#aventurine meta

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[taxed-up-trotter]

dr simptio anyways isnt aventurines boss form wife material

[mynabirb]

Aeons

[eatingfireflies]

I was on the hoyolab app doing my check-in and saw someone asking why Sunday suddenly started talking about the way Aventurine wears his clothes in the middle of a long conversation about other things.

I actually liked that bit so let's talk about it!! Not in the hoyolab app because I can't write long meta there, but here. Where people can't see me. Oops.

(my screenshots game is weak so I took a bunch of stuff from here. Also checked here to see what the Jp translation says. These people don't know me, I just like their videos.)

What is this old rich vs nouveau riche conversation 😂

But nah, the implication here is Aventurine is a pantser (which he tells us earlier)

while Sunday isn't. Sunday needs to have everything decided and planned and all his pawns arranged on the table before he makes a move.

But Black Swan tells us in the beginning that this is one of the reasons why dealing with Aventurine is dangerous

When he says he'll play it by ear, he means he'll adjust his actions and reactions based on what he's getting from the other person.

Sunday's weakness is not only underestimating Aventurine, but also being unable to adjust his plans or even actually listen to what his opponent is saying

Sunday is wrong here: Dr Ratio doesn't value the pursuit of knowledge above all. (This is why he's not a Genius Society member! He values ethics and fairness above knowledge or prestige. But tbf, even Screwllum got this wrong about Ratio.)

'But how can you be sure of that?'

Because Ratio says so. To Sunday. In reply to Sunday's offer.

In Jp he says それがわかっているなら、一人前の学者は自分の立場を弁え、つまらない尊厳のために大事なものを失ったりしないことも 知っているだろう。'In that case, you should know a competent scholar knows how to stand their ground and not lose something important* for the sake of trivial dignity**.'

* his ethics

** prestige

Sorry, Chadwick. But Ratio is different 😂

So you've already lost one of your bargaining chips if you're Sunday

But he moves forward anyway, because he's already gone outside and can't adjust his clothes anymore. If he was even listening to Ratio, that is 😂 He was so convinced he's got Ratio's personality correctly

And Ratio also has to move forward with this because it's part of Aventurine's plan

even though Ratio doesn't necessarily approve of it (I also want to talk about the plan and also I'm losing my mind about the posts I've seen talking about the references that were made in game, but there's no more space for screencaps so let's do that in a different post!!)

The moral lesson is: don't believe rich people when they give tips on how to prevent wardrobe malfunction

[iridescentscarecrow]

going to be real most of jade's character can only be framed & understood through her emphasis on mutual respect & understanding (percieved, artificial) before a deal. this mutuality/equality is something she deliberately tries to assert in her conversations too...

she initially brings this idea frame of herself up in her convo with oti & this, alongside "kids/chessboard" are world hooks to compare her w. NPC stories too. further, very fun how aventurine & topaz reflect aspects of this as imbued teaching...

the devil who grants deals, empowering the weak by forcing them onto the same bargaining table through both assumed equality [contractual base] & desires sets itself against sunday's offer to the weak: the latter erasing agency, underlining weakness to enforce desire granting.

i think setting aventurine as a central medium along which this build is concieved makes the parallel between the jade - sunday conversation & the sunday - aventurine interrogation ring quite hard. image attached is my response to an ask a while back so it's quite messy but yeah.

re: mutuality : the "i've been in your shoes before" above & the "we're equals" to topaz. if you want to get additionally crazy, the way she insists on calling aventurine "child" & her voicelines about him, particularly compelling. because at so many levels he wants to be her.

he imitates her & wishes to be her & be more than her & i think *this* unsettles her. the weak seeking power by /becoming/ strong, abandon the pretense at the root of the contract base. aventurine incessantly cutting himself into shape for that table he is "qualified" to be at.

& i think considering this next to sunday's oddly personal discomfort with aventurine: something that manifests in cruelty & violence. there's obviously the way the conversation is half self projection [do you love your family/manipulate minds] etc because sunday *identifies* himself with the weak. image: their respective ambitions. but aventurine's counter unsettles: he doesn't wish to be saved, or seen of as weak. he'd rather strike wagers (but notably: he doesn't wish to do so with jade.)

see: recieved her kindness, their convo at the end of 2.1.

