#who fucking knows how long it'll be
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if hori wont give me my bkdk reunion then ill just do it myself!!!
#im really feeling the angst today#oh man#we're getting a pov switch next chapter so#who fucking knows how long it'll be#i miss them so bad#bkdk#bakudeku#my art#bkdk art#mha
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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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Do you think it was a date?
[DP x DC fic]
[Love at first... murder? - part 5]
<< Prev | Next >>
Part 1
Ao3
---
In-chat nicknames:
Daniel = Danny
Sharpshooter = Jazz
TooFine= Tucker
Chaos = Sam
TheCoolerDaniel = Danielle/Dani/Ellie
---
Private chat nicknames:
Bill = Danny
Pants = Jazz
---
As soon as Danny enters his apartment, face bright red, he takes his head into his hands and lets out a silent scream.
He could have said anything, and he panicked and went with Toodealoo Kangaroo???
At this rate, he’ll never get a partner.
As Danny stands there in misery, his phone starts buzzing with messages. Curious, he checks his phone to see what going on.
Uh oh.
---
Team Phantom 👻😎
Chaos: Guys check this out
Chaos: *link*
Chaos: The Joker escaped from Arkham again, but no one’s heard anything of him since, nor have they been able to find him
TooFine: @Daniel 👀
TooFine: ok the @ had been a joke but the fact that he has read it and not replied is concerning
Sharpshooter: @Daniel, what did you do?
Sharpshooter: @Daniel
Sharpshooter: I can see that you’re reading this, don’t ignore me.
TooFine: ohhhh someones in troubleee 👀
Sharpshooter: Tucker.
TooFine: 🤐
---
Danny takes a deep breath.
Well, it’s now or never. Let’s hope Jazz is feeling merciful.
---
Private chat
Bill: ok so you know how you said you would still love me if I was a worm?
Pants: I have no clue how this ties into the previous conversation, but yes. Why?
Bill: hypothetically
Bill: would you also still love me if I
Bill: hypothetically
Bill: accidentally
Bill: vibe checked someone that tried to uh
Bill: hypothetically
Bill: kidnap and or kill me??
Bill: 🥺🥺🙏
Pants: Danny, did you accidentally kill the Joker?
Bill: yes or no Jazz??!? 😩🥺
Pants: Yes, Danny. I would still love you if you, hypothetically, accidentally killed the Joker.
Bill: this is why you’re my favorite sister 🥹🥰😘
Bill: don’t tell Ellie 😳🫣
Pants: Danny, what happened?
---
Danny lets out a sigh of relief before proceeding to tell Jazz what happened.
---
Pants: Oh Danny.
Bill: are you mad at me?
Pants: I’m not mad at you, I just want you to stay safe.
Pants: While I don’t condone murder, I understand that it was self-defense and an accident. I‘m just glad that you’re alright.
Bill: 🥰💞😘
---
With a small smile on his face, Danny goes back to the groupchat.
---
Team Phantom 👻😎
Daniel: you know
Daniel: if I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to fight off an insane clown that attacked me 🤡
Daniel: I’d have two nickels
Daniel: which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice, right? 🤔
Chaos: Damnit Danny, we leave you alone in a new city for a week and you already manage to get into a fight with one of Gotham City’s most infamous rogues
TooFine: actually its been 6 days 10 hours and 17 minutes
TooFine: so not even a full week yet
Chaos: Did you at least get a good few punches in?
Chaos: Danny?
TooFine: @Daniel ???
TooFine: if i had a nickel for every time danny said something concerning and then didnt provide context id be richer than vlad
Daniel: anyway, for completely unrelated reasons, @TooFine I need you to wipe some cams for me 😃
TooFine: danny im not wiping the cams again so no one will have proof of you tripping backward and falling ass-first into a trashcan
Chaos: Speaking of, Tucker do you still have that footage and can you send it to me?
TooFine: already done
Daniel: noo it’s nothing like that this time 😫
Daniel: pleaseeee 🥺🙏🙏
Daniel: I’ll get you an autograph from Tim Drake-Wayne?
TooFine: deal.
Daniel: 🥳🎉
Daniel: ok so the footage from somewhere around 3 am last night
Daniel: around some place named park row??
Daniel: I think it’s called?? 🤔
Daniel: though I’m pretty sure I’ve also heard some people refer to it as crime alley
Daniel: not sure why tho 🤷
TooTine: aye aye captain o7
Chaos: Danny, in an alley getting attacked by the fucking Joker: I wonder why this place is called crime alley
Daniel: stop bullying me 😠
Chaos: No
TooFine: hey danny r u sure thats right? i checked the cams n stuff but theres no available footage from the area n time u described
TooFine: its like someones already wiped it all
Daniel: oh!
Daniel: that’s so sweet of him 😊
Chaos: Wait who is this ‘him’?
