#not tagging the characters because !!!! um

[yangcherie]

mating season

𐀔 pairings: astarion x reader. karlach x reader. halsin x reader. background cast (wyll, shadowheart, lae’zel, gale) x reader. background rolan x tav.

𐀔 content warnings: tiefling!tav, LITERALLY PWP, alcoholic consumption, brief sexual memory (halsin), heavy petting, noncon to dubcon (with astarion only), slight slutshaming, oral (f!receiving), mentions of breeding, afab anatomy but g/n pronouns. astarion is very slightly, slighty mean, up to you if he is ascended or not.

𐀔 sypnosis: you, a tiefling, go through your first heat cycle around your companions. some are willing to either indulge you or take advantage of you.

𐀔 author’s note: hoppinh on the bandwagon of tieflings having heat / rut cycles. astarion, briefly halsin, ROLAN and karlach get some action, teehee. and don't worry. everyone is a pervert and thinks about it. everyone will get a chance. someday. merry christmas!!

The first thing everyone wakes up to is heat. Sweltering, palpable heat, pervading the air up to the point it felt like it was trying to smother them, casting annoying, relentless burnishes of perspiration on their skin.

It couldn’t be the sun, no. The warmth felt too close, within of reach – but even then, it was no lively and unextinguished campfire, no engine out of hand nestled within Karlach, Shadowheart concluded.

They’d all been taking turns the entire morning seeking cold relief in the stream. Thankfully, as the day prevailed, the sun was no longer so glaring, the heatwave lessening by a tad bit, the rest of the party excluding a certain Ravenguard had found it now bearable.

It wasn’t until Wyll was fed up with the sweat that would inevitably come no matter how much he wiped at it, marching towards where it felt most blistering, most fervent; the intense source.

It had led him to your tent — and without doubt, the demon believed the source was your tent; your fucking otherworldy furnace of a tent. Even as he stood from outside, the heat was practically choking him. He wouldn’t be surprised if he took a look inside and finds out you, little fiend you, stuffed the entire Nine Hells inside. And take a look inside he does, peeling away the entrance, a delirious but polite request to turn down the heat ready on his tongue —

But it isn’t the Nine Hells’ heat and musk that slaps him to his face, to his utter surprise.

It’s you; trembling, flushed raw and in all of your fiendish glory, naked. Tail loud and thumping on the floor as your whimpers permeate through the air, legs spread and — No!

Somewhere in the back of his horned head, he wonders if it’s the heat, the shock, or simply his building arousal that has rendered him stuck to his position. It takes Wyll all his strength he can muster to tear his eyes away; what was he doing? He was intruding on your tent— your privacy! How could he forget basic etiquette, so much for being a noble-!

(Without a doubt, he’s ruined his chance of any traditional courtship.)

“Sorry.” The Blade himself awkwardly coughs before pushing himself out of your tent with an inhuman force, slamming the fabric entrance shut and tripping on his own two feet on the way out. “It’s Tav!” He shouts, sprinting with little idea on where to; the heat is unbearable and by the gods, he isn’t so sure anymore if it was coming from your tent or if it was simply his body. His commotion with Tav gathers the attention and eyes of his fellow companions, and it is both Karlach and Shadowheart that push at him to settle him down.

“Hey, hey. Calm down, you!” Karlach, ever the concerned companion with her furrowed brows, assures him like steed. “Tav, you mentioned?” Shadowheart, upon quick confirmation that he was not injured, is quick to coax him for answers of his behavior. He’s a bit mortified as his little flustered fit had everyone around him.

“Tav, they’re– get this–” Wyll swallows, tense with the image of you squirming and dripping still on the front of his mind. “T-they’re hot.”

It’s a dreadful thing, he realizes later a split second more than he’d like, the silence that follows. Through the tadpole, they’ve seen what he’s seen; and judging from the atmosphere, they’re chalking it up to an active imagination. All but loud, with a lone cricket chirping in the distance. He shoots up to in an attempt to explain, but wordlessly splutters instead.

“So you’ve had your first wet dream, I take it?” Astarion scoffs, finding the dirt under his manicured nails more interesting than what the fiend had to say next. “Had an issue with morning wood, perhaps– or should I say, a hardened blade?”

“No!” Wyll refutes, now standing up with the help of Shadowheart. “I-I meant to say they’re hot, literally. They’re drenched with sweat, lookin’ like they’re about to keel over. You saw it, in my head, what they looked like!”

“Ah, yes.” The vampire recalled that vision. Though brief and concerning, yes, it was also undeniably delectable. What he wouldn’t give to have seen you writhing with want up close. But still, he slips his desperation behind a theatric mask. “Like a mutt in heat, how hilarious.”

