#Also I've a feeling this isn't entirely my original thought

[thecoolerliauditore]

Pls tell me about Scott's views on women in general pls I'm begging you

o7 and I'm sorry

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fyi, the post itself isn't NSFW, but I'll be getting all gender theory in this bitch so I'll be referencing a lot of things and putting in pictures of naked ppl sometimes. maybe skip this one if you don't like that

(long post)

Disclaimers

An explanation for the tweet up there

I usually don't write these because I assume the people on my blog have enough sense to realise when I'm talking about the characters vs the CCs or are comfortable enough being a little confused, but I feel the need to extra-clarify here and expand on how I specifically view C vs CC because I think it differs a little from the average person.

To me, C and CC are two separate entities but not entirely disconnected. What differs (e.g. the exclusion of irl relationships -- their wives, kids, etc.) is poignant enough to severely detach them from the people they originated from, at least in my eyes, but there's also the fact that these are not scripted characters, just creators being themselves with a hint of behind the scenes drama-adding and improv thrown in.

For example, CC Pearl is a car nerd. So I assume her character is too.

This is where I state very clearly that yes, a lot of these thoughts come from things I've seen on Scott's twitter, which is undoubtedly the CC and not the C. However I, to me, am still talking about the C because any observations/judgments I could make on actual irl youtuber CC guy Scott Major would be tabloid at best and slightly invasive at worst. I'm seeing these statements within the context of "the death game guy would say this too and I'm writing this based on that", not "this is the inner psychological workings of the youtuber because I, as a fan, can totally tell".

TLDR I don't consider this post RPF but you might. This is a little more RPF-y than my usual stuff. If you don't rock with it we cool.

Everyone is weird about women, and that's okay

One short-hand I've used in the past to talk about Scott and women is just by saying that he's "weird about women" which I'm sure isn't exclusive to him.

(shitpost I made awhile back)

I see a lot of people now who love "villains" and "evil" but when it comes to any traits resembling real life evil (e.g. misogyny in this case) they suddenly become insecure. Just a couple of days back a saw a post on twitter essentially asking for permission to continue liking CC Scott in spite of the "bad things" he did.

And I think, in order to present an analysis like this, I must address that mindset first.

This is not a judgment on Scott's morality, nor is it trying to dissuade you from liking him. This is not saying that he is any more misogynistic than any other player in the series. This is just me pointing out Scott's attitude towards women and what I read it as, nothing less or more.

The feelings that me pointing these things out - be they apathy, disgust, anger or, what I would hope to see most, interest - are your own. I'm not here to tell anyone how to feel and never will try to police that on my blog.

Scott's Relationships with Women

aka. oh yeah this is about minecraft.

Scott and Cleo || "Yeah, you can kill me."

Scott and Cleo's alliance is arguably the strongest in the entire series, spanning through all five seasons and remaining unbroken with no (serious) drama attached. You'd expect from this that they two have a very settled and stable understanding of eachother, yet this isn't a case.

Their power dynamic shifts dramatically from one season to the next.

3L's initial Widows Alliance began on fairly equal footing, built on the mutual agreement that they were waiting for their respective partners to die. Both understood they were eachothers' "plan B" and felt comfortable in that arrangement.

Come LL, Cleo does what she couldn't in 3L, and initiates that plan, going to Scott after her last alliance, the fairy fort, fell apart. Scott requests nothing from her in return.

DL is the longest the two spent as eachothers main ally. Cleo is the one who initially proposes teaming up to spite their "cheating" soulmates and Scott agrees. Cleo admits to Martyn in private that she's aware she's taking advantage of Scott (which I've always interpreted as her talking about all seasons, not just DL). Due to the time they spend together, it's here where it becomes apparent that their initial assumptions during 3L were not entirely accurate, as Scott shows a level of gameplay competency much higher than Cleo's (e.g. teaching her how to axe-crit) but despite this Scott never berates her or thinks any less of her value as his ally.

LimL is probably this pairing at their most unhinged, as Scott, despite once again asking for nothing (or very little -- I'll be honest I'm a bit fuzzy on this) in return from Cleo, allows them and their allies to butcher him repeatedly for time. He gives more time to the Clockers than he does to Martyn, his closest ally that season. Despite this, Scott is never ever considered as a "family member" by the Clockers, despite them giving that title to even temporary allies (like the Bad Boys being their cousins) -- even Martyn gets a title with Scott completely unattached.

SL is relatively more chill, but shows that the two inevitably end up teaming together even despite their oath to avoid eachother that season.

The point being -- again and again, we see Scott literally and metaphorically making sacrifices for Cleo, with the only real transaction he requires from her being that she continues having his back when times get rough. This is despite that he's aware she isn't any more capable than he is and the fact that so far it has only been Cleo in rough times (LL, LimL and SL) and never Scott.

Speaking from a purely transactional perspective, Scott is not getting a bargain here -- and even Cleo seems acutely aware of it, judging by her comment during DL as well as the way she tends to speak of her survival capabilities very lowly in general ("rubbish pvp skills and spiffy one-liners"). I'm speaking in this sense because I've seen discussions in the past about the transactional way Scott views relationships but rarely does Cleo get brought up.

This is at stark contrast to how he treats Jimmy, whose predicted death was what spurred on Scott and Cleo's alliance in the first place.

Scott assumes Jimmy is "incompetent", where he assumes Cleo is capable. When Jimmy messes up, he reprimands him, when Cleo struggles to crit him, he patiently teaches her. When LL begins, Scott's first instinct was to look at Jimmy's lives and note that he was "useless to (him)", but holds no objections to Cleo joining his alliance despite her already having enemies being a potential liability. In SL, he jokes about how Cleo and him being allied is a given and pretty much expected of them, whereas in LimL he explicitly requests from Jimmy a recognition that he still cares ("say love you back!") before he will help him.

Scott and Gem || "You HAVE TO kill me, Gem,"

In SL, Gem settles in very easily in a leadership position within Gem and the Scotts due to her trying to live up to her reputation but also due to Scott and Impulse's more laid back, passive playstyles.

Both Scott and Impulse let Gem kill them for extra health this season, although Scott is arguably much more subservient than Impulse is, with him not only insisting that she kill him in the final episode but also not fighting back (and only yelling for her to stop) when she starts hitting him with a sword during the episode where her task was to literally kill everyone on the server.

Once again comparing her to Jimmy, Scott in 3L had a tendency to brush aside Jimmy's concerns over alliances (e.g. Jimmy questioning if they could trust Cleo) while in SL Scott runs his plans by Gem (and Pearl and Impulse) in terms of who he wanted to team up with (specifically excluding Joel from the potential mounders alliance) implying he held her opinion in some form of regard.

Before this becomes less of an analysis of Scott's treatment of men vs women and more of Scott's treatment of Jimmy vs everyone else, I think it's notable enough to mention that he and Martyn also lacked this sort of communication in LimL. He would inform Martyn of his plans, but rarely was it ever framed as a request.

SL almost feels as if Scott has slid Gem into the slot he had previously designated for Cleo in 3L (his girlboss ally) as he provides her and pretty much forces onto her by the end the acts of service he'd become accustomed to performing for Cleo.

Scott and Lizzie || "You killed her! I don't.. I don't know what to even say!"

Relatively shorter section because this is the one woman he hasn't teamed with, but there's still some interesting stuff I wanted to touch on.

In LL, one of the first thing Scott does is yell at Pearl to revenge-kill Joel for boogey-killing him. Pearl does as she's told and Joel's wet miserable pathetic LL life gets worse from there.

Several episodes later, the roles are reversed -- Lizzie lies to both of them and manages to isolate and boogey-kill Pearl. Scott, instead of reacting with the anger he had for Joel, is almost in a state of shock as he asks Lizzie to let him down so he could collect Pearl's belongings. He doesn't act aggressively towards Lizzie at all, with his most antagonizing act against her being to lie about his intentions when giving her a wither skull.

In SL, he's the only one aware of her early permadeath, but keeps quiet about it almost as if he's in a state of shock akin to when he saw Lizzie kill Pearl in LL. It's not until the others have noticed when he finally brings it up.

Scott and Pearl || "Tilly death do us 'part"

I wrote a whole post just for their relationship alone so for the sake of my sanity I'll be leaving this here.

So now I get to dedicate this section to the meat of this post -- how the way Scott treats women in general impacts his relationship with Pearl and how I view his heel-turn on her as seeping with relevance to Pearl's perceived gender.

In all three of the previous sections, the running theme is that Scott is 1. kinder and more patient with women, regardless of their competency and 2. someone who likes to be in a supporting role to women, occasionally aiding them more than he aids himself and his closer male allies (e.g. Jimmy and Martyn). As shown with Cleo, he assumes that girls have it together, but even if they don't it's not a big deal. When a girl's actions are truly disastrous, such as with Lizzie's, he goes into a state of shock and doesn't really react, preferring to swallow it down and not acknowledge it.

With the amount of times he sacrifices himself, I don't think it's a reach to say that Scott values his own life less than he values the lives of his (female) allies. This specific point actually does extend to his male allies too, shown when he's happy when Martyn literally backstabs him in LimL, but just as with the Martyn post where I point out his victim status-ing doesn't end at only women but includes all the women, Scott has pedastal-ed all the women he's teamed with.

Lizzie is, once again, the exception here due to his limited interactions with her. However that's actually somewhat patched over if you look at adjacent series (such as x-life) where he definitely shows her a level of admiration and respect.

Back to Scott and Pearl.

Their relationship during LL is very standard of how Scott treats women. While the power dynamic between them is obviously more caused by the initial life trade agreement, I don't think it's a far reach to say that Scott is somewhat comfortable in the arrangement.

However, this is also the first thing that sets their relationship apart from Scott with Cleo or Gem -- Pearl is the one making sacrifices, not Scott. She is the one "sacrificing" her lives to him, just in a more non-violent way as allowed by the season's mechanics.

When viewed through this lens, Scott trying to make it up to her and wanting his effort acknowledged makes even more sense. This is suddenly uncharted waters for him. His assuming that Pearl doesn't value him as a person goes hand in hand with him valuing himself less than her.

What Scott has with Cleo or Gem, situations where the other party is clearly uncomfortable with how he treats himself (Gem) or actively aware they are taking advantage of him (Cleo), is equalized to him because he is inherently worth less. What he has with Pearl, on the other hand, looks more equal to most people (lives vs labour) but is wildly imbalanced to him.

It's one of the many factors I see going into Scott's weird decision to abandon her in DL.

An Interlude, Before We Get to DL

La Pieta, Michelangelo

So this has been a lot of words so far and some of you might be wondering at this point: why say Scott is "weird" about women when so far this has been describing how he values women more, is kinder to them, is more patient with them, etc.? How is any of this behaviour remotely misogynistic?

And I would feel horrible if I forced you to read through all of my DL thoughts before I clarified this -- Scott is not your classic wifebeater "women are lesser" misogynist, Scott is someone who subscribes to misogynistic schools of thought and probably considers himself an ally to women, when in reality his beliefs are still rooted in dehumanizing them and these beliefs end up harming the women around him as well as himself.

After all, seeing women are your superiors is still not seeing them as your equals.

I know it's a bit of a meme on this blog at this point. But. Sigmund Freud identified what we know refer to as the "madonna/whore complex", which he described as a pattern of behaviour in men who separated women into being madonnas (pure, holy and admirable) and whores (debased, sexual, deviant). We'll be focusing on the former, the madonna, as it is more relevant to Scott's character.

Freud proposed that the madonna figure was something men projected onto women as a replacement for maternal love. These women are sacred and untouchable, literally as the projection of the maternal role onto them also makes it so that the sufferer cannot feel any sexual attraction towards her (keep this in mind for later).

Scott projects the madonna figure onto his female compatriots -- they are to be protected, served and supported. They are goddesses, queens, but they are never human. The madonna role in of itself is not inherently harmful to the woman, as seen with Cleo who takes control and advantage of it. However, it is enforced, as seen with Gem who at first revels in the superiority but almost breaks down when Scott offers him up as her sacrificial lamb one last time.

I linked this Utena AMV awhile back when vaguely talking about Scott and women, and this was the point I was alluding to.

Girls are beautiful and pure. They don't spit on the street, they don't piss on the street, they don't build hierarchies -- they subvert all the expectations of masculinity that I hate having to deal with. They are my escape.

But what about the girls who do spit on the street? The girls who piss on seats? Who build social hierarchies, who size up their competition?

The girls Scott interacts with are all painfully human. Cleo weaponizes his beliefs and take advantage of him. Scott is smart enough to know and accept this. Gem's playing into a role she has been assigned into by not only Scott but everyone around her. Scott supports the character she plays. Lizzie reflects traits he hates in Joel and Jimmy, but for her, he looks the other way.

Are they "demons", as the song says, or are they no longer girls at all?

(demons, gods, but never humans)

Weaponized Femininity and Women In Total Control of Themselves ;)

Hylas and the Nymphs, John William Waterhouse

Historically, weaponized femininity I'd argue is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. Whether it's nymphs or sirens or witches or succubi or even more roundabout cases like Helen of Troy, there's countless stories of men's sexual attraction to women leading them to disaster.

One way to view these stories is to see them as warnings, don't let womens allure be the end of you.

There's a lot of good writing done on the femme fatale trope both in the context of weaponizing femininity and as a sexist way to argue against victims of sexual assault, as these stories often say that men who experience attraction to these "evil" women no longer have agency over their own actions.

Look at the painting above, for example - is it the nymphs who are responsible for drowning Hylas, or is Hylas climbing into the lake of his own accord?

Despite the fact we all know sirens, nymphs and succubi aren't real, the belief that men will simply lose control of themselves when encountering a particularly alluring woman persists to the modern consciousness. That there's something inherently dangerous about women and attraction to them.

(this is not 100% applicable to Ninja saying he won't stream with women, but it's the real life example I felt most comfortable putting in here)

Now, let's combine this with what's been said so far -- let's say you don't hate women. You love women, in fact, and you hate the way men treat women. You hate men, in fact.

Yet, you still believe in this inherent power women hold by being female and the loss of agency that men experience when attracted to them -- how disgusting.

It quickly becomes easily to not only demonize men for sullying the holiness of women, but also men, masculinity and attraction to women as a whole.

(apologies for using twt discourse in the meta post but this flew by my TL and i had to grab the irl example of mens non-violent attraction to women being used to frame them as misogynistic before the stupid app refreshed and i lose everything forever)

"To Venner" is a student film exploring a world set within this belief, where all the women have vanished and the men have become monstrous figures as a result of their pent up sexual frustration. fyi this is one of my favourite student films (and ive watched a bunch), but I do think its messaging is worth breaking down (especially its juxtaposition of dirty horrible monstrous sexuality vs pure and beautiful romantic love)

NOTE: this film is super graphic, lots of violence and nudity. have fun. or not

I admit this section is a bit hard to gauge as everyone in the series is gay as fuck. The closest in-series example I can think of is Scott reacting to Martyn's antics in DL with a sort of indigence but otherwise I can't really think of an example of a man expressing attraction to a woman at all, let alone one Scott reacted to. However, I do think it's still worth talking about because it opens up some interesting trains of thought in regard to Scott and Pearl.

For Scott, he himself has never been part of the picture. He's gay, after all, which gives him an edge over the bad straight men who objectify and assault women. Likewise, there's little evidence to suggest he finds the expectations of masculinity frustrating, but I don't think it's too far a reach considering how common of an experience that is for gay men and his adapting of more feminine mannerisms.

Double Life and Corruption

As mentioned in my previously linked post about Scott and Pearl's relationship, I do think Scott experiences what he would name as attraction towards Pearl, so my writing will reflect that.

Pearl is. ahem. not like other girls.

Not actually. But to Scott, she probably isn't like other girls.

She remains unaware of his different standards for her (how could she when she had nothing to compare them to), she acts out, sometimes violently, against Scott's urging (such as when she stole from Scar's wagon). She maintains their already irregular dynamic, and while she appreciates his care for her, she never quite falls into seeing him as a source of subservience the way Cleo or Gem do.

At the end of LL, right before the 1v1v1v1, she monologues to herself that she no longer has to feel bad for killing Scott. Which, in turn, implies she expected Scott to give it his all against her as well.

She entirely fails to embody the madonna with her immature naivete and her questionable morals. She is unpredictable, she doesn't take what she is owed, she is a monster in a lot of ways.

Scott, too, is a monster, to himself, for how he feels about her.

The very foundations of your understanding of yourself being ripped apart aside, let's rewind to the madonna/whore complex. To sexualise the madonna is to corrupt her and make a monster of yourself. Suddenly, you are no better than the men around you, the ones you've grown to hate. Suddenly, you are the grotesque figures in films like To Venner. You are Hylas and she is the nymph. And you are so stupid. Your worldview crumbles around its flawed foundations.

Scott is, however, immune to this corruption. This is a theme that appears in Empires as well, but throughout the traffic series he's prided himself on being loyal and kind and good. His monologue leading up to LL's 1v1v1v1 summarizes it quite well.

He can't let himself or anyone else see this side of him, but the energy needs to go somewhere. To defy fate, abandon your soulmate, is to admit you had a fate in the first place, is to acknowledge that she was your soulmate in the first place.

I've previously talked about how fate and romance are very ingrained in Scott's belief system, if it was anyone else it would've been amazing. He could've been like Bdubs and Impulse or Ren and Bigb, diving into domestic life and performative romance with a stranger. Or the world could've made his happy ending from 3L real, as he got to be Jimmy's husband all over again. I think it says something that he accepts Cleo as a "soulmate" before Pearl.

So what do you do with all that energy and tension, clearly apparent to yourself and everyone else, when you can't let them observe your feelings?

You project them.

Shout-outs to @/legally-allowed-to-slime for pointing out Pearl's comment early on in DL that she "feels like (she's) been broken up with" confirms she never saw Scott in a romantic sense. The "crazy ex-girlfriend" and "this is why I'm gay" comments really did come out of thin air, or perhaps insecurity.

Pearl is the crazy one. She's insane, because she wants me. She wants to be with me, so she does all this crazy stuff. She's lost control of herself because she wants me. She's disgusting.

I mentioned before that Scott is not your classic misogynist, but this is where the gears start turning. Scott's views of Pearl echo that of other players, most prominently Ren and Martyn, that Pearl has been overcome with some sort of corruption. She has become the witch, the demoness, the whore, in their eyes. Scott does not want to be the same as these men and I think his overcorrecting his behaviour in SL makes sense when you view it from this angle, but for now he has to rely on more traditional misogyny in order to navigate this new obstacle.

"Corruption" also implies that she had to have been pure (or at least pure-er) beforehand, something Scott personally knows is not true, but it falls in line with defaulting women to being "madonnas".

This is a Scott post but. shout outs to Ren for being all of this about Pearl but without the complexity of Scott like he literally accuses Pearl of seducing Bigb what the fuck man.

Pearl is, of course, none of that. But she plays into the role of being the witch much better than she fared playing into the role of the madonna.

Sidenote: I know I'm looking at this from a Scott/Pearl POV but I do feel like you can omit Scott's attraction if you look at it from a purely "pearl not performing to standards of femininity I expect and she makes me realise I don't view women as a whole as human which makes me feel weird so now we have to do this" POV. Like idk I think the exact reason he abandoned Pearl is going to be lost on everyone forever so any analysis I could perform is going to suffer at least a little bit of making-shit-up-itis.

I do also think there's something to be said about Pearl being pushed until she performed a role, any role and generally failing at Being A Girl tm but that's another post i think. yknow shes um. a bit. 🏳️‍⚧️ (but also very much not at the same time idk that's gonna need its own post)

anyway yeah uh the minecraft movie looks crazy huh

[hephaestuscrew]

When you listen to the funeral in Boléro when you're 19 and are fairly naïve and have been lucky enough that you've never had a death close to you, you think Hera doesn't understand "why they have to be gone" because she's an AI and she only has 4 years of life experience to go off and it's inevitably difficult for someone without a physical body to conceptualise death. But then you get a little older and things happen and you realise No, that's just what grief is like.

Hera thinks that it doesn't make sense to her because she's missing something, because there's something that her creators didn't put inside her head, or at the very least because she's never experienced that kind of loss before. She thinks there's something that can be explained to her that will make it easier to come to terms with the deaths of people who've been a part of her life. And Eiffel struggles for an answer, or rather a way to explain to her that there is no answer; "Hera, we don't… I don't know that there's… That's not what this -".

The truth is that there's nothing that Hera is missing. What is happening inside her head feels "wrong and stupid and wrong" because that's just how it feels when someone you know dies. That's how the other characters are feeling too, even if they express it differently.

Hera thinks that she feels the way she does because she's experiencing things differently to her human crewmates, but that's not really the case. She's just being the most honest about those feelings.

It's not an artificial intelligence grappling with human situations that she can't understand. It's a person struggling with grief in the way that any human struggles with grief.

Hera's feeling that she doesn't know how to deal with this, her inability to stop thinking about the fact that they're gone, her sense that there must be some set of instructions she wasn't given, her desperation for a way to make it better or easier, her plea for things to somehow make sense… It's all just so incredibly, heart-wrenchingly human and real.

[the-ancient-dragons]

HiveWing. Overcomplicated. But also not?

Joy and Tui, y'all cooked, I just put my own spin on it.

Details and explanation below.

Otherwise, next week are LeafWings! See you then!

More overcomplicated dragons.

I thought I had fun with the RainWing.

I was wrong. This was FUN.

Of all the ones I've done this design is nearly identical to the original. I'm not saying that to toot my own horn, it just somehow came out like that because I found the perfect references (and avoided altering the skull too much lol). Let's talk about them!

First, an unlikely one: iguanas. I originally picked them for their spines, but when I saw their eyes and large jaw scale (or whatever it is) I knew I'd found the new reptile base for the HiveWings. I also included the little snout and under-the-chin spikes they have; it just fits perfectly for a beetle-and wasp inspired dragon.

Speaking of beetles and wasps: I took heavy inspiration for the HiveWing's 'beak' from wasp mandibles. I love the way the mouth looks originally and wanted to preserve and exaggerate it. So, when creating the beak, I combined the jagged jaws of wasps with the curved beak of an African fish eagle. To top it off I referenced the rhinoceros beetle (obviously) for the horn on the nasion.