TooFine: the joker????
Daniel: oh no not the Joker
Daniel: just some cute guy I met last night
Daniel: he witnessed me killing the Joker 🫣
Daniel: and didn’t call the cops on me afterward 🥰💞
TooFine: def green flag
Chaos: Oh hell yeah, he’s a keeper
Chaos: Wait you killed the Joker?! I thought you just fought him off!
Daniel: it was an accident!! 😭😭
Daniel: he crept up on me and tried to grab me 😓
Daniel: so I got startled and because all I saw was a clown
Daniel: I just kinda punched his face in with my ghost strength… 😰
TooFine: f
Chaos: f
Sharpshooter: Have you gotten rid of the body yet? Did you leave behind DNA at the crime scene? Will I need to start saving up bail money or getting ready to enact the Fenton Break Out plan?
Chaos: Jazz asking the important questions here
Daniel: well, considering the footage was wiped
Daniel: and also the fact that no one’s found him yet
Daniel: I think it’s safe to assume it’s all taken care of
Daniel: that’s honestly really sweet of him though 🥰😊
TooFine: oohhhhh ur mystery boo??
Daniel: yeah, this random guy saw me vibe-checking the Joker
Daniel: and let me go home without any trouble
Daniel: pretty sure he’s the one who wiped the cams 🤔
Daniel: and then today he showed up at my apartment with flowers 🥺
Daniel: they were sweat peas!!!! 🥰🤩
Chaos: Was that to thank you for the murder orrrr?
Sharpshooter: Oh those are your favorite, was that on purpose?
Daniel: well I didn’t tell him
Daniel: so I’m not sure if he knew or if it was a coincidence 🤷
Daniel: but yeah then he took me out to this restaurant called Pete’s for dinner
Daniel: they had some amazing cannoli
Daniel: you should try it sometime if you get the chance
Daniel: and then after dinner he took me to the observatory!!!!!!! 🤩🥰
Sharpshooter: Gotham observatory?
Sharpshooter: Isn’t that the one with the special telescope, I think you mentioned it before
Daniel: yeah, the crystal-powered telescope!! 😍💞✨🤩❤️
Daniel: and at the end, he brought me home
Daniel: and he asked for my number!!!
TooFine: nice dude!
Chaos: The guy really went all-out and planned your dream date hu? So, what’s this mystery hunk’s name?
Daniel: oh I’m not sure, I didn’t ask 🙃🤭
Sharpshooter: Danny…
Daniel: yes?
Sharpshooter: Did you go on a date with a complete stranger who witnessed you commit a murder?
Chaos: How do you not even know his name?
Daniel: two words Jazz: Johnny 13
Daniel: and he’s not a stranger!! 😠
Sharpshooter: But you don’t know his name?
Chaos: We just can’t leave him alone, can we? Less than a week on his own and he already murdered one of Gotham’s most infamous rogues and then completely forgets the concept of Stranger Danger
Daniel: I mean he probably just found it when he tried to do some research on me or something
Daniel: probably got it from the school’s system now that I think of it 🤔
TooFine: dude who the hell is this guy??
Chaos: Who the fuck did you go on a date with?
Daniel: do you really think it was a date? 🥺😳
Daniel: I wasn’t sure
Daniel: cause he mainly took me out for dinner to thank me for the night before
Daniel: but then again
Daniel: he did get me flowers and ask for my number after he brought me back to my apartment 🤔
Daniel: like I wasn’t sure if I was reading the signals right…..
Daniel: but do you think that was a date? 🫣
Sharpshooter: Danny, for the love of the Ancients.
Sharpshooter: Who was it?
Daniel: oh, it was Red Hood 🥰
TooFine: damn dannys got that vigilante rizz
Sharpshooter: Red Hood? The crime lord?!
TooFine: former, actually
Daniel: what he said ^^
Chaos: Danny, you really have a type huh? Vigilantes with a Red theme. Who’s next? Red Robin?
Daniel: stop bullying me
TooFine: never
Chaos: Never
Daniel: on a different note, who changed my name in the chat again?
Sharpshooter: Ellie did.
Chaos: Ellie
TooFine: @TheCoolerDaniel
TheCoolerDaniel: 😎
TheCoolerDaniel: wait i just read back, danny’s dating a crime lord?? :0 👀
---
Taglist (for now, I’ll probably stop if I cant keep up):
@i-always-say-yea @uraniumwizard
#i had more planned for this chapter#but this already started to become too long#so the batfam reactions will hae to be in the next chap#sorry#anyway#dp x dc#dp x dc fic#dpxdc#dcxdp#dp x dc crossover#dead on main#dead on main ship#Danny in an alley getting attacked by the fucking Joker: I wonder why this place called crime alley#team phantom has questions#but then again weirder shit has happened#danny killing the joker and going on a date with red hood is barely in the top 10 of weird/fucked up shit he's done#he seems fine and happy so theyre not too worried#might be planning a shovel talk in a private chat tho#sam: alright ill get the creep stick#sam: jazz--#jazz: already getting the ecto-skeleton ready as we speak#oh for those who are curious#jazz and danny's private chat nicknames are references to invis-o-bill and jazzie-pants the nicknames#question: would anyone mind me adding some plot? it'll still be mainly crack of course#but i got a thought of how i could add in a lil plot#tho i won't do it if people prefer it like this#so let me know what y'all think
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Bruh, Do you think that it's just that Kipperlilly hates the Bad Kids that much that she doesn't care about failing? Or is she just fully cognizant that they are better people than her, and wouldn't just let a kid die, even if they didn't like him?
