Rika and friendship and Lambda
...Okay this is more in the nature of an emergency essay in order to figure out Rika's head for dealing with Lambda but I'll toss it up anyway.
Back home, the only thing keeping Rika remotely sane is her friends. Considering her friends' tendency to snap and kill people, this might be a bit odd! But they do nonetheless. The games they play and the fact that they genuinely all do care about each other before they snap and kill each other is pretty much the only thing in her life that keeps her stable. The only thing Rika really wants out of life is the chance to keep the happy days where she plays with her friends continue on without bloody death and murder. That's the goal that she would shank babies for (and I do mean that literally because she is a Higurashi character.)
In camp, she has friends, obviously! But they don't tend to be the type that work as a stabilizer for her, because for that she needs people who are very energetic and playful. The best friend she has in camp who fits that criteria is Lambda. ...Lambda is also endorsing her murderer, and refusing to give her information, while dropping just enough information that Rika can't/won't just tell her to fuck off forever.
Usually, for the sake of Rika's own sanity, what she does when her friends start snapping is that she avoids them, unless she's actively making a move to try to change fate. Um. A lot of this is self-preservation! I mean seriously, you do not go near the crazy paranoid person without risk. But there's also the fact that she sort of hates her friends every single time this happens. Usually she sort of divides them into sane friend and insane friend for her own sanity, I think. It makes it easier for her to handle the fact that the people who she relies on to keep her happy and who she cares about most in the world have almost all killed her. (Well, Mion hasn't, and Satoko's a probably not. But Shion has definitely killed her, Rena's implied to have killed her, and Keiichi snaps often enough that I'd be surprised if he'd never killed her. RIKA'S LIFE, DUDES.)
So. Lambda does not offer that separation! The very same Lambda who plays with her and makes her laugh is also the one who endorsed her murder and refuses to tell her a thing about it. THIS DOES NOT DO GOOD THINGS TO RIKA'S MENTAL STATE. Like. Seriously, if Lambda hadn't said she was her friend? Rika would just do her best to get as much information out of her as possible and possibly go a little nuts hating her inside but she could deal with it because that's just the way her life goes. But friends are important to Rika! They are literally the only thing that keeps her going. Having Lambda say that she considered her a friend under the truth post while simultaneously saying that she would not help her - SO MUCH INCOHERENT RAGE
The funny thing is, Lambda asked her if she hated her and wanted her to suffer and Rika's reaction was pretty much bemusement. Because Rika doesn't really hate people! She hates what they're doing. Rika's sort of instinctively big on the whole "hating the sin, not the sinner" as a defense mechanism, because otherwise she'd be hating the only people that keep her sane. And wishing them to suffer is so redundant in her experience that it's not even on the table. Admittedly, Lambda doesn't really remotely apply to that, but it's still an ingrained habit of hers!
In a way, she could almost treat Lambda like Hanyuu, and in a lot of ways that's the closest model to their relationship. Hanyuu's also helped create the game board on which she dies, and then fails to do anything helpful (like, you know, stick around and watch her murdered so that she find out who her murderer is) and that makes their relationship really, really complicated. Rika hates Hanyuu a little bit and loves her and just there is so much push and pull of codependency and despair and love there that they need their own essay okay. But what really reminds me of her and Hanyuu with Lambda is the fact that Lambda is speaking from a perspective beyond the human world. As a miko who takes her job seriously, Rika is prone to listen to that! But Lambda's a witch, not a god, and....hmm. Hanyuu speaks from the experience of being grounded within human restrictions and dying to break them to save humans from them, while Lambda strikes Rika as speaking from the experience of living outside human restrictions, with no desire to ever help anyone else because she doesn't have the capacity to sympathize So Rika's less inclined to listen to her because she just doesn't think that her perspective of beyond humanity is the best. But on the other hand Lambda seems infinitely more capable of accomplishing things than Hanyuu, and so Rika is more inclined to listen to her based on that.
But. Lambda endorses killing her. And she doesn't appear to regret it or want to prevent it in the least. If she showed any signs whatsoever of that, Rika would be totally fine with it because of her attitudes towards sin and atonement and generally how she manages to be friends with so many horrible people without a qualm. If she would present herself as a pure opponent, she'd be fine with that! But she doesn't, and so Rika can't just brush it aside. And Rika, well, is inclined to like Lambda! To put it simply, she's the type of person Rika most likes. She'd just avoid her forever if she could, because that would be the easiest for her. But Lambda is the safest stalker, and therefore Rika's chances of that are basically nonexistent. And so Rika's just like. CANNOT COPE GO AWAY.
...So basically I have no idea what Rika will do when she and Lambda thread again. Probably act normal, avoid the subject, and tell her to go away whenever the tension rises too much. And try to hit her if she ever pokes her about it too much.