(The nasion is a point where your nose meets your forehead between your eyes). The HiveWing's horn isn't directly on it but I couldn't think of another word.

I actually wanted the entire head to have an insect-like feel, that's why the snout and forehead are built from large plates (once again referenced from rhino beetles).

Lastly, besides the lion-inspired teeth, an incredible animal called the nyala was responsible for the back horns. Whoever photographed that bull in that exact angle: thank you.

Let's see how badly I mess up the LeafWings next week. If you've read this far, perhaps let me know if you would like to see all of my personal headcanons for the LeafWings? For Alate Atta's Ascension I use a design where they have four wings and extra frills to look like leaves. I can do one closer to canon where they're more like a Pyrrhian tribe and another where they visually fit in with the other Pantalan tribes. Let me know!

[anominous-user]

Double Indemnity, Veritas Ratio and Aventurine

This was originally a part of my compilation post as a short analysis on the Double Indemnity references, linking to this great thread by Manya on Twitter. However, I've recently watched the movie and found that the parallels run much deeper than just the mission name and the light cone itself, plus as the short synopsis I've read online. Since there isn't really an in-depth attempt at an analysis on the film in relation to the way Aventurine and Ratio present themselves throughout Penacony, I thought I'd take a stab at doing just that. I will also be bringing up things from Manya's thread as well as another thread that has some extra points.

Disclaimer that I... don't do analyses very often. Or write, in general — I'm someone who likes to illustrate their thoughts (in the artistic sense) more than write. There's just something about these two that makes me want to rip into them so badly, so here we are. If there's anything you'd like to add or correct me on, feel free to let me know in the replies or reblogs, or asks. This ended up being a rather extensive deep dive into the movie and its influences on the pairing, so please keep that in mind when pressing Read More.

There are two distinct layers on display in Ratio and Aventurine's relationship throughout Penacony, which are references to the two most important relationships in the movie — where they act like they hate/don’t know each other, and where they trust each other.

SPOILER WARNING for the entire movie, by the way. You can watch the film for free here on archive.org, as well as follow along with the screenplay here. I will also be taking dialogue and such from the screenplay, and cite quotes from the original novel in its own dedicated section. SPOILER WARNING for the Cat Among Pigeons Trailblaze mission, as well.

CONTENT WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF SUICIDE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

To start, Double Indemnity (1944) is a film noir by Billy Wilder (and co-written by Raymond Chandler) based on the novel of the same name by James M. Cain (1927). There are stark differences between the movie adaptation and the original novel which I will get into later on in this post, albeit in a smaller section, as this analysis is mainly focused on the movie adaptation. I will talk about the basics (summaries for the movie and the game, specifically the Penacony mission in tandem with Ratio and Aventurine) before diving into the character and scene parallels, among other things.

—

[THE NAME]

The term "double indemnity" is a clause in which if there’s a case of accidental death of a statistically rare variety, the insurance company has to pay out multiple of the original amount. This excludes deaths by murder, suicide, gross negligence, and natural causes.

The part of the mission in Cat Among Pigeons where Ratio and Aventurine meet with Sunday is named after the movie. And before we get further into things, let's get this part out of the way: The Chinese name used in the mission is the CN title of the movie, so there's no liberties taken with the localization — this makes it clear that it’s a nod to the movie and not localization doing its own thing like with the mission name for Heaven Is A Place On Earth (EN) / This Side of Paradise (人间天堂) (CN).

—

[SUMMARY OF THE 1944 MOVIE]

Here I summarised the important parts that will eventually be relevant in the analysis related to the game.

Insurance salesman Walter Neff, wounded from a gunshot, enters his office and confesses his crime on a dictaphone to his boss Barton Keyes, the claims manager. Much earlier, he had met Phyllis Dietrichson, the wife of Mr. Dietrichson and former nurse. Neff had initially wanted to meet Mr. Dietrichson because of car insurance. Phyllis claims her husband is mean to her and that his life insurance goes to his daughter Lola. With Neff seduced by Phyllis, they eventually brew up a scheme to murder Mr. Dietrichson in such a way that they activate the "double indemnity" clause, and the plan goes off almost perfectly. Initially, the death is labeled a suicide by the president of the company, Norton. 

Keyes finds the whole situation suspicious, and starts to suspect Phyllis may have had an accomplice. The label on the death goes from accidental, to suicide, to then murder. When it’s ruled that the husband had no idea of the accidental policy, the company refuses to pay. Neff befriends Phyllis’ stepdaughter Lola, and after finding out Phyllis may have played a part in the death of her father’s previous wife, Neff begins to fear for Lola and himself, as the life insurance would go all towards her, not Phyllis.

After the plan begins to unravel as a witness is found, it comes out that Lola’s boyfriend Nino Zachette has been visiting Phyllis every night after the murder. Neff goes to confront Phyllis, intending to kill her. Phyllis has her own plans, and ends up shooting him, but is unable to fire any more shots once she realises she did love him. Neff kills her in two shots. Soon after telling Zachette not to go inside the house, Neff drives to his office to record the confession. When Keyes arrives, Neff tells him he will go to Mexico, but he collapses before he could get out of the building.

—

[THE PENACONY MISSION TIMELINE]

I won’t be summarising the entirety of Aventurine and Ratio’s endeavours from the beginning of their relationship to their final conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth the same way as I summarised the plot of the movie, so I will instead present a timeline. Bolded parts means they are important and have clear parallels, and texts that are in [brackets] and italics stand for the names of either the light cone, or the mission names.

[Final Victor] Their first meeting. Ratio’s ideals are turned on its head as he finally meets his match.

Several missions happen in-between their first encounter and the Penacony project. They come to grow so close and trusting with each other that they can guess, understand each other’s thoughts, way of thinking and minds even in high stakes missions. Enough to pull off the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Aventurine’s E1) and Stag Hunt Game (Aventurine’s E6) and come out on top.

Aventurine turns towards Ratio for assisting him in the Penacony project. Ratio's involvement in the project is implied to be done without the knowledge of Jade, Topaz, and the IPC in general, as he was only sent to Penacony to represent the Intelligentsia Guild, and the two other Stonehearts never mention Ratio.

Aventurine and Ratio cook up the plan to deceive Sunday before ever setting foot on Penacony. Aventurine does not tell Ratio the entirety of his plan.

Aventurine convinces Topaz and Jade to trust him with their Cornerstones. Aventurine also breaks his own Cornerstone and hides it along with the jade within a bag of gift money.

[The Youth Who Chase Dreams] They enter Penacony in the Reverie Hotel. Aventurine is taken to the side by Sunday and has all his valuables taken, which includes the gift money that contains the broken aventurine stone, the jade, and the case containing the topaz.

Aventurine and Ratio speak in a “private” room about how Aventurine messed up the plan. After faking an argument to the all-seeing eyes of Sunday, Ratio leaves in a huff.

Ratio, wearing his alabaster head, is seen around Golden Hour in the (Dusk) Auction House by March 7th.

[Double Indemnity] Ratio meets up with Sunday and “exposes” Aventurine to him. Sunday buys his “betrayal”, and is now in possession of the topaz and jade. Note that this is in truth Ratio betraying Sunday all along.

Ratio meets up with Aventurine again at the bar. Ratio tells Aventurine Sunday wants to see him again.

They go to Dewlight Pavilion and solve a bunch of puzzles to prove their worth to Sunday.

They meet up with Sunday. Sunday forces Aventurine to tell the truth using his Harmony powers. Ratio cannot watch on. It ends with Aventurine taking the gift money with his Cornerstone.

[Heaven Is A Place On Earth] They are in Golden Hour. Ratio tries to pry Aventurine about his plan, but Aventurine reins him in to stop breaking character. Ratio gives him the Mundanite’s Insight before leaving. This is their final conversation before Aventurine’s grandest death.

Now how exactly does the word “double indemnity” relate to their mission in-game? What is their payout? For the IPC, this would be Penacony itself — Aventurine, as the IPC ambassador, handing in the Jade Cornerstone as well as orchestrating a huge show for everybody to witness his death, means the IPC have a reason to reclaim the former prison frontier. As for Ratio, his payout would be information on Penacony’s Stellaron, although whether or not this was actually something he sought out is debatable. And Aventurine? It’s highly implied that he seeks an audience with Diamond, and breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone is a one way trip to getting into hot water with Diamond. With Aventurine’s self-destructive behaviour, however, it would also make sense to say that death would be his potential payout, had he taken that path in the realm of IX.

Compared to the movie, the timeline happens in reverse and opposite in some aspects. I will get into it later. As for the intended parallels, these are pretty clear and cut:

Veritas Ratio - Walter Neff

Aventurine - Phyllis Dietrichson

Sunday - Mr. Dietrichson

There is one other character who I feel also is represented in Ratio, but I won’t bring them up until later down the line.

For the sake of this analysis, I won’t be exploring Sunday’s parallel to Mr. Dietrichson, as there isn’t much on Dietrichson’s character in the first place in both the movie and the novel. He just kind of exists to be a bastard that is killed off at the halfway point. Plus, the analysis is specifically hyper focused on the other two.

—

[SO, WHAT’S THE PLAN?]

To make things less confusing in the long run whenever I mention the words “scheme” and “plan”, I will be going through the details of Phyllis and Neff’s scheme, and Aventurine and Ratio’s plan respectively. Anything that happens after either pair separate from another isn’t going to be included. Written in a way for the plans to have gone perfectly with no outside problems.

Phyllis and Neff —> Mr. Dietrichson

Goal: Activate the double indemnity clause by killing Mr. Dietrichson and making it look like a freak train accident

Payout: Twice or more of the face value of the life insurance ($100,000)

Main Actor: Walter Neff    |    Accomplice: Phyllis Dietrichson

During the entire time until the payout, Phyllis and Neff have to make sure to any outsiders that they look like complete strangers instead of lovers in an affair.

Step-by-step:

Neff convinces Mr. Dietrichson to sign the policy with the clause without him suspecting foul play, preferably with a third party to act as an alibi. This is done discreetly, making Mr. Dietrichson not read the policy closely and being told to just sign.

Neff and Phyllis talk to each other about small details through the phone (specified to be never at Phyllis’ own house and never when Neff was in his office) and in the marketplace only, to make their meetings look accidental. They shouldn’t be seen nor tracked together, after all.

Phyllis asks Mr. Dietrichson to take the train. She will be the one driving him to the train station.

On the night of the murder, after making sure his alibi is airtight, Neff sneaks into their residence and hides in their car in the second row seating, behind the front row passenger seat. He wears the same colour of clothes as Mr. Dietrichson.

Phyllis and Mr. Dietrichson get inside the car — Phyllis in the driver’s seat and Mr. Dietrichson in the passenger seat. Phyllis drives. On the way to the train station, she makes a detour into an alley. She honks the horn three times.

After the third honk, Neff breaks Mr. Dietrichson’s neck. The body is then hidden in the second row seating under a rug.

They drive to the train station. Phyllis helps Neff, now posing as Mr. Dietrichson, onto the train. The train leaves the station.

Neff makes it to the observation platform of the parlour car and drops onto the train tracks when nobody else is there.

Phyllis is at the dump beside the tracks. She makes the car blink twice as a signal.

The two drag Mr. Dietrichson’s corpse onto the tracks.

They leave.

When Phyllis eventually gets questioned by the insurance company, she pretends she has no idea what they are talking about and eventually storms off.

Phyllis and Neff continue to lay low until the insurance company pays out.

Profit!

Actual Result: The actual murder plan goes almost smoothly, with a bonus of Mr. Dietrichson having broken a leg. But with him not filing a claim for the broken leg, a witness at the observation platform, and Zachette visiting Phyllis every night after the murder, Keyes works out the murder scheme on his own, but pins the blame on Phyllis and Zachette, not Neff.

Now for Aventurine and Ratio. You can skip this section if you understand how deep their act goes, but to those who need a refresher, here’s a thorough explanation:

Aventurine and Ratio —> Sunday

Goal: Collect the aventurine stone without Sunday knowing, ruin the dream (and create the grandest death)

Payout: Penacony for the IPC, information on the Stellaron for Ratio, a meeting with Diamond / death for Aventurine

Main Actor: Aventurine    |    Accomplice: Veritas Ratio

From the moment they step onto Penacony, they are under Sunday’s ever present and watchful eyes. “Privacy” is a foreign word to The Family. They have to act like they don’t like each other’s company the entire time and feed Sunday information through indirect means so that the eventual “betrayal” by Ratio seems truthful to Sunday. Despite what it looks like, they are closer than one would ever think, and Ratio would never sell out a person purely for information.

Step-by-step:

After Sunday takes away the bag of gift money and box, Aventurine and Ratio talk in a room in the Reverie Hotel.

Aventurine establishes the Cornerstones’ importance, and how he lost the gift money and the case containing the Cornerstones to Sunday. Ratio turns to leave, saying “some idiot ruined everything”, meaning the Cornerstones were vital to their plan. (Note that Ratio is not wearing his alabaster head while saying it to said “idiot”.)

Aventurine then proceeds to downplay the importance of the Cornerstones, stating they are “nothing more than a few rocks” and “who cares if they are gone”. This lets Sunday know that something suspicious may be going on for him to act like it’s nothing, and the mention of multiple stones, and leaves him to look up what a Cornerstone is to the Ten Stonehearts of the IPC.

Ratio points out his absurd choice of outfit, mentioning the Attini Peacock and their song.

Ratio implies that without the aventurine stone, he is useless to the IPC. He also establishes that Aventurine is from Sigonia(-IV), and points out the mark on his neck. To Sunday, this means that Aventurine is shackled to the IPC, and how Aventurine may possibly go through extreme lengths to get the stone back, because a death sentence always looms above him.

Aventurine claims Ratio had done his homework on his background, which can be taken that this is their very first time working together. (It isn’t, and it only takes one look to know that Aventurine is an Avgin because of his unique eyes, so this comment does not make sense even in a “sincere” way, a running theme for the interaction.)

Ratio mentions how the true goal is to reclaim Penacony for the IPC, establishing their ulterior motive for attending the banquet.

Ratio asks if Aventurine went to pre-school in Sigonia after saying trust was reliant on cooperation. Aventurine mentions how he didn’t go to school and how he doesn’t have any parents. He even brings up how friends are weapons of the Avgins. This tells Sunday that the Avgins supposedly are good at manipulation and potentially sees Ratio possibly betraying Aventurine due to his carelessness with his “friends”. Sunday would also then research about the Avgins in general (and research about Sigonia-IV comes straight from the Intelligentsia Guild.)

Ratio goes to Dewlight Pavilion in Sunday’s Mansion and exposes a part of Aventurine’s “plan”. When being handed the suitcase, Ratio opens it up due to his apparent high status in the IPC. He tells Sunday that the Cornerstone in the suitcase is a topaz, not an aventurine, and that the real aventurine stone is in the bag of gift money. This is a double betrayal — on Aventurine (who knows) and Sunday (who doesn’t). Note that while Ratio is not officially an IPC member in name — the Intelligentsia Guild (which is run by the IPC head of the Technology Department Yabuli) frequently collaborates with the IPC. Either Aventurine had given him access to the box, or Ratio’s status in general is ambiguous enough for Sunday not to question him further. He then explains parts of Aventurine’s gamble to Sunday in order to sell the betrayal. Note that Ratio does not ever mention Aventurine’s race to Sunday.

Ratio brings Aventurine to Sunday. Aventurine offers help in the investigation of Robin's death, requesting the gift money and the box in return.

Sunday objects to the trade offer. Aventurine then asks for just the bag. A classic car insurance sales tactic. Sunday then interrogates Aventurine, and uses everything Ratio and Aventurine brought up in the Reverie Hotel conversation and their interactions in the Mansion, as well as aspects that Ratio had brought up to Sunday himself.

Aventurine feigns defeat and ignorance enough so that Sunday willingly lets him go with the gift bag. After all is said and done, Aventurine leaves with the gift money, where the Aventurine Cornerstone is stored all along.

Ratio and Aventurine continue to pretend they dislike each other until they go their separate ways for their respective goals and plans. Aventurine would go on to orchestrate his own demise at the hands of Acheron, and Ratio… lurks in the shadows like the owl he is.

Profit!

Actual Result: The plan goes perfectly, even with minor hiccups like Ratio coming close to breaking character several times and Aventurine being sentenced to execution by Sunday.

This is how Sunday uses the information he gathered against Aventurine:

• Sunday going on a tirade about the way Aventurine dresses and how he’s not one to take risks — Ratio’s comment about Aventurine’s outfit being peacock-esque and how he’s “short of a feather or two”. • “Do you own a Cornerstone?” — Ratio talked about the aventurine stone. • “Did you hand over the Cornerstone to The Family when you entered Penacony?” — Aventurine mentioned the box containing the Cornerstones. • “Does the Cornerstone you handed over to The Family belong to you?” — Aventurine specifically pluralized the word Cornerstone and “a bunch of rocks” when talking to Ratio. • “Is your Cornerstone in this room right now?” — The box in the room supposedly contained Aventurine’s own cornerstone, when Aventurine mentioned multiple stones. • “Are you an Avgin from Sigonia?” —Aventurine mentioned that he’s an Avgin, and Ratio brought up Sigonia. • “Do the Avgins have any ability to read, control, and manipulate one’s own or another’s minds?” — Aventurine’s comment on how friends are weapons, as well as Sunday’s own research on the Avgins, leading him to find out about the negative stereotypes associated with them. • “Do you love your family more than yourself?” — His lost parents. “All the Avgins were killed in a massacre. Am I right?” — Based on Sunday’s research into his background. • “Are you your clan’s sole survivor?” — Same as the last point. “Do you hate and wish to destroy this world with your own hands?” — Ratio mentioned the IPC’s goal to regain Penacony, and Aventurine’s whole shtick is “all or nothing”. • “Can you swear that at this very moment, the aventurine stone is safe and sound in this box?” — Repeat.

As seen here, both duos have convoluted plans that involve the deception of one or more parties while also pretending that the relationship between each other isn’t as close as in reality. Unless you knew both of them personally and their histories, there was no way you could tell that they have something else going on. 

On to the next point: Comparing Aventurine and Ratio with Phyllis and Neff.

—

[NEFF & PHYLLIS — RATIO & AVENTURINE]

With the short summaries of the movie and the mission out of the way, let’s look at Phyllis and Neff as characters and how Aventurine and Ratio are similar or opposite to them.

Starting off with Aventurine and Phyllis. Here is where they are the most similar:

Phyllis is blonde and described as a provocative woman. Aventurine is also a blond and eyes Ratio provocatively in the Final Victor light cone.

Phyllis was put under surveillance after Keyes starts figuring out that the so-called accidental death/suicide may have been a murder after all. Similarly, Aventurine was watched by Sunday the entire time in Penacony.

Phyllis never tells Neff how she's seeing another man on the side to possibly kill him too (as well as how she was responsible for the death of her husband‘s previous wife). Aventurine also didn't tell Ratio the entirety of his plan of his own death.

Phyllis puts on a somewhat helpless act at first but is incredibly capable of making things go her way, having everything seemingly wrapped around her finger. Aventurine — even when putting on a facade that masks his true motives — always comes out at the top.

Now the differences between Aventurine and Phyllis:

Phyllis does not care about her family and has no issue with killing her husband, his previous wife, and possibly her daughter Lola. Opposite of that, Aventurine is a family man… with no family left, as well as feeling an insane level of survivor’s guilt.

Really, Phyllis just… does not care at all about anyone but herself and the money. Aventurine, while he uses every trick in the book to get out on top, does care about the way Jade and Topaz had entrusted him with their Cornerstones, in spite of the stones being worth their lives. 

Phyllis also uses other people to her advantage to get what she wants, often behind other people's backs, with the way she treats Neff and Zachette. Aventurine does as well (what with him making deals with the Trailblazer while also making a deal with Black Swan that involves the Trailblazer). The difference here is Phyllis uses her allure deliberately to seduce men while Aventurine simply uses others as pawns while also allowing others to do the same to himself.

Phyllis makes no attempt at compromising the policy when questioned by Norton. Aventurine ends up compromising by only taking the gift money (which is exactly what he needs).

The wig that Barbara Stanwyck (the actress of Phyllis) wore was chosen to make her look as “sleazy” as possible, make her look insincere and a fraud, a manipulator. A sort of cheapness. Aventurine’s flashy peacock-esque outfit can be sort of seen as something similar, except the outfit isn’t cheap.

Moving on to Ratio’s similarities to Neff… There isn’t much to extrapolate here as Ratio is more of a side character in the grand scheme of Penacony, however this is what I’ve figured out.

Neff has dark hair. Ratio has dark purple hair.

Neff almost never refers to Phyllis by her name when speaking with her, only as “baby”. The few times he refers to her as Phyllis or Mrs. Dietrichson is during their first conversations and when he has to act like he doesn’t know her. Ratio never calls Aventurine by his name when he’s around him — only as “gambler”, sometimes “damned” or “dear” (EN-only) gambler. Only in the Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode does Ratio repeatedly say his name, and yet he still calls him by monikers like “gambler” or, bafflingly, a “system of chaos devoid of logic”.

Both Neff and Ratio committed two betrayals: Neff on Mr. Dietrichson and Keyes, and Ratio on Sunday and Aventurine. With the former cases it was to reach the end of the trolley line, and with the latter it was on a man who had put his trust in him.

As for the differences…

Neff is described as someone who’s not smart by his peers. Ratio is someone who is repeatedly idolised and put on a pedestal by other people.

Neff is excellent at pretending to not know nor care for Phyllis whenever he speaks about her with Keyes or when he and she are in a place that could land them in hot water (the office, the mansion when there are witnesses). His acting is on the same level as Phyllis. With Ratio it’s… complicated. While he does pull off the hater act well, he straight up isn’t great at pretending not to care about Aventurine’s wellbeing.

Instead of getting his gunshot wound treated in the hospital like a normal person, Neff makes the absolutely brilliant decision of driving to his office and talking to a dictaphone for hours. Needless to say, this is something a medical doctor like Ratio would never do.

