#oh fuck tag time
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What do u think yr f/os favorite halloween songs r. This is important.
#damien's imagines#im deadass just going off my preexisting halloween music playlist. if yall want it i am actually very proud of it#Lilia absolutely rocks w Dragula by Rob Zombie. cant explain why but im right#Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde is lestatcoded#i feel like Vil likes more instrument stuff but also i know in my heart she wld like Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks#uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Jareth would like SOMETHING from RHPS. Cant tell what just Any of it.#Michael with (Dont Fear) The Reaper♡♡♡♡#OR CRY LITTLE SISTER. MAYBE#this doesnt work very well bc most of my f/os r from horror and most of these songs r also from. horror stuff.#whatever idc#CATER ABSOLUTELY ADORES SHE WOLF BY SHAKIRA R YOU KIDDING ME#hmmmmmmmmmmmm Malleus ily but. monster mash. im so sorry.#sorry for the emo idia propaganda but either Vampires Will Never Hurt You by MCR or You're So Creepy by Ghost Town#Marko canonically likes Runnin With the Devil (like. its IN Alex Winter's Marko playlist)#YURI WITH YOU'RE DEAD BY NORMA TANEGA#Kiyo also probably vibes w Youre Dead. BUT The Killing Moon too#Tiff likes all of it#oh fuck tag time#tag: poet perfection#tag: perfect devil#tag: forbidden fruit♡#tag: it's only forever#tag: humanity's beauty#tag: fairest of all#tag: fangtastic#tag: say hello to the night
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@pscentral event 20: antagonists
↳ THE LORDS IN BLACK in NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE
#nerdy prudes must die#npmd#starkid#npmdedit#team starkid#the lords in black#hatchetfield#hatchetverse#npmd spoilers#userisiah#userfaiths#userbaz#usercats#userhallie#noooo fucking clue what to tag in this fandom lmao#musicaledit#? sure#anyway yeah i watched npmd and immediately had to make this i was up until 1 am last night#wouldve been earlier but i had to take a break for dnd lol#i was gonna do a tua set for the event but this is easier and better so like. slay#i just wish they had more screen time. pokey and tinky have less than 20 seconds each </3#oh and the titles and stuff are from the fan wiki. hope i didn't get anything wrong#i've been getting a lot of use out of this motion blur text transition its so funky fresh#*edits
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staff still hasn't given me polls, what should i do?
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their moms 69%
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their dads 31%
grace image os i get to look at her
#edit: edited the og post to what i want but to set the record straight i edited to the post to be mathematically correct right after the#first person pointed it out which was like ten mins after i posted the og post. now fuck offf !!!!! the rest of the tags r from the og post#for some reason i feel very immature making your mom jokes about tumblr staff. which i shldnt !!#bc they suck nd they still havent given me polls. but i ig i feel imature bc it a your mom joke 😭 but still i tihnk its kinda funny#EDIT: edited the post to what i want bc yall were getting annoying . but to set the record straight i edited to post to be mathematically#also its *mum* not mom okay i am NOT !! an american . but if i say mum everyone will j be like 'omg british' like i dont know i am#anyway. i want polls please. give me the rigght to force my mutuals chose between the most inane things#also i tihnk it wld b cool for the cs weekly blog. like w each episode#i cld do a poll of like. out of five stars what do u think of this ep#and it wld b a cool thing of which eps r ppls faves#also i cld have like. whose ur fave in team red whos ur fave in acme etc#id prob just have to go with vile faculty bc theres more than 10 ppl in vile. and ppl wld kill me if i didnt include nel the ell or whoever#it wld b fun !!!#oh btw csweekly thats i thing i want to start. prob on uhhh the 11th of feb ill post abt it more but its basically#a tag/blog for watching cs one ep a time watching one ep every saturday#ya !! :3#flappy rambles#inaccessible#ask to tag#(<- idk. just in case)
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I think the death weirdos should hang out
#transformers#maccadam#first aid#rewind#arts#death mention tw#how do i even trigger tag for snff film mention without getting shadow banned. is the question.#for the record i dont think either of them are having A Good Time in that last panel#but watching them has become like a compulsion#like when aid found out abt the tapes he was like oh goddamit. fuck. well i have to watch them :/#and everyone else was like no???? you really dont have to wtf??#but the specter of amulons corpse that watches aid from the darkened corner of the room tells him he has to so#whos he supposed to listen to here
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“Icarus.”
it's all about freedom really
Credit goes to An Sifakah for the poem. Enjoy!
Support me on Ko-fi maybe?
#lake's art#happy birthday sabo!#this time actually on time wow#revolutionary sabo#one piece sabo#asl brothers#asl trio#monkey d. luffy#portgas d ace#watch me tag ace even though he barely shows up#one piece comic#one piece#one piece fanart#oh i'll confess. i traced that ship from a screencap#there's no force on earth that can make me draw a whole ass ship sorry#as always I am stupidly proud of exactly 1 (one) page and this time it's the third#but i also just love that part of the poem so i was already biased towards it before i drew it lmao#i had a whole ass explanation for the reasoning behind this comic that i wrote at like. 3 am. but fuck knows what i did with it#i contemplated colors and immediately gave up. hell nah i'm not doing that again
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REGRETEVATOR ICONS!
FIRST ROUND OF ICONS!!! lower quality (aka more friendly for actual pfp use) and extra bive AND a timelapse of mark for funsies under the cut.