* re: aventurine & jade the npc duo i mentioned in the sunday-jade convo i pasted above is pretty intriguing to think about alongside them. thomas specifically uses jade's "chessboard/pawn" investment methodology. i find erica's dialogues in response very brainrottey though. reasoning out chasing of wealth, disconnect/sense of imposterism from-in high society..

didn't put the exact dialogue in here because theyre buried in another notes document & this is mostly stream of consciousness paras.

[mikansei]

assorted 🦚 HCs i'm probably never going to do anything with and am thus releasing into the wild:

🩵 aventurine's hair is only wavy when it's humid - but coming from a desert planet, basically any humidity above 0% counts as such, so in effect it's now permanently wavy. (on sigonia it only showed when it rained, which was such an infrequent blessing that it was seen as good luck - which, at this point, is just another facet of that grand cosmic joke at his expense. permanently lucky, right?)

🩵 he doesn't hide his brand scar because it makes people visibly uncomfortable to see it, and he's never been a non-confrontational person. sure, he'll twist himself into all kinds of more palatable shapes in order to play a role or fulfill expectations - but there are some things he doesn't want people to be able to ignore. (if you want to look at me, you have to look at what the world did to me. you don't get to look away.)

🩵 he doesn't make it common knowledge that he never learned to swim; he'll happily sip mai tais under the shade of a beach umbrella, but no one's ever seen him get in the water. (ratio swims like a fish, but the "wet shirtless ratio" factor overrides any jealousy he might feel over this.)

🩵 he has mixed feelings about rain until he has to be In The Rain, at which point he becomes the world's saddest wettest cat about it. and yes, some of it's about evoking bad memories - but the sensation of cold wet clothes clinging to him is also just physically uncomfortable.

also this doesn't really fit here but i don't want to make a separate post lmao, the ingame descriptions of the avgins and the halovians are making me slightly insane

halovians:

A revered race esteemed for their enchanting voices and captivating appearance, widely adored throughout the universe. They seem born into the love and admiration of other species and peoples. Halovians are blessed with shrewdness and few can peer past their mysterious and elegant smiles.

avgins:

The Avgins are blessed with attractive facial features, beautiful eyes, and an innate wealth of emotional intelligence, all of which effortlessly endear themselves to any strangers. However, these inborn talents are the exact reason they draw jealousy and ire from others.

the descriptions are so incredibly similar and yet their reception is polar opposite!! i feel a very normal amount of emotion about this

[qserasera]

i'm extremely glad that the 'how to write about kaibacorp environment' post exists for better fic research

and i really do wish someone w/ that kind of business knowledge would make a similar post for aventurine ft his role with the IPC Strategic Investment Department/what his schedule/job looks like hypothetically or useful terms to use and know

[aconfusedkitten]

heya fuckers, it is 12:30am, i spent an hour straight chipping away at aventurines boss with just stelle and gallagher and still managed to lose, so have some fairly unhinged commentary on aventurines trailer!

putting a cut here because there will be spoilers for some lines of 2.1, but nothing major.

i make no promises to how coherent this will be, but hey! i noticed a thing and wanted to comment on it, so here goes!

now, do we all remember the line about chips under the table?

cool!

so aventurine's trailer is gambling based, which makes sense! aventurine is framed a s a gambler, and until 2.1 that's supposed to be it. he's a shady gambler, not as open about the ipc as topaz, and not really someone we can trust.

however, this is what i noticed.

tying in the quote from above, if you pay attention during the trailer, the focus is almost always directed to aventurine's right hand. his left is usually out of sight or at his side, and while it could be an animation thing, it's also really interesting for a character who's so easily summed up using that quote.

putting some examples down below, so last warning to those wanting to watch the trailer! sorry for image quality, these were screenshoted off of youtube and i had to slow the video to take them, so they're not the best.

