#BUT I JUST HAD TO FUCKING WATCH THE VIDEO ESSAY ON IT AND THEN GOOGLE AND I WANT TO THROW UP

[anominous-user]

Double Indemnity, Veritas Ratio and Aventurine

This was originally a part of my compilation post as a short analysis on the Double Indemnity references, linking to this great thread by Manya on Twitter. However, I've recently watched the movie and found that the parallels run much deeper than just the mission name and the light cone itself, plus as the short synopsis I've read online. Since there isn't really an in-depth attempt at an analysis on the film in relation to the way Aventurine and Ratio present themselves throughout Penacony, I thought I'd take a stab at doing just that. I will also be bringing up things from Manya's thread as well as another thread that has some extra points.

Disclaimer that I... don't do analyses very often. Or write, in general — I'm someone who likes to illustrate their thoughts (in the artistic sense) more than write. There's just something about these two that makes me want to rip into them so badly, so here we are. If there's anything you'd like to add or correct me on, feel free to let me know in the replies or reblogs, or asks. This ended up being a rather extensive deep dive into the movie and its influences on the pairing, so please keep that in mind when pressing Read More.

There are two distinct layers on display in Ratio and Aventurine's relationship throughout Penacony, which are references to the two most important relationships in the movie — where they act like they hate/don’t know each other, and where they trust each other.

SPOILER WARNING for the entire movie, by the way. You can watch the film for free here on archive.org, as well as follow along with the screenplay here. I will also be taking dialogue and such from the screenplay, and cite quotes from the original novel in its own dedicated section. SPOILER WARNING for the Cat Among Pigeons Trailblaze mission, as well.

CONTENT WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF SUICIDE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

To start, Double Indemnity (1944) is a film noir by Billy Wilder (and co-written by Raymond Chandler) based on the novel of the same name by James M. Cain (1927). There are stark differences between the movie adaptation and the original novel which I will get into later on in this post, albeit in a smaller section, as this analysis is mainly focused on the movie adaptation. I will talk about the basics (summaries for the movie and the game, specifically the Penacony mission in tandem with Ratio and Aventurine) before diving into the character and scene parallels, among other things.

—

[THE NAME]

The term "double indemnity" is a clause in which if there’s a case of accidental death of a statistically rare variety, the insurance company has to pay out multiple of the original amount. This excludes deaths by murder, suicide, gross negligence, and natural causes.

The part of the mission in Cat Among Pigeons where Ratio and Aventurine meet with Sunday is named after the movie. And before we get further into things, let's get this part out of the way: The Chinese name used in the mission is the CN title of the movie, so there's no liberties taken with the localization — this makes it clear that it’s a nod to the movie and not localization doing its own thing like with the mission name for Heaven Is A Place On Earth (EN) / This Side of Paradise (人间天堂) (CN).

—

[SUMMARY OF THE 1944 MOVIE]

Here I summarised the important parts that will eventually be relevant in the analysis related to the game.

Insurance salesman Walter Neff, wounded from a gunshot, enters his office and confesses his crime on a dictaphone to his boss Barton Keyes, the claims manager. Much earlier, he had met Phyllis Dietrichson, the wife of Mr. Dietrichson and former nurse. Neff had initially wanted to meet Mr. Dietrichson because of car insurance. Phyllis claims her husband is mean to her and that his life insurance goes to his daughter Lola. With Neff seduced by Phyllis, they eventually brew up a scheme to murder Mr. Dietrichson in such a way that they activate the "double indemnity" clause, and the plan goes off almost perfectly. Initially, the death is labeled a suicide by the president of the company, Norton. 

Keyes finds the whole situation suspicious, and starts to suspect Phyllis may have had an accomplice. The label on the death goes from accidental, to suicide, to then murder. When it’s ruled that the husband had no idea of the accidental policy, the company refuses to pay. Neff befriends Phyllis’ stepdaughter Lola, and after finding out Phyllis may have played a part in the death of her father’s previous wife, Neff begins to fear for Lola and himself, as the life insurance would go all towards her, not Phyllis.

After the plan begins to unravel as a witness is found, it comes out that Lola’s boyfriend Nino Zachette has been visiting Phyllis every night after the murder. Neff goes to confront Phyllis, intending to kill her. Phyllis has her own plans, and ends up shooting him, but is unable to fire any more shots once she realises she did love him. Neff kills her in two shots. Soon after telling Zachette not to go inside the house, Neff drives to his office to record the confession. When Keyes arrives, Neff tells him he will go to Mexico, but he collapses before he could get out of the building.

—

[THE PENACONY MISSION TIMELINE]

I won’t be summarising the entirety of Aventurine and Ratio’s endeavours from the beginning of their relationship to their final conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth the same way as I summarised the plot of the movie, so I will instead present a timeline. Bolded parts means they are important and have clear parallels, and texts that are in [brackets] and italics stand for the names of either the light cone, or the mission names.

[Final Victor] Their first meeting. Ratio’s ideals are turned on its head as he finally meets his match.

Several missions happen in-between their first encounter and the Penacony project. They come to grow so close and trusting with each other that they can guess, understand each other’s thoughts, way of thinking and minds even in high stakes missions. Enough to pull off the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Aventurine’s E1) and Stag Hunt Game (Aventurine’s E6) and come out on top.

Aventurine turns towards Ratio for assisting him in the Penacony project. Ratio's involvement in the project is implied to be done without the knowledge of Jade, Topaz, and the IPC in general, as he was only sent to Penacony to represent the Intelligentsia Guild, and the two other Stonehearts never mention Ratio.

Aventurine and Ratio cook up the plan to deceive Sunday before ever setting foot on Penacony. Aventurine does not tell Ratio the entirety of his plan.

Aventurine convinces Topaz and Jade to trust him with their Cornerstones. Aventurine also breaks his own Cornerstone and hides it along with the jade within a bag of gift money.

[The Youth Who Chase Dreams] They enter Penacony in the Reverie Hotel. Aventurine is taken to the side by Sunday and has all his valuables taken, which includes the gift money that contains the broken aventurine stone, the jade, and the case containing the topaz.

Aventurine and Ratio speak in a “private” room about how Aventurine messed up the plan. After faking an argument to the all-seeing eyes of Sunday, Ratio leaves in a huff.

Ratio, wearing his alabaster head, is seen around Golden Hour in the (Dusk) Auction House by March 7th.

[Double Indemnity] Ratio meets up with Sunday and “exposes” Aventurine to him. Sunday buys his “betrayal”, and is now in possession of the topaz and jade. Note that this is in truth Ratio betraying Sunday all along.

Ratio meets up with Aventurine again at the bar. Ratio tells Aventurine Sunday wants to see him again.

They go to Dewlight Pavilion and solve a bunch of puzzles to prove their worth to Sunday.

They meet up with Sunday. Sunday forces Aventurine to tell the truth using his Harmony powers. Ratio cannot watch on. It ends with Aventurine taking the gift money with his Cornerstone.

[Heaven Is A Place On Earth] They are in Golden Hour. Ratio tries to pry Aventurine about his plan, but Aventurine reins him in to stop breaking character. Ratio gives him the Mundanite’s Insight before leaving. This is their final conversation before Aventurine’s grandest death.

Now how exactly does the word “double indemnity” relate to their mission in-game? What is their payout? For the IPC, this would be Penacony itself — Aventurine, as the IPC ambassador, handing in the Jade Cornerstone as well as orchestrating a huge show for everybody to witness his death, means the IPC have a reason to reclaim the former prison frontier. As for Ratio, his payout would be information on Penacony’s Stellaron, although whether or not this was actually something he sought out is debatable. And Aventurine? It’s highly implied that he seeks an audience with Diamond, and breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone is a one way trip to getting into hot water with Diamond. With Aventurine’s self-destructive behaviour, however, it would also make sense to say that death would be his potential payout, had he taken that path in the realm of IX.

Compared to the movie, the timeline happens in reverse and opposite in some aspects. I will get into it later. As for the intended parallels, these are pretty clear and cut:

Veritas Ratio - Walter Neff

Aventurine - Phyllis Dietrichson

Sunday - Mr. Dietrichson

There is one other character who I feel also is represented in Ratio, but I won’t bring them up until later down the line.

For the sake of this analysis, I won’t be exploring Sunday’s parallel to Mr. Dietrichson, as there isn’t much on Dietrichson’s character in the first place in both the movie and the novel. He just kind of exists to be a bastard that is killed off at the halfway point. Plus, the analysis is specifically hyper focused on the other two.

—

[SO, WHAT’S THE PLAN?]

To make things less confusing in the long run whenever I mention the words “scheme” and “plan”, I will be going through the details of Phyllis and Neff’s scheme, and Aventurine and Ratio’s plan respectively. Anything that happens after either pair separate from another isn’t going to be included. Written in a way for the plans to have gone perfectly with no outside problems.

Phyllis and Neff —> Mr. Dietrichson

Goal: Activate the double indemnity clause by killing Mr. Dietrichson and making it look like a freak train accident

Payout: Twice or more of the face value of the life insurance ($100,000)

Main Actor: Walter Neff    |    Accomplice: Phyllis Dietrichson

During the entire time until the payout, Phyllis and Neff have to make sure to any outsiders that they look like complete strangers instead of lovers in an affair.

Step-by-step:

Neff convinces Mr. Dietrichson to sign the policy with the clause without him suspecting foul play, preferably with a third party to act as an alibi. This is done discreetly, making Mr. Dietrichson not read the policy closely and being told to just sign.

Neff and Phyllis talk to each other about small details through the phone (specified to be never at Phyllis’ own house and never when Neff was in his office) and in the marketplace only, to make their meetings look accidental. They shouldn’t be seen nor tracked together, after all.

Phyllis asks Mr. Dietrichson to take the train. She will be the one driving him to the train station.

On the night of the murder, after making sure his alibi is airtight, Neff sneaks into their residence and hides in their car in the second row seating, behind the front row passenger seat. He wears the same colour of clothes as Mr. Dietrichson.

Phyllis and Mr. Dietrichson get inside the car — Phyllis in the driver’s seat and Mr. Dietrichson in the passenger seat. Phyllis drives. On the way to the train station, she makes a detour into an alley. She honks the horn three times.

After the third honk, Neff breaks Mr. Dietrichson’s neck. The body is then hidden in the second row seating under a rug.

They drive to the train station. Phyllis helps Neff, now posing as Mr. Dietrichson, onto the train. The train leaves the station.

Neff makes it to the observation platform of the parlour car and drops onto the train tracks when nobody else is there.

Phyllis is at the dump beside the tracks. She makes the car blink twice as a signal.

The two drag Mr. Dietrichson’s corpse onto the tracks.

They leave.

When Phyllis eventually gets questioned by the insurance company, she pretends she has no idea what they are talking about and eventually storms off.

Phyllis and Neff continue to lay low until the insurance company pays out.

Profit!

Actual Result: The actual murder plan goes almost smoothly, with a bonus of Mr. Dietrichson having broken a leg. But with him not filing a claim for the broken leg, a witness at the observation platform, and Zachette visiting Phyllis every night after the murder, Keyes works out the murder scheme on his own, but pins the blame on Phyllis and Zachette, not Neff.

Now for Aventurine and Ratio. You can skip this section if you understand how deep their act goes, but to those who need a refresher, here’s a thorough explanation:

Aventurine and Ratio —> Sunday

Goal: Collect the aventurine stone without Sunday knowing, ruin the dream (and create the grandest death)

Payout: Penacony for the IPC, information on the Stellaron for Ratio, a meeting with Diamond / death for Aventurine

Main Actor: Aventurine    |    Accomplice: Veritas Ratio

From the moment they step onto Penacony, they are under Sunday’s ever present and watchful eyes. “Privacy” is a foreign word to The Family. They have to act like they don’t like each other’s company the entire time and feed Sunday information through indirect means so that the eventual “betrayal” by Ratio seems truthful to Sunday. Despite what it looks like, they are closer than one would ever think, and Ratio would never sell out a person purely for information.

