Instance Domination

I feel like I need to extricate this from my brain before I pass out. I’m not sure I how I feel about Kathy’s ending in rcbg.

A major question of rcbg is asking to what extent are people responsible for their actions vs the circumstances that explain why they take those actions. It comes down pretty hard on the idea that while circumstances aren’t completely irrelevant, they become more and more unimportant the more removed one’s actions are for those circumstances. (Eg, *maybe* Nichole can be forgiven for blasting Kathy on the server In chapter 11 or whenever, due to the horrible circumstances of kathy and Nichole’s early relationships, but this justification wears thin as nichole uses it more and more).

What’s been sticking to my brain is how this theme is applied to Kathy. Kathy is an autistic coded girl who transitioned alone, laughed at by her online community, and barely tolerated by the people who know her in real life. And yeah it’s justified, she’s pretty much an awful person for the first quarter of the series and before the series began. But after realizing her actions are driving people she cares about away from her, she does actually resolve to change and sticks to it for the rest of the series. What itches me is that in the last bit of the story kathy is judged pretty harshly for her actions and I’m not entirely sure why.

As far as I can see, in this last bit of the story Kathy has three primary sins, she doesn’t communicate properly with Rashmi, she won’t give up her obsession on Nichole, and she is racist and abusive towards rupali. Taking these in order, Kathy is very autistic coded and it’s sorta frustrating to see her struggling to communicate her trauma to Rashmi be met with no effort from rashmi’s side? Like as far as I can tell, Katherine sends that big rambling “breakup text” to Rashmi and then they literally don’t speak again meaningfully until the conversation with Nichole (or maybe the Halloween party depending on your definition of meaningful). It might be me just making a watsonian critique of a doyalist moment but I feel Kathy is punished by those around her for being bad at communicating her feelings as they dismiss her behaviors as just weird shit Kathy does. Like, Rashmi get so upset at her reasoning for breaking up with her. And like yeah I get it but like. Rashmi knows her main trauma is people secretly hating her and then refuses to engage with the fact that she admitted that she used to secretly hate Kathy.

The whole “obsession with Nichole” thing is another instance of Kathy’s fear of abandonment made manifest, though far less justifiable. I don’t have much to say here except that I can kinda get why she tried to “fix” Nichole into liking her because she had convinced herself that Nichole was fixated on her in turn and could use that obsession to salve her own fears.

And then there is her being racist towards rupali. She should not have spoken to rupali that way and showed off some really ugly prejudices. That being said, I am not remotely surprised at her blowing up at rupali. Rupali had kinda spent the past month like. School yard bullying Kathy? And making it clear Nichole wanted rupali more than she wanted Kathy. And also implicitly at the party was a reminder that Rashmi wanted her more than Kathy(by this I mean, confirming Kathy’s bias that she is discardable). I her mind, surely rupali would be seen as a natural object of envy. again, the way kathy treated rupali was unacceptable, especially when rupali was offering an olive branch, but rupalis past treatment of katherine was also unacceptable.

and then the series ends with katherine cutting off nichole, and indicating that rashmi never contafts her again(i suppose this is debatable, but that was what i got from the "you are no longer able to message rashmi " line.) and i cant help but feel this girl that has spent the past in universe year trying very hard to become a better person end the story punished by everyone she loved for being too autistic and too isolated to communicate perfectly.