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anominous-user · 3 days

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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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sunflower-lilac42 · 15 hours

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𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲 | 𝘭𝘩43 ♔

➪ summary: she'd always thought she wasn't pretty enough for luke, but that all changes with an invitation to the hughes' lake house and luke's hoodie

➪ warnings: reader is insecure/insecurities, reader compares herself to other girls

➪ word count: 3.1k

➪ sunny's notes: i have to say, this is by far one of my favorite fics I've written and by the previous feedback and support i got for it, i would assume it's one of your favorites of mine as well. this is for my mid/plus-sized girlies, coming from one. i hope you all enjoy this one again! :)

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A lot of the time it felt like that was the only feature people noticed about her. Not that she was funny, or smart, or insanely good at making a spreadsheet for anything and everything. It was the fact that she was fat, or excuse people’s language, curvy. It had been what labeled her for her whole life it seemed like. And no matter how hard she tried to stop it from happening, it never did.

She heard the whispers every time she was in the hallways in high school, every time she sat down and the chair would creek even the slightest bit, every time she’d accidentally brush someone’s shoulder. It was horrible, something that would haunt her for years to come no matter what happened.

When she went off to college, her voice was the only one that stayed with her. She met Luke through mutual friends and while she loved their relationship, she always thought it put a damper on her mind especially when she realized she liked him. Luke was Luke, he was tall, handsome, adorable, cute, charming, and all of the above. And on the inside, he was funny, smart, kind, nice, everything a girl could ever love. He made it impossible not to fall for him.

But why would Luke want her, when he could have anyone he ever wanted? This put a strain on their friendship during sophomore year especially. She would go to games, supporting the hell out of him because he asked her to be there. And always somewhere further down the row, in a different section, wherever, there was a group of girls who looked nothing like her in her opinion. They were skinny, and pretty, they wore outfits that looked not only good on them but just good in general.

They were standing there, looking like that, while she looked like this. Wearing leggings that were too tight to make her look thinner, they pressed too hard on her stomach. Wearing the largest sweatshirt in her closet to hide the way her hips bulged a little, to hide everything if she was honest. And while she knew it shouldn’t have bothered her, that she shouldn’t have been mad at them, she couldn’t help it.

However, when she was around him and it was just the two of them, she couldn’t help but notice the thoughts dissipate. There was something about him that made her forget what she was thinking, forget what she was feeling besides happiness. He made her feel beautiful even if he didn’t know it.

But, when he went away to New Jersey, there was no one to block out those thoughts anymore. Every day she thought negative things about herself, and compared herself to her friends, to those she passed on the way to class, those in the dining hall, everyone. She was left feeling alone with her thoughts, which made her feel all the worse.

In the weeks following her last day of class, she got a text from Luke. He had asked her to go to the lake house in Michigan. She wasn’t expecting it, to say the least. It meant that she would have to spend at least a week around Luke and his brothers and their friends in shorts and shirts. The things that made her uncomfortable when she was alone.

She reluctantly agreed to his invitation and the only reason she did agree was because she knew Luke wouldn’t stop texting her and calling her until she said yes. She didn’t like summer, it meant that she couldn’t resort to her long sleeves and leggings due to the temperature. It was too hot for that. At least when she was at her own house, it wasn’t bad, she could do that and wouldn’t be hot due to her being able to set the house to a cooler temperature.

But, Luke was Luke, and it was hard to ignore him. They hadn’t seen each other since he left for New Jersey, keeping up only through texts and FaceTime (which was not her favorite thing in the world). So, when that text came through that she had said yes to coming, he was bouncing off the walls for hours. He had run to tell Jack and Quinn, immediately, yelling at them to get a room set up for her and to make Trevor and Cole or whoever share one.

It was rare that Luke got excited to see someone besides his brothers and his closest friends, so when Quinn and Jack heard him rambling a million miles an hour, they knew that this “friend” was special. Luke picked her up from the airport, having flown in from her home state. He was quick to bring her bags to the car for her, open up the passenger side door, and everything in between.

When he saw what she was wearing, he curled an eyebrow, “Aren’t you hot?”

“W-what? No.”

“Y/n/n, you’re wearing a literal sheep right now and it’s like 80 degrees.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m quite comfy.”

“Whatever you say.” He muttered but he made sure to turn the AC on full blast so she wouldn’t overheat more than she already was.

Y/n was trying to prolong the time she would have to be around Luke, and his brothers and their friends, in shorts and t-shirts and tank tops. And while she knew it was going to have to happen soon, it didn’t mean that it had to happen now. She was beyond grateful that Luke turned the AC on, it was a blessing in disguise.

When they pulled up to the house, he wasted no time in doing the same things he did at the airport; grabbing her luggage, opening her door, and leading her up the steps. He opened the door with his elbow and pushed it open with his back, or well more or less his butt. Y/n giggled at the action and stepped inside after him, looking around in disbelief, “Can’t believe you get to spend every summer here.”

“Yeah, kind of lucky to have two-”

“Heads up!”

The two turned to see Jack hurling a football in their direction and Luke dropped her things to catch it. Due to Luke’s reaction time, he spared his best friend from getting hit in the face, “Dude!”

Y/n stood in shock, blinking even as Luke’s hand was taken away from her face. Jack winced, “Sorry.”

Luke threw it back at him and hit him square in the head, “Well, that’s Jack, which means…”

As he trailed off two more voices and two pairs of footsteps came from the hallway, “Cole and Trevor aren’t too far behind him. Blonde one is Cole, the douchey-looking one is Trevor.”

“Douchey?”

She stood there in the entranceway, raising a hand as if to say hi. Trevor and Cole walked in and took her bags for her, “M’lady.”

She giggled again as she watched the two bumble around the house like idiots, all while Luke’s face heated up in embarrassment. When she looked at him she threaded her arm around his waist, “Don’t worry. I have my bunch of idiots back home. They don’t compare honestly.”

Luke’s arm wrapped around her shoulders in habit, slightly tightening as a way to ground himself. He looked over at her to see her still watching the three 22-year-olds, who were now dancing around the living room playing Just Dance. His eyes were filled with fondness, he couldn’t remember the last time or if there was ever a time he felt like this about someone.

“You must be y/n! I’m Quinn, Luke’s oldest brother.”

Y/n smiled at him and Luke swore he could’ve died right there, “Nice to meet you, Quinn. Oh! I saw your guys’ last few games of the season, you guys played well.”

Quinn’s cheeks flushed, “Oh, thanks. Well, listen, your room is right next to Luke’s if you need anything. Anything in the kitchen you are more than welcome to have, we do have some things that if you want to cook you can. The bathroom is at the end of the hallway and the campfire is out back. I won’t tell, but I’m fine if you drink, just don’t do it outside the property or when our parents get here.”

She nods, trying to keep up with all the information he is spitting at her. He walked away and let the two be on their own, going back to his room. Luke picked back up her things and led her into the hallway and to her room. He placed her bags on the foot of the bed and looked back at her, “Well, I’ll let you get settled. I think we’re going out on the boat tonight.”

She didn’t think it would be this soon that she would have to wear them. Luke could see the panic that showed in her eyes for a brief moment, “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. I'm just not a huge fan of the water.”

“Oh, that’s okay! You don’t have to go in it if you don’t want to.”

That sent some relief through her body, “Okay.”

“I’ll come back when we’re ready to go, okay?”

She nods and watches as he leaves, worried about what was to come.

–

Two hours later, Luke came back into her room. He knocked before coming in, of course, looking down, “Hey we’re just about- holy shit.”

Y/n stood there in her ripped jean shorts that didn’t come down fully because she had gotten them last year, her oversized UMich hockey shirt that was beginning to fade from the number of times she’d put it through the wash. Her hair was in two braids with her UMich baseball hat on and her makeup was done in the slightest bit. She was wearing a pair of gym shoes, her trusted ones that she’s had since she started college. When she heard Luke’s voice and then it cut off, she shied away, wrapping her arms around her waist.

“What?”

“Nothing, you just look-”

Here it comes. The fat jokes, the “you should get clothes that actually fit you” monologue, the snide remarks about her working out, and everything in between. But what hurt more, was that it was going to come from Luke, her best friend, her crush, her seemingly everything. The one who made her forget about those things.

“Really pretty.”

Her head snapped up and her eyes opened wide, “I- what?”

Luke’s face flushed, “You look pretty. Um, we’re getting ready to go! You ready?”

“Oh, uh yeah.”

“Did he really just call me pretty?” Her thoughts ran a thousand miles an hour as she grabbed her bag from the bed and followed Luke. There was no way he said that, was she imagining things? What had she eaten for lunch?

Luke helped her onto the boat, holding her hand as she stepped up. She sat down and immediately pulled out her computer, connecting it to her portable hotspot. The boys watched her both in confusion and awe, but Jack was the only one to speak up, “Why are you on your laptop? Dude, you’re gonna get it wet.”

“I just have to do something quick.”

Jack watched from beside her as she pulled up her spreadsheets and started typing information in it, “Holy shit,”

That was the second one of the day, and both of them had been directed at her, “What now?”

“Dude, these are insane.”

He stole the laptop and started scrolling. Now she felt ten times more embarrassed than she was before, “It’s nothing.”

Luke was the next to steal the computer, sitting in awe at the payrolls among other stuff she created, “Damn girl. How much free time do you have?”

She toyed with the ends of her shorts, starting to fray, “A lot.”

She was glad once they moved on from the topic and she was able to shove her computer back in her bag after updating a few things. She watched as the boys went out on the water, Luke staying with her, claiming that he didn’t want to go in the water either. However, as time went on it got colder and colder, yet none of them wanted to go back.

It was now nighttime and y/n was cold from the drastic temperature change. Luke watched as she shivered and instantly took off his sweatshirt and handed it to her, “Here.”

Her eyes looked between him and his hoodie before shaking her head, “I’m okay.”

His eyes softened, growing increasingly worried and confused, “Y/n/n you have goosebumps all along your arms. You’re not ‘okay’.”

“No, I promise. I’m okay.”

“Please.”

She hesitantly took it and unfolded it to hold it up and look at the size. This had always been a worry for her, fitting into other people’s clothes especially when it came to boys. Sure they were ‘bigger’ than her, height was and all, but was that enough to counteract? She nervously put her arms through it, being careful not to stretch it out. She pulled it over her head and was pleasantly surprised when it fit a little baggy on her.

However, her mind clouded with negative thoughts and it started yelling at her that she was the one that stretched it out, that that was the reason why it was baggy. She looked up at him with tears in her eyes, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me.”

She tugged slightly on the hoodie, feeling it start to cling to her impossibly tight. It wasn’t the hoodie, it was her mind making her think that it was smaller than it was. She tried to get out of Luke’s gaze but it was no use. She cursed to herself before looking out at the water, watching the boys splash each other like immature 10-year-olds, “I’ve never been the skinniest girl out there, Luke.”

Her words caused him to frown. ‘Is that seriously what she’s worried about?’ He brought his right hand up to her face, placing her chin in between his index finger and his thumb. He turned her head so her eyes had no choice but to look at him, “You listen to me. You are beautiful, okay? You are the prettiest girl I have ever laid eyes on.”

She moved her head away from his grasp and wrapped her arms in front of her stomach. Luke was determined to convince her that he wanted her. That she was the only one for him, so despite her worries and insecurities, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into his lap. She yelped in surprise and as soon as her butt touched his legs and squirmed, “Let me go, Luke.”

“No.” His voice was stern as he spoke.

“Please, Lu.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t think I can. Not when you are talking about yourself like this, out loud or in that beautiful head of yours. Listen, y/n/n, I know it’s hard, believe me. And while I might not know exactly what you’re going through, I have had my fair share of insecurities myself. You are gorgeous and I love every single part of you there is, okay? I cannot tell you one moment that I have seen you look ugly.”

Completely brushing over the fact that he said ‘I love’, she continued trying to prove him wrong, “What about that-”

“Nope! Doesn’t exist. And I’m going to tell you that if you do not come to at least one game of mine next season, wearing my jersey I might lose it.”

Luke’s words had her blushing in an instant but her mind did not want happiness to be a thing tonight. Her thoughts of this being a prank clouded the intense blissfulness she felt for a few seconds, “Why?”

“Why what, sweet girl?”

The nickname passed over her, “Me. Why me?”

“I’m going to tell you my favorite moment of you and then we’ll see if you know why,” He removed one of his arms from her waist to wrap his fingers around the back of her neck and rub his thumb against her cheek before continuing, “Freshman year. First game you ever went to. I had just bought you a jersey and wrote on the back of it with a sharpie my name and my number. It wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world, obviously because that’s you, but it made sure everyone knew you were supporting me. You wore it with those jeans that I like, the ones with the rhinestones bordering the pockets, and you wore these gym shoes, the ones you’re wearing right now. You had your hair in two ponytails and this hat,” He flicked the brim of it, “and you brought two of your other friends for whom the life of me I cannot remember.