TL;DR summary: Lambda makes Rika want to drink forever.
Back home, the only thing keeping Rika remotely sane is her friends. Considering her friends' tendency to snap and kill people, this might be a bit odd! But they do nonetheless. The games they play and the fact that they genuinely all do care about each other before they snap and kill each other is pretty much the only thing in her life that keeps her stable. The only thing Rika really wants out of life is the chance to keep the happy days where she plays with her friends continue on without bloody death and murder. That's the goal that she would shank babies for (and I do mean that literally because she is a Higurashi character.)
In camp, she has friends, obviously! But they don't tend to be the type that work as a stabilizer for her, because for that she needs people who are very energetic and playful. The best friend she has in camp who fits that criteria is Lambda. ...Lambda is also endorsing her murderer, and refusing to give her information, while dropping just enough information that Rika can't/won't just tell her to fuck off forever.
Usually, for the sake of Rika's own sanity, what she does when her friends start snapping is that she avoids them, unless she's actively making a move to try to change fate. Um. A lot of this is self-preservation! I mean seriously, you do not go near the crazy paranoid person without risk. But there's also the fact that she sort of hates her friends every single time this happens. Usually she sort of divides them into sane friend and insane friend for her own sanity, I think. It makes it easier for her to handle the fact that the people who she relies on to keep her happy and who she cares about most in the world have almost all killed her. (Well, Mion hasn't, and Satoko's a probably not. But Shion has definitely killed her, Rena's implied to have killed her, and Keiichi snaps often enough that I'd be surprised if he'd never killed her. RIKA'S LIFE, DUDES.)
So. Lambda does not offer that separation! The very same Lambda who plays with her and makes her laugh is also the one who endorsed her murder and refuses to tell her a thing about it. THIS DOES NOT DO GOOD THINGS TO RIKA'S MENTAL STATE. Like. Seriously, if Lambda hadn't said she was her friend? Rika would just do her best to get as much information out of her as possible and possibly go a little nuts hating her inside but she could deal with it because that's just the way her life goes. But friends are important to Rika! They are literally the only thing that keeps her going. Having Lambda say that she considered her a friend under the truth post while simultaneously saying that she would not help her - SO MUCH INCOHERENT RAGE
The funny thing is, Lambda asked her if she hated her and wanted her to suffer and Rika's reaction was pretty much bemusement. Because Rika doesn't really hate people! She hates what they're doing. Rika's sort of instinctively big on the whole "hating the sin, not the sinner" as a defense mechanism, because otherwise she'd be hating the only people that keep her sane. And wishing them to suffer is so redundant in her experience that it's not even on the table. Admittedly, Lambda doesn't really remotely apply to that, but it's still an ingrained habit of hers!
In a way, she could almost treat Lambda like Hanyuu, and in a lot of ways that's the closest model to their relationship. Hanyuu's also helped create the game board on which she dies, and then fails to do anything helpful (like, you know, stick around and watch her murdered so that she find out who her murderer is) and that makes their relationship really, really complicated. Rika hates Hanyuu a little bit and loves her and just there is so much push and pull of codependency and despair and love there that they need their own essay okay. But what really reminds me of her and Hanyuu with Lambda is the fact that Lambda is speaking from a perspective beyond the human world. As a miko who takes her job seriously, Rika is prone to listen to that! But Lambda's a witch, not a god, and....hmm. Hanyuu speaks from the experience of being grounded within human restrictions and dying to break them to save humans from them, while Lambda strikes Rika as speaking from the experience of living outside human restrictions, with no desire to ever help anyone else because she doesn't have the capacity to sympathize So Rika's less inclined to listen to her because she just doesn't think that her perspective of beyond humanity is the best. But on the other hand Lambda seems infinitely more capable of accomplishing things than Hanyuu, and so Rika is more inclined to listen to her based on that.
But. Lambda endorses killing her. And she doesn't appear to regret it or want to prevent it in the least. If she showed any signs whatsoever of that, Rika would be totally fine with it because of her attitudes towards sin and atonement and generally how she manages to be friends with so many horrible people without a qualm. If she would present herself as a pure opponent, she'd be fine with that! But she doesn't, and so Rika can't just brush it aside. And Rika, well, is inclined to like Lambda! To put it simply, she's the type of person Rika most likes. She'd just avoid her forever if she could, because that would be the easiest for her. But Lambda is the safest stalker, and therefore Rika's chances of that are basically nonexistent. And so Rika's just like. CANNOT COPE GO AWAY.
...So basically I have no idea what Rika will do when she and Lambda thread again. Probably act normal, avoid the subject, and tell her to go away whenever the tension rises too much. And try to hit her if she ever pokes her about it too much.
TL;DR summary: Lambda makes Rika want to drink forever.