interesting that both Moon and Eclipsa operate under the philosophy of âdo the right thing, even if everyone hates you for it.â but for Eclipsa, the âright thingâ is whatâs right for herself. itâs being who she is, being authentic and honest and living in her personal truth. no matter the cost.
for Moon, the âright thingâ is more of an abstract morality that i donât think she even fully understands or could articulate if she had to. she assigns a non-personal, objective, external origin to this morality, this ârightâ way of doing things, but itâs actually very personal, sheâs just so disconnected from herself that she canât see it. the âright thingâ is the thing that will guarantee the least amount of death. or itâs the thing that will keep her daughter safe. or itâs the thing that will maintain the status quo. it's the thing that will maintain her precarious sense of self, which is based on a kind of non-self in which she sacrifices endlessly for the sake of duty, making her actual self so small and far away itâs almost as if she could keep herself immune to the hardships of life. for Moon, i think the âright thingâ protects this dissociative means of coping, and will ultimately boil down to whatever makes her feel safe. whatever affirms her version of reality, whatever keeps her from losing what/who she cares about most.
but neither of them have a morality thatâs rooted in true empathy. itâs selfish. understandably so, in some regards. but also in a way thatâs very much influenced by their privledged status as royals. Eclipsa views the plight of monsters through her own suffering as a high-society woman who was denied the power and privilege and even human dignity typically afforded to women in her position due to her association with Monsters and unorthodox personality and interests. their plight is important to her because she sought and found belonging among these people â she chose to extricate herself from Mewman culture, after presumably many failed attempts to assimilate, because Monsters were seen as freaks and outsiders, and she saw herself in them, specifically in the way they were set apart from other people by her family and her society. she could be herself with Monsters, which is all she ever really cared about. not that sheâs not empathetic or she doesnât care about the oppression of Monsters, but her path to this place was a self-centered one. if Monsters did not provide a space for her to be herself, she may not have found herself advocating for them in the same way which, even still, revolves around her own values around people being accepted for who they are and being able to fit into society as it is. which is dangerous bc that's not the solution to Monsters' struggles at all.
and for Moon, it all comes back to feeling safe by viewing herself as a non-person, more of a duty-bound machine. grief and trauma have impacted her so deeply she feels incapable of making decisions as her authentic self. she doesnât trust herself and sheâs too afraid of her own pain and emotion to go near it, so she represses it all and acts from a kind of fabricated higher self whose every decision is because itâs the âright thing to doâ instead of what she wants or needs. and so she can get away with avoiding accountability in a way because sheâs not ever doing what she wants to do, sheâs doing what she has to do. thatâs what she tells herself anyway. itâs not that the âright thingâ comes from really empathizing with her people, itâs more of a selfish (mostly subconscious in my headcanons) refusal to engage with anything that threatens the false sense of peace her mind has gone to such great lengths to maintain. and in the process she finds herself upholding the very system that caused her so much suffering, and unable to see that it needs to be dismantled because it has afforded her just enough personal security to make it worth her while to stay apart of it. (thatâs why her amnesia should have led her down a very different path, bc with Star on her side she really could have come to see things in a new light, but iâll save that for another post.)
Moon wants to be a good person, a responsible person, a person who wonât let bad things happen, and who can keep people from hurting, herself included. whatever she has to believe or do to keep this up, thatâs what sheâll do. and sheâll call it the âright thingâ and make it seem like objective truth to dissociate from it when it really is all a projection from her scared, vulnerable inner self that just wants to feel safe and in control.
Eclipsa wants to be herself without any restrictions. âIâd rather be hated for who i am than liked for who I pretend to be.â she wants to feel what she feels, say what she thinks, love who she loves, explore what she wants to explore regardless of what anyone thinks, or even how it might impact other people. and unlike Moon, Eclipsa doesnât live in any kind of delusion about this. and i think thatâs why Moon gets so triggered by her. bc that kind of authenticity she views as recklessness, as a selfish unwillingness to sacrifice for the greater good. but they both are kind of ruthless in their determination to live in their values; the difference is that Eclipsa does so from an honestly self-centered place while Moon does so from this place of deluded superiority that comes from dissociating from herself to such an extent that sheâs able to glorify her own means of securing safety for herself by viewing it as an objective ârightâ way of doing things.