“But you stood for the whole game with this little pompom thing in your hand, cheering every time someone got a goal and booing every time whoever we were playing got one. And then after the game I met you outside and then we went to go get ice cream and you got vanilla with sprinkles and we tasted each other’s because I kept looking over at yours and you finally gave in. And then I took you back to your dorm and you stole my beanie. Which you didn’t give back for another two weeks.”

Her eyes watered as she listened to him, “Y/n/n. Don’t cry, please.”

She shook her head, “I’m not, I promise.”

“No matter how long it takes, what it takes, I am going to prove to you that you are beautiful no matter what anyone says. And as long as you love yourself, that’s all that matters. But you’ll always have my love, okay?”

“You love me?”

“Of course I do! I know we haven’t really dated, but when you know you know.”

She smiled at him and closed her eyes when his lips made contact with her forehead, and then her cheek, “Can I kiss you?”

She nodded and leaned in to meet him halfway. Once their lips connected they heard ‘whoops’ from the water. They pulled away, both red in the face. And as they drove back, y/n sat next to Luke with her head on his shoulder and his hand resting comfortably on her thigh.

⬂ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗝𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘆 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗹𝘀 𝗧𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 ⬂

please message me if you didn't get tagged!

#sunny lune writes #nhl #hockey #nhl hockey #nhl imagine #hockey imagine #luke hughes #luke hughes x reader #lh43 #luke hughes imagine #nj devils

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ghostssweetgirl · 2 days

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Hii!! I just wanted to say i love your work and i had a request 😋

could you write a fic (or hc) where ghost finds the fem!readers sh scars? like she’s sitting in between his legs and he’s holding her thighs and he feels the scars. he asks her to show him and she explains (she’s a little insecure cause she thinks he’ll judge her but he doesn’t) them and he makes her promise that she’ll come to him for help??

(if this makes you uncomfortable please don’t feel the need to write it🙏🏼)

Omg thank you sm <3 also on another note to those reading this (followers or not), I’ve been on and off on here. I’m getting to a point where I can start writing semi-often again. If you go a little further down my blog, I’m also about to start another series (it’s planned and 0% written).

It’ll be short-ish, but yeah, I’ll give it a shot.

If you didn’t read all of the above, this will contain mentions of self harm and bodily scars and mentions of non-specified trauma.

Minors do not interact

You were unwinding with Simon at the end of the night, in between his legs on the ground looking up at the night sky.

It’s been comfortably silent. Not needing much words to help each other decompress after the recent missions you’ve been assigned. Your back against his chest, his calloused fingers softly rubbing against your arm that rested on his leg.

“Y’ a’right, luvie?” He spoke softly. “Anythin’ goin’ on in that pretty lil head?”

You smile, and think about it. You take a deep breath. In all honesty you couldn’t even think of where to start. You don’t know if you’re okay. But you feel okay right now. That’s all that matters. You finally decide, and quickly shake your head. “Mm-mm. No, I’m good. And you? Are you okay?”

He sighed, his hands tracing the top of your thighs. He plays with the fabric of your shorts for a moment and rests his chin on your shoulder. “No, ‘m fine. Fine right here.”

You close your eyes and your thumb rubs small circles against his wrist, his hands’ movements slow as you feel him gently soothing over an arrangement of scars on your thigh. Some deep and overlapping each other. Some light. You shudder and hold your breath for a moment.

It was part of the reason you joined the military. The hell you had to face in your former life essentially pushed you over the edge. And it was the only thing that felt like a proper release.

You didn’t want to talk about it, really. Even though you were safe with Simon. You didn’t want to feel the shame of being judged. If anything, you knew if anyone understood, he definitely would.

But it’s still not your favorite conversation.

Ugh.

He studied them for a while, tilting his head. Not in a judging way, you managed to take a look and saw his once stoic gaze become soft, almost pained. His brows furrowed as he cleared his throat.

“Can…” he gently scoots away from you, caressing your shoulders as you lean up and hesitantly meet his eyes. “Can you show me?”

You sigh, holding your hands over the area. “I… I don’t really…”

You stutter and ramble, unable to get the words you want out.

“It’s a’right, I’ve got you,” he cupped your cheek.

You turn more towards him, enough to where he can see, thank god for the dark sky, the moon light was enough for him to get a general idea and look over without him seeing the anxiety on your face. He held your thigh, and leaned down to press a gentle kiss against your scars.

You were completely froze at this point, not in a bad way. His reaction was a lot less… well, you don’t know what you expected because you would have avoided this if you had the choice.

“It’s… from my past, and—”

“You don’t have to tell me what you don’t want,” he comforts you, pulling you to his chest.

“But what I do want,” he looks down at you. “I need you t’promise me you’ll come to me when you need help or anything. Anything. Anytime. Okay?”

“Please.”

It wasn’t like him to beg. But he needed you to be safe. Safe from bad people, from the horrors of the world and from the horrors of your own demons.

You nod your head in agreement. “Okay.”

He grunts approvingly, his grip on you even tighter now and it goes back to silence just like before. The least you could do in return is offer him the same he does to you, so you cup his cheek, cradling his face as you whisper to him.

“And you come to me for anything. Okay?”

His eyes close in relief as he rests his forehead against yours and if his embrace wasn’t tight before, it’s almost a death grip now as both arms squeeze your whole body, a silent ‘thank you’.

—

#simon ghost riley #simon riley x reader #simon riley #ghost cod #cod mwii #cod modern warfare #modern warfare 2 #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley imagine #simon ghost riley x you #simon riley cod #Simon ghost Riley comfort #simon ghost riley x fem reader #simon riley x fem reader

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mamawasatesttube · 2 days

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on the note of yj in owaw im also thinking about this bit of tim narration from yj98 #36...

tim is feeling betrayed and frustrated (understandably), but what stands out to me is how he thinks of "that whole guardian fiasco". in the earlier yj owaw tie-in, he and the others express disapproval of kon for "stealing government property":

they let it go at the end to move on, but...

but like, the baby in question is a cadmus clone (just like superboy himself), cloned from a man who expressly wished that he not be cloned and forced back into the fight after his death.

as an aside, clone baby guardian arc is possibly the BEST in sb94 - it's about bodily autonomy and the humanity and personhood of clones, and the dignity that should be afforded to all people vs the way waller & spence etc want to treat them as property and disposable, reusable weapons.

so i think overall tim and the rest of yj talking about that situation like this... well, those plot threads overall got dropped in the general aftermath of owaw, but it feels like a real missing scene to me. because realistically, given everything kon stands for and everything he went through for baby guardian's sake, to give him the right to choose, i think tim and the others all talking about it like "it's the government so they must be right" would not sit well with kon. (and frankly, would be a pretty solid in-universe reason for kon to further mistrust their orders re: rescuing the suicide squad members, leading up to him disobeying and trying to save steel.)

owaw is arguably the most serious conflict anyone in yj has been involved in up to this point (kon and bart were both present for genesis, but genesis wasn't... Like This, imo. kon was also involved at the destruction of coast city, but this is kind of a tangent.) my point is, up until this point, they are all kinda operating under the assumption that the government is generally on the side of the good guys. this is partly bc of how comics are written, of course, but also makes sense as an in-universe stance for most young heroes to take; tim in particular is definitely a lawful good, and at this point he doesn't understand that his personal rules don't always 100% line up with what the greater authority of The Government dictates.

kon is a contrast to this, because kon does not have the whole "grew up with a family as a part of normal society" backstory like tim and cassie do. kon's involvement with cadmus, a government-funded organization, generally is written such that cadmus are good, except that the closer we get to owaw, the more questionable their intent seems. we see the agenda and their push for eugenics. we see guardian being treated as a tool and not a person. we see waller taking over.

anyways, all of this is kind of to say - i think it's a real shame we don't actually see a big conversation between tim and kon in the aftermath of this. i want to SEE tim get that first real big crack in his worldview that makes him start to think that huh. maybe if lying to small time authority figures for the sake of doing good, like me lying to my dad about being robin, is justified... then maybe directly disobeying the law in the name of doing good is also justified. like, i want kon to look him in the eye and ask "do you think i'm government property, too, then, jackass?" and i want tim to have to really sit back and think on it. i wanna see that character development.

because like - it is a flawed viewpoint, that tim and the rest of yj were written to treat kon trying to free a baby like this. but it's also not an unrealistic one when they're all teenagers who haven't really necessarily had to face moral quandaries of "what's right vs what's lawful" with such high stakes before. i wish this plot had actually gone more places with everyone.

#rimi talks #all of this to say ....... missing scene fic when #maybe i make this part of my kon & steel agenda after i work on the kon & lois agenda sdkfjfh #sorry for the longass post. i just have SO many thoughts #kon #tim #guardian

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zev-rynna · 3 days

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I am made aware of the controversy around Jiyan on how he became the general and the terrible story writing from the writers part.

Jiyan has been called names like “Run-away General”, “The Faux General” etc etc, and the complaints that Jiyan is a hypocritical character that judged Geshu Lin’s decision making and yet made the exact same decision Geshu Lin made in the end.

Honestly speaking, I don’t doubt the possibility of terrible writing on Kuro’s part but I wonder if this also reflected the complexity of human nature in the sense that there’s just no perfectly evil/bad person (in this case Geshu Lin) or the perfectly good/right person (in this case Jiyan)? Maybe it was written this way, but wasn’t properly done? Idk..

This is going to be long, bear with me…

Geshu fought the battle and was almost winning, and he has lost too many people to back off. And in his “conversation” with Jiyan, he did also highlighted that backing down and running away will not do justice to all those lives he carried behind his back. It’s true, when it’s war, if you decide to back down knowing you could’ve won, you have nothing to explain to those who have lost their lives in previous battles. Geshu Lin carried all those lives with him, and in his knowledge, the retroact rain’s effect was relatively unknown to him, and his arrogance or overconfidence may have resulted in him disregarding the significance and danger of the unknown. And Geshu Lin was born a warrior, fighting to win battles also means sacrifices have to be made, and therefore his actions reflected his values.

On the other hand, Jiyan was born a medic. His values revolved around saving lives, and the purpose of winning certain battles is to ensure better lives for his people. So if a war caused too many sacrifices, is that war still considered a win for his people? And so with his knowledge and his instincts on the catastrophe that may happen due to the retroact rain, with no Geshu Lin in sight, he made the choice to save as many people as he can by ordering a retreat. I believe at that point, he has no intention to override Geshu Lin’s authority or to made Geshu Lin the “bad guy”, but solely to save the people left to save before they all perished.

But the society (Jinzhou citizens) will need someone to blame. This is the reflection of how humans are like. When loss is too big and incomprehensible, the tendencies to blame become prevalent. In that situation, without knowing all sorts of context, Geshu Lin led to the death of the people and Jiyan was the one who ensured lives saved. Jiyan naturally became the hero and Geshu Lin the villain.

I don’t believe that Jiyan personally wanted to reprimand Geshu Lin or try to taint his reputation so it can make his “promotion” to General more believable. Yes he did not agree with Geshu Lin’s ideals, but I don’t think the whole “Geshu Lin was the cause of this tragedy” talk was started by him. It was the people who needed a hero and someone to blame during the difficult times. Then he was chosen to be General, and when you get to a position like that, confiding in people to tell them how you truly feel becomes a luxury because people start to rely on you and in order for them to respect you and able to lead an army, you have to be composed, and mask all forms of doubts.

When Rover came as prophesised, Jiyan was seen having a “conversation” with Geshu Lin before the war, and Jiyan was mostly quiet on his part. You can sense his doubts manifesting as he is about to make the exact same decision Geshu Lin made years ago, and he questions himself. But then again, Jiyan was flamed incredibly cuz of the irony that he did in fact made the same decision Geshu Lin did, but Jiyan was in the luxury to make that decision knowing what he knew, and having Rover by his side made the odds significantly better. And this was what made the fans/anti-fans so bitter about Jiyan because this was pure hypocrisy at play, especially it made Jiyan looked weak cuz everyone knew the outcome may have been the same as years ago if Rover was not present. But that’s the thing, if Rover was absent, I don’t think Jiyan would’ve made the decision he made.

The tragedy was that Geshu Lin was too quick to be burnt on the stake by people who were desperate to find closure. And the situation Geshu Lin was in, made this grey in the sense that no one truly knew what happened at the war zone and Geshu Lin did not have everything that the people know now about the Retroact rain and Rover to made the war of his time a success. Jiyan has that, that was his luck. But how does one blame Jiyan for that? After all, luck is an also huge component of strength. And probably (just a speculation) - the irony of Jiyan making the same decision as Geshu Lin may be a foreshadowing of Geshu Lin’s return to mock the hypocrisy of the entire ordeal, including the people who blamed him.