#AND HE'S STILL FUCKING DEAD#Like I'm assuming they have until the end of the school year to get him back before they automatically fail#But that's out of their hands now#He's a fucking crime scene#Who knows how long it'll be before he's brought back?#Fantasy High#Fantasy High Junior Year#FHJY#Fantasy High Junior Year spoilers#FHJY spoilers
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Uh-oh! You are like, SOOO awkward!!
You're so awkward that it is occasionally mildly uncomfortable for people!
You're so awkward that sometimes people are confused by you and then there are awkward silences!
You're so awkward ...... that ultimately no one is harmed!!
Oh damn!!! What a vile crime you have committed! What an unforgivable thing it is to make a fellow human briefly confused!
Why, if *I* were ever briefly confused and kind of uncomfortable as a result, I'd be devastated.... by the absolute net zero change in my happiness and health! - From which I might never recover!! Yes indeed! No punishment can ever be enough for you!!
So you better absolutely hate yourself for it.
Better be SO MEAN to yourself about every single missed social cue so you don't forget your horrible crime! Meaner than you'd ever dream of being to someone else for the same thing! This is YOUR responsibility!
Better accept that idea that bullies carry like guns in holsters - the idea that people who have trouble with social cues should suffer. Better carry on the burden they placed on you. Aid the cause of the callous by enforcing shame and suffering upon yourself extra hard; try your best to do their work for them. They're very busy.
Better not recognize that you need patience and kindness to heal from your trauma. Better not find out that it was trauma rather than personal weakness filling your head with self-hating thoughts. Better not find out it wasn't your fault.
Better not find out that awkwardness is not inherently harmful or unkind, and, in fact, the people who act like it is *are the ones enacting harm and being cruel.*
Better not get righteously angry when you realize just how much unnecessary damage this has done to you. After all, if you get mad, you might realize you deserve better. You might even feel brave enough to DEMAND better! You might build boundaries that keep you safe! You might make other people think they deserve to feel safe too! And we obviously can't be having that, so...
Better not show yourself even a little kindness a little bit at a time.
Better not make a habit out of it after all that practice.
Better not get confident.
Especially if you can't first wipe out every trace of awkward. (And you probably never will. Because people who experience absolute social certainty at all times tend to be insufferable assholes that enforce the status quo. And you just don't have the stock portfolio for that.)
Better not be confident and awkward because then you might confuse and delight people
- you might accidentally end up making other people feel less shame for their social difficulties
- you might make isolated, traumatized, and shy people feel like they deserve to be included in social situations
- you might even make them feel they can be themselves around you
- you might start loving the effect you have on a room
- you might enjoy conversations more
- you might forgive yourself and bounce back from shame more easily and frequently
- you might come to enjoy some of those moments of harmless confusion you cause because NOBODY expects the Confident Awkward, and that can genuinely be an advantage in social situations
- you might stop apologizing so much.
- you might find that socializing is like a video game: it requires practice but also a safe space for it to be fun and positive.
Or if you can't become assertive and confident, better not remain awkward and shy and quiet, and then love and forgive yourself anyway!
Why, it would be carnage!!
In either scenario, you run the risk of finding out that it's not your fault that safe spaces full of kind people can be really hard to find, create, and nurture. You could end up building a skillset that helps you do those things!
- You might realize that it was never your fault that it took so long to like yourself.
- You might realize that you were always worth talking to, even when you didn't like yourself and communication felt impossibly difficult.
- You might realize that you'll still be worth talking to even if communication becomes harder as you age and/or experience disability.
- You might know that you deserve to be heard even on bad days when words come slow and blurry.
You might discover that you were always deserving of kindness, first and foremost from yourself.
So. As you can see, it's FAR too much of a risk to take to cut your awkward self some slack for your many heinous and harmless crimes. Better to just leave it there.
