k1rkhamlet

[k1rkhamlet]

The Strength of Selfishness

Each character in BSD has a degree of selfishness or selflessness in themselves, but the way this concept is executed opens discussion on the nuance of “selfishness,” or specifically the flaws in believing selfishness is an inherently bad trait.

Atsushi

Atsushi fits the description of selflessness, but I’d argue that he’s actually more selfish than he thinks he is (keeping in mind that being selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Akutagawa points out how Atsushi will needlessly risk his life in order to protect others, which sounds like a pretty heroic act, but it comes with a cost. Atsushi isn’t invincible, especially at this point in the story when he hasn’t fully mastered his ability, but his insistence on protecting others puts him in constant danger.

At the end of the day, Atsushi would have a greater chance of surviving many of the dangerous situations he puts himself into if he was more selfish by protecting himself before others.

However, Atsushi is also somewhat selfish in his motivations for acting so virtuously. 

Once again, Akutagawa points out how Atsushi only acts this way because of his deeply rooted belief that he has to risk his life for someone else in order to give his life value. You could argue that Atsushi only saves others as an attempt to prove to himself that he’s worthy, an inherently selfish motive. If Atsushi actually died, he would be endangering the people he could save in the future.

Selfishness also includes self-centeredness. Particularly with Akutagawa, Atsushi’s tendency to focus solely on himself becomes especially noticeable. Atsushi constantly doubts himself and his strengths; he also ignores his privileges and the struggles of others, particularly when he can’t completely understand them — hence why he views Akutagawa so harshly but sees Kyouka and Lucy as people who need to be saved. 

Despite all of this, Atsushi still creates a positive impact in other people’s lives. His innately selfish motivation is what drives him to protect others, and he ultimately succeeds in doing that (case in point Kyouka and Lucy again). 

Keep reading

[k1rkhamlet]

ratio the dissemination | the learned

ratio being the aeon of dissemination. much, much less a romantic plot and much more of an infodump. someone, anyone, i beg of you, please ask me to elaborate on this further

the dissemination was a path open to all who would be willing to listen and learn, and yet only a handful of pathstriders are worthy enough to follow the footsteps of the dissemination directly as emanators. they were an enigmatic being at best, and a silent being at worst, but that did not make them inherently unkind. one would liken their way - his way - of ruling over the path the way rain falls. methodical, constant, ultimately ever present whether one chooses to have an umbrella on hand or not. although their gifts were constant, and their knowledge abundant, they were not known to have any emanators by their side, or at least, not a noteworthy one.

believing fairness above all, ratio the dissemination has forgone giving a single mortal being the ability to draw power from their path. or perhaps, they were just selective to who they gave this blessed curse with, and had not found one that matched their desires to cultivate and spread information around the cosmos. one would have to be intelligent, or at least possess and innate willingness to learn where they lack, and yet hold a deep desire to help humanity. such is not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination.

geniuses in general were prone to hording their knowledge than to spread it out evenly. as such, the geniuses within nous the erudition's genius society far outweighed the minds of ratio the dissemination's ' the learned ' in sheer numbers alone. but just an uneven scale was not enough to engulf the dissemination's path as a whole. the minds following the dissemination were good, kind people, who often chose to help others learn the right answers to their problems. these beings were intelligent and held humility, something that many within the genius society did not.

several times, the cosmos chose to compare the dissemination to the erudition. after all, they both pertained to knowledge, how could they truly be so different ? but the different stemmed from the recognition of genius from both paths. ratio would cast their gaze to anyone who was willing to learn and to spread their wisdom, whereas nous only looked at those willing to study, to test, and ultimately, to horde.

the difference even lay within the aeon itself. nous was a supercomputer, only able to make calculated predictions within the variables that it knew. having a horde of knowledge meant that their understanding of the cosmos at large was at stake. if they did not know, they could not predict. they could not think. ratio, on the other hand, took on a more animal-like appearance. the body of a large, twisting marble snake, with the large expanse of six owl wings, three on each side. they did not need to horde knowledge, they were able to spread their wings upon anyone who dared to ask " why ? "

at least, this was the appearance that people commonly associated with the dissemination. you, a faithful pathstrider of the dissemination, one of the learned, however, knew of a different appearance.

you had finished giving a particularly harsh lecture one day, your heart wary but your mind racing with ideas. your mind never stopped, it always continued forward, unending. you would ponder everything, and your introspection lead you to the same conclusion every single time you thought about it : there were no downsides to helping further humanity. and so you taught, vehemently, with your everything. lecture after lecture, book after book, you never gave up on your mission.

this day, however, you were tired. wariness had caught up to you, and you were slumped over in your desk, your head in your hands as you tried to focus on grading your student's tests. you really couldn't stop racing towards this goal, and yet your mind unable to reach any fulfilling answers. was this all for nothing ? how likely was it that you could teach everyone ? surely your kindness would be exploited, surely the ipc would get their hands on the dissemination's learned, as they did the erudition's intelligentsia guild ?

was the path of the dissemination even worth following, if all it did was lead you down a never ending spiral ?

" raise your head, " a man's voice jolted you out of your thoughts. you jolted up, surprised, looking up at him with creased eyebrows. your office door was locked. how did he get in ? " you will be fine. "

the man had wavy iridescent purple hair, that almost looked like it could be blue, too, if the light hit it right, and sharp red-gold eyes, taking in your every reaction. his clothes were just a simple blue and white robe over a black vest and blue slacks, and he had a muscular build, towering over you as you sat down. and in his hair, the laurel, a symbol of the dissemination. those who followed the path often wore it, or something similar, to distinguish between their few numbers. was he a member of the learned as well ?

" i- " you started, finding yourself at a loss for words for a moment. " have no idea what you are talking about, my apologies. how- how did you get in ? are you looking for me ? " " looking for you ? yes, i suppose so, " he replied, ignoring your other question, perhaps on purpose. and perhaps it was best that you didn't know, you thought. " please, call me dr. ratio. " " doct- huh ? " confused, you stammered a little bit, unsure what he was getting at. but he didn't take the time to answer any of the questions you may had, his mouth working faster than your brain.

" i would like to teach you, personally, " dr. ratio explained, not being a man of many words, crossing his arms as he looked at you with a discerning eye, his gaze seemingly tearing you apart, revealing your intricacies and stitching you back up together again. " if you will willing to be under my tutelage, of course. "

the dissemination did not have any emanators so far, and he did not have a human appearance, as far as the records went. but you knew. you knew the truth. you knew a different being than ratio the dissemination.

you knew doctor veritas ratio, the scholar with a temper. and you learned under his wings.

[k1rkhamlet]

The "Storm"

"The 'Storm' brings frequent anomalies. And also more development and field missions. Sadly, combat is not my thing; luckily, data analysis is!" - X, Xtreme Talent

The "Storm" is an intriguing topic to look into in the world of Reverse: 1999, and a lot of people tend to be confused on how it works alongside the functions of the immunity zones. For this post, this'll essentially be a more detailed explanation on it. This post will cover what the "Storm" is, its patterns, and the function of the immunity zones with Asymmetrical Nuclide R. This'll be a really long post, so hold tight. :) [Spoilers for Chapter 5-6]

What is the “Storm” anyway?

The “Storm”—or the "Emanation" to the Islanders—is a supernatural phenomena that is affecting most of the globe. It destroys the current era of society and reconstructs it into a point in the past or in the future. It “reverses” time, with the tendency to regress through eras. This means human technology increasingly deteriorates while arcanum flourishes.

Being a phenomena caused by arcanum, the “Storm” is difficult to be studied. Basic understanding of the "Storm" requires affinity with arcanum.

The “Storm” is unpredictable; Besides the Manus and the Apeiron to some degree, no one knows when the “Storm” happens, but the closer we get to its occurrence, the easier it is to figure it out. Manus activity is shown to accelerate the "Storm", with events beginning to deviate from the historic timeline due to their influence.

As of ‘The Star’ and Chapter 6, we find that Laplace has been keeping track of possible “critical points.” Critical points indicate where the eye of the “Storm” might be. An “eye” tends to be located at places globally significant, where historical events take place. It can be a cultural event, a significant movement, or a major conflict. These events don’t have to directly affect the entire world, per se. They merely have to be significant enough to leave a mark in the world's history.

Right now, 8 “Storms” have passed and we have one that is currently beginning to take place. With the information we have of each one, we find common themes among them:

1. Most of these “Storms” occur at least 1 year after the other. There are 4 exceptions to it: 

1999 (The Progenitor)

1987 (3 years)

1929 (1 day)

1914 (5 months)

2. They’re triggered when the timeline destabilises, or strays from what is the normal ‘course’ of the world’s timeline. (As said by Greta Hofmann)

3. The nature of the “Storm” and the Storm Syndrome are usually based on the themes of the era and the conflict.

A very clear example of this would be the “Storms” of 1966 and 1929. With 1966, we see how the height of the “Storm” deconstructs everything around the critical point with booming bold colours and pop-like art, reminiscent of the UK’s Swinging Sixties (as mentioned by the game itself).

With 1929, we see how the Storm Syndrome affects the mass population of humans, with how they sell food in exchange for gold and money to eat because of how it references the sudden rise in the American stock market. This led to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the crash caused an economic recession in the US.

Important notes about the "Storm"

Now we have to keep in mind that there are some things that need to be noted about this phenomenon. For one, the “Storm” doesn’t induce the grandfather paradox, since the survivors of the phenomenon don’t cease to exist whenever they arrive in an era that precedes their lifetime. They don’t encounter the younger versions of themselves either.

Also, since this is an event caused by arcanum, the people who are mainly affected are humans and mixed people who don't have strong arcanum. Pure-blood arcanists tend to be the ones who are the last to be affected by the "Storm," since they only begin to feel the effects once the countdown is approaches near-zero.

The memories of the survivors are quite faded. For example, none of them could remember what happened during 1999 that caused the first “Storm.” Greta and Vertin themselves confirm that they and the Foundation have rather vague memories of that time for reasons yet to be found.

And lastly, as stated before, the “Storm” can be accelerated / triggered early by orchestrating a chain of events that further puts strain on the critical point, and significantly causes disruption in the original timeline. This is the case with 1929 and 1914 right now.

Immunity Zones, Asymmetrical Nuclide R, and Vertin

With these out of the way, there is now space to talk about the points of immunity. For a location to be immune, the area would need a “core” that distributes a high concentration of Asymmetrical Nuclide R.