The whole situation where Geshu Lin was strongly blamed as the villain and Jiyan was depicted as the hero and the best person ever was so overly exaggerated, I don’t think this was what Jiyan meant for to happen. And I know a lot of people say that “well but Jiyan took all those compliments bla bla”. But he was promoted to general though, he cannot just come out and disregard what people said about him because he needed these people’s vote of confidence, and during those dark times, he is in no position to show any form of doubts. But it doesn’t mean that he didn’t mourn the loss of respect and reputation of Geshu Lin when he’s alone.

I’m upset Jiyan got too much hate for this. This was a perfect depiction of how complex humans are and how things cannot be black and white. It’s so nuance that I’m not sure if I properly explained it in words.

Then again, I really like Jiyan’s character, although I have the admit, the writing was terribly done, which may have caused so much backlash cuz of all the unsaid things. I felt that with a little bit more of explanation on the plot and Jiyan’s thought process would’ve significantly helped with Jiyan’s character building. Now Geshu Lin is so well loved cuz everyone felt that Jiyan stole all that belonged to him. I wouldn’t say Geshu Lin was entirely innocent despite the fault of the people who were quick to blame him, but that’s for another day.

Again, there isn’t a perfectly evil person, just like there isn’t a perfectly good person. People are complicated and one action does not justify the other.

#wuwa jiyan #wuwa #wuwa rover #wuwa spoilers #wuwa official #wuwa geshu lin #jiyan #geshu lin #rover #wuthering waves

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hiraeth-sonder · 23 hours

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Want Nothing More

Jiyan x Reader

A quiet moment away, a reunion and a revelation long foreseen

//He finally came home it only took my sanity. Very short little decently written fic, maybe OOC also some maybe spoilers for his story quest??? Also maybe I got stuff wrong idk, this isn't beta read so like eh

The greater world is often far wider than the humble confines of a small village, much less one so tucked away. Since facing an injury that rendered you almost entirely incapable of returning to the frontlines, you quietly returned to Taoyuan Vile with hefty compensation and an arm that could not even be lifted.

Life becomes oddly quiet, with barely any danger to hold arms against nor a proper purpose back home, you take to helping in the village’s pharmacy as some way to bring order back into your daily routine. You are given more delicate work, pressing and drying herbs, sorting them for use, dealing with customers and aiding with deliveries. With the opportunity to provide, to give back, it became a sort of pride for how quick you could pick up the routine.

It works for a while, yet with this new direction, you are gradually reminded of a certain someone from all those years ago.

That boy who smelled like medicinal herbs and eyes like stars, whose face scrunched from displease whenever he caught a taste of bittberries in his food, the boy who certainly has found his path beyond medicine. There are times you blink and before you is not the current reality of him, but rather the little boy who somehow managed to find time to spend with you no matter his duties.

Memories of stolen moments, of forcing him to rest after his sending condolences to grieving family, of exercising his natural medical ability. You were younger then, with limbs like sticks and hair that stuck to your face, yet that did not discourage you from doing what you could for your friend.

You wonder how he is doing nowadays, you haven’t seen him since the day you got discharged after all.

One can only imagine your surprise when through falling pink petals and the light breeze of the wind, he appears as he did all those years ago. Still the pillar of calm and decisiveness, he looked a tad out of place compared to the lively and enthusiastic crowd of teams. By his side was a dark haired individual, looking just a little less out of place, and when two other rangers approached them, a small huff escaped you.

A repeat of that last game, who would have known that the general’s second game would have him recreating the circumstances of his first. If only with a few minor differences.

By the time the revelry and chaos dies down, the sun has long since fallen beyond the horizon. Many of the villagers are still out celebrating as the tapestry of stars stretches far past what your eyes can see. Having made the venture to the great tree that stands atop the mountain, you notice a familiar form already standing there. Beneath falling petals and illuminated by the moon’s grace, that young boy of the past has become your stalwart general.

With heavy steps, you approach him, yet stop just a few steps before his side, sitting down on the grass as you overlook the little lights of the village. He clearly notices your presence, sitting curtly, leaving an arm’s distance between your two forms.

“I didn’t think you’d take part again,” You hum, keeping your eyes away from his as you maintain your focus ahead of you.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” He shakes his head, his lips move to open just the slightest, as if wishing to say more yet unable to muster the words to say so, still they close. Jiyan manages to breathe out, “It's been a while.”

You swallow, an action that seems oddly difficult, “It has.”

As you finally muster the courage to turn towards him, you notice how his gaze seems to consider your inept arm. Perhaps a few years ago, you would have despised the way he looks at it, knowing that people only look because of pity. Nonetheless, you instinctively press that arm against you, your other hand raising to hold it.

He furrows his brow just the slightest, and in a tone so soft you must strain to hear, “I wanted to apologise for not doing more for you.”

“You’ve already done so much.” Sighing, a breath escapes you as you meet his eyes. You move closer towards him, shifting so that hand of yours, that arm that could barely lift a basket, could rest atop his arm.

Your voice cracks just the slightest, even after all this time you never manage to thank him for everything he has done for you. The compensation was far too generous for an ordinary ranger such as yourself, the immediate and efficient care you received as rehabilitation, the bundle of Pecok flowers you would see upon every morning’s awakening. You only hoped you could give him something back in return, “An arm is just an arm, if you hadn’t acted as quick as you did, maybe I would’ve lost more than that.”

Jiyan looked no more than the young man he is, in such familiar settings and under such familiar straits. Sword straight brows and the soft quirk of his lips, he never truly changed from that young boy. Your eyes trail further down, to his squared shoulders and staunch chest, how they maintain rigid and perfect poise.

Another sigh escapes you, “You’re not at work, won’t you at least untense your shoulders?”

“I’m sorry, there has been a lot going on and I didn’t think I’d end up staying here so long.”

“Don’t apologise,” You smile, then pat your lap with your hand. Sending him a nonplussed look, you can all but see the gears in his head, you can only laugh, “Humour me then.”

He does not move, his eyes widening just the slightest that to anyone else, they might have missed his brief moment of shock. You have not asked him to rest in such a manner for years, perhaps the last time was over a decade ago, so you do not blame him. Still, perhaps it was the nostalgia, perhaps it was the unveiling of sentiment, but a familiar sense of easiness takes over.

“Come on, don’t tell me great and mighty General Jiyan is too good for a break?” You raise a brow, easy teasing falling from your lips.

He is quick to deny your quip, “I never said that.” And with at first hesitancy in his very form, he finally tentatively lays his head on your lap.

The weight brings about old memories, and old feelings. How old were you when you realised that Jiyan, friend as he is, was worth far more than that to you? How old were you when you started looking forward to his little breaks just to catch a glimpse of him?

You loved him, of course you did. Who does not love their friends?

Yet this love of yours is one that is aged, one that has matured into contentment for what you had. Even as you spend your days in Taoyuan Vile, the little parts of him you see among the crooks and crannies of white walls and verdant greenery, it is enough for you. So even when he lays in your lap and closes his eyes as he did all those years ago, you are happy with what you have.

“You know, when we were younger, I used to have to convince you to rest whenever we managed to get away,” More akin to reminiscing seniors, you brush away his bangs away from his face with a gentle flick.

“Even then you were so hardworking,” You murmur.

He responds, just as quietly as your recollection, “That should be expected, I was working even then.”

“I think it was when I saw how peaceful you looked while sleeping that I realised I liked you,” Humming, you close your eyes as the wind breezes past your cheek.

As though realising what you said, a warm flush pools at the tips of your ears as you accidentally meet his eyes, “Ah…”

“Guess I said too much huh?” You laugh, the sound carried by the gentle wind. “Ignore me, I’m just saying things.”

In a rare moment of vulnerability, Jiyan reaches for you, his hand raised to keep you from looking away. Though he remains, those golden eyes tipped with scarlet bear an emotion you never thought he would hold. With just one look, just one action, he renders you incapable of moving to defend yourself.

He mutters, voice tinged with just the hint of languish, “After all these years, you’re still unwilling to tell me things.”

“Would you have wanted me to tell you?” With a raised brow, you cock your head, leaning into his palm incidentally.

“Yes.”

And that contentment, the placidity that came with the distance and time between the two of you, crumbles. For your love, a sentiment you have nurtured into something that can be tucked away, is still one that yearns for response. For his love, is one just as aged as yours, just as willing to sit in contentment and placidity. Years and years of pining that soon bred a seed of tranquillity, quietly sitting within the soil just waiting for that push to bloom.

With a soft smile, so like that boy’s and so befitting your beloved general’s visage, he avows the second half of a confession brazenly said, “Because it was when I laid in your lap that I realised that I liked you too.”

#wuthering waves #wuwa #wuwa jiyan #wuwa x reader #jiyan wuthering waves #jiyan x reader

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navstuffs · 3 days

Text

Synesthesia

Pairing: Gojo Satoru x GN!Reader

Summary: "A condition in which stimulation of one sense generates a simultaneous sensation in another". Or aka the fic where Gojo Satoru fucks you inside his domain expansion.

Trigger Warnings: MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!, SMUT, tiny squint of dubcon (reader goes mind blank inside the domain), creampie, multiple powerful orgasms, reader gender isn't mentioned

Author's Notes: probably the hardest smut i have ever written. idk how many times this has been done in the fandom (im sure tons) and one time i read this INSANELY good fic abt it and have never found it again. anyway, enjoy! credit on the images from this post right here.

other gojo fics

An average person will feel many sensations in this world, either physically and/or spiritually (if you believe in that type of stuff). Before meeting Gojo Satoru, your emotions were still there to remind you, hey, you are human: come and feel us; you can't stop us.

Everything changed after you met Satoru.

Gojo Satoru wasn't normal. Even in your first meeting, even without being a cursed user, you could tell something was off about him in the best way possible. The white hair, the ethereal blue eyes behind the sunglasses, or the fact that he consumed sweets as someone should be consuming water. Even your concerns about diabetes didn't feel necessary with this man.

And then you started dating him. Yes, you, the average human being of this world, the single person in the million of eight billion or more. And he chose you, fell for you, for some crazy idea in his head. You became his new drug in the best way possible. Gojo Satoru could never have had enough of you.

The kisses were intoxicating, and his neediness was that of someone who could not hear the word "no." Satoru would pout like a child, his head down enough that you could see his eyes shining through his sunglasses. And you would say "yes" as if only that vision persuaded you (it was your heart speaking).

Now, fucking Gojo Satoru, that was on a whole new level. At this point, you knew of the curses, the Jujutsu world, and the fact that somehow you are dating the strongest of that universe (?!). Fucking Gojo Satoru was not like fucking your other lovers. Satoru was entirely in during sex. As in head, soul, mind, the total package deal. And it was only fair you gave him the same.

-x-

"What would happen to normal humans inside your domain expansion?"

The question is met with curiosity by Gojo, who is wearing his black bandana today. He ponders for a moment, one finger toward his chin (because you said once he looked cute doing it, and he does it every time now). "They probably wouldn't be able to see it. Just feel it."

"Could it be considered safe?"

"Mhmmm, let me think. For some milliseconds. Why?"

"Nothing."

Oh, but Satoru had already perceived your interest. Your eyes did not meet his, and you tried to look away, embarrassed. His smile grew from his side lips until Satoru questioned, his voice low, " Is there anything I should know of?"

"You promise you won't laugh?"

-x-

That's how you end up on top of him, his dick buried deep inside your body. It is already overwhelming, suffocating almost, the air being pulled from your lungs every time your hips meet his, and you weren't even inside his domain yet. Satoru insisted on starting slowly for your safety: 0.1, 0.2 seconds max, according to his estimation.

"Now?"

"Are you close?" You shake your head impatiently, furrowing your brows. "Didn't think so."

Differing from all the other nights, you sense Satoru's tension. He can't relax, not even without you moaning in his ear. It's not that Satoru believes he will hurt you; Satoru has to consider the slight possibility of what could happen if he lost control for a tiny second and ended up frying your brain on accident.

"'Toru. Focus on me." You demand, squeezing his nipple so he can come back to you.

Satoru reacts: he starts rubbing in between in the middle of your legs, stroking your sex in a way only he knew how to do, after weeks of studying your reactions every time you had sex. In less than two weeks, the prick had learned places you haven't even discovered yet. It had to be six eyes, giving your body away like that. Biting where the neck meets your shoulder together with a particular way of fucking you and hitting on the place that made you see stars could make you cum in minutes. You are thankful he is the strongest because Satoru had ruined you for any other person who existed.

"Focus, honey." His voice is steady, his chest heaving up and down.