FREE USE!! USE WHEREVER NO NEED TO ASK!!!
credit isn't needed, but don't purposefully crop out the signature please :3
smaller images, for icon use anyplace! if they don't work you'll just have to resize them urself lol
high & low quality BIF. enjoy BIF.
slight flash warning for the vid. nothing serious but at the end it flashes white idek
#oh god. time to tag this fucking monster#labyposting#labyart#my art#regretevator#regretevator roblox#roblox regretevator#regretevator fanart#regretevator art#roblox#roblox art#roblox fanart#fanart#icon#icons#icon art#pfp icons#pfp#matching icons#matching pfps#icon set#regretevator icon#regretevator icons#art#poob regretevator#regretevator poob#poob#partynoob#party noob#regretevator party noob
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rotating them in my mind like a microwave
#this was#fucking crazy#so happy#this is my first time really drawing kissing and maybe it shows idk#guys am I cringe#i am cringe but I am free#OH#THANK YOU REMI for the other vid hehehe#okay back to the mines (debaser comic)#normal tag time#scream 1996#scream fanart#scream#billy loomis#stu macher#stuilly#billy x stu#stu x billy#screamd#scream’d#my art
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what the fuck am i doing. scheduling this at 1am.
#MD personality shift au#murder drones#murder drones fanart#murder drones N#murder drones uzi#serial designation N#uzi doorman#murder drones Nuzi#Nuzi#enzi#biscuit bites#tw suggestive#??? i guess#no one actually notices it but he's slightly lifting her shirt. lol. lmao.#being aroace is making suggestive/nsfw art that you gradually lose interest in because you just don't feel it yknow? LMAO#it starts out like “oh boy! this one's SPICY!!” and then it devolves into “oh yeah whatever. gotta color here and shade there.”#“dang i fucked up the anatomy there. wait what was i drawing?”#shoutout to my fellow aroacers who do this full-time cuz i could not I'd literally die of boredom LMAO#its . 1am and im jsut rambling in the tags
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THE WAY THAT THEY INVENTED ROMANCE WITH THIS SONG???? HELLO?????
#'i don't know why you waste your time on me' 'baby; all i got is time!' OH MY *GOD*#WHY IS THAT THE MOST ROMANTIC THING THATS EVER HAPPENED#im screaming and crying knowing no one else will ever have what they do#like i am so serious ive never REALLY cried at this show before but this song got me so bad#theyre so fucking cute. im going to lay on the floor and be overwhelmed by yearning#mine#fave#<- yes im tagging my own posts w this#helluva boss#helluva boss spoilers#fizzarolli#asmodeus#fizzmodeus#helluva boss fizzarolli#fizzarolli helluva boss#asmodeus helluva boss#helluva boss asmodeus#e: mammon's magnificent musical mid-season special
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i think i'm hilarious -- aka i made blood blossom danny au memes
all of these come from my DpxDC prompt "i am pushing the batdad agenda--" and it's corresponding additions in the reblogs ksdjlf.
i am. rotating them in my head. forever and always. personally i think there should be more batdad aus in dpxdc, their dynamic could be neat. :)
#THAT FIRST ONE TOOK ME A HOT MINUTE TO MAKE. i have never been more careful with a trackpad. imgflip doesnt have an undo button#i think its fucking hilarious#its a batdad au#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dpxdc#dpxdc crossover#dp x dc crossover#dp x dc#dc x dp#mmm i need to come up with a name for this au#found family ftw WHOOOO. i could just do a generic 'blood blossom au' tag but i want a specific one because i like being unique#eldest batkid danny au#chronically ill danny au#danny: im grateful he's helping me but im still kinda apprehensive...#battinson: vaults over a car to escape reporters. likes rock music. isn't fucking evil. punched a cop. actively looking for a cure#danny: ...huh. okay.#furiously pushing the batdad agenda for my own gain. just look at them guys. they're funny little guys.#unofficial witness protection to adoption pipeline.#bruce wayne accidental teen acquisition. save a teenager gain a son#its about the adventure of them going from strangers to friends to family :)#im bored of the bruce slander guys in the words of hermes from hadestown:#“[its] about someone who *tries”*#danny saw a funny man in a funny costume eat the side of a dumpster and has never related more with someone on a spiritual level#“brother eugh i feel that. oh heY WAIT HERO BUDDY?? SAME HAT??? SAME HAT?”#danny's been the only hero he's known since he was 13. on god he is leaping at this opportunity. like YES. PLEASE BE ANOTHER HERO#HELP ME GET AWAY FROM CERTIFIED CRAZY MAN. HELP. YOU'RE SCARY AND HIDING IN THE DARK. EVEN BETTER. HELP A BROTHER OUT HERE#blood blossom au#for the time being thats the name
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Unfinished Marinetta anyone?
#doodles#art#fanart#my art#original art#Splatoon#Splatoon marina#marina Splatoon#marina ida#Splatoon art#Splatoon fanart#bayonetta#bayonetta is my lesbian awakening like girl what oh#I WANNA BE A WITCH#office siren girls my absolute favorite I worship them#those glasses GURL#UGH#WOMEN#STOP#seryo these are your fucking tumblr tags calm yourself the fuck down#also first time drawing bayonetta’s suit or whatever she’s wearing#it’s a suit right like a uh#yeah jumpsuit something idk#it’s hella complicated but I’m into it cuz I like complicated#I’ll stop now.
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Dress me up, make it tight, I'm your dolly
You're my doll, rock'n'roll, feel the glamour in pink
Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky~
Inspired from This post of @just-dol-headshots and this ask from @hakusins. Don't worry I'm still aiming for your ass Haku-Dean :) References and something under the cut
We all have to agree Bully Robin should have some softer and caring sides. When there's only them two and no one else is around to judge, he can let loose and slip back into that kinda of "Original Robin" we know and I love. I mean, that's what JDOLH made that got me into these swap messes from the beginning jsjkhskjhd you knowww the HUG!!