“In heat.” Karlach had repeated Astarion’s words and bristled, her muscles twitching once but violently enough that it had them staring at her like they had been with Wyll. The look on her face tells everyone she’s had her eureka moment, a light flickering beside her head. “Tav is in heat. Of course they are; it’s breeding season!” She guffaws then, disregarding the disbelief of the party — save for Halsin, who simply nodded.

“So what you’re saying is we have a feral, unspayed animal amongst us for the time being?” Lae’zel grunted, though she certainly did not mind if the blush on her face was anything to go by.

“Mating season is upon most of the forest.” The druid responded, crossing his thick arms, ever the calm elf. “Given the... more animalistic features of some cambions, it is not entirely unreasonable. Given the intensity, it must be their first heat since you’ve all been on this journey.” The party gapes; Karlach nods, and though she does not mention it, she’s mildly disappointed your heat had not aligned with her rut.

“So, what you’re both saying is that they need to breed – or be bred?” Though the vampiric rogue balked, he was unable to deny the inkling of lust that washed through him at the idea. You, and your all proud visage crumbling into one of a desperate, slut of a fiend.

“Well, when you put it in such a frank and vulgar manner...” Gale coughs, flushed, Astarion notices, inwardly grimacing. The wizard’s never been discreet about liking your musk – and today, it is especially honeyed and heavy around the campsite. “Yes.”

And that’s when it hits the rogue, the shared tension and ignited lust in everyone – not just Gale. It’s a slow and heavy shift, like puffs of smoke. The current of lust in the air runs deeper when a small, inviting moan permeates from your tent. The sounds of heavy breaths and trousers shifting from around the party, it all goes unobserved to any eye that doesn’t belong to an experienced rogue.

Still, the rest would’ve been fools to think only one or two of them would be intrigued, he thought. It was with a silent agreement amongst them that by the end of this week, you’d be thoroughly savoured.

The first thing you wake up to is a dull ache across the expanse of your stomach, and a pool of your own arousal drenching the bedroll between your legs. Your bed-kissed face tightens, glaring down at the growing tension in your belly. A groan is torn out of your dehydrated throat – and if the obvious lack of sun on your tent was anything to go by, you’ve slept through nearly the entire day.

Fuck, what was going on? Distoriented, you attempt to sit up only for the dull ache to morph into heated convulsions that immediately spread like wildfire around your weakened body. It was then that you realized that to your utter horror, you were burning hot, to the Nines and beyond — as if you were forcefully thrown into an early heat.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. No. The edges around your vision blackened for a split second before you violently lurched yourself out of your too-warm, too-cramped tent, slamming your palms and knees into the dirt ground and digging your nails in, your mouth open to welcome the hot pants stuck in your dry throat.

You spat out a vicious string of Infernal curses, your focus blurring in and out of itself. You shut your mouth, biting your lip to keep in whimpers, sweat trickling down from your forehead as your mind fought in vain against the primal urges now closing in on it; the feral ache for relief deeming itself more important than reason.

Relief. Fuck, it sounded good right now. You hissed, your mental resolve crumbling, tail furiously lashing against the dirt. Relief. Your eyes darted around the camp anything that could relieve the heat in your loins; Shadowheart and her healing hands or a cool river stream to let the water wash over you, but fuck, you needed real relief. A body you could sink your teeth into and ride until the next morning – preferably Karlach, or Halsin–!

Thick, strong Halsin.

“You feel good, little one.” Halsin quietly groaned up from above you, touching you as if he’s been longing to.

He moves inside you; thick cock bruising your insides. Every open-mouthed gasp and hurt or pleasured cry was eagerly welcomed into his own mouth with wet kisses. He was unrelenting, but kind. Full of sinew your hands could run across or scratch in slight distaste if the fat tip of his length pressed a sensitive spot deeper than you’d have liked. And without fail, he had laughed everytime, gentle and light, even if his deep thrusts into your spent hole were anything but.

He must have been trying to burrow in you with how deep he was inside, letting you raggedly cry into the slope of his neck meeting the thickness of his shoulder. Halsin set out to plant an apologetic kiss into the crook of yours, fucking you deep until you fluttered around him, dragging him to his peak alongside you.

No, you winced, tearing your eyes open and your mind out of its lust-ridden gutter, the burn inside you relentless. No Halsin nor Karlach, not a single soul that could provide you relief to be found around camp — and damn them all, you were in no state to be crawling around searching for even the slightest whiff of their scent in gods know where.

Relief.

Yet another infuriating wave of heat rolled through you, forcing you to clench your hands and drive dirt beneath your nails. What remained of your rationality sought out to the crevices of your memories, ones that weren’t flooded of nightly trysts with the druid elf or — Rolan.