Step-by-step:

After Sunday takes away the bag of gift money and box, Aventurine and Ratio talk in a room in the Reverie Hotel.

Aventurine establishes the Cornerstones’ importance, and how he lost the gift money and the case containing the Cornerstones to Sunday. Ratio turns to leave, saying “some idiot ruined everything”, meaning the Cornerstones were vital to their plan. (Note that Ratio is not wearing his alabaster head while saying it to said “idiot”.)

Aventurine then proceeds to downplay the importance of the Cornerstones, stating they are “nothing more than a few rocks” and “who cares if they are gone”. This lets Sunday know that something suspicious may be going on for him to act like it’s nothing, and the mention of multiple stones, and leaves him to look up what a Cornerstone is to the Ten Stonehearts of the IPC.

Ratio points out his absurd choice of outfit, mentioning the Attini Peacock and their song.

Ratio implies that without the aventurine stone, he is useless to the IPC. He also establishes that Aventurine is from Sigonia(-IV), and points out the mark on his neck. To Sunday, this means that Aventurine is shackled to the IPC, and how Aventurine may possibly go through extreme lengths to get the stone back, because a death sentence always looms above him.

Aventurine claims Ratio had done his homework on his background, which can be taken that this is their very first time working together. (It isn’t, and it only takes one look to know that Aventurine is an Avgin because of his unique eyes, so this comment does not make sense even in a “sincere” way, a running theme for the interaction.)

Ratio mentions how the true goal is to reclaim Penacony for the IPC, establishing their ulterior motive for attending the banquet.

Ratio asks if Aventurine went to pre-school in Sigonia after saying trust was reliant on cooperation. Aventurine mentions how he didn’t go to school and how he doesn’t have any parents. He even brings up how friends are weapons of the Avgins. This tells Sunday that the Avgins supposedly are good at manipulation and potentially sees Ratio possibly betraying Aventurine due to his carelessness with his “friends”. Sunday would also then research about the Avgins in general (and research about Sigonia-IV comes straight from the Intelligentsia Guild.)

Ratio goes to Dewlight Pavilion in Sunday’s Mansion and exposes a part of Aventurine’s “plan”. When being handed the suitcase, Ratio opens it up due to his apparent high status in the IPC. He tells Sunday that the Cornerstone in the suitcase is a topaz, not an aventurine, and that the real aventurine stone is in the bag of gift money. This is a double betrayal — on Aventurine (who knows) and Sunday (who doesn’t). Note that while Ratio is not officially an IPC member in name — the Intelligentsia Guild (which is run by the IPC head of the Technology Department Yabuli) frequently collaborates with the IPC. Either Aventurine had given him access to the box, or Ratio’s status in general is ambiguous enough for Sunday not to question him further. He then explains parts of Aventurine’s gamble to Sunday in order to sell the betrayal. Note that Ratio does not ever mention Aventurine’s race to Sunday.

Ratio brings Aventurine to Sunday. Aventurine offers help in the investigation of Robin's death, requesting the gift money and the box in return.

Sunday objects to the trade offer. Aventurine then asks for just the bag. A classic car insurance sales tactic. Sunday then interrogates Aventurine, and uses everything Ratio and Aventurine brought up in the Reverie Hotel conversation and their interactions in the Mansion, as well as aspects that Ratio had brought up to Sunday himself.

Aventurine feigns defeat and ignorance enough so that Sunday willingly lets him go with the gift bag. After all is said and done, Aventurine leaves with the gift money, where the Aventurine Cornerstone is stored all along.

Ratio and Aventurine continue to pretend they dislike each other until they go their separate ways for their respective goals and plans. Aventurine would go on to orchestrate his own demise at the hands of Acheron, and Ratio… lurks in the shadows like the owl he is.

Profit!

Actual Result: The plan goes perfectly, even with minor hiccups like Ratio coming close to breaking character several times and Aventurine being sentenced to execution by Sunday.

This is how Sunday uses the information he gathered against Aventurine:

• Sunday going on a tirade about the way Aventurine dresses and how he’s not one to take risks — Ratio’s comment about Aventurine’s outfit being peacock-esque and how he’s “short of a feather or two”. • “Do you own a Cornerstone?” — Ratio talked about the aventurine stone. • “Did you hand over the Cornerstone to The Family when you entered Penacony?” — Aventurine mentioned the box containing the Cornerstones. • “Does the Cornerstone you handed over to The Family belong to you?” — Aventurine specifically pluralized the word Cornerstone and “a bunch of rocks” when talking to Ratio. • “Is your Cornerstone in this room right now?” — The box in the room supposedly contained Aventurine’s own cornerstone, when Aventurine mentioned multiple stones. • “Are you an Avgin from Sigonia?” —Aventurine mentioned that he’s an Avgin, and Ratio brought up Sigonia. • “Do the Avgins have any ability to read, control, and manipulate one’s own or another’s minds?” — Aventurine’s comment on how friends are weapons, as well as Sunday’s own research on the Avgins, leading him to find out about the negative stereotypes associated with them. • “Do you love your family more than yourself?” — His lost parents. “All the Avgins were killed in a massacre. Am I right?” — Based on Sunday’s research into his background. • “Are you your clan’s sole survivor?” — Same as the last point. “Do you hate and wish to destroy this world with your own hands?” — Ratio mentioned the IPC’s goal to regain Penacony, and Aventurine’s whole shtick is “all or nothing”. • “Can you swear that at this very moment, the aventurine stone is safe and sound in this box?” — Repeat.

As seen here, both duos have convoluted plans that involve the deception of one or more parties while also pretending that the relationship between each other isn’t as close as in reality. Unless you knew both of them personally and their histories, there was no way you could tell that they have something else going on. 

On to the next point: Comparing Aventurine and Ratio with Phyllis and Neff.

—

[NEFF & PHYLLIS — RATIO & AVENTURINE]

With the short summaries of the movie and the mission out of the way, let’s look at Phyllis and Neff as characters and how Aventurine and Ratio are similar or opposite to them.

Starting off with Aventurine and Phyllis. Here is where they are the most similar:

Phyllis is blonde and described as a provocative woman. Aventurine is also a blond and eyes Ratio provocatively in the Final Victor light cone.

Phyllis was put under surveillance after Keyes starts figuring out that the so-called accidental death/suicide may have been a murder after all. Similarly, Aventurine was watched by Sunday the entire time in Penacony.

Phyllis never tells Neff how she's seeing another man on the side to possibly kill him too (as well as how she was responsible for the death of her husband‘s previous wife). Aventurine also didn't tell Ratio the entirety of his plan of his own death.

Phyllis puts on a somewhat helpless act at first but is incredibly capable of making things go her way, having everything seemingly wrapped around her finger. Aventurine — even when putting on a facade that masks his true motives — always comes out at the top.

Now the differences between Aventurine and Phyllis:

Phyllis does not care about her family and has no issue with killing her husband, his previous wife, and possibly her daughter Lola. Opposite of that, Aventurine is a family man… with no family left, as well as feeling an insane level of survivor’s guilt.

Really, Phyllis just… does not care at all about anyone but herself and the money. Aventurine, while he uses every trick in the book to get out on top, does care about the way Jade and Topaz had entrusted him with their Cornerstones, in spite of the stones being worth their lives. 

Phyllis also uses other people to her advantage to get what she wants, often behind other people's backs, with the way she treats Neff and Zachette. Aventurine does as well (what with him making deals with the Trailblazer while also making a deal with Black Swan that involves the Trailblazer). The difference here is Phyllis uses her allure deliberately to seduce men while Aventurine simply uses others as pawns while also allowing others to do the same to himself.

Phyllis makes no attempt at compromising the policy when questioned by Norton. Aventurine ends up compromising by only taking the gift money (which is exactly what he needs).

The wig that Barbara Stanwyck (the actress of Phyllis) wore was chosen to make her look as “sleazy” as possible, make her look insincere and a fraud, a manipulator. A sort of cheapness. Aventurine’s flashy peacock-esque outfit can be sort of seen as something similar, except the outfit isn’t cheap.

Moving on to Ratio’s similarities to Neff… There isn’t much to extrapolate here as Ratio is more of a side character in the grand scheme of Penacony, however this is what I’ve figured out.

Neff has dark hair. Ratio has dark purple hair.

Neff almost never refers to Phyllis by her name when speaking with her, only as “baby”. The few times he refers to her as Phyllis or Mrs. Dietrichson is during their first conversations and when he has to act like he doesn’t know her. Ratio never calls Aventurine by his name when he’s around him — only as “gambler”, sometimes “damned” or “dear” (EN-only) gambler. Only in the Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode does Ratio repeatedly say his name, and yet he still calls him by monikers like “gambler” or, bafflingly, a “system of chaos devoid of logic”.

Both Neff and Ratio committed two betrayals: Neff on Mr. Dietrichson and Keyes, and Ratio on Sunday and Aventurine. With the former cases it was to reach the end of the trolley line, and with the latter it was on a man who had put his trust in him.

As for the differences…

Neff is described as someone who’s not smart by his peers. Ratio is someone who is repeatedly idolised and put on a pedestal by other people.

Neff is excellent at pretending to not know nor care for Phyllis whenever he speaks about her with Keyes or when he and she are in a place that could land them in hot water (the office, the mansion when there are witnesses). His acting is on the same level as Phyllis. With Ratio it’s… complicated. While he does pull off the hater act well, he straight up isn’t great at pretending not to care about Aventurine’s wellbeing.

Instead of getting his gunshot wound treated in the hospital like a normal person, Neff makes the absolutely brilliant decision of driving to his office and talking to a dictaphone for hours. Needless to say, this is something a medical doctor like Ratio would never do.

Now here's the thing. Though it's very easy to just look at Phyllis and Neff in the movie and go "okay, Aventurine is Phyllis and Ratio is Neff — end of story" and leave it at that, I find that they both take from the two leads in different ways. Let me explain. Beginning with Aventurine and Neff…

Neff is the one who hatches the plan and encourages Phyllis to go through and claim the double indemnity clause in the first place. He is also the key player of his own risky plan, having to fake being the husband to enter the train as well as fake the death. Aventurine puts himself at great risk just by being in Sunday’s presence, and hoping that Sunday wouldn’t figure out that the green stone he had uncovered wasn’t the aventurine stone.

Adding onto the last point, Neff had fantasised about pulling off the perfect murder for a long time — the catalyst was simply him meeting Phyllis. Aventurine presumably sought out Ratio alone for his plan against Sunday.

Neff makes a roulette wheel analogy and talks about a pile of blue and yellow poker chips (the latter in the script only). I don‘t even have to explain why this is relevant here. (Aventurine’s Ultimate features a roulette wheel and the motif is on his belt, thigh strap, and back, too. And of course, Aventurine is all about his chips.)

Neff has certain ways to hide when he’s nervous, which include hiding his hands in his pockets when they were shaking, putting on glasses so people couldn’t see his eyes. Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back when he’s nervous: Future Aventurine says that "they don't know the other hand is below the table, clutching [his] chips for dear life", and in multiple occasions such as the Final Victor LC, his character trailer, and even in his boss form in the overworld you can see that Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back. And he is also seen with his glasses on sometimes.

Neff says a bunch of stuff to make sure that Phyllis acts her part and does not act out of character (i.e. during their interactions at the market), like how Aventurine repeatedly tries to get Ratio back on track from his subpar acting.