#social skills#i have a few posts now in my ' social skills' tag#original#maybe eventually I will compile them and polish them in some meaningful way. I know what I want to call the book title#in big text it'll say 'I'M AUTISTIC' and then beneath that in smaller text 'And I Have Better Social Skills Than You'#or something to that effect. and the cover of the book will be me making an exaggerated smug face like the little rascal I am#challenging the viewer to pick up the book and see if they can prove me wrong.#and then the entire first section of the book is about how actually the issue with our society's social skills is the harsh judgment#for people who have trouble communicating and not the other way around. I don't actually think I'm the#most charismatic person in the world by a very long shot. but i do know that I have put more thought into my social skills than#most allistic people and frankly i have surpassed most of them. not because i am more persuasive or smooth or funny#(tho i am persuasive and funny lol) but bc i have questioned which social functions are more restriction than utility.#and instead i have focused my energy on actively learning how to make people feel safe. i feel social rules would benefit all people by#being a little more autistic tyvm. i don't think every person should dedicate themselves to being better at communicating#i think people should dedicate themselves to being kind and patient to everyone regardless of their ability to communicate#I think our society wrongly links communication ability to intelligence and intelligence to level of humanity.#when in fact all three of those things are fucking unrelated and connecting them inevitably leads to#really fucked up views on disabled people that hurt us. and then with that aspect of the book firmly understood and established I would#go on to recommend some ways to make socializing easier and more fulfilling (and less shameful and terrifying) for all kinds of people#it wouldn't be a book about Leaning In To Succeed in Business or 'here's how to avoid being the awkward loner at a party'#it'd be a book about how if you see someone alone at a party here's how to invite them to join your group without pressuring them#stuff like 'hot tip! if someone takes a while to type or speak a full sentence - talking over them b4 they can finish makes u an asshole!'#I know that a lot of people cannot or don't want to dump a lot of skill points into socializing like i did and they shouldn't have to in#order to experience basic dignity and respect. if we treat people like that then we just validate that people - especially#autistic children and elders and disabled people of manu varieties - have to suffer unless they learn all these arbitrary bullshit rules#and a lot of them are arbitrary bullshit! one of the reasons I throw people off so much is because I harmlessly break a lot of social rules#but I know I'm doing it and I'm not ashamed and people just don't know what to do with that! but a lot of them like it actually!!#i think it's a relief to be around someone so openly and unrelentingly weird bc what am I gonna do? judge you for being weird??#I only care if you're kind. not necessarily 'nice' or passive. Kind. Brave enough to care about people being treated well. Kind.#also I recognize that at least some of my ability to be openly weird is white privilege so that's important to acknowledge too
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Fuck It Friday
tagged by @lover-of-mine <3
I was going to share another bit from the 5x06 fic, but then decided to embrace the 'fuck it' mindset and share a bit from the Thanksgiving Fic part 2 :)
“All these relatives and you’ve been sat here by yourself for the last thirty minutes?”
Eddie drags his gaze away from his son to find Abuela pulling out the chair beside his own. He offers up a small smile. “I’m just tired,” he lies.
“Is it Buck?”
The smile falters. “I… what?”
“I sent you out of the kitchen to phone Buck last night, and you’ve seemed off ever since.”
He considers lying, he really does, but the look in Abuela’s eyes says don’t even try and he relents easily. “I had to call Carla and get her to take him to hers for Thanksgiving today. When I rang him yesterday, he said he was just going to stay alone in his loft, said something about everyone leaving the state.”
“You should have invited him here.”
“I would have, but he told me he had other offers, and I didn’t know any different until last night.”
Eddie takes a moment to centre himself before continuing.
“I’m just… I’m angry. With me and everyone else. We call ourselves a family and yet none of us realised Buck didn’t have plans for the holiday? How did we let that happen? Especially after the whole lawsuit and everything else that’s happened in the past few years.” There’s something about Abuela that has this new therapized version of Eddie comfortable opening up to her in a way he never would with his parents.
“Maybe he wanted to spend the holiday alone?”
He shakes his head. “No. He… the way he sounded on the phone… he said it was fine, but he wasn’t okay with it. That’s why I called Carla. I should have pushed the issue when he left my house after finding out we were coming here.”
“He left your house?”
“Yeah, Chris told him before I had a chance to bring it up. Again, he said it was fine but then he left mid-movie. He’s never left mid-movie before. I… Dammit I really should have talked to him about it.”