Now here's the thing. Though it's very easy to just look at Phyllis and Neff in the movie and go "okay, Aventurine is Phyllis and Ratio is Neff — end of story" and leave it at that, I find that they both take from the two leads in different ways. Let me explain. Beginning with Aventurine and Neff…

Neff is the one who hatches the plan and encourages Phyllis to go through and claim the double indemnity clause in the first place. He is also the key player of his own risky plan, having to fake being the husband to enter the train as well as fake the death. Aventurine puts himself at great risk just by being in Sunday’s presence, and hoping that Sunday wouldn’t figure out that the green stone he had uncovered wasn’t the aventurine stone.

Adding onto the last point, Neff had fantasised about pulling off the perfect murder for a long time — the catalyst was simply him meeting Phyllis. Aventurine presumably sought out Ratio alone for his plan against Sunday.

Neff makes a roulette wheel analogy and talks about a pile of blue and yellow poker chips (the latter in the script only). I don‘t even have to explain why this is relevant here. (Aventurine’s Ultimate features a roulette wheel and the motif is on his belt, thigh strap, and back, too. And of course, Aventurine is all about his chips.)

Neff has certain ways to hide when he’s nervous, which include hiding his hands in his pockets when they were shaking, putting on glasses so people couldn’t see his eyes. Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back when he’s nervous: Future Aventurine says that "they don't know the other hand is below the table, clutching [his] chips for dear life", and in multiple occasions such as the Final Victor LC, his character trailer, and even in his boss form in the overworld you can see that Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back. And he is also seen with his glasses on sometimes.

Neff says a bunch of stuff to make sure that Phyllis acts her part and does not act out of character (i.e. during their interactions at the market), like how Aventurine repeatedly tries to get Ratio back on track from his subpar acting.

Neff is always one step ahead of the game, and the only reason the plan blows up in his face is due to outside forces that he could not have foreseen (a witness, Keyes figuring out the plan, the broken leg). Aventurine meanwhile plays 5D chess and even with the odds against him, he uses everything he can to come out on the top (i. e. getting Acheron to kill him in the dream).

Even after coming home on the night of the murder, Neff still felt that everything could have gone wrong. Aventurine, with his blessed luck, occasionally wavers and fears everything could go wrong whenever he takes a gamble.

Neff was not put under surveillance by Keyes due to him being extensive with his alibi. After witnessing Robin’s death with eyewitnesses at the scene, the Family had accepted Aventurine’s alibi, though he would be under watch from the Bloodhounds according to Ratio.

Neff talks about the entire murder scheme to the dictaphone. Aventurine during Cat Among Pigeons also retells his plan, albeit in a more convoluted manner, what with his future self and all.

Continuing with Ratio and Phyllis, even with their personalities and motivations being quite different, they do have a few commonalities.

Phyllis was a nurse. Ratio is a medical doctor.

Her name is Greek of origin. Veritas Ratio, though his name is Latin, has Greco-Roman influences throughout his entire character.

The very first scene Phyllis appears in has her wearing a bath towel around her torso. Ratio loves to take baths to clear his mind.

Phyllis was instructed by Neff to be at the market every morning at eleven buying things. Ratio is seen in an auction house with his alabaster head on so no one could recognize him.

Phyllis mostly acts as an accomplice to the scheme, being the one to convince her husband to take the train instead. She is also generally seen only when Neff is involved. Ratio plays the same role as well, only really appearing in the story in relation to Aventurine as well as being the accomplice in Aventurine’s own death. Even him standing in the auction house randomly can be explained by the theory that he and Aventurine had attempted to destabilise Penacony’s economy through a pump and dump scheme.

With these pointers out of the way, let’s take a closer look at select scenes from the film and their relation to the mission and the pair. 

—

[THE PHONE CALL — THE REVERIE HOTEL]

Before the murder, there is a scene with a phone call between Phyllis and Neff discussing the plan while Keyes is in the same room as Neff. Neff has to make sure that Keyes doesn’t think of anything of the phone call, so he acts like he’s calling a “Margie”, and says a bunch of stuff that sounds innocent out of context (“Can’t I call you back, ‘Margie’?” “What color did you pick out?” “Navy blue. I like that fine”), but are actually hinting at the real plan all along (the suit that Mr. Dietrichson wears.)

In a roundabout way, the conversation between Ratio and Aventurine in the Reverie Hotel can be seen as the opposite of that scene — with the two talking about their supposed plan out loud on Penacony ground, a place where the Family (and in turn, Sunday) has eyes everywhere. Despite being in a “private” room, they still act like they hate each other while airing out details that really do not make sense to air out if they really did meet the first time in Penacony (which they didn’t — they’ve been on several missions beforehand). It’s almost like they want a secret third person to know what they were doing, instead of trying to be hushed up about it. The TVs in the room that Sunday can look through based on Inherently Unjust Destiny — A Moment Among The Stars, the Bloodhound statue that disappears upon being inspected, the owl clock on the left which side eyes Ratio and Aventurine, all point to that Sunday is watching their every move, listening to every word.

Rewinding back to before the phone call, in one of the encounters at the marketplace where they “accidentally” run into each other, Phyllis talks about how the trip was off. How her husband wouldn’t get on the train, which was vital for their plan, because of a broken leg. All this, while pretending to be strangers by the passersby. You could say that the part where Ratio almost leaves because Aventurine had “ruined the plan” is the opposite of this, as the husband breaking his leg was something they couldn’t account for, while Aventurine “being short of a few feathers” was entirely part of the plan.

—

[QUESTIONING PHYLLIS — THE INTERROGATION]

This section is going to be a little longer as I will cover two scenes in the movie in a more detailed manner — Mr. Dietrichson signing the policy, and Phyllis being questioned — and how they are represented in the Sunday-Aventurine interrogation and the prior conversation between Ratio and Sunday in multitudes of ways.

Going about their plan, Neff has to make sure that Mr. Dietrichson signs the policy with the double indemnity clause without him knowing the details, all the while having Phyllis (and Lola) in the same room. He and Phyllis have to pretend that they don’t know each other, and that this is just the standard accidental insurance process, instead of signing what would be his downfall. To sell it, he gets Mr. Dietrichson to sign two “copies” of the form, except with Mr. Dietrichson’s second signature, he’s duped into signing the accident insurance policy with the respective clause.

You can tie this to how Ratio goes to Sunday in order to “expose” the lie that the suitcase didn’t actually contain the Aventurine Cornerstone, as well as there being more than one Cornerstone involved in the scheme. Ratio must make sure that Sunday truly believes that he dislikes Aventurine’s company, while also making sure that Sunday doesn’t figure out the actual aventurine stone is broken and hidden in the gift bag. The scheme turns out to be successful, as Sunday retrieves the two Cornerstones, but not the aventurine stone, and truly does think that the green stone he has in his possession is the aventurine.

This whole scene with Sunday is also reminiscent of the interrogation scene in the middle of the movie, where Phyllis was questioned by the boss (Norton) who was deducing that Mr. Dietrichson's death was a suicide, not accidental death. Neff, Phyllis, Keyes and Norton were all in the same room, and Neff and Phyllis had to act like they never knew the other. Phyllis acts like she knows nothing about what Norton insinuates about her husband and eventually, Phyllis explodes in anger and storms out the room, even slamming the door. Her act is very believable to any outsider.

Now back to the Ratio and Sunday conversation. One glaring difference between the movie and here is that his acting isn’t great compared to either Phyllis nor Neff. It never was throughout the Penacony mission. He even comes very close to breaking character several times, and is even defending Aventurine in a somewhat aggressive manner during his one-on-one conversation with Sunday, as in he literally tells Sunday to see a shrink. It’s very different from the way he was acting in Herta Space Station — like Ratio cares about Aventurine too much to keep his hands off.

It's also worth pointing out that Neff doesn't speak a word when Phyllis was being interrogated. Similarly, Ratio is silent throughout the entire scene with Sunday and Aventurine, with his only “line” being a “hm”. When Aventurine calls him a wretch to his face, all he does is look to the side. In fact, he can only look at Aventurine when the other isn’t staring back. Almost like him uttering a single word would give them away. Or his acting is terrible when it has to do with Aventurine, as he has no issue doing the same thing in Crown of the Mundane and Divine (Mundane Troubles).

So, Sunday finds out about the Cornerstones and reveals them to Aventurine, and reasons that he cannot give them back to him because Aventurine had lied. Note that in that same scene, Aventurine attempted to use the two murders that had occurred beforehand against Sunday to retrieve his own cornerstone. Similarly, when it was revealed that Mr. Dietrichson did not know about the accident policy and that the so-called “accidental death” was not, in fact, accidental, the insurance company refused to pay out the money.

Unlike the movie, this was all planned, however. The double-crossing by Ratio, the gift money being the only thing required for Aventurine’s real plan. All of it was an act of betrayal against Sunday, in the same manner as the meticulous planning as Mr. Dietrichson’s murder — To sign the policy, get him to take the train, kill him on the way, and to have Neff pose as the husband on the train until the time is right to get off and lay the body on the tracks. A key difference is that they could not have expected their scheme to be busted wide open due to forces outside of their control, while Ratio and Aventurine went straight down the line for the both of them no matter what.

From here on out, we can conclude that the way Ratio and Aventurine present themselves in Penacony to onlookers is in line with Neff and Phyllis.

—

[“GOODBYE, BABY” — FINAL VICTOR]

And now for the (in)famous light cone, Final Victor. The thing that truly kickstarted the Ratio and Aventurine ship in the fanbase, and the partnership between the two in general. It’s a direct reference to the final confrontation between Neff and Phyllis in the movie.

I’ll fire through all the similarities between the two scenes.

During the respective scenes, Aventurine and Phyllis both outsmart their partner one way or the other: Aventurine with his one-sided game of Russian Roulette, and Phyllis hiding her gun underneath the cushions until Neff turned away.

The guns are owned by Phyllis and Aventurine, not Neff and Ratio.

Phyllis couldn’t bring herself to fire any more shots after she realised she truly did love Neff. Ratio could do nothing but watch as Aventurine did what he did — he couldn’t even pull away if the LC animation is anything to go by him struggling as Aventurine firmly keeps the gun to his chest.

Neff says he doesn’t buy (believe) that Phyllis loved him. She then goes “I’m not asking you to buy […]”. The LC description has Aventurine ask Ratio “You don’t believe me?”, while in the LC animation Ratio straight up says “You expect me to believe you?” and Aventurine answering “Why not, doctor/professor?”

The visual composition of the LC and the scene are nearly identical, from the lighting to the posing to the way Aventurine looks at Ratio — Aventurine and Ratio are even wearing different outfits to fit the scene better. The background in the LC is also like the blinders in the movie, just horizontal.

In the shot where Phyllis’ face is more visible, the way she looks at Neff is strikingly like the way provocatively looks at Ratio. Even their eyes have a visible shine — Phyllis’ eyes brightly shining the moment she realised she really fell in love with Neff, and Aventurine having just a little light return to his eyes in that specific moment.

And now the differences!

Neff holds the gun in his right hand. Aventurine makes Ratio hold his gun in his left.

Neff is the one who takes the gun from Phyllis‘ hand. Aventurine is the one who places the gun in Ratio’s hand and fires it.

Three gunshots are fired. In the movie, Phyllis shoots the first shot and Neff the second and third. Aventurine unloads the gun and leaves only one bullet for this game of Russian Roulette. He pulls the trigger three times, but they all turn out to be blanks.

Phyllis does not break her façade of not smiling until the very last moment where she gets shot. Aventurine is smiling the entire time according to the light cone description, whilst in the animation, it’s only when he guides the gun to his chest that he puts it on.

So, you know how Neff meets Phyllis and it all goes off the rails from there. The way Neff goes from a decent guy to willingly involve himself in a murder scheme, having his morals corrupted by Phyllis. His world having been turned upside down the moment he lays eyes on Phyllis in that first meeting. Doesn’t that sound like something that happened with the Final Victor LC? Ratio, a man all about logic and rationality — a scholar with eight PhDs to his name — all of that is flipped on its head the moment Aventurine pulls out his gun in their first meeting and forces Ratio to play a game of Russian roulette with him. Aventurine casually gambles using his own life like it’s nothing and seemingly without fear (barring his hidden left hand). All or nothing — and yet Aventurine comes out alive after three blanks. Poetic, considering there’s a consumable in the game called “All or Nothing” which features a broken chess piece and a poker chip bound together by a tie. The poker chip obviously represents the gambler, but the chess piece specifically stands for Ratio because he plays chess in his character trailer, his Keeping Up With Star Rail episode and his introduction is centred around him playing chess with himself. Plus, the design of the chess piece has golden accents, similar to his own chess set. In the end, Aventurine will always be the final victor.

Furthermore, Neff had deduced that Phyllis wanted to kill her husband and initially wanted no part in it, but in a subsequent visit it was his own idea that they trigger the double indemnity clause for more money. As the movie progresses though, he starts to have his doubts (thanks in part to him befriending Lola) and makes the move to kill Phyllis when everything starts to come to light. It’s strikingly similar to how Ratio initially wanted no part in whatever Aventurine had in mind when they first met, but in the subsequent missions where they were paired up, he willingly goes along with Aventurine's risky plans, and they come to trust each other. Enough so that Aventurine and Ratio can go to Penacony all on their own and put on an act, knowing that nobody in the IPC other than them can enter the Dreamscape. The mutual respect grew over time, instead of burning passionately before quickly fizzling out like in the movie.

Basically, in one scene, three shots (blanks) start a relationship, and in the other, it ends a relationship. In the anan magazine interview with Aventurine, he says himself that “form[ing] an alliance with just one bullet” with Ratio was one of his personal achievements. The moment itself was so impactful for both parties that it was immortalised and turned into a light cone.

—

[THE ENDING — GOLDEN HOUR]

The ending of Double Indemnity that made it into the final cut has Neff continue his confession on the dictaphone until he realised that he wasn’t alone in the room. Keyes had come inside at some point, but none had said a thing, only listening to a dead man speak of his crime. When Neff sees Keyes, they talk for a moment, Neff says he plans on fleeing to Mexico. Keyes does not think he will make it. He tries to leave, only to collapse at the front of the elevator, Keyes following just behind him. Neff attempts to light a cigar but is too weak to do so, so Keyes does it for him.

Parts of the ending can still be attributed to the interrogation scene between Sunday and Aventurine, so I’ll make this quick before moving on to the conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Ratio and Aventurine’s final conversation together. Once Sunday mentions how quickly Aventurine gave up the suitcase, he inflicts the Harmony’s consecration on him, which forces Aventurine to confess everything that Sunday asks of. In a way, it’s the opposite of what happens in the movie — where Neff willingly tells the truth about the murder to his coworker. Aventurine does not like Sunday, and Neff is close to Keyes. Ratio also does not speak, similarly to how Keyes didn’t speak and stood silently off to the side.

Post-interrogation in Golden Hour, Ratio worriedly prods at Aventurine and asks him about his plan. He then gives him the Mundanite’s Insight with the Doctor’s Advice inside when Aventurine tells him to leave. Throughout Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Aventurine gets weaker and his head starts to buzz, until he falls to the ground before he can hand in the final gems. Similarly, Neff progressively grows weaker as he records his confession. Keyes says he’s going to call a doctor and Neff says he’s planning to go to Mexico. And when Neff collapses near the elevator, they talk one final time and Keyes lights Neff’s cigar as the other was too weak to do so himself.

—

[OPPOSITE TIMELINES AND DEVELOPMENTS]

Remember how I said the way certain events happen in the movie and the game are mostly opposite and reverse of one another? 

The Final Victor LC is the first meeting of Ratio and Aventurine, and Neff killing Phyllis is their final meeting.

Between that first and last meeting between Phyllis and Neff’s whirlwind romance, their relationship becomes strained which ultimately leads to Neff not trusting whatever Phyllis has to say at the end point of the movie. As for Ratio and Aventurine, the exact opposite had happened, to the point where Ratio trusts Aventurine enough to go along with his plans even if they went against his own ideals. The basis of the mission involved Veritas Ratio, whose full name includes the Latin word for “truth”, lying the entire time on Penacony.

Aventurine is sentenced to the gallows by Sunday after his unwilling interrogation. The movie starts and ends with Neff willingly confessing everything to Keyes.

It bears repeating, but I have to make it so clear that the trust between Ratio and Aventurine runs incredibly deep. Being able to predict what your partner says and thinks and plans in a mission as critical as the Penacony project is not something first-time co-workers can pull off flawlessly. All the while having to put on masks that prevent you from speaking sincerely towards one another lest you rat yourselves out. You have no way of contacting outside reinforcements from within Penacony, as the rest of the IPC are barred from entering. To be able to play everybody for fools while said fools believe you yourselves have handed your case on a silver platter requires a lot — trust, knowledge of the other, past experience, and so on. With Phyllis and Neff, the trust they had had been snuffed out when Neff grew closer to Lola and found out what kind of person Phyllis truly was on the inside. Phyllis did not trust nor love Neff enough and was going behind his back to meet with Zachette to possibly take Neff and Lola out. And the whole reason Neff wanted to perpetrate the murder was due to him being initially taken by Phyllis' appearance, which single handedly got the ball rolling on the crime.

Now then, how come trust is one of the defining aspects of Aventurine and Ratio’s relationship, when Phyllis and Neff’s trust eventually lead to both their deaths at the hands of the other? Sure, this can be explained away with the opposite theory, but there’s one other relationship involving Neff which I haven’t brought up in excruciating detail yet. The other side of Ratio and Aventurine’s relationship.

—

[NEFF & KEYES — AVENTURINE & RATIO]

Here is where it gets more interesting — while Phyllis and Neff are at the centre point of the movie, there is another character to whom Neff has a close relationship with — Keyes. It’s also the only relationship with no pretences, at least, until the whole murder thing happened and Neff had to hide his involvement from Keyes. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but feel there was something more to the two than meets the eye. I knew that queer readings of the film existed, but I didn't think too much of them until now. And though Aventurine and Ratio parallel Phyllis and Neff respectively, the fact that they also have traits of their opposite means that it wouldn’t be completely out of the question if parts of their relationship were also influenced by Keyes and Neff on a deeper and personal level. Let me explain.

Keyes and Neff were intimate friends for eleven years and have shown mutual respect and trust towards one another. They understood each other on a level not seen with Phyllis and Neff. Even after hearing Neff confess his crimes through the dictaphone (and eventually standing in the same room while Neff confessed), he still cared for the other man, and stayed with him when Neff collapsed at the front door. The only reason Keyes hadn’t deduced that it was Neff who was behind the murder was because he had his absolute trust in him. Keyes is also Neff’s boss, and they are always seen exchanging playful banter when they are on screen together. Neff even says the words “I love you, too” twice in the movie — first at the beginning and second at the end, as the final line. There’s also the persistent theme of Neff lighting Keyes’ cigarettes (which happens in every scene where they are face-to-face), except in the end where it’s Keyes who lights Neff’s.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Mutual respect, caring too much about the other person, the immense amount of trust… Ratio says he’s even the manager of the Penacony project (which may or may not be a lie), and despite their banter being laced with them acting as “enemies”, you can tell that in Dewlight Pavilion pre-Sunday confrontation that Aventurine genuinely likes Ratio’s company and believes him to be a reliable person. From the way he acts carefree in his words to the thoughts in his head, as seen in the mission descriptions for Double Indemnity. Their interactions in that specific mission are possibly the closest thing to their normal way of speaking that we get to see on Penacony.

Not to mention, this is the way Neff describes Keyes. He even says (not in the script) “you never fooled me with your song and dance, not for a second.” Apart from the line about the cigar ashes, doesn’t this ring a bell to a certain doctor? “Jerk” with a heart of gold?

After solving the puzzle with the statues, Ratio jokingly offers Aventurine to join the Genius Society. Aventurine then goes "Really? I thought you’ve given up on that already", and then Ratio says it was, in fact, a joke. Solving the puzzle through brute force has Ratio telling Aventurine that the Council of Mundanites (which Ratio himself is a part of) should consider him a member. In the movie, where the scene with the phone call with Neff and Phyllis reiterating details of their plan happens, Keyes actually offered Neff a better job (specifically a desk job, as Keyes’ assistant). The two pairs saw the other as smart, equals, and were invested in each other’s careers one way or another.

Because of all this, the character parallels for this side of the relationship are as follows:

Aventurine - Walter Neff

Veritas Ratio - Barton Keyes

With the way I’ve talked about how Aventurine and Ratio take from both leads in terms, it does fit to say that Aventurine is Neff, and Ratio is Keyes in this layer of their relationship. Since we’re on the topic of Keyes, let me also go through some similarities with him and Ratio specifically.

Keyes says the words “dimwitted amateurs” in his first on-screen conversation with Neff. You can’t have Dr. Ratio without him talking about idiocy in some way.

Keyes almost only appears in the movie in relation to Neff, and barring a single interaction in Neff’s house, is also only seen in the office. Same with Phyllis, Ratio also only ever appears regarding Aventurine.

Keyes genuinely wanted the best for Neff, even offering to celebrate with him when he thought the case truly had been busted wide open by forces when Zachette entered the picture. You could say the same for Ratio, as he hoped that Aventurine wouldn’t dwell on the past according to his response on Aventurine’s Interview, as well as telling him to “stay alive/live on (CN)” and wishing him the best of luck in his Doctor’s Advice note.

Whether or not you believe that there was more going on with Neff and Keyes is up to you, but what matters is that the two were very close. Just like Ratio and Aventurine.

—

[THE ORIGINAL FILM ENDING]

Something that I hadn’t seen brought up is the original ending of Double Indemnity, where Neff is executed in a gas chamber while Keyes watches on, shocked, and afterwards leaves somberly. The ending was taken out because they were worried about the Hays Code, but I felt it was important to bring it up, because in a way, you can kind of see the Sunday interrogation scene as Sunday sending Aventurine to his death in seventeen system hours. And Ratio doesn’t speak at all in that scene, and Keyes doesn’t either according to the script.

Another thing that’s noteworthy is that Wilder himself said “the story was about the two guys” in Conversations with Wilder. The two guys in question are Keyes and Neff.