Neff is always one step ahead of the game, and the only reason the plan blows up in his face is due to outside forces that he could not have foreseen (a witness, Keyes figuring out the plan, the broken leg). Aventurine meanwhile plays 5D chess and even with the odds against him, he uses everything he can to come out on the top (i. e. getting Acheron to kill him in the dream).

Even after coming home on the night of the murder, Neff still felt that everything could have gone wrong. Aventurine, with his blessed luck, occasionally wavers and fears everything could go wrong whenever he takes a gamble.

Neff was not put under surveillance by Keyes due to him being extensive with his alibi. After witnessing Robin’s death with eyewitnesses at the scene, the Family had accepted Aventurine’s alibi, though he would be under watch from the Bloodhounds according to Ratio.

Neff talks about the entire murder scheme to the dictaphone. Aventurine during Cat Among Pigeons also retells his plan, albeit in a more convoluted manner, what with his future self and all.

Continuing with Ratio and Phyllis, even with their personalities and motivations being quite different, they do have a few commonalities.

Phyllis was a nurse. Ratio is a medical doctor.

Her name is Greek of origin. Veritas Ratio, though his name is Latin, has Greco-Roman influences throughout his entire character.

The very first scene Phyllis appears in has her wearing a bath towel around her torso. Ratio loves to take baths to clear his mind.

Phyllis was instructed by Neff to be at the market every morning at eleven buying things. Ratio is seen in an auction house with his alabaster head on so no one could recognize him.

Phyllis mostly acts as an accomplice to the scheme, being the one to convince her husband to take the train instead. She is also generally seen only when Neff is involved. Ratio plays the same role as well, only really appearing in the story in relation to Aventurine as well as being the accomplice in Aventurine’s own death. Even him standing in the auction house randomly can be explained by the theory that he and Aventurine had attempted to destabilise Penacony’s economy through a pump and dump scheme.

With these pointers out of the way, let’s take a closer look at select scenes from the film and their relation to the mission and the pair. 

—

[THE PHONE CALL — THE REVERIE HOTEL]

Before the murder, there is a scene with a phone call between Phyllis and Neff discussing the plan while Keyes is in the same room as Neff. Neff has to make sure that Keyes doesn’t think of anything of the phone call, so he acts like he’s calling a “Margie”, and says a bunch of stuff that sounds innocent out of context (“Can’t I call you back, ‘Margie’?” “What color did you pick out?” “Navy blue. I like that fine”), but are actually hinting at the real plan all along (the suit that Mr. Dietrichson wears.)

In a roundabout way, the conversation between Ratio and Aventurine in the Reverie Hotel can be seen as the opposite of that scene — with the two talking about their supposed plan out loud on Penacony ground, a place where the Family (and in turn, Sunday) has eyes everywhere. Despite being in a “private” room, they still act like they hate each other while airing out details that really do not make sense to air out if they really did meet the first time in Penacony (which they didn’t — they’ve been on several missions beforehand). It’s almost like they want a secret third person to know what they were doing, instead of trying to be hushed up about it. The TVs in the room that Sunday can look through based on Inherently Unjust Destiny — A Moment Among The Stars, the Bloodhound statue that disappears upon being inspected, the owl clock on the left which side eyes Ratio and Aventurine, all point to that Sunday is watching their every move, listening to every word.

Rewinding back to before the phone call, in one of the encounters at the marketplace where they “accidentally” run into each other, Phyllis talks about how the trip was off. How her husband wouldn’t get on the train, which was vital for their plan, because of a broken leg. All this, while pretending to be strangers by the passersby. You could say that the part where Ratio almost leaves because Aventurine had “ruined the plan” is the opposite of this, as the husband breaking his leg was something they couldn’t account for, while Aventurine “being short of a few feathers” was entirely part of the plan.

—

[QUESTIONING PHYLLIS — THE INTERROGATION]

This section is going to be a little longer as I will cover two scenes in the movie in a more detailed manner — Mr. Dietrichson signing the policy, and Phyllis being questioned — and how they are represented in the Sunday-Aventurine interrogation and the prior conversation between Ratio and Sunday in multitudes of ways.

Going about their plan, Neff has to make sure that Mr. Dietrichson signs the policy with the double indemnity clause without him knowing the details, all the while having Phyllis (and Lola) in the same room. He and Phyllis have to pretend that they don’t know each other, and that this is just the standard accidental insurance process, instead of signing what would be his downfall. To sell it, he gets Mr. Dietrichson to sign two “copies” of the form, except with Mr. Dietrichson’s second signature, he’s duped into signing the accident insurance policy with the respective clause.

You can tie this to how Ratio goes to Sunday in order to “expose” the lie that the suitcase didn’t actually contain the Aventurine Cornerstone, as well as there being more than one Cornerstone involved in the scheme. Ratio must make sure that Sunday truly believes that he dislikes Aventurine’s company, while also making sure that Sunday doesn’t figure out the actual aventurine stone is broken and hidden in the gift bag. The scheme turns out to be successful, as Sunday retrieves the two Cornerstones, but not the aventurine stone, and truly does think that the green stone he has in his possession is the aventurine.

This whole scene with Sunday is also reminiscent of the interrogation scene in the middle of the movie, where Phyllis was questioned by the boss (Norton) who was deducing that Mr. Dietrichson's death was a suicide, not accidental death. Neff, Phyllis, Keyes and Norton were all in the same room, and Neff and Phyllis had to act like they never knew the other. Phyllis acts like she knows nothing about what Norton insinuates about her husband and eventually, Phyllis explodes in anger and storms out the room, even slamming the door. Her act is very believable to any outsider.

Now back to the Ratio and Sunday conversation. One glaring difference between the movie and here is that his acting isn’t great compared to either Phyllis nor Neff. It never was throughout the Penacony mission. He even comes very close to breaking character several times, and is even defending Aventurine in a somewhat aggressive manner during his one-on-one conversation with Sunday, as in he literally tells Sunday to see a shrink. It’s very different from the way he was acting in Herta Space Station — like Ratio cares about Aventurine too much to keep his hands off.

It's also worth pointing out that Neff doesn't speak a word when Phyllis was being interrogated. Similarly, Ratio is silent throughout the entire scene with Sunday and Aventurine, with his only “line” being a “hm”. When Aventurine calls him a wretch to his face, all he does is look to the side. In fact, he can only look at Aventurine when the other isn’t staring back. Almost like him uttering a single word would give them away. Or his acting is terrible when it has to do with Aventurine, as he has no issue doing the same thing in Crown of the Mundane and Divine (Mundane Troubles).

So, Sunday finds out about the Cornerstones and reveals them to Aventurine, and reasons that he cannot give them back to him because Aventurine had lied. Note that in that same scene, Aventurine attempted to use the two murders that had occurred beforehand against Sunday to retrieve his own cornerstone. Similarly, when it was revealed that Mr. Dietrichson did not know about the accident policy and that the so-called “accidental death” was not, in fact, accidental, the insurance company refused to pay out the money.

Unlike the movie, this was all planned, however. The double-crossing by Ratio, the gift money being the only thing required for Aventurine’s real plan. All of it was an act of betrayal against Sunday, in the same manner as the meticulous planning as Mr. Dietrichson’s murder — To sign the policy, get him to take the train, kill him on the way, and to have Neff pose as the husband on the train until the time is right to get off and lay the body on the tracks. A key difference is that they could not have expected their scheme to be busted wide open due to forces outside of their control, while Ratio and Aventurine went straight down the line for the both of them no matter what.

From here on out, we can conclude that the way Ratio and Aventurine present themselves in Penacony to onlookers is in line with Neff and Phyllis.

—

[“GOODBYE, BABY” — FINAL VICTOR]

And now for the (in)famous light cone, Final Victor. The thing that truly kickstarted the Ratio and Aventurine ship in the fanbase, and the partnership between the two in general. It’s a direct reference to the final confrontation between Neff and Phyllis in the movie.

I’ll fire through all the similarities between the two scenes.

During the respective scenes, Aventurine and Phyllis both outsmart their partner one way or the other: Aventurine with his one-sided game of Russian Roulette, and Phyllis hiding her gun underneath the cushions until Neff turned away.

The guns are owned by Phyllis and Aventurine, not Neff and Ratio.

Phyllis couldn’t bring herself to fire any more shots after she realised she truly did love Neff. Ratio could do nothing but watch as Aventurine did what he did — he couldn’t even pull away if the LC animation is anything to go by him struggling as Aventurine firmly keeps the gun to his chest.

Neff says he doesn’t buy (believe) that Phyllis loved him. She then goes “I’m not asking you to buy […]”. The LC description has Aventurine ask Ratio “You don’t believe me?”, while in the LC animation Ratio straight up says “You expect me to believe you?” and Aventurine answering “Why not, doctor/professor?”

The visual composition of the LC and the scene are nearly identical, from the lighting to the posing to the way Aventurine looks at Ratio — Aventurine and Ratio are even wearing different outfits to fit the scene better. The background in the LC is also like the blinders in the movie, just horizontal.

In the shot where Phyllis’ face is more visible, the way she looks at Neff is strikingly like the way provocatively looks at Ratio. Even their eyes have a visible shine — Phyllis’ eyes brightly shining the moment she realised she really fell in love with Neff, and Aventurine having just a little light return to his eyes in that specific moment.

And now the differences!

Neff holds the gun in his right hand. Aventurine makes Ratio hold his gun in his left.

Neff is the one who takes the gun from Phyllis‘ hand. Aventurine is the one who places the gun in Ratio’s hand and fires it.

Three gunshots are fired. In the movie, Phyllis shoots the first shot and Neff the second and third. Aventurine unloads the gun and leaves only one bullet for this game of Russian Roulette. He pulls the trigger three times, but they all turn out to be blanks.

Phyllis does not break her façade of not smiling until the very last moment where she gets shot. Aventurine is smiling the entire time according to the light cone description, whilst in the animation, it’s only when he guides the gun to his chest that he puts it on.

So, you know how Neff meets Phyllis and it all goes off the rails from there. The way Neff goes from a decent guy to willingly involve himself in a murder scheme, having his morals corrupted by Phyllis. His world having been turned upside down the moment he lays eyes on Phyllis in that first meeting. Doesn’t that sound like something that happened with the Final Victor LC? Ratio, a man all about logic and rationality — a scholar with eight PhDs to his name — all of that is flipped on its head the moment Aventurine pulls out his gun in their first meeting and forces Ratio to play a game of Russian roulette with him. Aventurine casually gambles using his own life like it’s nothing and seemingly without fear (barring his hidden left hand). All or nothing — and yet Aventurine comes out alive after three blanks. Poetic, considering there’s a consumable in the game called “All or Nothing” which features a broken chess piece and a poker chip bound together by a tie. The poker chip obviously represents the gambler, but the chess piece specifically stands for Ratio because he plays chess in his character trailer, his Keeping Up With Star Rail episode and his introduction is centred around him playing chess with himself. Plus, the design of the chess piece has golden accents, similar to his own chess set. In the end, Aventurine will always be the final victor.

Furthermore, Neff had deduced that Phyllis wanted to kill her husband and initially wanted no part in it, but in a subsequent visit it was his own idea that they trigger the double indemnity clause for more money. As the movie progresses though, he starts to have his doubts (thanks in part to him befriending Lola) and makes the move to kill Phyllis when everything starts to come to light. It’s strikingly similar to how Ratio initially wanted no part in whatever Aventurine had in mind when they first met, but in the subsequent missions where they were paired up, he willingly goes along with Aventurine's risky plans, and they come to trust each other. Enough so that Aventurine and Ratio can go to Penacony all on their own and put on an act, knowing that nobody in the IPC other than them can enter the Dreamscape. The mutual respect grew over time, instead of burning passionately before quickly fizzling out like in the movie.