Abuela studies him for a second. “Were you worried about what everyone would think if you invited him here?”
no pressure tagging: @aroeddiediaz, @steadfastsaturnsrings, @pirrusstuff, @butraura, @your-catfish-friend and anyone else who wants to do it :)
[feel free to let me know if you want me to start/stop tagging you in things 💚]
#thanksgiving fic pt2#i have a vague plan for a part 3 as well 👀👀#but also it's been over a year since i posted part 1 so who knows how long it'll take me to get part 2 up#911 fic#aspecbuddie writes#fuck it friday#eddie diaz#evan buckley
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I wonder how many tags i can add on to this
#there must be SOME kind of a limit otherwise posts would get suuuuuuper duper long like is it just 30?#idk but i'm going to find out by simply maxxing out the character limit for each tag and finding out the limit of tags for each post lololo#this is gonna be great. i just have to remember to type without ever using the comma. it shouldn't be too hard right? fuck i almost typed#the comma i'm already bad at this smh my head. also if your still here i commend you. you have a better attention span than i do.#i'm already starting to get bored holy shit this is not happening. i gotta power through this. FOR SCIENCEEEEEEEEEE. or somethinggggggggggg#but fr idk what else to say. maybe just saying that i don't know what to say will be good enough? but does that even count?#I don't even know anymore. ffffffffuck. this is gonna be a while huh? also holy shit if you're still here omg u deserve like. a prize or#something because u definitely didn't have to stay and read all of this bull shit. lololol i typed out bs but decided to just spell the who#thing out just to make it go by faster. i'm so lazy. this is only the nineth tag HOW will i make it to 30. i am sobbing the adhd is adhding#very hard rn. are you still here? bruh this is insane. i have somehow managed to keep ur attention this long and it's just me spouting#absolute balderdash. wait do you know what balderdash even means? i don't care if you do already i'm gonna tell you anyway. balderdash is#basically just another word for nonsense. boom. you learned something new today. balderdash equals nonsense equals this damn post.#why did i decide to do this in the first place. it was a dumb idea. i don't know if i can even keep going. this is only the *counts tags*#it's the 14th tag. we've got a long way to go boys. men. soldiers. comrads. friends. besties peeps. marshmallows.#where was i going with this? oh yeah. trying to max out the limit for tags. dang i almost typed a comma there. i haven't done that since#i think the third or fourth tag. dang that feels like such a long time ago. not for you guys probably. it feels longer because i have to li#type it all out and stuff. so it's definitely gonna feel longer for me. are you still here? good lord don't you have better things to#be doing than reading all of this? we're already on tag number 18. it feels like i should be on the thirtyeth by now. or however it's spell#'toast' you might be wondering 'why are you typing out the names of the numbers instead of say '9' or '5'?' well you see. young one.#this is a strategy i'm using to make each tag slightly longer. even if i don't know how to spell it. it'll make it just a little bit longer#anyway. i got off topic. not that there was ever a topic to begin with. unless it's about making this as long as i can.#which i am apparently good at doing. i guess. are you STILL here? do you seriously have nothing to do? i guess i'm flattered you stayed thi#whole time. instead of reading something else you stayed here. with me. listening to me talk. on the twenty-third tag. oh yeah its tag 23#except now it's tag twenty-four. how crazy is that. this little talk is almost over. only 6 tags away if memory serves right. this's strang#i kind of don't want this to end. but i know it should. after all there is a limit. but all things must come to and end at some point i gue#i'm running out of things to say. it's probably a good thing it's almost over. hahahahah............... but i don't want to go. i don't wan#to leave this post. i've worked so hard on it. and for what. just for it to end. are you still here? yes? good. i'd hate to end this alone.#thank you for indulging me and my craziness. the end is only 2 tags away now. you can go ahead and leave. i'll be okay on my own. really...#...you're still here? i- i don't know what to say. i suppose a toast is in order. perhaps. for this journey. this stupid dumb post i though#would be fun. i'll make it short. it's the last tag after all. this was fun. but i will never do it again. so long as a i live. i'll miss y
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my craft merch finally shipped 🫶🏻
#i'm actually thankful it took longer because if it shipped last week it would've been hit#with the tornado#like nothing is getting delivered in my area right now because so many roads/buildings are fucked#so who knows how long it'll be before it ends up in my hands
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Shaving the rest of my head tomorrow I'll probably be ugly but idrc
#been growing it out slowly but idk what to do w the length. it's tough i like the feel of longer hair better but not the look. also refuse#to style that shit lol if it takes more than 5 secs to rix im wearing a hat#also im tryna date this summer but im at like my worst physically rn. not bad but medical shit and burned out and w/e it'll take me like a#month of goin crazy at the gym to get back to where i was. so idk maybe bein a little ugly will force me to try harder with that lmao. doin#my 50 pushups a day and slowly ramping back into weights and cardio. frustrating cuz i lost so much progress bc of the fuckin surgery#oh well lol i might get a face piercing tomorrow too who knows i kinda dgaf anymore i might just do a bunch of shit ive been wanting to but#held off. just throw in the towel and look fucked up for the summer ✌️ also its gonna be humid and hot as fuck so bald ass head will be nice#my fuck ass ponytail mullet was already hot in the winter i mightve died if i kept it. how tf did i manage waist length hair for so long#also i knocked over my pasta (reheated butter egg noodles) onto the ground tryna get my cat to stop eating a house plant while writing this#still ate them tho#also also yeah it's 2am but i was hungryy
