CFUW and why Rika may well be crazy forever in it now
Long story short, Rika is crazy, and CFUW exacerbates that terribly and brings out and also wow are she and Lambda gay and also screwed up. This essay is long enough to need to be divided up into sections just so I can have a clue what I'm talking about, okay.
Accelerator and Sanity
Okay, Accelerator is probably the simplest, but he's simple in a way that's one of the few things that's keeping Rika grounded at all. She'd... never actually been successfully saved by anyone before! And he did, despite the cost. And she was genuinely and simply impressed by that, and a little wistful. Rika simply likes Accelerator, and really he's the only person in the games who she's bothered at all about being a crazy bitch in front of. She likes that he saw her as a small child to be protected, and she doesn't really...want to change that because on a very fundamental level, that's what she'd like to be. It's what she should be, and it's not what she's ever given the opportunity to be, and so when someone does offer that opportunity, I think she loves them a little for that.
...Actually the fact that everyone who's successfully hit that ping of hers is male probably ties into the relative sanity of her daddy issues. Not going to get too deeply into it because I'll cover it later on, but Rika's relationships with women tend to be a complicated and intense mixture of love and hate once she starts getting seriously involved. Her relationships with men don't really have that insane edge, and so it's a lot easier for them to act as a major sanity improver even if they're not really always sane and good people themselves. (See also: Keiichi, Zhores. Akasaka doesn't count only because Akasaka is probably always a decent person. ...I think. Maybe. Somehow saying someone in WTC is always a decent person makes me feel like I've just painted a jossing target on my back, even if canon's complete.)
But yeah, basically Accelerator is the only thing keeping her from jumping fully into the deep and crazy edge in this particular timeline. ...Well okay I'm pretty sure she has jumped. HE'S HER BUNGEE CORD I GUESS? It looks like she's going to go pretty far over the deep end in the next couple days, depending on what Lambda and Rika end up doing IC, and I think the only thing holding Rika back from throwing herself into that wholeheartedly is him. Okay, and Hanyuu and her friends, but they're not here.
Hatter and Hate
Rika has simply never been given the opportunity to purely and simply hate someone before. In a weird way, she finds this refreshing. One of the reasons Rika is so twisted up is that the very same people she has most reason to hate are the same people who are the most important people to her. Shion is the only person who is guaranteed within canon to have tortured her to death horribly, most likely over several days. She isn't Rika's best friend, but yeah, Rika considers her a friend. Rika just...like. One of the most interesting things to me about Lambda and Bern's relationship, and the differences between Bern and Rika, is that Rika generally draws a line. It's a chronological line, rather than one around people, but it's pretty much I love you unless you're doing the thing that makes me hate you, and then I hate you. And she can move across it, sometimes really fast, but it's still a line. A lot of how I see Lambda and Bern's relationship comes down to them removing that line between love and hate. They love each other so much that nothing else in the world matters to them more than each other, and Bernkastel also hating Lambda is also a part of that, but it's no longer separate from the love.
And yes, that could have gone under the Lambda or Bern sections, but it's part of my point - Rika simply hates Hatter. It's sort of good for her and sort of bad for her? I seriously can't decide. I mean, it would be better if Rika didn't have to hate people, but her being able to separate love and hate for once is kind of an improvement oh my god her life. And it kind of ties up with her religion because it's all about redemption but screw it, I am waiting until I get a Hanyuu to essay on that. APP HANYUU SOMEONE.
I think she also understands Hatter surprisingly well? She doesn't care about the details, but... a part of Rika will grow up to be someone who plays similiar kind of games Hatter plays, and she knows that, and she's been thinking about that a lot, dealing with Lambda telling her about that. But she suspects that Hatter was broken horribly a long time ago, and Rika really understands just how games and power over people can fill that up. And I don't know if she underestimates Hatter or not because of that? I think it's more that she knows generally how dangerous Hatter is, but ran out on her ability to care about that decades ago. Rika's just. She's been killed so horribly so many times, betrayed so horribly so many times, yadda yadda yadda, that...she'll avoid pain if she can? She's not (much of) a masochist. But it's not really a driving force, and if Rika's intent enough on winning (which is what that deal was about, really) she'd...pretty much do whatever worked, no matter how badly it hurt her or anyone else around her. And so she can't be as cautious around Hatter as she should be when she's in that particular mindset. It's a little like how she deals with Shion when she's going mad - Shion can punch her around, throw her on the ground and scream at her, yadda yadda yadda, and the only time she shows anything other than determination is when she's cornered and knows that she's immediately facing torture followed by death or suicide. At which point, yeah, crazyfaces up the wazoo followed by brain stabbings. But! Hatter's never really put her in that position although the deal came a little close to it. Although Rika did enjoy being at the opposite end of the knife for once.