If someone asked you how a mere mortal felt bringing God to his knees, you would know exactly how to explain. That's exactly how you felt fucking Satoru. Like now, with his hands on your hips, helping you sink inside further every time, your open palms resting on his chest for support. It feels powerful and mythical; his mouth parted away like that, licking his lips from time to time. Satoru is a proud moaner, loud and about - but for this time, his forehead is furrowed in concentration, and barely any noises are coming from him. If it were any other time, Satoru would have helped you or taken control when it had gotten too much for his small patience to handle, moving his hips until you were a blabbering mess.

But now, he has to be focused on not harming you. The situation is even more thrilling if you think like that. Bring a God to his knees because if you don't, he might kill you with his power.

"Satoru!" You moan, needy. A warning that you are getting close.

His white hands raise, and you watch (as always) fascinated as the bandana comes off, even forgetting about your looming orgasm. Gojo Satoru is the most attractive man you have ever seen in your entire life, and if you believe in reincarnation, about ten more lives. He has a smirk on his lips now, happy with the way he affects you. I mean, how couldn't he?

"Domain expansion, Unlimited Void."

Everything stops. The air stops moving, and time stops. You are paralyzed, your eyes wide, feeling everything and nothing at the same time. Your mind goes blank in the total sense of that word; you can't form a single thought. You forget your name, can't remember your parents' names, or where you were born, what you do.

At the same time, everything is being shown to you; your consciousness is there, floating lost in the sky, but you can't grasp it. The only thing you can feel is your orgasm, but even that feels like it has toned down, a small explosion the size of a jelly bean growing inside your stomach.

The next thing you know, you wake up in Satoru's arms, gasping for air, shaking, with tears coming down your eyes. You can't stop squirming, and you realize it is your orgasm, with so much energy that could light up an entire city, spreading in your veins and going back into your brain at a swift speed, amplifying your senses. Then you find yourself staring at Satoru's blue eyes, and your mind goes blank again, but not like when you were inside the Unlimited Void. No, now you can feel everything: Satoru's love, Satoru's shooting his cum inside of you, Satoru's hand gripping your hips, the scream coming out of your throat!

Satoru is murmuring something, praising you, saying he loves you, but you pass out again, and the entire world goes black. Satoru holds you, feeling your heartbeat, not placing his bandana on his eyes, your body twitching unconsciously.

You return to him after a few minutes - if anyone asked Gojo, precisely two minutes, twenty seconds, two exact milliseconds, almost three.

"'Toru?" Your voice sounds exhausted, grateful, and in disbelief all at the same time.

"I'm here, honey. I'm here. You are okay." He kisses your forehead, holding you tightly in his arms, still buried deep inside you.

Later, when you ask, Satoru will answer that he had felt your orgasm within you. He had never seen you so out of this world, literally dumbfucked. He won't confess he got worried for a second and ended up placing you inside his domain for ONLY one millisecond. You also won't confess yet that you wanted to try again, up to 0.3 seconds (normal humans wouldn't survive), but who cares? You want Satoru to fry your brain. Instead, you will roll your eyes at his answer, slapping his arm playfully, and he won't even turn infinite on because it is you. And who is he to ever deny you? You who finally made his life whole.

You that had a God wrapped around your finger.

#gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x you #satoru gojo smut #satoru gojo #gojo satoru smut #gojo satoru #gojo satoru fanfic #satoru gojo fanfic #satoru smut

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luhafraser · 1 day

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Hello Anons!

"This" about Sam is his PUBLIC LIFE!

It's not his REAL PERSONAL LIFE!

How I know? Wasn't it clear how "this" was a setup? If Sam was in a real relationship with this woman, do you really think this would have been exposed like it was on Just Jared?

What I think? That was "a shot in the dark" attempt to generate content and improve Sam's numbers on socials. Let's face it, no one can stand "Nobleman, whiskey and MPC" anymore, except his "mommies". (And those inflatable animals... Oh my 🤦🏻‍♀️)

As I said before, for me, Sam created a character of himself... A Sam Heughan for his fans and general public.

This Sam is nothing more than that Sam from Waypoints who can't commit to a relationship. Isn't this exactly the message he gives us when he appears with an escort???

But I believe Sam when he says he's very protective of his personal life. Waypoints may have real-life elements, but it was written to show what he wants his fans to see and believe about his personal life. In one way or another we all do this on our Instagram accounts.

I really think Sam tries to protect the ones he loves, and I'm sorry for anyone who thinks otherwise, but Sam has never done that for any of those women he's seen with.

But he clearly does it for his family. And the curious thing (or not 😜)? He does this for Caitríona... If we think that most of the time Sam is the one who provides any silly content for this fandom to discuss/theorize. Meanwhile, Caitríona is somewhat spared. She only “comes back” because even she needs to show her face and give him a rest 😜😅

At this moment, no one remembers to discuss the e-mail about FMN Gin... What a fiasco to encourage people to look at social media, which contain minimal information, especially about projects (oops ... one project)... Posts from 2020. Even Caitríona's account is not attractive. 🤦🏻‍♀️

#sam heughan #caitriona balfe #sam and caitriona #outlander #outlander fandom #it's a shitshow #public life #fake life

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luna-rainbow · 2 days

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I liked the Russo bros until I heard an interview with them made about 4-5 years ago (just after Endgame I think) where they elaborated on why Bucky didn't get the shield.

It made me really mad how flippant they were about Bucky's "mind being damaged" and then started joking about him being crazy and dangerous. They even said at one point that he was "corrupted".

Just the amount of ableism was horrific. Mental health issues and brain damage do not arise from or make a person morally corrupt.

I get that Bucky would not have wanted the shield before the HYDRA programming was removed (which it had been by that point) but seriously? Also, why should having trauma or mental health issues disqualify someone from being Captain America?

Ah yes, the good ole ableism.

Much of the MCU is incredibly ableist. I think the modern world, despite all our efforts, still segregates disabled people from view. A lot of writers, especially if they come from comfortable upper/middle-class families and smooth-sailed through college, would never have had much interaction with a visibly disabled person as a fellow human.

Mental health is an invisible disability and still often seen as a weakness of the will. I think this is part of the disdain for Bucky and this weird push in TFATWS to write him into a Generic Dude. This is why Zemo says “there’s never been another Steve Rogers” because Bucky’s mind did break, and it broke because (the writers) see him as weak-willed and deficient, rather than because…withstanding 70 years of torture is something none of us can fathom.

I can’t find the post from a while ago (Tumblr being Tumblr) but someone wrote an essay about disabled characters in the MCU and the fact that disability is used as a narrative tool to signal a punishment for moral deficiency. And their (unnatural) regaining of their abilities as a nod to them recognising the error of their ways. The example they used was Rhodes, who was “punished” by becoming paraplegic then regaining his walking when he reconciled with the rest of the Avengers. (Civil War being what it was, I’m genuinely not sure that the writers felt Steve was the correct side, but anyhow)

But this theory is particularly true in how Bucky is written and what each generation of writers have said about him. The arm, once bearing the insignia of wings and now bearing the red star, was a visible symbol of what happens to his mind — a soldier’s failure, having his identity and loyalty ripped from him, and another new, deadlier identity transplanted against his will. But a failure nonetheless, because a real hero wouldn’t have fallen. And this is why in Civil War, the arm needed to be forcibly taken from him, because it was a mark of his identity as the Winter Soldier and of his crimes against a hero’s family. The arm is then given to him in Infinity War as an opportunity for atonement, to fight for the “greater good” (as if fighting against Nazis wasn’t right there in his history). And he is reminded in TFATWS it can be taken away at any time if he misbehaves, that no matter how hard he works that original flaw will always hang over him and any minor mistake needs to be punished to bring him back in line (a point reinforced by Sam’s constant jibing at his time as a prisoner).

And then people wonder why Bucky fans are pissed off about the gross ableism.

#bucky barnes #asks #ableism

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insanityclause · 2 days

Text

“It must have been in about 1979, I was in New York on holiday. I was sitting up with a friend, and we were both stoned as owls.” Jane Wymark was retelling her brush with a piece of theatre history. She recalled the sound of a telephone cutting through the sour, rising smoke. Wymark answered. Distant and absurd on the other end of the line, a telegram message from her mother. “It said something like: ‘Wonderful job. Hamlet, please come home.’”

After several minutes of laughter, it occurred to Wymark that the call might not be a joke. “So I rung my mother up, and said ‘I’m really sorry if I’m waking you up in the middle of the night for no reason, but is this real?’ And she said, ‘Yes, come home right now, because they want you to play Ophelia.’”

Wymark was being parachuted into a production of Hamlet that was being talked about as among the best of the century. Derek Jacobi, a Shakespearean actor then in his forties and recently made famous by his star turn as the Roman emperor in the television series I, Claudius, was in the title role. In some quarters, Jacobi’s poetic, volatile performance was being talked about as the Hamlet of his generation.

A film of the production would be broadcast in America and viewed by more people at once than any in history. When The New York Times asked Jacobi how he felt knowing that a generation of viewers would come to consider his interpretation definitive, he replied: “That way lies madness.”

One night, Wymark recalled, the cast were taking their bows in the furnacelike auditorium. “By the time we got to the end of the show we were pouring sweat,” she said. “Well I wasn’t, because I’d been dead for a while, but Derek and the guy playing Laertes were just sopping. We’d done all the usual curtain calls and everything, and then Peter O’Toole comes wavering on to the stage.”

O’Toole, then almost 50 and skeletal-gaunt, was carrying in his hands a little red book. As the audience hushed he explained that the book was given to the actor who was considered the definitive Hamlet of his generation. When O’Toole had played the part in 1963, the actor Michael Redgrave had given him the book. Redgrave had been given it by someone else, a great actor of the previous generation, and now O’Toole was passing it on to Jacobi, who in turn could give it to whomever he pleased.

The notion that each generation has its definitive Hamlet is a critical will-o’-the-wisp that has dogged the play almost since it was written. The Edwardian essayist Max Beerbohm called Shakespeare’s most famous part “a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump”, but only one actor in thousands gets to “give” his or her Hamlet in a professional production. “Everyone — great, good, bad or indifferent — wants to play Hamlet,” the actor Christopher Plummer once said.

Why? The question feels redundant. If you are someone who needs to perform, you are someone who needs to perform Hamlet. In Withnail and I, the 1987 cult comedy film about actors and their ambitions, the bloated, fey, lecherous character known as Uncle Monty has a short speech on the subject: “It is the most shattering experience of a young man’s life when, one morning, he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, ‘I will never play the Dane.’ When that moment comes, one’s ambition ceases.”

Earlier this year, I set out to find the red book.

As a trophy, a tradition, a secret succession, it seemed to embody some of the most romantic ideas about the part. I felt that in mapping its passage from player to player, I could trace a shadow history of the thing that has been driving the whole theatrical world for centuries: ambition.

This is what brought me to ask the retired Wymark about her encounter with the book. And this is how I eventually came to be standing outside a rambling, gabled cottage in north London, uncertain about whether to ring the bell until a vast Shakespearean sneeze told me I was at the right place. The door opened and I shook hands with a neat, elderly man who looked just like Derek Jacobi. The living room, decorated with antique furniture and hung with flower paintings, left an impression of a precisely chosen life. I said that I wanted to ask him about a red, leather-bound book, handed down from actor to actor, that had passed through his hands decades ago. I said he might be the oldest living actor to have held it in his hands. He furrowed an alpine brow and fixed his pale blue eyes on a tiny point just past my left eye. “Oh God,” he moaned, in an agony of remembrance. “It was a little copy of Hamlet . . . ”

Of course, there is no definitive Hamlet. This is true, and so obviously true that people have been saying it for hundreds of years. “There is no such thing as Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.” This is true! Hamlet is sour, obedient, suicidal, sarcastic, self-indulgent, flip and outright murderous before the end of his second scene. Modern scholarship has been wincingly keen to stress the heterogeneity of possible responses. As I once heard a professor say in a university seminar, should we be speaking of Hamlets, rather than Hamlet?

Perhaps. But we should also be honest: that sucks and we hate it. We also can’t ignore the genealogy of great Hamlets that exists, stretching all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s star performer and business partner, for whom the role was written. That the character and the play are both radically unstable and look totally different in different hands seems to have made us more eager to pinpoint a single actor’s performance as the one. Producers, theatre managers, actors and journalists have connived to reinforce that idea.

Hamlet does offer an actor a scope and centrality that no other part does. “It’s the great personality role in Shakespeare,” Jacobi explained when we were sitting down, his hands conducting the silence around him as he spoke. He had settled in a winged leopard-print armchair, like a portrait of himself. On the side table was an Olivier Award, a small bronze sculpture of the great Laurence Olivier himself, the man who won both Best Actor and Best Picture for his 1948 film of Hamlet, and then launched the National Theatre in 1963 with a production of the play. “You use much more of your own personality as Hamlet,” Jacobi said, “rather than becoming Hamlet by going out and acquiring things. . . Hamlet will look how the actor looks, sound how he sounds, move how he moves. You play yourself as Hamlet.”

