Deltarune Thoughts Post Chapters 3&4 Part 2: The SOUL and Susie

The SOUL

A pretty major new piece of information we now have is that Kris can absolutely operate just fine without "the soul" - or whatever we're calling the red, heart-shaped object that we control. Without even the sorts of issues that Undertale places on "soulless" creatures, to boot!

In total, I think we have enough information to conclude that Kris isn't actually "soulless" in any meaningful way when they remove it from their body. Whatever the red, heart-shaped object we control is, it might or might not resemble a human (lightner?) soul (or at least, Spamton believed it did). But it's likely either something that isn't quite a human soul or a second one that we're controlling instead of Kris.

At a minimum, during the time between chapters three and four in the weird route Kris went all the way over to Noelle's house, talked with her on her porch, and did their best to undo what we did in Chapter 2. The only indication we have that this was even difficult for them is Noelle describing their voice as being slightly "weak and shaky". Which given how active they've been under our control is pretty reasonable. And all this is on top of apparently lugging Berdly's unconscious form from the computer lab to the hospital.

Given how Noelle described Kris's normal voice as "deadpan" and "mumbly" yet as actually being their voice... that's apparently just how Kris talks without our influence. In all likelihood, that zombie-like shamble they do without us might just be how they normally walk. Noelle certainly didn't seem to notice anything odd with their posture when telling them to meet up in her room, anyway.

And then I heard your voice.
Kris's voice.
You said, sorry for being weird at the hospital, Noelle.
You said, sorry for being weird yesterday, Noelle.
You said, it was all a stupid prank.
You said, Berdly was going to get better.
... Kris, your voice, your deadpan, mumbly voice...
Even if you sounded kind of weak and shaky...
I don't know why, but it felt so long since I heard it.
I even started sniffling! Haha!
Kris, Kris, you're back...!
--Noelle

Now, whether the object we control is also a "soul" somehow that overrides theirs, something that was made from their soul when they interfered with Gaster making the Vessel with us... who knows. But we definitely can't underestimate their capabilities when we're contained away from them.

This will probably be pretty important in coming chapters, I feel. Susie remarks on it right near the end of Chapter 4, even.

... hey Kris, what's the deal with that red heart thing...?
Is that... your...
--Susie

Really the key takeaway is mostly that the general impression the fandom had of Kris being close to death every moment they're away from us can be safely discarded. They have both their own motives and plenty of capability to carry out actions in support of those motives without our knowledge. We have precious little information to help us evaluate how concerned we should be about those motives, but whatever they are Kris clearly wants to keep them as secret from us as possible, up to and including explicitly misdirecting us like with the pie between the first two chapters.

Susie's Nostalgia

Susie's lines right before the last fountain of Chapter 4 is sealed are... concerning. These ones in particular:

No matter what
I... want to keep being friends with you and Ralsei.
When the sun comes up again...
I want tomorrow to be the same as yesterday.
And the next day
To be just the same as that.
That in the end
We can always go back to the way things were before.

Now, in a lot of ways this is a pretty huge step for Susie. She's admitting that she wants to be friends with people, and would be hurt if they stopped being friends with her. Compare that to how she reacted when Lancer seemed to have betrayed her in Chapter 1! (Still hurt, but hiding it)

But... nothing lasts forever. And every day being "just the same as" the previous ones is stagnation, not bliss.

Wanting to "go back to the way things were before" is pretty much the core concept underlying the feeling of nostalgia, of course, and it's hard to miss how much of Deltarune has "nostalgia" as a central theme.

Susie doesn't seem to have a whole lot to be nostalgic for, in her past. Her life now is the absolute best it's ever been, most likely. Her wanting to hold on to it with everything she can makes perfect sense.

But Dess is gone and Asriel is off at college. Asgore and Toriel are separated, and Toriel is very not interested in getting back together. Tenna wanted to go back to how things were before, but that was impossible. Susie happily helped Tenna move on to a new home, but I doubt she'd be as sanguine if faced with her childhood friend group drifting apart.

I suspect that one of the major theses of Deltarune is going to be that nostalgia can be comforting but it can also be a crutch. And its pursuit can easily be taken too far.

I hope this doesn't mean that Dess can't be rescued. A lot of the speculation around Carol's motives right now has her mostly motivated by wanting Dess back, which is an extremely understandable motive. But that would still technically be wanting things to "go back to the way [they] were before".

Perhaps it'll be that Dess returns, just changed from her experiences and thus not quite "how she was before".

Blood

Once again a bit of a tangent from the rest of this post, but the handling of blood so far in Deltarune has been remarkably odd. We're obviously meant to assume that only humans bleed based on our experience in Undertale. Deltarune is explicitly a game that is "intended for people who have completed Undertale", after all.

So can lightners bleed or not? Fandom consensus was mostly just that only humans can, based on that Undertale experience. And the bunny that asks Kris what it's like to be made of blood certainly reinforced that view. But then Susie bled when she punched that prophecy panel.

Ooo, are you the human that lives at the top of town?
Wow, my mommy told me about you...
Does it hurt to be made of blood???
-- Apartment Bunny

Maybe Susie isn't a human or a monster? The Chapter 3 egg man seemed to sort of imply that dinosaurs exist in Deltarune's world. In what ways this might or might not make Susie a parallel to Flowey may wind up being the domain of multi-hour fan theory videos, I think.

THE EARTH WAS COVERED IN WATER, DINOSAURS APPEARED, AN ICE AGE,
HM... ACTUALLY, THERE ARE STILL DINOSAURS... IS IT MIXED UP?
-- Egg Man

Could also be a phenomenon entirely specific to dark worlds. We don't have any precedent for that particular sort of weirdness arising from dark worlds (except maybe Lancer's blood bucket thing?), but I guess it's possible. There's only slightly more indication of non-humans having blood in the light world, so pretty much anything is possible.

'Cause my GUYS are about to smash you into blood!
--Lancer