#also tried somewhat of an image id... ill get better at it eventually

[acadieum]

girlhood is a spectrum or smth like that...

(lup doodle for my treasured mutual, @lichlover !!!)

[jumin-is-secretly-gay]

MysticMessenger Misconception

Myth: Rika is evil.

It's more of her being misunderstood and going down the wrong path unknowingly. She suffered from multiple mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression and hallucinations. This causes her to lose touch with reality, also known as Psychosis. People who have Psychosis have inappropriate thoughts, feelings and behaviour and are disconnected from the reality around them without knowing the disconnection. This is just a theory, but there are many strong evidence suggesting this.

Due to her anxiety, the hallucinations started and she began to believe that she needed to save people from what she perceived as a bad world. Her anxiety was excessive, causing her brain to have too much stimulation, flooding the brain with "sensory imput".

In her case, the circuit's in her brain got jammed. Her brain couldn't make sense of the current environment, so it generates its own sensations, it starts hallucinating.

Rika started dating V after V noticed her looking at his exhibited picture in a museum, stating that she love the picture because she feels that "all my (her) fears disappear" and she feels the "consistent love and warmth" emitting from his piece.

While this may seem normal, it could help explain her experience from her past. Being adopted, only for her adoptive mother to regret doing so, would have given her a huge blow. It would have lowered her self-confidence greatly and have no parental figure to look up to. In the “R.F.A Top Secret” book located in the Character concept section, Rika was stated to be (see below)

If she absorbed what her adoptive mother said when she was young, what type of damage would she have faced? Not loved that much in her childhood, with her real mother committing suicide, there's very slight doubt that she slowly went beserk.

Parents are important, they play the biggest role in life and greatly affect mental, physical, financial and career development. When dealt with a tough situation (such as Rika being bullied in school), a child usually can confide into his/her trusted adult. However, Rika dealt with those problems alone. She couldn't balance her persistent emotional pain (distress due to factors such as prolonged anxiety, depression, guilt, anger, loneliness and fear) and thus started having delusions.

As she grew up, she knew that something was wrong with her.

If she haven't suffered from these severe mental illnesses, she would have continued being a caring and kind-natured person, wanting people to achieve happiness.

However, her mind became even more foggy with the death of her dog, Sally. Sally died after getting hit by a car. Sally was blind due to the cataracts in her eyes, and Rika refuse to pay for the surgery. Rika mourned for Sally and blamed herself for Sally's death.

Regretting about what happened, she tried to fix things. As she does so, she probably thought that she permenantly fixed her mistake of being unable to help people. Rika fell deeper and deeper into the delusion of her being a "savior", rescuing people from the pains and sins of the world, that she has great importance and power. This could have come from wanting to change her previous self in her childhood where she believed that she wasn't treasured (e.g., being bullied and Yoosung's aunt telling Rika she regretted adopting her).

Again, this is a theory that is only built on by facts that support it. I'm now going to use a theory by Freud, who's said by mordern psychologists to be a fraud. However, the theories used here are something to consider.

The Id, Ego & Superego (3 parts of the mind)

Babies are born with Id, a selfish desire that typically wants immediate gratification (e.g. wanting to be fed immediately by crying). When they're about 2 years old, they develop the Ego, which operates by the reality principle (to survive, you need to be realistic & plan for the future) & prevents people from following their desires created by Id. The Superego develops around 1-3 years after the Ego, it contains the conscience, valuing morals. The Superego merges between the Id & Ego, it makes the person feel good about doing something right and guilty for something they've done wrong.

How is this related to Rika?

There's a higher chance of a not fully developed Superego if the person doesn't have a good relationship with his/her parents. When applied to criminal behaviour, a not fully developed Superego could account for those who show no guilt or remorse for their crimes.

This could explain why Rika wasn't seen to regret injuring V after a fight they had when Rika broke up with him, even calling him a traitor and says she's glad he's blind as she'll be free to do whatever she wants. In the picture below (which I got from the internet), Rika was seen to be going crazy, hurting V, her own fiancee.

People are saying that even with the past she experience, she shouldn't have created the cult Mint Eye and brainwashed Saeran.

However, she created Mint Eye during her delusions, thinking it was the best choice, wanting to eliminate fear and pain in the world, for Mint Eye to reach a state of happiness in an everlasting party, even better than the RFA parties she hosts.

Remember, she had rejected counseling for her mental illness after taking 3 weeks of it, stating that

So how did she cope with this "darkness" inside her? I'm going to use another one of Freud's theories, the defence mechanism.

The defence mechanism provides ways to unconsciously protect ourselves from unpleasant memories or ideas. However, over-use causes problems.

Rika used a way called Displacement. To take her mind off her past, she diverts her pented up anger from her childhood into another activity. She was frustrated, she took her anger out on Saeran by brainwashing, drugging and tricking him to believe he was abandoned by Saeyoung when they were younger.

She overused this technic a lot, which eventually became what is viewed as bullying, causing Saeran to become very paranoid and angry towards Saeyoung for "abandoning" him, wanting to kill him for revenge.

I believe the reason why Rika tricked Saeran is because she originally wanted the RFA members to join Mint Eye. The anger Saeran had would cause him to better learn about hacking, so he could hack in and make members join Mint Eye (e.g. Yoosung in bad ending). In differing routes, Rika was more set on killing the RFA members and made Saeran set bombs in the apartment.

She regretted her actions (as seen in Secret Ending 1) when she somewhat break through her delusions and came back to partial reality and grieves for V, who died from a gun shot shot by Saeran.

After explaining everything, I'm not trying to justify her behaviour, there are many other people with mental illnesses such as Psychosis and they are nowhere near being like Rika. I'm trying to make people understand it and see why she wasn't trying to be evil.