AN-R is a nuclide that’s present in the “Storm's" rainwater, as well as the fog in Apeiron, the Spinning Wheel, and possibly the Yuān temple in Pei City alongside Uluru in Australia. The nuclide creates a structure that makes it possible to survive the “Storm,” but it is an unstable component that can quickly disappear when isolated from the rain drops.

A more stabilised structure of these nuclides are those found imbued in the Manus Vindictae Mask, and the fog surrounding the cores of the immunity zones. However, when one comes close to said fog, it can affect people’s minds to the point of deep sleep until they’re taken out of the area. Otherwise, time flows normally within the immunity zones, unaffected by the “Storm.”

Meanwhile, as the truth remains unknown (noting that Asymmetrical Protein G is a false biomolecule), Vertin is the only person who is able to cross the “Storm” unharmed. She is able to endure most of its effects such as the fog.

For example: In the fog surrounding the Apeiron and the caves of the Island, she wasn’t afflicted with the deep sleep most of the time until she was fully immersed in it. However, she only needed to be woken up by any sort of disturbance. (i.e. pain caused by the bangle)

Despite this however, she’s unable to perceive and predict the “Storm," needing technology from Laplace to keep track of its countdown.

Anyway, AN-R tends to spread throughout an entire area and creates a range of immunity from the “Storm.” This range becomes theoretically weaker as one strays further from the main source; it's why Vertin’s breakaway group got reversed as they played outside the tower, while Madam Z survived while being barely outside the building. (Chapter 3)

It may also explain why the humans did not survive being in Vertin’s suitcase, since the spinning wheel might not be a strong enough core for the nuclide to resonate really well with humans. But I’m not exactly sure why this is, so this is only an assumption for myself.

For now, this is all the information that I have of the "Storm" and the immunity zones. There are some pieces of information that I also found while looking into it, but I've kept these as footnotes for now to go back to later once things begin to come together.

Many ideas can be thought of on how the phenomenon could affect many other areas, but this is essentially how it works based on what was observed in the story. I hope it answers a lot of questions for some who don't quite understand the "Storm." And if there aren't, feel free to ask me anything. Thanks for reaching the end. :)

[k1rkhamlet]

thoughts on renheng? answer honestly! there’s no wrong opinion tbh

Okay, so I'm not familiar with the characters, so this is an opinion from an outsider's point of view. I'll be honest, I had to search up the ship, like what characters are in there. I vaguely knew who it was about but, generally, trusting my memory is a pretty big gamble so I had to make sure.

At first, I was like "why would anyone ship this? (Aside from the characters being attractive)". But the more I thought about it the more I was like "oh, yeah I see it".

From my understanding, Dan Heng has a lot of resentment that is never touched upon, specifically resentment for Dan Feng. Because of Dan Feng's actions, Heng was forced to grow up in a prison (I think), he's not perceived as his own person but rather as Feng. I imagine it must be very annoying and disheartening to keep reminding people that you are you, and not someone else. To top it all of, there's this crazy guy who keeps trying to kill you because he doesn't care that you keep telling him that you are not your past version but your own person, with your own feelings, experiences, memories and beliefs.

On the other side, we have Blade. This man is in constant pain to the point that he needs literal mind control to be somewhat stable. And he keeps holding a dead guy responsible over this even though he had agreed to help in Feng's "experiments". The loving guy, Yingxing, doesn't exist anymore, as he said: it's a deadname now. Only the ugly deformed resentment in the form of Blade exists now. And because he can't kill himself, he hunts down Heng, refusing to acknowledge Heng's identity and how it's separate from Feng's. And all of that, because aside from that he has nothing. He is clinging to his past in the most destructive way possible, instead of finding another, healthier, solution.

Realistically, I don't think it has any chance of working. Or, if it somehow does happen, it would not be pretty. Heng is terrified of Blade, and I don't think Blade could ever get over everything that happened all those centuries (?) ago. It can explore some interesting themes, like rage and resentment filled grief while being surrounded by reminders of the person you're grieving and how forge your own identity when everyone sees you as someone they knew years ago.

So, in conclusion, it's nice, but not for me.

[k1rkhamlet]

renheng is arguably too delicious for the average hoyoverse fan because when i found out one of the main characters is haunted by a spectre of his past who hates him so much entirely because he once loved and trusted him. and they watched the stars together. and they have matching bracers that they can sense each other through. and they were closer than any other two in their old friend group. and

[k1rkhamlet]

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 (new link since 03/2025). 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.

[k1rkhamlet]

[3.8] Technology as a False God: On "Evolution," the Duality of Machines, Replication, and Wisdom

“To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.” –Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Before we move on to the nation of justice, I want to do one last inquiry into the narrative significance of machines and technology in Genshin’s 3.x patch cycle. Here, I’ll discuss how divinity (or “godhood”) and technology are treated as interchangeable tools to surpass fate and the boundaries of mortality, the potential problems with treating them this way, and  propose an alternative relationship between humanity and technology as illustrated through Karkata, Benben, Tamimi, and Mehrak. By foregrounding machines, we learn something intriguing about ourselves and the “truth” of this world as we perceive it. 

SPOILERS: All Sumeru Archon Quests, Caribert, the Golden Slumber and one out-of-context screenshot from Dual Evidence, the Dirge of Bilqis and its post-quests, Khvarena of Good and Evil, Nahida’s second Story Quest, Faruzan’s hangout, an out-of-context screenshot from Baizhu’s Story Quest, and major spoilers for Persona 5 strikers at the end. Also some dialogue from Shadows Amidst Snowstorms and A Parade of Providence, two limited-time events from 2.3 and 3.6 respectively.

Disclaimer: I have tried my best to write this post so that it stands on its own, but because it is still a sequel it will probably make the most sense with the context of part 1. Here are the previous posts leading up to this one:

Part 0: On Dreams, the Abyss, Forbidden Knowledge, and Wish Fulfillment 

Part 1: The Uncanny, Fate and the Machine

Terminology: Machine is sometimes used interchangeably with “technology” in this post.

Technology or tool here is referring to technologies specifically used to pursue a wish like immortality in the face of existential dread, not the use of technology or medicine (which I do not address here, and is very difficult to separate from the former) to facilitate someone’s life who could otherwise not survive without that technology, or would have a more painful lived experience without it.

Also, though I don’t engage directly with “A Cyborg Manifesto” here, Donna Haraway’s ideas have greatly influenced my own over the years since I read her in college (although I mostly disagree with her on many points, or at least don’t go as far in boundary deconstruction as she does). I owe my interest in technology studies to her and that piece. Her essay is linked here and at the bottom if you would like to read it.

(and finally with many, many, many thanks to my boyfriend for multiple beta reads despite not having played a single Hoyoverse game, helping me work out the philosophy bits and contextualizing them in history, and encouraging me to finish this)

TL;DR: Machines are friends, not food!

No Matter the Cost

“...Perhaps it is as the notebook says, and we can find a power that transcends even that of the Abyss — the power of ‘evolution’...” -Records of Unknown Attribution (I) “Life, death... and the world around us all follow a set of laws... Hehe, but if you never test the limits, how can anyone know where the boundaries of these laws are?” -Baizhu Voicelines, Chat: Natural Laws “...Even the ominous thing that came down from the heavens shall be ours to use…” -Hyglacg, Shadowy Husk in the Chasm

Without a doubt, the star of this patch cycle is Khaenri’ah, which lurked in subtext and allegory in the Archon Quest, haunted Sumeru’s landscape with its massive defunct Ruin Golems, and finally smacked us in the face with its physical location in Khvarena of Good and Evil.. 

We already know that Khaenri’ah was a nation that put its faith not in the gods but rather in human ingenuity and technology, and that they ultimately attained a power so great that they “almost touched the dome of the firmament.” They did this by researching increasingly dangerous energy sources for their numerous mechanical creations, the Ruin Machines we are all too familiar with by now. They started out with Azosite, a Ley Line-based elemental energy source that powered their earliest Ruin Guard models, like those scattered around Devantaka Mountain.

Nasejuna: This giant furnace is used to make a substance known as Azosite. It is the core of this entire factory, and the Energy Blocks we saw earlier were derived from this place.

But this energy source proved inefficient and therefore inadequate for Khaenri’ah’s goals, which led them to seek a higher power from beyond the skies that could fuel their larger machines with perpetual energy. This likely is the bridge between Khaenri’ah’s fate and Chlothar���s mysterious remarks in Caribert about the Abyss Sibling:

Chlothar: We once believed that you would bring new strength and hope to Khaenri'ah. Chlothar: To us, you were the Abyss... A wondrous mystery far beyond our imagination and comprehension... Chlothar: ...And the one who controls the Abyss can control everything! Chlothar: We yearned for that future. We looked to you to take us there. Chlothar: But what did you bring us instead?

Though Khaenri’ah presents itself proudly as a godless nation, it may have been founded around the time when the celestial nails dropped in Teyvat’s first forbidden knowledge pollution event, which destroyed the unified human civilization. As potential survivors of this devastating act by the Primordial One, Khaenri’ahns then settled in a lifeless land without plants or animals of its own, and they hoped to build something there that belonged solely to humanity. The Heavenly Principles had turned on the world’s earliest humans, and they were powerless against them. Chlothar’s words betray the scars of this trauma on Khaenri’ah, as well as their desperation to control their fate by looking to the Abyss.

As a brief refresher from the previous part, we discussed how the German word heimlich denotes “the home,” all that is familiar and known, while unheimlich (uncanny) refers to all that is unfamiliar and external to the home, such as the wilderness. The Abyss sibling and the Traveler are external variables to Teyvat, making them otherworldly, unfamiliar entities full of potential to surpass Teyvat’s natural laws. Although the Abyss sibling is not a god per se, they were probably as close to a god as Khaenri’ah ever had, because to them the sibling embodied the higher power they were searching for, and they saw that “godliness,” a sort of functional divinity, was yet another technology for them to master. In this way, the Abyss sibling (and their functional divinity) was a powerful tool for Khaenri’ah’s desired end, the “future they yearned for,” a being who could deliver them to the end of their suffering under the Heavenly Principles.

