Rambling about blood. And Susie.
Recently been thinking about blood and its importance in Deltarune, when it didn't have any real prominence in Undertale originally. Like, honestly, the frequency with which it is mentioned in this game sticks out, especially considering most of the creatures within don't appear to be capable of bleeding... unless they can?
Let's analyze blood in the series, shall we?
Blood in Undertale
Now, while the references to blood in Undertale are scarce, they are there. As it turns out, they are mostly related to Mettaton, and mostly in relation to bloodshed, specifically shedding Frisk's since they are the person he is killing right now. Alphys even mentions he has become a "killing machine with a taste for human blood".
Two stray references to blood exist outside of the Mettaton's context, mostly for the sake of jokes relating to minor characters.
Lastly is a reference made by Flowey before the start of his battle, where he claims Frisk can watch him tear them to "bloody pieces" over and over again.
There really is no spotlight given to blood at all in this game, minus for various threats of violence towards Frisk specifically, who is human and physical, thus capable of shedding it.
That is, of course, with one notorious exception, which is Sans. When the killing blow is finally dealt, he will begin leaking a red substance from his mouth and wound, which looks very much like blood.
And he is the ONLY one who does this. No other monster ever does anything similar, boss character or otherwise. Sometimes, people claim Toriel is also bleeding, but her wounds lack the gushing red we find when cutting Sans down. If his wound looked like hers in presentation, then maybe I could see a point being made, but no red is featured anywhere near her injuries. Undyne, who was sliced open in a similar way to Sans also doesn't bleed the way he does.
His death scene is shocking because it is so abnormal for the standards of this game. His wound is vivid and unmistakably meant to evoke a bleeding gash...
So, blood has little to no presence outside of when it relates to Frisk in some way, EXCEPT with Sans. And this may very well be intentional, when we take into account the plentiful foreshadowing that he was NOT from Undertale's world originally, and is instead from Deltarune's, and is unable to return to it.
(What didn't fit here: UT's track "it's raining somewhere else" paralleled to DR's track "the place where it rained". It is better to link to it anyway since it's audio-based)
Blood in Deltarune (and the Susie in the room hi Susie)
Things take a drastic turn when we turn to our favorite "parallel story", Deltarune. Blood is mentioned since the very beginning, where the mysterious voice, who is definitely not W.D. Gaster, asks us what our favorite blood type is.
But that is only the beginning... blood is later mentioned by several other characters. One of them is most likely for the sake of a joke though, as the Warrior who works for ICE-E's P"E"zza isn't exactly... sound of mind, as far as we know.
More interesting is a bunny kid's dialogue, who asks Kris if, as a human, it "hurts to be made of blood". That is already an interesting thing to point out, but possibly dismissible due to the child's age? It would be odd though, since kids do know about blood usually. I don't think there's a child on earth that has never experienced bleeding at some point in their life...
Noelle herself was apparently tricked by Kris into believing the ketchup they put on their arm was blood, which might lend credence to the idea that monsters aren't familiar with it. It could be argued that it happened when they were kids, but she shows a similar uncertainty recognizing blood if she is given the TV Dinner in Save Slot 3 (link to the wiki page for more elaboration on that [x]). She also assumes the Absorb Axe is covered in blood due to it being covered in red, which neither Susie nor Ralsei ever point out. In fact, with the way her dialogue is structured with the Heart Donut, it almost feels like Kris is trying to freak her out again, telling her the inside is filled with blood, which she believes instantly despite their track record lol.
(We know these last two points due to datamining her reaction, likely added into the game ahead of time for when she returns as a playable character later (CH5 pls))
Of course, Kris does bleed for real. It feels redundant to mention, but it is true and it does happen during the story, so yeah.
Quite a few other things in the Deltarune world make mention of blood, often as an integral part of their brand. There are several mentions of Blood Crushers, an in-universe series of horror movies.
There is also a band of the same name, which is the origin of the guitar song called "Raise Up Your Bat", the tune we play during the second Physical Challenge. Its lyrics also make reference to blood.