but we regularly see aventurine making these grand gestures with his right hand, while the left is nowhere on screen, or behind his back. to some degree, the same thing happens during his cutscene in the story quest, focusing on his coin tricks or the movement of his hat and glasses.

the really interesting thing is that almost all of the shots where you can see both of his hands are angled backwards. they're also usually quick transitions between actions, and in most of them, his left hand is still behind him. you can even argue that they're usually ones involving risk or manipulation, in many cases!

and of course, this could just be the way it was animated and nothing more than that, but when a character is defined as having "one hand clenched behind their back" and being a performer, all of the time, it leaves a lot of room for interpreting just how far that act goes! again, this could be me being a cinematography nerd and things like that, but it's definitely an interesting angle to analyze!

good luck to everyone pulling for aventurine, and special luck to anyone gambling on their 50/50!!

[oceanatydes]

i'm so excited for aventurine i've literally been waiting for him since the first time we heard him speak to topaz in 1.4

[yinyuedijun]

playing this galactic baseballer event and I'm dying at how playing with the IPC setup (robin + aventiopaz) only got me bare minimum points but swapping out dr ratio with himeko destroyed the stage 😭😭😭 dr ratio I will always hate u

[starcurtain]

Interpreting Aventurine's Situation

(HSR 2.1 spoilers, watch out!) I think one of my favorite things to come out of Penacony is that the plot has left us with two completely opposite but equally valid interpretations of Aventurine's character. Is he a chosen child or just a "lucky" dog? The story leaves the door wide open for both possibilities.

Under a read more for space:

One Interpretation: Unfortunately for Him, Aventurine is Actually Blessed by an Aeon

If you work from the assumption that the Avgin mythology is correct, and Gaiathra Triclops is actually real (possibly a minor aeon of an unknown path or Ena, if you're on that train), then it's entirely possible, in game, that Aventurine has been blessed by a goddess to the point that he functionally cannot lose any gamble he makes. The odds are, literally, ever in his favor. In this interpretation, it doesn't matter how many gambles he takes with his life as the chip because he will always succeed. Despite how risky his behavior looks to everyone else, he's actually been perfectly safe all along.

But this is especially tragic because it means that, despite his mother's and sister's belief that his blessing will help everyone in their tribe, Aventurine's blessing has only ever extended to himself. He's not an omen of good fortune for his people. His luck was never going to protect his parents, sister, or friends. The goddess of the Avgin chose just one person and left the rest of her people to die.

This is where Aventurine's doubts stem from. He asks repeatedly: If the goddess can bless people, then why is life so miserable for the Avgin? Why do they have to live in pain, suffering, fear, and abject poverty if she could make them lucky enough to thrive? Why do people live if it's just going to be horrible?

(To be honest, I don't think this is out of line for the behavior we've seen of aeons so far. Even with aeons like Yaoshi, described as gentle and benevolent, with no intention to cause harm, their gifts often create horror in the human world.)

Aventurine's hands still tremble when he bets. He doesn't really believe he's blessed and still expects his own downfall at every turn--but it's never going to come because he is one of the few human beings in the entire universe with the direct favor of an aeon. Even Ratio, a skeptical, evidence-based genius, seems to think this might be the case.

(Choosing the Chinese because the text is a little clearer than the English, but basically: "This guy always has a way of dragging himself up out of the abyss, which can't be explained by just 'good luck.' Everyone is waiting to see him fail... Maybe even he's waiting too. But as time passed, I couldn't help but wonder: Will that day really come?")

This means Aventurine has lived a life of fear and uncertainty for nothing. He's spent his entire life awaiting a failure and painful death that will never come. He can't recognize the love of his own goddess nor trust in the faith of his own family.

The central question of this interpretation becomes "What does it mean for a single human to be favored by an aeon?" Can Aventurine really be called lucky after losing every single thing that has meaning in his life--all because an aeon chose him and only him? Should that be called a blessing or a curse?