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#Literally insane that Saturday is the probably last day I'm ever going to be able to hug her#Or hold her hand#Or hear her voice without a phone between us#I dont#I cant#It's so not fucking fair#This doesn't happen to people my age this is supposed to happen to people my cousins age. You're supposed to be nearly 30#Not barely an adult#It doesn't make it better#They don't even love her as much as I do but I got so much less time how is it fucking fair#Who gets to decide this shit anyway#I dont know if it's worse or better but at least I can see her every day and listen to her stories#And look in her eyes and see that she's there#I dont know how the fuck I'm supposed to live without her#And she just wants us to leave so I can see this school because she doesn't want to hold me back#But I'd live in her TV room if I could right now I think#I don't have to pass any of my classes 4th quarter to graduate#Probably to go to college but eh.#So long as I do my finals it'll be fine I think#I'd still have an 85 even if I got a 20% this quarter in most of my classes and then a 95 on the final#Sorry rambling
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Me starting another bg3 run where I will make virtually all the same decisions in mostly the same order as if there isn't different branching paths
#the horrifying idea of things going differently if i choose something different#my ass sitting here wanting other content for it as if i'm not actively refusing to make the choices to get other content#i've still only romanced astarion bro#i had my og. the EXACT copy of my og but durge this time.#began a karlach run to romance wyll and am still in early act 1 so nothing will happen for a long ass time#and i left that because i missed my paladin. the party feels incomplete without them bro#started a rogue/fighter run of one of my ocs retrofitted into the game.#but also am incapable of staying true to the character cause i'll miss stuff if i do and i need to do EVERYTHING explore EVERYWHERE#nearly couldn't get over the hurdle of having no strength and no speak with animals (so karlach and wyll gotta speak to critters)#then just started a sorcerer to try to really push myself to branch out. but all it did was reaffirm that being a spell caster sucks#no jump cause no strength no health no armour no decent melee. like motherfucker pick a struggle#luckily that oc is into music so sorcerer-bard here we come#but every single one of these bitches is good aligned#(and anything i SHOULD do different i don't cause there's still different varoeties of good but alas)#still haven't romanced another party member (but that's not ENTIRELY my fault!!!!)#my og/og durge was the same person i couldn't just romance someone else. they got with astarion i don't make the rules#karlach WILL romance wyll if i ever get farther in#my rogue/fighter oc is heading the baldur's gate for his boyfriend and they have an open relationship so he COULD fuck other people#alas he would never due to his own issues#BUT THIS WILL CHANGE#my sorcerer/bard (who is the boyfriend of the rogue. just imagining the plot as if he was on the adventure or rogue was in baldur's gate)#and he WOULD fuck other people no strings attached#so my goal is to fuck all potentially non-monogamous party members#so lae'zel shadowheart astarion#wyll is a slow burn so that's emotional depth we wouldn't put in#gale is king or monogamy (plus him and this character together would make the rogur pass the fuck out)#karlach is complicated because of the no touch thing? hard to say how much emotional depth ends up required there#meanwhile shadowheart has mentioned she does no strings attached hook-ups#lae'zel propositions you ten seconds in for a good tumble#and from romancing astarion i know fucking the first time seems like it'll just be casual hook up time and i needn't go further
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hello brand new customers of the moel sekiyu tumblr branch who mightve seen the limited edition wares perhaps not noticing the main product of this fine establishment or what of it
non roleplaying translation -> hi guys welcome to my blog. funny how i notice this trend of generic persona blogs trying to follow me for persona when i dont actually. no i wont draw adachi with yellow eyes looking sleazy while sitting on top of a TV. the next time you'll see yukiko amagi is probably next year. i actually think it's more funny if yosuke's whatever feelings are unreciprocated and unrequited. i know izanami because thats my best friend in the entire world not izanamilf. if youre looking for anything else an actual persona fan would make you can go visit them instead
go across the street or farther into town. otherwise you can keep your membership card and come back again and review this security footage with me of two goofs doing whatever the fuck for five minutes and talk about it for the next sixteen hours
#kommento#badpost#aspile#// ofcourse theres an attendant this is a fucking GAS STATION guys. unless it was completely self service well i dont know what to tell you#// sorry i didnt mean to be bitter i want to be goofy about this#// anyway this screening was long overdue .i dont want to misadvertise this place#// powered through it though but i still missed my buddies so much. eternal torment with you once again#// if youre still here yeah of course gsaslau's still going ive quite literally not stopped thinking about it ever#// but the tides are so strong i might be back in some force by december#// iwant to talk about it so bad. but how am i going to find people who enjoy friendship#// not that this gas station is exclusive or anything but i feel like 9 people get it so far im wracking my head so hard on this project#// not that it'll ever be 'completed' but my only goal is to get the timeline into place before i leave it for dead#// THEN you'll see#// what happens when god makes friends and also mommy issues or something#// thats it for this week i'll see you on the fly MUWAH
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don't look at the tags if you don't want survive spoilers
