#i literally saw someone imply that Murph was being emotionally abused by Emily

[biblicalhorror]

Ultimately, I do get why Saccharina was/is such a controversial character. By design, she exists as a central plot point to the story at large in a way that the other characters really don't, and I could see why her play style might have rubbed viewers the wrong way, especially if they've personally experienced DnD players who bulldoze over other PCs character beats and cannot handle not being the center of attention.

However. Keeping in mind all of the character's background, specifically being abandoned by both parents and raised by abusive bulbian nuns, growing up knowing that her only saving grace for not only the familial love that she desperately craved, but also her entire future and destiny, rested on finding her father and taking her rightful place on the throne of Candia, it makes a lot of sense that Emily would play her the way that she does. Yes, she is purportedly in her mid-twenties-ish while Ruby is a teenager, and under normal circumstances, she should be expected to be the grown-up. But Ruby had a large, mostly loving family and all of the resources in the world for most of her life. Developmentally speaking, Ruby and Saccharina are on a somewhat level playing field. Of course Saccharina is emotionally stunted after what she went through. Of course her main tools for emotional processing are repression and projection. The way Emily played her, in my opinion, was extremely accurate and empathetic to the way that person would actually act in real life.

Especially because it seems like so much of her personal identity and sense of self-worth comes from realizing her destiny as the true queen of Candia. She's been told that will be the thing that will finally get her the loving family she's always wanted, but thanks to the circumstances of their meeting, they were immediately cold to her and shut her out. I could totally see a traumatized emotionally stunted 20something taking that extremely personally and that triggering all of her already existing abandonment issues and inferiority complex. Given the context of the character's backstory and the vastly different way that Emily Axford plays Fig, for example, the hate that she got as a player seems wildly unfair to me pretty much no matter how you slice it.

It also seems like a fair amount of the hate stemmed from parasocialism and people assuming that Siobhan was actually mad at Emily irl, which is of course also an expression of misogyny in itself because it will always be assumed that women are incapable of acting without their actual, irl feelings being mixed up in their performance.