insanity vanity

This doesn't really make much sense at first glance - you can't even really FIGHT the thing on equal footing without the Shadow Mantle, and to even get that Kris has to go through a harrowing gauntlet and fight a whole OTHER secret boss that doesn't even use the battle mechanics we've grown accustomed to. Kris Suffers to get that item, the one thing that can let them stand up to the Knight's merciless assaults. Hell, the game won't even let you retry if you lose until you have the Mantle in your possession. You would therefore assume that the Mantle belongs to Kris, and that they are the ones who should wear it.

And yet. Even when you don't have this item, who stands up to defy it? Susie. Who stops it from doing... whatever it was trying to do to Toriel, TWICE? Susie. And who gives chase across the boundary between light and dark, across the entirety of hometown, to stop it from abducting Undyne? Why, it's Susie. Her actions are those of a hero standing up to a terrible villain of unknowable power, and she does it without a shred of hesitation, even faced with the very real prospect of being killed.

And if that were it, it'd be kind of boring. But that's not it at all, because the reinforcement of this idea continues into the fight itself. Because if you can keep Susie alive for five turns, she starts monologuing against the boss, telling it how much it sucks and that she'll always have her friends behind her.

The Knight is presented to us as unknowable, invincible, unstoppable. Regular attacks bounce off of its absurdly high HP, it cannot be Checked like a normal enemy, attempts to reason with it fall on deaf ears. And yet, what's the one spell that can meaningfully hurt the Knight, to the point of temporarily disrupting its form? Susie's Rude Buster.

And then, when you throw yourself at the Knight again and again, trying to figure out its weakness, trying to outlast its brutal onslaught, it hits you - the Shadow Mantle does NOTHING for Kris in this fight, but it does EVERYTHING for Susie. Susie's the one doing all the damage. Susie's high HP perfectly compliments the shadow mantle's protection against the Knight's more absurd attacks. Ralsei has no way to meaningfully contribute to the fight at all, and while Kris can use Hold Breath to give the SOUL a boost, their utility begins and ends there. The most that either of them can really do is to act as TP and healing bots for Susie, and to equip weak armours that have beneficial effects, such as the TwinRibbon, Silver Watch, Blue Ribbon, TensionBow and Lodestone - the effects of these items persist regardless of whether the character wearing them is DOWNed or not, and, you guessed it, are equipped not to help them survive, but to allow them to support Susie even when incapacitated.

Then you start seeing it in other areas. Who is it that facilitates change in the other characters - Ralsei, Noelle, Berdly? Susie does, each and every time. She effortlessly upends their own myopic views of the world, defying them to change and be better, without even really realising that's what she's doing - is it any wonder that EVERYONE in the main cast seems to have a thing for her? She's magnetic in the way that heroes are, not despite her brashness and short temper but BECAUSE of them - because she cuts so effortlessly through the FICTIONS that other characters cling to, the stories they tell themselves about who they are, what they can do, and how they ought to be. Susie shatters those preconceptions and offers an alternative - live how you want to live, make the choices that you want to make, and let no-one else ever tell you who you are.