—

[THE NOVEL]

With the original film ending covered, now it is time to bring up the novel by James M. Cain. I bought the book just to read about the differences between the adaptation and the original source material, and to list a few more similarities and opposites I could gather. For this section alone, due to the changes in the (last) names of certain characters, I will be referring to Walter Huff (Neff in the movie) as Walter, and Mr. Dietrichson as Nirdlinger. The plot is pretty much the same as the movie’s apart from a couple of changes so there isn’t a need to recount everything.

From my two read-throughs of the novel, these are the following passages that stood out to me the most. Starting with Aventurine:

Walter, as a top businessman of the company, knows how to sway a deal and to get what he truly wants with what the other gives him. Aventurine is the same, reliant on his intuition, experience and whatever information he has on the table to claim the win. Him luring out Sparkle in Heaven Is A Place On Earth and his conversation with Acheron in the Nihility is indicative of that.

• "But you sell as many people as I do, you don't go by what they say. You feel it, how the deal is going. And after a while I knew this woman didn't care anything about the Automobile Club. Maybe the husband did, but she didn't. There was something else, and this was nothing but a stall. I figured it would be some kind of a proposition to split the commission, maybe so she could get a ten-spot out of it without the husband knowing. There's plenty of that going on. And I was just wondering what I would say to her." 

Phyllis, like in the movie, had been hiding her true intentions of talking to Walter in their first conversations, always saying things that she didn’t actually mean. In a similar vein, Aventurine consistently says stuff but almost never truly means any of it, which is all part of his façade.

• "And I could feel it again, that she wasn't saying what she meant. It was the same as it was the first afternoon I met her, that there was something else, besides what she was telling me. And I couldn't shake it off, that I had to call it on her."

When discussing the murder plan with Phyllis, Walter makes this comment, kind of like how Aventurine seems to operate in a way where he has a plan, but is ready to improvise and think fast when needed.

• "And then it's one of those things where you've got to watch for your chance, and you can't plan it in advance, and know where you're going to come out to the last decimal point."

Remember the roulette wheel line from the movie? In the novel, the gambling metaphor that Walter makes about the insurance business goes on for two paragraphs, mentioning a gambling wheel, stack of chips, a place with a big casino and the little ivory ball, even about a bet on the table. Walter also talks about how he thinks of tricks at night after being in the business for so long, and how he could game the system. Needless to say, insanely reminiscent of Aventurine.

• "You think I’m nuts? All right, maybe I am. But you spend fifteen years in the business I’m in, and maybe a little better than that, it’s the friend of the widow, the orphan, and the needy in time of trouble? It’s not. It’s the biggest gambling wheel in the world. It don’t look like it, but it is, from the way they figure the percentage on the oo to the look on their face when they cash your chips. You bet that your house will burn down, they bet it won’t, that’s all. What fools you is that you didn’t want your house to burn down when you made the bet, and so you forget it’s a bet. To them, a bet is a bet, and a hedge bet don’t look any different than any other bet. But there comes a time, maybe, when you do want your house to burn down, when the money is worth more than the house. And right there is where the trouble starts." • "Alright, I’m an agent. I’m a croupier in that game. I know all their tricks, I lie awake thinking up tricks, so I’ll be ready for them when they come at me. And then one night I think up a trick, and get to thinking I could crook the wheel myself if I could only put a plant out there to put down my bet." • "I had seen so many houses burned down, so many cars wrecked, so many corpses with blue holes in their temples, so many awful things that people had pulled to crook the wheel, that that stuff didn’t seem real to me anymore. If you don’t understand that, go to Monte Carlo or some other place where there’s a big casino, sit at a table, and watch the face of the man that spins the little ivory ball. After you’ve watched it a while, ask yourself how much he would care if you went out and plugged yourself in the head. His eyes might drop when he heard the shot, but it wouldn’t be from the worry whether you lived or died. It would be to make sure you didn’t leave a bet on the table, that he would have to cash for your estate. No, he wouldn’t care."

Returning home from the murder, Walter attempted to pray, but was unable to do it. Some time passed and after speaking to Phyllis, he prayed. Aventurine presumably hadn’t done the prayer ever since the day of the massacre, and the first time he does it again, he does it with his child self.

• "I went to the dining room and took a drink. I took another drink. I started mumbling to myself, trying to get so I could talk. I had to have something to mumble. I thought of the Lord's Prayer. I mumbled that, a couple of times. I tried to mumble it another time, and couldn't remember how it went." • "That night I did something I hadn’t done in years. I prayed."

Phyllis in the book is much more inclined towards death than her movie version, even thinking of herself as a personification of death. She’s killed ten other people (including infants) prior to the events of the novel. Something to keep in mind as Aventurine had mentioned several times that he attempted to kill himself in the dream, plus his leadup to his “grandest death”. Just like Phyllis, he’s even killed at least a few people before, though the circumstances of that were less on his own volition and more so for the sake of his survival (i.e. the death game in the maze involving the 34 other slaves where he was the winner and another time where he murdered his own master). Instead of Phyllis playing the active role of Death towards everybody else, Aventurine himself dances with Death with every gamble, every time his luck comes into play. Danse Macabre.

• "But there’s something in me, I don’t know what. Maybe I’m crazy. But there’s something in me that loves Death. I think of myself as Death, sometimes." • "Walter, The time has come. For me to meet my bridegroom [Death]. The only one I ever loved."

Moving on to Ratio:

Walter says several times that it’s hard to get along with Keyes, and how he says nice things after getting you all worked up. A hard-headed man to get along with, but damn good at his job. Sound like someone familiar?

• "That would be like Keyes, that even when he wanted to say something nice to you, he had to make you sore first."  • "It makes your head ache to be around him, but he’s the best claim man on the Coast, and he was the one I was afraid of."

Keyes sees Walter as smarter than half the fools in the company. Ratio can only stand the company of Aventurine in regards to the IPC.

• "Walter, I'm not beefing with you. I know you said he ought to be investigated. I've got your memo right here on my desk. That's what I wanted to tell you. If other departments of this company would show half the sense that you show—" • "Oh, he confessed. He's taking a plea tomorrow morning, and that ends it. But my point is, that if you, just by looking at that man, could have your suspicions, why couldn't they—! Oh well, what's the use? I just wanted you to know it."

After going on a rant about the H.S. Nirdlinger case (Phyllis’ husband) and how Norton is doing a horrible job, he ends it by saying that it’s sheer stupidity. “Supreme idiocy”, anybody?

• "You can’t take many body blows like this and last. Holy smoke. Fifty thousand bucks, and all from dumbness. Just sheer, willful, stupidity!"

Phyllis’ former occupation as a nurse is more elaborated on, including her specialization — pulmonary diseases. One of Ratio’s crowning achievements is curing lithogenesis, the “King of Diseases”.

• "She’s one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles. […] She’s a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would."

As for the murder scheme, they talk about it a lot more explicitly in the novel. Specifically, Walter mentions how a single person cannot get away with it and that it requires more people to be involved. How everything is known to the party committing the crime, but not the victim. And most importantly: Audacity.

"Say, this is a beauty, if I do say it myself. I didn't spend all this time in the business for nothing, did I? Listen, he knows all about this policy, and yet he don't know a thing about it. He applies for it, in writing, and yet he don't apply for it. He pays me for it with his own check, and yet he don't pay me. He has an accident happen to him and yet he don't have an accident happen to him. He gets on the train, and yet he don't get on it."

"The first is, help. One person can't get away with it, that is unless they're going to admit it and plead the unwritten law or something. It takes more than one. The second is, the time, the place, the way, all known in advance—to us, but not him. The third is, audacity. That's the one that all amateur murderers forget. They know the first two, sometimes, but that third, only a professional knows. There comes a time in any murder when the only thing that can see you through is audacity, and I can't tell you why."

"And if we want to get away with it, we've got to do it the way they do it, […]" "Be bold?" "Be bold. It's the only way."

"I still don't know—what we're going to do." "You'll know. You'll know in plenty of time."

"We were right up with it, the moment of audacity that has to be be part of any successful murder."

It fits the situation that Aventurine and Ratio find themselves in extremely well: For the first point— Aventurine would not be able to get away with simply airing out details by himself, as that would immediately cast suspicion on him. Having another person accompany him who not only isn’t really a part of the IPC in name (as the IPC and The Family have a strenuous relationship) but would probably be able to get closer to Sunday because of that means they can simply bounce off each other without risking as much suspicion with a one-man army. Which is exactly what Ratio and Aventurine do in the conversations they have on Penacony. Secondly — they knew how Sunday operates: as a control freak, he leaves no stone unturned, which is how he became Head of the Oak Family, so their acting required them to give off the impression that a. they hated each other, b. Ratio would go against Aventurine’s wishes and expose him in return for knowledge, c. there were only the two Cornerstones that were hidden. This would give Sunday the illusion of control, and lead to Sunday to lower his guard long enough for Aventurine to take the gift money in the end. The pair knew this in advance, but not Sunday. And thirdly — the plan hinged on a high-level of risk. From breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone, to hoping that Sunday wouldn’t find it in the gift bag, to not telling Ratio what the true plan is (meaning Ratio had to figure it out on his own later on), to Sunday even buying Ratio’s story, it was practically the only way they could go about it. “Charming audacity”, indeed.

An interesting aspect about the novel is that the ending of the novel is divergent from the movie’s final cut and the original ending: Phyllis and Walter commit suicide during a ferry ride to Mexico. The main reason this was changed for the movie was because of the Hays Code, and they wouldn’t allow a double suicide to be screened without reprecussions for criminals. There’s also a bunch of other aspects that differentiate the novel from the movie (no narration-confession as the confession happens in a hospital, less characterization for Keyes and instead a bigger focus on Lola and her boyfriend, the focus on the murderous aspect of Walter and Phyllis’ relationship instead of actual romance, Walter falling in love with Lola (with an unfortunately large age gap attached), etc.)

As for the ending, this wouldn’t even be the first romance media reference related to Aventurine and Ratio where both the leads die, with the other being The Happy Prince and San Junipero (in relation to the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth reference), which I normally would chalk up as a coincidence, though with the opposite line-of-thought I have going on here (and the fact that it’s three out of four media references where the couple die at the end…), I think it’s reasonable to say that Ratio and Aventurine will get that happy ending. Subverting expectations, hopefully.

—

[THE HAYS CODE — LGBT CENSORSHIP IN CHINA]

I’ve brought up the Hays code twice now in the previous two sections, but I haven’t actually explained what exactly it entails.

The Hays Code (also known as the Motion Picture Production Code) is a set of rules and guidelines imposed on all American films from around 1934 to 1968, intended to make films less scandalous, morally acceptable and more “safe” for the general audiences. Some of the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” include but are not limited to…

(Don’t) Pointed profanity

(Don’t) Inference of sex perversion (which includes homosexuality)

(Don’t) Nudity

(Be Careful) Sympathy for criminals

(Be Careful) Use of firearms

(Be Careful) Man and woman in bed together

What does this have to do with a Chinese gacha game released in 2023? If you know a little bit about miHoYo’s past, you would know that pre-censorship laws being upheld to a much stronger and stricter degree, they had no problem showcasing their gay couples in Guns Girl Z (Honkai Gakuen 2/GGZ) and Honkai Impact 3rd, with the main three being Bronya/Seele, Kiana/Mei (admittedly the latter one is a more recent example, from 2023), and Sakura/Kallen. Ever since the Bronya and Seele kiss, censorship in regards to LGBT content ramped up, causing the kiss to be removed on the CN side, and they had to lay low with the way they present two same-sex characters who are meant to be together. They can’t explicitly say that two female or male characters are romantically involved, but they can lace their dynamics with references for those “in the know” — Subtext. Just enough to imply something more but not too much that they get censored to hell and back.

So what I’m getting at is this: The trouble that Double Indemnity had to go through in order to be made while also keeping the dialogue of Phyllis and Neff as flirtatious as they could under the Hays Code among other things is quite similar to the way Ratio and Aventurine are presented as of now. We never see them interact outside of Penacony (at least up until 2.2, when this post was drafted), so we can only infer those interactions specifically until they actually talk without the fear of being found out by Sunday. But, there’s still some small moments scattered here and there, such as when Aventurine goes near Ratio in the Dewlight Pavilion Sandpit, he exclaims that “the view here is breathtaking” (he can only see Ratio’s chest from that distance) and that Ratio could “easily squash [him] with just a pinch”. Ratio then goes “If that is your wish, I will do so without a moment’s hesitation.” Not to mention the (in)famous “Doctor, you’re huge!” quote.

It’s not a coincidence that Ratio and Aventurine have three explicit references to romance media (Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince), possibly even four if you take the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth as a reference to Black Mirror’s San Junipero. It’s not a coincidence that the storylines or characters of said references parallel the pairing, from surface-level to deep cuts. It’s not a coincidence that the CN voice actors were asked to “tone it down” by the voice director when it came to their chemistry. It’s not a coincidence that Aventurine has only flirted with (three) men throughout Penacony, even referring to a Bloodhound NPC as a “hunk of a man” inside his thoughts, all the while ignoring Himeko and Robin when it came to their looks — women who are known across the cosmos with a myriad of adoring fans. There are so many other so-called “coincidences” related to the two that you could make an iceberg just based on versions 2.0-2.2 as well as content miHoYo themselves have put out on social media. They absolutely knew what they were doing, and were trying to get their point across through subtle means — the extent they went to with the Double Indemnity reference while also keeping it under wraps from a “surface” level point of view is proof of this — the implications are there if you take the time to look for them, and are simply hard to ignore or deny once you do find them.

—

[CONCLUSION]

This was supposed to be short considering the other analyses I’ve seen were also pretty short in comparison, but I couldn’t get the movie out of my head and ended up getting carried away in the brainrot. I hope you could follow along with my line of thinking, even with the absurd length of this post, and the thirty-image limit. I tried to supplement context with some links to videos and wiki pages among other sources wherever I can to get around it.

I will end it with this though — the love in the movie turned out to be fake and a farce, going off track from what was a passionate romance in the beginning because of the murder scheme. Meanwhile, the whole reason why Ratio and Aventurine can pull off whatever they want is because of their immense trust in one another. What was initially shown to be distrust in the Final Victor LC grew into something more, for Ratio, someone who would have never put faith into mere chance and probability before this, put his trust in Aventurine, of all people.

TL;DR — (I get it, it’s over ten thousand words.)

Not only is the relationship between Neff and Phyllis represented in the deception and acting side of Ratio and Aventurine, but the real and trusting side is shown in Neff and Keyes. They have a fascinating, multi-layered dynamic that is extremely fun to pick apart once you realise what’s going on underneath the bickering and “hatred” they display.

Many thanks to Manya again for making the original thread on the movie. I wouldn’t be here comparing the game and movie myself if it weren’t for that.

By the way, I really do believe that Shaoji totally watched this movie at least once and really wanted that Double Indemnity AU for his OCs. I know exactly how it feels.

—

Other points I'd like to mention that didn't fit anywhere else in the main analysis and/or don’t hold much significance, have nothing to do with the Penacony mission, or may even be considered reaching (...if some of the other points weren’t). Just some potentially interesting side bits.

Phyllis honks three times to signal Neff to go for the kill. That, and the three gunshots in the confrontation. Aventurine is all about the number three.

The height difference Aventurine and Ratio have going on is close to Phyllis and Neff’s.

Phyllis had killed her husband’s previous wife and went on to marry Mr. Dietrichson, pretty much taking the wife’s place. Aventurine killed his previous master, and had taken certain attributes from him like his wristwatch and the rings on his hand and the “all or nothing” mantra.

When calling Ratio a wretch (bastard), Aventurine smiles for a moment. This is exclusive to the EN, KR and JP voiceovers, as in CN, he does not smile at all. (Most definitely a quirk from the AI they use for lip syncing, but the smile is something that’s been pointed out quite a few times so I thought I’d mention it here.)

Sunday specifically says in the CN version that he knew of Aventurine's plans the moment Aventurine left the mansion, meaning that he realized he had been played the fool the moment Ratio and Aventurine talked in Golden Hour

In the description for the "All or Nothing" consumable, teenage Aventurine says this specific line: "Temptation is a virtue for mortals, whereas hesitation proves to be a fatal flaw for gamblers." According to Ratio, this is Aventurine's motto - he says as such in Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode. Note that in the anan interview he explicitly says he does not have a motto, and yet Ratio in the video says otherwise. They definitely have to know each other for a while for Ratio to even know this.

A big reason why Neff even pulled off the murder scheme in the first place was because he wanted to see if his good friend Keyes could figure it out, the Mundane Troubles Trailblaze Continuance showcases Ratio attempting to teach the Herta Space Station researches a lesson to not trust the Genius society as much as they did.

In Keyes’ first scene he’s exposing a worker for writing a policy on his truck that he claimed had burnt down on its own, when he was the one who burnt it down. Ratio gets into an Ace Attorney-style argument with the Trailblazer in Mundane Troubles.

Neff talks repeatedly about how it won’t be sloppy. Nothing weak. And how it’ll be perfect to Phyllis, and how she’s going to do it and he’s going to help her. Doing it right — “straight down the line”. Beautifully ironic, considering what happens in the movie, and even more ironic as Ratio and Aventurine’s scheme went exactly the way they wanted to in the end. Straight down the line.

[artbyblastweave]

I think about Star Wars a lot more than I post about Star Wars, and I've had some free time recently to type up some thoughts on Episode 7 that've been swirling around in my head for a couple of years. There were a few ideas and plot beats, and moments of apparent self-examination in Episode 7 which I thought were fairly compelling, even though they ultimately paid no dividends:

First was Finn’s character concept. “Star Wars as experienced from the perspective of a Stormtrooper undergoing a crisis of faith” is a rich hook; humanizing and giving a face to what's basically the platonic implementation of the faceless mook. Unfortunately, the potency of the arc was undercut by the pre-existing textual ambiguity as to what stormtroopers actually are. Star Wars extended canon has settled on the idea that each trilogy features an entirely novel cohort of white-clad mooks, each with a fundamentally different underlying dynamic. The clones and the First-Order forces are different flavors of slave army; in contrast, the stormtroopers are more frequently portrayed in the expanded universe as military careerists, stormtrooper being a thing you work up to rather than a gig for a fresh conscript. A slave-soldier who defects is a very different character from a military careerist who defects, and they invite different analysis. There's a bait-and-switch going on here, in that Finn gestures in the direction of the familiar OT stormtroopers but can't comment on or examine them because he's actually part of a novel dynamic invented for the new movies. And there's one final nail in the coffin here, signaled by the number of times I've had to invoke the expanded universe so far. When Finn debuted, the racists were of course, legion, but I also ran into a number of people who were sincerely confused as to why they'd recast Temuera Morrison. Going off the seven films that existed at the time, it wasn't unreasonable to read the prequel trilogy as an origin story for where the OT stormtroopers came from. Going only off the nine films that exist now, it still isn't unreasonable! It's muddied from so many different directions by their failure to establish the ground rules in the mainline films before they tried to put on subversive airs about it. I am still irritated by this.

Next up is how Han Solo was written. I actually liked the tack they took with him quite a bit. Because initially, right, his role in the movie is just to be Han Solo. He's back, and he hasn't changed! He's still kicking ass and taking names, he's still the lovable scoundrel you knew and loved from your childhood- and the principle cast members react to his presence with the same reverence the film's trying to invoke in the audience, they've grown up hearing the same stories about him. Except that episode 7, at least, is also very aware of the fact that if Han Solo is still recognizably the same guy thirty years on, it indicates that things have gone totally off the rails for him. We find out that the lovable rogue routine is the result of him backsliding, his happy ending blown up by massive personal tragedy rooted in communicative failures and (implicitly) his parental shortcomings. It feels deliberately in conversation with the nostalgic impulse driving the entire film- here's your childhood hero back just as you remember, here's what that stagnation costs. And it also feels like it's in conversation with what was a fairly common strain of Han Solo Take- the idea that Ep. 6 cuts off at a very convenient point, and that Han and Leia's fly-by-night wartime relationship wouldn't survive the rigors of domesticity. Obviously, that's not the only direction you can take with the character; the old EU basically threaded the needle of keeping Han recognizable without rolling back his character development gains. But it felt like they were actually committing to a direction, a direction that was aware of the space, and not a reflexively deferential and flattering one, which at the time I appreciated! The problem, of course, is that for it to really land, you need to have a really, really strong idea of what actually went down-of what Han's specific shortcomings and failures were. And given the game of ping-pong they proceeded to play with Kylo Ren's characterization, this turned out to be. Less than doable.

Kylo Ren is the third thing about Episode 7 that I liked. His character concept is basically an extended admission by the filmmakers that there's no way to top Vader as an antagonist. Instead, they lean into the opposite direction- they make him underwhelming on purpose. Someone who's chasing Vader's legacy in the same way any post-OT Star Wars villain is going to, pursuing Vader's aesthetic and the associated power without really understanding or undergoing the convoluted web of suffering and dysfunction that produced Vader. It's framed as a genuine twist that there's nothing particularly wrong with his face under that helmet. Whatever it takes to be Vader, he doesn't have it, and he knows that he doesn't have it, and the pursuit of it drives him to greater and greater acts of cartoonish villainy. The failure to one-up Vader is offloaded to the character instead of the writers, and it was genuinely interesting to watch. For one movie. The problem, of course, is that if the entire character archetype is "Vader, but less compelling," you can't try to give the bastard Vader's exact character arc. You can't retroactively bolt on a Vader-tier tragic backstory when you spent a whole movie signaling that whatever happened to him wasn't as compelling as what happened to Vader. You can't milk his angst for two more movies when it's the kind of angst on display in "Rocking the Suburbs" by Ben Folds!

There's a level on which I feel like Moff Gideon was a semi-successful implementation of Vader-Wannabe concept; he's the same kind of middling operator courting the Vader Aesthetic for clout, but he's doing it in the context of the imperial warlord era, where there's a lot of practical power available to anyone who can paint themselves to the Imperial Remnants as a plausible successor to Vader. Hand in Hand with this obvious politicking, Gideon is loathsome, which relieves the writers of the burden of having to plausibly redeem the guy; he's doing exactly what he needs to do and there'll never be a mandate to expand him beyond what his characterization can support. Unfortunately, the calculated and cynical nature of how he's emulating Vader precludes the immaturity and hero-worship elements on display with Kylo, which is unfortunate; the sincerity on display in Kylo's pursuit of authenticity is an important part of why he worked, to the extent that he worked at all, and it'd be worth unpacking in a better trilogy. As he stands Kylo is a clever idea, and that's all he is- he lacks the scaffolding to go from merely clever to actively good.