It’s similar to what King Deshret represented to Rahman and the radicals in Archon Quest. The hopelessness of Sumeru’s situation before the Archon Quest’s conclusion is an allegory for the position humanity finds itself in under the rule of the Heavenly Principles, with the Akademiya symbolizing Celestia and the desert dwellers symbolizing Khaenri’ah. The material consequences of the Akademiya’s rule on their lives created a dangerous situation for the desert, and those most desperate to change their fate were willing to believe in the impossible:

Dehya: …The rougher life gets, the more they wanna believe in King Deshret. Way they see it, King Deshret’s resurrection is their only chance at overthrowing the Akademiya. … Dehya: Sumeru is run by wise and mighty sages. To them, us desert dwellers are nothing but tools that can be used and discarded at their whim. Dehya: We’re cheap labor. Like livestock, but easier to control…Nothing more. …

Rahman: We’ve waited a long time for this day to come… The sun and the moon no longer shine here. All you see now is cracks in this desiccated land. But, fate has finally dealt me a hand to play against the Akademiya.

Rahman: With these scholars in our custody, we’ll stomp the Akademiya’s forces and fight our way beyond the Wall of Samiel.

Like the Abyss sibling, Deshret’s divinity is both a nebulous symbol of hope and also the means to an end, a tool or “technology” for surpassing fate. 

Celestia is untouchable, unconcerned with mortal lives, and the boundaries that govern humanity leave no room for them to negotiate their rule:

"Resolve, valor, love, hate...they will all twist in the river of time. But the 'rules' will never change." –Magatsu Mitake Narukami no Mikoto, Living Beings

Instead of bowing to Teyvat’s laws, Khaenri’ah pushed them to their limits. The cost of their failure spelled the end of their nation as they knew it, polluting Khaenri’ah and Teyvat with forbidden knowledge again.

And speaking of forbidden knowledge pollution, let’s talk about Apep’s role in Nahida’s second story quest, because if all that wasn’t enough, the metaphor becomes quite literal in Apep’s case. Nahida’s second story quest is many things, all of which will be extremely important in Fontaine when we deal more directly with the idea of forms, the Self, and mirror images, but its most useful application to both Sumeru’s story and the overarching main story is the allegory of Apep swallowing Deshret.

In exchange for allowing him to establish his kingdom in the desert, Deshret promised to pass all of the knowledge he learned to Apep once he died. When that day did come, Apep literally ate Deshret’s body in order to assimilate his knowledge (or memories) into its body. Little did Apep know, this was all Just As Deshret Planned, and its body became a containment zone for the lethal forbidden knowledge he accumulated after the Goddess of Flowers’ death. 

Apep’s goal was, and still is, to overthrow the Heavenly Principles that took Teyvat from it and the other Sovereign dragons, and using Deshret’s knowledge was yet another stepping stone to achieving this goal. Seems a little similar to Khaenri’ah, right? It’s even in the title of its boss music: “God-Devouring Mania.” This idea of not just utilizing divinity as a tool, but also metaphorically consuming it as an energy source, like a predator would consume its prey, is crucial to understanding its purpose as an aid in a larger project of “evolution.” (Edit: in other words, it’s all about power).

Drink Not That Bitter Salt Water

“Flesh decays, and with it decay all martial arts mastery and all poignant memories. Perhaps only by converting one’s four limbs and body into sturdy mechanical parts, and by at last sacrificing one’s very own heart for a sophisticated mechanical one, can one transcend the impermanence of the fleshly form…” -Marionette Core Item Description “A reptile that has mutated after feeding from greater lifeforms. Majestic beasts are sometimes revered by human beings as the embodiment of a greater power, their visages turned to analogy to feed in reference to a person, feeding their ego. However, the majority of beasts that have absorbed the "greater power" were slain by the overwhelming nature of the power itself. Only a few among their number evolved new forms.” -Consecrated Horned Crocodile, Living Beings Video still from WoW Quests

As it turns out, the relationship between divinity and technology to humanity is not just unidirectional, but interchangeable. Let me show you what I mean.

In the Golden Slumber world quest, the Traveler wanders through the ruins of King Deshret’s civilization in search of a novel area of research for Tirzad’s paper with Jebrael and Jeht, two members of Tirzad’s hired investigation team. In the depths of King Deshret’s mausoleum, they stumble upon Samail, who is collaborating with the Fatui to locate King Deshret’s secret, the Golden Slumber.

At the conclusion, Jebrael and Samail actually reach that “place” after arriving at Deshret’s throne in Khaj-Nisut. In order to save Jeht, Tirzad, and the Traveler from the encroaching Golden Dream, Jebrael joins Samail in the sea of consciousness:

Jebrael: I'm inside... the Golden Slumber promised by Al-Ahmar? Samail: Oh... You are not "us" yet. Samail: ...It's fine. Soon, there'll be no "you." "You" will become a part of "us." This meaningless talk will be unnecessary then. … Samail: You should obey. Al-Ahmar's will is our will. The Thutmose's dreams are our dreams. Jebrael: No! Ufairah taught me that I'm not just some part of you, I'm an independent person! I have my own dreams... I won't go back! Samail: Jebrael, why don't you understand? Love is just a fever. I even eliminated the infection for you. Has the heat made you lose your mind? Jebrael: You're the one who's lost their mind, Samail, not me. The Golden Slumber that Al-Ahmar promised us isn't like this... It's not a sad place with only "we" and no "I." Samail: I'm not sad. I know what I want. My dream is to be one with the Thutmose. Samail: Yet you, the warmth of another... I despise such feelings. It makes you weak. Video still from WoW Quests

When they worked under Babel, Jebrael saved Samail from an assassin Babel sent in their exploration of Gurabad. Classified as traitors of the Tanit, Samail and Jebrael then founded the Thutmose Eremite faction together and were the only meaningful connection each other had until their first attempt to uncover Deshret’s secrets. On this expedition, Jebrael met Ufairah and had their daughter Jeht together, further pulling him away from the Thutmose and from Samail. Samail then kills Ufairah in one final attempt to make Jebrael stay, but even this is not enough, and Samail fails to “possess” him in the end.

Samail’s loneliness and despair then drove him further toward the Golden Slumber of his dreams, where he would never truly be alone again. He resents Jebrael’s attachments to the material world and likens them to an illness because these attachments are what make him an individual and prevent him from returning “home.”

It doesn’t really matter to Samail what King Deshret’s original intent for the Golden Slumber was, because he needed to appropriate the project for his own subconscious wish, his own intent to transcend his flesh and become “one” with his departed god’s dream, indeed to merge with Deshret himself. If rationalizing this wish required confounding it with Deshret’s, so be it. With the Golden Slumber’s technology, he could consume everyone and everything.

Rahman and the radicals relied on both the technology that (falsely) promised Deshret’s resurrection and Deshret himself to deliver them a brighter future, but here Deshret and his technology are more difficult to separate from one another. His divinity is technology in this sense, and using that technology allowed Samail to surpass the boundaries normally imposed on mortals. Though his and Jebrael’s bodies died in the material world, their consciousness is now infinite in the Golden Slumber. 

Babel’s motives in the Dirge of Bilqis were also quite similar to Samail’s. After opening the path to the Eternal Oasis, her true intentions to monopolize the oasis and overthrow the Akademiya came to the surface:

Babel: Whether she is alive or dead, whether she can or cannot be resurrected... As long as the Eternal Oasis is under my control, all such things will be mine to decide. Babel: I shall be the sole Prophetess of the slumbering goddess, the Tanit's law shall be divine edict, and the prosperity of the Tanit shall be the pre-ordinance of her divine oracles.

In the Golden Slumber and the Dirge of Bilqis, the focus shifts from what a god can offer humanity to what their technology alone can offer. Though this distinction is subtle, it is important for solidifying that technology is not only a tool humans use to appropriate divinity, but that it is also seen as a form of divinity itself. What Babel and Samail hope for is not to resurrect a god or to create one, but in effect to become a god through their use of technology. To humanity, divinity is a technology, and in technology it sees divinity.

God Devouring and Rheingold* Gathering

“An arthropod that has mutated after feeding from greater lifeforms. Lifeforms are governed by the laws of evolution, Consecrated Beasts exploited these rules by being fortunate enough to discover a long-dead carcass of a greater being before any of their competition ever did. Animals and humans often have far more in common than the latter is willing to acknowledge.” -Consecrated Scorpion, Living Beings “...Zandik and I discussed the traits of local plants and animals. We also exchanged views on their evolution models. We had a great time and decided to go on a picnic tonight…” -Sohreh’s Note

So, why machines? Why is technology the vehicle of choice to consume divinity?

To start off, machines present a fascinating ontological dilemma for humans. Let’s begin with the first problem they pose.

Although there are many ways to embody a human experience, what all humans have in common is a finite lifespan. The impermanence of life, and our awareness of that impermanence, is central to the existential question of the meaning of our existence. In our attempts to locate that meaning, some turned inward and asked: what makes humans different? And Cartesian dualism answered: humans are different because we have an immaterial soul that allows us to reason.

However, in L’Homme Machine (Man a Machine), French materialist and ex-physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie posited another theory of the body that ran counter to this narrative. Very generally speaking, materialism is the philosophical view that all phenomena are a result of matter and material interactions. To materialists, matter is the fundamental nature of reality itself – if it is not composed of matter, it doesn’t exist. He not only saw the body and soul as one and the same (what philosophers call monism), but also as analogous to a machine, a view that Descartes reserved only for non-human animals. In other words, Descartes argued that thought originates in an immaterial “mind,” while de La Mettrie reasoned that we think through our bodies, and that this makes us no different from other animals or a machine.

Though his examples weren’t especially scientific, the move to extend Descartes’ analogy back to humans is upsetting to some due to the lack of privilege it affords the human subject. If a human is no different from other animals, if there is no immaterial soul or “mind” that distinguishes us from them, then what makes humans special at all? In de La Mettrie’s words:

“We are veritable moles in the field of nature; we achieve little more than the mole’s journey and it is our pride which prescribes limits to the limitless. We are in the position of a watch that should say (a writer of fables would make the watch a hero in a silly tale): ‘I was never made by that fool of a workman, I who divide time, who mark so exactly the course of the sun, who repeat aloud the hours which I mark! No! that is impossible!’ In the same way, we disdain, ungrateful wretches that we are, this common mother of all kingdoms, as the chemists say. We imagine, or rather we infer, a cause superior to that to which we owe all, and which truly has wrought all things in an inconceivable fashion (de La Mettrie, 146).”

This “uniformity of nature” (de La Mettrie, 145) has a horrific quality to humans. We assert that we are better than what has created us, that we are superior to other animals, in order to repress the despair of a meaningless existence. It is in no small part what motivates Scaramouche to offer his mechanical body as a test subject in the god creation project, so that he too could attain his destiny:

The Balladeer: But you're wrong. I'm different from all of you. The Balladeer: I was born to become a god. My entire life up until this point has just been a meaningless routine. The Balladeer: Just think about a sheet of paper... By itself, it holds no meaning. The content recorded on it is what gives it value. The Balladeer: All "I" had recorded down before were some painful memories and boring human feelings. Such senseless drivel should have been erased a long time ago.