#i didn't want to make this a proper post because it's just me being depressed at 3am#but like#i know i said before the harmony route like emotionally gutted me and left me empty for like a week#but to be honest#even though obviously it made me SAD#bc of course it did#what happened to miu and even to kaito isn't what had me so fucked up for so long#it was what happened to dracmon#like#oh my god#wanting to save someone who doesn't want to be saved#watching them slowly lose themself in their grief and being able to do nothing about it#loving them so much you would willingly give up everything you are and everything you have#because at least that's something you can do#and maybe it'll help them hurt a little less#and not even being angry with them for basically killing you#then effectively dying before getting to see them come to their senses and realize they love you too#how fucked up is THAT#who WROTE that#WHY wrote that#harmony route isn't even kaito's route it is literally dracmon's#my ass coping with exam stress by thinking about things that depress me lol
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I like everybody else terminally online watched the plagiarism video this weekend
And maybe I'm just coming at this from a perspective of someone who was not exposed to j som before he got exposed but like Jesus fuck what the shit
Plagiarism notwithstanding, that man makes some bogus ass, shit ass claims that on a very basic level just do not pass a sniff test by anyone who knows even a little bit about anything
I mean, the man waxes on longingly about the beautiful aryan nazi bodies to serve the conclusion that US troops volunteered for service to.....prove that it wasn't just the nazis who had perfectly sculpted hairless asses? Is that like......even something anyone thinks smells a little bit true? Like on a basic motivational level, for a nation, for a people, for a single person?
Making claims that the Roman empire was 70% slaves and 30% patricians.........does that even sound correct? Like, even if all you know about ancient Rome is from memes and shit, where are the plebs? You know, the thing we still call people today, when they're acting common and unwashed
The thing about how no songs prior to 1956 made references to kissing....I mean guys.....
And like ......not to like.... But like ..... The man has the charisma of a slow growing fungus. Granted I've only ever seen clips bc by the time I got there, he'd nuked his channel, but like.... I've heard AI voices reading tiktok subtitles inject more urgency and personality into text. J som reads text like he not only doesn't know what he's saying, he doesn't know any of the individual words and how they interact with one another. Like who voluntarily listens to this boring dumbass badly read from a script that has no coherent style tying it together?
Like I know people are gagging for gay rep but fuckin seriously, not only is he a plagiarizing douche who makes shit up wholecloth, he's not even a decent entertainer
Is this what y'all are settling for? Is the bar really that fuckin low?
#taking bets on how long it'll take before j som reemerges from his ''break'' as an alt-right token shill#i say under a year#also damn dude we get it#you're from a small town in NS where it's socially conservative and the gay scene is sad#and even if it weren't sad you dont have the looks charisma or personality to pull the beefcake gays you wanna be fucking#and somewhere not very deep down you hate yourself#you hate that you're dull and complacent and stuck where you are#you think that you are being oppressed as a gay man but you also think you are being oppressed as a cis white man#and you hate how ''easy'' women have it#why do they get to be ''detached'' from ''reality'' like that? why are they ''allowed'' all of their ''fanciful fancies''#''imagining themselves lusting after serial killers''#''imagining themselves writing fanfic about fictional gays''#they're not ''real people'' like j som imagines he is a ''real person''#theyre not ''serious people'' who have to suffer things like nobody wanting to date them bc they're soulless and untalented#only it's not bc they're women jim#turns out some people --regardless of their gender!-- just have something called ''imagination''#and wouldn't you know imagination leads to curiosity and learning and sometimes even the ability to formulate one's own opinions#that one may then put into one's own words#and then you know not have to steal 300k words from other people#just to get a little bit of a taste of that thing called having friends and people who admire and care about you
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one thing about fiddle though is that it doesn't make me anxious to think about seeking out professional lessons/guidance in how to do it, which is VERY much not the case with archery. around here archery gets the same macho flavor as any gun, especially since most people are shooting compound or crossbows instead of traditional recurve/longbow like i prefer. it's a hunting implement, not a hobby or a sport, and so doing it wrong in front of the man who would inevitably be my tutor makes me cringe with discomfort. i have to self-teach, and while i did used to shoot archery a long time ago, my aim and technique are NOT good anymore and it's tough getting back to a respectable enough place where i wouldn't feel ashamed shooting in front of the people who would be likely to be watching me at an actual range or shoot. but with music? it's totally okay. nobody just *knows* how to play the fiddle, and there's not this whole country-man thing about it that takes the fun out of doing it with other people. it's just music and i don't feel like i'd be judged as an adult beginner
#being an adult beginner archer . who looks and is perceived as a woman. who DOESN'T hunt. or want to shoot compound . out here#is fucking rough lol#like i just want to play with my longbow my beautiful eight dollar vintage longbow . but everybody i talk to is like#well uh first of all you can't hunt with a 28lb bow so jot that down#or well uhh you're a smaller woman so you should shoot compound because it'll make it easier in the long run uhhh#or uh . oh you're just doing it as a HOBBY . oh okay#like. well maybe it is a hobby. maybe i don't do things to perfection and i don't do them if i'm not having fun#but this conversation isn't fun either and i just wanted to know how to sign up for the shoot so i can walk on trails in the woods#and aim at targets
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The existence of this Rosaline movie makes me so MAD, because SHE WAS NEVER IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH ROMEO. SHE TOOK A VOW OF CHASTITY, AND SAID THAT SHE WAS JUST GONNA NOT BE IN LOVE.