Jacobi first came to prominence as a teenage Hamlet, in an eye-catchingly serious schoolboy production at the Edinburgh festival fringe. In his early twenties he joined the germinal National Theatre and played opposite O’Toole’s Hamlet as Laertes. In his forties, he was given the red book by O’Toole, filmed in the role and toured the world. He was sworn to revenge under sheets of pelting rain outside the real Elsinore castle in Denmark. He soliloquised and played mad by the Egyptian Sphinx as the sun set.

A particular challenge of playing the part, Jacobi told me, is delivering lines so famous they risk breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. In his production, the second act began with Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Unusually, it was played as a speech delivered to Ophelia, rather than on an empty stage. In Sydney, at the end of the tour, Jacobi was waiting nervously in the wings. “I thought, ‘This is probably the most famous line in all drama. What if I forgot it? What if I went on and my mind went blank?’ And I went on, and I started . . .

“To be, or not to be, that is the question/ Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or–

Or–

Or–”

Blinded to the astonishment of a thousand spectators by the force of the footlights, Jacobi realised he’d dried. Dried completely. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten the words. It was like he’d never known them. An entire minute of silence passed, until he was audibly given his line by Ophelia. Somehow, he got through the performance and the rest of the run. Afterwards, Jacobi didn’t go on stage again for two years. When I mentioned the incident, his eyes turned tight and hooded. He asked to talk about something else. Sensing my cue, I returned to the red book.

“Oh God. Rich!” he called into the next room. “Who did I give the book to?”

“You gave it to Ken Branagh,” called Richard Clifford, Jacobi’s partner, from offstage.

“Ken! I gave it to Ken,” said Jacobi. Then, calling back: “Who did Ken give the book to?”

“Tom Hiddleston!”

“Tom! He gave it to Tom.”

I asked how he had received the book himself and he went back into the trance of remembrance. “Now, I was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. And at the curtain call one night, Peter O’Toole came on to the stage with this book and gave it to me. And he had originally been given it by . . . Oh . . . ” He trailed off, unable to remember Redgrave.

“Oh!” cried Clifford from the kitchen.

“Oh!” cried Jacobi in the living room.

Johnston Forbes-Robertson. That was the name of the first owner of the red book. Forbes-Robertson was a legendary Victorian actor who played Hamlet into his sixties. The book itself was a Temple Shakespeare, a handsome reader’s edition of the play printed around the turn of the century and bound in red leather. He probably bought it in a West End bookshop, pacing around between rehearsals. Or so I’m told by Russell Jackson, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham. “It would have been instantly recognisable,” he told me. “You can hold it more or less in the palm of your hand.”

In 1996, Jackson was working as a script consultant on a film of Hamlet directed by Branagh, who was then in the middle of a hurtling, flame-tipped ascent to near-unprecedented eminence among Shakespearean actors. As a leading man who had run his own theatre company and could direct and star in internationally released film adaptations of the plays, there was no one to compare him to but Olivier. He was now at work on a princely four-hour fantasia, shot amid fake fallen snow at Blenheim Palace with himself in the starring role.

He had cast his old hero, Jacobi, as Hamlet’s murderous uncle Claudius. On his last day of shooting, after the traditional applause that follows a final take, Jacobi asked for silence. Jackson kept a diary at the time: “[Jacobi] holds up a red-bound copy of the play that successive actors have passed on to each other, with the condition that the recipient should give it in turn to the finest Hamlet of the next generation. It has come from Forbes-Robertson, a great Hamlet at the turn of the century, to Derek, via Henry Ainley, Michael Redgrave, Peter O’Toole and others. Now he gives it to Ken.”

Hamlet had been a pivotal document in Branagh’s life. As a teenager in 1977, he had seen Jacobi play the role at the New Theatre in Oxford. In his memoir, he remembers it as one of the moments that inspired him to become an actor. “I didn’t understand it at all, but I was amazed by the power of it because it seemed to be affecting my body. I got the shakes at times.”

Two years later, Branagh went to interview Jacobi, who was then playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. “I got a note from someone called Ken Branagh, saying, could he interview me for Rada’s magazine?” Jacobi told me, referring to the prestigious London acting school Branagh attended. “He was a personable young man. He asked good questions. As he left, he said: ‘I’m going to be playing Hamlet one day, and you’re going to be in it.’”

“Ken,” Jacobi added with a smile, “wasn’t slow in coming forward.”

It was no secret that Branagh had set his sights on matching, even reanimating, Olivier’s career. With his movie of Hamlet, he was threatening to run away with the crown. But while the film won plaudits from some critics, it made back only around a quarter of its budget, and Branagh was nominated only for best adapted screenplay at the Oscars, a curiously backhanded compliment for a Hamlet that advertised itself as the complete text.

Branagh held on to the book for more than 20 years, passing over several acclaimed Hamlets (David Tennant’s agonised spectre foremost among them) in that time. “I took special pains to make sure it was preserved,” said Branagh, who was reached with written questions via an agent and an aide during the shooting of his new film. “I felt the book was something rather treasured and private, and not something that you in any way crowed about. You were a temporary custodian.” In 2017, he finally handed the red book on to the actor sometimes thought of as his protégé, Hiddleston.

So there it was. Redgrave to O’Toole to Jacobi to Branagh to Hiddleston. But still, something wasn’t adding up. I began desperately ringing round old actors asking for snippets of information about the red book, and started reciting the list of names from Jackson’s diary entry: Forbes-Robertson, Ainley, Redgrave, O’Toole, Jacobi, among others. Every time I read the list, everyone said the same thing. Where the hell is Olivier?

Here is a story about Laurence Olivier. Once upon a time, in the early 1800s, there was a great Shakespearean actor called Edmund Kean. He was the Hamlet of the Romantics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that watching him was “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning”. Kean was also renowned for playing Shakespeare’s other great soliloquist, Richard III. As the hunchbacked villain, Kean would rage and swagger and strut about, swishing a great sword in his hand. That sword was passed to William Chippendale, a member of Kean’s company. Chippendale gave it to an actor called Henry Irving, who gave it to the great Ellen Terry who, we understand, gave it to her great nephew. His name was John Gielgud. Gielgud gave the sword to his contemporary, Olivier, telling him to pass it on to the great actor of the next generation. And Olivier kept it.

He is rumoured to have been buried with it. Certainly, the sword has not been seen since his death. (One of the last people to see it was Jacobi, who confirmed to me that Olivier still had it as a very old man.) Is Olivier really lying in his grave with no tongue between his teeth and Kean’s sword beside him? If he is, it feels like a little parable about the sharp, inward points of ambition. Here was a man who got everything and more from a life in the theatre. But he couldn’t bear to part with a prop sword.

The question of why Olivier never received the book becomes more pressing when you read the letters he received playing Hamlet from the Edwardian actor Henry Ainley, the book’s second owner. On opening night, January 5 1937, Ainley telegrammed Olivier in his dressing room: “THE READINESS IS ALL.” Later that night he wrote: “You, my sweet, are the Mecca . . . Pay no heed to the critics, they do not know. You are playing Hamlet; therefore you are a king [ . . . ] You rank, now among the great.”

Ainley’s hornily free-associating letters seem to imply a physical affair at times. “Larry darling, I have been tossing (now now) about at night thinking of you,” he writes in one of the letters, currently kept by the British Library.

“Well, you know what you did. I can’t walk [ . . . ] And the child has your eyes.” Yet it is Olivier’s fame that Ainley most obviously covets. “Soon you will be like [me],” he writes in another. “Your public, your following all gone, dear old boy! The harlequinade. We do not endure!” There is no mention in their correspondence of the red book. Whether Ainley had already given the book away, or felt compelled to hang on to it, or simply had forgotten it, remains a matter of speculation.

It’s not the only agonising gap in the archive. In 1963, an older Olivier cast Peter O’Toole in the production of Hamlet that would open the National Theatre. O’Toole had already played a wild, revelatory Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic in 1958, in which he famously climbed the proscenium arch mid-performance. It was an interpretation that harnessed the young actor’s modernity. “He’s a lean, lank, individualist Teddy Boy!” one reviewer enthused.

But in 1963, Olivier had other ideas. “It was very strange,” remembers Siân Phillips, O’Toole’s then wife, now aged 91. “Larry [Olivier] had talked him into this terrible costume. He looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a Peter Pan collar and clean, beautifully cut dyed blond hair.”

Phillips thought Olivier seemed to want to trim the edges off her husband. “Larry had this new kind of concept of a very tidy Hamlet, which was the opposite of what [O’Toole] did best. But he had such regard for Larry, who was flattering him enormously. He just did everything asked of him.” Phillips had put her own starry career on hold to let O’Toole have the spotlight. She did his filing and kept track of gifts he had been given, making sure people were thanked, which was why she found it strange that she’d never heard of the red book.

Together, we wondered if the unhappy production had made it a sore point for her husband. “The thought did cross my mind once or twice that Olivier might be trying to sabotage him,” she said. “But how could he want to do that on the opening night of the National Theatre?” On the other end of the phone, I thought of Kean’s sword.

Perhaps this is harsh. Perhaps we can understand the desire to have and hold on to a physical token of fame, strength, adulation, applause, youth — the things that slip away from even the greatest artists. All performers live in fear of unemployment and redundancy, and even the successful ones are loved, fiercely and temporarily, for being someone they’re not. “Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing,” wrote William Hazlitt, the English essayist.

“British theatre has traditionally privileged innovation,” the Shakespearean scholar Michael Dobson told me. In France, he explained, you could see Phèdre performed with the same gestures, the same intonation, for hundreds of years. “The British are always inventing new things, like gas lighting and ways of doing ghosts with mirrors. It’s never the old, boring Hamlet your parents used to like. It’s always got this young, original, absolutely real actor in it, instead of those stylised old geezers.”

In which case, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about great actors who fell from fashion. It was Burbage who first delivered Hamlet’s acting advice to the players: “O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Until the modern day, actors didn’t play big roles just once or twice in their careers, in a long run of performances. They performed them frequently. Even in Shakespeare’s time, actors became associated with certain parts in the minds of spectators. Burbage died in March 1619, and the funeral baked meats were hardly cold when he was replaced by another actor, Joseph Taylor.

An unreliable but enticing story has it that Burbage taught Taylor, and Taylor taught the next great Hamlet, Thomas Betterton. Betterton was the Hamlet of Restoration theatre, among the first to play opposite women. Confronting his father’s ghost, Betterton’s Hamlet could “turn his colour”, as though his face had drained of blood with fright. Betterton made his face “pale as his neck cloth”.

Betterton died in 1710, immortality assured. Within a few decades his reputation had been all but vaporised by the greatest actor of the century, David Garrick. Garrick was almost a religion among theatregoers. “That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival,” was the poet and critic Alexander Pope’s verdict. Garrick was both a shameless showman and pioneering realist. He played Hamlet in a mechanical fright wig that made his hair stand on end when activated.

Garrick was replaced by John Philip Kemble, a severe and statuesque Hamlet. In the early 19th century, Kemble was outmoded by Kean, whose ascendant star was quickly selling out theatres. “Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Kean that only a third and fourth row could be got,” wrote Jane Austen, struggling to get seats. Out with the old. Next came Samuel Phelps, the actor-manager who first made a point of performing the original texts of Shakespeare’s plays. He was toppled by Henry Irving, a drawn and gothic actor. Irving was supposedly the inspiration for Dracula; his theatre manager was Bram Stoker.

Enter the melancholic, effeminate figure of Forbes-Robertson, the first owner of our red book. His Hamlet, first performed in 1897 and still being revived into his sixties, was in some ways the last definitive stage performance in this unofficial, highly debatable but surprisingly enduring tradition. “Nothing half so charming,” George Bernard Shaw wrote of his performance, “has been seen by this generation.” Orson Welles described one recording of Forbes-Robertson as the most beautiful Shakespearean verse-speaking he ever heard. You can still listen to it on YouTube, uploaded from an ancient LP.

“The next reference to the actor’s art,” creaks the old voice above the hiss of imperfectly transcribed sound, “is Hamlet’s advice to the players, written, obviously, by an actor who has complete command of his calling.” In a voice ponderous with time but still capable of lightness and precision, he begins the passage in which Hamlet gives notes to a theatrical troupe. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”

Forbes-Robertson would have seen more clearly than many of his successors how rapidly the galaxy of theatrical ambition was expanding. He was the first great Hamlet to play the part on film, in a lumpy silent production in 1913. If that film looks stagey and stylised to modern eyes, then looking back at these nested revolutions in realism, it’s also obvious that old actors have always looked that way in the eyes of their successors. Naturalism is just the style each era brings with it.