Weirdly, I think that Rika's pronoun usage for Hatter should probably correspond to how simple her emotions are regarding Hatter at that moment. He = simple hate. She = more complicated.
Lambda and Issues
Lambda takes a lot of Rika's issues, and turns them up 10 notches, really. It's odd, because in camp she's actually a largely stabilizing force, but that's mostly because there's not many outside influences to distract her from making Rika happier, I think? So she works to stabilize Rika despite the fact that she's also more responsible for Rika's deaths than anyone in canon, and Rika's become fairly dependent on that in the absence of her castmates. CFUW, on the other hand, is a game designed to exacerbate their existing fault lines. Rika can't consider trusting Lambda in a game like this without getting hit in the issues. I mean, literally, in even the most innocuous possible game in which Rika and Lambda were to both play in CFUW, Rika would be getting pinged hard in the issues. One of Hatter's kill games just brings that up a few hundred notches because it's actually striking directly at the things Rika deals with in canon - the tension of having beloved friends that you don't trust to be on your side.
And I was sort of surprised at how reluctant Rika was to vote her out? Like. Before Lambda convinced her by being genuinely upset at her (because that's really what convinced her, because Rika basically misinterpreted it as Lambda being upset that she was incapable of trusting her in these games even in a kill game even though Lambda was actually a sheep. Which. Would be a reasonably fair upset, considering Rika has hurt Lambda like that in the past and sometimes she cares and sometimes she doesn't because Rika's kind of a sadist and does have a reason to hurt Lambda like that. But I don't think she'd have changed her mind as thoroughly if she'd been any less bothered by voting Lambda out in a kill game.
And it's weird, because...dude, Lambda's part of the creation of Rika's hell. But I think that's actually a lot of the problem? In Rika's relationship with Lambda so far, the hate part of the love hate equation has been the more dominant in most major issues. Rika enjoys Lambda's company and cares about her, but in the end the knowledge that she helped create her hell and was keeping the knowledge Rika needed to end it while simultaneously caring about her has pretty much predominated in any major issue. But...hmm. Rika is kind of possessive? In a lot of ways. And although Rika doesn't really have many qualms about killing Lambda, because she has reason to, the idea of anyone else killing Lambda kind of pisses her off. Which is...probably kind of the love part of the equation, except for the fact that the possessiveness is mostly focused on the killing and a little on the forcing Lambda to play games um. And Rika's been a little in love with Lambda since...I'm not exactly sure when, but definitely the mindscape thread.
...So yes, this game basically confirmed to me how deeply intertwined games, death, and love are in Rika's id even before the whole stabbing Lambda to death flirtation fight thing. Rika can shove the death part out of her id when she's in a good state of mind? Or ignore it. (And that ties a bit into my theory of the interpretation of Bern and Rika's relationship, but that essay will wait on me finishing Rei and Umineko.) But...mm. It ties into power, really. Rika's fundamentally powerless because she dies all the time. That's the association Rika, at some fundamental level, has made. The people who kill her are, in the end, no more powerful (actually Higurashi and Umineko are both pretty firm about murderers being on a fundamental level less powerful) but...that's the association Rika's made. And power and gamesexuality and Rika's kind of. Like. Stuck at right before she's old enough to develop sexuality, but she very definitely has the start of those kinds of feelings? But getting stuck when she did has basically given those feelings time to get really twisted up by all the darker aspects of Higurashi, and yeah, I think a lot of the way Bern intertwines sex and death and pain and games in her relationship with Lambda already exists in Rika, even if Rika hasn't quite....hit that stage of puberty yet. And she'll hit it differently from Bern because she has more in her life than Bern and isn't as broken? But...basically I sort of view Bern as the furthest, most extreme edge of the darkest aspects of Rika's personality. And even when that's not dominating, and it's really rare that it actually does, it's still a part of Rika. So...yeah, Rika's kinked the same way Bern is, even if it's skewed much more towards the healthier edges of things.
Actually that's kind of interesting how it's happened in this game, because the way it actually happened actually lessened the appeal of killing for her. Because what she wants out of death is power, but that really just took all the power out of her hands in a way that made it really unsatisfying. ...Well okay mostly really unsatisfying um. ...CONGRATULATIONS HATTER YOU COCKBLOCKED A LOLI'S BURGEONING SNUFFUALITY?
Gosh this section is awkward.