The Opposite Interpretation: Aventurine Isn't Lucky At All, He's Just Skilled

On the other hand, the story leaves the door open to interpret Aventurine's situation in the complete opposite manner too. If, as the IPC seems to think, Gaiathra Triclops isn't real and Aventurine isn't blessed at all, then that means every single risk Aventurine has taken has actually been life-threatening--and that every single achievement he's reached has been by his own merits alone.

If Gaiathra's blessing isn't real, then Aventurine's life becomes one long self-run psyop: Everyone tells him he's blessed, he's lucky, he's favored--so young Kakavasha starts gambling early. Banking on this idea that he's favored, that he's chosen, he starts paying attention, he learns the tricks of the trade, figures out how to slip cards up his sleeves, how to word things just right so people will take his bait--he practices, practices, practices, until he can spot winning odds a mile away, until he can predict every possible outcome, until he's seen it all before.

In this situation, every single gamble he's ever made or will make carries a very, very real risk of failure--but Aventurine continues to succeed because he's just that quick-witted, just that aware, just that good at reading people. (He's been doing it for so much longer than everyone else he meets, after all.) He is the gambler extraordinaire, the archetypal charming rogue who can squirm his way out of any tight spot he gets into, time and time again.

He fears every gamble he makes because he has good reason to--there's literally never any guarantee that he will succeed, and he's constantly just flipping a coin to see what outcome he'll get. His personal skill and quick wit continue to turn things in his favor, but it's inevitable that one day he'll meet a situation that outwits him, a gamble where only a supernatural force could have saved him. And if you take this second interpretation, Gaiathra isn't real, so there won't be one.

This story choice would be interesting because it implies a greater degree of responsibility for everything that happens. If it's Aventurine's own quick wit and skill that continually save him, shouldn't he be able to help others with that skill? Shouldn't he have been able to help himself? How was he able to save himself from death but not from slavery? If it was skill, not luck, all along, then who do you blame for all the misery he still experienced?

This interpretation leads to greater questions of self-doubt and anxiety: Is it actual skill or just sheer dumb luck? Does Aventurine have what it takes mentally, psychologically, emotionally, and even physically to always come out on top by his own merits, or is he just the benefit of the wheel of fortune--statistically speaking, a one in a million chance still has to come through for that one, right? And when it all comes crumbling down eventually, will he have only himself to blame?

A Life of Uncertainty

The story doesn't actually give us any firm indication whether Gaiathra is real or not, or--even if she is real--if Aventurine is actually genuinely blessed. We just don't know, as players.

And Aventurine doesn't know either.

His faith in the goddess of the Avgin is shaky. He seems to want to believe and hold on to his people's mythology, but he has valid doubts that a goddess would choose to bless one person while leaving everyone else to suffer.

Is he the chosen of an aeon? And if he isn't chosen, then what meaning does any of it have? Is he just unbelievably skilled? Has he merely been lucky up to now? When will this blessing or luck or skill finally fail him?

Aventurine's most defining character trait is the extreme uncertainty that has plagued his whole life. What is true? What should he believe? Is he blessed or cursed? Does he have the talent to back up his massive boasts? Should others put any faith in him--should he put any faith in himself? Should he cling to his people's beliefs or reject the goddess that left him the sole survivor of a cultural extinction?

He can't trust anything. He can't trust his family's faith; he can't trust that he's actually a "chosen one" (because how could he chosen and his family be left to die?). He can't even trust that he's lucky because maybe it was just the years of suffering practice he put in. Then again, he can't trust in his own skill because maybe he's just blessed?

Which is it? Which is it? Which is it?

Nothing is certain. Nothing can be taken for granted. Nothing can be proven empirically true or false. There are no guarantees for Aventurine.

Every single thing in his life is a gamble, and none of that is his fault.

What an amazing character. What a great story. Thank you for the treat, Hoyo!