Hamlet’s advice was itself part of this reach towards the endlessly receding goal of the real. To an Elizabethan audience, the travelling troupe with their heroic verse and stagey couplets would have seemed obviously to belong to a previous generation of players, one playwrights like Shakespeare, and plays such as Hamlet, were making redundant. Hamlet says to the players what the theatre is always saying: be young, be modern, be new.

You can’t ask too much of very famous actors. Basic professionalism demands that they don’t tell you anything too interesting. They live like criminals, travelling under pseudonyms and booking the front seat on aeroplanes. We abhor in their personal lives the basic human latitude we praise in their work. “I am myself indifferent honest yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” Hamlet says to Ophelia. “What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?”

I had hundreds of questions for Hiddleston, the 43-year-old star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and current holder of the red book. Unfortunately, Hiddleston is not an easy man to reach. As the man who plays Loki in the Marvel series (global gross about $30bn), he has been watched at his craft by an unimaginable number of human eyes. He does his work in green-screen and widescreen settings that would also have been unimaginable to 90 per cent of the people named in this article. Where Burbage played Hamlet without an interval, Hiddleston’s fame is a postmodern mosaic, put together in franchise films with an average shot length of two seconds. Given that he commands multimillion-dollar fees for these acts of cinematic pointillism, you may imagine his time is precious. I was able to reach him by phone for 15 minutes during press week for Loki season 2’s Emmy campaign. “Good morning,” he said, dialling in from Los Angeles. “I mean, sorry, good evening.”

Hiddleston played Hamlet in a fundraiser production for Rada directed by Branagh in 2017. He told me how he had left drama school and joined Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl theatre company, standing out as Cassio in a somewhat legendary modern Othello, in which Ewan McGregor played Iago opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead. Branagh saw the production and persuaded Marvel studios to let him cast this relative unknown in Thor, which then grossed almost half a billion dollars. Afterwards, they sat down for lunch and Branagh suggested Hamlet. “And I said, ‘I would absolutely love to do it with you. What an honour.’”

The production played for three weeks in Rada’s tiny theatre, with tickets that were won by lottery. Among the critics, Michael Billington, Britain’s most decorated theatre writer, was one of the few to have got a seat. “If I had to pick out Hiddleston’s key quality, it would be his ability to combine a sweet sadness with an incandescent fury,” Billington wrote in his review. On Saturdays, Hiddleston remembered, there were gala performances for graduates and theatrical somebodies. “I think at the first one almost everybody with the last name ‘Attenborough’ in the UK was in attendance.”

On one of these evenings, a glass was clinked with a spoon. Jacobi began to speak, explaining something about a book that had passed from actor to actor. “And then Ken was at the microphone, explaining that the responsibility of the keeper of the book is that they pass it on to the next generation. And suddenly Ken said, ‘I’d like to present it to Tom.’”

We were 10 minutes into our 15. I looked at my list of questions — on frontispieces, annotations, signatures, printing quirks — about the red book. Hiddleston was in LA. The book was in London. He was not contractually obliged to talk to me, as he was to the other journalists who were waiting on iPhones all over the world. All that was sustaining this conversation was the actor’s private enthusiasm for the kind of acting he is rarely, if ever, able to do anymore.

Hiddleston began to talk at length. He said the gift of playing the part was to be presented with the most beautiful, profound poetry written in English about the question of being alive, of death, of the possibility of spiritual life after death.

An email arrived saying our time was up. “It has the effect of making me feel more alive,” Hiddleston was saying. “Learning and internalising those great soliloquies, and having to perform them, there is no escaping those big questions of what it means to be alive,” he went on, the minutes ticking by. “And actually I find it very reassuring to ask those questions. I find it repetitively reassuring to say those words. Because it actually makes your life mean something.”

#tom hiddleston #kenneth branagh #Derek Jacobi #hamlet #the red book

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fabbyf1 · 16 hours

Note

Hi!

I’m not sure of this is how to go about this correctly.

I’m not sure what your position is on others drawing inspiration/directly from your incredible fan fiction writing but, on Ao3 there is a fic called ❤️lestappen- One shorts💙 by lestapeeen. The most recent chapter (14) is very similar to the monza chapter of long live(twwct) specifically the piggy back and proposal promise. some of the dialogue is exactly the same.

I figured you should know. If it’s a cool with you or if you knew already, sorry to be a bother.

DISCLAIMER: This post, by no means, is asking for ANYBODY to send this author mentioned (and tagged) below hate. On anon or main. I have been pretty damn clear with my feelings on the matter below. They know what they've done, and I won't stand for it. Nobody needs to make this worse by sending them death threats. With that out of the way, let's deep dive, shall we?

YOU KNOW WHAT?

First off, god bless you, bestie. God BLESS you. I want to smooch you on your incredibly wonderful forehead. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I cannot be everywhere at once and cannot possibly read every fanfic posted to AO3, but it's not fucking cool for people to straight-up plagiarize my shit.

Secondly, I'd like to ask that if ANY of my followers come across something that looks very suspiciously similar to my fics, please let me know. You can for sure send it on anon, or send me a dm.

Now, with that being said, I clicked on this fucking fic not knowing what to think. I went into it with a pretty open mind, knowing that there are quite a few authors currently posting fics that are verrrrrrrrrrry similar to my writing style. I've gotten pretty close to calling a few of these authors out but haven't for a few reasons.

Fanfics based on the same ship, in the same canon setting, are always going to be... let's use the word "similar" here. The plot can only change so much when you're following canon events, you know? I don’t write AUs, so I’m only going off canon-inspired fics. My fics generally follow along with canon timelines and therefore, other author’s fics that follow the same timeline are going to be... similar. I get that and accept that.

Characterizations are bound to be... well, fuck it, let's use that word "similar" again. I'm gonna be pretty forgiving when someone's Max is damn near the same as my Max because one: I'm a good and forgiving person, and two: I think my characters (while totally fucking fictional) are very life-like to the real person. So, with that in mind, when I read a fic with characterizations similar to mine... I will usually give somebody grace... and accept that maybe, just possibly, they see Max Verstappen (the person) the same way I do (fictionally) and it’s a big old coincidence that our fics read so similar. You know? Does that make sense?

But with all that being said, I’m not a fucking idiot.

And honestly? I give more grace than I should on this goddamn website. (lmfao, respectfully.) This is sadly not the first time that somebody has very much written in my likeness, and I know it won't be the last. But this is definitely the boldest version of plagiarism I've seen. I haven’t clicked on any chapter except for 14, and I heavily skimmed the first part, but let’s take a little deep dive into some of the highlights. Because I will show the receipts, bestie.

from their story:

from long live:

..... right, let's move on.

from their story:

from long live:

okay................. sure

from their story:

from long live:

If you're going to plagiarize my shit... you could at least put it in a different font, so to speak. "Hey, can I copy your homework?” “Sure, but change it up a bit.”

Girlie pop, you stopped even trying to change it the fuck up.

Let me be clear: I do not authorize anybody to translate, re-post or distribute my work without my written consent. This is in a disclaimer (that I will post below) in every single one of my fics. Taking MY dialogue is NOT okay.

Direct quote from the beginning note of Long Live: DISCLAIMER #4: This is 100% fictional, and I do not own any person, team, or sponsor referenced in this story. I mean no offense to any person(s) mentioned and characterized in this story. I am not affiliated with any part of Formula 1 or its subsections. Please do not translate, re-post, or distribute my work without my written consent. I will cry.

To sum up, writing is not easy, and it takes time and effort. Time away from my friends, my girlfriend, my family. Time away from my job and my other hobbies. Long Live is 76 thousand words and took me countless hours to write.

To have somebody so blatantly and disrespectfully post MY SHIT as their own and not even try to give me credit? To not write a note that said, “Heyyyyy go read long live, which I [clearly] really enjoyed!” or even a “Some of this dialogue was inspired by @fabbyf1” or even just a “lmfao some of this i didn’t write but the rest i did” really pisses me off.

Why did it ever have to come to this?

I am SO disappointed right now.

Happy fucking Friday, I guess.

For full transparency, here is the link to their fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55255699 and here is the link to their tumblr: @l-estappen

Here is the link to MY fic, which was posted on April 2nd, 2023, and written in Google Docs with revision history about a month before that. I have receipts out the fucking ass, my dear. https://archiveofourown.org/works/46190509/chapters/116284915

Be well.

#... anyway #i expect this story to be EDITED TO REMOVE MY DIALOGUE or completely taken down.#thanks for listening.

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class1akids · 1 day

Note

Ok so I gave up on this manga long back before the war arc as the story inconsistencies were disappointing me but I kept up with the leaks just to see if it’d go interesting or if HK would fix the plotholes. After reading yesterday’s leaks I am super super pissed and disappointed. As a big bakugou fan, the boy got emotional development but it was made all about deku. He was given a total pointless death that didn’t achieve anything? Why do it? He didn’t save anyone except all might. No feelings shown towards anyone except deku n all might. My expectation was both him n deku trying to save shigaraki but the latter was killed in the most random manner. At first I thought maybe the leakers left something out but no, one punch and he is gone. No is mourning him, no regrets from Deku, he didn’t even speak with the villain. Ever since Deku unlocked Blackwhip, HK stopped showing his emotions, he lost his heart and it’s a pity all BKDK fans think that the manga achieved everything they asked for(PS: No it didn’t, it totally ruined your favourite characters and made them fodder feed, removed all the substance that made them lovable)

Iida wasn’t given much and sidelined (hello stain did you interact with this kid??), Shouto’s storyline went well but at least show him helping in the final fight rather than a single panel and uraraka’s cutest smile thing? Surely he could have written it so much better? Tokoyami, Kaminari, Mina, Kirishima and poor Momo, every kid was shown with lacklustre writing. Given a moment to shine and then faded to background.

And the way HK handled league of villains.. oh man, poor kurogiri, poor tenko, he managed to turn a complex characters into sacrifice.

This was a really sad ending and out of all the directions to go I have no clue why he chose to write this way. He clearly was trying to move the story in a good direction before so I had some hope but the execution of it butchered everything.

Yeah, I agree. I think Hori didn't do Deku or Bakugou justice, and generally what could have been a satisfying celebration of the great bonds of Class A, as well as the LoV, he barely allowed any meaningful interactions.

It's still bonkers to me that he made All Might fight AFO in an asspull mecha suit with the kids' quirks, while Class A got a single chapter of a combo and for many of the kids that's like their ONLY highlight.

As for the LoV , Tomura dying without even knowing if his friends are alive or being able to do anything for said friends right after he said he wanted to be the hero of the villains? That was just so weird.

I'm really not sure what happened in 424 - it felt like a narrative whiplash that Deku killed Tomura and Bakugou and Deku (presumably) killed Kurogiri all of a sudden. And not in a good twist way, but more like a "let's get this over with" way.

I think I tend to agree with hamliet who wrote a post about how Hori's greatest weakness is trying to please everyone and also the suspected editorial / WSJ meddling. I don't know what to think.

I mean you are correct to say that it's not the first time Hori dropped the ball - to me the decline starts way back at the Overhaul arc. But he still had good spots and there was a set up. All he had to do was put the roof on top of the bricks he built.

#c1a asks #bnha critical

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twstfanblog · 4 hours

Text

*~Toddler Chronicles-3rd Years Starter~*

A/N: I've been wanting to write this series for MONTHS. but if Im gonna do this, I'm gonna do it in ORDER no matter how much I wanna do certain ones more than others. I hope you guys enjoy the starter for this series! It's gonna be LONG. Word Count: 5K Pairings: Alluded to Vil/Rook Warnings: Children, Me trying to type out a country accent lord help me...

“I don't think this is a good idea…”

A cloaked group of Night Raven students stood around a cauldron, the only light in the room coming from the bubbling liquid and the moonlight shining through the windows. They all wore masks to hide their identities from the nosey paintings lining the walls.

One of the figures scoffed, their accented voice coming out mockingly as they continued to stir the potion and whispered, “Oh, don't get cold feet now. This whole thing was your idea anyway…”

“I said we should think something up to knock those guys down a peg! Not brew a-”

“Shhhhhh.” Another figure quickly silenced him, turning to look at one of the eavesdropping portraits before addressing the group with a gruff whisper, “We agreed on not saying anything too damning while doing this! Those portraits would sell us out the second anyone asked them if they saw anything…Let’s just finish the damn potion so we can get on with this plan…”

The accented figure nods, reaching over and grabbing a jar to pour the contents into the cauldron.

Another figure reads the jar, tilting their head, “Wait… ‘Powdered Moon Petals’? Didn't the recipe call for ‘Powdered Moon Crystals’? Why are we deviating?”