Reference: Barbie Girl (Aqua) and this cute ecchi Clamp Chobit piece
All in all I'm a pink bietch and Dollya won't be losing her V-card anytime soon that I can promise so hang in there okay mr.Bully.
edit: OMG THIS IS MY 1000TH POST TTOTT)) JKSDJLASKJKDLA
SELF-INDULGENT HERE WE GO
#Warning: rant in tags#dollya art#robin the orphan#dol robin#robin the bully#swap robin#swap au#DoL swap AU#Just Dollya herself#degrees of lewdity#dol#pinkcore#pink aesthetic#I don't know man I still can't decide the title for Dollya and “the Weeb” is kinda not very cute eventhough I like it#I'm enjoying this SO FREAKING MUCH I lose track of time and want to draw so many fucking things for it#I have “Plans” for Bully Robin don't worry he will get backstory as well as character development#Dark or light I can't promise I will work with JDOLH and maybe Hakusin too to build this AU#I want to put work into this you understand me?#AAAAAAAAAA THE IDEAS KEEP COMING I hate this yet I love it#What else to tag oh right#yumejoshi#yumeship#I LOVE to draw pink so fucking much#I love pink#I want to draw more pink
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Inflicts human Loop on you
#mrgh... my favourite little sadstar. I love star torture#gotta be sooo fucked up when blood in monochrome looks almost lightless. with reflecting light looking like stars#especially when you experienced a star busrting from inside of you. something that turned your skin into a little patch of cosmos#aren't you afraid it's still there. under your skin. just waiting to come out again.#isat#in stars and time#loop isat#isat loop#human loop#isat siffrin#siffrin isat#art tag#my art#desert art#isat mirabelle#mirabelle isat#oh forgor to mention but loop and mira are def style buddies. they have spa days :}
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i finished it, was kicked out of the game, and then spent the next 10 minutes drawing this. i will now go take a shower, most likely cry, and then go through the emotional turmoil of convincing myself to reset so i can do a geno run. i hate it here :D
#undertale yellow#uty#my art#<- ifg#spoilers under these tags beware. although it is mostly just me being very very sad#that entire thing was heart wrenching. anyways#CEROBAS FIGHT??? HELLO???#i had to exit out of it the first time (i got to the last phase) to get better items but i came back and won pretty quickly#but THE CUTSCENES?!?!?#JFC NO WONDER THIS WOMANS SO MESSED UP. HER HUSBAND PRACTICALLY DIED IN HER ARMS AND THE LAST THING HE LEFT HER WITH- HIS DYING WISH- COULD#ONLY BE FULFILLED BY PUTTING THEIR ONLY CHILD IN DEATHS WAY. AND THEN WHEN SHE TOOK THAT RISK THE WORST THING HAPPENED AND SHE NOW HAS TO#LIVE WITH THE GUILT OF BEING THE ONE TO. MOST LIKELY. KILL HER ONE AND ONLY DAUGHTER#ALL THE WHILE SHE WAS PUSHING AWAY HER CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND AND CONVINCING HERSELF THAT SHE WAS IN THE RIGHT TO SACRIFICE CLOVER WHO HAD#BEEN ONLY KIND MERCIFUL AND JUST THIS WHOLE TIME. EVEN TO THOSE WHO WERE TRYING TO KILL THEM. FUCK.#AAND WHEN CLOVER HUGGED HER I DOUBLED OVER IRL BC *THATS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO DO IN THAT MOMENT* I HATE IT (read: love it) HERE#n dont even get me STARTED on after that. when clover started moving on their own and the gd white screen came up and we got flashbacks of#everyone's words. thats when the tears rlly started coming bc it clicked for me. 'oh. this is it. isn't it?' and IT WAS#WHEN THEY GAVE THEIR FUCKIGN HAT AND GUN AWAY TO MARTLET AND STARLO WELL THATS WHEN I REALLY STARTED CRYING#AAND THE GROUP HUGG#I WAS SOBBING WHENEVER I HAD TO WATCH THEM CRAWL UP AGAINST THE WALL AND DIE AND HAVE FLOWEYS WORDS PLAY OVERHEAD#AND THE FUCKOGN#THE F U C K I N G#AFTEWRCREDITS SCENE WHERE WE GOT THE 'You heard someone calling for help. You answered.' I GOT CHILLS SO BAD#to think that all the other souls have stories just as expansive and emotional as clover n frisks. how fucked up is that. in a good way tho#and finally the last scene where we got all 4 of our main friends sending us off in waterfall and we see clovers items end up in the dump#just waiting to be found by bratty and catty. fucken hell man this was a masterpiece#anyways time to reset and obliterate everyone and never emotionally recover from that ever!! really is feeling like 2016-17 again w the way#this game has me sobbing my eyes out and feeling the guilt of knowing that i dont HAVE to kill them all but im too curious not to#oh well. at least i have the balls to do it this time around instead of letting a youtuber do it for me ig
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merry christmas @luminousbeings-crudematter, here's the ghoap x reader purge au! (a week and a half after you posted about it... im so sorry)
5.7k, mind the tags <3
cw: ROUGH NONCONSENUAL SEX in all caps, pwp, under-prepared/painful anal sex, some pretty intense fear stuff, people covered in blood and referenced violence (it's a purge au lol)
Your hands tremble where they’re tucked close to your chest, blood sticky and thick between each finger. You feel coated in it, like someone has taken a brush and gone over every inch of your skin, painted you in red.
It’s in your mouth. You can feel the warmth of it on your tongue, the taste of iron sickening. You tell yourself that maybe you bit your tongue, that it’s not really your ex Phil’s blood coating your teeth.
Your thin pajamas are hardly any protection against the chill of the night air, less so with how soaked they are. The stench of piss is heavy in the air, a mixture of yours and his, but you don’t have time to go back inside and change.