Relief – Rolan. A drop of your drool hitting the ground; Rolan with his horns you could grip and sharp teeth that could sink into your shoulder. No doubt warmly cooped up in Ramazith’s Tower, signing trades or shoving his nose in dusty books. He’d do, for tonight – he’d understand, indulge you and lift you from the unbearable heat clouding your head. He wouldn’t mind, you know it, because you’d be a blind fool to not see the way his eyes would fondly trail over your face, or the dips in your body.

He wants you, and for tonight, you will do him a favor and want him back.

You urge your trembling body to stand up and begin the treacherous trek from camp to the Gate’s city.

It was only the next night, moon high, that you sauntered into camp instead of out your tent, sporting a relieved glow, a fresh set of bites around your throat, a heavy limp, and of course, the hands of a flushed Rolan around your waist.

Your ragtag party watched from their campfire logs, a petty and envious air about them whilst the winsome smile on your face turned into an airy laugh as Rolan tenderly cupped your jaw with his hands, whispering something that had you curling your tails together. You shook your head and sweetly pecked his cheek as he nodded and bumped your horns together like lovers as a bid goodbye before stepping back to part ways.

“Well?” Karlach greeted with an amiable smile as you joined the group’s circle, having been worriedly sniffing around and asking for you the entirety of the morning; your scent lingering faintly around the air but with no continued path as to exactly where you were. She knew firsthand the extent of pain and delirium heats could bring, and god forbid you had fallen in the wrong hands.

(And thankfully, you hadn’t. She was simply glad you found someone trustworthy to mingle with instead of being alone.)

You scooched near her with a charmingly teasing grin, matching her liveliness, turning a blind eye to the tension in the air. “Well, what?” And before the red-skin tiefling could play banter with you, a certain rogue had pettily overtook the conversation.

“Well, did you enjoy your little fling?” Astarion dryly teased, a goblet of wine in his spindly hands and a sardonic smile on his face. He let the wine swivel for a moment. “Enjoyed playing charity, whoring yourself out?”

Karlach quietly called out his name in a disappointed manner, either to scold or deter him from what next he could say.

“What can I say?” You entertain his snark, peeking around the campfire logs for a bottle of blingdenstone blush wine; grabbing ahold of ot and pouring yourself a goblet. Taking a gracious swig, you allow the fruity taste to melt on your tongue. “My company is sought after.”

“Sought after? You amuse me,” The pale elf laughs, dry in a manner that has you eyeing him, his hand tightening around the rusted goblet whilst you set down yours. “Are you sure?” He asks, glaring. “I’d say it’s desperation, on your side of the coin – you’d spread your legs to anyone asking politely, darling.”

You scrunch your nose at that, the warmth and flavor of the wine turning cold and bitter in your throat.

The silence is almost hostile around the campfire – the crackling of it serving to make it less awkward. “Take that damn wine out his hands,” you hear Wyll whisper to a reading Gale and a Lae’zel sharpening her dagger – but both the wizard and githyanki don faces that tell you they aren’t approving of your escapade either. You allow your eyes a brief roam around all their faces; finding it tightened in displeasure.

You don’t feel so well, all of a sudden. Some part inside you chalks it up to the wine.

Save for Karlach who was nudging you with her tail, pleading you from the corner of her eye; asking you to back down from Astarion. Considering it was an option until he opened his mouth once again, his breath smelling of merlot wine. “You’re missing out, you know.” He hisses when you raise him a brow.

“These flings you have,” he eyes around the party, making sure to pointedly look at Halsin for a second longer. You’re half-sure he’d vex Rolan if he was here. Slurring, he pauses again to savor another sip from his wine. “They can’t give you something real.” Your eyes meet his, hesitant, reading the unsaid but he can in them.

“You...” You’re not sure if it’s a trick of the light, the fire shedding a hopeful glint in his eyes for a split second at your tender tone of voice, face softening at the way you curl in yourself. “You’re drinking too much.” And just as quickly as it came, it left.

Something heavy twists in your gut; and you can’t quite decide if it’s from the wine, the second wave of your heat, or distress. Silently pushing yourself off the log, you might as well to take that soak in the river that you’d been dying for.

(You’re not very surprised to feel the many eyes piercing through you.)

Shortly after you left the circle, Karlach had followed you, indiscreet. It’s a game of chase, really – and she’s hot on your tail but you just keep evading her when she thinks she’s got you, a hairsbreadth away from her hands. The way your shoulders tremble with little laughs from your lips are not missed by her, and if she were any closer she’d chase it with her own.

(She smiles, not seen through the dark mouth of the night. Was it her presence or the alcohol that has made you soft?)

It’s not a long trek to the lake by any means, the path obscured by dense foliage she’d occasionally lose you in. Within moments, she’s at the edge of the water with the gravel crushing beneath her boots, overtaking the slow stream of water you’re delicately undressing by. Her longing gaze lingers on the slope of your jaw, the fullness of your lips and the fresh, deep indents of teeth along your shoulder. She’s unsure of whether it’s from Astarion’s feeding or Rolan.