“Are you insane?” The figure pauses in his stirring to flick at the other in annoyance, “Crewel keeps stuff like that under such heavy lock and key he'd have us expelled for even looking at the cabinet out of class hours. Moon petals are weaker but still have the same effect as moon crystals…” The figure looks at the potion, then adds another generous pour from the jar, “We just need to mix in a bit more than written…”

As the figure stops pouring, the potion gives a flash of light, slipping into an eerily calm shade of blue before fully turning translucent. The group all looked into the cauldron before sharing a smile.

“Now we just need to find a way to slip it to them.”

The nervous figure hummed, bringing his hand to his mouth in thought, “I think…I know the perfect way to do it…”

The sound of a gavel hitting a desk echoed in the semi-empty classroom, Vil sitting at the grand desk in front, “I call this meeting of ‘Juniors Against Freshmen’ to order.”

Cater calls out from his seat, smiling playfully as he raises his hand, “Vil~. I still think we should call ourselves ‘Judicious Juniors’-”

“We aren’t calling ourselves that.”

“Oh, come on.” Cater pouts, “The firsties get their cute little group of Freshest Firsties. We should have a cool group name, too.”

Trey chuckled a bit, raising an eyebrow, “You know this is a support group and not a club right?”

Rook hummed, looking to the side at the small gathering of party platters and large juice dispenser on a lone row of desks, “Are you sure, mon Chevalier des Roses? Though, maybe you are correct and this is more of a party between scorned mentors…”

Idia scoffed, tapping at his phone and tilting it slightly to allow Lilia to watch his game, “I'm not sitting in here for another four hours complaining about our freshmen without any kind of rations. Being around you guys is already like running a dungeon without healing items…”

Lilia perks up, giggling as Idia fails to dodge an attack, “So stimulating and fun?”

Leona sighs, lazily picking at his plate of various slices of meat from the platters, “More like aggravating and torturous…”

Vil bangs the gavel again, rolling his eyes, “Back on subject, please. Idia, you requested to be the first to speak tonight; what was your grievance?”

Sighing, Idia passed his phone to Lilia to continue his dungeon run, “Who's representing Yuu this meeting?” Seeing Malleus and Rook raise their hands, he nearly sat back down, “Oh, of course…Ah! Nope, I'm doing it. I move to add another crime to Yuu's file.”

“Noted. Please state the crime.”

“I want to add on the crime of Yuu teaching my brother the phrasing of ‘Deez Nuts’. I recommend we place another life sentence.”

Malleus frowns, ignoring Lilia's snort beside him and raising his hand, “I object! We have no evidence that my beloved is the one to teach your brother such a phrase.”

Vil raised an eyebrow, leaning his jaw against the back of his hand, “Who else would teach Ortho?”

Gesturing to his side, Malleus deadpans, “Lilia for one.”

Lilia fumbled Idia’s phone as he stammered, managing to just barely flip the device into a still-standing Idia’s hands, “Slander! I regret to inform this court that I do not speak to the Shroud youngling one-on-one often. Our cuteness would simply be too much.” He turns to Malleus, nose wrinkled as he raises an eyebrow in question, “Do you even know what ‘Deez Nuts’ means Malleus?”

“...” Malleus nearly copies Lilia's expression, turning his nose up at the older fae and looking away from him, “I do not. But it sounds eerily similar to something you would say.”

Lilia pouts toward Vil, crossing his arms, “I did no such thing…” He hums, casting a side eye to Cater across the room and raising a hand to tap against his lips, “Ace on the other hand…”

Cater perks up from his texting, slamming a fist onto the desk and yelling over to Lilia, “Why do you always bring up Ace’s crimes when I'm defending him!? Why not when Trey’s his third-year parent!?”

Trey hummed, sitting calm and relaxed knowing he'd have a smooth meeting acting as Deuce’s defendant, “He would though…”

“Trey, Ace is our baby. We have to protect his name!”

“This is your weekend; sorry.”

Cater groaned, rolling his eyes before standing up and pointing to Leona on the other side of Trey, “What about Jack, huh!?”

Leona stopped picking at his fangs with a claw, sucking on his teeth before he raised an eyebrow in question to Cater, “What about Jack?”

Vil spoke up, resting his chin on his elegantly folded hands, “Yes. Do tell, Cater. What about Jack?”

“...” Cater quickly turned back to Lilia, pointing to him instead of trying to place the blame on Jack, “What about Sebek!?”

Lilia and Malleus both gasped, Lilia placing a hand over his mouth and Malleus's fanned over his chest while the older fae said, “Sebek would never.”

“W-well!” Cater sputtered, frustrated at the turn of events before rounding on Vil, “What about Epel!?”

Vil instantly opened his mouth, a finger held up to properly chastise Cater but he sat frozen. He closed his mouth, a pinched expression on his face as he put his finger down and looked to the side. After a moment, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “He…wouldn't…he…knows better…”

Rook cooed from his seat, raising an eyebrow, “Oh…mon roi. Did that hurt to say?”

“Moving on.”

Idia stammered, raising his hands, “I would like a verdict on my case, please!? Ortho is aggressively good at setting me up, I'm getting really sick of it!”

Vil rolled his eyes and gestured to Rook, “We will choose after a small break. Rook, please bring me something from the vegetable platter and a drink.”

“Oui!”

Though mildly by force, the group of juniors decided to take a break. While only a few of them grabbed food, they all grabbed a cup of juice. Nearly in sync, they all take a drink.

…

Leona looked into his cup, squinting his eyes in offense at the liquid, “Who was in charge of the punch?”

Malleus pouted, looking into his own cup in confusion, “I was…”

Rolling his eyes, Leona slid his cup away from him, “Oh, that fucking explains it.”

Trey was quick, grabbing Leona's cup before it spilled onto the classroom floor. Standing up he took both his and Leona's cups to the trash, “Don't start a fight. I'm sure Malleus tried very hard…”

The fae in question turned his sour expression toward Lilia. When Lilia said nothing, merely continuing to drink his juice with a smile, Malleus breathed out a small fireball at Lilia's face.

“Ack! My bangs!” Lilia finally pouted at Malleus, expression confused, “Why are you fussing? The juice tastes fine!”

Cater passes his own cup to Rook as the blonde also collects Vil's unfinished drink, “Lilia, it has the aftertaste of dishwater…”

“...” Lilia took another sip of the juice, smacking his lips as he fully concentrated on the flavor, “...Well, that's not dishwater, I can say that with utmost certainty.” he looked into his half-empty cup, “What is that…?”

Leona coughed slightly, still trying to dislodge the taste from his mouth, “The taste of Draconia fucking up…”

“I will have you know I collaborated with the Asim child on what would be a delightful mix for our meeting.”

“Oh, so we need to sentence Kalim to death alongside you then?”

Idia groaned, digging through his pockets for an emergency piece of hard candy, “Maybe it was…like a ‘phantom flavor’, or something?” He cheers under his breath, quickly unwrapping the candy and shoving it into his mouth.

Vil finishes wiping his tongue on a napkin, “Explain.”

“Oh Seven, um? Yuu told Ortho about it and he's been researching it for a while. It’s the idea that you can load something up with so many flavors you just…make a new flavor that you can't place…not sure how concrete it is, but that's my best guess…”

Malleus hums, glaring into his cup before letting Rook take it to the trash also, “Asim did bring a large variety of syrups and sprites…”

Cater hummed, “Yeah…I love Kalim but I'm not so sure about putting him in charge of drinks…Jamil handles the food for their parties for a reason…”

Trey smiled, giving Malleus a thumbs up, “But other than the aftertaste, it was really enjoyable, Malleus.”

“I can see your attempts to pacify me, Clover. I shall accept your pity only this once.”

“Okay?”

Vil sighs, banging his gavel on the desk, “Moving on-”

“Um!?” Idia waved a hand around, his hair barely flickering red, “The verdict of my issue, please!?”

“Oh. Right. We sentence Ace to death-”

Cater sputters, looking around the room before tilting his head at Vil, “AGAIN!?”

The meeting continued as normal, though no one could get the phantom taste of the punch free from their mouths, the third years parted ways at the end of the night.

Epel groaned, stomping down the halls of Pomefiore in the early morning. Vil had yet to make an appearance in the dining hall to the rest of the dorm. The house warden made it a habit to always give a morning announcement on the weekend like clockwork, only for neither Vil nor Rook to show up at the normal time.

If he had the choice, Epel wouldn't have even bothered seeing where they were, opting instead to just get his weekend started and hang out with his friends. Sadly, the other third-years had been concerned enough to basically bully him into checking up on their dorm head and vice. ‘You're their favorite, after all…’

Clicking his tongue, Epel ran a hand through his hair in frustration, “Even if ah was their favorite, ah don’ wanna see whatever they're doin’ together...”

He couldn’t fight the unease that welled inside him as he came up to Vil's door, seeing it cracked open but still dark inside. Vil never left his door cracked to sleep…Epel quickly jogged to the room, swinging open the door only to growl in anger at the scene.

The room was dark because the curtains were still drawn and Vil's bed wasn't made, the covers thrown off and half dragged onto the floor as though Vil had crawled out of them. What was pissing him off the most though was the fact Vil's silk pajama pants were also laying on the floor.

He slammed the door closed, making a beeline for Rook's room thinking of nowhere else for them to be, “Ah swear ta the SEVEN. If those two are late because they rolled too hard in the hay-AY!

Epel banged his fist against Rook's closed door, hearing nothing but silence he started to pound both fists against the door and yell. Hopefully, they had woken up and at least tried to put clothing on, “You two shits better be DRESSED or Ah’m gonna-...”

He had swung the door open, expecting to find a scene of a flustered Vil trying to put himself together and an all too proud Rook sitting in the bed. Instead, he looked at the image of two toddlers on Rook's bed. A bold gold blonde with a messy haircut and green eyes stood on the bedspread, a hand reaching out to the bow and arrow placed on a wall display. Behind him was a second blonde child, large purple eyes peeking past the second child in fear. The longer he looked the more familiar the children appeared.

Epel closed the door, staring into the open air of the hall as he tried to let his brain catch back up. That…that couldn't be…

Taking a deep breath, Epel calmed himself before opening the door again, “Um-AH!” He slams the door back closed, backing away just in time as an arrowhead pierces just slightly through the door.

The look was brief, but the children were clearly Rook and Vil. The fact Rook had quickly gathered a bow in the few seconds Epel had closed the door only cemented the fact. His juniors…were toddlers…why were they toddlers? What was he supposed to do with two potentially homicidal toddlers!?

He grabbed his phone from his pocket, gently knocking on the door and calling out softly, “Ah…Ah'm sorry if ah scared y'all. Ah'm gonna go get ya some grub and clothes that'll fit, okay?”

After a beat of silence, a tiny voice spoke, “I don't want to eat bugs…”

“...” Epel pinched the bridge of his nose. That…had to be Vil, “Grub is food. Ah'm gettin’ ya food…”

“...Oh. Okay. I want fruit and toast, please, thank you…Rook says he wants eggs and bell peppers.”

“Shakshuka!”

“Got it! You two youngings just hang tight, okay?” What the fuck was a Shakshuka?

He didn't have time to worry, dialing Ace’s number and running back to the Pomefiore dining hall to alert his still-grown juniors. He needed all the help he could get.

Epel spoke over the phone, “Ah need ya to get Trey and come to Pomefiore. ASAP.”

Biting into his poptart, Ace responded with a full mouth as he leisurely walked through the halls of Heartlabyul, “For why?”

“Can ya please just not be a fucking bastard fur 5 seconds-”

“Maybe, what's wrong? It's like 8am?”

“...” Epel sighed, the visual of him pinching the bridge of his nose clear in Ace’s mind, “...They're…They're toddlers-”

“I'm sorry. Who’s, what?”

Ace listened to Epel's rant over the phone, claiming both Vil and Rook had somehow turned into toddlers. They didn't seem to have any recollection of who anyone was or how they got into NRC, leaving the dorm in a weakened, panicked state. Through the chaos, missing both their dorm head and vice, various students stepped forward claiming they were the proper ones to take over until this curse was dealt with.

In the moments of strife, Epel had been given the title of babysitter. ‘Since he was the Favorite’.

“How the fuck do you…become a toddler?”

“Ah. Don't. KNOW. Just get Clover over hur to HELP. The third-years are fighting over who gets to wear Vil's crown while he's like this, and everyone else is freaking out like we're about to be under siege any second now. Ah just need an actual component Junior who isn't trying to usurp Vil while he's a defenseless fucking infant right now…”

Ace muttered under his breath but agreed, changing course to go up the stairs to the third-year’s room. Over the line he could hear Epel directing the other Pomefiore students what Vil and Rook had asked for breakfast and if anyone had clothing that could fit children or how to make them fit. Knocking against Trey’s door, Ace realized that he hadn't heard from the third-year yet today either. Normally, Trey would have been up already and making some basic breakfast pastry for the dorm to nibble on until that day's scheduled tea time.

