For years I’ve just kinda ignored metasusie because I thought it was dumb more than anything, but seeing the new wave of fans latch onto the first straight ship they see it means I’m seeing it flood my timelines and I’m forced to think about it. I don’t even subscribe to the MK has robot PTSD theory so much as I think it’s just a bad read of both characters. I think people should be allowed to make and consume what could be considered problematic media as long as they still think critically about what they are doing and understand the effects their creations can have on people. But I’m not seeing that here. Listen if this was just a bad read of the characters I wouldn’t make an elaborate post on it unless someone asked about it oop There are a lot of headcanons I think are shitty reads of the characters, but that’s all they are. There is no point to take a fat dump on them other than I was bored and wanted to complain.
But metasusie isn’t just that, it promotes harmful ideas rather the people that like the pair realize it or not. If the gender roles were switched more people would recognize that there was an unfair power balance and how icky the whole situation is, and if it isn’t undermining MK then Susie is reduced to a sexy mannequin devoid of personality to look pretty next to the cool guy. I have never seen a ship that both completely disregards the media’s message in order to exist and is so sexist for both characters involved; and I’d never thought I’d have to say that for a bloody Kirby ship.
I know I’m not changing metasusie fan’s minds because they are very stubborn. After scrolling on Twitter too much it’s clear that metasoos fans know their ship is problematic, and instead of reflecting on themselves they try to divert attention by bullying gay people or smth. I’ve seen them try to argue that metadede is the more problematic pairing, and as someone who does not like metadede, *bruh* it is as inoffensive as stock images lmao. Rather I’m writing this so that people that get there is smth off about the pairing but can put to words what they’re feeling. Because if you so much as poke at the arguments supporting it, they immediately shatter they’re so haphazardly put together.
And knowing what posting this will entail; please don’t harass anyone over this, it won’t help your point. I don’t think that liking smth yikesy automatically makes someone a bad person, some people just legit don’t know better. I think what matters more is how the respond after the fact, and to be patient with people because you can’t expect anyone to change overnight. That said some people won’t change their minds ever, and no amount of trying to cram the idea in their heads will change do that. Hell constantly poking someone about it when they have shown they don’t care about the topic, even if you think they are wrong about it that’s just bullying. If you can’t change someone’s mind they aren’t worth the time.
So, the big point everyone has seen. Susie ripped MK of his humanity. When you say you “remodeled” someone and give them a new robot name you have dehumanized them. There is no getting around that fact, and this is a thing that happened in the main story not even as pause screen lore.
How she describes him before the second fight is particularly degrading, calling him a product and referring to him as “it”. The line about the upgrade enabling him to work for 24 hours is definitely commentating on long works hours lol
People will argue that MK doesn’t seem all that bothered by it so it’s okay, I’d argue that isn’t the case but let’s go with this take anyways. Even if MK himself was okay with being reduced to a company’s asset, the act of mechanizing someone against their will is still an irresponsible thing to do on Susie’s end. I’m pretty sure 80% of metasusie fans didn’t actually play Planet Robobot, but just so that we are on the same page, the plot of that game is that the entirety of Planet Popstar is robotized by the Haltmann company and Kirby has to save the planet from being taken over by comically over-the-top capitalists. Meta Knight is one of the many, many victims of robotization and the fact that the galaxy’s greatest warrior was even taken over by the company is how the game raises its stakes. Whispey the tree becoming company property is bad enough, but the Haltmann company is just so damn powerful that not even Meta Knight could fight them off. This is the part where the player goes “oh shit! Not the badass Meta Knight!” The whole game is critique of capitalism, that the system reduces those at the bottom (the robotized) into cogs of a wider machine that serves to maximize profits that benefits only those at the top (the Haltmanns). Doesn’t matter how good you are at sword fighting, that can’t fight off an economic system man. And this game’s critique of capitalism, while still simple because all ages game, doesn’t get enough credit. That line about being able to work for 24 hours isn’t just a joke about how hard a job is, under capitalism the people in charge wring out as many hours out of their employees as they possibly can. They’d like it if we were all just mindless robots because more hours means get more work done in a week meaning more profit and faster. Even if you are 10 and have never heard of capitalism, it’s still clear that the bad guys are doing their bad guy thing by taking over the good guys. My point is by excusing Susie robotizing Meta Knight and saying it wasn’t all that bad, you are excusing the rest of the planet being turned into a hellscape and its inhabitants being ripped of their humanity. You are saying that the game’s message does not matter, that the game’s entire fucking conflict meant nothing. After all, if MK being robotized wasn’t so bad then why would Kirby need to save the whole planet? Some people really will ignore a whole game to justify a ship god damn.