(For what is worth, ICE-E's also has a flavor called "GAMER BLOOD ENERGY DRINK" for their soda dispenser. This is completely useless information but it's there lol.)
Interesting above all else, though, is the fact that Darkners know of and recognize blood. Lancer is the most prominent example, but the Swatchlings also make reference to it.
But all of these things pale in comparison to Susie's insistent obsession with blood. She is perhaps the BIGGEST source of blood-related dialogue in the whole game. She is talking about it so often, it's almost comparable to a character trait at this rate.
Recall how I said she doesn't freak out about the Absorb Axe at all unlike Noelle, meaning she recognizes it isn't blood? I mean, I doubt she would shut up about it if it really was or looked too much like it. Have you read the Power Band reaction? And that's not even about blood, as no other party member mentions it. It's just red lmao.
She also feels compelled to point out that the substance on the TV Dinner steak "obviously isn't blood" despite Noelle having a hard time recognizing it herself. And we KNOW Susie easily recognizes blood, because she is the only character to point out that the stain on the floor of Kris' room is dried blood... which seems to have flown over Toriel, but not her. Heck, she is also the one who points out that Kris is bleeding, as seen earlier.
(This kind of implies Lancer's salsa legit looks like blood lmao)
Of course, how could I not mention the scene where she quite literally starts to bleed after shattering the glass prophecy panel?
Fun fact, but we knew Susie could bleed since Chapter 2... kinda. In the files was an unused sheet, likely meant to be used for when Susie falls from the junk pile outside Cyber City, that shows a bleeding scrape on her fist. People have been arguing about wether it was evidence that monsters bleed in Deltarune or not since it wasn't in-game and might have been scrapped for a reason, but it seems it was removed to save the reveal for a more impactful scene.
And this way, it makes it seem even more like blood is MEANT to be Susie's thing, since they preferred saving this for something that would leave a true mark rather than being mistaken for general worldbuilding of some kind...
She has the most blood-related dialogue in the whole game, a keen familiarity with it, and actively bleeds on screen. Blood and Susie go hand-in-hand... however, we can't just ignore Sans bleeding too, so what are we even dealing with now?
So what's the deal with Blood?
So we have Susie, from Deltarune, clearly bleeding on-screen for everyone to see. And we have Sans, likely from Deltarune, doing the very same. So, is it just Deltarune monsters that bleed or not?
A piece of monster lore that has remained consistent is the fact that they turn to dust when they die, which is then spread across an object they were particularly attached to or that represents them as a funerary rite. It is the reason we are even capable of meeting Gerson Boom in the Dark World after all.
The only (alleged) difference is that Deltarune monsters bury the object afterwards, which is either because they live alongside humans and their culture was influenced by their practice, or that it is something we didn't learn about in Undertale but was always part of the process. The answer is probably up to individual preference.
Rabbit kid's question and Noelle's uncertainty also seem to paint blood as something quite rare to come across...
Still, Sans leaks red stuff, so what the hell is it? A theory that has been popular since the early days of the fandom is that this was simply ketchup all along, since Sans can be seen down a bottle of it on-screen if you refuse to have it on your food.
(There were also theories about it being "liquid Determination" because of the misconception that the Red Soul is the trait of Determination, while the substance in-game seems to be connected to the color of gold. Undyne also doesn't bleed, and she is the one with the most Determination outside Flowey and the humans in this game, so it's safe to say this is a pure headcanon reading of Sans' wound.)
But if monsters in Deltarune bleed, and that's the reason why Sans does so when he is killed in Undertale... what about Papyrus? We straight-up decapitate the guy, but not a single drop of blood comes out where his spine is cut.
Could it be that Papyrus is... NOT from Deltarune, unlike Sans? While it's possible, it doesn't track with the fact both showed up in Snowdin one day, unannounced, and asserted themselves. Papyrus is also vaguely aware of Sans' power over space-time too, so he isn't fully oblivious to what his brother is doing.