SHE. REJECTED. HIM.
SHE WAS NEVER INTERESTED IN BEING WITH HIM AT ALL.
And then they just...make a whole movie from her supposed perspective (which is loosely based on a book which...hoo boy we’ll get to that in a second), where the premise is that she’s jealous and wants to break him and Juliet up? That she’s so in love that she has to win him over again? (Also, how do they justify her knowing that they’re together? The entire point is that no one knows Romeo and Juliet are in love?? I know this is an adaptation, but Jesus Christ.)
WHY DID YOU PICK THIS CHARACTER. TO HAVE THIS STORY WITH. THE WHOLE POINT OF HER CHARACTER IS THAT SHE CHOOSES NOT TO BE WITH HIM. THAT’S WHAT OPENS THE DOOR TO HIM MEETING JULIET. IF ROSALINE IS DEEPLY INTO ROMEO, THE ENTIRE PLAY DOESN’T WORK.
Are we saying that she was just “““playing hard to get”””? That she was toying with his heart for fun? That when she told him no, she really meant “yes”?? I THOUGHT WE LEFT THAT BEHIND OVER THE COURSE OF THE LAST DECADE, I THOUGHT WE DECIDED THAT WAS BAD???!!?
Don’t even get me started on the book this is based on, where that general premise is that Rosaline is just an Innocent Average Girl, and her cousin who is Beautiful™ and vOLaTiLeLY uNsTAbLe and cRaZy comes and “takes” her poor unsuspecting boyfriend who is completely blameless for his own terrible behavior away from her while being called a “slut” the whole time. (I doubt much of this carried over into the actual movie, because that’s being billed as an ironic rom-com, and I highly doubt ANYONE would try to make that genre work while keeping this premise 100% intact.)
WHY WOULD YOU EXPAND THIS CHARACTER LIKE THIS. WHY. WE STUDY THIS PLAY IN SCHOOL AS AN EXAMPLE OF LITERARY STRUCTURE AND POETIC LANGUAGE AND FORESHADOWING AND HOW TO WRITE A TRAGIC NARRATIVE AND FOR WHAT. FOR PEOPLE TO NOT TAKE AWAY ANY OF THE INTENDED MEANING FROM THIS PLAY???!?!?!? I AM SCREAMING SO HARD I WILL BREAK THE EARTH’S CRUST UNTIL I AM SUBSUMED INTO HELL.
If you’re going to adapt something, you’ve gotta make it clear that you have some significant understanding of the original work. Retellings are fine! They can even have different functions or deconstruct tropes or be unexpectedly edgy! But it’s 1000% obvious when you don’t have any knowledge or engagement with the source material, and that is a problem. It’s ignorant, it’s lazy, and everyone involved deserves better.
#also like...juliet has been praised as a compelling and well-rounded theatrical heroine with clear goals by literary scholars for a LONG#time. you don't get to just...ignore that and say 'lol nope she's just cRaZy instead'#am I a LITTLE sensitive when it comes to people adapting shakespeare?? maybe. but also I don't care.#is it just because people are thirsting over That One Guy?? is that it?? is that why this movie was made???? I hate it here.#ANYWAY you want an actually GOOD expansion of rosaline's character that gives her Secret Feelings For Someone that she can't say#out loud because of a JUSTIFIED narrative reason and also gives her a well-developed#tentative-allies-to-lovers romance story watch still star-crossed#(which is also apparently based on a book. which I sadly have not read. maybe it'll be the next thing on my reading list)#GOD this is the 'lady macbeth is a stoic badass who never really loved her husband' all over again but like. in the opposite direction#UGH after juliet did the same ''she was just playing COY and HARD TO GET' thing too and I hate it#WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE WOMEN REJECT MEN? WHY IS THAT SO HARD FOR PEOPLE TO WRITE???#we could EVEN have a story about rosaline GENUINELY NEVER FALLING IN LOVE because she doesn't want to!!#wow shocking I know!#okay I'm done now#sorry#salty mc13 is salty#anti rosaline movie#idk how the fuck to tag this#romeo and juliet
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