Some people instead claim that what Susie did was awful, but she can improve as a person and MK can forgive her. There are a handful of things wrong with this mindset let’s break it down.
First off, Susie has never shown a willingness to change. “But she helped Kirby at the end” technically yes, but was it out of the kindness of her heart or because she was already in danger and recognized that he was the only way to ensure she’d survive? Going by her dialogue it looks more like the latter. “I’m not going to stand here be be destroyed by some crazy machine!” You got to work on your optics girl.
Compare and contrast this with Taranza helping Kirby in the end of Triple Deluxe. Taranza was blasted away Team Rocket style by Sectonia; he just had his best friend whom he was still loyal towards despite her changing for the worse finally betray him. He is literally blasted miles away from the big boss fight at this point and probably dealing with a lot of confused and built up emotions. And despite that, he goes to back to help Kirby and DDD defeat her having realized that she can’t be saved. He could of stayed behind away from all the action, but he went back to do the right thing. Both Susie and Taranza would of died in their situations (Secc eventually becomes a ginat flower and starts to cover the planet) but Taranza was the one that put himself into more danger by going back. That’s why he looks more selfless than Susie does. Not saying Susie didn’t do a good thing either, nor that you can argue even Taranza might of had selfish motivations for wanting to survive because don’t we all. But, because of the situation her motivations seemed more selfish in nature whereas Taranza put himself in more danger to save others.
Perhaps the intention was to have Susie be as admirable as Taranza was. I get the vibe the devs wanted Susie to be the next Taranza, but I don’t think they captured what made him special. Yeah they both had sad backstories, but that doesn’t excuse their bad actions. Rather they have to show them working to better themselves, and they had Taranza at the end helping DDD and Kirby back to Dreamland while Susie fucks off to space in her mech. If the intention was to make Susie nicer, then she should of been shown helping others more. Or maybe that wasn’t even their intention, and Susie is just supposed to be a bad guy. Taranza and even the Squeaks in the infamously underwritten Squeak Squad make up for their actions at the end of their respective games, if they wanted Susie to reform they could have. And Magolor shows that if they change their minds on smth they can just retcon what happened in their next game appearance! So did they do that with Susie?
We would see her again in Star Allies, so if we get a plot follow up of sorts then it would be there. In it she’s a Dream Friend; playable characters whose inclusion in the game are canonically dubious, but the information here is still significant because it’s the closest thing we’ll get to official media commenting on where the characters are after their own titles. It has been confirmed that there is no clear timeline, but it’s fair to say that KSA takes place after all the other games because it references those, and how else would Kirby know all these people anyways? Ultimately the most common take is what you see is canon, and what people see is Susie helping Kirby and the game referencing the events of PR. Each playable character has a little blurb in their pause screens explaining why they are in the game. It should be noted that the people that translated the game were seemingly given like two days to complete it, so yes I will be bringing up the differences in versions, but the vast majority of people that played the English version only know about the English text. While the Japanese text is the “original”, that doesn’t make the English text any less valid no matter how bad you may think it is. In the English version Susie’s blurb reads:
The company he built… I will bring it back!” Cool and collected, Susie from Kirby: Planet Robobot is all business. Following in the footsteps of her employer, she uses science to advance her mission—mechanizing new planets and peoples.
I don’t think I even need to explain how this version of Susie is repeating the same villainous acts from her debut game. This is how most English players view the character rather you like it or not. Moving on to the Japanese version:
“His company…I’ll show that I will rebuild it!” Brushing aside a loose strand of shiny hair, the beautiful secretary Susie that inherited his will from Planet Robobot has taken action! A harmonious family, and a happy life, are offered with the power of science… I’ll exterminate the savages under such principles!
I’ve seen Susie fans say that her JP description is nicer than her EN one and proof she’s changed for the better which. Okay mechanizing planets and people is arguably worse cause that’s larger scale, but the JP version literally says she is killing people she decides are degenerates lol. And what she considers savages are the people of Popstar by the way, she isn’t actually helping anybody. Even if she was killing obviously bad people, “exterminating the savages” is still a really blatantly evil way of wording things. That kind of language is used by colonizers when they take continents, or in the Haltmann’s case, planets. Big red flags here, is the American education system that bad???