Basically, in one scene, three shots (blanks) start a relationship, and in the other, it ends a relationship. In the anan magazine interview with Aventurine, he says himself that “form[ing] an alliance with just one bullet” with Ratio was one of his personal achievements. The moment itself was so impactful for both parties that it was immortalised and turned into a light cone.

—

[THE ENDING — GOLDEN HOUR]

The ending of Double Indemnity that made it into the final cut has Neff continue his confession on the dictaphone until he realised that he wasn’t alone in the room. Keyes had come inside at some point, but none had said a thing, only listening to a dead man speak of his crime. When Neff sees Keyes, they talk for a moment, Neff says he plans on fleeing to Mexico. Keyes does not think he will make it. He tries to leave, only to collapse at the front of the elevator, Keyes following just behind him. Neff attempts to light a cigar but is too weak to do so, so Keyes does it for him.

Parts of the ending can still be attributed to the interrogation scene between Sunday and Aventurine, so I’ll make this quick before moving on to the conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Ratio and Aventurine’s final conversation together. Once Sunday mentions how quickly Aventurine gave up the suitcase, he inflicts the Harmony’s consecration on him, which forces Aventurine to confess everything that Sunday asks of. In a way, it’s the opposite of what happens in the movie — where Neff willingly tells the truth about the murder to his coworker. Aventurine does not like Sunday, and Neff is close to Keyes. Ratio also does not speak, similarly to how Keyes didn’t speak and stood silently off to the side.

Post-interrogation in Golden Hour, Ratio worriedly prods at Aventurine and asks him about his plan. He then gives him the Mundanite’s Insight with the Doctor’s Advice inside when Aventurine tells him to leave. Throughout Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Aventurine gets weaker and his head starts to buzz, until he falls to the ground before he can hand in the final gems. Similarly, Neff progressively grows weaker as he records his confession. Keyes says he’s going to call a doctor and Neff says he’s planning to go to Mexico. And when Neff collapses near the elevator, they talk one final time and Keyes lights Neff’s cigar as the other was too weak to do so himself.

—

[OPPOSITE TIMELINES AND DEVELOPMENTS]

Remember how I said the way certain events happen in the movie and the game are mostly opposite and reverse of one another? 

The Final Victor LC is the first meeting of Ratio and Aventurine, and Neff killing Phyllis is their final meeting.

Between that first and last meeting between Phyllis and Neff’s whirlwind romance, their relationship becomes strained which ultimately leads to Neff not trusting whatever Phyllis has to say at the end point of the movie. As for Ratio and Aventurine, the exact opposite had happened, to the point where Ratio trusts Aventurine enough to go along with his plans even if they went against his own ideals. The basis of the mission involved Veritas Ratio, whose full name includes the Latin word for “truth”, lying the entire time on Penacony.

Aventurine is sentenced to the gallows by Sunday after his unwilling interrogation. The movie starts and ends with Neff willingly confessing everything to Keyes.

It bears repeating, but I have to make it so clear that the trust between Ratio and Aventurine runs incredibly deep. Being able to predict what your partner says and thinks and plans in a mission as critical as the Penacony project is not something first-time co-workers can pull off flawlessly. All the while having to put on masks that prevent you from speaking sincerely towards one another lest you rat yourselves out. You have no way of contacting outside reinforcements from within Penacony, as the rest of the IPC are barred from entering. To be able to play everybody for fools while said fools believe you yourselves have handed your case on a silver platter requires a lot — trust, knowledge of the other, past experience, and so on. With Phyllis and Neff, the trust they had had been snuffed out when Neff grew closer to Lola and found out what kind of person Phyllis truly was on the inside. Phyllis did not trust nor love Neff enough and was going behind his back to meet with Zachette to possibly take Neff and Lola out. And the whole reason Neff wanted to perpetrate the murder was due to him being initially taken by Phyllis' appearance, which single handedly got the ball rolling on the crime.

Now then, how come trust is one of the defining aspects of Aventurine and Ratio’s relationship, when Phyllis and Neff’s trust eventually lead to both their deaths at the hands of the other? Sure, this can be explained away with the opposite theory, but there’s one other relationship involving Neff which I haven’t brought up in excruciating detail yet. The other side of Ratio and Aventurine’s relationship.

—

[NEFF & KEYES — AVENTURINE & RATIO]

Here is where it gets more interesting — while Phyllis and Neff are at the centre point of the movie, there is another character to whom Neff has a close relationship with — Keyes. It’s also the only relationship with no pretences, at least, until the whole murder thing happened and Neff had to hide his involvement from Keyes. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but feel there was something more to the two than meets the eye. I knew that queer readings of the film existed, but I didn't think too much of them until now. And though Aventurine and Ratio parallel Phyllis and Neff respectively, the fact that they also have traits of their opposite means that it wouldn’t be completely out of the question if parts of their relationship were also influenced by Keyes and Neff on a deeper and personal level. Let me explain.

Keyes and Neff were intimate friends for eleven years and have shown mutual respect and trust towards one another. They understood each other on a level not seen with Phyllis and Neff. Even after hearing Neff confess his crimes through the dictaphone (and eventually standing in the same room while Neff confessed), he still cared for the other man, and stayed with him when Neff collapsed at the front door. The only reason Keyes hadn’t deduced that it was Neff who was behind the murder was because he had his absolute trust in him. Keyes is also Neff’s boss, and they are always seen exchanging playful banter when they are on screen together. Neff even says the words “I love you, too” twice in the movie — first at the beginning and second at the end, as the final line. There’s also the persistent theme of Neff lighting Keyes’ cigarettes (which happens in every scene where they are face-to-face), except in the end where it’s Keyes who lights Neff’s.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Mutual respect, caring too much about the other person, the immense amount of trust… Ratio says he’s even the manager of the Penacony project (which may or may not be a lie), and despite their banter being laced with them acting as “enemies”, you can tell that in Dewlight Pavilion pre-Sunday confrontation that Aventurine genuinely likes Ratio’s company and believes him to be a reliable person. From the way he acts carefree in his words to the thoughts in his head, as seen in the mission descriptions for Double Indemnity. Their interactions in that specific mission are possibly the closest thing to their normal way of speaking that we get to see on Penacony.

Not to mention, this is the way Neff describes Keyes. He even says (not in the script) “you never fooled me with your song and dance, not for a second.” Apart from the line about the cigar ashes, doesn’t this ring a bell to a certain doctor? “Jerk” with a heart of gold?

After solving the puzzle with the statues, Ratio jokingly offers Aventurine to join the Genius Society. Aventurine then goes "Really? I thought you’ve given up on that already", and then Ratio says it was, in fact, a joke. Solving the puzzle through brute force has Ratio telling Aventurine that the Council of Mundanites (which Ratio himself is a part of) should consider him a member. In the movie, where the scene with the phone call with Neff and Phyllis reiterating details of their plan happens, Keyes actually offered Neff a better job (specifically a desk job, as Keyes’ assistant). The two pairs saw the other as smart, equals, and were invested in each other’s careers one way or another.

Because of all this, the character parallels for this side of the relationship are as follows:

Aventurine - Walter Neff

Veritas Ratio - Barton Keyes

With the way I’ve talked about how Aventurine and Ratio take from both leads in terms, it does fit to say that Aventurine is Neff, and Ratio is Keyes in this layer of their relationship. Since we’re on the topic of Keyes, let me also go through some similarities with him and Ratio specifically.

Keyes says the words “dimwitted amateurs” in his first on-screen conversation with Neff. You can’t have Dr. Ratio without him talking about idiocy in some way.

Keyes almost only appears in the movie in relation to Neff, and barring a single interaction in Neff’s house, is also only seen in the office. Same with Phyllis, Ratio also only ever appears regarding Aventurine.

Keyes genuinely wanted the best for Neff, even offering to celebrate with him when he thought the case truly had been busted wide open by forces when Zachette entered the picture. You could say the same for Ratio, as he hoped that Aventurine wouldn’t dwell on the past according to his response on Aventurine’s Interview, as well as telling him to “stay alive/live on (CN)” and wishing him the best of luck in his Doctor’s Advice note.

Whether or not you believe that there was more going on with Neff and Keyes is up to you, but what matters is that the two were very close. Just like Ratio and Aventurine.

—

[THE ORIGINAL FILM ENDING]

Something that I hadn’t seen brought up is the original ending of Double Indemnity, where Neff is executed in a gas chamber while Keyes watches on, shocked, and afterwards leaves somberly. The ending was taken out because they were worried about the Hays Code, but I felt it was important to bring it up, because in a way, you can kind of see the Sunday interrogation scene as Sunday sending Aventurine to his death in seventeen system hours. And Ratio doesn’t speak at all in that scene, and Keyes doesn’t either according to the script.

Another thing that’s noteworthy is that Wilder himself said “the story was about the two guys” in Conversations with Wilder. The two guys in question are Keyes and Neff.

—

[THE NOVEL]

With the original film ending covered, now it is time to bring up the novel by James M. Cain. I bought the book just to read about the differences between the adaptation and the original source material, and to list a few more similarities and opposites I could gather. For this section alone, due to the changes in the (last) names of certain characters, I will be referring to Walter Huff (Neff in the movie) as Walter, and Mr. Dietrichson as Nirdlinger. The plot is pretty much the same as the movie’s apart from a couple of changes so there isn’t a need to recount everything.

From my two read-throughs of the novel, these are the following passages that stood out to me the most. Starting with Aventurine:

Walter, as a top businessman of the company, knows how to sway a deal and to get what he truly wants with what the other gives him. Aventurine is the same, reliant on his intuition, experience and whatever information he has on the table to claim the win. Him luring out Sparkle in Heaven Is A Place On Earth and his conversation with Acheron in the Nihility is indicative of that.

• "But you sell as many people as I do, you don't go by what they say. You feel it, how the deal is going. And after a while I knew this woman didn't care anything about the Automobile Club. Maybe the husband did, but she didn't. There was something else, and this was nothing but a stall. I figured it would be some kind of a proposition to split the commission, maybe so she could get a ten-spot out of it without the husband knowing. There's plenty of that going on. And I was just wondering what I would say to her." 

Phyllis, like in the movie, had been hiding her true intentions of talking to Walter in their first conversations, always saying things that she didn’t actually mean. In a similar vein, Aventurine consistently says stuff but almost never truly means any of it, which is all part of his façade.

• "And I could feel it again, that she wasn't saying what she meant. It was the same as it was the first afternoon I met her, that there was something else, besides what she was telling me. And I couldn't shake it off, that I had to call it on her."

When discussing the murder plan with Phyllis, Walter makes this comment, kind of like how Aventurine seems to operate in a way where he has a plan, but is ready to improvise and think fast when needed.

• "And then it's one of those things where you've got to watch for your chance, and you can't plan it in advance, and know where you're going to come out to the last decimal point."

Remember the roulette wheel line from the movie? In the novel, the gambling metaphor that Walter makes about the insurance business goes on for two paragraphs, mentioning a gambling wheel, stack of chips, a place with a big casino and the little ivory ball, even about a bet on the table. Walter also talks about how he thinks of tricks at night after being in the business for so long, and how he could game the system. Needless to say, insanely reminiscent of Aventurine.