“Trey? You in there man? Something happened in Pomefiore and Epel needs you there like, now…” his brows furrowed at not receiving an answer after another knock, turning the knob to open the door, “Trey? Yo, Trey-...”

In the full-sized canopy bed was Trey, only much smaller and seemingly struggling to place his now too-large glasses on his face. Tiny hands trapped in the sleeves of his button-up sleep shirt.

“...” Ace closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before pulling the phone from his ear and speaking to the toddler in the bed, “Give me a second buddy, I'll come back and help you in a hot minute.”

Large topaz eyes blinked in surprise, Trey held his frames over an eye and closed the other tightly to see Ace clearly, “Who are you?”

“Be back in a minute.” Ace closed the door, putting the phone back to his ear, “ Hey, Epel? Um…we also got a fucking situation over here.”

“What!?”

Ace saw Deuce walking up the stairs, the spade soldier barely getting a greeting out before Ace pointed over his shoulder to the other third-year rooms, “Go check on, Cater. I'm…I got a bad feeling.”

“A bad feeling about what-”

“Just go check, I gotta talk to Riddle!” Ace rushed past Deuce, giving the other first-year no time to question or properly reject his command.

Deuce sighed but decided to wait on taking his shower after checking on his senpai. Maybe he should have followed Jack's example and stayed at Ramshackle after their morning run…

Ace really didn't mean to slam the door open, but hearing it bash against the side table against the wall only made him pause briefly before addressing Riddle, “Hey, house warden, something happened…”

Riddle didn't look up from his paperwork, sighing and clicking his pen back into an active magic state, poised to fire his collaring spell at Ace, “Someone had better be gravely injured if you're slamming my office door open without even knocking…”

“...” Ace looked to the side, quietly contemplating before looking back to Riddle, “Define injured.”

“Ace-” a jaunty tune started to play from Riddle's phone, making the second-year sigh and hold up a finger, “One moment, Deuce is calling me.”

Ace watches as Riddle answers his phone, both of them jumping in surprise hearing the piercing cries of a child through the receiver. Epel spoke frantically, asking what was going on as Ace shushed him over the phone.

Riddle quickly puts the phone on speaker, calling out in concern, “Deuce!? What's happening, is that a child in the background!?”

“Rosehearts-senpai, help! Cater’s, like, a little kid!?”

The crying voice on the other side calls out, “Go away! You weird guy! I don't know you!”

“Is Ace there!? I need help, he's trying to run out of the room and he kicks surprisingly hard!”

“You SMELL!”

Ace pointed at the phone, catching Riddle's bewildered expression, “Yeah, that…that's what happened to Trey…”

“...”

“So, Vil Schoenheit, Rook Hunt, Trey Clover, and Cater Diamond have all turned into young children and retain no memory from their appropriate ages?”

“None, seemingly. We've managed to get Cater to calm down by giving him his phone though. I also casted a resize charm on Trey’s glasses but I would still appreciate if Idia could produce a proper pair after a brief eye exam.”

Ortho nods at Riddle's report, floating down the halls of Ignihyde to reach his brother's room. The house warden had called him since Idia wasn't picking up his phone, so he had to contact the next best person. Idia was possibly still asleep since he gamed much later than normal last night.

“Do you have any information on the Pomefiore third-years?”

“Epel has stated they're both fairly calm after the initial surprise. As far as I know, they’re being fed and clothing is being gathered.”

Ortho reaches his brother's door, “That's good. I will contact our dorm advisor to let him know of the current situation. You should focus on attending to your afflicted dorm members while Nii-san and I work with the teachers to reverse this.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Ortho. I will keep you posted- Ace put Trey down! You're upsetting him! I must go, keep me informed, please.”

“Will do, Riddle Rosehearts! Farewell for now!” Ortho taps his ear, ending the call. Turning to the door he knocks, “Nii-san! It’s me, please open the door!” hearing no reply, Ortho pressed in his override code to open the door himself and turned the lights on in the process, “Nii-San, we need to-...”

His brother’s room was messy as it always was. But laying on the bed, swimming in his now truly oversized hoodie, was a very small version of his brother sleeping. He was starfished on the duvet, one hand managing to escape the large amount of fabric to suck on his thumb contently.

“...Idia?”

The child whimpered, brows furrowing before he rolled over and snuggled deeper into his pillow, “Five more minutes, mama…”

“...” Ortho turned the light back off, “Five more minutes…” he barely registered the sleepy ‘thank you’ before he was closing the door back, pressing in another code to lock it from all access other than his own. He tapped his ear, redialing Riddle. Once the house warden answered, Ortho spoke, “Something happened…”

Yuu and Jack stood in the Ramshackle kitchen, both leaning over the island and looking at each other in silence.

Stirring their cup of now lukewarm latte, Yuu pondered for a moment before pointing at Jack with a raised brow, “Hollandaise?”

Jack shrugged, shaking his head in disbelief, “Of course I’ve had hollandaise. Everyone’s had hollandaise!”

“I have never had fucking hollandaise; that shit was so far out of my tax bracket.”

“Hollandaise is just a fancy word for mayo.”

Yuu snorted, “I’ve been around Trey and Vil way too much to know for a fucking fact, hollandaise and mayo are different.”

Rolling his eyes, Jack huffed and took a sip of his own cup of coffee. He waves at Yuu, “Give me another one…”

“...” Yuu hums, tracing the edge of their cup before pointing at Jack again, “Charcucci?”

“...” Jack sneered, eyes glaring at Yuu’s all too pleased smile, “Charcuterie?”

“You aren’t beating my allegations on you being a snobby rich kid, Jack.”

“Actually knowing what things are called doesn’t make me a snobby rich kid.”

Yuu sips their latte, looking to the side and mumbles into the cup, “No, but skiing in the Shaft Alps every winter does…”

“Shut-” Jack’s ears flick as his phone starts to buzz. He quickly pulls it out, seeing who was calling before answering the phone on speaker, “Ortho?”

Yuu perks up, smiling and calling out, “Morning Ortho!”

“Good morning Prefect Yuu! And good morning to you, Jack Howl. I have an urgent request for you.”

Jack’s expression turns concerned, “What is it?”

“I need you to contact Ruggie Bucchi. I’m still unable to figure out how it happened, but select members of the junior class have been turned into what I estimate to be four-year-olds.”

“...” Jack blinked, looking to Yuu to make sure they heard the same thing as he did, “Why…do you need Ruggie-Senpai for that?”

“Well…I actually need to reach Leona Kingscholar, but his phone seems to be out of service…”

Yuu hums, looking around the kitchen for their own phone to make a few calls, “Yeah he does that when he sleeps, so his phone doesn't even think about ringing.”

“So I tried to call Ruggie Bucchi, but his phone isn't allowing my calls either!”

“Yeah, Ruggie blocked most of our numbers. He says ‘We know what we did’...” Yuu pulls a face at their phone, seeing their call to Lilia had gone to voicemail.

Jack sighed, “I'll call Ruggie-Senpai. Is…everyone okay? Who was turned?”

Ortho sighed from his side of the line, a beeping starting to sound in the background, “My brother for one, Trey Clover, Cater Diamond, Rook Hunt, Vil Schoenheit-”

“Vil!?”

Yuu cooed, sending one-word texts one after the other to Lilia, hoping the constant vibrating would alert the fae his phone demanded his attention, “Aw~. We should tell him his dad sold him to the school.”

“Fucking why- Ortho, I'll call Ruggie-Senpai and keep you posted.”

The beeping in the background suddenly grew to a blaring alert, though Ortho's voice remained chipper, “Thank you, Jack Howl! I must go now. I believe my brother has awakened and is attempting to hack the system in an effort to leave his room. Farewell for now!”

Once the line cut, Jack sighed and started to dial Ruggie. Noticing Yuu also on their phone he raised an eyebrow, “Who are you calling?”

Yuu was growing increasingly frustrated, Lilia wasn't answering his phone and their chain of texts clearly wasn't getting his attention. They'd try to call Malleus, but the horned fae barely remembered owning a phone, much less actually charging it properly; so it was more than likely dead in his side table drawer again.

“I'm trying to get in touch with Lilia since when Leona inevitably says ‘Fuck them kids’ we can get Malleus to help instead.”

“...Fair plan.” The phone finally stops ringing, Ruggie’s annoyed voice coming through the speaker, “Ruggie-Senpai! There's a strange occurrence happening among the third-years. Some of them have been turned into 4-year-olds and Ortho is asking for Leona's help.”

“...” Ruggie starts laughing, hiccuped cackling and choked snorts before he speaks, “Damn! You gotta be desperate if you guys are asking Leona to help with a bunch of kids. Who got turned?”

Jack sighs but feels mildly better hearing Ruggie moving on the other side of the line, “As far as I know Idia-Senpai, Trey-Senpai, Cater-Senpai, Rook-Senpai, and Vil-Senpai…That's all Ortho said.”

Yuu and Jack wait in silence, Ruggie going quiet over the line but starts muttering under his breath. Neither of them heard much past Ruggie repeating the names, double checking the date and noting how 'They had a meeting last night'. The two first years look at each other before Jack calls out, “Ruggie-Senpai? Is everything okay?”

The two freshmen wait with bated breath, listening to Ruggie suddenly swear and the sound of him running. A door is slammed open and Ruggie swears again, only louder, “Ruggie-Senpai!?”

“He's not FUCKING HERE! FUCK-”

The call cuts out, leaving Yuu and Jack in silence past the dial tone.

Yuu perks up, someone finally picking up their call, “Sebek? Yeah, hey, shut up. Yes, I did change my contact name on your phone to Malleus, that's not the important part right now. I need you…to check up on Lilia and Malleus; I think something…happened to them…”

Silver and Sebek walked briskly down the hall toward Malleus’s room. Lilia's had been empty, yet full of uncharacteristic traits. His computer seemed to have been on all night, the death screen of his game displayed over the monitor. The bed was empty, so he hadn't fallen asleep suddenly either. Sebek had suggested that Lilia went to check on Malleus in the night, falling asleep in his room instead.

Silver hummed, “Still, he didn't even pause his game…I'm just concerned…”

Scoffing, Sebek rolled his eyes, “There is nothing to worry yourself over! Lilia-Sama and Waka-Sama are the strongest mages on campus; there's nothing that could waver their-”

The sound of a piercing scream echoed in the hall, the voice painfully young and terrified as it trailed off into sobs.

The two guards sprinted, slamming the door open and blanking only for a moment at the scene before them.

Halfway up one of the banisters of the canopy bed was a horned child, a chubby black-scaled tail barely poking out from the bottom of a far too large sleep shirt. He cried and struggled to pull himself higher from the black mass of a hissing and jumping creature below him.

Their brief moment of hesitation faded and Sebek sprung forward to sweep who he could only conclude to be a de-aged Malleus away from the danger of the unknown beast. Silver quickly drew his wand in its sword form, trying to cast a stunning spell on the now skittering mass.

Sebek manages to pull the crying child into his arms, standing on the bed and looking him over, “Waka-Sama! Have you been harmed!?”

Malleus wailed, rubbing his eyes in an effort to clear his tears, “Baul! I woke up and this monster was here! I want grandmother!”

Oh, that was…Sebek wasn't sure if he was prepared for this. He looked over to Silver, hoping his sophomore had some insight into how to calm their liege.

Instead, he got to watch the second-year bob and weave around the bedroom, caught in a dance with the unknown creature as it continued to dodge his spells and new efforts to simply grab it. Luckily, the beast made a break for the window. Unable to properly launch itself out due to its size, it struggled on the ledge long enough for Silver to grab it by its small pale legs.

Silver held the still hissing creature upside down by the legs, the long hair falling away to reveal a hissing naked child with bright red eyes and tiny fangs.

“...” Sebek looked away, covering a sniffling Malleus's eyes, “Is that-”

“Oh lord, this is my father.” Silver tried to gently place the seemingly feral child on the ottoman, only to have Lilia grip onto his wrist and pull himself up to bite into Silver's arm, “Ow? OW, OW!”

Sebek watched in mild horror as Lilia's child form started to bite at any exposed skin on Silver, tiny fang marks left behind to slowly bleed as the sophomore struggled to restrain the child.

He feels a tug at his collar, looking in his arms at the sniffling fae princeling.

Malleus looked around the room with a cautious eye, seeming to realize this was not his bedroom in the castle, “Baul…where are we? Where's Lilia?”

“...” Sebek quickly pulled his phone out, heartbreakingly ignoring his liege’s tearful questions and redialing Yuu.

“Yo, Sebek, you called back quick. Can Malleus and Lilia help-”

“SOMETHING HAPPENED!”

#twisted wonderland #twst #disney twst #twst wonderland #yuu oc #Toddler Chronicle #twst heartslabyul #twst savanaclaw #twst pomefiore #twst ignihyde #twst diasomnia #twst third years

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