In order to justify killing an entire population to take their land, the colonizers convince themselves and others that “well the inhabitants are just savages anyways they wouldn’t understand.” This is what she means by “A harmonious family, and a happy life, are offered with the power of science… I’ll exterminate the savages under such principles!” Killing “savages” in the name of science is straight up some eugenicist shit I’m not kidding. And capitalism is associated with advancement of technology which means getting rid of what is outdated by capitalists standards. Such as a planet and its people lacking in hi-tech department for example. She isn’t helping people y'all this is still the same capitalist from the previous game, just look at her dialogue in the second screenshot: “You natives need to be taught manners!”
This still is a bad localization, but unlike other parts of KSA I at least understand what the mindset was. “Okay she wants to exterminate the savages…. and those savages are the people in the way of her colonizing planets….. oh so she’s colonizing planets.” That’s still a different meaning from the og text, but even the person that were given what seems like 30 seconds to translate this at least understood the wider implication.
All that said, ultimately this dialogue is just set up for a punchline. Consistent in her writing is her complete and utter lack of empathy and juxtaposing her cherry attitude with her bad behavior. In the first dialogue blurb I reference she acts as if her turning MK into her slave was her doing him a favor and she thinks this completely unironically; she is crazy and that’s the joke. Bad people never think they are the villains; Susie thought she helping people when really she’s killing innocents and that’s the joke. This game series is inherently silly I don’t know how people can miss this.
Then there is the menu animation thing where MK runs away in fear and Susie chases him. These are even more canonically dubious but it’s the one example of the games referencing the two together after Planet Robobot. If they were supposed to both be on good terms you’d think the one time they can comment on their relationship status that then they’d be all buddy-buddy. But that isn’t what they went with, the animation is there to say that MK (and even DMK) is afraid of Susie.
I’d like to point out that while it’s easy to completely dismiss this as a “cute reference”, there was still thought put into this. The people that created this had to think about what makes the most sense for these characters based on what information we already know. They didn’t come to that conclusion based on nothing.
Alright the big question; does MK forgive Susie at the end of Robobot? Or ever? The end of the game has MK fly his ship near Star Dream where Kirby and Susie happen to be, nods to Kirby, Kirby nods back, and then they fly away leaving Susie behind. Some people have took this as MK forgiving Susie because. Uh. He doesn’t acknowledge her? What is that the mindset here, that because he doesn’t got out of his way to say “Susie you suck” that means they are on good terms? No, what’s happening is there is a giant computer about to take over the galaxy, and MK doesn’t acknowledge Susie because the evil murder robot is more important at the moment.
A problem with the series recently is that its had pretty ambitious story telling with little time to tell it. We probably won’t figure out if Taranza moves on from Sectonia’s death because *when* could they tell that story? TDX2? lol that was scrapped. Taranza certainly isn’t popular enough to show up in a game collection to elaborate on his game’s ending. We don’t know if MK forgave Susie or held a grudge because the game doesn’t have time to explore that unless it wants to ruin the pacing of the gameplay. The nature of the series is that after every game Dreamland basically resets, this is so that you can hop into any entry without needing context from previous titles to enjoy the current one. At most there will be references for older fans to gawk at, but the characters themselves live like they are in an episodic tv show. Next week all will back to normal to make a clean canvas for the next game. We can’t have a game that follows up on the after effects on mechanization because we can’t expect everyone to have played Planet Robobot. Plus the games barely have any time to properly establish the new story and characters, you think it has time to recap previous titles? We won’t find out what the likes of Bonkers and Whispey think about the whole being turned into a robot thing because of this.
But the people that worked on Star Allies had the opportunity to at least comment on the effects it had on MK, even if it was in the form of a simple easy-to-miss animation. They had to think to themselves what do we know about these characters and in this one opportunity we can comment on what their current status is, how would they react. Thought was put into this.
