange is distraught at both. What does she say?
I'm not gonna lie, my delusional ass teared up when I saw this. These are the words of a child attempting self-affirmation. She's trying to tell herself that she's fine just the way she is, that the contradictory ways in which people see her as 'wrong' don't matter.
I think it's the missing link for Susie's tail issues. The tail existing is less of an problem than it not looking "how it should."
If Orange is meant to be a reflection of a younger Susie at her most open, then Jackenstein is a reflection of a current Susie at her most closed off. When we first meet him, he is quite literally encased in shadow, both a tactic meant to scare others off and to shield his body from ridicule.
* I WAS BULLYED, AND HAITED BY THE OTHERS, FROAM MY LARGE AND UGLY BODDY.
* I WAS BANNISHED TO THE DARK ZONE, ONLY TO APPEAR ON FESTIVAL NAIGHT...
He has/had a fascination with pianos that was ruined by others' cruelty, same as her. Even in official artwork, Susie is depicted as Frankenstein's monster, a monster made of human parts.
I think Jackenstein most concretely reflects Susie through his development and relationships, but I'm probably going to discuss that stuff in a later post.
What we need to know for now is that Jackenstein hides his 'true face.' This is important because if the Susie parallel holds solid, It directs our attention to Susie's face. The question becomes: What about that would scare her?
On August 1st of 2025, Just over a year from today, I took a shower.
My shower room was covered in black mold from an infestation. We were gonna clean it soon, but until then I had to make do with constant spore allergies.
As I stood under the running water, my eyes, watery and itchy from the spores triggering my antihistamines, suddenly snapped into focus. I couldn't stop staring at one of my shower tiles.
In this moment, the mold spoke to me. It said, "Hey, I think kinda looks like if Susie had big ass ears." And I said, in response, "Dude, that makes perfect sense, actually."
If you're still not convinced, I'll explain further.
The entire premise behind this idea is just a natural extension of what I've already been talking about; Susie has body insecurities due to past harassment, covers herself up to feel in control, and must become vulnerable in her physique to grow as a person.
We should make an effort to cover how all of these aspects could apply to her ears. I think the first order of business is to establish that there is some attempt by Susie to cover her ear area.
Look at Susie's head real quick. I want you to pay attention to this pattern.
She's got a very stubborn set of bangs around the side of her head and a lower hair portion that drapes forward. This allows her hair to stay in place regardless of what she's doing.
This is remarkably consistent across chapters. Even when she's running or swinging her axe, laughing or twirling, the pattern holds pretty well. So what happens when it breaks?
Well usually, It breaks from Susie performing a sharp downward action that would lift her hair.
In this case, her entire body is obscured due to motion blur. Which is like whatever, could mean nothing.
So unless there's some other action Susie willingly takes in free fall that obscures that part of her head, I think this trail runs cold-
This is so stupid. Why am I so autistic about this
And it gets even dumber because we can implicitly tie this back to an actual story beat.
From the jump, Susie absolutely refuses to wear any ribbons on her head. At first, this seems like your average "tough girl that doesn't want to be feminine" , but then we get to chapter 3 and it's obvious that she's got some REAL baggage with the blue ribbon in particular. We can gleam that her aversion to ribbons is more from a coping mechanism extending from some bad experience than a surface-level desire to conform to a masculine demeanor.
This is re-enforced in chapter 5 when Susie actually does wear a ribbon in her hair, but quits almost immediately, saying it "doesn't work." You could argue that this is because she's still grappling with the "tough" persona she needs to shed, and I wouldn't completely disagree, but I think it goes deeper than that.
When Kris wears the same red ribbon, Susie goes:
Can wear anything. Susie denies wearing ribbons not because she doesn't want to, but because she doesn't believe she can. It's a subconscious compulsion, an urge. We've already talked about how Susie manifests the urge to control her body by hiding it.
Why does Susie think she can't put on hair ribbons? Well, what do hair ribbons do?
They hold your hair back.
Ears are weird, right? They're like these weird little eldritch folds of flesh we've got sticking out. By all accounts the only reason we put up with this bullshit on the side of our heads is because we evolved with it. Now imagine taking that and putting it on the sides of what's supposed to be a reptile/dragon creature and boom, you've got a certified, Grade-A,
Susie projects. When she calls others "freak," it's a reflection of her own self-image and what she's likely been called in the past. Yeah, it's no wonder she hates ribbons if that's what she's gonna be called while wearing one!
And this even ties back to her character parallels as well. We talked about how Orange represented a younger Susie that hadn't developed/mastered her coping mechanisms yet? Look at her design. What's on her head?
A ribbon. A ribbon holding up her stupid fucking ears.
When Ralsei does their stereotyping microaggression spiel, they decide that putting on ratface would be a good idea to "get along" with orange. They put on fake rat ears, and Susie reacts by throwing them on the ground.
Odds are, Susie's gone through this exact same type of patronizing. An attempt to sympathize with others through adorning their features just comes off as another form of otherization. She'd rather beat her up.
Same with Jack. He's terrified of his own face and doesn't want the world to see it. When he reveals it, what do we see?
EARS!!!!! CUTE LITTLE EARS!!!! IT KEEPS HAPPENING!!! WHY DOES IT KEEP HAPPENING?????
So Susie's growth trajectory from this urge is obvious, and sort of already outlined by me. If she wants to overcome her urge to subjugate her body, she's gotta full send a ribbon. I think we all implicitly understood this given what we've seen, but now we have a reason as to why such an action would be so important.