You’re running on pure instinct, an animal urge deep in your mind insisting you run. You’d always thought you’d have more of a flight instinct than fight. Despite how you feel now, how your legs itch to carry you as far away as possible, the cooling corpse left behind tells you the truth.
You stumble into the wall, a wave of nausea knocking you off balance. There’s a trail of red left behind as you use one hand to balance yourself, the other held protectively over your heart.
Your security system - cheap, but usually enough to let you sleep through the Purge - is completely destroyed. There’s no chance of it protecting you, and the bust in windows will let anyone on the streets see your vulnerability. You’ll never feel safe there, and you can’t shake the need to run.
There’s no chance of any of your neighbors helping you. There’s some neighborly camaraderie between your floor-mates, but that all disappears on Purge night. It’s every man for himself, every year, without fail. You know that. You even think the same as them, pretend no one else exists when that siren goes off every year.
But now, shaking and terrified, you wish you could knock on a door and see it open. Hear the security system disengage and see a familiar face, beg for help and thank them on your knees.
It’s a nice fantasy. Reality is less kind, seeing you shake with a dawning chill as you manage to shoulder open the door to the stairwell, cringing when it slams behind you.
The cold cement is rough on your feet, and a distant part of yourself worries about slipping - your feet are slick with blood, and you can hear yourself leaving a trail of footsteps. You don’t try to slow down, holding tight to the metal railing and shuffling down the stairs.
You’re halfway down the first of four flights when the door on the next floor opens, a large figure stepping into the stairwell. Your stumble to a stop before you even register that you’re not alone anymore, and you’re backpedaling before you even fully realize.
He’s big, his face covered in a red skull mask. From your vantage point you can see his hair is shaved into a mohawk, and he’s shirtless with only a pair of gray sweatpants on.
He’s drenched in blood. Even more than you, and you feel like you’re drowning in it. If you’re painted in blood, someone took a bucket and dumped it on this man. You can hardly see any unmarked skin, and you wonder for a split-second if the skull was once white.
There’s an audible grin in his voice when he calls up to you. “Look’it you, bonnie thing. You tryin’ to run?” He steps to the side, leaving a wide open space for you to pass him to the next staircase. You’re frozen where you’re leant against the railing, hardly able to breathe. “C’mon, give it a shot.”
You listen, scrabbling further back and all but throwing yourself up the stairs on all fours. You’re only the need to get away, an innate fear that tells you to get as far from the blood-soaked man as quickly as possible. You swear you hear him laugh as you launch yourself up the next flight, panting already.
There’s no safety found in going up though, as hardly two flights later you’re tugged to a stop by your instincts alone.
Standing above you, hardly six feet away and blocking the door he must’ve just come from, is another giant. This one fully clothed and with a white skull mask, somehow bigger and more intimidating than the man you can hear coming up the stairs behind you. You can’t see even an inch of skin, black gloves on his hands and mean black combat boots reaching nearly his knees.
There’s a moment, before the chase ends, where you contemplate jumping over the railing. There’s no going up, there’s no going back, and you can’t even begin to imagine what these two men want with you. The only thing that keeps you from throwing yourself over is the fear that you wouldn’t die on impact, that you’d be left injured and even more vulnerable to these men.
You’re not sure you could’ve tried that plan had you even wanted to, because the moment it forms fully in your mind a pair of thick arms wraps around you, and a heavy weight forces you to the ground.
You cry out at the sudden shove, palms scraped raw against the cement. The man behind you covers your body completely - his knees bracket yours, his hands rest on either side of your head, and there’s no part of the back of you that isn’t cloaked in him.
He doesn’t say anything as he ruts against you, the blood from his chest soaking through your tank top and making you cringe further away. You can’t stop the quiet stream of whimpers as you try to shrink into the stairs, try to get away from the beast behind you. He doesn’t care, only drops more of his weight onto you and pantomines fucking you.
You can feel the outline of his cock through his pants, as thin as the clothes both of you are wearing are. If you weren’t wearing your shorts, if he tugged the waistband of his pants down, he’d be inside of you.
The thought makes you tear up, makes you want to slam your head back and try to knee him in the balls, makes you want to fight.
But all your fight is gone. It died with Phil and your security system, and you’re left only with a weight in your bones that makes you wish you could sink through the floor.
The hard plastic of the skull mask presses to the sensitive skin of your cheek, biting into the fat there. You can see the gleam of bright blue eyes in the sockets, the creases at the edges that tell you he’s smiling.
“You gonna fuck her here for the first time?” The white skull asks, voice deep enough that you hardly register the words. Your eyes are jerked to his form and it makes you shiver to see him sitting on the top of the staircase you’re pinned to, legs spread wide as he stares down at you with a cigarette between lips exposed by the tilted mask. You feel like a sacrifice, thrown to the stairs of a temple for a god.
“Can I?” The man over your shoulder pants, accent roughened from his own movements. You can’t tell if the wetness between your thighs is piss, blood, or an even worse option. You bite your tongue to hold back a whine, wince at the burst of iron in your mouth.
The man above you tilts his head, smoking blown into the air. “You fuck her here, you won’t get to go again on the roof. Don’t need you gettin’ spoiled.”
Your nails dig into the concrete, folding beneath the pressure as you shake beneath the red skulled man. He whines over you, like a petulant kid being told no for the first time, but goes still against you. That alone has you blinking open damp eyelashes, watching him from the corner of your eyes.
“Alright, I’ll wait,” he pants, chin resting on your soldier. “Give ye some time to get ready, huh lass? It’ll be easier for ye then. Just think about what we’ll do to ye, how good it’ll feel to get properly fucked, yeah?”
You sob when he grinds one final time against you, your hips pushed into the harsh edge of the stairs.