• "You think I’m nuts? All right, maybe I am. But you spend fifteen years in the business I’m in, and maybe a little better than that, it’s the friend of the widow, the orphan, and the needy in time of trouble? It’s not. It’s the biggest gambling wheel in the world. It don’t look like it, but it is, from the way they figure the percentage on the oo to the look on their face when they cash your chips. You bet that your house will burn down, they bet it won’t, that’s all. What fools you is that you didn’t want your house to burn down when you made the bet, and so you forget it’s a bet. To them, a bet is a bet, and a hedge bet don’t look any different than any other bet. But there comes a time, maybe, when you do want your house to burn down, when the money is worth more than the house. And right there is where the trouble starts." • "Alright, I’m an agent. I’m a croupier in that game. I know all their tricks, I lie awake thinking up tricks, so I’ll be ready for them when they come at me. And then one night I think up a trick, and get to thinking I could crook the wheel myself if I could only put a plant out there to put down my bet." • "I had seen so many houses burned down, so many cars wrecked, so many corpses with blue holes in their temples, so many awful things that people had pulled to crook the wheel, that that stuff didn’t seem real to me anymore. If you don’t understand that, go to Monte Carlo or some other place where there’s a big casino, sit at a table, and watch the face of the man that spins the little ivory ball. After you’ve watched it a while, ask yourself how much he would care if you went out and plugged yourself in the head. His eyes might drop when he heard the shot, but it wouldn’t be from the worry whether you lived or died. It would be to make sure you didn’t leave a bet on the table, that he would have to cash for your estate. No, he wouldn’t care."

Returning home from the murder, Walter attempted to pray, but was unable to do it. Some time passed and after speaking to Phyllis, he prayed. Aventurine presumably hadn’t done the prayer ever since the day of the massacre, and the first time he does it again, he does it with his child self.

• "I went to the dining room and took a drink. I took another drink. I started mumbling to myself, trying to get so I could talk. I had to have something to mumble. I thought of the Lord's Prayer. I mumbled that, a couple of times. I tried to mumble it another time, and couldn't remember how it went." • "That night I did something I hadn’t done in years. I prayed."

Phyllis in the book is much more inclined towards death than her movie version, even thinking of herself as a personification of death. She’s killed ten other people (including infants) prior to the events of the novel. Something to keep in mind as Aventurine had mentioned several times that he attempted to kill himself in the dream, plus his leadup to his “grandest death”. Just like Phyllis, he’s even killed at least a few people before, though the circumstances of that were less on his own volition and more so for the sake of his survival (i.e. the death game in the maze involving the 34 other slaves where he was the winner and another time where he murdered his own master). Instead of Phyllis playing the active role of Death towards everybody else, Aventurine himself dances with Death with every gamble, every time his luck comes into play. Danse Macabre.

• "But there’s something in me, I don’t know what. Maybe I’m crazy. But there’s something in me that loves Death. I think of myself as Death, sometimes." • "Walter, The time has come. For me to meet my bridegroom [Death]. The only one I ever loved."

Moving on to Ratio:

Walter says several times that it’s hard to get along with Keyes, and how he says nice things after getting you all worked up. A hard-headed man to get along with, but damn good at his job. Sound like someone familiar?

• "That would be like Keyes, that even when he wanted to say something nice to you, he had to make you sore first."  • "It makes your head ache to be around him, but he’s the best claim man on the Coast, and he was the one I was afraid of."

Keyes sees Walter as smarter than half the fools in the company. Ratio can only stand the company of Aventurine in regards to the IPC.

• "Walter, I'm not beefing with you. I know you said he ought to be investigated. I've got your memo right here on my desk. That's what I wanted to tell you. If other departments of this company would show half the sense that you show—" • "Oh, he confessed. He's taking a plea tomorrow morning, and that ends it. But my point is, that if you, just by looking at that man, could have your suspicions, why couldn't they—! Oh well, what's the use? I just wanted you to know it."

After going on a rant about the H.S. Nirdlinger case (Phyllis’ husband) and how Norton is doing a horrible job, he ends it by saying that it’s sheer stupidity. “Supreme idiocy”, anybody?

• "You can’t take many body blows like this and last. Holy smoke. Fifty thousand bucks, and all from dumbness. Just sheer, willful, stupidity!"

Phyllis’ former occupation as a nurse is more elaborated on, including her specialization — pulmonary diseases. One of Ratio’s crowning achievements is curing lithogenesis, the “King of Diseases”.

• "She’s one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles. […] She’s a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would."

As for the murder scheme, they talk about it a lot more explicitly in the novel. Specifically, Walter mentions how a single person cannot get away with it and that it requires more people to be involved. How everything is known to the party committing the crime, but not the victim. And most importantly: Audacity.

"Say, this is a beauty, if I do say it myself. I didn't spend all this time in the business for nothing, did I? Listen, he knows all about this policy, and yet he don't know a thing about it. He applies for it, in writing, and yet he don't apply for it. He pays me for it with his own check, and yet he don't pay me. He has an accident happen to him and yet he don't have an accident happen to him. He gets on the train, and yet he don't get on it."

"The first is, help. One person can't get away with it, that is unless they're going to admit it and plead the unwritten law or something. It takes more than one. The second is, the time, the place, the way, all known in advance—to us, but not him. The third is, audacity. That's the one that all amateur murderers forget. They know the first two, sometimes, but that third, only a professional knows. There comes a time in any murder when the only thing that can see you through is audacity, and I can't tell you why."

"And if we want to get away with it, we've got to do it the way they do it, […]" "Be bold?" "Be bold. It's the only way."

"I still don't know—what we're going to do." "You'll know. You'll know in plenty of time."

"We were right up with it, the moment of audacity that has to be be part of any successful murder."

It fits the situation that Aventurine and Ratio find themselves in extremely well: For the first point— Aventurine would not be able to get away with simply airing out details by himself, as that would immediately cast suspicion on him. Having another person accompany him who not only isn’t really a part of the IPC in name (as the IPC and The Family have a strenuous relationship) but would probably be able to get closer to Sunday because of that means they can simply bounce off each other without risking as much suspicion with a one-man army. Which is exactly what Ratio and Aventurine do in the conversations they have on Penacony. Secondly — they knew how Sunday operates: as a control freak, he leaves no stone unturned, which is how he became Head of the Oak Family, so their acting required them to give off the impression that a. they hated each other, b. Ratio would go against Aventurine’s wishes and expose him in return for knowledge, c. there were only the two Cornerstones that were hidden. This would give Sunday the illusion of control, and lead to Sunday to lower his guard long enough for Aventurine to take the gift money in the end. The pair knew this in advance, but not Sunday. And thirdly — the plan hinged on a high-level of risk. From breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone, to hoping that Sunday wouldn’t find it in the gift bag, to not telling Ratio what the true plan is (meaning Ratio had to figure it out on his own later on), to Sunday even buying Ratio’s story, it was practically the only way they could go about it. “Charming audacity”, indeed.

An interesting aspect about the novel is that the ending of the novel is divergent from the movie’s final cut and the original ending: Phyllis and Walter commit suicide during a ferry ride to Mexico. The main reason this was changed for the movie was because of the Hays Code, and they wouldn’t allow a double suicide to be screened without reprecussions for criminals. There’s also a bunch of other aspects that differentiate the novel from the movie (no narration-confession as the confession happens in a hospital, less characterization for Keyes and instead a bigger focus on Lola and her boyfriend, the focus on the murderous aspect of Walter and Phyllis’ relationship instead of actual romance, Walter falling in love with Lola (with an unfortunately large age gap attached), etc.)

As for the ending, this wouldn’t even be the first romance media reference related to Aventurine and Ratio where both the leads die, with the other being The Happy Prince and San Junipero (in relation to the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth reference), which I normally would chalk up as a coincidence, though with the opposite line-of-thought I have going on here (and the fact that it’s three out of four media references where the couple die at the end…), I think it’s reasonable to say that Ratio and Aventurine will get that happy ending. Subverting expectations, hopefully.

—

[THE HAYS CODE — LGBT CENSORSHIP IN CHINA]

I’ve brought up the Hays code twice now in the previous two sections, but I haven’t actually explained what exactly it entails.

The Hays Code (also known as the Motion Picture Production Code) is a set of rules and guidelines imposed on all American films from around 1934 to 1968, intended to make films less scandalous, morally acceptable and more “safe” for the general audiences. Some of the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” include but are not limited to…

(Don’t) Pointed profanity

(Don’t) Inference of sex perversion (which includes homosexuality)

(Don’t) Nudity

(Be Careful) Sympathy for criminals

(Be Careful) Use of firearms

(Be Careful) Man and woman in bed together

What does this have to do with a Chinese gacha game released in 2023? If you know a little bit about miHoYo’s past, you would know that pre-censorship laws being upheld to a much stronger and stricter degree, they had no problem showcasing their gay couples in Guns Girl Z (Honkai Gakuen 2/GGZ) and Honkai Impact 3rd, with the main three being Bronya/Seele, Kiana/Mei (admittedly the latter one is a more recent example, from 2023), and Sakura/Kallen. Ever since the Bronya and Seele kiss, censorship in regards to LGBT content ramped up, causing the kiss to be removed on the CN side, and they had to lay low with the way they present two same-sex characters who are meant to be together. They can’t explicitly say that two female or male characters are romantically involved, but they can lace their dynamics with references for those “in the know” — Subtext. Just enough to imply something more but not too much that they get censored to hell and back.

So what I’m getting at is this: The trouble that Double Indemnity had to go through in order to be made while also keeping the dialogue of Phyllis and Neff as flirtatious as they could under the Hays Code among other things is quite similar to the way Ratio and Aventurine are presented as of now. We never see them interact outside of Penacony (at least up until 2.2, when this post was drafted), so we can only infer those interactions specifically until they actually talk without the fear of being found out by Sunday. But, there’s still some small moments scattered here and there, such as when Aventurine goes near Ratio in the Dewlight Pavilion Sandpit, he exclaims that “the view here is breathtaking” (he can only see Ratio’s chest from that distance) and that Ratio could “easily squash [him] with just a pinch”. Ratio then goes “If that is your wish, I will do so without a moment’s hesitation.” Not to mention the (in)famous “Doctor, you’re huge!” quote.

It’s not a coincidence that Ratio and Aventurine have three explicit references to romance media (Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince), possibly even four if you take the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth as a reference to Black Mirror’s San Junipero. It’s not a coincidence that the storylines or characters of said references parallel the pairing, from surface-level to deep cuts. It’s not a coincidence that the CN voice actors were asked to “tone it down” by the voice director when it came to their chemistry. It’s not a coincidence that Aventurine has only flirted with (three) men throughout Penacony, even referring to a Bloodhound NPC as a “hunk of a man” inside his thoughts, all the while ignoring Himeko and Robin when it came to their looks — women who are known across the cosmos with a myriad of adoring fans. There are so many other so-called “coincidences” related to the two that you could make an iceberg just based on versions 2.0-2.2 as well as content miHoYo themselves have put out on social media. They absolutely knew what they were doing, and were trying to get their point across through subtle means — the extent they went to with the Double Indemnity reference while also keeping it under wraps from a “surface” level point of view is proof of this — the implications are there if you take the time to look for them, and are simply hard to ignore or deny once you do find them.

—

[CONCLUSION]

This was supposed to be short considering the other analyses I’ve seen were also pretty short in comparison, but I couldn’t get the movie out of my head and ended up getting carried away in the brainrot. I hope you could follow along with my line of thinking, even with the absurd length of this post, and the thirty-image limit. I tried to supplement context with some links to videos and wiki pages among other sources wherever I can to get around it.

I will end it with this though — the love in the movie turned out to be fake and a farce, going off track from what was a passionate romance in the beginning because of the murder scheme. Meanwhile, the whole reason why Ratio and Aventurine can pull off whatever they want is because of their immense trust in one another. What was initially shown to be distrust in the Final Victor LC grew into something more, for Ratio, someone who would have never put faith into mere chance and probability before this, put his trust in Aventurine, of all people.