Bernkastel and Self
A lot of this essay really obviously has influence from Bernkastel! There's a reason for that, and that's because Rika is getting pushed hard in the direction of being more like Bernkastel in CFUW. There's a lot of reasons for that, but it really comes down to the fact that the only fundamental difference between Rika and Bernkastel is that Rika's friends and god are fundamentally good people, and who they are when sane is enough to keep Rika from breaking, or from tipping over entirely into crazy evil psycho territory. And it's weird, because Rika's not remotely close to breaking in this? But I didn't quite realize what influence Lambda would have on her, although I probably would have if I thought it through.
But Rika's someone who keeps her morals basically because she sees the consequences if she doesn't, and she sees the utility of them, and because there's people she loves and wants happy. She can have inherent morals, but...yeah okay basically Satoko is her morality pet, as she's really the only person who Rika instinctively and immediately acts to protect if hurt. And Accelerator and Akasaka act a little similarly except for the fact that she doesn't really want to protect them, she wants them to protect her because it's the right thing to do. Anyone else? Eh, probably because hurting people is a cause of instability and Rika's too weak and Hinamizawa is too unstable to afford that, but it's a rational, deliberate choice.
And CFUW games, because they're so narrow, cut her off from a lot of that source of morality. Rika acts morally in CFUW games because it benefits her to be the cute innocent loli, mostly. And because Accelerator protected her and she doesn't really want to make him regret that. And because sometimes it benefits her to have people more well adjusted.
But if Lambda's there, she's going to be her primary influence. And when Rika acts like her darkest tendencies, Lambda doesn't discourage her in the least. If anything, I kind of figure that she thinks that Rika's most attractive when she's acting crazy the same way Bern does? ...I don't actually know but. Lambda is, well, an Umineko witch. She likes horrible things just as much as good things. And when Rika's under stress, what she needs is someone who makes her want to be a good person. Lambda, on the other hand, is ... I don't know if Lambda's less or more of a psycho than Rika. About equal, I'd say? With more experience in being a psycho, which helps.
Basically, Rika's different from Bernkastel mostly because Rika's always being pushed to be a better person by Hanyuu and her friends. Without that push, and with someone who actively enables her worst tendencies in some ways, in a kill game Rika will sink towards extremity.
And in completely other news:
10,000 comments = Anything goes meme
I also totally hit 10,000 comments when Rika was killing Lambda gayly. No seriously, it was when she and Lambda were screaming at each other with crazyfaces in the kill thread - I should probably not find this as hilariously awesome as I do. But since I do! This post may also be used as an anything meme.
Accelerator and Sanity
Okay, Accelerator is probably the simplest, but he's simple in a way that's one of the few things that's keeping Rika grounded at all. She'd... never actually been successfully saved by anyone before! And he did, despite the cost. And she was genuinely and simply impressed by that, and a little wistful. Rika simply likes Accelerator, and really he's the only person in the games who she's bothered at all about being a crazy bitch in front of. She likes that he saw her as a small child to be protected, and she doesn't really...want to change that because on a very fundamental level, that's what she'd like to be. It's what she should be, and it's not what she's ever given the opportunity to be, and so when someone does offer that opportunity, I think she loves them a little for that.
...Actually the fact that everyone who's successfully hit that ping of hers is male probably ties into the relative sanity of her daddy issues. Not going to get too deeply into it because I'll cover it later on, but Rika's relationships with women tend to be a complicated and intense mixture of love and hate once she starts getting seriously involved. Her relationships with men don't really have that insane edge, and so it's a lot easier for them to act as a major sanity improver even if they're not really always sane and good people themselves. (See also: Keiichi, Zhores. Akasaka doesn't count only because Akasaka is probably always a decent person. ...I think. Maybe. Somehow saying someone in WTC is always a decent person makes me feel like I've just painted a jossing target on my back, even if canon's complete.)
But yeah, basically Accelerator is the only thing keeping her from jumping fully into the deep and crazy edge in this particular timeline. ...Well okay I'm pretty sure she has jumped. HE'S HER BUNGEE CORD I GUESS? It looks like she's going to go pretty far over the deep end in the next couple days, depending on what Lambda and Rika end up doing IC, and I think the only thing holding Rika back from throwing herself into that wholeheartedly is him. Okay, and Hanyuu and her friends, but they're not here.