[yesimwriting]

Match Burns

A/n saltburn rewired a part of my brain

also my original idea was way too long for a one-shot so now i'm splitting it into 2 (maybe 3?) parts, if you'd be interested in that pls lmk lol

Summary: Despite your charm and kind disposition, Oliver has never been able to let himself be fond of you. Not with the way that Felix gravitates to you and your obliviousness to the attention. When you're invited to join him and Felix at Saltburn, his wariness of you morphs into an oddly suffocating dislike, until he realizes how to turn you into a way to get 'in' with Felix.

Pairing(s): eventual felix x reader x oliver, current oliver x felix (unreciprocated) and felix x reader (unreciprocated)

Warnings: potential typos (i'm tired yall), first time writing characters so potentially ooc?, canon-level toxic thoughts/plotting, some canon deviation (felix is alive and well to me and it's staying that way), oliver lowkey hating reader,, but kind of in the grown up version of a kid pulling another kid's pigtails when they have a crush lmao

----

The qualities that make the others adore you, that leave them with no choice but to treat you as some kind of dorm hall trapped princess, are the parts of you that make it difficult for Oliver to tolerate you.

You may not be the heir of some great fortune, the kind of commodity that can only be created through generations of pristine breeding and a lifetime of wealth that comes attached to that kind of pedigree. But you do have something.

His peers may see your self sacrificing nature in the ear you're always willing to lend or the time you're willing to give away without a second thought as instinctual kindness. But Oliver knows how to look beyond careful facades, the stained glass people use to warp the way they're perceived. He knows that your too sweet smiles and soft eyes are just your forms of social currency.

And the most off putting part of it all? The only person that can get away with pretending to not notice the way people react to you, is you.

Sometimes, when his thoughts drift to you without his permission, Oliver convinces himself that it's impossible for anyone to not see your softheartedness as the compensation that it is. And then someone--Felix, says something that is so transparently devoted, Oliver knows that it's worked. Give people what they want, and eventually you'll ensnare them.

Oliver let himself believe that he was finally reaching the peak of Felix's favor after being invited to spend the summer at his family's estate. Then, two days into his stay, Felix informed him that you'd be joining them at the end of the week.

The thought of you and your sense of humor that always seems to toe the line between witty and sarcastic; and the warm feel of your hand on his, or anyone's, arm, because when you listen you do so with your entire body; and your bright eyes that seem to see through everything but yourself, at Saltburn seemed to take something from this away from him. You didn't even need a sob story or to flash an indicator of something in desperate need of repair to get invited.

You were just you, and that was enough.

The way Felix told him only strengthened his chargin. She's friends with you, isn't she? I've seen you two together at the library.

The two of you. Not something that Oliver chose. You appeared one day at his side, on a too warm day for late November in Oxford. A too crowded library had the universe dropping you onto his lap. He accepted your presence because of the way the world seemed to light up for those around you.

But now there are no crowds of admirers to divide the attention. There is only Felix and his family, and with just two guests being invited to spend the summer, it'd be easy for the ultra wealthy to turn this into a competition for favorite pet.

It's also more than that. Alone here, it was easy to pretend Felix's attachment to you didn't exist. But now--now he could easily be the second favorite out of a set of two.

----

There was only one part of your arrival that Oliver was looking forward to, and you stole it from him.

He wanted to witness a crack, a wavering in your assuredness. The size of the estate would get to you, would make you--for once--seem small. You'd hesitate, maybe even see Felix in a different way that'd have you rethinking your friendship.

Your eyes had widened, a combination of shock and awe meshing together behind your gaze. Oliver could feel it, the moment that you'd reveal yourself as susceptible to shrinking in on yourself...and then your eyes met his, and the look vanished before it could fully take root.

You grinned at him and then at Felix, abandoning your luggage next to the car that picked you up before approaching them with unashamed enthusiasm. You pulled each of them into a quick hug, your warmth an ache against him. You didn't attempt to suppress your joy until Duncan appeared, standoffish as ever as Felix introduced you. That was just enough satisfaction to make Oliver want it more.

He's still thinking about it now, imagining just what it'd take to leave you vulnerable. You don't sense the resentful nature of his thoughts. You never do. Not even when Felix tells you that you'll be staying in the room connected to his through a shared bathroom.

Felix suggests giving you some time to rest before dinner. You accept the offer, tired from the back forth traveling from the UK to the US. Your visit to your mother had been so brief, you accepted Felix's offer so quickly. Maybe there's more tension in your family than you've admitted.

"She likes you a lot." Felix's low tone snaps Oliver out of his thoughts. It's a strangely nervous statement that doesn't make sense. You're friends with both of them, and if Felix means the statement in the romantic sense, he's wrong. Oliver's in the habit of taking note of the way people see him, and he can't remember instance in which you've ever looked at him like that.

He could see you feeling that way about Felix easily. You're around Felix often and while there is an underlying hint of stiffness when you're around him, it isn't a sign of dislike. You're determined to like him less, you're dedicated to not loving him. An amicable, but ultimately pointless goal. Who doesn't end up loving Felix?

Oliver doesn't know where this conversation is going, so he decides to keep his response simple. "She likes you, too."

"N--" Felix starts to deny the point, but realizes a full dismissal wouldn't be true. You do like him, it's just--it's different. "She trusts you." Felix shakes his head once, still uncertain. "I know we're friends, but sometimes, especially when we're alone, it-it feels like she sees me as a match that's starting burn too close to her fingers."

There it is. Oliver can't blame you for your precautions. Felix has turned the heads so many women--and some men--and he allows them to hang around him openly. His desirability, his options have never been secret. And your only overlap into his world is going to the same college. Oliver's even heard of you deciding to spend the night alone instead of with Felix because you don't always feel safe at those kinds of parties.

You're playing it safe, like a very good girl from suburbia, USA. It's your way of surviving, but Oliver can't quite respect the choice. You're smart enough to realize that loving Felix is like playing with matches, but you're not strong enough to realize that the proximity would be worth a few burns.

"I know we're a little different, but I don't want her to think I'd ever make her do anything." The obliviousness in Felix thinking that this is just about social circles is endearing in an odd way. "How'd you two get so close, anyway?"

Oliver isn't sure so close is the right way to phrase things. Sure, you're attentive and a little touchy, but that's just how people like you move through the world. Besides, if anything, Oliver thinks you choose his company so often because he's never given you the kind of desperate attention everyone else gives you.

Oliver forces a smile, pushing against the thought of being the one to bridge the gap between the two of you. It twists at his stomach. "What? Are you asking me for girl advice?"

Felix cracks a grin, playfully nudging Oliver with his shoulder. "You know how I meant it."

The words are light, but still another attempt at getting a concrete answer. There's an edge there that Oliver's familiar with, an implication of a feeling he's gotten used to. That chest tightening, what's so special about them? And now the Felix Catton is viewing him in that light.

Personal emotions aside, this--you--could be more useful than Oliver thought.

[piosplayhouse]

EVERY PIKMIN 4 CASTAWAY'S CANON DOGSONA

Link to the rescue corps

After hours of research, I've compiled a definitive chart of what every dog every single Pikmin 4 NPC's name references. This time, I also added their original Japanese names in comparison to their English localized ones, as some of the breeds aren't entirely clear in the latter. I cross-referenced Pikipedia and Yuatoa Game Labo to formulate the best guesses between the two languages, so I hope this satisfies curious onlookers!

Special conundrum: Wolfgang.

So you would think Wolfgang would be an easy character to do this for, right. Obviously the wolf's in there, that's it, right? Except it's not because his name in Japanese isn't anything close to Wolfgang. It's Airu. As in Ireland. So all leads in Japanese led to Irish dogs, but all leads in English led to wolves and wolfdogs. And I have no idea why this translation discrepancy is so ridiculously gigantic that it blows all the rest of the names I was having issues with out of the water.

But I came to the conclusion that obviously the translation team would have the knowledge, they would choose something that still references the original concept especially on a theme as universal as dogs, so with that idea I came to this 3am guess: he's an Irish wolfhound.

Probably no one cares about this character, and I don't either. But this is my informed speculation conspiracy corkboard theory on his dogsona. Please leave your thoughts below and let me know how you feel about the doggy dog world of Pikmin 4.

[firelxdykatara]

I too ship Zutara and think they should have been canon. Although for me it's important to know how such a rewrite would go down. I tried to think, and I'm lost.

After Mai betrayed Azula for him, will he just go "sorry, not interested"? He isn't obligated to date her because of this, but her redemption hinges on Zuko and I don't see it being satisfying if he ends up rejecting her after this.

I thought the solution would be to rewrite her arc in boiling rock to make her have a moral realization, but then the problem with Maiko is practically solved. Their relationship wasn't salvaged by her redemption because last time they talked, Mai still didn't understand what's wrong with the Fire Nation and only changed because she loved Zuko. So how do you make it both satisfying & logical?

With Kataang the problem is the Chakras. The problem with the original (in my opinion) is that after he opened his chakra, letting go of his attachment to Katara, he's still attached (forcing a kiss on eip). Should TCoD get rewritten so that Azula shoots him before he opens it? Then why wouldn't he just open it later? Maybe the chakra would be locked so he feels as though he doesn't need to overcome his attachment just yet. In that situation, how would his chakra even unlock? The stone thing felt like nonsense, so how would I do it?

So yeah I have no idea how to approach this. How would you? (Thanks)

I've been rotating this ask in the back of my head like a rotisserie chicken for a few days--it's interesting because I don't generally stop to think like, how would I write them out of these relationships, I either ignore the relationships completely (which isn't hard, they were barely footnotes in the cartoon) or play a little bit with jealous exes or something. Thinking about like, In A Perfect World where Bryke wasn't in charge of ATLA post-canon (because if zutara had been canon, you can be sure they would've made us regret it) is interesting, and I do have thoughts on how I'd handle their relationships in a rewrite.

(this got long, so the rest is beneath the cut)

Assuming you mostly want to keep canon intact, I think maiko would be the easiest to work around, given how little relevance their relationship has in canon. The problem with maiko as an endgame ship is that it was not set up that way--if it had been, it would not have begun entirely off-screen and their whole relationship would not have been a study in misery and utter inability to connect emotionally. His relationship with Mai was there to showcase just how much he had changed and how little he fit into the life he had been so sure he wanted more than anything since his banishment. It worked very well to highlight Zuko's growth--how that contrasted to Mai's lack of it and why she could not understand him even at his most open and vulnerable--and did not work nearly so well when she was shoved back with him in the epilogue, after he'd quite literally forgotten her existence (he never mentions her again after Boiling Rock, not even to say a word of mourning, considering he'd have every reason to believe she was killed for defying his sister).

I don't think you can fix this by giving Mai some moral realization, because there simply is no room for it. As @araeph says in the essay I linked:

As a character, Mai is very useful to the story during Zuko’s return, because she represents everything that Zuko gains by sticking by his father. A girl who cares about him; the ability to indulge her; the authority he has over others at the palace; we see it all in his interactions with Mai. But this makes Mai a tether to a life he has long outgrown. Her function is not to advance Zuko’s character development, but to obstruct it, which also unfortunately means that Mai gaining a full understanding of Zuko’s trials would be disadvantageous to the story. If she knew everything about him and still wanted him to stay, it would give Zuko more cause than he should have to remain in the Fire Nation, but if she knew and encouraged him to leave and join the Avatar, it would rob Zuko of the triumph of making this decision on his own. In other words, there are good narrative reasons for keeping Mai in the dark; it just doesn’t make their relationship any stronger.

The seeds of a genuine redemption arc (one that includes some sort of moral realization and change to her moral framework) for Mai would have to have been planted far earlier than five episodes from the end of the series, but doing so would have of necessity detracted from Zuko's own character arc and the realizations that he makes despite his attachment to Mai (or more specifically to their relationship, which I feel like he was clinging to more out of a sense of abject loneliness he couldn't shake rather than genuine feelings and emotional connection).

So, in my mind, since we're tackling this with an eye towards getting rid of maiko with the fewest ripples to the overall story anyway, the easiest way to do this would be make one slight change to the end of the Boiling Rock two-parter--have Ty Lee (who had always been the least gung-ho of the trio about bowing to Azula's whims and had to be textually threatened into joining her in the first place) save Zuko's life, and then have Mai (who showed the most genuine affection for Ty Lee anyway) save Ty Lee. I love Zuko more than I fear you always fell flat for me as some epic declaration of love, anyway, since a) Zuko is not around to hear it, and b) unlike Ty Lee, she never showed much fear of Azula to begin with, so it wasn't a very high bar to clear. It was a cool line that was entirely unearned, and I don't think it would be missed, there would be some cute mailee crumbs this way, and a throwaway line of getting them released from the prison after the war ended could wrap up their presence in the story pretty nicely.

Now, kataang is a little trickier, if only because the last leg of Aang's character arc is almost completely derailed by his refusal to let go of his possessive attachment to Katara, to the point where he never naturally reopens his chakras, he has to have the Rock of Destiny hit him in just the right place, and the deus ex lionturtle there to give him a way out of having to make a hard moral choice. (I've maintained for years that if you work the final act of your main character's overall arc in such a way that it could have been solved by one good session with a chiropractor, something got fucked along the way.)

The thing about Aang's chakras is that, narratively, his whole thing with Guru Pathik and leaving his training early to save his friends was basically his version of Luke running away from his training with Yoda on Degobah because of his Force vision, only to find out that his friends were in the process of rescuing themselves and then losing his hand because he hadn't completed the most crucial part of his training. What's missing, therefore, from the last act of Aang's character arc, is the return.

See, in Star Wars, Luke pretty explicitly makes the wrong choice when he chooses to prioritize saving his friends over attaining enlightenment and fully mastering the Force. It was the only choice he could have made, but it was still the wrong one--because, like Aang, his friends did not actually need him to save them, he actually almost makes it harder for them to get away by requiring them to save him because, like Aang, he loses a battle in a very critical way. This was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, and it is clear he has learned it by the time he makes it back to Degobah and witnesses the end of Yoda's life, his own enlightenment having already been reached.

But Aang never goes back to the Guru.

And the text refuses to allow us to sit with the fact that he made the wrong choice in prioritizing his attachment to Katara over his ability to master the Avatar State. He is actually narratively vindicated about it, because the plot bends itself into a pretzel so that he doesn't have to spend any time during the last book trying to reopen his chakras and regain access to the Avatar State, handed both in the final battle with no excess effort on his part, and handed the girl into the bargain. (The girl who never even wanted him, so far as we can tell from all the lack of cues she gave him that she actually returned his feelings.)

And I think this could have been solved with a few scattered scenes. Let Katara actually have some agency in her own romantic relationship (or lack thereof), insofar as noticing Aang's advances and clueing the audience in to how she actually feels. Let Aang struggle with the fact that he can't reach the Avatar State, that his mastery of the elements is in limbo because he can't access his full power, rather than ignoring all of this until the end of the show. If we're trying to keep the shape of the last season roughly the same, let Katara confront Aang about the invasion kiss.

This would have been the perfect time to establish that Katara actually does feel some type of way about Aang prior to the epilogue, and it could have saved us from the exceedingly cringey EIP kiss that Aang never apologized for. How it comes across now, of course, is that Katara basically pretends it never even happened, to the point where she doesn't even know what Aang is talking about during EIP until he reminds her--the death knell for any shot their relationship had at looking requited, because I can tell you, as someone who's been a teenage girl, if someone I had conflicted but burgeoning romantic feelings for had kissed me, I would not have completely forgotten about it only a few weeks later--and we never get any indication as to what she actually felt about the kiss (which was not mutual, despite what Aang's dialogue in the EIP scene implies) except for the fact that she looked away and frowned afterwards. (A change mandated by Bryke, who wanted to leave her feelings completely ambiguous; the original storyboards had her smiling to herself.)

So, with an eye towards wrapping up Aang's puppy love crush and establishing Katara's distinct lack of romantic feelings for him, have her talk to him about the kiss. A good frame of reference for this would be Meng's conversation with Aang in "The Fortuneteller", where she finally realizes that he doesn't like her in the same way she likes him. Katara and Aang's conversation about the invasion kiss could be a callback to this, with Aang having some important realizations--that just because Katara doesn't share his feelings doesn't mean she loves him any less, and just because he can't have her the way he wanted doesn't mean he has to love her any less, that she doesn't belong to him but that's ok, because she's still his family and they'll always have each other's backs. Which could have functioned well in helping him take another step towards unblocking his chakras. Going back to the Guru directly may not have worked, since by this point in the story we're hurtling towards the final confrontation and Sozin's Comet, but let Aang reflect on what the Guru told him with new understanding granted him by his experiences throughout the first half of the season.

To keep the stakes high and up the suspense, obviously, he shouldn't have fully unlocked his chakras and the AS before the final fight, but the seeds could be planted--little moments like a talk with Katara about the invasion kiss, maybe a little more empathy and understanding from him about why Katara needs closure in TSR, etc--and then, during the final fight, rather than hand him all the answers on a silver platter, have him almost lose. He still can't go full Avatar, he's out of time, he still doesn't know exactly what to do about Ozai given his own pacifism and desire to preserve that part of his culture--he tries to fight but he's pretty quickly overpowered. Idk how I would've animated this, and maybe it wouldn't have looked as cool for the final fight, but the true climax of the finale was the Zuko and Azula agni kai anyway, so it hardly matters--I'm picturing him doing the rock-shield thing and going into a brief meditative state, where he finally achieves the enlightenment necessary to unlock the AS on his own, no rock of chiropracty necessary. And at this point, I'd give Ozai a Disney Death, since leaving him alive causes more problems than it solves and it's not necessary for Aang to kill him for him to die--they're fighting on a mountain ffs--but if you don't want to change that part then him figuring out energy bending as part of becoming a fully realized Avatar would at least feel more earned than the lionturtle just handing it to him. (And that could've been foreshadowed better by seeding the idea for it earlier in the season.)

After all of that, particularly if you up the emotions during the agni kai and have Zuko and Katara kiss there (or something less explicitly romantic but still tender, like a brief forehead touch), it'd feel pretty natural to have a just friends ending for Aang and Katara. Maybe a brief, slightly awkward but ultimately amiable conversation if Zuko and Katara had a ~thing at their final fight, and then the final shot of the series could be the gaang all together, maybe zutara holding hands or Katara resting her head on his shoulder or something, but since they already kissed there wouldn't feel like a need to end the whole show on romance, something which I've always felt missed the point of the series.

And then, y'know, after that, the world's your oyster! This is how I'd do it if I were trying to keep the bulk of the final season intact. Of course, breaking it all down to its component pieces and rebuilding from the ground up is also an option, but that'd probably be a longer post lol.

[spaceorphan18]

Ranking Bridgerton Season 3 Episodes

After sitting with this season the past month, I kind of wanted to see how a ranking would go (and those of you who know me, know I love a good ranking). These are 100% subjective opinions, and I don't expect anyone else to agree. More so did it out of the fun of it. :)

8. Forces of Nature (Episode 3)

I don't actually think there is a bad episode of this season. Truly. After really sitting with this season, thinking it over, even agreeing that there isn't enough Polin and some of the subplots could have been stronger (or not existed at all), I think all of these episodes are pretty stellar. But one of them had to be placed last, and after combing through all of them, it's episode 3.

There is actually a lot I like in this episode - Colin spending the whole episode pining for Pen, the ridiculous and romantic dream fantasy, the awkwardly cute willow scene, the angsty cake scene, Colin asking his mother for advice and awkwardly trying to figure his shit out, loved it. I also really enjoyed Debling and the development of that story as an alternative option for Pen.

What really bogs this episode down, and consequently pushes it to the bottom, is that it's also the culprit for braiding in all of the seemingly many subplots. I don't necessarily think any of them are bad on their own, but it feels like so much that it's too much at times.

We get Lord Kilmartin's introduction (yes, great), Lord Anderson (yeah, okay), Lady Tilly (ooff, fine), The Mondrichs (why are they here again?), the stuff with the Queen (this was just weak in general), and development of Cressida (it works in conjunction with LW, but idk if it holds up on rewatches?). It's just a lot and the main characters (unfortunately, especially Colin) get pushed a little to the side.

7. Romancing Mister Bridgerton (Episode 6)

This is the episode that when I first watched it, I straight up thought it wasn't that good. I've honestly changed my opinion on it a lot, but I do understand why I originally felt that way.

I love LOVE the first half of this episode. We get to have Pen and Colin in a little bit of a honeymoon stage -- the engagement ring scene is brilliant, everything at the church is brilliant, even the stuff at the Mondrich ball... It's truly delicious. And I love Colin just being soft with his sister and at the Mondrich bar scene. And then I do love the Lady Whistledown aspect of it -- Pen dealing with whether or not she wants to continue. There's some great Eloise stuff in here, too. And even Cressida pretending to be Whistledown was handled decently.

But, like episode 3, this episode was saddled with a ton of side plots, where the scenes just go on and on and on because they're the meat of some of these side plots. I don't know if they needed to be balanced better or parceled out better, I don't know. But the long stretches without any Polin, or much Pen or Colin in general in the second half is why this episode ended up lower.

I think the only reason it's moved up a spot is that I do love the Polin we do get more than what's in episode 3. Also, the last few moments of Colin discovering Pen is Lady Whistledown is an excellent cliffhanger.

6. Out of the Shadows (Episode 1)

I do think the season opener is solidly good! I actually really love Pen getting her transformation and the ridiculous of Colin (attempting) swagger as he comes back into town. I love that we don't beat around the bush, and the two of them really get to the heart of their issues right off the bat and it sets up the entire season really nicely. Plus, their dynamic as never sparkled any better -- it's truly a treat to see the two of them back on screen.

The rest of the episode works pretty well, too. The tension between Pen and Eloise is great -- and kicks off one of my favorite arcs of the season. Francesca's (re-)introduction is wonderful. There's some truly brilliant Bridgerton sibling stuff, as well as Anthony and Kate being on the top of their game. It's also got some breathing room as we haven't established the nineteen other plot lines going on this season (though the Mondrich stuff feels a little sluggish).