TL;DR — (I get it, it’s over ten thousand words.)

Not only is the relationship between Neff and Phyllis represented in the deception and acting side of Ratio and Aventurine, but the real and trusting side is shown in Neff and Keyes. They have a fascinating, multi-layered dynamic that is extremely fun to pick apart once you realise what’s going on underneath the bickering and “hatred” they display.

Many thanks to Manya again for making the original thread on the movie. I wouldn’t be here comparing the game and movie myself if it weren’t for that.

By the way, I really do believe that Shaoji totally watched this movie at least once and really wanted that Double Indemnity AU for his OCs. I know exactly how it feels.

—

Other points I'd like to mention that didn't fit anywhere else in the main analysis and/or don’t hold much significance, have nothing to do with the Penacony mission, or may even be considered reaching (...if some of the other points weren’t). Just some potentially interesting side bits.

Phyllis honks three times to signal Neff to go for the kill. That, and the three gunshots in the confrontation. Aventurine is all about the number three.

The height difference Aventurine and Ratio have going on is close to Phyllis and Neff’s.

Phyllis had killed her husband’s previous wife and went on to marry Mr. Dietrichson, pretty much taking the wife’s place. Aventurine killed his previous master, and had taken certain attributes from him like his wristwatch and the rings on his hand and the “all or nothing” mantra.

When calling Ratio a wretch (bastard), Aventurine smiles for a moment. This is exclusive to the EN, KR and JP voiceovers, as in CN, he does not smile at all. (Most definitely a quirk from the AI they use for lip syncing, but the smile is something that’s been pointed out quite a few times so I thought I’d mention it here.)

Sunday specifically says in the CN version that he knew of Aventurine's plans the moment Aventurine left the mansion, meaning that he realized he had been played the fool the moment Ratio and Aventurine talked in Golden Hour

In the description for the "All or Nothing" consumable, teenage Aventurine says this specific line: "Temptation is a virtue for mortals, whereas hesitation proves to be a fatal flaw for gamblers." According to Ratio, this is Aventurine's motto - he says as such in Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode. Note that in the anan interview he explicitly says he does not have a motto, and yet Ratio in the video says otherwise. They definitely have to know each other for a while for Ratio to even know this.

A big reason why Neff even pulled off the murder scheme in the first place was because he wanted to see if his good friend Keyes could figure it out, the Mundane Troubles Trailblaze Continuance showcases Ratio attempting to teach the Herta Space Station researches a lesson to not trust the Genius society as much as they did.

In Keyes’ first scene he’s exposing a worker for writing a policy on his truck that he claimed had burnt down on its own, when he was the one who burnt it down. Ratio gets into an Ace Attorney-style argument with the Trailblazer in Mundane Troubles.

Neff talks repeatedly about how it won’t be sloppy. Nothing weak. And how it’ll be perfect to Phyllis, and how she’s going to do it and he’s going to help her. Doing it right — “straight down the line”. Beautifully ironic, considering what happens in the movie, and even more ironic as Ratio and Aventurine’s scheme went exactly the way they wanted to in the end. Straight down the line.

[kerosene-saint]

me when I fall down a rabbit hole and spend literally over 7 hours reading a first hand account of a horrifying situation and it feels like the pages are never ending and I get so deep into it all that I immerse myself too far and feel like everything is out of control and I'm in the situation that I'm reading and I'm trying to fight tooth and nail to escape a situation I'm not even in but have somehow entered into the mindset of someone who is.

[strstab]

𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐚 - 𝐣.𝐦

summary ; you see a tiktok trend and decide to see if you boyfriend will help you participate in it

pairing ; jj maybank x fem!reader

notes ; soft jj, kissing, video filming, hp & family guy references

a/n ; my first public writing, hopefully ppl see this. if y’all do send requests? i think you can do that.. but enjoy <3

— tiktok in question —

scrolling on tiktok with kie sitting next to you, you came across a video of a girl putting makeup on her best friends face. you let out a small giggle at the thought of your boyfriend with mascara and pretty pink lips.

“what’s funny?” kie asked turning to peek at your phone.

you showed her the video and got up to go find your beloved boyfriend, who coincidentally, had just walked into the room.

“jj, can you help me with something?” you looked at him with pouty lips and sparkles in your eyes only he could see

he lifted a brow and grinned as he looked at you, knowing you were up to something, “it depends on what that something is, baby,”

kie let out a quiet laugh from behind you as she threw your phone towards him, letting him watch the video you previously showed her. knowing you’d be able to convince him happy or not, you started searching through the drawers of your vanity in hopes of having your makeup bag in one of them.

“no way,” jj scoffed with a shake of his head, “you’re not putting makeup on me.”

giving a knowing look to kie, she walked out and closed the door behind her.

this is where the fun began.

after 10 minutes of begging, smacking, pecks to the cheek and tugging, you finally managed to convince your lover to let you do his pretty boy makeup.

you sat on the counter of your bathroom sink with jj standing in between your thighs with his eyes looking straight at you.

“don’t give me that look” he said with a quick eye roll

you smiled as you uncapped the ‘better than sex’ mascara in your hands, “roll your eyes and i’ll poke your eye out with my wand.”

“wand? what are you a witch?” he replied with a soft grin. you lifted his chin and softly ran the inked bristles across his long lashes. god those lashes of his you wish you had. why were men blessed with female preferred features?

“i am, i casted a love spell on you a couple years ago,” you laughed and scolded him for blinking shortly after.

he stared at you in silence, admiring your pretty eyes that tend to crinkle when you smile. the soft lips he kissed every morning he woke up next to you. your perfect nose that just seemed to fit your face structure perfectly. everything about you he fell in love with more by the second, minute, hour, and day.

jj was never good at english class, but ask him to write an essay about you and you’d get a 20 page google document.

getting sucked out of his thoughts as you painted his thin lips a soft shade of pink, “what’s on your mind, j?”

“nothing, just how powerful your spell is on me. did you go to hogwarts, baby?” he questioned with a smile, pushing the strands of hair that covered your pretty face behind your ear.

“fuck yeah, i was fighting dementors and shit” you answered while filling in his eyebrows and putting highlighter in the corners of his eyes.

you finished after another couple of minutes and while pulling out your phone to find the audio you were going to use, jj spoke up with a concerned tone in his voice,

“are you actually going to record me in this?!”

looking up from your phone to look at him you saw his filled in eyebrows furrowed, “duh, that’s the point of the trend, j” you stated.

you weren’t going to let his worried expression get to you because you knew you’d be able to kiss it away in a couple minutes.

he let out a whine in protest but you had already started the video, doing your part, you lip-synced

“do you or do you not feel bonita?”

and with a turn of the phone, the camera faced him and he slightly panicked not knowing what to say.

“you didn’t tell me what i’m supposed to say!”

your lips shaped into an ‘o’ and proceeded to explain how to do the tiktok.

once again, with the flip of the camera jj awkwardly worded his part

“...uhm i feel bonita”

“wonderful, because you look bonita!” you grinned and went back to your phone to caption and post the video

jj pushed your phone aside and placed his lips on yours, in desperate need of affection. you let out a quiet gasp as you were caught off guard but kissed him back anyways.

he placed his hands on your cheeks and pulled away slowly. “do my lips feel prettier?”

you snorted, tilting your head in confusion

“y’know, because they look prettier, do they feel prettier?” he asked again, trying to explain his question

you placed another kiss on his lips and nodded, “yes they feel prettier, baby”

he picked you up, wrapping your legs around his waist as he peppered your face with kisses, leaving pretty pink marks on your glowing skin.

he smiled, pleased with the outcome of his make over.

a win is a win.

check out ocean eyes 🌅 water drops 🧴 & pretty present 🍰

WOAHHH FIRST WRITING HOW WAS THAT.??

hopefully people see this 😓

but anyways i’m a whore for some jj fluff, and the trend has been flooding my fyp so ofc i had to write for my love ❤️‍🩹

[vshushmshu]

pickup lines

usually the red eared slider’s flirts and compliments were flowery, over the top with heaps of silly, and you would roll your eyes at each and every one. grand sweeping gestures, an arm slung around your neck, or running his thumb over your knuckles with a wiggle of brows that didn’t actually exist. it was entertaining, something you would never actually admit outloud, so you never really shut down his teasing. you only let it happen for the hell of it. yeah.

a wink that looked as if his eye momentarily had an uncontrollable spasm, “i would never play hide and seek with you, because someone like you is impossible to find.”

you grimaced as he walked over to sit beside you on the rooftop, “i honestly wish i could hide from this.”

finger guns, “are you from tennessee?? because you’re the only ten-i-see!”

a huff, looking over the city once more before you stopped patrolling for the night, “new york, buddy.”

“you never humor me…”

“you have no idea.”

an irritatingly wide smile, leo splayed out on your bed, “this might sound cheesy, but i think you’re really grate.”

you turn from your homework to cock a brow at him, “…puns? really? you’re stooping to puns now?”

“hey, a turtle’s gouda do what he’s gouda do.”

“i hate you.”

“awww, i love you too!!!”

you were drawing with mikey when your self-proclaimed bestie barreled in, “i seem to have!! lost my phone number!!!! can i have yours?”

the orange clad turtle seemed to be holding in the fattest cackle, so you ignored him to look at leo with a fairly neutral expression, “i thought you already had my number?”

“yeah, but i kinda… deleted it just to make this work..”

“…you’re stupid. i’m friends with an idiot.”

he pouted, until his phone lit up at an unknown number’s message, “and i’m friends with a meanie pants… oh! thanks!”

you shoved your phone back in your pocket while mikey eyed the two of you, his red striped brother already tapping the number into your contact once more, “sure, mhm.”

nabbing a piece of popcorn from your bowl, eyes scrunched from his simper as he glances at you, then lets his eyes land back on raph and april’s mario kart game once more, “it’s a good thing i have a library card, because i am totally checking you out.”

“…aren’t you illiterate or something? do you even know what a library is?”

“shut the fuck up….”

he looked up from his comic as you flopped onto his bed, just having listened attentively to another one of donnie’s infodumps, “did you just come out an oven?”

you huffed, draping an arm over your eyes, “no, leo.”

said turtle leaned over to poke your cheek with a snicker, “‘cause you’re hot.”

“goddammit, leo.”

“is this hogwarts express, because it feels like you and i are going somewhere magical.“

you stared at him as he gestured to a newly opened portal, “man, i swear, are you getting these from buzzfeed articles?? ain’t no way you pulled a harry potter line out your ass like that.”

“…is your name google? ‘cause you got the answers for everything i’m searching for.”

you swore you saw the face of a slider caught, and your eyes twinkled in amusement, “so, you are.”

“LEAVE ME ALONE.”

“your hand looks lonely. want me to hold it for you?”

you readjust your grip on your weapon, eyeing him in a sort of flabbergasted way, “lee, we are literally in the middle of a FIGHT.”

“right, whatever.”

you both were on your phones, the turtle laying on you scrolling through god-knows what, while you watched a video essay on something you were to inevitably forget about. you snickered at an elaborate joke about something or other, and the slider grinned a little, “roses are red, violets are blue. with a smile like that, looks like i’m doomed.”

