If I Had A Penny For Every Time A Character From A Square Enix Series Got Isekai’ed Into Tokyo, I’d

the worst person you know is still actively obsessed with helsa (i forgot to post this on tumblr lol)

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Art credit: 42@서코F09@42Yojin Twitter.

One of the worst things about the Kirby fandom

You've noticed it in the Kirby fandom, right?

I am putting a "Keep reading" tag in this because it's gonna be a long rant, but one that I have honestly needed to get off my chest for a while now.

It must be really stressful to be a Susie fan. You have to endure so much awful discourse about her. It definitely can't be fun at all to watch one of your favorite characters constantly get trashed on and ripped apart so badly by the fandom. It's gotten so bad to where.. hopefully the fandom discourse doesn't make her fans feel guilty or ashamed for liking her and considers changing their mind to not like her anymore. You earn my respect if you refuse to let all of the discourse stop you from liking her.

I get it, people have the right to hate a fictional character, I understand that. The mere fact that Susie is hated by a lot of people alone isn't the thing I have a problem with. Here's the thing: while Susie fans have to endure so much shit thrown at her and likely get seriously irritated by it, fans of other Kirby villains don't need to have that fear and can feel much safer and more secure about their opinions, because barely any other character in the series gets nearly as much vehement hatred or discourse from the fandom as Susie does. I guess the only other one that even comes anywhere close is.. Pyribbit? But no one else, really, and while Pyribbit is generally more unanimously disliked/hated and not nearly as liked by people, it's also a much less prominent character that people think much less about, and seeing Pyribbit hate posts/comments isn't quite as common of a sight as it is for Susie. The point still stands.

It feels unfair.

Susie did some really bad and antagonistic things, and as of now HAL hasn't really given her a proper redemption arc yet. But other villains in the series have also done some really bad and antagonist things too! Yet most of them, including ones that have also never redeemed themselves, don't appear to receive even a FRACTION of the scrutiny that Susie gets, and are generally more unanimously liked/loved. By comparison, they appear to get off almost scott-free from criticism. Uhhh? It makes me suspect there is some sort of double standard involved in the fandom's views on characters.

I could see that it may be because Planet Robobot's plot hits home a lot harder than other Kirby game plots, and has a generally darker tone, but let me point out one thing in particular about another villain from this same exact game:

I actually really don't understand why STAR DREAM doesn't get this kind of scrutiny? If anything, I believe that Star Dream deserves hatred way more than either Susie or her father. I don't care if Star Dream is an AI that doesn't act on its own free will, that does not change the fact that Star Dream is still the very thing that ruined Susie's life by banishing her to Another Dimension, and ruined her father's life by erasing his memories and causing him to forget about Susie when she finally comes back to. This was the thing that was responsible for completely destroying the two Haltmanns' relationship forever, this is the one that's the biggest perpetrator out of the Planet Robobot villains and this thing is ultimately the one that made it all possible to happen in the first place. How does it make any sense for people to hate Susie and her father, but love Star Dream? This is the thing that made Susie become a morally screwed up person in the first place, what caused her to receive so much discourse from the fandom, and it doesn't become subject to a lot of hate itself? Star Dream seriously just gets off scott-free from scrutiny, while the other two Planet Robobot villains are the ones to get all the hatred, despite that Star Dream is the reason they became bad? Again, being a computer/AI is not a good enough excuse to be exempt from criticism. People are allowed to have their own opinions, but comparing the opinions of Star Dream to the opinions of Susie and her father just.. do not make any sense.

It may be worth bringing up another Kirby villain that comes from different Kirby games: Dark Matter. Dark Matter did horrible and evil things. Its motivation is basically hate-incarnate (Susie's motivation was 100% not like this) and has no positive thoughts at all, it terrorizes planets by surrounding them with dark vile clouds, it possesses people and makes them monsters, including King Dedede who gets possessed three times by this villain. Dark Matter is the villain in three Kirby games, which is an outlier because most villains only hold their position for one game, which shows how depraved Dark Matter was. Dark Matter is actually purely evil, unlike Susie who I can genuinely say isn't purely evil.

If Susie has gotten a lot of disdain and scrutiny for her bad deeds, then surely another vile Kirby villain like Dark Matter would too. Right? Riiight? No. Dark Matter doesn't get the same level of scrutiny. Not even close! In fact, Dark Matter is more unanimously liked! How do Kirby villains that are genuinely way eviler than Susie not become subject to nearly as much criticism?