It’s only when you’re fully bare that you turn to face her, that same plush smile that’s melted the hearts of hundreds.

“Are you joining me?” The sweet lilt of your voice makes the gears stop turning in Karlach’s nodding head, her body moving before her mind to start peeling away at her own clothes at the appealing invitation; wading into the water with you as soon as she’s done. A snort is pulled from her when you playfully splash at her with your tail when you hear her behind you.

“Don’t play a game you can’t win, you little...” Karlach jovially returns the splash, inwardly rejoicing at your giggle; this little, shared intimacy is nothing new, but it makes her heart lurch all the same. What she wouldn’t give to have more time with you.

By the gods, she could never get enough of that you and your joy. Some selfish, unbidden part of her hopes you’ll take her up on Wyll’s offer on the path to Avernus, for the sole reason to see it just a little longer.

She shifts around for a topic to hear your voice a little more, “How is your heat coming along?” The smile on your face falters slightly at her choice of inquiry – but you relax instantly. She’s one of your dearest friends, concern is her second nature.

“When is it never dreadful?” You shrug, casual though your words ring true. An unmated tiefling’s pain during a rut or heat was nothing short of agonizing. She watches the nervous swallow bob in your throat. “But I had a little bit of help- from Rolan.”

“Ah, the new master of the tower, was it?” You nod at her, and it comes to you once again that Karlach was no jealous woman. She was glad you had your fill of enjoyment. “He looks smitten with you; are you courting him?”

“Huh?” Your tail whacks against the relaxed surface of water in disbelief, a flush festering on your disgruntled face. “It’s more like the other way around, he bumped his horns to mine earlier.”

Karlach guffaws at your distress, tearing up with her joy until her breath catches on a sweet aroma. She squints, cautiously sniffing the air, once, twice – and she looks to you, pursing her lips when she realizes it isn’t the fragrances you’re washing over yourself; it’s just you, or rather, the second wave to your heat. She hopes the hunger welling in her isn’t clear in her eyes.

You smell really good, she thinks as she chews on the inside of her cheek, staring at the dip of your back as your turn around. And you’re a really good friend, too good, maybe. She feels what she’s about to do isn’t very good.

Karlach doesn’t know what compels her to do what she does but she follows like it’s law; catching your wrist in her hand, capturing your jaw in her other and kissing you tender, swallowing the gasp that comes out.

It’s only when the air starts to feel thick with your heat and her lust that she pulls away, a string of spit following you both – and she’s already pulling away, horror welling up in her eyes but before she can grovel with apologies, you’re reeling her right back to your spit-slick lips with a moan so utterly full of want it has her pulling you closer.

“I can help you,” she murmurs against your taste before pulling away, your want reassuring her she’s got nothing to be sorry for. Your heaving breasts press against her face when she dips half of herself in the water to wrap her arms around your legs. She pleads. “Let me help you. Please.”

Karlach carries you with her muscled arms and settles you on the edge of a rock, softly parting your legs for you and making herself a warm home between them. The way she looks up at you gives you a bashful knot in your stomach.

“Do you want this?” She swallows thick, as if to wash away the heavy weight of her need, eyes situating her hands on your hips with a trembling but still dominant grip. “Use your words.”

You nod, frantic. Breathy pants now visible in the hot air. “I do,” your tongue feels weak when you speak, looking at her with dazed eyes. “P-please, I- I want it, Kar.”

It’s all the push she needs to lick a stripe up your slit, rendering you still when she wraps her lips around your clit and sucks. It drags a heavy moan out of you and it’s nothing but music to her ears. She hopes it’s the sound that greets her in the afterlife instead of angels with their harps or trumpets.

“Ahah,” Karlach pants, hot against your clit, and you look down to see your slick running down her chin, her tail pulling you closer by your calf while yours whips around. “You taste so fucking good.” She murmurs against you, sending an arrow of pleasure straight through your trembling spine that makes her dive right back in, tracing your fluttering hole.

She tongues inside your hole, moaning when it tightens around her, fucking and writhing it around in response.

If the heat wasn’t so heavy, you’d think she was tracing her name on your cunt. You huff, rocking your hips into her face as much as you can with her hands firmly clasped around your hips. Your hands find themselves around her horns and they gently pull her head closer to you, riding her face as if to help brace you for the knot snapping in your stomach.

Karlach takes a moment to pause, smiling with your heady flavor on her lips, chuckling against your core. “So needy.”

You don’t last long, not with her smile and teeth and tongue around your folds, no, and it’s a blind rush of time and hot white when your thighs tremble around her head, mouth dropping open in a silent scream.

