Retracing Iceguya

This essay serves to illustrate how I view Iceguya and what role she plays at this point of the story.

So, as we should be relevant here, let's start with 138, where everything starts off with this:

It's obvious what happens here: Kaguya is led to believe that her behaviour is extremely idiotic and Prez might thing of her not-so-highly because of her actions.

Result? She is afraid to face him, as she now firmly believes he deplores her.

Well, say hello to Kaguya-chan. That's her "60% happiness, 40% escapism" and lack of sleep due to her turmoil. Convenient.

Still manages to dig herself even further into self-okawaii-koto pit.

Then as she is trying to recover, meet mental instability number one:

She obviously does not know how to handle this shit, and thus decides to escape this cruel world into the realm of chibi nonsense. Two points outlined here are:

1. She will have to face her decision to study abroad made on a high emotional moment
2. She will have to deal with the kiss somehow (she still believes that is something highly criminal)

Her "rational" side speaks up:

Enter the Iceguya. Here she plays the part of Kaguya's thought process that is angry over the sudden turn of the events (because she also has no idea how to handle that) and tries to blame everything on her being an idiot, how Hayasaka led her to believe. As a conclusion of this arc, she forcefully tries to suppress her idiot, aka willingly stopping short everything that would be considered idiotic by her standards. Chapter reinforces that she is ashamed of appearing before Prez.

And it is stated that her Iceguya thought process wants to be kissed. Why? Well, no need to go into that, she just wants to, in some corner of her mind.

I'm referring to "thought process" here because at this point, it's how it is presented and is the most accurate in the court setting.

Here we start to see her decision to un-idiot coming into action. She forcefully distances herself from her "idiotic" desires. She accomplishes that in a way that she is able to - by lying to herself and trying to restrain her behaviour and show off a certain image. To herself, first and foremost. So she would believe that she feels more at ease and in charge of herself.

A little psychology trip. Her "Ice" personality, as a consequence, comes with a "persona". Persona is an image of something or someone that one fully takes upon. In Jung's interpretation it's a "mask". The key factor here is, you shift into a persona almost entirely and start behaving, looking and doing things according to that persona. A persona is usually copied from someone who appeared stronger/victorious in an incident that happened in person's lifetime. For example, if there's an incident from one's childhood where Father punches Mother, shouts at her and slams the door, mother is clearly in the weak. One may find oneself, later, utilizing parts of Father's behaviour in their everyday life under consequences vaguely similar to the incident(s). It could be as extreme as playing back, in present time, Father's entire beingness (forgive me for a DA example).

By how she immediately shittalks Shirogane, we can clearly see that she has taken upon a mask, a persona, a behaviour. I can go ahead and assume it's Gan'an's or someone's else from her family. She learned this from somewhere. She has no reason to behave like that, her objectives as of now should be:

1. Downplay the kiss
2. Ensure Shirogane is serious and does not hate her
3. Do not cause any more shit (she believes shutting down her "idiocy" will aid in that - smh my head)
4. Figure out the feasibility of her own (albeit "idiotic") decision to go to Stanford

But, well, she does behave like an asshole. No one is perfect. There are things that take over our rational side all the time. She trapped herself there, by falling down this pit of pretend-I-am-not-an-idiot-but-still-am. Idiocy usually comes from lack of data or experience. She still doesn't have enough. She hadn't addressed that core issue, so she's still an idiot.

Then she goes on.

And then she's like...

Of course this won't work, he's fucking terrified of Kaguya, of the uncertainty and of the wild direction Kaguya took. She doesn't act natural, she doesn't look natural, she is forcing herself to be who she isn't. She can't solve anything in this state, nor evoke any kind of affection towards her. All she raises is concern.

That is a precious exhibit of a teenager that got carried away in her self-righteousness. And then she tries to turn everything in her favor again.

Going on, she bounces between wanting to be kissed and reprimanding him of being spineless. Great combo, if only it worked. Choose one.

Scheming ensues, she wears perfume, WHY ARE YOU RUNNING (which further reinforces the fact that her "idiot" is still pretty much there), back and forth, Prez ends up severely exhausted by this cold-hot shower, and when he calls her out on that, she dies a little.

She keeps losing and losing and losing. She did not handle *any* of her original goals. A persona was not an answer. Nuh-uh.

Now, what happens next, is finally a step in the right direction.

She finally queries for data she did not have. That's how you become less of an idiot.

She realizes. It's time to drop your stupid self-righteousness. It gets you nowhere. It slams you down emotionally, and Prez suffers as well.

But she can't go against herself. She is frozen in this Ice state. Cold reality starts to sink in.

And she cries over her inability, her cowardice and her inability to face. She longes for the kiss from Shirogane not because it's hotter, but because he will ease her of the painful responsibility of being the one who moved forward, and to overwrite the reckless kiss she did.

In 145, the realization continues and she eases off on her bullshit, slowly drifting from her stupidly chosen Ice path. Too bad she exhausted her savior. She did this to herself.