[buqbite]

ok so!!!! i have. so many thoughts about penacony. aventurine the man you are...... his obsession with facades and masks... his future self shit talking him.... 2.1 truly delivered. his dynamic with ratio is also so interesting.... the contrasts... aven not taking care of himself at all vs ratio the self care king........

there's so much unexplored potential for a friendship between acheron and aven... their similarities as people who lost everything ... how acheron works in the shadows and aventurine flaunts himself yet acheron is much more willing to be... openly vulnerable about her past? as compared to aven..... i care them both dearly anyway!!! i have many thoughts on 2.2 but i don't want to intrude or make this too long ajshldfkjasdjf but yes!!!! im having a good time so far (though i'm kinda fed up with the sunday boss fight) and !!!! looking forward to meeting aven again (myriad celestia trailer!) + seeing what other adventures the astral express goes on...

I FORGOT TO REPLY SORRY

aventurine is just such a fun guy. i become attached to characters who try to sell a specific image of themselves pretty much immediately, because the gradual detachment from their own identity and struggle to properly connect with others is always a delight to see. and aven does it so well! he's completely out of touch with himself - kakavasha and aventurine are practically different people by now.

i care deeply about depictions of cptsd in media, particularly when they acknowledge that it really isnt just depression + anxiety + flashback induced panic attacks in a spot the person you ship them with can conveniently find them in and calm them down. such a big part of it is the way it can completely fuck up your self-concept and worldview cuz yknow. your brain structure is altered. it's the key factor in that disconnect that i just talked about. and that constant sense of impending doom and emptiness are a part of that, which often leads to stupidly reckless behavior. i don't even need to bring up aven's whole gambling thing here, do i?

(also please do note that, as i wrote this bit, welt was even further on the forefront of my mind than he usually is. because of course he would be)

him and ratio are also a fun match, because ratio does not care for the way aventurine flaunts himself (to pretend he has his shit together) in the slightest. he'd do a good job at getting aven to just... slow down, and wouldn't allow their relationship to develop into something unhealthy either.

(its one of the reasons i like avenpaz + ratio, bc aven and topaz on their own would most certainly enable each other's bad habits. they have a bit too much in common in that regard.)

AND ACHERON. ACHERON...

miss raiden bosenmori mei i love you so damn much. she does the "oh, i'm doomed? my struggle was meaningless? well if nothing matters then i will do what i want" thing so well, and every dynamic she has with the other characters is fascinating to me.

one really big thing to consider is that, since acheron's whole backstory is essentially the bad ending of honkai impact 3rd, she's already seen all of this dreamscape shit. she's been living in the waking world for a long time now. in the quest "when the sacred ginmill closes," her and welt talk about kevin kaslana, someone who used his last resort to try and save humanity from the uphill battle against the honkai and plunge all of humanity into a dreamscape (etc), robbing it of its future.

a big part of hi3 is the direness of the situation, and the way people push themselves to go further and further in hopes of reaching this unattainable peace. it's an absolutely sisyphian task. and acheron let go - she defeated her version of kevin (why would you name him that) and let her homeworld be enveloped by the nihility.

so acheron's been there. she lost the people she loved, struggled against a meaningless end and was changed so irreversibly that she's not even human anymore. and there's a lot of potential for her to properly guide aventurine out of the nihility (i mean that's kind of her job?) and onto a path that's a lot more meaningful to him.

also, i'm saving a lot of my acheron thoughts for when i actually finish hi3, but there's a few dynamics that i could pick apart and think about forever. my favorites being aventurine and his whole (gestures at this post) stuff, black swan as someone whose whole being consists of memories while acheron perpetually erases them, welt as someone who shares the same experiences and black hole related powers, and firefly, who exists in the moment because she can't dream in the first place, and chooses to fight against the inevitable without being afraid of it.

