#felix and oliver both wound up seeing the worst parts of each other

[spacecasehobbit]

Oliver's last conversations with each of Farleigh, Felix, and Venetia are so consistently fascinating to me. Each of Farleigh and Venetia think that they are calling Oliver out, forcing him to face the harsh truths of his own insignificance, while Oliver stands passively by and lets them reveal their own hypocrisy before revealing the true fragility of their positions, the power that he has over their lives.

Farleigh towers over Oliver, belittling him against the backdrop of this party that is supposedly for Oliver and is full of people whose regard for Oliver spans from indifference to outright hostility. Yet while he thinks that he's giving Oliver his victory speech, gloating over the fact that it is Farleigh, not Oliver, who will stay at Saltburn after this summer, he's also admitting to the tenuous nature of his own position there. "I was invited," he tells Oliver, when Oliver questions his presence at the party, along with, "I'll always come back," and, "This is my house."

The contradiction that Farleigh doesn't even realize he's admitted to, however, is that people don't have to be invited back to their house. He's always been as much a guest as Oliver, but he's the one who can't face the possibility of getting kicked out for good. Thus, Farleigh is the one who is really clinging to hope instead of action, the one who will never be fighting quite as hard as Oliver to ensure that possibility doesn't come true.

Farleigh gloats over Oliver's loss and takes Oliver's silence as proof that he is right. When really, Oliver doesn't gloat or bluster or protest. Oliver listens to what people tell him, and then Oliver acts.

It's the same thing we see in Oliver's confrontation with Venetia in the bathtub after Felix's funeral.

Venetia is clearly devestated by her brother's loss, and she is looking for someone to lash out at. And what a convenient, easy target Oliver seems to make. So polite, so soft-spoken, so awkward and innocent and small.

A harmless moth, batting up against the windows. At the same time, a parasite, consuming what wasn't his to take. Eating holes in her family - her family who would have greedily consumed every last drop of the sad, pitiful life he fed them for their own amusement, before casting him aside like a moth-eaten sweater abandoned in the back of a closet.

She calls him out, too, for wearing Felix's aftershave (but not the fact that he's wearing Felix's bathrobe, interestingly enough), while she's the one sprawled in Felix's bathtub. "I bet you're even wearing his underwear," she tells him scornfully, and he kisses her to prove that she'll still kiss him back, that for all her mocking words she's just as desperate as he is to cling to any scraps of Felix left behind. That for all her words to the contrary, he is a scrap of Felix left behind.

And then the harmless moth puts holes in her wrists, puts her in a hole in the ground, and walks away.

In contrast, the confrontations with Farleigh and Venetia make Oliver's confrontation with Felix in the maze all the more devastating in a different way.

With Felix, Oliver isn't quiet. He isn't timid or passive or small, and he is trying desperately not to listen when it's Felix telling him to go away, to stop, to give up, with nothing else he can latch onto for hope of a different outcome. With Felix, Oliver shouts, he protests, he snarls. He loses control of his voice and his body, even pins Felix up against the minotaur statue while he begs Felix to listen to him because he doesn't know what else to do; all he has are these words that he desperately wants to be true, that Felix doesn't want to hear.

It's Felix who is forced into silence while Oliver talks, and it is Felix who finally sees the truth that Oliver can't bear to face in himself.

It's Felix who tells Oliver, "You make my fucking blood run cold."

And he's the only one who gets it right.

#saltburn #saltburn meta #oliver quick #felix catton #farleigh start #venetia catton #look okay as much i loved both farleigh and venetia as characters #both of them were lashing out at oliver in those scenes due to their own insecurity or grief #neither of them really understood him #and he knew that and used it to his advantage #felix was the only one who actually saw the hard truth oliver wanted most to bury #felix and oliver both wound up seeing the worst parts of each other #the parts that neither of them wanted anyone else to see #which is.... #honestly really sad