The only reason this episode is as low as it is -- is because I just like everything else more.

5. Joining of Hands (Episode 7)

It pains me to have this episode as low as it is because I love so much of it. The Polin stuff in this episode is just delicious. I love the tension after Colin finds out that Pen is Lady Whistledown. I love the brutalness of the first argument and the angst, longing, and actually working through some of their shit (as well as the spiciness) of their argument outside the Modeste.

I love that they still get married despite having unresolved conflict, and that their love transcend set backs. And that wedding dance is absolutely gorgeous.

Plus - we get some great Bridgerton in general stuff -- Eloise and Pen are on their way to repairing their relationship, Colin and Eloise get some great moments, Benedict is adorable at the 'bachelor' party, and Anthony and Kate are amazing in everything that they do (I love LOVE the scene with Kate, Anthony, and Colin).

The episode does have some weaker aspects - I don't care all that much about Violet and Lord Anderson nor Benedict and Lady Tilly (even if I'm all here for Benedict's bisexual awakening). But the subplots don't really weigh everything down as much, and it's a solidly good Polin episode.

4. Into the Light (Episode 8)

The Season Finale! I honestly toggled between episodes 7 and 8 and where they went, and I think maybe on a different day I could be persuaded to switch them, but I think what really sells me is everything from the Butterfly Ball onward. The ending is gorgeous, Pen's story wraps up brilliantly, Colin's grand speech was beautiful, the epilogue was pitch perfect, and all of the storylines work out in a great way, setting up threads for future seasons (obviously, Benedict is next but Eloise and Francesca are getting some good stuff, too.)

My only issue with the end of Pen and Colin's story is that I wanted more resolution to their story. The twenty seconds of make-up sex felt like not enough, and I do hope that they rectify this in Season 4. (Which I have a feeling they will.)

There are some really great things leading up to the ending as well -- I love that Pen and her mother kind of come to terms with each other and finally that relationship is being restored, as well as the Featherington sisters blooming into decent people. I also LOVE the reconciliation of Pen and Eloise. And while the blackmail plot could have been a little stronger (Cressida's whimper out was a little weak) I honestly love Colin's scene with Cressida. (As well as the hilarity of Portia, Eloise, and Colin being the ones to try to help Pen deal with it all.)

It's not perfect episode -- there's the seemingly never ending threeway with Benedict (as well as the fact that Benedict desperately needs next season because his character feels aimless at this point), and Francesca's wedding, while sweet, felt like it pushed Pen and Colin a little out of the limelight for a little too long in the middle. But pacing might have been the biggest issue of the episode. It's otherwise a great episode and a solid ending.

3. Old Friends (Episode 4)

So here's the thing. Here is the thing I've been really thinking about while putting this together. It's a testament to the carriage scene and, honestly, everything from the last twenty-ish minutes of this episode because without it, I'm not sure this episode would be that high. Pen and Colin get ZERO screen time together until the end (and I suppose that's somewhat intentional) you really start to feel it as the episode goes on.

But the tension of this episode is fantastic. Pen bonding with Debling, beginning to accept that this is her best option with pressure from Portia... Colin dealing with his own feelings and downward spiraling (though I do wish we had gotten more of him). It's really, really well done. And then the last twenty minutes is just solidly amazing. All of it. Fantastic. It's just captivating.

And then, of course, the carriage scene -- one of the best (possibly the best??) scenes of the entire show. I could wax poetic about the carriage scene for days...

This is another episode that does feel like it's saddled with too many subplots, and pacing issues, because they're withholding the Polin stuff until the very end and it almost feels like a trudge to get there at points. But it's well worth the wait -- and enough of an amazing payoff that I have this episode so high.

2. How Bright the Moon (Episode 2)

I just fucking adore this episode. Like so much. It is a romantic comedy at its finest with one of the most beautiful first kiss sequences I've ever seen. I love everything this episode chooses to be.

First of all, there's just so MUCH content for Pen and Colin, and we really get to see their FREINDSHIP at play here. (As well as Nicola Coughlan's amazing comedic chops - she shines in every scene here.) Everything between the two of them is brilliant and hilarious and awkward and funny and really, I could have watched a whole season of just this ridiculous rom-com trope-y stuff. Because they're both so good at it. Because it's just so delicious and wonderful.

We also get some of the best comedy of the show in the scene with Portia explaining sex to the Featherington sisters. And some truly great moments with Eloise, too. The rest of the side plots don't feel as heavy as they don't over shadow what's going on with Pen and Colin.

And then that last scene, the beautiful, fairy tale, fantasty-esque, shot like an Old Hollywood film first kiss that is truly breathtaking. This episode just wins all the things.

1. Tick Tock (Episode 5)

Like it was going to be anything else ;)

But no, here's my thing. It's not just the awkwardly beautiful ten minute sex scene of this episode that has me placing it on top. No, really, even if I think the mirror scene is incredible and breathtaking in it's own right.

This episode is solidly for Pen and Colin. And in a season that sometimes struggles to find good balance, this episode (and episode 2 really) are the only ones that really feel like the fully feature Pen and Colin, so it's no coincidence they end up taking the top spots.

The first half of the episode is just a continuation of the amazingness that is the ending of episode 4. The engagement announcement, the hilariously wonderful ABC Bros scene, Colin telling off Portia, Pen and Colin being so soft and sweet with each other during sex, the aftercare cuddling on the satee, the carriage ride.... it's all so, so good, I love it so much.

There's also some great stuff going on around Polin -- Kate and Anthony are back, Eloise has some great stuff, the Cressida plot is hitting its stride, the Queen is adding tension, the Lady Whistledown plot is getting turned up to eleven...

The second half of the episode is also incredibly strong, as it mostly takes place during the engagement party and the tension during that whole sequence is fantastic. All the little plot threads are getting pulled at in a way that works well being woven in together. It's GREAT drama and it really pushes this episode to be the season's finest hour.

This episode just works all the way through. It's got such lush, romantic Pen and Colin that I keep coming back to, some crazy tension built in to ramp up the drama, the characters all just so much fun to watch. This episode is amazing, and truly deserves to be at the top of the list.

And that's my list!! Thanks for reading!! :)

[the-way-astray]

The Keefe Sencen Infantilization Argument (because I've seen people say that saying he infantilizes Sophie is a bad-faith argument):

(Note: This post is a repost. I had my thoughts scattered out over a few posts, so I wanted to put them all together in one cohesive post. If you've already seen all the original posts, then aside from like two sentences being reworked and the format being better now, there's like nothing new here for you. Sorry.)

Examples of Keefe infantilizing Sophie and my explanations as to why this is infantilization and not okay:

Lodestar, chapter 4. What I originally said: “There you go, rocking the whole adorable-when-you’re-angry thing. I think that’s what I’ve missed about you the most.” Keefe infantilizes Sophie by saying she’s cute when she’s angry. She is trying to express her feelings, and all Keefe can do is be all Awwwwww. Isn’t that so cute? She’s angry! How adorable. It’s a form of invalidating someone’s feelings, by treating them like they’re just entertainment or by brushing them off like that. It’s some of the most manipulative behavior out there. It also saves Keefe from having to actually take Sophie’s feelings into account. His infantilization of her also shows up in his incessant need to protect her. It’s icky and gross, and authors should stop encouraging this behavior.

Sophie and Keefe are having a mental conversation and Keefe starts talking about Sophie's love triangle/square situation and Sophie doesn't want to talk about it. Not a fan of this, because Keefe butts into Sophie's personal business, then when she gets worked up, he heavily implies that he thinks it's cute. But this one isn't particularly bad compared to the others. Don't get me wrong, I still think this is infantilization, but the best I can say about it is it's not the worst example.

Lodestar, chapter 46. What I originally said: “You’re so cute when you worry, he told her.” More classic Keefe infantilization. He once again invalidates Sophie’s feelings by dumbing them down and acting like they’re this cute, quirky, inconsequential thing.

Sophie is obviously incredibly worried. Keefe clearly knows this. And his comment is to be like Yeah, but don't you know that makes you sooooo cute??? Like, sir.

Lodestar, chapter 65. What I originally said: “Is this going to be another one of those nights where you spend the whole time yelling at me to come home? Keefe asked, making her sit up straighter as his thoughts filled her head. Because as much as I love it when you get all feisty on me, now’s really not a good time.” God, Keefe is so subtly invalidating. He treats Sophie like she’s just his personal worry machine, not a person with valid concerns and ideas. The flippant way he talks about her worry for him makes me so mad. He takes her worry for granted and throws it back in her face, without a care for how it would affect her mental health. He brushes her off and invalidates her because he thinks he’s so much smarter than everyone else. Not to mention he calls her worry “feisty” and further infantilizes her feelings and ideas.

This one honestly stands alone. Context doesn't really do anything to it. The infantilization for all these quotes is in the quote itself, because it is invalidating to treat someone's outburst of negative emotions as entertainment. Keefe basically just says that he finds it cute when she insists he comes home because she's worried about him??? He's like, yeah, Sophie's worried about me, tearing up her mental health over me, but like. She gets feisty when that all becomes externalized and she begs me to come home! Again, it's just a way he's able to brush Sophie's feelings off and disregard her opinion entirely.

When I say Keefe acts like Sophie is his personal worry machine, I'm saying he acts like her worry only exists for his amusement. He doesn't see the deeper feelings behind that worry (or if he does, he certainly doesn't respect them), and only see it for what he sees it as: something cute and adorable.

Nightfall, chapter 24. What I originally said: “‘I know! Our little girl is growing up and getting so snarky!’ Keefe pretended to wipe his teary eyes. ‘I’ve never been so proud.’” “Our little girl” . . . that totally isn’t creepy or infantilizing at all. The way Keefe talks about Sophie here is genuinely so gross, even if it is a joke. 

This is a joke. 100%. But it's a joke that sat very poorly with me because of the way Keefe verbalizes this. The problem for me is in the quote itself, again, because I feel like saying these sorts of things constantly is just so weird.

Nightfall, chapter 32. Wouldn't say what I originally said adds anything new, so I'm just gonna move past that. The larger problem here is 100% the fact that Keefe is clearly trying to joke to deflect Sophie's anger away. My argument isn't about that. My argument is that saying that someone's anger is adorable is textbook infantilization. In context, Keefe uses it as a way to deflect or joke. But the simple act of saying that is a form of invalidation where Sophie's emotions are made out to be some silly, inconsequential thing.

Anyway, about this quote in particular. Sophie is obviously freaking out, and she is clearly and seriously trying to tell him that his joking behavior is unacceptable. Keefe responds, not by listening at all to what Sophie said or what she's feeling, but by instead saying this. This invalidates Sophie's very real feelings as well as saves Keefe from having to confront what Sophie's telling him. And yes, this is a product of his deflection, but my point here is that saying someone's anger or worry is adorable or cute when they are trying to be serious is textbook infantilization, because it treats that opinion they have as a silly, child-like tantrum. "Awwww, isn't that anger adorable???" is what you say about a tantrum-throwing toddler who just got their favorite toy taken away, not someone your age presenting a valid, serious opinion. My issue is with the statement "Your anger/worry is adorable/cute" itself, not how Keefe uses it to deflect. It also presents Keefe, subtle as it may be, as the only one with valid opinions on things because Sophie's adorable little feelings get in the way of her rationality.

And before you say Sophie calls him out on this, yes, but he doesn't change. I'm not going to talk about it at length here, but Keefe apologizes to Sophie in the Nightfall scene after his bed rest more out of a desire to make up with her than a desire to change his bad habits. You can see this because he continues to do it into Unlocked.

Nightfall, chapter 34. Again, I don't think what I originally said adds anything relevant, so I'll skip that here.

The famous scene. I do admit that Sophie calls Keefe out this time. However, as I've already said, this doesn't stick, so it hardly matter. Keefe continues with this behavior through the series and into Unlocked, where he doesn't necessarily say these things out loud, but you can see he still thinks them.

Nightfall, chapter 70. What I originally said: “‘Much as I’m enjoying this sudden overflow of adorable Foster-rage—it’s not worth it.’” Ah, more of Keefe infantilizing Sophie and invalidating her feelings. If someone finds your anger or worry “adorable” and acts like it’s this cute little quirk, then that’s never a good thing. Especially if they enjoy it. Someone who cares about you should never enjoy seeing you angry or worried.

Sophie's having a serious, key word here is serious, discussion (we'll call it a discussion, even though that's not particularly correct) with Cassius, and even though her rage isn't aimed at him this time, Keefe telling Sophie her rage is adorable when she's being serious is still dumbing down her emotions to that of a toddler throwing a tantrum, not a grown-up (at least relative to Keefe) having a very valid reason to be angry. Just because he agrees with her anger, doesn't mean he can't still infantilize her.

Flashback, chapter 1, page 12. I think what I said in my original post just about sums it up: “‘You’re so adorable when you worry. I’ve told you that, right?’” (12) Yes, you have, and saying it more doesn’t make it any less icky and gross and infantilizing. It’s like he’s dumbing Sophie down to this object who only exists to entertain him with her adowabuw wittle feewings, instead of a person with very real, very complex emotions.

Keefe fans the air, so we have physical evidence he knows exactly how worried Sophie is. And his response is to be like, so cute! So adorable! Once again, this is serious, and Keefe is acting like Sophie's worry exists only to amuse or entertain him. I don't know else to communicate that that isn't a good thing. Someone being worried usually means they have something they're worrying about, worry doesn't just manifest out of thin air for entertainment's sake. Sophie also responds poorly to his writing her off, with what and the glare and all.

(Side note: When I was looking for that quote, I found a quote where Fitz says the exact same thing, I'm talking word-for-word "adorable when you worry" stuff. Like I mentioned in my disclaimers, I'm not saying he's more right for this and I'm not letting him off the hook. It's icky when Keefe does it and it's icky when Fitz does it. But I'm solely focused on Keefe, which is why I'm not bringing that up. It's also worth it to note that Fitz doesn't say this over and over again, the way Keefe does.)

Flashback, chapter 17, page 304. I think I'm just going to copy-paste exactly what I said in my original post because it's exactly what I'm trying to say: “‘Hear that, Ro?’ he interrupted. ‘She’s giving me her serious voice.’” (304) Another example of Keefe infantilizing Sophie and dumbing her feelings down for the sake of a joke. Awwww, isn’t her serious voice so cute? She only does that when she thinks she has something important to say to us grown-ups! Awwwwwww. 

Apparently, people don't get why this is a bad thing, so: acting like someone isn't being serious when you can literally feel their emotions and know they're being serious just because you don't like what they're saying is not just invalidation, but infantilization, because you are dumbing their emotions and the complexities behind them down to that of a child attempting to be serious.

I'd also argue that this shows Keefe's true colors: he only really listens to her opinions and respects them when he agrees with them. Disagreeing with someone is all fine and good, but you can still respect the other person's opinion and not dumb it down and act like it's lesser than your own. If Keefe said "Sophie, I hear you, but I think you're wrong" (in Keefe jokester language, obviously, not word-for-word what I wrote) then I wouldn't call this infantilization, I'd call it respect. My problems arise from when Keefe acts like Sophie's opinions are stupid because Sophie is the one saying them with that adorable little pouty voice.

Flashback, chapter 21, page 355. What I originally said: “It’s always fun when you get feisty.” (355) I’ve said this about a gajillion times, but Keefe’s infantilization of Sophie is so horrific, it’s like he doesn’t care about her at all. He just sees her emotions as amusement for himself.

This is a sad scene, and Keefe has every right to be emotionally . . . off in this scene. But it still doesn't change the fact that he calls Sophie's anger "feistiness" and then says it's fun when she gets angry. You could say that's not exactly what he said, but it's likely that's what he meant given the past few quotes I've shown. Keefe has demonstrated a pattern of thinking Sophie's anger is amusing or adorable or fun. Anger is a negative emotion. When Sophie feels anger she doesn't feel good. And Keefe is like, yeah, but it's cute! Do you see how that's not the greatest thing to say? It says a lot about his internalized beliefs about Sophie, and is essentially confirmed by Unlocked. And even if that didn't represent the way he saw Sophie inside, that's still a really shitty thing to say because it still carries the invalidation.

Legacy, chapter 3, page 70. What I originally said: “‘Tell me why you have that cute little crease between your eyebrows.’” (70) You already know what I’m going to say. Keefe finding Sophie’s worry cute is textbook infantilization. But also, if he finds her worry and anger so adorable, what’s he gonna do when the Neverseen are defeated and Sophie doesn’t have as many things worrying her?

So, the crease between the eyebrows is obviously because of worry. So by saying he finds it cute, Keefe indirectly says he finds Sophie's worry cute, though I'm sure I don't have to spell that out because he's already flat out admitted he finds Sophie's worry cute several times. I'm going to sound like a broken record if I repeat what I've been saying this entire post about why this is infantilization, so instead I wanna talk about that last paragraph there. Keefe literally knows how queasy Sophie's worry can make her sometimes, and he has expressed this before, as well. So he knows exactly what Sophie's going through when she worries. And still, he acts like her worry is amusing, funny, cute, or otherwise a quirky little thing. I don't understand how Keefe can be so invalidating, having had firsthand experience with Sophie's emotions.

“But I was only half listening because she gets this cute little crinkle between her eyebrows when she’s trying to be serious, and it makes me want to reach up and smooth her forehead with my fingertip—and I’m betting she’d think I was super weird if I did that, since it’s not like she’s my . . . ” (Unlocked, very first paragraph of Keefe's diary entry, 481)

Don't have an e-book of Unlocked, unfortunately (boooooooo). So the context is that Keefe is giving us (or himself???) an intro to what he's doing here, which is writing about his drawings. He explains that Sophie gave him the idea and gives a general overview of what she said to convince him. Then he says this quote.

Here's what I said, which I stand by: I hate the way Keefe talks about Sophie. She’s just this soft, kind of ditzy, child-like sort of figure in his head. He admits that he doesn’t care what she has to say, he just cares about how adorable she looks while she says it. This is a textbook sign of a toxic relationship. You should care about what your partner/crush says, because that shows that you see them as a person, not as your personal cover model. Also “trying to be serious” paints Sophie as this impudent little child who’s trying to get the attention of the older, more experienced adults and it very much implies that Sophie is not serious, but awwww, look how cute she looks trying to be serious, isn’t it adorable? Except Keefe and Sophie are the same age. So this is another case of textbook infantilization.

Personally, I think I made it fairly clear why I think this is infantilization. Keefe did not listen to the latter half of what Sophie said because he was too busy imagining how adorable she must've looked as she said it. I don't know how to make it more clear that Keefe does not respect or care about Sophie's opinions. He did what she asked, sure, but he did not actually listen to her. Again, implying Sophie was not being serious when she was is infantilization. It takes away the weight of what Sophie is saying and makes it out to be a thing of like, Oh well, Sophie told me to, so I guess I'll humor her adorable little wishes and give it a shot, but let's get back to what's more important here, which is how cute she probably looks! I don't know how else to explain that that's not an attitude you want in someone who claims to listen to you and respect you.

Addressing some other things (Keefe calling Sophie herself cute [1], Keefe's deflection [2], Keefe praising Sophie's prowess [3], Sophie not seeming bothered [4], and The Real Problem [5]):

I don't think Keefe calling Sophie herself cute or adorable by itself is infantilization. That's just a cute, fluffy teenage crush. 100% cool with that. My problem is with Keefe dumbing Sophie's negative emotions that have complexities behind them down to something cute or inconsequential by calling them adorable. There's a quote in the diary entries where Keefe describes Sophie's blush as adorable and proceeds to describe it in vivid detail. I don't like it for personal taste reasons, but I would never argue that this is infantilization. Because. It's not. There is no dumbing down of emotions here, no shrugging off experience or maturity. There's just a kid with a crush.

As for Keefe's habit of deflecting stuff through jokes, yes, it's a flaw and yes, some of the times Keefe infantilizes Sophie, he's using it as a joke to deflect. Yes, that's the larger issue. But the point still stands that the way in which he thinks of Sophie's worry and anger is infantilization.

There are moments where Keefe talks nonstop (sometimes in a very unnatural way, in my opinion) about how powerful and amazing and brilliant and talented and spectacular Sophie is and how he respects her choices and whatnot. I don't see this as particularly contradictory to his infantilization. Keefe can dumb Sophie's emotions down to cute, inconsequential little playthings while also insisting that he thinks she's amazing and powerful. I do think he does think that she's incredibly talented, but he also invalidates or disrespects her choices because he sees her emotions as adorable and unserious. Sophie is objectively powerful and talented and smart, I'm not really sure how saying those clear facts out loud changes the fact that Keefe still sees Sophie as very juvenile in his head. He can respect her prowess and capacity for talent while still disrespecting her opinions and emotions. The two can coexist. This is why I say Keefe pedestalizes and infantilizes Sophie simultaneously.

As for saying this doesn't bother Sophie (except in that one instance where she glares at him), I'd hardly say it matters. People can be the object of toxic behavior without realizing it. Sophie doesn't really seem to care past a handful of seconds when Keefe reads her emotions without her permission (on purpose, with intention), but I think most of us would agree that that doesn't make it acceptable. And Keefe's infantile views of Sophie say more about him than they do Sophie, which is the argument I'm trying to make. My point is that Keefe sees Sophie's emotions as inconsequential little things that don't need to be taken into account. This is all mapped into how he sees her internally. Again, just because Sophie doesn't seem bothered by Keefe's comments, doesn't mean they're acceptable, especially considering it gives us a view into the way he truly sees Sophie. And if Keefe thinks of Sophie is such an invalidating way, how are we supposed to believe he'll respect her when she argues with him, instead of just writing it off as "that adorable rage"?

And last but not least (as this is literally the reason people are annoyed with Keefe, regardless of what flaw you're talking about): the infantilization isn't the problem. Not really. What the problem is is that it is never called out by the narrative and when it is, it lasts two seconds, doesn't stick, and Keefe continues with it having not learned a thing. He doesn't change, and I can give you a thousand explanations for why Keefe may be so prone to infantilizing Sophie based on his childhood, trauma, and everything else, but none of that is an excuse. And I'm certainly not a fan of the way we're constantly told that Keefe respects Sophie when he's clearly so ready to undermine her emotions or dumb them down. If you're going to have him say things like this, it should be understandable that it's not a good thing.