...also also also i fucking love black holes and i love how it's connected to sun imagery and i think the idea of icarus reaching the sun only to discover a hopeless abyss beyond it is my favorite hsr symbolism thing ever. black holes are like THE thing to show hopelessness and meaninglessness and emptiness and a point of no return, because they devour everything and leave nothing. we don't truly know what lies within a black hole!! we might never find out!!! there are so many suns out there that will end up as black holes but we can appreciate their beauty nonetheless, can't we??? ive never seen a character with black hole (or sun) imagery that didn't fuck severely. a person who will figuratively consume you in your entirety if you get too close. they can't even help it. it gets me every single fucking time. can you guys tell that interstellar changed my brain chemistry when i first watched it as a kid. i need to punch a wall

[bueris]

who's ur hsr main? or characters u play with a lot? (if u don't mind me asking ofc)

mine are caelus, arlan, yangqing, dan heng and feng and lynx(she saves me everytime)

OHHH yeah basically I have no particular main but I do have a team I use just because I'm too lazy to make another

it's himeko, black swan, sliver wolf and natasha

NATASHA THE ABSOLUTE GOAT SHE'S THE REASON I GET THROUGH BOSS FIGHTS 💞💞

I sub people out a lot, usually with march, serval or Dr ratio depending on what I need

I don't actually know how to team build in this game it's just vibes 🫶🫶

[canismajors]

sooo true xianzhou continuance i hope they have my silly guy yanqing there

[eatingfireflies]

2.2 is coming and if I don't write this now, how can I get jossed later?

This is the moment when I started to wonder if their 2.0 conversation was a role play.

Like, we know this issue is a sore point for Ratio. The fact that this guy he called a loud peacock in 2.0 made a joke about his failure to get into the Genius Society and all he said was 'I was being sarcastic'?? Babe, is something wrong? You barely touched your sharp and witty comeback.

(Btw I checked both Cn and Jp, he says 'It was just a joke.')

And I don't want to bring up the voice acting because the way voices sound is subjective and what I hear might not be what you hear, but the Double Indemnity scenes with Ratio are probably the most relaxed we ever see Aventurine ever. (I'm talking about the Cn version, but I played in Jp audio and I could hear it there too.) He's playful and his voice is higher pitched, so different from what we've seen of him so far.

It sounds like Ratio and Aventurine have known each other longer than they want us to believe in their 2.0 convo.

I mean, the implication here is Ratio did some research on Aventurine's background recently and that's how he found out about Aventurine's past. So we make the assumption that they haven't been working together for long.

Look, they even did a Penacony remix of their Final Victor conversation

But honestly, you'd think Ratio would have figured out if he trusted Aventurine or not at this point, considering he came back for more after Final Victor (lmao??)

Also, we know Aventurine had been planning for Penacony since his call to Topaz, where he asked for her help. It's hard to believe that he went through all the trouble of asking two different Stonehearts to lend him their cornerstones and then went to Penacony and the Dreamscape with Ratio, whom he barely knows. That's too much gambling, Aventurine!

We know the Family won't let anyone from the IPC to enter the Dreamscape and Aventurine only gets a pass because of the Watchmaker's invite

But Himeko is wrong here: Aventurine didn't go inside the Dreamscape alone and he does have someone backing him up. It just happened that almost no one else saw Ratio in Penacony and the one scene where we did see him talking to Aventurine was 2.0, where he got angry and left Aventurine babbling to himself.

But now that we're here, what did Ratio do in Penacony aside from bicker and betray?

His initial job is to gather intel, afaik. Aventurine tells him to go look into things in 2.0 before he left. And he does give Aventurine updates in 2.1 (Aventurine finds out about Firefly from Ratio) so good for you, professor!

Ratio is Aventurine's connection to his colleagues outside. Once Aventurine's plans enter the Dead phase, Ratio is the only one left to tell Topaz and Jade if the plan had been a success or not. (Aventurine also makes a joke about the Genius from the Council of the Mundanites offering to be his undertaker. In the Jp version, he says 'So the Genius from the Council of the Mundanites wants to claim my corpse? What an honour.' So there's also that... Uh. Idk how dead dead Aventurine really is, but at least we know someone's looking after his body while he's gone lmao??)

But also he's Aventurine's bait to Sunday, the (fake) weak link in Aventurine's plans that Sunday thought he could exploit.

And the 3rd one is a bit complicated, because it is a gamble. Remember Aventurine's E1? Prisoner's Dilemma? Yeah, it's kinda like that. I talked about it before, but let's copy paste it here for easier reading (and because this post totally needs to be a wall of text)

Let's zoom out a bit again and remember that Aventurine was sent to Penacony because Diamond thinks this whole affair could still have a peaceful resolution. Meaning: Aventurine is the kind option. The IPC could have sent Opal instead, but it sounds like that means there would be a body count.