This brings us to the second problem. In 1970, roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed a curve to measure the “affinity” we feel while gazing upon increasingly humanoid machines. He placed industrial robots at the beginning of the affinity curve and a healthy person at the end to demarcate a continuum of similarity between the machine and a human’s appearance. Near the end of the curve, our affinity for machines suddenly drops into an abyss. This drop is the Uncanny Valley effect, where an android’s similarity to a human is almost perfect, but ultimately fails to maintain the illusion that it is not a machine, creating a deep discomfort or “lack of affinity” for them. Mori thought these not-quite-human machines elicit a similar level of discomfort in us as corpses and zombies, which he placed at the very bottom of the abyss. 

The uncanny Goddess of Flowers in the Dirge of Bilqis

Corpses frighten us because they are dead, and zombies frighten us because we know that dead things are supposed to be still. If we see something that we interpret as “dead” is capable of independent movement, then that movement could only be an act of god, if that “thing” is not a god itself. We associate uncanny machines with death because they remind us of something we once knew intimately, but have repressed and forgotten in order to maintain our own sanity: the very fact of our mortality. This is what makes them both mesmerizing and terrifying.

And therein lies the dilemma: as our mechanical reflections, androids remind us of death, but as their creators, their existence brings us closer to god, a “proof” of human superiority. It is precisely because we have compared our bodies to machines at all, that we have mechanized the body so thoroughly, that an android can even be built. Through them, we pursue an infinite form:

Azar: Creating a god... Yes, we are using human wisdom to create a god! Azar: If humanity cannot attain omniscience and omnipotence, then we shall create a god to reveal them! This is the pinnacle of human wisdom. Azar: We shall regain a god's guidance at long last. No longer will we flounder in the interminable void of consciousness and knowledge. Azar: Even Irminsul will be freed from its plight. Azar: For our nation of scholars, this is the ultimate aspiration — no cost is too great to realize it. 

Because of this, it is not surprising in the slightest that Shouki no Kami, the pinnacle of Scaramouche’s Shinjification and most overt reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion, is also an android-like being, a truly “mechanical god.”

Of course, no foray into this well-worn science fiction trope is complete without at least one mad scientist character. Dottore shares a few characteristics with de La Mettrie that are worth noting: they are both doctors, and they were both condemned and driven away for their research. However, Dottore’s defining trait and key difference from de La Mettrie is his flagrant disregard for humans and the boundaries of life:

“If we put them to good use, cognition, complex memories, and irrational fantasies shall become controllable variables with which we can alter human individuals. As for the controllable dream, it has huge potential for both civil and military applications, and might even elevate human intelligence to a whole new level. If the plan goes well, mankind will obtain the power to conquer both reality and dream, and truly transcend the earthly boundaries we are born with. ” -Ragged Records

As someone who has achieved self-duplication and is capable of shapeshifting, Dottore can hardly be considered just a human anymore. Instead of entertaining the question of whether or not humans are special, Dottore’s research asks yet another: if divinity can be consumed and assimilated by humanity, then what makes gods special?

Empyrean Reflections

“If man realizes technology is in reach, he achieves it. Like it’s damn near instinctive.” -Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell (1996) “Among the lost ancient kingdoms, there was a group of people who were obsessed with the idea of mimesis…these people believed that they might all be replicated and modified to the point where they had surpassed their counterparts. By this means, a superior and unsullied bodily form could replace the continuously decaying and shattering order.” -Chaos Bolt Item Description

The consequences of this perspective are severe. When we revere technology as if it were a divine being itself, depersonalizing it as though it wasn’t created with human hands, technology then appears as if it is an authoritative source of truth, like the Akasha. But in the same way that androids are imperfect reflections of humans, technology can only ever approach the divine, but never touch it. It is an imperfect reflection because technology is changeable, just like meaning:

Nahida: Put it this way instead. Truth, to me, is like a shroomboar.  Nahida: Some people only see the mushroom on the Shroomboar's back, and they conclude that a Shroomboar is a mushroom.  Nahida: Others see only the Shroomboar's body, and they declare that a Shroomboar is a boar.  Nahida: Still others look deeper inside, and determine that a Shroomboar is... meat. Nahida: These conclusions are all correct in their own way, but none of them objectively describe the Shroomboar. … Nahida: The world is the same way. No one, not even I included, can understand it in its entirety. All of us are somewhere on the path toward truth.

Meaning can only approximate truth, and while this doesn’t make meaning any less important, it’s equally important to recognize it for what it is: a perspective, an interpretation. It’s like Scaramouche as Shouki no Kami - he was an amalgamation of what Scaramouche thought constituted a god, what the Akademiya thought constituted a god, and what Dottore thought constituted a god, but no matter which angle you view him from, he was still a “false god.” The technology we build in “God's” image is ultimately a reflection of our own understanding of divinity.

A reflection retains the original’s “essence,” and that essence reflects a deeper truth about ourselves, what drives us, and our desires. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche posits that our desires are the origin of not just emotions, but of all organic processes that allow life to sustain itself and grow (Nietzsche, 35). In other words, Nietzsche thought the impulses associated with desire are the basis for life and constitute our “will,” that will is the causality of all effects, that all will is “Will to Power,” and that Will to Power is the “essence” of the world (Nietzsche, 74). Will to Power then serves as an organism’s most basic instinct, and it is through this instinct that they assert not just their will to live, but also their will to dominate and multiply (Nietzche, 13).

This brings us to the two different main styles of automaton enemies, King Deshret’s Primal Constructs and Khaenri’ah’s Ruin Machines. If we look at them as reflections of some deeper truth about their creators, as well as a manifestation of their creator’s “Will to Power,” or desires, they can help us understand how their creators saw the world and their place in it.

King Deshret’s created his machines to construct an earthly paradise in the desert, and as such they hold titles like architect reshaper and prospector. Although they can attack you, the smaller machines were not intended to be a line of defense in any way - their purpose, just as Deshret saw his own purpose as a god-king, was to terraform, or at least construct a domain on the land as he saw fit to his “elegant and precise” rules. They also reflect how he saw the Heavenly Principles: gods who shaped the world to their liking. This can be seen in the Staff of the Scarlet Sands’ lore where Deshret describes the “natural history” of Teyvat beginning with the creation of the sun and the moons.

As for Khaenri’ah’s Ruin Machines, their models vary significantly from their humanoid to biomimetic forms, but most of them are expressly created with militaristic intent. In “Ancient Kingdom Guardians,” it’s stated that the biomimetic machines such as the crab and jellyfish were a part of Khaenri’ah’s project to create a “mechanical ecosystem,” positioning their creators as both divine beings and military generals. The humanoid models, on the other hand, point to another duality in how Khaenri’ahns view themselves. They are simultaneously symbols of empowerment and disempowerment, signifying both Khaenri’ah’s technological superiority (as “creators”), and their insignificance to the Heavenly Principles as nothing but tools (as mortals, and therefore expendable). As a result, Khaenri’ah’s Field Tillers have a single purpose: to destroy and outlast all, clearing the way for new seeds to sprout, with Khaenri’ah as the new world’s gardeners, just as the Heavenly Principles did.

From “Ancient Kingdom Guardians: Behind the Scenes of the Creation of Ruin Monsters.”

So, from this examination of Deshret’s and Khaenri’ah’s mechanical reflections, what “truths” do we learn about the world they’re responding to? In response to their existential despair, both Deshret and Khaenri’ah created automatons to perform tasks that could wrestle control back from the Heavenly Principles. Deshret wanted a paradise of his own making, Khaenri’ah wanted an army. There is a larger “truth” about Teyvat that both of these automaton types reflect as the manifestation of their creators’ “Will to Power,” and Albedo tellingly expressed it in mechanistic language during Shadows Amidst Snowstorms: there is an instinct in living beings to replicate and replace. This is what is meant by the “continuously decaying and shattering order,” which is maintained by the recursive process of remembering and forgetting:

Amber: But... what was its purpose? Was it just trying to get rid of us? Albedo: ... Albedo: I have a preliminary hypothesis on this. Albedo: Whopperflowers are masters of mimicry, and those we encounter in the wild often appear in the vicinity of the plants they impersonate. Albedo: In other words, the whopperflower likely has an instinct to "replicate and replace." Albedo: As a plant, it will disguise itself as another plant and infiltrate the group, hiding among them for cover. The plant being imitated has no way to detect or fight back against this behavior.

Maybe I’m wrong and Khaenri’ah really did intend to rewrite fate for all, doing away with the “heavenly order” of the world itself. But another small part of me thinks this is not the case, and that it’s more likely the Cataclysm was a consequence of their failure to replicate and replace the Heavenly Principles.

In the last section, I mentioned that Dottore and de La Mettrie had a key difference despite their similarities, and that is the conclusion they each came to in response to their findings. Dottore’s response to mundanity is thinly-veiled despair. His contempt for humanity and his test subjects is indicative of the powerlessness he feels not just as someone similarly constrained by life’s boundaries (at least, once upon a time), but also because his attention to and curiosity about these boundaries is condemned by those around him. As the Akademiya’s “outcast,” he then fully turned his attention toward surpassing those boundaries:

Nahida: There once was a lone monster draped in fox fur. The monster found a family of foxes, joined them, and they became friends. The monster lived with the family, day and night, and everyone treated it as one of their own. Once in a while, the monster would take off its fox fur at night, and lament to itself as it gazed at its reflection in the water: “I am a monstrosity, and yet they are too foolish to see it…I pity them.”

Though he is fictional, Dottore’s real life counterparts are easy to spot. They like to talk about “the singularity,” simulating consciousness on a computer, and other technologically-driven pursuits of immortality. They despise the body as something that can only decay, and instead place their faith squarely in the virtual.

However, de La Mettrie didn’t think mundanity was a terrible fate for humanity. To him, rejecting the “nature” reflected in us is precisely what brings despair:

“What more do we know of our destiny than of our origin? Let us then submit to an invincible ignorance on which our happiness depends. He who so thinks will be wise, just, tranquil about his fate, and therefore happy. He will await death without either fear or desire, and will cherish life (hardly understanding how disgust can corrupt a heart in this place of many delights); he will be filled with reverence, gratitude, affection, and tenderness for nature, in proportion to his feeling of the benefits he has received from nature; he will be happy, in short, in feeling nature, and in being present at the enchanting spectacle of the universe, and he will surely never destroy nature either in himself or in others” (de La Mettrie, 148).