“Karlach...!” You cry her name, cumming and convulsing around her tongue with open-mouthed moans. Her grip on you tightens, an Infernal curse leaving her as your slick taste floods her mouth. Her hands run over you, the small of your back, your hips and then to your ass, gripping the fat of it to keep you still while she laps at what little you have left to give; only giving in when you whimper and try to kick her away.

(In the rational crevices of your head, you’d hate to prove Astarion right about being a whore but fuck, does she make you feel good.)

It’s soft silence that fills the air, after you both cease your panting. You stare at the stars, head foggy with the orgasm that racked your body, humming when Karlach gently sets you in her arms again to wash your arousal away in the water while your head contentedly lies against her shoulder.

“Let’s get you to your bed, hm?” She coos, bumping her horns against yours – only letting you go to stand up again when she finishes washing and drying you, allowing you to clothe yourself. Time is a blur then, as you spend it aided to walk by her warm arms, staring at the intricate maze of foliage you’re surrounded about.

You’re snapped out your limping daze when you look around to see the foliage isn’t dark anymore, lit around by hues of oranges from a familiar campfire. Karlach grins, closed-eye as she squeezes you and kisses you warmly before nudging you towards the direction of your tent, quaintly lit up by a candlelight lamp you set inside earlier.

“Go inside,” she coaxes you, all-kind. It’s a certain emptiness you feel when you peel yourself away from her warmth with a whine that has her chuckling and pressing her lips against yours again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

You do as she says, stumbling inside your tent and falling with a thud to your soft bed – but not without curling your lips into a loving smile, savoring the memory of her. It’s the last thing you see before you succumb to the hands of rest.

Fuck.

It’s the middle of the night when you’re next startled awake.

And it’s no surprise when you wake up to yet another surge of dull aching and your own arousal just starting to drip out of you. You waste little time; stumbling like a fawn out your tent, movements laden with the remnants of sleep –

You’re halfway out when your face slams against a body; lithe and cold, and in your sleep-ridden state, you could be convinced you just bumped into a slab of ice draped in flesh. But you urge your heavy lids to open up, to see the man, well, vampire you’d bickered with earlier, staring down at you from the very opening.

“Astarion,” you state, bleary-eyed and fisting your nightshirt closer; the fleece of it grounding you under his piercing gaze. Your heart is beating quick; a brief thought hopes it stays beating, and you will it away. You have half the mind to ask what he’s doing in front of your tent, but you have no time. The air is thick. The heat inside you is boiling. You need relief – Rolan.

“I...” Your words crawl in your throat, the line of your brows furrowing when you feel the familiar pinpricks of your heat pressing into you. “Please, move. I have somewhere to be.”

You almost feel small under the depth of his gaze; everything about him reeks of fury mingling with need.

“Off to find another bed to warm, I assume?” Astarion hisses with the slightest slur, the breath which he speaks out carrying the scent of fine wine – the air around him dangerous. Starving. He moves closer, and you, in all your confusion, slowly crawl back into your tent, unsure on what to fight first; the heat that consumes you or the danger you feel is about to overtake you.

“Astarion,” you mumble, this time with a bleat to your voice and your eyes wide like the lamb to be drained and slaughtered you feel you are. The air is heady; laden with fear and need thick like honey. Everything around you is too much. Where is Rolan? Karlach?

A hand tightens around your ankle, refusing to let go even as you yelp and watch Astarion force his way inside your cramped tent and crawls himself between your legs to nestle his face in the crook of your neck.

“No, no,” You whisper to him, shifting under him in a panic when you feel his familiar lips on your neck. “I’m sorry but you cannot feed from me tonight, Astarion. I need to leave, now.”

“I’m not here to drain you dry, silly.” Astarion’s voice is husky, breathy. It has you clenching your thighs around his hips; his hands clasp around yours in return. “Though, I am starving, I have something else in store for little you.” You grit in discomfort, the unease and desire a blend that you feel entirely drunk on.

(He would never admit it but that tender pit of terror in you has him salivating.)

“Leave...!” You hiss. He chuckles at that; the sound velvet-rich and grating, and does exactly the contrary – pushing himself closer to you until you’re chest-to-chest. You hate that you cannot see him tucked away to your neck. It does not help he is close to your raw, still-sensitive core; you have nothing on save for a long, flowy poet’s shirt thanks to a certain crimson tiefling.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I can’t have you running off to somebody else.”

It’s then that you feel it; the press of a cruel, toothy smile against your throat and something of leather, something of warmth digging into the meat of your thigh. He is not here to drain you out of his anger, rather, he’s here to devour you, prey on you. You fear you’ve catched on belatedly.

“Mfh. I don’t want–” Your late, futile resistance is met with a finger to your lips, flushed thighs being pushed further apart as his hips slot between yours. Somewhere in the back of your muddled mind, you hear yourself keen with delight at the friction before he hushes you.