And I think that's why Ratio is here and why he agreed to cooperate. Because if Aventurine's plan works out, only Aventurine's life will ever be in real danger. (And we know from Ratio's note that he also took steps to increase the chances of Aventurine coming back.)

Ratio being there is important to the plan because

Him being from the Intelligentsia Guild removes some of the heat from the Family. If Ratio is coming in as a plus one, the IPC (in this case, I'm assuming it's Aventurine because he's the guy in charge of the operation) chose the best person for the job. It makes the Family happier knowing there are not two IPC envoys walking around the Dreamscape and Aventurine has a buddy who can move around more freely than another IPC employee could

But because Ratio is an outsider, he's also the weak link in Aventurine's plans. Another IPC employee will probably not betray Aventurine, but the Guild has no particular horse in this race. We were also led to believe from their 2.0 conversation that Ratio doesn't like Aventurine very much. This is what I meant when I said Ratio is a bait: Aventurine was pretty much dangling him in front of Sunday, making Sunday think he could use Ratio to ruin Aventurine's plans. The important thing of course is the trust the two of them have for each other (yay, Prisoner's Dilemma). Ratio could ruin Aventurine's plan if he wants to (very bad for all involved because I'm guessing Opal is the next step) and Aventurine could fail (not as bad for everyone involved after 2.1 because the IPC has already won regardless. There's still a Phase 2 in Aventurine's plan and Ratio seems to want him back after that, so I guess he'd consider it a failure if Aventurine doesn't return?), but trusting each other means they win.

Tl;dr Ratio's presence in Penacony is a bit of a gamble on Aventurine's part but it worked well for him so far. Ratio is here to make sure everyone stays alive. (And maybe the Phase Flame? I honestly don't know if the Annihilation Gang will ever come back again, but for now I'm going with the obvious and assuming Ratio is here because he thinks Aventurine's plan will work and work with the least amount of pain for everyone.)

Thank you for getting this far. Why do we think they deserve Oscars?

Aside from the movie references (we'll get to that), we have 3 different instances where Aventurine mentions acting / the 'script'.

The most direct is the conversation with future!Aventurine in the garden maze: future!Aventurine praises Ratio's acting while Aventurine says 'Or he might not be acting at all' (the inability of these two to admit they are friends, but more importantly they don't think the other person thinks highly of them, is2g).

The next one is hidden in the mission description

And the other one got lost in translation. This was translated to 'You catch on quickly' in En. In Jp he says something like 'You have a good sense for drama, professor' (Sorry Idk what this is in the og Cn)

Finally, Double Indemnity. I haven't seen the movie, but it seems to be about an insurance salesman who gets seduced by a hot wife femme fatale into helping her get rid of her husband so she could claim his insurance. Double Indemnity refers to this clause where the insurance gets doubled if the person suddenly dies of an accident.

I've thought about this so hard, let me tell you. What could this possibly have to do with Aventurine and the mission? (For example, 'Hot wife Sunday seduces Ratio the insurance salesman into helping him get rid of Aventurine' etc.) And I honestly still don't know but one detail does help my theory so I'm pulling it out:

The relationship between the insurance salesman and the hot wife femme fatale was known only to the two of them. To the insurance claims adjuster, who was investigating the case and trying to prove the husband's death wasn't an accident, those two are unrelated people who might have seen each other once or twice. The claims adjuster suspected the wife, but had no idea of the insurance salesman's involvement. The truth is, they actually knew each other a full year before the plan was set in motion. Hey, doesn't it actually fit nicely now?

(Spellbound otoh, I still don't know. I have a Sunday and Gallagher reading of it, but Hvy keeps telling me no and making it gay instead so Idk.)

[iridescentscarecrow]

posted this on twitter as a response to an ask on sunday-jade dynamic on retrospring, moving this here asw ^_^.