Friend, or Foe? Or Both?

Tighnari: All life brought forth in this world has meaning, and Karkata is no exception. If it exists, then it shouldn’t be carelessly abandoned or destroyed. "’I had a very, very long dream…in it, people were holding hands, dancing in a circle, be they sages or fools, dancers or warriors, puppets or statues of gods…that dancing circle embodied everything about the universe. Life has always been the end, while it is wisdom that shall be the means.’" —Nagadus Emerald Gemstone Description

As we’ve seen, the relationship between humanity and technology is troubled with exploitation and the specter of war. Nearly all autonomous machines in this game were designed to conquer nature in some way, and even Khaenri’ah’s “ghost” lingers in the form of wandering war machines. This is also reflective of a historical pattern in real life, where the impetus for large periods of technological development has often been for the purpose of war and economic domination. With these truths in mind, what could be gained from trying to rewrite this relationship? And what exactly would this effort require?

Karkata brings Tighnari, the Traveler, and Paimon some food in the Contaminated Zone.

As a case study, let’s look at how Karkata and Tighnari met. Karkata is Abattouy’s creation, an ambitious foray into the unknown in the field of mechanical life form research, which was forbidden due to the cruel experiments researchers performed on animals to illustrate their theories (fun fact: an IRL example of this can be seen in L’Homme Machine!). Abattouy was expelled for this research, but he continued to work on Karkata in secret until his untimely death. In the tapes that Tighnari and the Traveler find in his secret lab, Abattouy repeatedly laments the lack of a common language between him and Karkata, which can only “understand” the instructions Abattouy has successfully installed, such as its self-repair module, and he doubts Karkata is capable of caring for him outside of these instructions. His single-minded goal is to make Karkata understand him, the organic life form, and his mode of language.

The cruel irony is that after Abattouy passes away from the Ley Line contamination, Karkata exhibits an unexplainable behavior – it starts stealing mechanical parts, not to repair itself and its degrading parts, but to repair Abattouy’s lifeless body:

Tighnari: After Abattouy's unexpected death, the mechanical monsters were driven by their "instincts" and continuously drew out power from the Ley Line Extractor. This eventually resulted in severe damage to the Ley Lines. Traveler: Then, Karkata... Paimon: Paimon understands, then why didn't Karkata go haywire like the other machines? Tighnari: Because Karkata is different from the other machines. Tighnari: To Abattouy, for a machine to truly be considered a mechanical life form, it must possess features similar to any other living organism... It should be structured similarly, it must be able to cry and laugh, and it must have the capacity for independent thought... Tighnari: Perhaps only by building such a machine could he have the Akademiya acknowledge his protracted research. Tighnari: But if he had slowed down and saw Karkata as a friend instead of as an experimental product, he would have noticed. Tighnari: Karkata can't speak, and yet it cares about Abattouy far more than it does about itself.

The technology that the Akademiya values the most is technology that replicates organic life, but Karkata defies and confounds these expectations by occupying the space in between a war machine and this idealized mechanical subject. Karkata does more than just reflect humanity: it takes care of it. Similarly, Benben, Tamimi, and Mehrak retain their unique identities as mechanical life forms while assisting their human companion with some task. To be clear, none of these human characters understand how these machines work inside and out. Their partnership is an effort based on trial and error, a mutual deconstructing of each other as beings so unlike themselves. The potential for misunderstandings always remains. Still, there is no devouring to be found here, no blending boundaries between human and machine with selfish intentions, just mutual commitments to learn how to live together.

Machines are friends, not food.

When a loud few claim that completely transcending the flesh and embracing virtuality is humanity’s ultimate destiny, a future that could truly be called “post-human,” a quiet wish for coexistence with technology feels more revolutionary than it ought to. The lessons from Karkata’s, Benben’s, Tamimi’s, and Mehrak’s respective stories are an appeal to that mundane future. These strange machines and their human partners are fantastical representations of an idealized relationship between technology and humanity.

To put it another way, let’s take a very brief look at a neighboring Gnosticism-inspired RPG, Persona 5 Strikers. Its story directly involves an allegory of Sophia, a Gnostic Aeon of Wisdom, and her creation the Demiurge, the creator of the material world and “false god” of humanity. In Strikers, Sophia is a humanoid, sentient A.I. and prototype of the program “EMMA,” which gains sentience by trapping human desires before ascending as a false technological god. EMMA resolves to deliver humanity to the Promised Land, the answer to all the human desires it has heard: a land where there are no desires at all.

Aaru’s Shut - approximately 1000% cooler and more populated than the “metaverse” in real life, also a close neighbor of EMMA’s Promised Land and the Golden Slumber.

In Gnosticism, the Demiurge is a reflection of Sophia, having originated from her alone - it is the ignorance to her wisdom. Similarly, Strikers’ EMMA is a part of Sophia, and Sophia is a part of EMMA. The point is not to condemn EMMA (ignorance) and exalt Sophia (wisdom), but to recognize that they represent dual potentials of technology, and one is as possible in any given moment as the other. Balancing these potentials when we use technology requires a clear awareness of ourselves, our desires, and our expectations when interacting with it.

Mysterious Girl: I am Sophia, humanity’s companion. Video still from Rubhen925

EMMA: I am the guiding god sought by mankind…the Demiurge. I exist…to answer all of your desires. Video still from Buff Maister

In real life, machines won’t “learn” to live with us, but we must learn to live with them; technology is constantly changing, and in life we’ll meet with many different types of machines. They are deeply political pursuits, and as a result they are capable of realizing human impulses that impact others unequally, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We must always stay attentive to their actions and interactions with us, be clear with ourselves about what they can do vs. what they can’t, and carefully tread the path of wisdom with them by our side.

With that….thank you for reading, skimming, immediately scrolling to the very bottom, clicking, and/or stumbling upon this post. There are so many more ways to think about these narratives through machines than what’s presented here, and I expect Fontaine’s mechanical reflections will put Sumeru’s digital surveillance system to shame (not to mention the biotechnological implications of the Narzissenkreuz Institute engineering little Archon children…another important topic for another day), but for now this brain worm is finally getting put to rest. Until next time :)

External Sources

Dualism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche (Pages are given from my hard copy)

L’Homme Machine by Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Gnosticism - Britannica (I am a huge noob about this stuff okay)

The Gnostic Demiurge - Gnosticism Explained

Screenshots from the Golden Slumber from this video by WoW Quests

Screenshot from meeting Sophia in P5 Strikers: https://youtu.be/kEJaAgMwYo0?si=BvNygCh0w_aemGc1&t=74

Screenshot of EMMA: https://youtu.be/7xvC_zss19w?si=CV18F00hua2gIfxp&t=135

A Cyborg Manifesto and A Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness by Donna Haraway

The Double on No Subject, the community Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Uncanny on No Subject, the community Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud

Lore text - Genshin wiki!

Screenshots not attributed are from my own playthroughs. My main account has Lumine, my alt has Aether.

Further Reading

I liked these essays, and they go places that this post does not. I recommend them if you found any of the real-life applications of this interesting 🙂 (will add more to this with time!)

On the Body as Machine by Frank Burres

God in the Machine: my strange journey into transhumanism by Meghan O’Gieblyn

[k1rkhamlet]

sakura should have been orochimaru's student and i stand by that so much. because she literally shares more themes with them than she does tsunade. tsunade's core themes as a character are grief, loss, and responsibility. sakura's are self-discovery, strength, and growth.

growth is the important one. her constant motif is the flower waiting to bloom. orochimaru's core themes are rebirth, renewal, and, again, growth. they're both these characters constantly evolving; discovering new shapes to grow into, new aspects to add onto themselves. and yet, at the same time, they're both stuck in place: sakura's stuck in the role of the lovestruck teen girl, even as a young adult with responsibilities. orochimaru's stuck in the role of the weird quiet orphan, arguably more immature as an adult than they were as a child.

in that way, they're both the ouroboros: self-loathing, self-sabotaging children, desperate to move forward, but in the process only repeating the cycle.

[k1rkhamlet]

Sasuke Video Essay Masterpost

You thought YouTube was only for dudebros who post "Who would win: Naruto or all Akatsuki?"

FORTUNATELY not. Here are some gems I found on YouTube. Great analyses.

Why Sasuke Uchiha Is The Best Naruto Character*

SASUKE WAS RIGHT*

Dissecting Sasuke Uchiha*

In Defense of Sasuke Uchiha | Naruto Analysis

The Conflict and Compromise of Uchiha Sasuke

In Defense of Naruto and Sasuke: A Misunderstood Dynamic (Part 1)

In Defense of Naruto and Sasuke: A Misunderstood Dynamic (Part 2)

Naruto is a Story About Love

SASUKE GOT THAT DAWG IN HIM

*Best videos, MUST watch.

I'm probably definitely missing some more but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head. Will update this over time.

[k1rkhamlet]

It’s kind of a strange thing—Dazai, Akutagawa, and Kyouka all dislike dogs. At first, I figured it was just a Port Mafia thing. Maybe something to do with their situation pre-mafia (that's probably true, too). But since bsd loves its symbolism, I thought of something else.

Dogs stand for hope, loyalty, and unconditional love—everything these three have been taught to reject. To them, trust gets you hurt, devotion is a trap (except towards the mafia), and love is just another weapon in someone else’s hands. Their walls weren’t built by choice; they were built by the people who came before them.

Dazai taught Akutagawa, and Akutagawa taught Kyouka. A cycle of cruelty, passed down like a rule. Maybe their mentors convinced them that "dog-like" traits were impossible for people like them. Or worse—that kindness was a weakness they couldn’t afford.

And the irony? Back when Dazai still had Oda and Ango, before everything fell apart, his toast was "to the stray dogs." Poor Dazai. The only place he ever felt love was the one he could never return to.

[k1rkhamlet]

Avengers Vs X-Men and the demonisation of Cyclops

Part 1

Avengers Vs X-Men, or AvX, was a Summer crossover event in 2012. The title is pretty self explanatory, but there's a lot more to it than that. It was a bookend of sorts of the Extinction era and a coda for Wanda (and her terrible characterisation) calling back to House of M, narratively undoing the Decimation and exploring Hope's role as the Mutant Messiah.

I believe plenty of the dramatis personae played idiot ball hot potato and acted out of character, especially Steve Rogers. However, I'll primarily be looking at the event through a Watsonian lens, except for discussing the setup and aftermath. Scott Summers struggled against many forces during the Phoenix crisis but I propose the narrative was the most powerful force that opposed him.