He’s dragging you up after that, hardly letting either of you stand fully before shoving you up the stairs. You can’t catch your balance and let out a small cry as you fall back to your knees, mouth twisting in pain at the unforgiving surface against your naked knees.
You flinch when a gloved hand grasps your chin, tugging up until you’re forced to look towards the white skull above you.
You’ve landed between his feet, a boot on either side of your body, and if you’d moved forward even another half foot, you’d have face planted into his lap.
Your heart skips a beat when you realize you’re making eye contact with him. The dark brown of his pupils blends almost seamlessly with what must be black paint smeared around his eye sockets, and the only reason you even realize you’re locked in a staring contest is the way the light reflects off the whites of his eyes.
You don’t have time to try and move away from him on your own (or, more accurately, to throw yourself backwards and pray you didn’t break something falling down the stairs) before a pair of bare hands are shoving you up from beneath the armpits, making you almost squeal as you jerk in the direction you’re forced.
“Up, c’mon,” red skull grunts, hands flitting from one part of your exposed skin to the next as he herds you upstairs. “Need to get inside ye, kitty, fuckin’ walk.”
You sob as you stumble up the stairs, the top of your foot scraping painfully against the concrete. You glance over your shoulder just in time to see White stand to follow you two, but you’re nearly sent sprawling again when Red only shoves you all the more harshly.
“Pl-please,” you manage to gasp, shoulder roughly bouncing off the wall. A glance up tells you you’re two full flights away from the rooftop. “Please, I don’t know what you want, b-but…” You can hardly talk around the sobs floating in your throat, choking you. “Please, please don’t hurt me.”
Red groans as he tugs you nearly off balance, the sound echoing off the walls and full of what you can only describe as hunger.
“Fuck, haven’t even gotten ye naked yet ‘n yer already beggin. Knew ye’d be perfect for us.”
You can hardly see through the tears in your eyes, the rest of the trip up to the roof all gray with streaks of red and black. You can’t focus enough to try and get away again, can’t get enough of your panic under control to fucking think.
The red skull catches you when you almost go careening over the rails, one broad hand catching you by the chest and gripping.
He groans, you flinch. “Fuck, cannae wait to get my mouth on these.” He pinches with his whole hand, your breast going sharp with pain on every fingertip. You whine, flinching further against his chest and trying to shrink away.
“Keep movin’, Soap.”
“Aye,” Red - Soap - pants, and you can practically hear the saliva gathered in his mouth when he swallows. “C’mon, kitty, only a little further.”
The blood on your hands has dried by the time White is shouldering open the door to the roof, your hands itching and the red flaking away every time your fingers twitch. The night air is a cold shock, just jarring enough to tug some reason back into your brain.
Soap doesn’t stop his herding until you’re far enough from the door for his partner to block it with an old metal chair, the back tucked under the door handle. You tuck your hands beneath your arms, shoulders curled in in an attempt to preserve warmth.
You wouldn’t have expected the night to be so cold. Half of the street is burning - flames painting the sky, giving you the exact opposite impression of the biting chill you feel. There are dozens of people in the streets, carrying guns and axes and chainsaws and all sorts of other weapons you can’t see. You feel bile rise in your throat when you realize the dark pools reflecting flames in the street are blood, not water.
“Fuckin’ finally,” Soap grumbles, and you don’t have any time to think before his mouth is pressed forcefully against yours, tongue shoving at your lips.
Your eyes are wide open, unlike his, and you make a shocked sound high in your throat at the sight of his maskless face. You can’t really see what he looks like with the way he’s pressed against you, but it’s a shock nonetheless.
You keep your lips pressed tightly together, no matter how much his tongue prods and tries to force its way into your mouth. You feel more than hear him laugh against you after a few long seconds, and one of his massive paws comes up to cradle your jaw pointer finger against your temple and thumb under your chin.
He stops trying to force himself between your lips after almost a minute, instead shifting to just… licking your lips. His tongue paints wide across your mouth, soaking you in his saliva. He’s almost scarily determined in the way he accosts you, his grip tight on your face as his other hand shifts to bruise your hip, covering what feels like the entire bottom-half of your face in his spit. You can’t help but grimace, trying to pull away from him, but he’s pressed too close.
“Can’t fuckin’ wait to be in ye,” he pants, breath warm and wet against your cheeks. “I know yer gonna squeeze me just right, bonnie, can tell already.”
“Please,” you say, voice weak. “Please, don’t, I don’t want you to-”
His groan is guttural. “Ye wanna know a secret, bonnie?” His voice is quiet between the two of you, bright blue eyes boring deep into yours when he pulls back. To your endless frustration, he’s handsome.
He leans close, whispering so low that you almost have to strain to hear hum. “That’s what makes you fun. Wouldnae be draggin’ you up here if ye wanted it, could get you any other night of the year for that. But it’s Purge night, lass… so you go ahead and fight as much as ye want, yeah? Just makes it more fun for me.”
You can’t help but sob at that, fat tears streaming down your face as he maneuvers you. You feel disconnected from your body as he forces you down to the ground, your soft belly left exposed when he pushes up your tank-top to cup one of your breasts, a whimper crawling out of your throat at the way the gravel presses into you.
You feel his breathing grow heavier as his hands move down to your shorts, shoving them off your hips and leaving them loose around your calves, completely disregarding your pitiful attempts at crawling away.
“Poor thing, been stuck in these the whole time? They fuckin’ reek, bonnie, no offense. That his piss or yours?”
You shake your head against the ground, face twisted up in acute humiliation. For some stupid reason you don’t want to even begin exploring, you find it necessary to whisper, “H-his.”
Soap hums, and you curse yourself inwardly when the humiliation is slightly alleviated.