“You’re right, you don’t want it.” Astarion croons, watching as you writhe your hips against his for friction, as your bare cunt instictively grinds against the hot imprint of his still-clothed cock even as your head grasps for even a thread of coherence. “You need it, need this - need me.”

Your body does not deny his claim, arching your hips to meet his grinding, swollen folds clinging to his leather trousers – the pit in your stomach and the crawl up your spine indistinguishable between dread and ecstasy. The line of reason and morals are once again blurred in your head.

You curse yourself for having indulged in the alcoholic delicacy earlier. He’s emboldened by the wine; you’re weakened by it. The finger on your lips slip inside your mouth, firm on your tongue. You gag on it when his other hand clasped on your hip reaches down in between your legs and feels around for your, unsurprisingly, dripping vulva, the both of you gasping in delight.

“You’re soaked. What a fine surprise!” He chuckles, continuing to buck his clothed erection into your heat, petting your hair when you moan around his fingers. “I hope it’s because of me and not just your little heat.”

Your body is transparent, visceral with him, loyal to the promise of pleasure he can give you – even if your mind, what is left of your rationality indignantly fights tooth and nail to convince your body to stop giving in to animalistic pleasure.

It’s not long then, until Astarion becomes impatient, always having been; unlacing the ties on his trousers with one skilled hand and leaning over you to toss it off – it’s all too quick for your swarmed mind to catch up to, and the next thing you see and know is that you’re hissing through your teeth and thrashing while he pushes the burning head of his cock into you, hushing you as if you were a distressed animal. Your muscles tense, jerking away, a feeble little no on your lips—

But it’s an easy intrusion, a quick thrust into you is all it takes to bury himself deep with the help of your slick and his pre. He groans as, eyes rolling back as yours start to prick with tears, hold tightening on you as you whimper and turn limp like a ragdoll to his experimental thrusting. Some part of you wants to preen at the pleasure; the honeyed heat inside you pleased.

“Good- fuck, good pet.” He breathily murmurs, clasping a hand around your hip again; alternating between sensual grinding and abruptly slamming into you. All while he laughs and watches with a vicious smile as you’re torn between pathetically moaning and crying, the fingers in your mouth helping to muffle the sounds.

“See? Not so bad if you just close your eyes and give in.” He presses down particularly hard on your tongue when you wail at a sharp, unexpected thrust. He couldn’t have someone from the party playing hero. “I’m trying to help you.”

Tears sting at the corner of your eye, and you have no doubt you look pitiful right now - but fuck, he feels good. You don’t want to admit it, but you won’t deny it either; you needed this. And though you would have preferred to have it be Rolan, all gentle, rutting into you with sweet whispers and even sweeter promises, the heat in your body cannot be satiated with the tenderness he can give you. But you would rather stake him first than admit he’s helping you fill that gaping need in you.

“Astarion...” You furrow your brows and swallow around his fingers, your own life clinging to the back of your throat. It’s with a certain horror and desperation that you realize you’re approaching the edge faster than you’d like – and you know he knows, because he pulls his fingers out your mouth and presses a warm, spit-slick thumb to your aching clit. Your hole flutters around him, and you writhe around, the tightening burn of your incoming orgasm too much to handle. Pleasured, honeyed mewls are wrenched from you as his hips snap, driving his cock deep.

Astarion purrs – a hand on your thigh to help him slam into you, gripping hard enough to form bruises whilst the other was relentless at your clit. It’s with a shriek that you fall apart, seizing on his thrusts that only seem to quicken, the wet sound of skin on skin and your crying permeating through the entire camp, no doubt. He coos when a whine slips out of you, a tear gliding from your eye.

You’re seeing fucking white, blots of black dotted along your vision by the time he greedily slams inside you a final time with a low groan – something pleasingly warm filling you up, satiating you. Astarion holds your face and tugs it meet his for a breathy, passionate kiss whilst he twitches seed inside you - smiling in delight against your lips when you melt.

Relief is found; a warm glow settling on you despite your lids fighting their damndest to stay up. You’re a soft, slow little thing now, all but warm and ready to be taken by approaching slumber. Astarion gladly takes the chance to lie on his side and gather you in his arms, lips curving sweet yet again, but with less threat, as he watches you contentedly curl yourself up against his side. He sighs at the warmth that washes over him, thankful that fatigue has tamed you and fanned out that little spark and scratch you had earlier.

“Happy?” The smitten vampire asks, cheeky, smug as he pulls you closer into him, massaging your sore hips. “No need for you to go looking around for victims when you have me at your disposal, darling. I’d hate for you to lose sight on what really matters.”

You hum as if far away, you’d slap him in the morning that comes, but for now you’d let yourself be lulled into a soft, gentle slumber. A kiss on your head is the last thing you feel, a feeble little goodnight whispered.

