love is blind

I got back into my LoZ blogs and uh...... V bby took a bit of a back seat to renovating their themes and pages and whatnot

that one draft is still halfway done lmao (I haven’t forgotten I promise!!!!)

not that I’m trying to like.... demonize rika or perpetuate the stereotype that being mentally ill automatically makes you ‘evil’ or ‘crazy’, but she is the antagonist for a reason. her mental illness(es) certainly didn’t help her or anything, but she made the conscious and willful decision to start a religious cult. she kidnapped and brainwashed a child. she wanted to play god in her own little world. she robbed a man of his sight. she lied to someone genuinely trying to help her about her therapy and medication. she coerced v into being intimate with her when he wasn’t ready to be by making him feel guilty for it.

she has shown no desire to change or improve who she is. even after saeran blew up mint eye she continued to try to drug unwilling victims and induct them into her cult. she’s broken the law. she’s shown no remorse for her actions. hell, it’s implied that saeran dies and she doesn’t feel bad at all that her actions caused his death.

rika is the antagonist in spite of the fact that her character wasn’t handled as well as it could have been by cheritz (namely by them slapping the ‘mentally ill’ label on her without providing a specific illness and also feeding into the idea that mentally ill people are dangerous).

her characterization has been pretty consistent throughout the entirety of the game. the only difference being that in the main story what information we’re given is limited because the focus isn’t on mint eye. in another story, it is and so we’re given the details of the things that she’s done.

does saeran say that she’s like a mother to him? yes. but the only mother he’d ever known before abused him and used him. what does rika do? abuse him and use him and treat him like a tool. and you know what? even in the secret ends it’s shown that rika doesn’t truly care about saeran. she promised him that she would get rid of v, and even as he’s screaming at her that she swore v wouldn’t be a part of their paradise (which is truly only a paradise for rika and no one else) she continues to say she’ll bring v into mint eye.

and I’m aware that the mc is very often compared to rika, but the thing is, everyone in the RFA eventually comes to realize that she is not. mc is meant to be rika’s foil. mc is meant to be everything that rika could have been and everything that rika willingly threw away.

      He’s staring rather pensively at the canvas in front of him, paintbrush poised over his palette as if he hasn’t spent the last five minutes arguing with himself over what he’s doing. So engrossed is he in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice Sujin has paused in her own work to look at him, and neither has he noticed her intentions until he feels sticky bristles against his cheek.