That is not to mention the first Papyrus Q&A, which ends in a very odd but intriguing question regarding his life prior to settling in Snowdin. It has him recall green grass before Sans interrupts and finishes the question for him with no more elaboration.
This has also been further fuel for the idea that they are both from Deltarune's reality in some way, which makes the difference in the presentation of their deaths stick out heavily. There is still a possibility that only Sans comes from Deltarune, but in that case, the green grass that Papyrus remembers would remain a mystery, too. There's just no easy answer is there? Lmao.
Maybe it's just a case-by-case basis? I mean, Darkners seem aware of blood, implying that some of them probably bleed. However, we see Tenna get his arms sliced off and there wasn't a drop of blood, likely because he is a large TV man, most definitely mechanical...
But in that case, what makes Sans viable for having blood when Papyrus is not? They are both skeletons, shouldn't they both NOT bleed? Or both should bleed, if Sans wants to aurafarm so much...
So maybe bleeding in Deltarune IS just a Susie thing? I mean, she IS the certified blood girl of the series, as we just saw. But why would that be? A theory that gained a lot of traction recently is that one of Susie's parents might be human themselves, and that Susie is therefore a hybrid child of the two races.
This might explain some things about Susie's backstory. She seems to have been treated as a freak for the way she looked or behaved, but perhaps it was due to being a monster in mostly-human towns?
She also displays behavior dissimilar to that of most monsters regarding her appearance. For one, she is extremely self-conscious about her tail and constantly hides it. It might not have anything to do with being short as some people initially thought, but just the fact that it exists in the first place... while her obsession with blood is a direct result of latching onto a trait she shared with other humans. Maybe. Do remember it's all speculation lol.
Unlike most monsters, she is also really keen on using her monstrous features as an intimidation tactic. This can be seen with her various threats of biting people with her sharp chompers. However, monsters all look different, and many of them have fangs or are physically strong (Undyne works for both), but Susie is the only one we have seen consistently weaponizing these traits, at least as far as I can recall. Undertale is different since there's a big in-universe divide between the two races, and even then, most of it was used for the sake of jokes, or portrayed humans as the scary ones.
So, is this what's happening? Could Susie be a monster-human hybrid? If so, how does it relate to Suzy from Undertale? Are the circumstances of her birth different? Does she even actually exist past serving as handy foreshadowing for our purple Deltarune friend?
Or maybe, this is all meaningless drivel. In fact... oh god, what if. What if it were all juice? What if the red was all. Oh my god what if it-
... y-you are right Susie... this is most definitely not the case, let's be completely honest here. As funny as it would be, it would undermine the impact of that moment greatly...
I mean, maybe. Like, the red liquid being ketchup for Sans doesn't undermine his death scene for me at all, but that's because it's not really an important part of it; his dialogue is the one doing the heavy lifting. Meanwhile, the stain resting on Ralsei's cheek becomes immediately less cool of a visual if it was all sick fruit juice.
... but we will only know for sure when the full story is released, so in the meantime, we'll have to live with this potentially being the true answer to this mystery. At least for as long as it takes for the game to come out in full. May this thought keep you awake at night.
In conclusion
I don't think there's enough evidence to definitively conclude that all monsters in Deltarune bleed, actually... we have two sources casting doubt on the average monster's knowledge of blood, and Susie is the one big bloody exception to it in a way that feels much too intentional to be a general statement on all of their kind. Blood is important to Susie, undeniably so. It was an integral part of her identity even before the Chapter 4 reveal, as shown by the screenshots.
However, it might not be a case of Susie being a hybrid child either, especially if Sans and Papyruse are, indeed, from Deltarune in some capacity, and it turns out Sans is truly bleeding. But in that case, whether a monster has blood or not would remain shrouded in mystery for the time being, because what determines who gets to bleed? How is Papyrus not erupting into blood upon dying? Noelle still falls for the same old tricks; does she also not bleed? Why is that?
For now, I stand by blood being tied to Susie exclusively. It feels too much like her thing. It's special.