The Cutie Mew Mew Rebuttal
Some of the more astute people who've gotten through this might be saying "okay, this Susie having ears idea is all great, but there's one small, tiny little hiccup about it."
"It's that she says she doesn't. You idiot. You fucking rube."
So, what? I just dragged you along for 3,000 words, and now you want me to stop just because there's so called "direct evidence" and "logic" going against the idea? No, dude. You know what you signed up for. Hold your breath, because we're diving in. Let's see if you have what it takes to be a true #SusieEarTruther.
We get this equip dialogue from the NetskieHat, which can be found in Pink's shop during Chapter 5. Notably she also has something to say about Susie's ears, seemingly corroborating the idea that they aren't visible.
But notice what the talk option this is listed under.
I want you to put yourself in my shoes when I read this for the first time. Imagine having spent ten months proselytizing the gospel of Susie having human ears, and then playing Chapter 5, and seeing this shit. I damn near lost it.
And then my mind went into overdrive. I thunk really hard.
Pink's shop has some of the most serious dialogue in the game. It's all incredibly wistful and melancholy, to match the drab shop environment. It's played completely straight, too; there's no bathos to break up the downcast tone.
So why then, are there just three not very funny jokes about ears tossed in towards the end?
Because, very simply, they're NOT jokes- they're extensions of the fun gangs psyche.
Kris's interaction is the most obvious double meaning. Like sure, they want to be a therian, but what belies this is Kris's absolute disgust with what they are, their own physical making, to their core.
For them, it's not about wanting to be a cat, or dog, or any other sort of monster, it's about not wanting to be themself. They will take anything over Kris and it's sad as hell.
Then we have Ralsei. Once again, just seems like a joke about how Ralsei's ears are so big they'll start a fire. But why this specific language around someone that's been so associated with fire? Because once again, it's not a joke. Pink refers to the ears as "cute and fluffy," words almost one-to-one used to describe Ralsei. By criticizing Ralsei's ears as oversized, she's actually pointing out how their desire to seem harmless and cuddly betrays their actual destructive potential.
The obvious issue with neglecting their emotions like this is that it completely dysregulates them and turns them into kind of a constant emotional wreck. But there's a reason they do it- because they know the carnage they're capable of, and is deadest on stopping it from happening.
They believe that if they just shut down that part of themself, their destructive potential will never come to pass. But it's in fact this over-correction that will eventually eat away at Ralsei until all that's left is rage. Like pink said; the ears are "cute," but a fire hazard.
And then last and most Important, Susie. The question is directed at all three heroes but Susie 'especially.' When you re-frame the question like I have with the other two responses, the meaning of it changes from "how's it possible for you to hear" to "with what do you hear with"?
In a metaphorical sense, we can depict the "fluffy ears" that Pink talks about in these lines as a sort of goal-point of contentedness/self-actualization. All three of the fun gang believe that they are fundamentally incompatible with such a thing. For Kris, its their consignment to "whatever they are." For Ralsei, it's their fear of rocking the boat. For Susie, It's her need to cover up.
When I saw Susie's NetskieHat equip dialogue, I didn't even flinch, because we've literally been through the rigamarole of this before. She lies about her appearance!
Ultimately the overarching theme with pink is that of "my body is wrong," and it parallels all three of the fun gang members, including Susie.
That's not all of the parallels with Pink and Susie (Her relationship and similarities with orange and how Susie would be physically the inverse of a human with cat ears), But those are the ones that matter in this context.
Or should I say hearing forward? Haha fuck you
Right, so we've outlined Susie's body issues, evidence for them, and how they would fit into her arc resolution. What we haven't done is speculate on what this would look like in the story. I'll make this quick; I've already been typing for way too damn long.
Susie's dark world experiences have done wonders to her growth as a person. From her companionship with lancer to jump-starting her love of Noelle, to empathizing with Tenna, to emphasizing her sense of justice with Gerson/the prophecy. Chapter 5 was a moment of growth for her social perception, giving herself confidence with "what she is" in respect to others through Orange.
There's still one more thing she has to conquer, I think, it's what we've discussed- Her physical insecurity with her body. What would be a way she could do this?
A lot of people presume Susie to be a Dragon, which is a perfectly fine assumption to make. The only issue is that we don't have a frame of reference for what a dragon would look like in Deltarune- we only have Susie. We don't know her parents, haven't seen them either. The one opportunity to see a dragon darkner (How to Draw Dragons Book) was completely passed over in chapter 3, something the game explicitly points out.
I think this is because Deltarune is using it as a reveal. To show us what a "real" dragon looks like. Where would this happen?
Well, in the holiday manor, the consensus pick for the chapter 6 dark world, we see this:
* (It's Dess's bed. Underneath are army rations, guitar picks, paintball gear, ice skates...)
* (... and a badly traced drawing of a dragon.)
This dragon being used as a comparison to how Susie looks would be a perfect catalyst for her facing her body insecurity head on. And odds are, it's slated next chapter! Cool how that worked out.
Anyways, I just hit the image limit, so let's wrap this up.
There really isn't a conclusion.
Theories are basically a nutjob telling you "here's some bullshit I synthesized; make of it what you will." and this is no different. I had a lot of fun making it, and I don't really care if you believe it or not. That's what creative security is!
I'm just glad that after 4,000 words (holy shit) I've finally got this idea that's been rolling around in my head since 2025 onto paper. What will I talk about next time? IDK, probably some bullshit about how Susie's human parent was a swinger that left her family. Until then, toodles!
