Just Crawled Out of Hell

Tenna is a 𝒲𝒪𝒩𝒟ℰℛℱ𝒰ℒ boss!

hey did anyone notice this sucks ass?! :D do we feel the eventual contempt i had for this idea in that last panel?

anyway bonus yellow

As a huge Ralsei fan I was so on-board for this Chapter’s Hater Ralsei arc, I’ve been waiting for years for them to be comfortable enough with themself to even express their rougher and less Palatable sides from time to time. It’s so funny how they started figuring out their own ‘likes and dislikes’ and immediately went ‘well, I know I fucking dislike this guy’. That of course made me predisposed at first to side with Ralsei in their dislike of Flowery, I wanted Ralsei to be validated in their newfound ability to be comfortable with not being comforting Literally All the Time. But the more the Chapter went on, I also appreciated how Complicated the situation with Flowery was.

That it wasn’t just a simple case of Ralsei standing up to a Bully who was Probably Evil, and also that Ralsei’s newly-revealed rough-edges are actually rough, that they can now cross the line to mean or insensitive, that they can now express their fucked-up deterministic worldview openly. And that doesn’t make Ralsei Secretly Evil or a Total Asshole either, it’s just that after spending their entire existence believing that they shouldn’t have opinions of their own or express any emotions that aren’t Pleasant to others, it’s understandably Hard to figure out how to actually handle these ‘uglier’ emotions and that also makes these more unpleasant opinions more visible to the people around them and to the audience. They are, like every main character in the game, a messed-up teenager figuring out how to be a person.

And then also, they weren’t totally in the wrong, either. Flowery is well-intentioned both in terms of the overall plot and in some of their interactions with Ralsei, but he can absolutely cross the line to assholery that makes Ralsei's frustrations feel very justified. And there are multiple layers of Metaphors going on in the conflict between Ralsei and Flowery, but I’d say one of them is definitely ‘I have to hold myself back to make sure Nothing Bad Happens’ as a metaphor to trying to force yourself to be as nice and friendly and palatable as possible to make sure you never Hurt Anyone’s Feelings, while Ralsei doesn’t even notice they’re already veering into this territory as they speak. And meanwhile, the fact that Flowery is as proud and shameless about his treatment of Ralsei as he is about everything else he does, that he’s so unworried about how his words come off to others, this is clearly one of the reasons the way he treats Ralsei can come off as a step too far. So the whole situation, for both of them, is about the balance between ‘Repression is Bad’ and ‘be a little more tactful, goddamit’.

(That's also why Ralsei is an Asriel stand-in and Flowery is a Flowey stand-in, they are two sides of the same coin!)

And Ralsei is also not entirely wrong in the sense that they also has other reasons to worry about ‘being themself’ and just ‘doing whatever they want’, their Doomed by the Narrative situation really is dire, and Flowery’s overconfidence was kinda misplaced, as seen when the Knight shows up at the end of the Chapter. Ralsei has reasons to be afraid their attempts to do what they want to do or be what they want to be will either fail or end up making the life-threatening world-ending situation they and their friends are in even worse. Going into a different facet of the Metaphors in the interpersonal conflict, Flowery is, like, trying to prod Ralsei into coming out when they are in an incredibly unsafe environment, on account of the Evil Nightmare Deer with the Big Fuck-Off Black Sword trying to hunt them and their friends down for sports, and Ralsei is frustrated that he’s not taking the risk seriously enough. But also Ralsei is absolutely letting out their frustrations and jealousy about Flowery doing the things they feel they literally can’t do in a very harmful and unconstructive way. And despite the eventual futility of his actions, there’s a lot to be admired in how Flowery tries his best to break the rules and live his dreams while he can.

And, like, I don’t think their interpersonal problems would’ve improved if Ralsei was still in an earlier point in their character arc, when they would’ve tried to explain how it’s Wrong for the Flowers to try and pursue their dreams and identities in the sweetly soft way they told Tenna to accept his own obsoleteness and if they had passively accepted their Party Members’ opinions on Flowery regardless of their own emotions. I think you can argue that being a Salty Bitch through this adventure has been an healthier outlet to Ralsei’s emotions, and trying to repress them like they would’ve in earlier Chapters would’ve hurt their mental health and their arc even more at best, or ended up with the ‘Inferno of Jealousy’ burning out the garden being far far more literal at worst.