we need to talk about ragatha, yall 😭
Preface: Users, I am pissed. I am pissed about the Ragatha discourse, I'm pissed about the constant misinterpretations of her character all over the internet. So pissed, in fact, that I opted to revive a 5-year-old dead tumblr blog just to vent and provide a dive into Ragatha's character. Now, am I claiming to have a perfect understanding of her? No, not at all. I merely want to provide a different perspective on her behaviors, over just "Ragatha is a perfect, innocent victim🥺" vs. "Ragatha is an EVIL, CONNIVING MANIPULATOR and FAKE." This isn't supposed to be perfectly written, so apologies. It's more of a rant than anything.
You guys saw the new trailer, right? But did you see my gurl Ragatha? Oh my god… I feel soooo bad for her. I mean, look at her in the new trailer. (Examples: We can see in various shots. First, we can see one where Jax nigh immediately shoots her. Despite this, she’s still extremely hesitant and even terrified to inflict harm on others. She even picks the smallest, most non-threatening gun in the pile. If she does end up being pushed to the point of harm, she wants to do it in the least damaging way possible.)
She's so hesitant to harm anybody, even at the expense of herself, and inadvertently— by extension, the expense of others. Her hesitation in this moment isn't being fake, or people pleasing in a BASIC sense. It's the key to understanding her entire character, and it reveals a truth that's much darker than just being 'fake.' I wanna break down why Ragatha is secretly the most tragic and complex character in the Digital Circus. So, as we can see, the players are forced into a shooting match team up, you know, guns, guns guns! When she's paired with Kinger, she's being hit with a more tangible manifestation of her defense mechanisms and how they might accidentally cause harm, because she's too afraid of causing conflict. She HAS to cause harm directly to others in order to win. But she doesn't want to. At the same time, if she DOESN'T cause harm to others her last true friend (per the friend chart and evident thru her interactions) will suffer. (Example: In the Episode 6 trailer, we see a shot where Kinger seems to have been shot down, whereas Ragatha remains behind a barrel. This shot is the perfect encapsulation of her internal conflict: She desperately wants to do her best for others, but is terrified of causing any sort of harm or conflict, even if it's justified. This, inadvertently, results in further harm, and, in-turn, may fuel a sense of self-blame.)
I mean, they can't die, but it must be jarring to have to face a situation where her methods of mitigation render her so utterly... powerless. She's gonna be forced to face that she has less control than she thinks, which will be devastating and terrifying.
We can’t be too quick to judge, I mean, she's been in the circus longer than ALMOST anyone at this point, right? And the only person who HAS been there longer has gone batshit crazy. She's seen so many friends come and go.
People don't understand her because they haven't been there for nearly as long. They haven't seen what she has. Pomni (And Jax) said it's okay to be a jerk sometimes, but what if, Ragatha DID allow herself to be "a jerk," and it resulted in her losing someone she cared about? (Example: Episode 5, during the baseball scene. Pomni tells Ragatha that it’s okay to show negative emotions, and perhaps Jax was right in his assertion. Notice how Ragatha turns the term ‘negative emotions’ to ‘jerk,’ likely because she subconsciously views any negative emotion as inherently harmful or bad. It’s the type of splitting that one might expect to see from trauma survivors.)
And jerk more so means, allow herself to justifiably react in a way other than negatively, even in healthy ways— but maybe her self-blaming nature and tendency for over responsibility caused her to take the blame herself for anything that had gone wrong? Or what if, once, she was pushed to her limit, it caused harm to someone she cared about, and she resigned herself to never showing the bad side of herself again.) Alternatively, her people pleasing nature might have come from her upbringing, and was amplified once placed in the circus, so it might be a convergence of factors over just one. Point is, we don't know much about the circus. We don't know what it's like to be Ragatha, what she saw that might have caused her to act the way she did.
It must be so much pressure, trying to hold everyone and everything together, when she knows it is hopeless, when she herself is falling apart. It's probs terrifying, desperately trying to hold some semblance of control, some grip on what was happening, to prevent the terrifying inevitable in such an unjust situation... Abstraction was its own madness, but the real madness was living to see all of it, to see everybody else go. I mean, hell, that's probably why Kinger went insane. That's why she can't let herself get close to anybody else. She can't lose more people. And the one person she DID feel she could be close to, Pomni, is backing off from her. She probably saw herself in Pomni, maybe that she likely wouldn't abstract for a while like the others since Ragatha herself had survived so long.
Regarding Pomni 'backing off,' Another possibility could be that Ragatha is terrified of losing her only chance at a real friend, so she merely perceives Jax as taking Pomni from her when this isn't reality. This is exhibited clearly in episode 5, when she has her controversial crash-out. ("Will you stop trying to get her to act like you?") This could be feeding a self-perpetuating cycle where her fear of losing Pomni as a friend ironically pushes her away more. This seems to carry over into the episode 6 teaser, where Pomni is explicitly paired up with Jax, and again in the 5th episode where Pomni seems on edge near Ragatha throughout. Ragatha is still human, she still needs connection, she still craves it. The connection she's allowing herself right now isn't authentic, and her only real source is Pomni, who seems put off by her trauma responses, likely not interpreting or understanding them.
People say Ragatha is kindness without empathy, but that's not true. I'd argue she's hyper-empathetic. She feels so deeply that maybe, sometimes, when someone abstracts, she blames herself. I mean, we saw it with Kaufmo in the first episode, when she apologized for fake laughing at his jokes. Her empathy is so high that she overcompensates, attempting not to cause harm to others. In turn, this makes her appear disingenuous to others, causing distance. That's not being fake to hide a mean girl core, that's a trauma response from being someone who feels deeply, put in a situation that's pretty antithetical to how they operate.