“…”

you were tempted to kick him off, something inside you churning, but you just refocused on your video once more. his face seemed a little surprised in your peripheral vision, but at what, you couldn’t be sure.

leo sat beside you in blankets, barely conscious in his goofy pajamas during the latter end of a movie night, everyone else already asleep (except for donnie, who could care less about anyone else as his eyes stayed glued to the screen projected on the wall, hyperfixated on a jupiter jim movie he’s no doubt seen a thousand times over), “are you- did you fell from heaven- cause- fuck. i forgot how that one goes.”

you hid a grin behind a facepalm, equally fatigued as his head dipped to rest lightly on your shoulder, neck giving up on keeping it upright, “of course you did.”

sometimes though, those bits of flattery are uttered so quiet, barely above a whisper, the turtle holding such reverence in his tone. like now, just before he drifts off to sleep to no doubt drool all over you, the slider makes himself comfortable buried in your side. you still when his cheek rubs against your shoulder, a content sigh escaping leo while he wraps his arms around you in your shared blanket nest, “hm mwarm… i wish this would last f’rever..”

you can’t doubt that it’s sincere when it’s said like that. you look away from the movie to stare at him with tired eyes, face warm while you fiddled slightly with your fingers, buried under the blankets wrapped around your own body. leo started snoring in record time, light chirps coming from him every time he shifted in his sleep, and you rest your head on his. maybe you wished that too, maybe your mouth twisted into the smallest of frowns, but you decided not to dwell on it.

letting your eyes drift close, and pulling the red eared slider closer, you knew you were going to wake up to dumb pickup lines that held a bit too much sincerity in them. maybe you were glad.

[aachria]

hi pookes, sorry I haven't sent in an ask in a hot minute, I know, you missed me no need to cry [smug/j]. you wouldnt BELIEVE half the things that have happened to me.

for some reason I had a dream that we were friends because you joined a server I was in and you held a poll for who to me your best friend and all my friends voted me..... this may be a sign-

THEN MY PIECE OF SHIT GAMER BROTHER WONT BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING IF GOD CAME DOWN AND SMITES HIM! I reorganized my room, got a bed frame, no not a new one, I got a bed frame, my mattress was on the floor before. it was really comfortable, my bed frame creaks every time I fucking move and my autistic ass cant handle that so I broke down crying at night for two days straight. not even half the insane shit that has happened but anyway I gotta move on. Leon d coin, the only thing I think of and how I imagine he looks like is Leon kuwata from thh, sorry not sorry. the lore is intensifying so you know I'm getting ready to theorise! :p

i have nothing rn, but once I get my life back on track I'll get to theorising. I should probably update the TV tropes page, I made that like half asleep back when you were still at likeeee what? in the 70-80 chapter mark? maybe even 60's, I know I started binge reading this when you were at like chapter 54 or smth. kinda late into it but still pretty early ig.

quick question, what YouTubers do you tend to watch a lot? random question but I'm curious I feel like you'd like kwite. my top 5 are probably, Markiplier, kwite, caseoh, tommyinnit, and jschlatt (I know I'm basic) later skibidi rizzler (I died saying that)

Sorry babydoll as it is currently one of my best friend's bday I cannot in good conscience add another to the roster 😔

My bedframe is also terribly loud and makes me want to cry, I understand pookie. It's the little things that getcha.

I cannot BELIEVE I had healed enough to have to google who that was and not I'm going to manually wipe my memory again so moving swiftly along.

UPDATE THE TV TROPES PAGE AND MY LIFE IS YOURS—

Honestly I don't really watch particular Youtubers, mostly I just watch video essays and retrospectives while I eat. Never call me skibidi rizzler again.

[hismercytomyjustice]

9 People You Want to Get to Know Better

I was tagged a hot minute ago by @ valentinaonthemoon and have been meaning to do this for ages!

Last Song: There Will be Sun from Groundhog Day: The Musical. The music for that show is SO FUCKING GOOD. I was trying to decide on a oneshot fic title and spent like 20 years looking through all my music before finally settling on this one. Wanna give honorable mentions to Daisies by Black Gryph0n & Baasik and Deal Maker by Tyto-Cat because I have been listening incessantly to both over the past few days. So fucking good!

Favorite Color: Teal! Though I also have a soft spot for rose gold.

Last film/show: Most recently have been rewatching Community. God, that show is such a fucking treat. Watched this compilation of best Dean moments earlier today too and almost injured myself by laughing. Also, shoutout to Jim Rash as a fellow, exceedingly rare native Charlottean! I've also been making my husband watch Gravity Falls after somebody corrupted me. I s2g that show just keeps randomly resurfacing in the back of my head like some kind of hypnotic cryptid. I didn't hyperfixate as hard as my friend did on it, but damn if I don't keep hearing its siren song when I least expect it... Rewatching it is def a delight tho. I'm seeing now why folks are so enthralled by the writing for it, now that I'm more aware of the foreshadowing along the way! Also omggg we're about to rewatch Summerween which I absolutely adored the first time!

Sweet/savory/spicy: Sweet!!!

Last thing I googled: Lmaooo. Fucking "jabba the hutt play doh set" because I watched Chris James's most recent Pawn Stars video and was trying to figure out whether or not the guy selling one had gotten fleeced.

Last Book: *immediately proceeds to forget everything they have ever read* Umm... I've mostly been reading fanfic as of late. But the most recent book I started was Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Behind Blackfish by John Hargrove. LPOTL did an episode on SeaWorld a few weeks ago and mentioned it, so I picked it up. As for the last book I finished... I think it was Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. Really enjoyed it and have the 2nd one near the top of my fucking mountain of a TBR pile... I lost my mind and bought way too many books over the past few months...

Relationship status: Married for almost 5 years now! We were extremely lucky to get married right before Covid hit. So many of our friends had to cancel their weddings because of it. My anniversary is coming up next month! But I've been with my husband for just a few weeks shy of 11 years now!

Current Obsession(s): Hazbin Hotel. Hit me out of nowhere like a fucking sniper bullet. All because Spotify was like "hey, you like musicals, here's a few new songs for your daylist!" I knew literally nothing going into it except that the songs were catchy af and, well, I'm in too deep now... Spotify got me... Interview with the Vampire. This multi-fandom blog is actually a Assad Zaman appreciation blog in (a terrible and super obvious) disguise... Hands down one of the best shows I have ever watched. I am straight up feral over it. It is simultaneously hysterical and absolutely fucking devastating. Everyone involved in it is so passionate about the work too and it shows! I have written fucking essays on here about season 2. I can guarantee you when Season 3 drops, I am going to be even worse. I will never fucking emotionally recover from 2.05 or 2.07 BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT TO. Phantom of the Opera. I have been obsessed with POTO for...fuck...almost 20 years now? (jfc i am old) I saw the 2004 Movie back in high school orchestra, and I can still remember the instant I felt the hyperfixation take root. Masquerade. I wore the DVD out, I wore the soundtrack out (my little brother, who had never fucking seen it knew the words to the soundtrack). I read the book. I read Phantom by Susan Kay. I read The Angel of the Opera. I (fucking unfortunately) read The Phantom of Manhattan (hands down a waste of a perfectly good tree, I am still mad about this book literally 20 fucking years later). I researched the Paris Opera House. I wrote POTO fanfic… Ramin Karimloo is hands down my fave Phantom though. And I absolutely adore the Royal Albert Hall production. I'm so fucking glad they filmed it. Musicals. I have seen...so many fucking musicals live. Phantom of the Opera (4x), Les Miserables (2x), Wicked (2x), Mary Poppins (2x), Annie (2x), Hadestown, Six, Legally Blonde, Moulin Rouge, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hairspray, Beetlejuice, Hamilton, Big Fish, Mamma Mia, Anastasia, The Book of Mormon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dear Evan Hansen, Fiddler on the Roof, RENT, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, If/Then, Jekyll & Hyde, Miss Saigon, The Great Comet of 1812, The Bodyguard, The Color Purple... Those are all just the professional live shows I have seen. And I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some! I've seen even more via high school/college productions. Not to mention movies/recordings. Or musicals I've only listened to the music of but haven't actually seen! Pacific Rim. My other forever obsession. It was the fandom I wrote my most fics for prior to Hazbin Hotel. My first fic on AO3 is one for Pacific Rim, lol. I s2g, those two bitchy, gay, neurodivergent scientists have lived rent free in my head for over a decade now... Those motherfuckers are constantly at each others' throats, but they did not even stop to question whether or not they would be Drift Compatible... They make me fucking ill. I have genuinely lost count of the number of times I've watched the movie...

Tagging: Absolutely no pressure at all, but tagging @asymmetricjest, @person-of-varying-obsessions, @theeladymystic, @gourmet-trash, @quartzthequat, @moonmaiden86, @ladyrevealedofcloak, @marionrav, and @batteredrugosa!

[rat-rosemary]

To be frank with you, I don’t think that Dream went about announcing or creating the USMP in a good way.

For starters, Dream could have shown basic respect for Quackity and waited before announcing his SMP. He couldn’t even congratulate Quackity for the QSMP without making it about himself. Dream didn’t even wait a month before announcing the USMP, which you must admit is very similar to Quackity’s idea, which has been in the making for way longer than Dream’s has, based on how Dream doesn’t even have all 60 members of his server nor, you know, an actual quality translator (at least based upon his most recent video).

Plus, what connection does Dream have to other languages? I, for one, distinctly mentioning something about how the only language he speaks is winning, and yet now he’s all for overcoming cultural bounds and uniting people from all across the world? I acknowledge that a person’s opinions can change, but then again, there’s the matter of timing that I mentioned earlier.

Overall, I don’t believe that Dream would have been condemned this way if he had announced the USMP later. However, I do believe that he is being heavily inconsiderate of Quackity and that there is a very high possibility that he is trying to ride off of Quackity’s coattails for whatever reason. That reason could be relevancy, as with the obviously faked letter that he supposedly got from Google (obviously faked because of the multiple spelling and grammar issues), or it could be that he is trying to replicate the DSMP and its popularity again.

Regardless, even without getting into the moral qualities of Dream’s character and whether the accusations about him are true, it’s obvious that he is being rude to a certain degree (the degree of which is debatable, but the rudeness definitely not) towards Quackity and what he is trying to achieve with the QSMP.

Sorry for typing out this long essay, but I feel strongly about this topic, and whenever I feel strongly about something, my brain goes into writing mode (it’s the autism—just kidding, of course). I hope I didn’t come off too mean, I just wanted to share with you my views on why the Dream might not have the best intentions for creating the USMP.

Okay so i also talk a lot but my thoughts come a lot more fractured so you might see a ton of edits to this post

So first of all, i actually do agree that the announced of the usmp was not very good. Personally i think he should maybe have waited a bit more, or idk, but i do agree that it didn't come out the best way

The thing about connection to other languages I think that Dream is doing it both because of some of his friends (Korean in specific, Tina really want to learn korean again after she lost most of what she knew, and there are a few more youtubers Dream is friends with and/or knows that know or are korean) and because he genuinely enjoyed connecting with people from other places and languages! Idk if you saw him during the squid games and more even on spreen's heaven event but he was clearly having lots of fun and really really loving talking to people

And a thing about the Dt that most people who dont watch them dont really know, is that they're all kind of shy around new people. Dream is exited but kind of scared, Sapnap is really really shy and will stick to people he knows (you can see on his first irl stream with Karl, he looked like a spooked cat) and George will be weird with people he doesn't know but he doesn't really make a connections quickly like how Quackity for example does

You can really see how these events left a really strong impact on Dream (and his community!)