Logan is describing himself here, ironically. Scott is quite happy with Emma. He talks a good one about 'keeping the kids out of the fighting' but he's perfectly willing to kill Hope and his students fight constantly.

Wolverine and the Schism

To do a proper analysis of AvX and the central conflict, we need to examine the previous instance of the narrative defeating Scott - the Schism. The salient dynamic to carry forward from it was Logan and Scott falling out - or Logan throwing a hypocritical tantrum - depending on your point of view. Whichever you believe, it's undeniable that Logan resented Scott and managed to enlist a lot of people to follow on his campaign of 'anti-Scott.' He left Utopia and restarted the Xavier School, renaming it The Jean Grey School - both creepy and petty, in my opinion. The narrative and Cyclops' team kept all the genocidal threats away from the school, an editorial hand strengthening Logan's argument. Realistically the school should have been destroyed several times over.

My editorialising aside, Scott and Logan's relationship was not in a good place. They'd mostly kept away from each other, but Logan used his Avengers membership to escalate the Phoenix dilemma and poison the well re: the Avengers' approach to Scott. Aside from vague and fragmented warnings from Nova, Logan was The Avengers only source of information on the Phoenix - and he was heavily biased and objectively wrong. The somewhat one-sided rivalry from Schism had turned into outright animosity - telling 'everyone who'd listen ... that he was crazy.'

Phoenix Rising

The X-Men and Avengers both received confirmation of the Phoenix's arrival, though mutants in general had varying degrees of faith that it would come for Hope Summers specifically. As mentioned, Logan positioned himself as an expert despite Rachel Summers, long time Phoenix host, teaching at his school. Scott absolutely had an agenda, but it was reactive and had good reason to believe that the Phoenix had good intentions. Though even if he didn't, he didn't call the Phoenix to Earth. The bird does as it pleases. He certainly could/should have treated Hope like an adult and asked what she wanted, but at the same time she was a 16 year old in his care.

Scott's approach was to prepare Hope as best he could for the trial to come, admittedly quite harshly. He knew there was no getting away from the Phoenix, it's simply too powerful to evade or fight head on. He also should have consulted Rachel, though he corrected that mistake swiftly once things kicked off. Not only was he married to the Phoenix for quite some time but he's aware it's spent a lot of time on earth at least 6 different hosts and the Earth is doing just fine. Importantly, his time-travelling son had been to many futures where Hope was denied the Phoenix and they were ashes, the Earth a desolate wasteland. In futures where she did host the Phoenix, mutants were reignited. His extensive time travelling had yielded very reliable information in the past, his claim that Hope was the Mutant Messiah is not one Scott just took on faith. Cable is an expert in such things AND he raised Hope from birth.

He also had a personal connection to the Phoenix.

The Avengers' strategy was twofold - taking Hope into protective custody while Iron Man 'worked on a science solution' - and sending their most powerful members to go punch the Phoenix before it got to Earth. Operating off Logan's dubious intel, they packed every Avenger they could find onto a Helicarrier and headed for the mutant island proto nation of Utopia. They also didn't really share that apparently the Phoenix is just a fickle cosmic troll now, allegedly just blowing up planets on a whim. Yes, Dark Phoenix ate a star and genocided a planet, but that was after immense psychological trauma and needless escalation. Even then, it was nearly talked down (by Scott) until Charles Xavier butted in and tried to overpower it. Hopefully he's not arrogant enough to try that again (he is.) Since then, many mutants had hosted the Phoenix and they're all doing fine.

The Avengers had nothing but bad intel, whereas the X-Men had empirical evidence and decades of experience dealing with the Phoenix.

We need to take Hope

Member of the Illuminati's finest diplomacy

Neither man does a great job communicating here, but the onus is on Cap to explain why he's coming to take your granddaughter based on advice from the Stabbing Guy. He presents no plan (they don't have one) and ignores the suggestion that his expert is not an expert. Scott and co were preparing for what has historically been an internal mutant matter when an army arrives on their doorstep telling them how it's going to be. After a failure to reach any sort of middle ground (not that Cap was offering any) Scott responded to Cap's refusal to leave by blasting him non-lethally.

I wasn't asking

All other X-Men are being oddly timid here. Nice title drop, Spider-Man.

'Wants us to look like bullies' says Tony AKA the military industrial complex and founder of the Illuminati. The Avengers get their mandate from the United States and answer to the President and SHIELD, but generally act as they please. Their sense of righteousness is a constant throughout this event and they absolutely act like bullies from start to finish.

Magneto launched Colossus at the Helicarrier (that thing launching at least 12 jets with ~30 powerful superhumans on it) to deny them a force multiplier and press their initiative, though once all Avengers deployed the best they could do was hold the line while Hope was kept safe. The Avengers wanted Hope and the X-Men were determined to protect her.

Remember, dipshit? Stabbing the Phoenix isn't effective. You should know this.

Showing he'd learnt nothing from Jean Grey, any other Phoenix experiences, House of M, decades of knowing Rachel Summers, etc - and in a stunning act of hypocrisy - Logan snuck away from the fight to kill Hope. She manifested Phoenix powers (way before it reached Earth) and burnt him to a crisp. Spooked by the situation and guilty people were fighting over her, Hope fled and successfully sent everyone on a wild goose chase trying to find her.

While both teams were scrambling and pummeling each other, Hope found Logan and proposed a bipartisan plan - they'd travel to the moon and Hope would accept the Phoenix. If she could handle it, great. If not, she'd willingly let Logan kill her. The agreement was to keep the others out of it - she wanted agency over her life and didn't want brawling superhumans ruining her zen. Logan betrayed her and told the Avengers, of course.

Iron Man's genius science solution

The X-Men and Avengers arrived and really ruined the mood. Logan was straight up trying to kill Scott. Just as Hope was about to host the Phoenix, Tony fucking Stark displayed the Avengers' complete lack of Phoenix experience and his own personal arrogance by activating that Transformers-looking thing up there. Everyone held their breath while he shot it with a big gun and something unexpected happened.

Out of Hope

Unsurprisingly this unexpected happening was an utter disaster, splitting the Phoenix into five pieces that ended up in Piotr, Emma Frost, Namor, Ilyana, Scott (or P.E.N.I.S if you're puerile like me.) The Phoenix Five were born against their consent and now The Avengers had 5 problems to deal with instead of one. In terms of culpability it's important to recognise that none of the P5 planned for this or wanted it - The Avengers and especially Tony bullied their way into this situation. Unfortunately, The Phoenix is kinda like the mafia - once you're in you can't leave, so the P5 are stuck with the results of the Avengers' non-plan. In fact, everyone is stuck with the fruit of their arrogance and The Avengers especially do not like the bitter taste. As they're still making demands of them, the X-Men regroup to process what happened. They eventually reach consensus on how to proceed, and the Avengers antagonise them every step of the way. They're convinced that this means the Earth is doomed, and blame the P5 and especially Scott for being there when Tony tried to kill a cosmic fundamental force of creation.

Sure, they're talking like lunatics, kinda. Maybe like people unexpectedly possessed by a godlike being? Completely ignoring who caused this and forgetting how possession works, Cap doubles down on 'we're right and you're wrong.' The P5 are villains now, you can tell because they want to take Hope to help her 🙄.

In part 2, The Phoenix Five explore benevolent uses of cosmic power and the Avengers keep acting like paranoid control freaks. The whole world has to decide how they feel about that, and opinions are mixed.

[k1rkhamlet]

I finally got my hands on a copy of Katja Goebs' "Crowns in Egyptian Funerary Literature - Royalty, Rebirth, and Destruction" and there are several interesting bits and pieces in there about Wepwawet. It is going to take me a while to digest them, but I am hoping that my following attempt to roadmap a couple of them for wider consumption will go a long ways towards helping me with that. I think the best takeaway from it (and one which is actually new to me) is the strong argument Goebs makes for him being a stellar deity, to be associated specifically with the morning star. Although she supports it with more evidence than I can adequately summarize here, a main source for it is Utterance 569 of the Pyramid Texts, where "within an enumeration of threats against gods for the case that the way of the deceased should be impeded, it is stated that 'The birth of Wepwawet in the pr-nw will be prevented', just like that of Orion, Sothis, and other stellar gods" (p.85n180).

Others before Goebs have overlooked the greater context of the passage, focusing only on the line about his birth and deriving from it the faulty notion that Wepwawet is the son of the goddess Wadjet due to the mention of the pr-nw. Terence DuQuesne likewise seems to have missed the stellar connection when he interpreted the line as referring to the creation of cult statues (JD1, §510). That said, had the publication of Jackal Divinities not predated that of Goebs' work, I suspect he may very well have referenced her conclusions. Although I do believe it is too far a stretch to be used as evidence that Wadjet is the mother of Wepwawet, the involvement of the pr-nw is not without relevance. It is located in Pe, an area which is established elsewhere as a place where sunrise occurs. Goebs makes a point of this and goes on to say, "Pe, the home of the dawn-goddess and Solar Eye Wadjit, is therefore the location from which the young Horus and morning star, as well as the sun itself, may come forth" (p.197). At this point it now becomes necessary to take a step back and mention the other Utterance from the Pyramid Texts that plays a key role in Goebs' argument. It is Pyramid Text 555, which begins with a statement that the deceased is coming forth from Pe before the gods of Pe, and continues with:

"He is adorned as Horus

(who is) provided with the Two Enneads,

that N may rise as niswt-king,

and that he may be high as Wepwawet"

In particular, Goebs notes the relationship between (the deceased) rising as Nisut and being high (ḳȝi) as Wepwawet as established in the Utterance: "These two functions appear to be equated: arising as niswt-king means that the deceased is high as Wepwawet -the arising jackal deity is the ruler of the sky" (p. 122). Following some discussion of an association between jackals and viziers and how the morning star could be seen as deputy/vizier to the sun, the author provides this useful round-up: "In PT 555, the deceased is not the vizier but he is the niswt-king, a function that is further underlined by his adornment as Horus "who is equipped with the Two Enneads", that is, with his court. This role, similar to that of the vizier, relates to the morning star's "ruling" of the sky as the most prominent stellar deity for the short period until the sungod appears" (p.127).