I think it all comes down to this: Imagine you were trying to get a very serious point across to someone or otherwise feeling very emotional over something and then you look over and the other person's reaction is like, Aw, you're so cute when you're all worked up trying to be serious! Anger so adorable! Worry so cute! I love it when you get feisty! Wouldn't you feel like they don't respect what you're saying? Is that not incredibly icky and weird?

Here is the definition of infantilization. I think it's very difficult to make an argument that Keefe is not doing this to Sophie. And if you think that's bad, oh boy, is it so. Much. Worse. In the actual Unlocked novella. It's very difficult to deny that Keefe only sees Sophie as an adorable little cute thing that amuses him when you read it. But I'll get there . . .

Anyway I'm leaving it off with this because these are the vibes I get from Keefe every time he makes an infantilizing comment about Sophie (minus the yelling, Keefe doesn't really yell):

[brain-rot-central]

Sonnet of the Lone Cardinal, Ch. 7

A/N: *Full warning: we have depictions of nail picking and a panic attack in this chapter.* Alright everyone, we gettin' into it now. This chapter is how Tav feels about Astarion and the entire situation, thus far. She also pieces together a lot about what's going on and starts planning ahead. Happy reading! Rating: Mature Word count: 3.6k Pairing: Ascended Astarion x Female Tav (DU, named) Warnings: 18+, nail picking, panic attacks, unhealthy relationship Summary: Tav returns to her room to begin preparing for the evening's event with Magdalena waiting for her at her door. Tav quickly realizes that not everything is quite as it seems.

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It's late afternoon by the time the tailor finishes the dress. He heeds Tav’s request to keep extra fabric around the waist and with the dress in hand, she returns to her room to prepare for the ball. 

As she rounds the corner, Tav is surprised to see Magdalena waiting for her by the door. The woman holds two boxes within her hands: a velvet jewelry box and a shoebox. Somewhat unsettled, Tav gives the woman a warm greeting as she ushers her inside, closing the door behind them.

As Tav rests the dress over the back of a chair, Magdalena suddenly rushes to her. “Oh, I simply adore the color!” she exclaims. Magdalena places the boxes atop the vanity and picks up the dress, holding it out before her. Light dances over the rich green hue of the satin fabric, and Magdalena is simply in awe. “It matches your eyes, my lady,” she adds, looking over her shoulder.

She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, giving a soft chuckle. “Yes,” Tav agrees shyly, “so I've been told. Astarion insisted on the color for that reason.”

“Well, the young Master has always had a keen sense of fashion. This dress will pair wonderfully with the accessories he’s chosen,” declares Magdalena with a confident nod of her head.

Raising her hands to her head, Tav gives the older woman a questioning glance. Auburn locks cascade down Tav’s shoulders as she unravels her hair tie. She takes a moment to run a hand through her hair, shaking it between her fingers. Tav tosses her hair to the other side of her face as she meets Magdalena’s eyes. “More gifts from Astarion?” she inquires, tilting her head in the direction of the boxes.

“Indeed they are,” Magdalena says, carefully laying the dress on the back of the chair. She gathers the accessory boxes and makes her way to Tav, who is now sitting on the bed. “Earrings with a matching necklace,” she explains jovially, “and a pair of shoes to complete the ensemble.”

Tav stares at the boxes and her mouth turns upwards. He means to doll me up further? she relents, mood deflating. 

Astarion knows how much she dislikes this type of thing, so why bother? The gaudy, flashy jewelry. The clothing, shoes, handbags, hats… She'd feel more at ease in a suit of armor, pulling a sword off her back. 

That's probably not the most appropriate attire for a gala, however. 

She prays Magdalena hasn't brought makeup – Tav simply loathes the feeling of her skin suffocating under layers of concealer and powder. She bites her inner lip as she continues gazing at the accessories, contemplating. 

Well, perhaps a little mascara wouldn't hurt, she concedes. Eyeliner, too. So long as her freckles remain visible, she's satisfied. 

They pepper the tops of her shoulders and her breasts, as well as stretch across the bridge of her nose. A compliment to the permanent summer tan of her complexion, and it often leaves Tav pondering her origins. Though, the thought usually fades as fast as it forms.

Astarion noticed them not long after they started their affair. The nights they'd spend in his tent often left one, or both of them, shirtless and bare from the waist down.

He traces a pattern into her back with a single digit. The pressure isn't too much, really. Yet, it's enough to draw her out of her concentration from the journal in her lap. 

‘What are you doing?’ she asks, coarsely. Curse her short temper; Tav has no reason to anger at this situation, yet she feels the embers being stoked from below.

Astarion sits behind her, having just recently fed. There's a bloodstained rag laying next to his pile of throw pillows, and a throb deep in her neck.

‘Your skin, dear,’ Astarion says while dragging a finger across her bare shoulder, ‘is entirely covered with freckles.’

Tav quirks her brow, looking over her shoulder at him. ‘You have them too, you know. Across your face. And a little on your shoulders.’ Her neck protests the movement, but she'll live.

‘So I've been told,’ he agrees, ‘but you have enough to trace patterns with.’

She doesn't answer. Tav simply chuckles and resumes writing in her journal, adjusting her posture slightly. The violent urges are subsiding. She finds comfort in the fact that he means only to appreciate her form, not turn it into a spectacle.

After a moment, Astarion asks, ‘Would you like me to stop?’

‘Of course not,’ she answers, affectionately. ‘It feels good, actually.’

Astarion smiles and resumes his tracing, now with two fingers instead of one.

Tav never realizes what he etched into her skin until much, much later. She'd already lost him, by then. As she closes her eyes, she feels the ghost of his fingers passing over her shoulder even now.

I love you.

She stands in the bedroom, lost in thought. The fingers of one hand find a hangnail on the other.

Pick.

Would he have resisted, had she realized his feelings sooner? Would she have been stronger in her efforts to stop him? Could she have saved him? 

The far-from-innocent but budding man he was becoming, just starting to see how much light there is in the world. Only to end up swallowed whole by the depths of his own despair, his own lust for power blinding him. His fear, his desire for control.

Tav begins to chew the inside of her cheek.

Pick, pick.

Ultimately… she failed him. Stood there, frozen, watching helplessly as he let himself be consumed by all he fought so hard to escape.

I'm doing this for us, too, you know, Astarion had told her. 

He destroyed himself for them. For her.

The intensity of her finger picking increases, succeeding in ripping the hangnail out from the bed. The faint scent of blood fills her nostrils and she looks down, watching a small well of crimson pools within her cuticle.

Tav should have stopped him. Should have extended a hand to him sooner. She should have been more aware of his internal struggle. Because if she did, she could have pulled him back from the edge. Told him how much she cared for the man he was. If she did, they wouldn't be in this situation. Things wouldn't be like this, and they'd be happy. They'd be together, in love, and rejoicing over becoming parents, and–

“Lady Tavaria?”

The voice is Magdalena's, and suddenly the world snaps back into focus. She doesn't remember when she veered off, but she's thankful for the redirection. 

“I'm sorry,” Tav offers as she gathers herself. She sucks the bloodied finger against her mouth, extending her opposite hand toward the woman. “May I see the jewelry box, please?” she asks.

Magdalena hesitates as though to ask a question, but places the velvet box in Tav’s hand without further discussion. Tav opens the long, rectangular box; a gasp escapes her as she looks inside.

A diamond gold tennis necklace, with a pair of matching diamond earrings, lies within. Tav rotates the box, watching intently as the gems shimmer against the candlelight. Solid white reflects off the diamonds.

They're real.

Not only are they real, but their quality is about the highest one could find.

“He… He can't expect me to wear these, can he?” Tav asks, lifting her head to Magdalena. “These cost tens of thousands of gold!” Her chest burns; an uneasiness begins to take root within her. Something feels wrong about this, but she can't quite place her finger on why.

“I believe he does,” answers Magdalena, seemingly unbothered. She places the shoebox next to Tav, removing the lid. “I had a peak at everything before coming in,” she admits with a short laugh. “Lord Ancunín truly has such wonderful taste.”

The shoes are golden in color with a slight sparkle. Not too blinding, but it's noticeable when held up to the light. There are no elaborate straps or designs; they're a simple pair of slip-on dress shoes with a modest heel, no higher than two inches.

“Doesn't want me to be taller than him, does he?” Tav remarks between a chuckle of her own, desperate to hide some of the building tension. Both her and Magdalena exchange a strained smile as Tav reaches into the shoebox, grabbing a single shoe. She then takes the jewelry box with her opposite hand and heads to the mirror over the vanity.

The uneasiness in her chest is beginning to make sense. Why all of this seems… tainted. Almost soul-less. This should bring her insurmountable amounts of joy, to have someone treat her so well. But as she opens the jewelry box and pulls out the tennis necklace, placing it to her chest, she understands.

‘He's trying to buy my affections.’

Instead of having the difficult conversation about what happened the evening before, Astarion means to express all he cannot say through lavish gifts. It all feels rather… cheap, to Tav. A cop-out. Disrespectful, even, that she isn't worth the effort of having such a heavy conversation.

However, it dawns on her that Astarion may not be capable of having that discussion with her. That he lacks the emotional competency to navigate those feelings appropriately. So, instead, he places those feelings into gifts or actions, constantly skirting around vulnerability of any kind.

Her heart falls a bit deeper in her chest, and she rests the jewelry and the shoe on the vanity before turning to Magdalena. “They're all rather lovely,” Tav remarks, painting her best smile widely across her face.

The servant smirks and narrows her gaze. She clasps her hands over her lower abdomen, and says, “Yet something still troubles you?”

The metaphorical weight on her chest is crushing, and Tav contemplates expressing all in that very moment. Yet, a quick flash of her memory reminds her of Astarion's influence over the woman. 

“These past few days have given me much to consider,” Tav expresses, modestly. She longs for the ability to speak plainly, but knows better than to do so here. Not when Astarion has such strong influence over this woman.

Almost as expected, Magdalena's eyes glow, signaling her communing with Astarion. The light fades just as quickly as it appeared, and Magdalena then walks toward the washroom. “I’m sure you have much to discuss with Lord Ancunín,” she offers in acknowledgement. Yet, she’s unphased by Tav’s admission, quickly brushing it off as she says, “But right now, we absolutely must get you ready!”

The woman's aloofness is baffling to Tav. It's inconsistent with her prior behavior. But as Tav settles her gaze on Magdalena’s face, she finds the maid’s signature smile on display. 

And like the spark of a flame igniting, the puzzle pieces finally come together. Her stomach sinks. Her heart races.

He instructed Magdalena to drop the matter. 

He directed Magdalena to continue getting her ready.

Magdalena's kindness is a veil, subject to Astarion's whims. She will be as cold or as warm as Astarion commands. None of this is honest. As long as she stays within the manor, Tav will never be free. She will always be under Astarion's watchful gaze, directly or through surrogate means.

He will always know everything.

The gears in her head begin turning, almost on pure instinct. As if searching through an archive, Tav finally settles on something to challenge her current mindset.

‘But what is his greatest weakness?’ she asks herself.

“Of course,” Tav answers, sullenly, “though if you don't mind, I'd like to prepare on my own.” She looks intently at Magdalena.

‘His fear.’

Fear of the unknown, of lack of control. Fear that she will leave, reject him, despite all he's done thus far.

Tav knows Astarion; understands his heart as if it's a mirror image of her own. Fear drives almost everything he does, including his current treatment of her. It's an overcompensation for all he cannot do. Words he can never express.

The maid pauses for a brief moment, contemplating Tav’s request. Tav expects Magdalena's eyes to glow once again, but to her surprise, they never do. If Magdalena did speak with Astarion again, it was so subtle that she missed it. Her face only holds the stain of disappointment.

“As you wish, Lady Tavaria,” Magdalena says with a hint of uncertainty. “I'll be here to assist, have you any need of me.” She looks back toward Tav, taking a small bow, then exits the small bedroom.

As soon as Tav hears the door click shut, she sighs, clasping a hand over her chest. Her heart beats wildly against her ribcage, the adrenaline finally taking over. She can only remain stoic for so long before the panic sets in.

The cracks in her foundation are starting to grow, wider and fatter. The countdown to the collapse has begun.

Tav isn't being dishonest. These last few days have given her too much to consider. In fact, it's more like the last few weeks that have her head spinning. Months, even.

Astarion returning was enough to throw her off-kilter. All the effort she put in trying to right herself after the end of their relationship. The gaping wound it left within her chest, the scar still aching even now. 

But a few months of passion softened that scar and she found herself letting him back in, against her better judgment. She became accustomed to being deceitful when asked about her love life in order to hide her shame, only to fall pregnant with a child that could spell the ruin of all of Faerûn, if her Father demands it.

Tav rushes to the washroom, her throat tightening. Heat creeps up her face and her vision narrows. She sparks the flame to the oil lamp above the mirror and immediately opens the faucet. Gathering cold water in her palms, Tav splashes the flushed skin of her face. The water acts as a soothing balm, her mouth hanging open as she drags a hand down the front of her face.

It's not like her to play the fool for anyone. She’s usually the one with answers to everything. She's the fearless leader. She's in command.

Icy cold water drips from her brows, rolling down her cheeks, and she shuts off the water. As it drips onto her chest, she feels her heartbeat slowing.

But Astarion is different. She can hold him, but like a feral alley cat, he's skittish. Never staying in one place for too long. Divulging only choice pieces of a story to spin the type of narrative he wants to put forth. He wears so many different faces that it's hard to ascertain which is truly his. And it has her dipping her hands into the pot deeper each time, desperate to reach the bottom she knows exists.

Especially now.

Tav stares at herself in the mirror, her reflection looking back. Bags sit heavy under her eyes; a testament to her exhaustion. The bruise on her neck is better, though still visible up close. 

There was a time before all of this when she could easily admit to her beauty. Probably not winning any pageants, but she could hold her own just fine. Use it to her advantage, if the situation called for it. 

Tav doesn't remember much from before the Nautiloid, but she does see the drastic difference in her appearance now. Her hair is longer. Her bangs have grown out, the ringlets not as tight. Tav leans toward the mirror and tilts her head, wincing. She watches as crow's feet appear within the creases of her eyes.

She looks… older. Almost unrecognizable.

The Illithid War either aged her, or the child in her belly isn't shying away from having their fill. Which, given their paternity, is highly likely.

Tav stands straight, raising her hands to her head. She sections a part of her hair in the front and folds it over her forehead, replicating the bangs she had when they'd all first met. She sighs.

There's very little she can do about the passage of time. She's human, and is bound to show signs of aging at this point in her life. If asked, Tav would say she's in her late twenties, or perhaps even her early thirties. That part of her memory hasn't fully returned to her, though she can say with certainty that she's somewhere around that age.

The funny thing about time, she's learned, is that time marches ever forward to the beat of its own drum. There's little point in fighting it. All anyone can ever do is try their best to keep up.

Letting her hair fall back into place, Tav opens the cabinet behind the mirror. It's filled with various small dropper bottles, but on the middle shelf lay a pair of steel scissors. Her mouth shifts into a curious pout as she contemplates the shears. Tav closes the medicine cabinet, once again sectioning her hair and observing herself in the mirror.

In a split decision, she agrees to cut her hair. 

It's a risk, being so close to the event. But she cares not – she hears the direction as clear as someone's voice in her ear. And she follows the compulsion.

Tav dips her head into the sink basin and turns on the spout again. She wets the front of her hair, then parts it down the middle. Turning off the faucet, Tav then retrieves the scissors from the cabinet, slowly bringing them to her hair.

And with a breath, she begins to cut.

Strands of hair fall freely into the sink basin. She cuts perpendicular, creating a curtain-like effect. As she descends, Tav blends the bangs into the rest of her hair with face-framing layers.

She's suddenly met with a familiar face, of a woman she's seen before. One that she’s come to know very well. The lone warrior who faced countless foes without question, putting them to the sword and wearing their blood as ritualistic war paint.

The wicked child of Bhaal; a harbinger of murder.

A woman who fears no one.

Shaking out her hair, Tav smiles. A simple haircut isn’t enough to rid her of the deep ache in her chest, but it certainly soothes the burn. She lifts her face again, focusing her attention to her neck. The mark left by Astarion is fading, though it still screams loudly. Still boasts ownership, possession, of her.

Her stomach twists at the sight.

Concealer and foundation have their places, too, she realizes and she's ever grateful for their existence, at this moment.

She turns to the tub and opens the valve. Clean water flows endlessly into the basin and almost instantly, she's mesmerized. 

The palace hosts riches, plumbing, and an endless supply of fresh food. Servants who wait on you hand and foot, and is home to one of the most handsome bachelors in Baldur's Gate.

She could have everything, should she choose to stay here. She would never have to work again, never do a single thing for herself ever again.

But at what price? How much of a blind eye would she need to turn? 

Would it be expected of her to be seen and never heard? Is she to stand as a trophy on Astarion's arm, never to speak her mind again? Does he seek to extinguish her flame so he shines brightest?

The sound of water pounds loudly in her ears.

She would have everything, yes… but nothing that she wants. Her choices would be dictated solely by Astarion, as they are for Magdalena. As they are for every servant of the manor.

Exactly as he wants it.

She regains focus, shaking her head some, and reaches to shut off the tub’s valve. 

Astarion has changed, she realizes. He boasts an air of confidence, of a debonair. But within, he's frail. He now relies on the faux control that comes from the bottom of a wine bottle, forever a drink in hand. Without it, he's unstable. Out of place. She saw proof of it down in the crypts as his body began to warp before her eyes.

Awkward and struggling. He's desperate to hide that side of him – how the ascension may have done more than grant him insurmountable power. Of all that lay behind the mask he wears.

Quickly stripping herself of her garments, Tav steps into the tub. She lowers herself gently into the water and leans against the wall of the tub. Her hands rest over her stomach, rubbing up and down over the soft bump that grows with each passing day. The tension bleeds from her muscles as she gives into the warm embrace of the water.

Tav knows what needs to be done. 

She'll play along this evening. Act the part of the trophy wife, the bed warmer, the painted doll. She'll be as alluring as possible; even fuck him, if that's what he wants. Though, it’d be dishonest to say she doesn't want that, too.

Yet… she could always just leave. Avoid this entire ordeal. 

Astarion isn't keeping her here. In fact, he's left that as an option knowing she'd be less likely to entertain it, should he give it to her freely. It's a display of reverse psychology. An illusion of choice.

Once she speaks with Wyll, she'll be more confident in her decision. Tav knows the likely outcome is to leave, but perhaps her conversation with Wyll tonight reveals information she can use toward confronting Astarion directly. Hopefully she can drive some sense into that dastardly head of his.

And perhaps, depending on how their conversation goes… she’ll finally tell him about their child.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for choosing to spend Christmas with my girlfriend instead of my family?

I (22M) have been dating my current girlfriend H (22F) for a little over 5 months now. We met in college and were friends, hooked up a few times during school, but we weren't official until July this year. We don't live together, we currently live in different cities in the same state, and we see each other just about every weekend. Her family really likes me and always tells me how happy I make her.

Last weekend (the weekend before Christmas weekend, for context), while I was visiting her and her family, they were telling me about some sort of family tradition they have each Christmas, and they would really like me to be there if I didn't have any plans. I accepted immediately as I felt it was a good thing to do for H. Her entire extended family lives in her city, and H really wanted to introduce me to everyone since I wasn't able to be with her on Thanksgiving and she was upset (I was traveling to visit my extended family out of state).

Here is where I may be the AH. I originally had plans with my family for Christmas (meaning my parents and my twin sister). When I told my family that plans have changed and I'd be spending Christmas with H instead of them, they didn't take it well. Mostly my mother. I've heard my mother cuss at me almost every day since I broke the news. My sister and father didn't seem to be as upset, or at least they weren't verbally making it known to me, but I could tell they're disappointed every time I talked to them about Christmas.

I found out from my father today that my sister is more hurt about me not being there than she's been showing. She also lives away from home but in the same city, and apparently when she visited for dinner last night, she started sobbing about how selfish I'm being about "choosing a girl he hasn't even been dating for that long over family" and how "do our Christmas family traditions not matter to him anymore?" I thought my sister liked H, they seemed to get along well. My sister isn't replying to any of my messages and has canceled our usual gaming sessions until at least after the holidays. My father said that while he will support my choice, changing plans on such short noticed wasn't smart.

I feel bad about making my sister cry. I've been talking to my friends about it and while some are supporting me, most are saying I made an AH choice and I'm thinking with my dick especially because of the short amount of time we've been dating. One of them said that spending holidays with your GF's family is for long term relationships. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[0bees-knees0]

(One sided! Satan x Gn!Mc/reader)

Also small A/N( I'll probably have another at the end lmao 😭) this MC is a reader and the whole little fic sort of pertains to that. You can still read this even if that's not your forte ofc, but I thought I would leave a note bc some ppl don't wanna read about an Mc that's nothing like them 😅. Also Mc in this fic does NOT crack the spine of their books.(This is relevant I promise) And personally I don't either but to each their own.

Where Satan casually walks into the library at RAD, and sees you the book that you're reading and he is just completely obsessed with the sight, forgetting all about his original reason for entering the library in the first place. It looks so interesting you look so interesting. He sits and watches your facial expressions to see what you think of it. You notice him after some time, how could you not I mean he's literally just staring at you, and when you do realize that he isn't spaced out or anything you decide to see what was up.

"...Satan?"

"...yes Mc?"

"i-is there a reason that your staring at me so aggressively? Did I do something to annoy you?"

What?! The look on his face in that moment was absolutely unreadable. He was so red. He had been caught staring at you for crying out loud! But he also looked kinda shocked or offended. How in the world could you possibly think you could do anything to annoy him?! (It definitely isnt like he has a serious case of rbf or anything!) He was appalled, though he tried his best to hide it.

"what?! I-i...um no. I was just... interested in the book you were reading. I didn't want to interrupt however so I just...kinda stood here."

