It’s so fundamental to my understanding of Karlach’s character that her sunshiney, golden-retriever energy is entirely genuine... but it’s also a load-bearing wall holding back a festering swell of rage, hurt, and grief.
Underneath that warmth is a decade of hurt and tragedy and betrayal and suffering she has been through, that she can't afford to look directly at all of it. She has to keep reaching for the good.
She has to stay positive. She has to focus on simple joys and be cheery. She has to laugh, love, tease, dance, and throw herself into every happy moment she can find, because the moment that grip slips, - the moment she’s forced to face the true depth of her emotions - it turns into an inferno that threatens to consume her entirely.
Her sweetness and her terrifying, justified, destructive anger are the two halves of her survival, and cannot be seperated