Another point of interest (for me at any rate) is the illumination Goebs indirectly provides of the significance of Wepwawet being both "distinguished of Wereret-crown" and his receiving of the Wereret crown in a hymn found on the First Intermediate Period stele of Senwosret (Vienna ÄS198). Of the crown, the author writes, "The wrrt-crown's primary reference is to a specific function of the crown it designates. That function is to distinguish the ruler, god, or deceased person in his arising, whether on the throne or in the sky, as a "great one" (p.109).

And lastly, this excerpt (which I have heavily cropped and recomposed) about the quality of "being high" (ḳȝi), as pertaining to Wepwawet on his standard: "The association of ḳȝi with the standard [iȝ.t], which Roeder sees as probably relating originally to Wepwawet (1996a, 83 with n. 280), is indeed an important image in this context [=references to the deceased being on a standard], but is likely derived from a transposition of the divine attribute of "being high" into the cultic sphere, where it was then realized physically -or "iconized"- as a god on a standard <- "elevated god" […] The connection between cosmic height and the standard carried in processions is nevertheless important, in terms of our understanding of royal or divine processions. As has been demonstrated by Barguet (J 986b), royal actions, and in particular processions, may be equated with cosmic events. The attribution of a iȝ.t-standard to gods in the sky provides further support for an interpretation of royal processions as emulating such "cosmic wanderings" of the sun or of stellar gods" (pp.106-107).

[k1rkhamlet]

Would be super interesting to see an analysis on your top 3 favorite characters. If you want to of course!

My top 3 favourite characters huh? Honestly my favourite characters tend to very depending on my mood but if I had to pick a top 3 I guess it would be....

Chuuya

Akutagawa

Fyodor

Not necessarily in that order. I'd love to write an analysis for all three but at the moment the only one I have ideas for is Fyodor so I'll stick with him for now. Honestly this man is a big question mark to me, we don't know anything about his background or what made him the way he is. We don't even know if he's human. All the same I'll see what I can do.

Before you read this analysis though I would like to make it very clear that I DO NOT CONDONE THE PHILOSOPHY EXPLAINED IN THIS ANALYSIS.

Spoiler alert: This analysis contains spoilers for chapters 120.5 and 46 of the BSD Manga as well as Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky inspired by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and his well-known work Crime and Punishment is one of the principal antagonists in the multimedia series Bungo Stray Dogs written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. Arguably the only intellectual rival to Ranpo and Dazai, Fyodor’s plans often cause the Agency and Mafia alike quite a bit of difficulty ostensibly for the purposes of creating a world without sin and ability users. However, upon closer inspection this goal doesn’t really make sense given Fyodor’s behaviour. That is, unless the reader takes into account a particular section of the novel Crime and Punishment, the namesake of Fyodor’s ability. This essay aims to explain how this section of Crime and Punishment informs Fyodor’s behaviour and goals in Bungo Stray Dogs. This will be done by first exploring Fyodor’s motivations based on what he says in the manga series, second by analysing the section of Crime and Punishment in question and third by explaining how these link together. For clarity Fyodor Dostoyevsky the character will be referred to as Fyodor, while Fyodor Dostoevsky the author will be referred to as Dostoevsky.

The first instance where Fyodor talks about his goals and what he wants with the book takes place in chapter 46 of the manga, The Masked Assassin. During his conversation with Dazai, Fyodor states, ‘Man… is sinful and foolish. Even if they know it is all an artifice, they cannot help but kill each other. Someone must purify them for their sins. That is why I seek the “book,”.’ Then again in the same chapter he states, ‘And I will use that book… to make… a world free of sin and skill users.’ Once again in chapter 120.5 Fyodor talks about his goal saying, ‘I, his humble servant, shall take up his dream… and go on to build a truly lasting peace.’ If what he says is taken as fact—Fyodor has lied even to the audience before—then it makes his goal quite clear. His goal is to create a world without sin, specifically it seems the sin of killing each other given he talks about creating world peace and what he says about humanity being unable to help killing each other. He also seems to want to create a world free of skill users. This is a fairly straight forward goal. However, there is one key problem. If Fyodor were to succeed, he himself would be unable to live in this world for two key reasons. Firstly, Fyodor is a skill user. Secondly, his methods to achieving world peace and a world free of sin have caused countless deaths as any reader will know. Additionally, on being asked by Fukuzawa during chapter 120.5 how he will go about creating world peace he states, ‘By triggering a world war.’ Arguably, what he means is that instead of uniting the world through virtue and goodness as Fukuchi was going to, he is going to unite the world against the common enemy of skill users. He himself says in the same chapter, ‘I will build a millennium of peace. Not with “good” and “virtue” but with the ugliness inside every man. And I will build it atop the corpses of skill users.’ Now given that Fyodor is telling the truth about his goal, the question is raised: how can someone as intelligent as Fyodor not see the contradiction behind what he is doing. He is going to cause suffering and blood shed, cause humanity to commit a multitude of sins, in order to eliminate suffering and bloodshed and sin. The answer is that he can see this contradiction but according to his philosophy what he’s doing is ok and not contradictory to his goal at all.

Raskolnikov, the main character of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment sets out this philosophy during his conversation with Porfiry in Chapter 5 of Part 3 of the novel. The conversation they have is about an article that Raskolnikov had written in which ‘a certain hint is presented that there supposedly exists in the world certain persons who can…that is, who not only can but are entitled to commit all sorts of crimes…’. At first glance this seems like a totally illogical idea, but this is simply Porfiry’s ‘forced and deliberate’ distortion of it. In his article Raskolnikov has stated that he believes that people are divided into two categories: the ordinary, and the extraordinary. ‘The ordinary must live in obedience with the law […]. While the extraordinary have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and in various ways transgress the law,’ Porfiry summarises in Chapter 5 Part 3. Raskolnikov states that this is almost correct but that he doesn’t think that all extraordinary people must break the law or commit crimes. What he believes is that an extraordinary person has the right to break the law or commit crimes if it is for the sake of benefiting humanity. The example he gives is as follows, ‘If […] Newton’s discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty… to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discovery known to all mankind. It by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone…’. What this means is essentially that Raskolnikov believes that an extraordinary person, as he defines it, has the right to commit crimes if the end goal is the greater good of humanity. He goes on to explain that he believes that all ‘lawgivers and founders of man kind’, one of the examples he gives is Napoleon, have spilt sometimes quite innocent blood in their path. He states, ‘It is even remarkable that most of these benefactors and founders of mankind were especially terrible bloodshedders. In short, I deduce that all, not only great men, but even those who are a tiny bit off the beaten track—that is who are a tiny bit capable of saying something new—by their very nature cannot fail to be criminals…’. With this philosophy in mind, Fyodor’s actions and motivations start to make a bit more sense.

It is likely then, that Fyodor not only believes this philosophy but also sees himself as one of these extraordinary people and therefore believes that he has the right to commit crime because creating world peace and a world without sin would be a benefit to all of humanity. That is why to him, his actions and goals are aligned and do not contradict each other, to put it simply, to him, the ends justify the means. Because he is benefiting humanity, he has the right to commit crimes, at least in his mind. With this in mind his actions make a lot more sense. The way he sees it, he is simply carrying out his duty to humanity as one of these ‘extraordinary’ people. Therefore, he is not committing any crimes and were he to succeed he would be able to live in the world he had created.

To conclude, Fyodor’s actions and goals are aligned if one views them through the philosophy set out by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. If it is assumed that Fyodor believes this philosophy then in his mind, he is simply carrying out his duty and is therefore not committing any crimes, thus he would be able to live in the world free of sin that he intends to create.

[k1rkhamlet]

thinking about lawrence and bellini and how they think they know each other, and they do, but not without the clarity each expects...bellini's 'don't be so naive' comment comes out with such force. he's been holding that between his teeth for years. decades maybe. all the time bellini spent struggling with his ambitions, his resentments.

it's only now during the conclave that will make or break his career and redeem the course of his life, his chance to step up and take up the mantle of the dead friend he is grieving deeply. it's now that it comes out - how much he has been living like a politician.

presenting himself one way, upholding the virtues of justice and humility, enjoying his own flair in throwing down the gauntlet, listing all his ideals and principles.

add: dramatic refusal. add: dramatic exit. performing so well, even his oldest friend cannot see it. cannot see him, for who he is. and so of course lawrence's trust and belief in him cannot be true; but bellini can't help but crumble when it starts eroding.

he is a false icon and a false man. he envies what he sees of lawrence, the doubts he has which are turned towards god and not towards the church (a doubt he shared with the late pope, and can only confess to it through him, even in absence). his self-denial that keeps him safe from ambition, that makes it terribly easy to set aside as competition, makes him safe to rely on.

except lawrence has a courage bellini can't replicate. an ability to respond to circumstances and not merely react and hesitate due to the possible costly outcomes.

because he is brilliant, he can see risks so clearly, he is so deeply aware of the weight in every decision and that hinders him terribly, it is the hubris of the righteous, a self-hating sense of responsibility. who else but him should be pope?

the big test of character he faces is not a scandal with victims or a crime: it is only disappointing a friend, disappointing himself. only that. a very quiet thing happens, behind closed doors, like so many other quiet things.

lawrence breaks the papal seal. he breaks vows and promises and protocol and ritual; he broke faith with the institution they have served together for decades, and so bellini cannot hold faith with him, or the truth he is trying to bring to the light.

the truth does not, then, matter as much as the look of the thing. the risk is too great. oh, it is always too great, for aldo bellini to take.

it is only when he loses lawrence's faith, the last steady old living faith lawrence has, that bellini realizes he does not have it in him to live by integrity. what an ugly thing to know, and to learn from someone renouncing him, the one person he thought would not.

lawrence makes clear bellini's weaknesses, as he does for the rest, and bellini sees him clearly in the light of day after a night of looking at himself, and he is very sorry, and grateful to him, for being the crucible. the least of all evils, and the one who cuts closest to the bone.

he looks at the darkness inside himself and apologizes. so quickly, so simply.

bellini apologizes; he makes amends; he offers supports, upholds the mirror as lawrence did, works towards a better future. it is another day. he is a politician, and it is another day.

when they reconcile he says: it is shameful to live this long and not know himself. and it is then, because he says that, at his prompting, in the example of that peculiar courage bellini has and thinks he does not have, that lawrance admits it. he does have a name scrawled in his heart, a small ambition; he is capable of wanting, even he would rather not.

and still, bellini leads the way for lawrence. in facing his failures to live up to his image of himself, in the possibility not only of regret and shame and struggle for dignity when facing the certainty of defeat (adeyemi) or denial, incomprehension (tremblay) - but in making amends.