Okay, let me get this straight. This isn't a call to hate Dark Matter. What I posted may seem like I hate Dark Matter, but I don't. In fact, I like Dark Matter quite a bit. Heck, I actually love the Dark Matter Swordsman, I think he's dope!

However, I think it's incredibly surreal, awkward and makes little sense that Dark Matter is generally liked without much trouble and barely gets dunked on at all, meanwhile Susie can't even seem to catch a break from discourse targeted at her. Despite the fact that the former is absolutely so much eviler and more villainous than the latter, as the latter has been dunked on for their deeds.

You can like a villain without condoning their actions. It seems like the Kirby fandom even understands this for most villains but.. poor Susie is not nearly as lucky as others in terms of fandom reactions, despite that she isn't anywhere near the most evil out of Kirby villains. Fecto Elfilis did way worse things, including literally using Kirby's own planet as a weapon against him, but the fandom is generally more chill about Fecto Elfilis than it is to Susie.

It's been argued that roboticizing someone is worse than possessing them, and I'm not necessarily arguing against that, but Meta Knight was only turned into a robot once while King Dedede has been possessed countless times in the series. Some people go on and on about how Meta Knight may be traumatized by what Susie did to him... but where's the talk about all of the trauma Dedede could be facing from all of the times he's been possessed? Barely anyone seems to bat an eye on that. I think it'd certainly mess up Dedede mentally when he learns about what Dark Matter did to his stomach when it was possessing him, since it literally formed a big-ass eyeball on his stomach as well as turning his stomach into a set of jaws with sharp teeth. I'd think that Dedede would be experiencing trauma way more than Meta Knight would, because of all the times he's been possessed.

If they introduce a new villain that also decides to turn Meta Knight into a robot slave, then I would hope that new villain undergoes the same scrutiny that Susie has. Otherwise, I will really go "WTF" at the Kirby fandom.

I dunno, man. The Kirby fandom just seems pretty unfair on how it treats Susie compared to other baddies. Susie fans might have it the hardest out of Kirby character fans in terms of trying to not get pissed off at discourse. That being said.. Susie does at least have a large number of fans that love her, regardless of whether it's loving her given the fact of her having been antagonistic, or trying to interpret her in a more redeemed sense (let's be real: HAL has done basically nothing with her character after Planet Robobot. No character growth after her debut game. At this point, I really don't count her differing pause descriptions in Star Allies because they clash with each other, and they're also for Guest Star mode which I doubt is even canon anyways. Therefore, it's really not clear what she's like post-Robobot, and thus in my opinion it's not wrong to interpret her as either redeemed or unredeemed until we get a clearer answer in the future if HAL decides to revisit her character again). However, the amount of hatred is still easily noticeable. I don't think any Kirby character has nearly as much of a divided line of opinions as Susie does. I think she is easily the most controversial character in the whole series.

I think Susie deserves to be revisited by HAL and be given more character development. Why not make it more clear on what she's actually like post-Robobot? I've seen some people say they'd like for her to be a villain again, and I can understand that, but realistically I have doubts that she'd be a villain again because I don't believe she'd be stupid enough to antagonize Kirby again, since now she knows what he's capable of. But eh, that's just me. I would personally prefer to go the route of giving Susie an actual redemption arc and not make her villainous anymore, if that's what it takes to finally calm down all the discourse. I personally would make a Susie redemption imperfect, as I think it'd be cool if she still had some grey morals, but hey.. I ain't gonna say no to a Kirby/Susie friendship, I think that would be cute. She does have enough traits to where I believe she can still be a very entertaining and fun character even if she were to be on the "good guy column" (by that, I mean not opposing the good guys anymore, doesn't mean she has to be purely good for this). Although it's possible she might not even need to be definitively and properly redeemed in the same sense as Dedede or even Magolor in order for her to just be friends with Kirby to any extent. Marx, like Susie, is also not properly redeemed yet, but it can be pretty easy to interpret him being friends with Kirby, too!

I know this is a long post.. just needed to get it all off my chest, like I said at the start. Thank you if you read it all.

A small checkmates because today was a great day

Marx wants the jiggle jiggle skin

Art credit: Hinata@hinatamebae Twitter.

Huge collection of moody Volos that makes me sad because the artist shows him having a family once.

Lore accurate Checkmates kissing

then they go "mwa mwa mwa!!" allllll daaaaay

Happy Late Pocky Date

🍫💕

Beating inside me like a second heart