[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.

[starteas]

being an artist means you can do whatever you want forever

[hooved]

i hate j*lian b*shir fans. he's like the spock of DS9 in the sense that literally all of you vote for him in polls no matter what the question is just because you wanna fuck this out of character version of him you made up in your head

[buqbite]

it's kinda fascinating to me how welt has been "at the end of his life" for like. several decades by now. he goes on and on about how old and weary he is and how "his job is done" and his story is over but- oh wait i just realized i can phrase this in a very funny way- he's kind of sorta immortal now because he got the herrscher core back, so he's really just stuck in the epilogue for all eternity

[olessan]

HEWWO???

(source)

[iwoulddieforienzo]

Something really great about the persona 2 cast is that they all individually fucking SUCK to talk to casually. Every single one of them. They are all infuriating. We have:

Tatsuya, who will stare at you blankly if you try to initiate conversation (IS) and will dip without saying a word afterward (EP)

Batsuya, who will scoff and brush you off/otherwise act dismissive

Eikichi, who might honestly be the best to talk to in the IS crew and that is not saying much, who WILL talk extremely loudly over you (probably not on purpose?) and will not be paying particularly close attention to the conversation beyond whatever he wants to say (gets points for talking about his gf. gets points taken away for constantly talking about his gf)

Lisa, who will automatically assume bad faith and will be rude to you the entire conversation unless you manage to defuse her temper (good luck)

Jun, who is uncommunicative at BEST and requires an encyclopedic knowledge of flowers, metaphor and body language just to get a HINT on what he’s thinking, and who will be extremely polite but completely unhelpful. If you tried asking him what he wants for dinner I guarantee it will be the longest 30 minutes of your life as he goes “oh I have no opinion :) whatever you want. :))” EXCEPT HE DOES HAVE OPINIONS. He has SO MANY OPINIONS. He is Expecting you to be able to pick up on his “obvious” clues. He will be passive aggressive if you don’t. (Jun babygirl you suck so bad I love u)

Maya, who is a delight but will very quickly become grating if you try to talk to her about anything serious as she hits you with the white suburban mom's "how to live a happy, healthy life" lifecoach slogans. You can’t even mention, like, stepping in a puddle or something without her hitting you with the positivity beam.

Yukino is great actually. 10/10. She’s fabulous we love her. Incredible conversationalist, chill and fun and easy to get along with. But she’s from Persona One, she doesn’t Count.

Ulala, who WILL bring up her relationship problems in every conversation within 10 minutes at least once. Any longer and she will start talking about Maya.

Do I even need to explain Baofu. Have you seen him.

And finally, Katsuya, who is a cop and a kiss ass and Very Obvious about these things. Also he can't talk to women. He can barely talk to men. Help Him.

And yet they all work wonderfully as a group. They are so annoying I love them

[highabovethecloudssomewhere]

EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS

I hate doing this, I really wanted to save my commissions for a time in my life after I’d improved the quality of my art to a higher standard but my car is. um. Doing that thing cars do where they cost more than they’re worth. Trying to balance feeding my family and maintaining my ability to work.

Please reach out if you have any questions or if you’d like to see more samples of my work (messy line art + flat color, loose sketches, etc). At the moment I can only accept payments through Venmo and CashApp. Half the price of the commission will be paid up front, with the other half paid upon completion of the piece. I can’t accept NSFW and lack the skillset to draw furry/anthro.

I will draw fandom content and would love to draw your OCs.

If by some chance y’all want to commission a piece of writing instead (or even alongside of), I’d negotiate a price on that as well.

Even if you aren’t able to/don’t want to commission me, thanks for reading this far. I’m sorry to do this but I appreciate your time immensely.

[steakout-05]

medic tf2 doodles?!?!?? in this economy!???!?!? (art from yesterday)

most gentle and sweet middle aged german man in the whole entire world smile vs planning to swap all of your organs with a series of interconnected frogs smile

a doodle i did of Medic and Archimedes.... he looks too round in this drawing, not smug and evil enough..... also Mitzi from the RAE appearance :D

i LOVE the voicelines Medic has with Haunted Archimedes, he's not disturbed or even slightly put off by the fact that his zombified dove is 1. talking and 2. has a violent and constant craving for brains. he's just like. being a slightly irritated pet owner about it. he's just like "ugh yes archimedes vants all zhe brains doesn't he. now shut up". also i think this is the most on-model medic drawing i've ever done wtf

[feelo-fick]

⬤UTLAWS // Mini MV

We ABSOLUTELY never watch it! / ABSOLUTELY never say it! / ABSOLUTELY never hear it! / There is NOTHING we need to know!!!!

Bright moon is in the sky! / Crescent moon is in the shadow! / Take the unforgivable thought! / Take the unapplicable exception!

