when I first played Deltarune Chapter One, pouncing upon the release of the "Survey Program"—by contrast we were slow to get onboard the Undertale train—I had a strong negative first reaction to Hometown. that final stage of Chapter One where the Dark World adventure is over and Kris gets to wander around Hometown for a bit, gave me the chills for some reason. the place felt so...prickly, somehow. it felt like the Hometown Monsters simmered with quiet resentments.
I think maybe I was overreacting a bit; I was much newer to "fronting" in the Pnictogen Wing and given to excessive passions, and at any rate it was a first impression. we didn't know that Kris was latent in our system, either. much has changed since Hallowe'en 2018. but was I really that wide of the mark? there's a lot of unhappy relationships in plain sight in Deltarune, but they're papered over with superficial politeness ("small town nice") and a sense of fatalism. Toriel doesn't seem like she's ever going to tell Asgore to leave her alone; she merely trashes his flowers and vents her disdain in private.
Susie furnishes a particularly painful example of someone who seems imprisoned by circumstances. she's big and scary looking, hence she's shunned, hence she's bitter and harsh as a result, hence the other Monster children get even more scared, etc. Susie clearly doesn't like being ostracised but there's a compensating advantage—everyone keeps their distance and nobody is brave enough to confront her, so at least Susie's left to her own devices.
I find myself thinking about Susie's chalk eating and what it may suggest. an unsuspected dietary requirement, compelling Susie to eat substances rich in calcium? or maybe Susie is simply starving and lacking a reliable home—there are ambiguous hints of this—and thus liable to eat whatever she can grab? or maybe Susie has "pica", a compulsion to eat non-food substances? all of these possible issues with Susie are problems with practical solutions, but none of them will be solved so long as Susie's chalk eating is perceived merely as a crime of some sort, just another bit of delinquency from Hometown's meanest Monster girl. once again, Susie is stuck. nobody really wants to help her, and nothing seems likely to change for Susie, except for the worse.
until the Dark World happens to her.
~Chara of Pnictogen