Hatter and Hate
Rika has simply never been given the opportunity to purely and simply hate someone before. In a weird way, she finds this refreshing. One of the reasons Rika is so twisted up is that the very same people she has most reason to hate are the same people who are the most important people to her. Shion is the only person who is guaranteed within canon to have tortured her to death horribly, most likely over several days. She isn't Rika's best friend, but yeah, Rika considers her a friend. Rika just...like. One of the most interesting things to me about Lambda and Bern's relationship, and the differences between Bern and Rika, is that Rika generally draws a line. It's a chronological line, rather than one around people, but it's pretty much I love you unless you're doing the thing that makes me hate you, and then I hate you. And she can move across it, sometimes really fast, but it's still a line. A lot of how I see Lambda and Bern's relationship comes down to them removing that line between love and hate. They love each other so much that nothing else in the world matters to them more than each other, and Bernkastel also hating Lambda is also a part of that, but it's no longer separate from the love.
And yes, that could have gone under the Lambda or Bern sections, but it's part of my point - Rika simply hates Hatter. It's sort of good for her and sort of bad for her? I seriously can't decide. I mean, it would be better if Rika didn't have to hate people, but her being able to separate love and hate for once is kind of an improvement oh my god her life. And it kind of ties up with her religion because it's all about redemption but screw it, I am waiting until I get a Hanyuu to essay on that. APP HANYUU SOMEONE.
I think she also understands Hatter surprisingly well? She doesn't care about the details, but... a part of Rika will grow up to be someone who plays similiar kind of games Hatter plays, and she knows that, and she's been thinking about that a lot, dealing with Lambda telling her about that. But she suspects that Hatter was broken horribly a long time ago, and Rika really understands just how games and power over people can fill that up. And I don't know if she underestimates Hatter or not because of that? I think it's more that she knows generally how dangerous Hatter is, but ran out on her ability to care about that decades ago. Rika's just. She's been killed so horribly so many times, betrayed so horribly so many times, yadda yadda yadda, that...she'll avoid pain if she can? She's not (much of) a masochist. But it's not really a driving force, and if Rika's intent enough on winning (which is what that deal was about, really) she'd...pretty much do whatever worked, no matter how badly it hurt her or anyone else around her. And so she can't be as cautious around Hatter as she should be when she's in that particular mindset. It's a little like how she deals with Shion when she's going mad - Shion can punch her around, throw her on the ground and scream at her, yadda yadda yadda, and the only time she shows anything other than determination is when she's cornered and knows that she's immediately facing torture followed by death or suicide. At which point, yeah, crazyfaces up the wazoo followed by brain stabbings. But! Hatter's never really put her in that position although the deal came a little close to it. Although Rika did enjoy being at the opposite end of the knife for once.
Weirdly, I think that Rika's pronoun usage for Hatter should probably correspond to how simple her emotions are regarding Hatter at that moment. He = simple hate. She = more complicated.
Lambda and Issues
Lambda takes a lot of Rika's issues, and turns them up 10 notches, really. It's odd, because in camp she's actually a largely stabilizing force, but that's mostly because there's not many outside influences to distract her from making Rika happier, I think? So she works to stabilize Rika despite the fact that she's also more responsible for Rika's deaths than anyone in canon, and Rika's become fairly dependent on that in the absence of her castmates. CFUW, on the other hand, is a game designed to exacerbate their existing fault lines. Rika can't consider trusting Lambda in a game like this without getting hit in the issues. I mean, literally, in even the most innocuous possible game in which Rika and Lambda were to both play in CFUW, Rika would be getting pinged hard in the issues. One of Hatter's kill games just brings that up a few hundred notches because it's actually striking directly at the things Rika deals with in canon - the tension of having beloved friends that you don't trust to be on your side.
And I was sort of surprised at how reluctant Rika was to vote her out? Like. Before Lambda convinced her by being genuinely upset at her (because that's really what convinced her, because Rika basically misinterpreted it as Lambda being upset that she was incapable of trusting her in these games even in a kill game even though Lambda was actually a sheep. Which. Would be a reasonably fair upset, considering Rika has hurt Lambda like that in the past and sometimes she cares and sometimes she doesn't because Rika's kind of a sadist and does have a reason to hurt Lambda like that. But I don't think she'd have changed her mind as thoroughly if she'd been any less bothered by voting Lambda out in a kill game.
And it's weird, because...dude, Lambda's part of the creation of Rika's hell. But I think that's actually a lot of the problem? In Rika's relationship with Lambda so far, the hate part of the love hate equation has been the more dominant in most major issues. Rika enjoys Lambda's company and cares about her, but in the end the knowledge that she helped create her hell and was keeping the knowledge Rika needed to end it while simultaneously caring about her has pretty much predominated in any major issue. But...hmm. Rika is kind of possessive? In a lot of ways. And although Rika doesn't really have many qualms about killing Lambda, because she has reason to, the idea of anyone else killing Lambda kind of pisses her off. Which is...probably kind of the love part of the equation, except for the fact that the possessiveness is mostly focused on the killing and a little on the forcing Lambda to play games um. And Rika's been a little in love with Lambda since...I'm not exactly sure when, but definitely the mindscape thread.