“Get ‘em off her,” the white mask says, and you can’t help but jump at the sound of his voice. He’s sat on a large box only a few feet away, leaning back and relaxing, looking for all the world like he’s settled in for his favorite show. “Don’t want anythin’ of his touching her now.”
The sound Soap makes at that is animalistic, a snarl coming from deep in his chest that makes you flinch as he all but tears the shorts from your body. You wince at the wet splat of them landing several feet away.
You force your forehead into the gravel when your knees are forced wide, a rough hand and another pair of knees spreading you.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” you can’t help but beg, voice trembling. “Please- god, please don’t-”
“Fuck,” he moans over your shoulder. “Yeah, keep goin’, lass.”
You sob at the feeling of warm skin against your bared behind, his thick length slotting itself smoothly between the slightly spread lips of your pussy. Your eyes squeeze shut and it takes all your willpower not to keep begging.
He slides himself back and forth against you for a few long breaths, using online the slight slickness from a mixture of piss and blood to get some friction. But to your immense horror, it only takes a few moments for the sensual movement against your clit to have your body preparing itself.
The slight wetness at your hole might be a betrayal, but it’s not nearly enough to ease the way when he pushes inside of you with no warning.
You nearly scream, a high sound of pure panic and pain when it feels like you’re being split in two. Somewhere off in the distance, you hear someone laugh. Right above you, Soap groans.
He’s buried himself to the hilt inside you before the pain has had any time at all to fade, and he’s fucking into you hardly a second after that.
Every thrust forces a grunt from your throat, the entire weight of him slammed into your back each time his balls smack against your clit. Your face is twisted up in a grimace, your whole body racked with pain that your assaulter couldn’t care less about.
“Fuck, kitty. Yer squeezin’ me so good, such a good girl, shit-! Knew you’d be ti-tight as a vice, fuck, but didn’t know you’d be squeezin’ me so tight I can hardly move.”
Your whine is plaintive, his moan is filled with pleasure.
“Yer gettin’ so wet for me, bonnie. Ye like this, huh? Bet you like it just as much as I do, gettin’ thrown around and takin’ advantage of. That it, kitty? Ye like being forced?”
You sob and shake your head against the ground, crying all the more when sharp pebbles dig into your cheeks.
“Naw, I think ye do. Why else’d you be- fuck, squeezin’ me like that?”
“Cause- because-” you try, but you can’t get the breath in to get more than a single word out.
“Huh? Cause- cause-?” Soap mocks, his voice pitching up to mimic you as he plants himself deep inside you, grinding his hips against the meat of your ass. “C’mon, kitty, tell me why. Go on.”
“Cause I want you to stop!” You cry, balled up fist slamming into the gravel. You can’t help but whine ow when the sharp rocks poke into your skin, and Soap’s laugh shakes your entire body.
“Good,” he whispers, breath hot against your ear. “Squirm all ye want, lass. I love it when you fight.”
You can do nothing but go limp beneath him as he begins fucking you again, his pace somehow faster and even more relentless. It’s a small mercy that there’s no fight left in you, that you can’t give him any more pleasure.
It certainly doesn’t stop him, though. Despite the fact that you’re doing your best impression of a dead fish, Soap pants and moans against your shoulder like you’re the single best thing he’s ever slept with. His cock is painfully hard inside of you, and his pace never once slows.
He’s loud when he finally comes, the sound of his orgasm clear enough that you know he’s thrown his head back to the sky. You can only whimper as he rolls his hips against you, working the last spurts of cum out of his cock and into your unwilling body.
“Fuck,” he sighs in your ear, sounding far more satisfied than he has any right to. “Good girl, kitty. You were perfect.”
You sniffle beneath him when he slowly pulls out, both of you groaning at the sensation. He gives you an almost perfunctory pat on the ass, and stands to walk away. You manage to open your eyes and focus just in time to see him slide to the ground in front of his partner, leaning against the wall.
“Yer turn,” he sighs. “Warmed her up good for you, Lt.”
Despite the hatred boiling in your gut, you can do nothing but lay limp on the ground and watch as his partner stands, cracking his neck and moving towards your prone form.
You want to run, you want to fight, but you can only watch the executioner come closer and wait for the metaphorical axe to fall.
He crouches by your head first, grasping your chin and pulling up until your torso tries to follow to alleviate the tension. He stares deep into your eyes for a long moment, and you find that it’s impossible to even tell where his pupils are with no real lighting. You feel like you’re truly looking into the empty eye sockets of a skull, no man and no mercy to be found.
“You’ll call me Ghost when I fuck you,” he rumbles, thumb stroking over the scrapes on your cheek. He doesn’t wait for a response, simply hauls you up by the shoulder and turns you onto your back.
He’s rough with your limbs as he shoves your legs together and up, his forearm banding across the backs of both of your knees and holding them to your chest. You whimper and wiggles as best you can, but the bruising blow against your thigh is enough to have you gasping and stilling.
“Don’t fight,” he warns, and you feel his gloved fingers running up the crack of you. “You’re hurtin’ enough as it is, and I’m not gonna help. You wanna make it worse too?”
You shake your head, unsure if he can even see you through your legs. He doesn’t respond, and hums when he swipes two fingers through the liquid gathered between your lips.
You whine when those fingers move further down, a fresh panic creeping in when he presses around your back hole.
“You should be glad Soap fucked you so good,” Ghost drawls. “He gave you all the lube you’re gonna get.”
You feel like an animal when you whine again, unsure of how to even begin trying to speak. You yelp when a thick finger slides into your hole, completely disregarding any resistance and forcing its way in until it’s buried to the knuckle. Your cries go ignored.
“Quit squirmin’,” Ghost scolds, pulling his finger out to smack your ass before shoving two back in. “You’re fine.”