JUST HIDE THEM ALL AND LIVE, OKAY?!

DIJIIIIIIIIII HE GETS AN MV (sorta)!!!!!!!!!!!! for a pretty simple looking 20 second video this took me FAR too long, but then again capcut isnt the best editing software in the world.

so yeah i got suddenly possessed to edit a short video of him with this song cause RAAAH ITS SUCH A BANGER!!! and some of the themes fit him, though i admit its not toooo fitting -- some of the lyrics fit meg more BUT its a song about moons and rabbits!!!!! it HAS to be about him!!!

i didnt do the part that had the lyrics i put in the caption even though those fit him best because... well its kinda complicated + animated and ive already suffered enough by just doing these simple overlay layers and keyframes.

anyways i had a lot of fun with this!!!! i heart diji. youre gonna get a lot of him because ever since that fairy brothers post ive been brainrotting on both of them alot >:)

[clowndensation]

there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.

like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?

and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?

the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)

[gophergal]

hello

im sorry

[r7inyz]

finally played this game after hearing about it 3 years ago.. some stuff...yeah

[tachiharastanacc]

Tachihara losing his brother and not understanding what he was feeling or how to deal with it since he was so young (5). And as he gets older, he starts to wonder if he really missed his brother or he missed the idea of having a brother.

He assumes that because he’s grown since then and it feels so distant that he could handle it if it were to happen now. Maybe that’s because he’s killed people of his own. But he never really wants to dwell on it.

Turns out. It’s not. It hurts just as much, but now he blames himself as well. Why wasn’t he there? Why didn’t he stop Fukuchi when he had the chance? If he’d just asked for help, this all could’ve been avoided.

He’s always been a loner to some extent, never good at processing feelings, always wanting to belong but feeling like he was an outsider.

It’s not until they’re all gone that he realizes how much emptier he feels without them.

Shunzen may have been his brother by blood, but as much as he doesn’t wanna face it. Tachihara barely remembers him.

He remembers them. He spent the last 6 years being raised by them. They always encouraged him, supported him, even when the government and fate itself were trying to control them. And yet.

He wasn’t there.

[doppiopinkman]

I am on my hands and knees begging you to tell me some of your Secco headcanons 🙏

Ok! I saved this ask for Secco Saturday!

Here's a bunch of stuff that's not in any sort of order

I think Secco Rottario is around 26 or so during Part 5.

He's canonically not very good with technology. However, I think if you were to dump him in the middle of the woods for a few days with nothing but a bindle and a dream, he'd be okay! He'd be fine! He'd probably even come back carrying food he hunted and foraged for!

Secco from the main universe to me has blonde hair. In the Jorge Joestar universe, he has a mop of dark brown/black hair. Main universe Secco's hair is natural, Jorge Joestar Secco's hair is not.

Secco has a tattoo of a chocolate bar (dedicated to you know who) as well as other smaller tattoos in miscellaneous areas.

Speaking of tattoos! Jorge Joestar Secco has an Evil Dead chainsaw tattoo.

He doesn't talk much around other people, especially around people in Passione. He mostly listens in on other's conversations, using false rumors (i.e., stuff about lobotomy) about him and Cioccolata to his advantage.

Only a select few people in Passione have been able to figure out what the fuck his deal is. Those people are Cioccolata, Tiziano, and Bruno. Cioccolata doesn't need an explanation, Secco trusts this man to the point of joining the mafia with him. Tiziano is a lawyer, so it's kinda his job to pick apart people's personas and arguments, plus his stand is the lie detector stand. And we were there with Bruno.

Secco usually can't find his words for some things. But he knows a scary amount of anatomical vocabulary, all from experience and studying with his doctor. The word 'bitch' has left the room and in its place came 'Scapula', 'Tibia', and 'Vertebral Column'

If you ask Secco to play SSB with you, he's picking Mr. Game & Watch and will be struggling the whole time. If you have the DLC characters, he'll pick Minecraft Zombie and will be struggling the whole time.

He's a little freak at Poker! He's got one hell of a poker face, plus if he's up against people who've never seen him face to face before, he has the added benefit of mystery and intimidation on his side.

Secco probably lies a lot about his life before Passione. From "I lived in an abandoned theme park with 3 roommates" to "I was created in a lab by the Italian government, but I escaped." The truth is probably incredibly mundane in comparison. Again, only Cioccolata knows the truth, and he's NOT spilling the beans. He probably even adds to the lies like a yes and improv scene.

He's not picky at all with food. He ate a dirt off the ground, c'mon now.

[disposal-blueeee]

halloween thing i drew for an art trade with @cherry-207 ! she asked for edgar and scri dressed as angel and devil . you can see her part here !

edgar vargas belongs to jhonen vasquez

scriabin belongs to @zarla-s