Well, MK just isn’t a very open guy for one thing. Like, him being quiet and mysterious is his whole gimmick. Even if the games were more story heavy, MK isn’t the type to waltz into a room and announce how he’s feeling. He’s also normally in a high position of power; be it leading the Halberd or defeating the likes of Galacta Knight. He fights back the possession during Epic Yarn, and afterwards infamously says “Kirby, forgive me! I blame the yarn!” He is very clearly embarrassed by the ordeal lol. By KATFL he’s so sick of being possessed that he just escapes Fecto’s grasp through sheer will. In PR he’s shown to be very stiff and lifeless in his Mecha Knight animations, devoid of any personality. We don’t see him struggle like in Epic Yarn, but the fact that the mechanization has that strong of a hold on him that he can’t fight it back is much scarier than the yarn thing. He would be at least a little shook from having that power suddenly taken from him, and he has been established to not like being mind controlled. And we know the guy is stubborn, he will not admit he’s losing a fight and stick to the very end. Even if Susie tried to get on better terms with him, he’d hold a grudge for having bested him. In KF2 he still holds a grudge against freaking Kirby for always beating him for Pete’s sake. This isn’t proof the guy is traumatized or whatever that title goes to Zan, but he is said to have an ego streak in Star Allies, and the whole turned into a cyborg against your will thing would bruise your ego. So yeah, I think it makes complete sense that MK would try to avoid Susie. Go figure the people that work on these characters for their job understand them inside and out.
Now even ignoring all of this, I see people say well it’s so open to interpretation what happens that I just hc Susie as getting better and MK forgiving her anyways.
Okay, prove it. Where’s this story you have where this happens. Where is this content. I have not seen a single metasusie fan commit to this slow burn growing for the better and learning to forgive narrative, they just hop right into the romance. I have seen stories where Susie tries to better herself, sometimes MK forgives her and sometimes he doesn’t, and none of those were done to justify shipping the two. They were stories that existed to explore the character (hell the only one with shipping had FranSoos) While I have argued here that Susie has never shown the willingness to change at all, at least the people that disagree have made some impressive art expressing why they think otherwise. The fact that I haven’t seen metasusie fans actually do that and instead charge straight first into generic married couple shit tells me they don’t actually care about the narrative where they grow as people and just say that’s what they hc as a justification for the ship. You aren’t exploring these characters you just want fluffy shit, and if that’s all you care about just say that.
“Why can’t you just let people have fun.”
fffffffffffffff The main reason why I made this thing despite keeping quiet on other shit in this fandom I don’t like, is because this pairing pushes sexist ideas rather the shippers intended this or not (and the vast majority of the time they don’t). Making the two a happy-go-lucky couple downplays the abuse MK endured, and by extension rips Susie of her agency.
I am not saying MK suffered the equivalent of real world domestic abuse, he is literally a blueberry man that was made into a cool transformer when he didn’t want that. But, there is more evidence to support that MK didn’t like being robotized than there is saying he was okay with it. If the game explicitly supported the idea that he is fine and even forgives her, that would be a different story. But as established he’s either indifferent at best or scared of her at worst. What is happening is that the media says that he suffered a bad thing, and people react to it by showing him fine and dandy despite that. Let’s play a game. It’s called “a man kidnaps a woman and forces her to do everything he says rather she wants to or not; is this scenario fucked up”. If you answered yes then congrats you won the game, if you answered no, welp. I don’t what to do with you man. It’s incredibly telling when I see people react viscerally to others that headcanon MK’s experience as having went worse. The same people I see say “just let people have fun it’s just hc” in regards to their fluffy owo metasusie ship freak the fuck out whenever they see an angsty MK was hurt by Susie hc and try to argue how wrong it is. If your headcanon that MK is okay with the robot thing is valid, then what makes the angstier hc’s any less valid? What is wrong with people that sympathize with MK being stripped of his anatomy and forced to work for someone else and exploring that story? Taking the theming of dehumanization and further exploring it? I thought you just wanted to let people have fun! Gonna go out on a limb here and say some people don’t like the idea that men can’t take more abuse than women; that they have a double standard and seeing that take makes them reevaluate their minset. And also that headcanon conflicts with the idea that he can date Susie. Mostly the later, but smth smth no one is free from biases and those can show up anywhere even in depictions of anthropomorphic spheres.
Back to Susanna, a problem with the games with that she suffers little repercussions for her actions. She can’t really grow as a character if she doesn’t find out what she did was wrong. But if they wanted to just play the villain thing straight it’s still kinda boring to see she barely struggles to get what she wants, wow she sure is quick to brush off losing Star Dream so quickly after all her hard work. This is reflected in fan work as well, people don’t seem all that interested in discussing why what she did was bad unless it’s among the lines of “she is evil incarnate and deserves to die”. Very productive guys. Because the games never properly punish her for her bad deeds, and the fans jump straight into the romance shit without writing that character arc where she grows as a person that the games lack. And the end result is Susie is never punished for her actions, rather she’s rewarded with the same man she dehumanized. No amount of “well I hc this” will change that, all you ever draw is shippy stuff, never the character growth, and what people remember is the visuals not your written hc’s. All people will see is fanart of a villain who never learns and is even rewarded for her bad behavior. MK’s tribulations are ignored for the sake of her. Again, if the games actually had her pay for her mistakes then everyone’s understanding of the character would be that of someone that actually understands what is and isn’t wrong, then the pairing would be less icky. But that isn’t the case, and the fandom isn’t going to change that perspective anytime soon because it doesn’t have the influence the official media nor does it care all that much about that narrative to begin with.