...So yes, this game basically confirmed to me how deeply intertwined games, death, and love are in Rika's id even before the whole stabbing Lambda to death flirtation fight thing. Rika can shove the death part out of her id when she's in a good state of mind? Or ignore it. (And that ties a bit into my theory of the interpretation of Bern and Rika's relationship, but that essay will wait on me finishing Rei and Umineko.) But...mm. It ties into power, really. Rika's fundamentally powerless because she dies all the time. That's the association Rika, at some fundamental level, has made. The people who kill her are, in the end, no more powerful (actually Higurashi and Umineko are both pretty firm about murderers being on a fundamental level less powerful) but...that's the association Rika's made. And power and gamesexuality and Rika's kind of. Like. Stuck at right before she's old enough to develop sexuality, but she very definitely has the start of those kinds of feelings? But getting stuck when she did has basically given those feelings time to get really twisted up by all the darker aspects of Higurashi, and yeah, I think a lot of the way Bern intertwines sex and death and pain and games in her relationship with Lambda already exists in Rika, even if Rika hasn't quite....hit that stage of puberty yet. And she'll hit it differently from Bern because she has more in her life than Bern and isn't as broken? But...basically I sort of view Bern as the furthest, most extreme edge of the darkest aspects of Rika's personality. And even when that's not dominating, and it's really rare that it actually does, it's still a part of Rika. So...yeah, Rika's kinked the same way Bern is, even if it's skewed much more towards the healthier edges of things.
Actually that's kind of interesting how it's happened in this game, because the way it actually happened actually lessened the appeal of killing for her. Because what she wants out of death is power, but that really just took all the power out of her hands in a way that made it really unsatisfying. ...Well okay mostly really unsatisfying um. ...CONGRATULATIONS HATTER YOU COCKBLOCKED A LOLI'S BURGEONING SNUFFUALITY?
Gosh this section is awkward.
Bernkastel and Self
A lot of this essay really obviously has influence from Bernkastel! There's a reason for that, and that's because Rika is getting pushed hard in the direction of being more like Bernkastel in CFUW. There's a lot of reasons for that, but it really comes down to the fact that the only fundamental difference between Rika and Bernkastel is that Rika's friends and god are fundamentally good people, and who they are when sane is enough to keep Rika from breaking, or from tipping over entirely into crazy evil psycho territory. And it's weird, because Rika's not remotely close to breaking in this? But I didn't quite realize what influence Lambda would have on her, although I probably would have if I thought it through.
But Rika's someone who keeps her morals basically because she sees the consequences if she doesn't, and she sees the utility of them, and because there's people she loves and wants happy. She can have inherent morals, but...yeah okay basically Satoko is her morality pet, as she's really the only person who Rika instinctively and immediately acts to protect if hurt. And Accelerator and Akasaka act a little similarly except for the fact that she doesn't really want to protect them, she wants them to protect her because it's the right thing to do. Anyone else? Eh, probably because hurting people is a cause of instability and Rika's too weak and Hinamizawa is too unstable to afford that, but it's a rational, deliberate choice.
And CFUW games, because they're so narrow, cut her off from a lot of that source of morality. Rika acts morally in CFUW games because it benefits her to be the cute innocent loli, mostly. And because Accelerator protected her and she doesn't really want to make him regret that. And because sometimes it benefits her to have people more well adjusted.
But if Lambda's there, she's going to be her primary influence. And when Rika acts like her darkest tendencies, Lambda doesn't discourage her in the least. If anything, I kind of figure that she thinks that Rika's most attractive when she's acting crazy the same way Bern does? ...I don't actually know but. Lambda is, well, an Umineko witch. She likes horrible things just as much as good things. And when Rika's under stress, what she needs is someone who makes her want to be a good person. Lambda, on the other hand, is ... I don't know if Lambda's less or more of a psycho than Rika. About equal, I'd say? With more experience in being a psycho, which helps.
Basically, Rika's different from Bernkastel mostly because Rika's always being pushed to be a better person by Hanyuu and her friends. Without that push, and with someone who actively enables her worst tendencies in some ways, in a kill game Rika will sink towards extremity.
And in completely other news:
10,000 comments = Anything goes meme
I also totally hit 10,000 comments when Rika was killing Lambda gayly. No seriously, it was when she and Lambda were screaming at each other with crazyfaces in the kill thread - I should probably not find this as hilariously awesome as I do. But since I do! This post may also be used as an anything meme.