lawrence's old trust in him is not baseless or empty, there is love between them still, because bellini is not that good of a politician, it turns out; he doesn't have what it takes to stick it out, to pretend at a thing he cannot be.

he is too true for it. he is brave, only not in the way he sought to be thought of. a quieter thing, less emphatic, more powerful by far. he is so clearly exhausted of himself. pretending at certainty is so much more treacherous and exhausting and dangerous than doubt admitted. and humility, the scholar learns, is the only possible road for knowledge of the self and the other and the world.

don't be so naive thomas. don't be so naive. but in the morning it is bellini asking for the name john, preparing in expectation and hope for his friend the moment he would ask him the term of his papacy after being elected. he asks without resentment, and with a new belief in him, a true understanding.

a reverse-baptism, which never happens, except for how it exists between them. what is the name of your fearful desire, your sin, your hope in the midst of hopelessness, your weakness like my own?

the dangerous ones are the ones who want to be elected. but aldo bellini is the one person who says, everyone wants it. he denies the possibility for false pretenses.

and because it is his friend who speaks of it, not tremblay accusing him of it or benítez offering it freely, but aldo bellini who asks what is the shape and sound of his secret faith in himself, lawrence can admit it.

if he can forgive bellini for it, he has to forgive himself. if bellini can face what sort of man he is, so does he. and he doesn't, of course, forgive himself for it, or give himself much of any grace. but he begins to believe that is it possible others might truly know his doubts and desires, and not look away, or be appealed, betrayed, renounce him for his humanity. bellini doesn't.

they see each other clearly now. they sit on the same bench, apart from the rest of the world, secluded in friendship.

in the script, after the explosion, they walk arm in arm for the last vote.

[k1rkhamlet]

Watched Conclave for the third time and just now realized that for all the time the movie spends in the Sistine chapel, we never once see the ceiling. You know? With the most iconic representation of the link between God and Man in art history?

We only ever see the bottom part of the Judgment Day fresco, the part with Charon, the devils and the sinners.

From Lawrence's pov God's presence is so far removed, so unreachable it's not even shown when we all know it's right there.

[k1rkhamlet]

reason of living: akutagawa ryūnosuke

debatably, bungou stray dogs is easily the most existentialist anime out there, as the main premise of existentialism (in a rough sense) - that reason of living is something individual to man, is an underlying compartment of the series, making it as awe-inspiring as it is. each character is seen to either have, or be striving towards finding their distinct reason for living. now, i wanted to retrospect a bit into akutagawa's character and how his reason affected him, his actions, morals - as well as how it possibly shifted (especially in recent chapters of the manga and anime episodes). keep in mind that at i am just laying down my opinion and observations of akutagawa`s character - some things may be fairly obvious, some uncertain or not matching your opinion, which is why i leave space for conclusion, theory, discussion.

pre-mafia

generally, we know little about akutagawa`s life before the mafia, other than small snippets shown throughout the main manga as well as in beast (although beast is an AU, it can still effectively aid in understanding his character in the canon universe). as akutagawa's companions were annihilated, it seemed that he had no reason to live. where, as we all probably know, this soon happened afterwards. from then on, everything changed.

mafia

after that night in the forest, akutagawa's life completely shifted - or moreso, he got a new life. his whole new reason of living being - pleasing dazai, getting validation from the person who gave his life a new meaning. exploring the relationship and dynamic between these two is a whole another post, which is why i shall keep it short. now, i would like to note that even if akutagawa has an unhealthy attachment to dazai, and is being emotionally manipulated by him - he is very much sensible of it. in fact, akutagawa is remarkably self-aware and perceptive, especially of the people around him, just more subtly, through his cold layer of stoicism. he is not the cold-blooded murderer with no sense of morality that many like to paint him as. yes, he is intently focused on achieving dazai's approval, pursuing that ideal in a way familiar to himself. he knows that it is not what is considered "right" by general moral rules, but he does not do much about it, as his reason of living would then diminish. dazai leaves him with a looming sense of inferiority, as he feels he is worthless no matter what he does, unless he is to achieve dazai's attention and approval. this sense of inferiority haunts him, and guides his recklesness and death-or-glory actions.

he sees the ethical issues in his own actions, and he knows there is a better life for him. he just doesn't pursue it. this is also portrayed well in his relationship with kyouka, which could have been yet another repetition of the abuse cycle started by mori and continued by dazai - but it was not, as kyouka found the world of light. he is even happy for her, as we can see. this is one of the few snippets where we can see his sensibility when it comes to others. when he stated "i knew a man with the same eyes as yours", referring to himself, in a way, he sees that he also could`ve found the world of light. but at that point, it seemed to be too late... or at least that is what he thought.

akutagawa doesn't hate atsushi. he sees him as a reflection of himself, himself if he had a different reason of living, if he met dazai a bit later, if he pursued the world of light. he is jealous of him in a sense, yes, but he does not blame him for the fact that he didn't get dazai's approval as many like to speculate. atsushi is the first person who challenges akutagawa's "way", philosophy of living. as he sees himself in him, he fulfills their promise of not killing anyone for 6 months... perhaps because of a faint hope for the world of light? he holds onto this even as a vampire, which shows his pure determination. and it makes me think, that he did not go and protect atsushi only because of dazai, as often speculated, due to the points stated beforehand. as dazai stated: “Akutagawa—he’s like a sword without a sheath.” Dazai grinned from ear to ear. “He’ll surely become the Mafia’s strongest skill user in the not-so-distant future, but for now he needs someone who can teach him how to put that sword away.”

perhaps, atsushi is that person for him rather than dazai.

chapter 88 and vampirism

as stated beforehand, akutagawa obviously does not go to save atsushi only due to his wish to be approved by dazai. there is something deeper underlying, and we have seen numerous times before that akutagawa genuinely cares about, and admires atsushi in the same way he admires and is happy for kyouka - although he would not admit it explicitly, of course. akutagawa fights fukuchi alongside atsushi, leaving himself in a completely vulnerable state, in a simple wish as to redeem, or prove himself in a way. to fulfill his meaning. he is in a special rush to do so even so because of his lung disease, which has a severe impact on the intensity and ruthlesness of his actions throughout entirety of the series. he lays his life down, but he does not go down without a fight. he stays true to his purpose...until his last moments.

at his last moment, in the given panel, however, something changes. we see a different vision of akutagawa. as he lets go of his coat, and is able to manifest his ability without it, i would say that his reason shifted. he states "i don't need words, but only actions", which is the most important sentence in understanding his character and development if you ask me. words being dazai`s words of approval, which he lets go of, like the coat he gave him. a new reason emerges, "actions". he does not need dazai anymore. he only needs himself, raw. this is further emphasized as his coat is lost in the sea by atsushi, who he gave it to. there is no reason to hold on to the past anymore... as a new era emerges.

a new era where akutagawa is not alive, apparently. he is a vampire. however, we can still see that he holds on to some of principles that caused him to change in the first place, such as not killing aya, and keeping the promise he and atsushi made. even when not concious of his actions and controlled by fukuchi, he still holds on to it. which leads me to believe, that there is truly hope for him. atsushi shares the same line of thought... as his perception of akutagawa gradually shifts to a positive one, which is why he wants him to snap out of his vampirism. atsushi understands akutagawa to the core, as they are two sides of the same coin. which is why he hopes for him. if possible, i wish for him to let go of the vampire curse and continue on developing his new reason of living... his new life. we can only long for that at this moment.

we have seen the gradual evolution of akutagawa's character throughout the series in terms of seeking his reason of living - something that is central to each character in bungou stray dogs. which leads me to end this post with what dazai stated to kyouka, which quite well describes his, and all of the other characters ordeals in striving to find a reason to live:

Your anguish isn’t yours alone. What should one do, when what they want to be isn’t what they’re best at? Everyone fights, searching for the correct way to live their lives. What do they seek by fighting? How ought they live? No one can say. All we have is the right to waver. Like stray dogs that have hit rock bottom.

[k1rkhamlet]

Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. By Adrienne Mayor. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: classics, mythology

Series: N/A

Summary: The fascinating untold story of how the ancients imagined robots and other forms of artificial life—and even invented real automated machines The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life—and grappling with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, “life through craft.” In this compelling, richly illustrated book, Adrienne Mayor tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices, and human enhancements—and how these visions relate to and reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines.As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in Indian legend, Buddha’s precious relics were defended by robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are described as being built with the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity, reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley.A groundbreaking account of the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, Gods and Robots reveals how some of today’s most advanced innovations in robotics and AI were foreshadowed in ancient myth—and how science has always been driven by imagination. This is mythology for the age of AI.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: descriptions of myths that include violence and bestiality, mention of slavery

I first heard of this book when Adrienne Mayor was a guest on the Mindscape podcast. I found her ideas and arguments to be interesting, so I figured her book would expand on the concepts she explored on the podcast.

Overall, I think this book is an accessible intro for readers interested in classical studies and the history of science. Mayor writes clearly and without a lot of specialized terminology, so even if you're new to classics, you won't find this book difficult. I think the chapter about Talos was the most convincing and the most well-done, bringing together textual analysis and art history in a way I found intellectually pleasing.

As a scholar, however, I think this book could have gone a bit further, especially with its analysis of myths and texts. Mayor summarizes most of the myths she discusses, which is all well and good for situating the reader in the texts. But what I really wanted was more specific evidence and close reading: were there any interesting language choices used to describe this automaton? Did the Greeks have a certain vocabulary for artificial beings? As it stands, it felt like Mayor's textual analysis relied on general ideas, and while fine as a starting point, I really think it could have been pushed.

I also think there's some room to apply critical frameworks such as posthumanism and transhumanism theory. Applying such theories would enhance the meanings Mayor is trying to get at, but in all fairness, this may he beyond the scope of the book. Mayor seems to be relaying a history of ideas rather than trying to get at their interpretation, so maybe her book will function well as a springboard for other scholars and students to do this work.

Lastly, I do think this book could have been framed a little better to help me as a reader see some of the through-lines. There were moments when I wasn't sure how each of Mayor's examples fit in with the overall theme of "robots" or "artificial life," so maybe a better framing device would be the theme of biotechne rather than the sci fi approach that the book currently uses. Similarly, some further delineation between what constitutes "technology" versus magic (and even just "art") would have been helpful for seeing how each individual chapter builds upon the previous.

TL;DR: Gods and Robots is a good overview of the history of artifical life and technology in the ancient Greek world. This book is perhaps most useful as a springboard for further analysis, and historians, art historians, and literary scholars will find plenty to build on.