I’ve seen some defenders of the ship say that it only gets so much hate because people are weird about Susie. Now the people that say this will lump together actual haters with people who have legitimate criticisms, but yes as referenced above people are very weird about Susie. Like some people just despise this fictional woman, and she’s clearly a bad person but she’s a villain that’s the point? Calm down. I know it might seem like *I* hate Susie because I’ve written 1000 words detailing why she’s an awful person, but actually that’s why I love her. All that dialogue I used to argue why she’s awful? That shit is funny as hell! I’m sorry the hero of the story is boring; I’d much rather watch a villain giggle in glee, wine in hand from the comfort of their spooky castle as they watch the city burn underneath them. Susie would post a picture of her posing next to her latest victim with the description “feeling cute might delete later”. She’s that meme posing in a pool with someone drowning in the back. I don’t think she’s particularly well written, her backstory doesn’t seem to have any affect on her and the game itself can’t decide rather she’s a straight up villain or morally ambiguous, but damn she’s still so much fun. What she lacks in clear morals, she more than makes up for with plenty of personality! And seeing a horrible character suffer no repercussions for their bad actions and instead are congratulated with given a hot bf is obnoxious. But making a fun character boring? One of the worst sins you could commit. No I’m joking, but it is also super fucking telling that a good chuck of metasusie shippers are really just MK fanboys that only ever bring up Susie in relation to MK. And they ignore her war crimes to make her a sexy lamp that flirts with him and seemingly has no other ambitions. Like hating women is one thing, but women are people and people can be awful therefore women can be awful and let women be a bad bitch like Maleficent dammit. What I mean to say is; Susie isn’t like some feminist icon, for one of like barely 10 plot important female characters she plays into a lot of basic stereotypes and the devs seem hesitant to actually punish her for her actions or have her grow to the extent of her male counterparts. But she’s still an incredibly active character that can outsmart anybody (exception being the evil supercomputer which is fair) and takes matters into her own hands. In order to make Susie shippable you have to make her nicer, but this comes in the form of removing her smarts and her go getter attitude so that she becomes the ideal wife, and not only does she no longer resemble Susie, that’s incredibly demeaning.
(Edit: I forgot to mention a lot of people will argue that depicting a female character as villainous to be an inherently bad thing. While it is true that there are some creators that hate women so much that every woman they write is some sort of evil temptress or whatever, this obviously doesn’t mean that every fictional bad lady ever is inherently sexist for being evil. No not every depiction of Susie being mean is a result of someone that hates her, you can’t deny that she’s mean in canon at least at *sometimes*. Let women be bad bitches.)
TL:DR, The ship is bad. Planet Robobot makes a stance on the negative effects of capitalism, that because capitalism favors those at top it dehumanizes those below them. Meta Knight is a victim of this, and by saying it wasn’t a problem you ignore the game’s message for a ship. Susie isn’t a particularly well written character, perhaps she was intended to be more sympathetic but the series doesn’t do enough to show her trying to change for the better. The fans don’t make up for this and treat her even weirder. If it was just those issues then it would just be a lame pairing, but the pair also emphasizes how the abuse men receive is undermined and how little people care about Susie being her own person. Also by posting this I lost a lot of followers lol
Susie took over her father’s business, but doesn’t mechanize planets anymore. She looks to aid others rather than harm but still has her overarching flaws. She’s also ”married” to Magolor (as a way to improve business between to two in many ways). The two see each other as very close buddies but just take advantage of the whole marrige thing despite one of them definitely being gay. (Shitpost sketch to explain better maybe)
Taranza was finally able to accept Sectonia’s death thanks to a unexpected visit from a very annoyed butterfly. He’s really just chillin and living his best life really.
(Refering to this post) The wean is fine, he was just beating up some lads. He lived for the carnage even as a tiny thing.