Yes! That was it! That was most definitely why he was there, no particular fascinating human or anything, and he had to make sure you knew that this was his only reason. Nothing else! Goodness, when did you start becoming so important to him that he was out here stuttering up excuses, becoming all red and shy, just from being around you? He didn't know but what he did know was that his sorry excuse for an explanation did seem to take hold in your mind and that was all that mattered.

"oh the book! It's actually one of my favorites...I've probably read it more times than I can count! Do you wanna read it? I can lend it to you for a few days."

Wow. Your book. Your favorite book, so good that you've read it countless amounts of times, and you're going to lend it to him?? He was ecstatic.

"...yes that would be good. I want to know if it's actually worth reading as many times as you say it is."

Of course he couldn't tell you or show you how ecstatic he was, that would blow his cover. If it wasn't blown already thanks to the recent display of events.

Oh how he wished he could just tell you how he felt for you. Really, there was nothing stopping him, just himself and his thoughts, his fears. Maybe he might do something cheesy like write his opinion on the book, as well as an invitation to hang out together(if you could call this hanging out) again like a date like how you were now. Yes maybe, he'll even write his feelings to you right then and there on the paper, in his pretty handwriting it has to be pretty for you, and then fold it and put it in the back of the book.

"it really is that good, I think you'll really like it Satan, here just bring it back to me in like...three days? Is that enough time?"

He's so happy he might burst. So he just nods to keep his cool. He is going to learn so much about you, and you might talk to him even more than you already have just because of this book. you place the book in his hands that he is willing to stop shaking and tell him that you have somewhere to be.

Three days come and go. He read the entire book on the night you gave it to him, and did research on everything involving the book the next day. The book itself was pretty good, though he really wanted to know why it was your favorite. He thinks there is probably some reason in your mind that he can't read on a page that will help him understand, but in order to get that he'd have to actually ask you. He spends the last day trying to decide whether he should write the letter or not. He decided no, that if he really wants to go on a date hang out with you, then he should ask you in person. He didn't want you to think he was a coward.

He shows up at your door a few hours after school, book in hand. You open the door and happily invite him in. He hands you the book and immediately starts talking about it and telling you his opinion, in hopes that maybe you would talk to him about your thoughts as well. Normally you would have, so happy to have someone to discuss your favorite book with, except this time is different. Something is off and Satan can tell, though he doesn't know what.

"hey Satan?"

" yes Mc"

"can I ask you a question?"

A question? Of course, you can ask him anything! And he tells you as much.

"why did you break the spine of the book? It's my only copy and well...it's not that big of a deal I guess, and it does make it easier to read I suppose..."

You keep talking, trying to justify his actions but all he can think about is what you just said. He can't believe it! He always breaks the spines in all of his books before he reads them. He didn't think of anything different, doing the same to yours. He was trying so hard to be considerate and careful with the book, even keeping the bookmark you left in there in its place, careful not to dog ear any pages(another bad habit of his).

He's so upset with himself. You're never going to let him borrow anything from you ever again. How long will you hate him for? He wasn't sure but he was ready to suffer in silence for his actions despite how upset it will leave him, and he will probably never talk to any-

"Satan?" You call for him for the 5th time, trying to regain his attention.

"...h-how long are you going to hate me for?" He asks the question before he can think rationally about it. You seem to have that effect on him.

However, when you burst into laughter he is confused.

"hate you? Satan it's just a book!" You say through your laughing spells.

"but it's your favorite..."

"I can just get another one, in fact I was thinking of going to the bookstore anyways."

"then let me come with you and pay for it! As an apology for ruining your first one." You smile and nod and he swears his stomach could qualify for the Olympics the way it's flipping and turning. You tell him to meet you outside of the HoL in 30 minutes and he gets there 10 minutes early (not that he'd ever tell you that) and when you meet him you smile and wave. He tries so hard not to look behind him to see who you're waving at, not fully trusting that it's him.

"You know, I've never really been to this bookstore before, so you'll have to show me around." You say to him as you both walk in the bookstore in front of you. As it turned out for Satan, he didn't even have to ask you on a date to hang out again, because here you are now. One of his favorite places, getting to talk about one of his favorite things, with one of his favorite people. He had to try so hard to keep his cool.

You both ended up getting a few books, and obviously when you got to the checkout you weren't allowed to pay a grim. Although you didn't mind paying, you also didn't protest(free books am I right?) and as you're walking back you guys talk about the books you got. When you find yourself at the door to your room that Satan had walked you back to(like the true gentleman he is) you say your goodbyes.

"this was super fun Satan. I really appreciate it! We really should hang out more, I like the way you think about things, and I also like your taste in books."

And he thinks that if he were killed right then, he would be okay with that. You tell him that there is a movie to the book you let him borrow, and ask him if he would want to watch it with you one day. And once again he is reeling.

"Uh...yeah I mean, I guess I could possibly find the time for that. I'll need you to tell me when though so I can check my schedule" he absolutely has nothing to do and if he does he will reschedule it for as long as he needs to if it means another date hanging out with you again. He says his goodbyes and heads back to his room.

He thinks to himself that he would love to read another one of the books that you like or continue the discussion from the last time.

As long as he doesn't break the spine again of course.

A/N: hey guys had this in the drafts for a good zillion years but I finally decided to get it done yay! I hope you enjoy even though it's one sided lmao. I didn't say earlier but this is set in like the first few weeks or so once mc gets to the devildom so they're not great friends with everyone yet. Also was thinking about making a pt.2 where Satan confesses but idk if anyone would be interested 😭 if I did it would probably be another eon or two before I publish it 😅😅😅 but please give me your thoughts, as this is one of the first really big things I've wrote on this acc. Anyway that's all I think thanks for reading!!

[jazeswhbvault]

Glad to see you open request again cuz I've just came up with a fun and silly idea :)

So you know the MC in WHB is originally Korean right? That makes me wonder how the kings (+ any characters you like) would react to MC asks them for a trip to Earth with them so they can go to her/his favorite K-Pop idols' concerts together. I think some of them would love to share the fun and even enjoy the chaotic atmosphere 😄

Hope you accept my request. Have a great day! 🫶🏻

Hi anon! I know it's been a while since I've been over here on this blog, but it's bittersweet to be over here. And oo there was an ATEEZ tour just recently I think? A couple moots of mine went and they had a lot of fun so this should be cute to talk about with the bois.

Kings

Satan's always wanted to go to a concert, there are a couple on Gehenna but they don't always last so long before everyone gets too drunk/rowdy to continue. When MC invites him to the local K-pop concert that's in town he accepts. Thankfully, everyone is dressed up so he doesn't have to really change how he looks and everyone thinks the horns are just cosplay. MC picked good seats, and the concert starts and the crowd starts going wild. Satan watches, intrigued by the band's uniformed movements and outfits and a how the girls in the crowd scream every time there's a bit of fan service. There was a point....where he has an idea to go up on stage and join in, but yeah not happening when MC grabs him by the collar and forces him to stay put.

Well....going to a K-pop concert with Mammon is truly the VIP experience. He has his own boy group in Tartaros so he's familiar. He claims that's where humans got the idea from anyway. He buys out an entire section of the venue for him and MC and any friends they want to bring. it's a good thing he did buy out the section and it's balcony seating because no one would be able to see over him otherwise. Drinks, snacks, MC has it all. Mammon doesn't react much but he's happy to see that his Master is having so much he doesn't really care if he feels the music is a bit of a "copy" to his group.

If there's a local tour happening, Beelzebub is the devil to ask to travel to every single one with MC. He has no issues booking hotels, no flights because he can just "poof" them there, and it doesn't matter what seats they get at the venue because he's not going to stay in the section anyway. It's odd how no one seems to challenge him when he pulls MC through the crowd to get to the front, or somehow the two end up backstage and no one questions it. Perhaps that's just Beel's magic. But also he finds it intriguing to just travel, listen to good human music and have fun with his favorite human.

At first, asking Leviathan was like pulling teeth. Why would he want to go watch a bunch of humans that MC possibly finds attractive dance and sing across a stage and listen to a bunch of screaming from others who also found these humans attractive. They possibly can't be that entertaining. He ends up going anyway, but it doesn't go quite as what MC thought. Not only did they have to leave the venue due to the chaos that was caused by Levi arriving, but the K-pop group performing literally tried to recruit him and the manager was chasing them down for a few blocks. Let's just say, that Levi's jealous energy leaked onto everyone, and the fans literally began to fight each other and some tried to claw towards Levi thinking he was part of the group. He was amused, MC...was not lol

Lucifer isn't the one for crowds. If he does go to a concert with MC, he requests that they get the seats furthest away from people. Also because he can't exactly hide his bloodied wings that well, sitting in front of someone would a bit grisly. MC picks the best seats where they won't be disturbed even if they have to pay more to get them. But once the concert starts he seems a bit uncomfortable, so MC tries their best to get him to enjoy it with them the best they can. Eventually he does smile and says he enjoyed spending time with them, but it's best that he does it at home next go around.

Belphegor didn't even show up. He rolled the dice, it came up as an odd number so he laid back down in bed and said "better luck next time." Beleth didn't see a smoking section at the venue so he declined respectfully. Gusion isn't really the one for it, and Bathin is missing. Oddly, it's Agares that agrees to accompany MC. He finds the K-pop idols interesting, while he's peeling an orange and enjoying some fine liquor from the bar. It's a very different experience going with this devil, but hey it beats having paid for two tickets and going alone! Plus, a lot of compliments were thrown MC's way saying that Agares looks like a sexy sugar daddy. He also seems to appreciate the compliments, although MC had to explain to him exactly what the phrase means.

Nobles

Paimon and Eligos bother MC to go as a group. These two are already planning outfits, Eligos has eaten and packed snacks to sneak inside. Paimon is best sassing any rude fans that push MC or say something weird about their outfit. Eligos brought cash so he's of course paying for most of the merch, drinks, everything. Best seats, meet and greet, tons of photos. MC pretty much had a blast from the beginning of planning the trip all the way until coming back to Hell again.

Belial is another devil to accompany MC to a concert. I mean it's his entire thing to do this stuff. He leaves Jjyu with Ppyong so there isn't someone yelling out insults the entire time, and he wears his best outfit and brings glow sticks to cheer since he can't use his voice to show appreciation. The music has Belial in a trance, and he's even dancing and smiling. MC is having just as much fun and it's nothing but good vibes with Belial even if he can't vocally express his excitement.

Did I mention? That Amon would be a perfect devil to ask to go with to a concert? He already dresses the part, he's got the cool laid back energy, and he's totally boyfriend coded when he links arms/holds hands with MC if he feels someone is trying to hit on him while they're standing in line or defends them if someone is trying to skip the line. Now, when it comes to music, Amon may be a bit picky, but he's spending time with MC. To him this is the most fun he's had while not dealing with the day to day mess of Avisos. He gets to unwind and be himself for once. Plus he found a cute keychain he bought for Beel as a gift.

[coraniaid]

buffy/faith for the ask game

(Reverse unpopular opinions)

Easily my favorite Buffy ship and one of my favorites in any work of fiction. I think the main reasons it works so well for me are:

The way it resonates so strongly with what's going on in the rest of the show the season Faith arrives. I mean, Buffy comes out to her mother (as a Slayer), which is treated by the show as ... well, as Buffy coming out ("it's because you didn't have a strong father figure, isn't it?" / "have you tried ... not being a Slayer?" / "I've tried to march in the Slayer Pride Parade...") and a handful of episodes later Buffy meets another girl who is also a Slayer and who she starts spending a lot of time with (because they have a connection -- "it's kind of a Slayer thing" -- which she doesn't have with her other, non-Slayer friends). And while they're busy patrolling cemeteries and looking for vampires every night, this other Slayer is keen to (1) talk to Buffy about sex and quiz her on her love life; (2) repeatedly tell her that "all men are beasts" and "losers" who can't be trusted; (3) suggest that Buffy should be more open to having sex with the people she spends her nights hunting vampires with (like ... who, Faith?); and (4) is delighted when Buffy breaks up with her boyfriend (and later furious when she gets back together with her previous ex) and immediately suggests that she could replace him ("You're still going to that dance, right? [...] Why don't we go together?"). If this was deliberately laying the ground work for an explicitly romantic arc, it would feel pretty heavy-handed. The fact that it apparently wasn't (at least not on the part of the showrunner or of most of the writers) almost makes it work better, in some ways.

The way that Faith is, from the very beginning, very deliberately written as a foil for Buffy, a person Buffy might have been if things went just a little differently in her life -- because she goes through things very much like things the audience has already seen Buffy go though (living alone in a small place in a strange town with no friends all season the way Buffy did in Anne, panicking and starting to pack to run away in Faith, Hope & Trick in the same way Buffy was accused of doing just the episode before, killing a person the way Buffy thought she had in Season 2's Ted, the way her fear of Kakistos mirrors Buffy's fear of the Master in When She Was Bad) and because she is so aware of the fact that she's always being compared to Buffy and coming up short, either by other people or herself ("you get the Mom, you get the Watcher ... what do I get?") it's very easy to tie Faith's arc across the show back to Buffy and to her feelings about Buffy. Faith wanting Buffy to accept her becomes Faith wanting this idealized version of herself to forgive her failings. And likewise Buffy recriprocating Faith's feelings and admitting to herself that she is attracted to Faith becomes Buffy accepting that Faith (and the things she represents) really are an integral part of Buffy herself; that Faith isn't entirely wrong when she says that Buffy enjoys being a Slayer and that being a Slayer is something she should be proud of (or, again, being "a Slayer").

Apparently this wasn't the original plan for the character (if there ever was anything like an 'original plan'), but the fact Faith's arc in Season 3 so clearly mirrors Angel's in Season 2 -- and the fact she is so very weird about Angel all season (and that Buffy is equally weird about how attracted to Faith she just keeps insisting Angel must be) just naturally suggests that Faith might have a similiar role to Angel in the narrative beyond just the circumstances of her betrayal of (and later not-quite-being-killed by) Buffy. And Angel is -- for the first three seasons of the show at least -- primarily cast in the role of Buffy's doomed tragic love interest who she has to (metaphorically) kill but will later be reunited with. Which makes Faith ... well, something.

Even if not all the writers were on board, the fact that Eliza Dushku was deliberately playing Faith as attracted to Buffy (and that SMG was playing Buffy as alternately frustrated by and protective of and tempted by Faith) gives their scenes together a chemistry that I don't think most of Buffy's (or Buffy's) canon relationships ever managed. Whether that's the Amends porch scene or Buffy kissing Faith in the hospital in Graduation Day or any and all of their various fights across the show. And those fight scenes are all great, which is another thing I love about the ship: is it really a proper enemies-to-lovers arc if one of the people in it hasn't tried to kill the other one and left them in a coma for months?

Faith's return to Buffy in the last five epsiodes of the show is one of the last season's saving graces, and it helps that by this point the writers definitely seemed to be playing up the ship deliberately ("Willow said you needed me: didn't give it a lot of thought" / "Defensiveness and weird mixed signals ... I've got Faith for that" / "Deep down you've always wanted Buffy to accept you. To love you." / "It feels like it's mine ... I guess that means it's yours"). Even without ever being canon and without wandering what happens post-Chosen, it feels like there's a real narrative arc to their relationship, from their initially rocky start through to "just good friends" to bitter enemies through to Faith seeking (and finding) some measure of redemption and Buffy cautiously letting her back into her life. Faith isn't in the show much (or even mentioned in the show in most episodes), but it feels like she has a genuinely meaningful connection to Buffy that most characters who appeaer in less than a season's worth of episodes can't manage.

The thing that made the ship work for me, rewatching the show after several years back in 2020, is the fact that Faith is -- even at her worst -- incredibly sympathetic precisely because she is such a loser and hates herself so much. She boasts about being a great actor despite the fact we see her awkwardly telling the sort of transparent lies that ... well, normally only Buffy manages (compare "There's this big party ..." in Amends to Buffy trying to tell her old crush Ford that "there was a cat ... and then there was another cat, and they were fighting"), she wants people to think she's cool so badly but only manages to fool Xander and Willow, she tries to act as though she's happy without friends but we only ever see her alone sitting watching old tv shows or lying listlessly on her bed, she insists she doesn't need a Watcher and "has a problem with authority figures" but she is so openly desperate for any sort of parental guidance in her life that she sides with first Mrs Post then the Mayor. She ties Buffy's mom up so she can have someone to listen to how sad she is that Buffy's moved on to a new guy in college and "dumped" her. The scene in the church in Who Are You? where Faith-as-Buffy furiously attacks Buffy-as-Faith while screaming through tears that she's "nothing ... disgusting ... murderous bitch" is, I think, a strong contendor for the best scene the show ever produced.

As Doug Petrie said, the reason Faith works as a character -- and the reason that Buffy/Faith works as a ship -- is that Faith is incredibly unhappy. If Faith was the cool loner she tries to pass herself off as -- and which some of the fandom seems to think she is -- the ship wouldn't be nearly as compelling to me. Faith isn't just the part of Buffy who loves Slaying and pushes back when other people give her orders, and she's not just another verison of Angelus. She's the part of Buffy from Becoming who lost everything and ran away from home, only unlike Buffy she never got to go home again. As Angel asked Buffy in that episode: "no friends, no hope ... take that away, what's left?". Well, Faith is what's left. Of course Buffy would see herself in Faith, right from the beginning. Of course Buffy would want to protect her. As Buffy (Sunnydale Class Protector 1999) tells Angel, Faith is in pain ... she's somebody who "some people ... protective-type people" are naturally drawn to. The show is very consistent about the fact that Buffy's type is friendless losers who look good in leather and can fight alongside her in battle (but not quite as well, so she can protect them and look after them when they're hurt). And what bigger loser in the show is there than Faith?

[sherwood-scribblings]

Sunrise on the Reaping theories + thoughts so far (pt 1)

here's a collection of the most likely and most interesting head-canons and stuff I've seen, both fandom-made and my own

NOT MINE BUT EXPANDED & CONNECTED BY ME:

• Tigress pov, as an audience member, maybe she's Haymitch's designer

• we got a tribute pov, a mentor pov, now we could get an audience pov because of the themes of propaganda she emphasizes... we could also get multi pov if she wants to do smth crazy and appease all fans

• Unreliable narrator, perhaps screwing with the reader's head on what actually happened in the games, capitol editing footage out

• Perhaps Tigress observes the games and originally starts off oblivious to the truth but the more she watches and helps Haymitch the more she begins to see the truth, and so the capitol punishes both her and Haymitch for it

• Lucy Gray is midnight, Haymitch/Maysilee is sunrise, Katniss/Peeta is sunset (symbolic of the progression of the games. Lucy Gray wiped out and forgotten, Haymitch the escaped glimmering sliver of change, Katniss the blazing fire and finale)

• Maysilee wore the mockingjay pin in the arena but the capitol edited it out of all the footage

• Themes of light vs dark, truth vs lies, the audience starts out unaware and conflicted but comes to see how things really are

• Katniss parents could appear??? Maybe we'll see Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen fall in love??

MY THEORIES + THOUGHTS:

• (canon) The arena is an illusion. Flowers, water, fruit, mountains, animals. It's beautiful, heavenly, too good to be true, it doesn't seem real... well, it's not real. Everything seems normal and like you know what it is, but the Entire Setting is actually poisonous and deadly. JUST like the theme of propaganda and lies, she says the book is about. The arena itself is a meta layer to things not being as they appear.

• the cover will have a mockingjay and a sunrise or sun-flare, gold against purple

• the "sunrise" in the title is symbolism, for a person and a theme, likely symbolic of Maysilee Donner because of her kindness and humanity and spirit casting light in the face of violence and war (the reaping). A light the capitol would've snuffed out, to hide the truth. (I have a whole essay on this + maysilee's importance pls check my feed)

• Maysilee is the real mockingjay, and very important, not just a random dead background character who passed down the pin to Katniss. We know how Collins' brain works. Look at TBOSAS. Look at how she foreshadowed Lucy Gray as early as the first book. 

• the mockingjay isn't just one person, but a symbol of resistance and goodness and freedom, that anyone can take on as a mantle, an idea rather than tied to one thing or person. Lucy Gray, Rue, Katniss, and likely Maysilee.

• a rebellion almost happened with the mockingjay pin and Maysilee and Haymitch and perhaps Tigress seeing the truth last minute, but the capitol snuffed it out and destroyed all the evidence of such a thing ever happening, including Haymitch's family and punishing Tigress, leading Panem and the readers themselves in the dark and at peace. Maysilee is the warm sun to bring the spark of a fire, her pin symbolically passes onto Katniss through her niece, thus passing on the resistance and legacy. ....symbolic of how the mockingjay had the will to survive, even when it was destroyed and wiped out.... It escaped and became stronger in the face of its enemies....

• ...for all we know, Katniss' dad didn't die in a coal mining accident, but perhaps was a rebel himself and the capitol planted explosions in the mines to get rid of him. we can't just blindly trust the narrative.

• If Haysilee is a parallel to Everlark, what if Haymitch's girlfriend is a Gale figure? This isn't just because I'm a haysilee shipper I'm built to be a multishipper I'm FIGHTING not to be biased I'm openminded, but i feel the haysilee content in my bones and it's definitely a possibility

• the capitol (and Snow) believes that humanity is vile, that humans will always give into instinct and fend for themselves, that you can't trust or love or anyone lest it lead to your downfall. So... If Ballad was about humanity's corruption, perhaps Reaping is about humanity's goodness (the bond between Haymitch and Maysilee, Tigress seeing the truth despite being a capitol/audience member, perhaps the Capitol cut the footage of that bond to prevent a rebellion like Everlark's relationship later induces) 

• Most people are saying this book will be super depressing and focused on the capitol's propaganda succeeding to stop a rebellion, and I do agree, but, that doesn't cancel out highlighting themes of goodness and friendship but rather enhances them. Perhaps that very thing is what we're missing from the footage, what the capitol succeeded in covering up, raw humanity being the thing that defies their propaganda the most, and punished anyone who acted otherwise (Haymitch, Tigress...)

PART 2 IS COMING SOON to address the fandom discourse with my personal thoughts on whether this book will be about Haymitch and if we need more District 12.

and why Collins would logically choose to tell this story (regardless of pov because that could be anything at this point she'll upset someone either way)