I'd argue the main difference between Pomni and Ragatha isn't that Ragatha is fake and Pomni isn't, I'd argue the main difference is that Ragatha's been in the circus long enough to have her natural empathy distort into a terrified trauma response. That she's seen everyone she's close to, one by one, abstract. That she couldn't prevent their demise. Having empathy doesn't automatically mean you'll use it well. It can become dysfunctional once trauma kicks in. Her 'fake' optimism isn't just some basic performance; it's a survival mechanism to prevent herself and others from falling into insanity. It's a means of self-preservation, of regulation, of survival. Because she's likely learned that this place doesn't go by the basic rules, it's unstable, unpredictable, where anyone can just disappear at any time. We can't apply the rules of our own reality to something as chaotic as the circus and expect it to be the same.
Besides, Pomni's empathy isn't perfect, either. She doesn't understand Ragatha's trauma responses, she sees Jax's underlying issues, yes, but that could cause her to accidently enable harmful behavior. At the same time, Ragatha's fear of conflict IS actively pushing other people away, that's on her. She isn't comfortable with being seen, being vulnerable. She sees conversations not as something to use to genuinely connect on a vulnerable level, but to navigate. As a way to manage her image as a caretaker so others won't leave, and ensure others aren't hurt, because she's rejection sensitive as well as sensitive to hurting the feelings of others. It's a delicate balance that she feels she has to play in order to be liked. She's also constantly hyper vigilant, and when one invests all of their time and energy reading others that they don't have the space or time to connect. We can tell she's constantly watching for something. For example, in episode two, when she's about to knock on Pomni's door to talk about how she was left behind by Pomni to an abstracted Kaufmo, her eyes quickly dart to both sides to ensure no one else is there to witness it.
The sheer PANIC in her eyes says it all…
She starts bringing it up in subtle ways, hoping for an apology. Then, when she sees Pomni is disoriented from her circus arrival, she quickly and almost automatically drops the matter and reverts to caretaker mode. It's threat detection, a constant, exhausting adaptation that precludes personal connection. (She's also quite sensitive to loud noises. We can see this through 3 or 4 instances when someone yells near her, or makes sudden movements, not even yelling at her, but nearby, she frowns dramatically, flinching back significantly. I mean, look at her face! Girl is TERRIFIED. This makes it seem that she may be on constant survival mode)
(Examples: In episode 2, When Caine exclaims that they need to go on the adventure, she immediately flinches, then her expression worsens. Even in the aftermath, the frown on her face remains, showing how deeply she was affected by even a neutral instance of a character being loud. Another instance can be seen later in the episode, when she reassures Jax. He lunges himself at her once she reassures him, and she shows that same sort of terrified, almost sad expression. This one is a combination of several of her triggers: loud movements, disapproval, and failing her role as the caretaker/the one who maintains group cohesion.)
Like it's a game she's in risk of losing, where people's approval can be taken away in any moment if she isn't perfect, if she doesn't perfectly adhere to her facade. That's why she gets so anxious at the smallest sign of disapproval, because it feels like the consequences are far more catastrophic than they really are.
(Example: For example, in the bar scene of ep. 5, when she makes her failed attempt at a joke to Pomni after Jax rubs in her face that him and Pomni are becoming friends, Pomni looks… Uncomfortable, to say the least. Cue another almost compulsive pivot into her caretaking mode. She immediately apologizes, attempting to restore equilibrium and ease tensions almost desperately, adorning a look of self-blame and self-defeat.)
This is just speculative, but this might be due to her upbringing, where love may have been conditional on whether she was compliant. So, basically, she fails to bring something up, then says something offhanded about it due to pent-up resentment. (She also lacks a healthy model for conflict resolution entirely, most likely). Then, the person reacts negatively, causing her to desperately soothe others.
This comes off as inauthenticity, trying too hard, and a bit too much to others. So, it pushes them away further. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that only serves to isolate.
It's also a way to survive, herself. If she doesn't think of the bad stuff, she doesn't have to undergo that same spiral most endure when they abstract.
(Example: This is most evidently seen when she has her infamous spiral regarding the futility of finding an exit at the beginning of episode one. She starts off with touching the surface of her emotions in her explanation. Then, she quickly spirals into her likely massive wall of repressed emotions regarding being trapped in such a chaotic, digital hell. She almost borders on a panic attack. Then, IMMEDIATELY after, she dismisses it “Uhhh… Buuuuut.. That’s not something we need to deal with today!” adorning an anxious smile. This is an almost perfect representation of her defenses kicking in hard.)
She's that classic caretaker: takes care of others through a facade of optimism because she feels her core self is inadequate, whilst desperately wanting to be cared about and cared for. But she feels too anxious and avoidant to bring it up bc it reads as danger, and when she DOES receive proper care, she feels selfish for it.
Ragatha has prior trauma, that probably gives her an advantage in an unpredictable environment. She's developed a false, survival self that can withstand the whims of Caine. That might be why she survived so long. Maybe she developed increased resilience as a result. But that mask has cracks in it, it's not infallible, and I feel like the trauma she's been facing in the circus may or may not be forcing herself to delve deeper and deeper into her defenses, to her detriment. In the end, it's a dysfunctional adaptation. It's really not meant to last so long.
The real madness of the circus isn't abstraction; it's having to live long enough to see everyone else go. And with every new challenge, Ragatha is being forced to confront the fact that her methods are failing. The question is no longer if her mask will break, but what will be left of her when it does.
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So, that was my rant... thingy. Thanks 4 reading <3
(Sorry if it was a little rambly.)
U get a cookie for making it to the end 😊🫴🍪
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oh fuck.... i dropped it... on the floor... sorry....
um... i'd give you more, but... well, i only made one...
...well... this is awkward...
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