You’re not, you’re terrified and hurting and upset, but none of those things matter when Ghost only coaxes more of your slick and Soap’s spend to your unused whole so there’s less resistance.
The only blessing you have is the fact that you can’t see more than the outline of Ghost’s figure with the way he’s got you positioned. You try your best to close your eyes and float into disassociation, and while you can’t fully manage it, the fact that you can’t see his face - his mask - helps you distance yourself from what’s happening.
The moment you realize this is of course the moment it stops being true.
He seems to decide you’re ready after scissoring three fingers inside of you, hefting himself up so that he looms more fully over you. You can only whine as you feel the movements of him unbuckling his belt, feel the weight of him slap against your slightly spread cheeks.
Fresh tears fall past your lashes as you stare up into the fathomless darkness that are Ghost’s eyes. There’s nothing there, just a cold empty skull prepared to ruin you.
You don’t even have the energy to beg.
The stretch of him inside your ass is five times worse than Soap was. There’s no natural lubrication, and nowhere near enough synthetic lube either. Your hole feels like it’s on fire, the stretch white hot as he gives you no mercy.
You’re not even fully sure what you’re babbling as he slowly sinks to the root, only aware of the pain and fear and panic sitting heavy in your heart. You fear you’ll choke on your tears, head jerking back and forth.
He sighs when he bottoms out, heavy barrel chest forcing your knees past your shoulders. Your hips strain, just another pain from the endless abuse.
“There,” he grunts, patting your thigh when you go limp from it all. “Stay nice and still now, just need a place to dump my cum.”
Upsettingly enough, that hurts. The idea that you could mean nothing to this man is somehow worse than the thought of him having some other twisted feelings for you, your hormone-addled mind deeply insulted.
His thrusts are long and slow, each one pulling nearly completely out before slamming back in. The sound of your skin slapping together is embarrassingly sexual, and a distant part of you is aware enough to pray that no one nearby had heard your screams and cries.
Ghost is near silent as he fucks you, the opposite of Soap. You can only hear the occasional grunt when you squeeze him because he’s inches away from your face - you can even feel the occasional gusts of breath when his hips start working a little faster.
There’s nothing you can do but lay limply beneath him and take it, just a vehicle for his pleasure. You almost manage to float away, to pretend none of this is happening or has ever happened, when his free hand moves from your thigh to the top of your cunt.
You nearly squeal when he rubs your clit, the smooth leath gliding over your slick bud. Your eyes fly wide open, back arching as much as you can with three hundred pounds of man holding you down. The loud laugh from several feet away only makes you writhe more.
“Make her squirt, Lt!” Soap shouts, his voice carefree.
“Shut it, Johnny,” Ghost grunts, voice roughened with pleasure. You don’t even have time to focus on the fact that he’s just told you Johnny’s name, far too preoccupied with the tidal wave of pleasure rushing towards you.
You have no idea why it happens. You’re never quick to come - almost every single partner of yours has complained about you taking so long to get off, it’s been an Issue in several relationships.
So it makes absolutely no sense that after hardly a minute of rough circles against your clit, you’re clenching down on the cock in your ass and moaning loudly as your orgasm overtakes you.
The natural clench of your body only makes the pain worse, a sharp spike of it running up your cunt and making your moan shift into more pained sounds. Ghost only moans in tandem above you, his thrusts becoming slightly less even as he lets your orgasm coax out his own.
You sob when you feel his cum paint your insides.
Unlike Johnny, Ghost doesn’t pull out after he comes. He lets your legs fall limp on either side of him, just barely managing to catch them for you before you slam your ankles to the ground. He leans his torso over yours, elbows resting on either side of your shoulders while you do nothing but wait beneath him.
He’s sweat off some of the makeup. This close, you can see hints of pale skin in the sockets of the mask. There’s nothing to read in his eyes, but that flash of skin tells you he’s still a man.
You swallow, trying to work moisture back into your dry mouth, and whisper, “Will… will you let me go now?”
You know it’s more likely he’ll kill you. It’s what you can only imagine happened to all those bodies in the streets, what you know happens to tens of thousands of women every year.
So it’s not a surprise when he doesn’t answer you verbally, instead covering your mouth with his palm and pinching your nose shut with his fingers.
Your eyes flutter shut after a moment, lungs tightening already, and all you can hope is that suffocation is a quick death.
———————————————————————
You wake, gasping, in a dark room.
You’re lurching forward before you’re even fully aware that you’re awake, coughing loudly and gasping when it feels like your throat is bleeding.
“Oh, poor thing,” you hear a familiar accented voice coo, and a moment later there’s a warm hand patting your back. “Yer alright, deep breaths.”
You jerk back from Soap - Johnny - as soon as your coughing is under control, scrambling back on your palms and staring at him with wide eyes. He only grins at you, looking for all the world like any other normal man in his sweater and sweatpants.
He got changed at some point - these pants are clean. He’s not wearing his mask either, and you’re struck dumb by how non threatening he manages to look.
He also changed your clothes - or Ghost did, maybe. You try to cover your chest with one hand, but there’s no hiding the fact that you’re completely naked.
Johnny only laughs at your attempted modesty. “Been starin’ at them for hours, lass. Ye’ve got nothin’ to hide.”
That’s… horrifying, and does absolutely nothing to calm you down.
It’s then that Ghost rises from a chair, stepping forward and making you aware of his presence. “Calm down, Johnny. We don’t want her panickin’ this early.”
Soap fully pouts, tilting his head at you before glancing up at his partner. “I haven’t even done anythin’, Ghost. Was just sayin’ hi, tha’s all.”
Ghost snorts, gripping Johnny’s mohawk and tugging back until the other man sprawls back on his ass. “You know how you are, pup. Give your kitty some space.”
