I mentioned on twitter that I had a mild pet peeve for deltarune artists drawing young Carol Holiday as a y2k goth baddie when mathematically she probably grew up in the 70s/80s and her fashion would reflect the alternative scenes of the time. And I wanted to be productive soooouhhhhh vintage punk deer woman it is
I'm an emotional abuse survivor, and Ragatha's story in Digital Circus hits me like a train and genuinely, I have no idea how no one else is talking about it
I knew FROM THIS MOMENT exactly why Ragatha is the way she is. The way she pulls herself short because you DO NOT TALK about what you go through, you do not tell anyone what your parent does to you or says to you. No one gets it. It's embarrassing. It's too much.
But her torture scene in the new episode just cemented it for me.
It's always at the dinner table. You can't get away at dinner. You have to sit with your abuser, who has probably already hit their limit for the day and is looking for someone to unleash their stress at. And you have to take it, because it gets SO much worse if you get up from the table before you're finished.
All the mannequins make me wonder if Ragatha has a big family. That's an awful lot of people who have already been beaten down and aren't speaking up to defend her.
Ragatha is a rag doll because Caine can see in her mind files that she's been used that way all her life. Thats how she sees herself. She's a soft thing to be thrown about. She can stand up to rough treatment. You can fling as many knives at her as you like and it doesn't matter, because she's made of stuffing, it doesn't hurt. You can just patch her up and keep going.
But if course it hurts. Look at her.
(and obviously her mother didn't *actually stab her in the eye*, come on guys.)
But I have to go back to how Ragatha's mother is shown here, because it speaks volumes to Ragatha's entire character. It's so screamingly obvious to me, probably because I mould my own life exactly how Ragatha does, for better or for worse.
The mother looks like Ragatha. She has the same hair, the same body type.
And the whole time she's abusing Ragatha, she's *smiling.* She's enjoying it. She's exactly the type of vile bully that comes up with her most hurtful thing to say, and smiles in your face while she says it, because it makes her feel good.
THAT is why Ragatha is so accommodating. THAT'S why she doesn't tell Jax to fuck off until she's given "permission" by Pomni at the softball game (who immediately gets freaked out by her big feelings and tells her she's being irrational).
THAT is why she tries to keep the peace and not upset people. THAT is why, almost to the very last, she tries to placate Caine.
Because she thinks that if she hurts someone's feelings, *SHE IS EXACTLY LIKE HER MOTHER.* And in Ragatha's mind, there is nothing worse in the whole world than finding out you're just like your abuser. Cosmically, you might even think that's why they hurt you in the first place. Because you're bad. You deserve it.
So you make nice. You stay quiet. You give compliments. You make sure everyone is happy.
You pick yourself up and keep going, despite constantly being knocked down, dismissed, laughed at. You try your best not to set them off, not set *anyone* off, because if they freak out, you end up being the villain. And there's always that tiny part of your brain that is terrified, deep down, that you are going to hurt people in the same way you were hurt.
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