Johnny listens, crossing one leg beneath him and bending the other close to his chest, looking casual as can be. Meanwhile your heartbeat only gets faster, and you wince when you happen to lean too far one direction and feel a throbbing reminder of what these men did to you.
Ghost steps forward again, crouching just out of arm's reach. You realize he’s not wearing the same skull mask as before, but a balaclava with a printed skull pattern instead. His eye sockets are unpainted, and you’re shocked by how such little things make him look so much more human.
“You can calm down. Long as you behave, nothin’ much worse’ll happen to you.”
You find yourself almost comically not-comforted by that, and can do nothing more than stare at him with wide eyes.
“Where…” Your voice cracks, so you swallow and start again. “Where am I?”
It’s Johnny who speaks up. “Our place. We finally brought ye home with us, kitty.”
The world feels like it’s slowed around you, and your eyes drag from one kidnapper to the other. You have to swallow again to work any moisture into your bone-dry mouth.
“Is the Purge over?”
The creases at the corner of Ghost’s eyes are painfully obvious with how pale his skin is, and you shudder at the thought of him smiling.
“Been over for… what, five hours now? Somethin’ like that.”
You can’t fight the tremble in your voice now. “Then… then you have to let me go.”
Ghost’s head tilts, the creases get deeper. “Do I?”
You nod with as much conviction as you can - which is almost none. “You can’t keep me here. You’re breaking the law.”
Ghost leans closer on the balls of feet and you lean further back, your spine pressing into the wall behind you. “Are we now? And who do you think will stop us, pet?”
“The- the police. Someone will report me missing, they’ll come looking.”
“Oh? And you think they’ll come here?”
You nod as best you can, and jump when Ghost laughs. It’s low and quiet, only a few beats, but it’s like gasoline thrown on the small fire of panic in your mind.
“You have no idea where you even are, and you think they’ll find you? I hate to break it to you doll, but you’ll be lucky if they look for you for a week. You have any idea how many people go missin’ after the Purge?”
Your breath is quickening. “So that’s it? You’re just going to… going to keep me here, forever? What are you even going to do?”
His laugh is sharper, meaner this time. “We’re gonna do a whole lot more of what we did last night, pet. Keep you as a little cocksleeve, a pretty thing tucked in the basement just for our entertainment. Ain’t that right, Johnny?”
You manage to tear your eyes away to look at Soap and see that he’s nearly salivating, having inched closer and closer and shifted so he’s knelt behind Ghost. There’s a feral spark in his eyes that has every hair on your body standing straight up.
“Yeah, tha’s right. Don’t worry, lass, we’ll make sure yer never lonely. Might even stay the night with you, cuddle up in the winter. Bet ye could keep our cocks nice and toasty in the cold, huh? Gonna let us use ye as a little heater?”
“A heater, a mattress, a fleshlight… your future’s lookin’ bright, sweetheart,” Ghost drawls, mockery dripping heavily from the cruel words.
Your eyes dart back and forth between the two men and their predatory stares, your heart racing against your ribcage.
It’s not a conscious choice for you to launch yourself towards them, reaching out and clawing your sharp nails down Soap’s face with a feral scream that tears your throat to shreds.
Even as Ghost throws you off and forces you to the ground, you vow to fight these men to the end. You’ll kill them both if you have to, leave them dead and wander however many miles it is back to your apartment.
Ghost only laughs when you shout this in his face, and you scream as you lunge forward, just managing to catch his masked chin between your teeth and bite.
With your fight instinct back in full force, you’re ready to make their lives hell.
#lumi im SORRY hand on the bible i could not tell you why this took me so long#it's pwp. it's pure smut. there is no justifiable reason for this taking a week#i literally have FOUR fucking docs of purge au's rn lmao like when i tell you i tried to write this SO MANY TIMES it was just not happening#ghoap x reader#bo writes#purge au#how do i tag this to get people to see it but not to get people complaining about dark fic to me#...i don't#oh well. special treat for you guys lol
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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.
#honkai star rail#double indemnity#veritas ratio#aventurine#golden ratio#ratiorine#an attempt at analysis by one a-u#relationship analysis#you know what‚ i guess i can tag the other names of this ship#aventio#raturine#you could make a fucking tierlist of these names#um‚ dynamics (yk what i mean) dont really matter here in the analysis just fyi if youre wondering its general enough#also if you're wondering about the compilation thread - its not done. it'll take a while (a long while.)#this post was so long it was initially just a tumblr draft that i then put into google docs. and it ended up being over 2k+ words long#is this a research paper‚ thesis‚ or essay? who knows! this just started as just a short analysis after watching the movie on may 5#final word count according to docs (excluding alt text): 13013 - 43 pages with formatting#i wish i could have added more images to this‚ 10k words vs 30 images really is not doing me any favours…#plus‚ i hit the character limit for alt text for one of the images.#if you see me mixing up british and american spelling‚ you probably have!#oh yeah. if any of the links happen to break at some point. do tell. i have everything backed up#there also may be multiple links strung together‚ just so you know.#I link videos using the EN and CN voiceovers. Just keep that in mind if the jump between two languages seems sudden.#I had to copy and paste this thing from the original tumblr draft onto a new post because tumblr wouldn't let me edit the old one anymore.#Feels just like when I was finalising my song comic…#(Note: I had to do this three times.)#I started this at May 5 as a way to pass the time before 2.2. You can probably tell how that turned out.#Did you know there is a limit to the amount of links you can add to a single tumblr post? It's 100. I hit that limit as well.#So if you want context for some of these parts... just ask.#I'm gonna stop here before I hit the tag limit (30) as well LMAOO (never mind I just did.)
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