(Also, some other languages might also been chosen because of his friends, Foolish, Tubbo, Tina and [Oh fuck another person but i forgot her name] were/are working really really hard on learning Spanish, but didn't really get a chance to use it. Other ones, like Japanese, might just be a "oh! I bet there are tons of cool people there" but really i dont know the streamers, so i cant say for sure)

I can talk a bit about why portuguese tho! Most big brasilian youtubers started out as minecraft youtubers, and they're actually really big! I cant really vouch for them (they're not bad, just... like annoying bad, except that one guy, but we dont talk about Monarca) some of our youtubers were on the top of all creators on the site a few years ago (i havent really looked since then)

So it's a big untapped community that does actually love interacting with people from other countries (there's a reason that "come to Brasil" is a meme, other then the fact that no band ever comes to brasil)

I cannot comment on the google thing because i genuinely dont really know what you're talking about

But about congratulating Quackity, I think multiple cc's were congratulating Quackity and saying his project was really cool (including Dream) even before it was announced, and im pretty sure he congratulated Q after the qsmp trailers came out

But yeah, again I think it was kind of weird how the announcement of the usmp came, but i dont think it was because Dream genuinely wanted to hurt Quackity or try to overshadow him

About the quality of the translation, i actually think its kinda funny? It definitely shows that Dream (and Callahan! Who is absolutely incredible) were actually trying to create this themselves and not just copying from something else.

I also think its not meant to really be perfect? I for sure think it will be better when we see it live, but I think the usmp and the version of the translator we see in it are not meant to be the best version it can be, but more an example so people can take it and alter it and transform it. Thats why i think its free to access and edit, because it was meant to be taken and changed by the community

But hey! One of my favorite tropes is language barriers, so i might he a bit biased on the "It's okay that the translator is glitchy thing"

(I also think that language is so complex that the translator will never truly be perfect, with complicated words and frases and *regional dialects and words that dont truly have translations, like "saudade" or "cafune", i think that there will always be little misunderstanding and confusion and bugs, but we can just pause and try to explain it differently, like it always is in conversations)

[*side note, im kind of doxxing myself a little, but my dialect literally replaces the word "thing" for the word "train" and we only do that in my state. You can also always tell when someone writes something in portuguese making sure that people could translate it because we talk/text completely different, you can translate você but not ce so some things get caught up]

This is actually really nice! Its nice to share views without being aggressive and going for each other's throat. I hope is discussed everything? It's 2:31 am and im sick so i might have missed something and im glad to talk more about it if you want to

But yeah, long story short, i do agree that the delivery of the usmp was weird and kind of disjointed, but i think it came from a place of genuine love and excitement with Dream, he just hyperfoxused on it and forgot to think of some stuff. And i think it will be fun to have multiple multilingual smps and that in the ends usmp and qsmp will be different in some core ways

I hope i wasnt rude as well! If i did i genuinely didn't want to come off as agressive

[butcherlarry]

I was tagged by @burins in a people I want to get to know tag meme! Thanks for the tag!

Last Song: I was actually listening to this in the car as I was coming home from work today, Sexkiller on the Loose by Carpenter Brut. I really like this whole album, Trilogy , and listen to it all the time when I'm traveling. It's nice thinkin' music for me, but I have to be careful because it's very easy to speed when listening to the upbeat songs.

The last podcast I listened to was the most recent Behind the Bastards episode, discussing Michael Lewis and the terrible book he wrote about Sam Bankman-Fried. I also completed a re-listen of BtB's six part series on what a bastard Henry Kissinger was, in honor of his death.

The last book I read was Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis. I might have stayed up until 12:30 am finishing it, and was VERY TIRED when I went birding the next day. Reading this book finally pushed me to get a library card so I can read the next book, Truth of the Divine. I've been holding out on getting a library card for the last couple years because my life has been so hectic with multiple moves. I've finally settled down enough where I can get a library card, and this book was the push I needed to finally do it.

My favorite color: purple! I just really love that color. If you look in my closet, you'll see a lot of purple clothes :)

Currently Watching: What everyone else on the Internet is watching, Hbomerguy's Plagiarism video essay. I couldn't watch it all yesterday and have one more hour to go!

Last Movie: Barbie! I watched it with my two best friends over a discord chat. One of them hadn't been able to see it yet, so we watched it together. It was also lovely to catch up :)

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Hmmmmmm. I'm a sucker for sweet things, but sometimes that gets to be a little too much for me. So sweet and savory or sweet and spicy are always favorite combos of mine.

Relationship status: Single. Not really looking for anyone either. I'm starting to suspect that I'm aro as well as ace.

Current obsessions: BIRDS. Omg, birds. I blame my cats for this, I got a bird feeder to hang outside a large window at my old apartment to entertain them. Well, it ended up entertaining me too. Now I have a nice camera, multiple bird field books, and I go to the local arboretum every Sunday to go birding. It's my "go out and touch literal grass" day. And it's so much fun to see the birds throughout the year, especially seeing which ones stay in the area and who migrates/come back. The dark-eyed juncos and white-throated sparrows are back and I'm SO HAPPY to see those little guys! I post my pictures on my bird tumblr or Bluesky, as well as the Batfam discord server I'm in :)

Last thing I googled: How to take the FUCKING knife guard off our back up meat slicer to clean it. I wanted both slicers going because we had 100 POUNDS (45+ kgs) of deli turkey to slice for my company's holiday party and it was dirty from the last time it was used. I have NO IDEA how the FUCK we got it off the first time. It should be simple! There is a long pin/bar you unscrew in the back! But it still wouldn't come off!! I think there is some kind of safety we're not triggering, but I have NO CLUE what it is. The manual it came with and the manufacturer's videos on YouTube were NO HELP. I blame the French (the slicer was made in France).

I'm tagging @ktkat99, @betta-male, @sunny-in-gotham, @halehathnofury, @froizetta, @superbattrash, @lizyarikus, @sisaloofafump, and anyone else who would like to join! No pressure though! :)

[cadybear420]

Getting to know people better

Thanks to @peonierose, @tveitertotwrites, and @aces-and-angels for the tags!

Last song: I don't remember... I think the intro theme song to "From Russia With Love". That shit slaps.

Favorite color(s): Either purple, green, or black.

Currently watching: Nothing new. Mainly just YouTube video essays. Also rewatching some episodes of Garfield and Friends.

Last movie: In theaters: I think Oppenheimer? It was alright but I could not deal with that fucking theater seat for a 3 hour movie lol. At home: Everything Everywhere All At Once. It uh... quite surprised me. A bit of a fever dream, but it was mostly a fun one.

Currently reading: Books-wise: It's been a while since I read an actual book. I'm hoping to get back into it but I'm not sure what to start with. Choices-wise: I'm on my SEVENTH fucking replay of OG HSS, for the purpose of making a record of all the choices I make in the game so I can better construct my MC Evie's personality. And also so I can see Aiden again. I'm also diamond-mining The Billionaire's Baby, and I have a bunch of other books on hiatus.

Sweet/spicy/savory: Sweet and savory. I never liked spicy foods much despite being South Asian lol.

Last thing I Googled: "this is how terfs think skeletons work"

Current obsessions: OG HSS. I hate that even though I'm on my 7th playthrough, I've never made an actually different MC from Evie. I have tried Evie in a few different routes– I had her romance Michael in two playthroughs, do band in one playthrough, and I did a sort of a semi-"you suck" playthrough prior to the current one. But I've never actually played as a different MC, and there are so many different routes and route combos to try and SO LITTLE TIME ARRRGGGHH AND I ALSO PLAN TO DO MY SECOND PLAYTHROUGH OF HSS:CA SO I CAN GIVE IT A SECOND CHANCE AND MAKE HEADCANONS ABOUT WHAT THE OG GANG WAS UP TO DURING THAT TIME AND I ALSO HAVE PERSONAL SHIT IRL AGH- [cady.exe has stopped working] Sorry bout that, shit gets overwhelming

Currently working on: A timeline documentation of all the in-game choices for my HSS MCs Evie (OG) and Cher (CA). So I can better construct who they are as characters and other headcanons like what happens off-screen. I'm in the middle of writing a fanfic about that roller rink trip MC and Aiden go to with Aiden's parents in Book 2, it's going great so far but I'm stuck on how to end it.

i'll tag: Anyone who wants to participate

[ace-reviews]

Anime Review: Trigun Stampede

Originally, when this series won the poll to see which of this season's anime I would review, I was planning to rewatch the 1998 anime in order to better discuss the differences between the two series, since I've never watched the movie or read the manga or seen any of the other adaptations that may or may not exist. I ultimately didn't because I have super important video games to play, but it's probably fine. I'm sure there are plenty of comparisons between the two just a Google search away if that's what you're interested in.

I watched several disconnected episodes of Trigun in high school and watched the whole series a few years ago, in the background while I played some video game or another. Basically, while I definitely enjoy and have fond memories of it, I've never had the deep and abiding love of the series that a lot of other millennial weebs have.

I didn't retain much about the plot or the history of the characters, but I remembered that Vash is a plant (though not the kind I originally thought of) who likes love, peace, and donuts; Meryl and Milly were trying to keeping him from causing more property damage; Wolfwood dies; and Knives is yandere. That's about it. Even so, I was put off by some of the seemingly arbitrary changes made for Stampede--mostly the decision to replace Milly with a middle aged alcoholic named after an actor and the introduction of Vash and Knives' backstory in the first episode.

I left the first episode feeling largely ambivalent toward the whole thing, and when the second episode was out I was busy watching other premiers so I didn't bother with it. Then I got caught up with the third episode and was blown the fuck away.

Knives has always ever been "Vash's yandere brother" to me. I remember little about him from the '98 series except that he exists and was the bad guy. When he was introduced in the first episode of Stampede playing piano while draped in that weird blobby shroud thing, I found it a bit silly. Like, "ooooh look at him he's so scawy lmao". Then he showed up in episode three and was fucking terrifying.

The highest point of the series is the episode detailing Wolfwood's backstory, which is presented in a charming picture book style that looks very nice and contrasts nicely with the really dark shit being covered. If I wanted to, I could also write a separate essay just talking about how Knives is the best character and how he was totally right all along (some of the shit he gets up to in the last couple episodes crosses over into 'what the fuck dude' territory, but he is supposed to be the bad guy so it's fine).

The environmental messaging is a bit hamfisted, but considering the current state of the climate I think we're far past the need for subtlety--if anything, we should probably start looking into beating people 'round the head with actual hammers instead of merely metaphorical ones lest this series become based on a future true story.

Ultimately, though, Trigun Stampede is fucking phenomenal. I'm not going to say 'you owe it to yourself!!' to give it a second chance if you bounced off the first episode because the only things you owe yourself are food, water, sunshine, and love, but I doubt you'd regret giving it another go.

[omnifitense]

It began with the forging of the three-

I'll start again.

It began with BioShock Infinite.

Now obviously, it didn't all begin there. It's the third game in a series that itself is a spiritual successor to another series. But that's where we're starting our story. Or where I'm starting this one. Like most things that came out in the fucking early 2010s, it has not aged well. I'm not qualified to talk about the racism for reasons that would be blindingly obvious. Most people in this hellhole are too harsh on it, or harsh on it for what I consider the wrong reasons (hint: your internalized misogyny may be showing).

At the time, I really liked it. It 'woke me up' out of a sort of stupor I'd been in for a while. So I eagerly awaited the story-based DLCs.

They were dogshit. Or more accurately, the second one was dogshit and would be worth an entire essay on its own. In fairness it was made while the studio was being shut down because the lead "auteur" Len Kevine (not his real name) was taking his ball and going home in more ways than one. He started his own studio shortly thereafter, and is still working on the first game there almost ten years later because he's an indecisive both-sidesing hack who keeps getting distracted by the new craze in whatever video game he played last.

Anyway: they were dogshit. I decided to rewrite them. In Absentia was a meandering project that took me about two years, but it mostly holds up. While trying to get a handle on how to write the main character I did a search for 'omnichronal perception' or something along those lines, and ended up on the Power Listing wiki. One of the other listings on that page was for a set of contact lenses on the SCP wiki. That's a second rabbit hole right there, and one I spent many years thereafter browsing.

After In Absentia I started work on another project that didn't pan out for a variety of reasons. It and my time with the SCP wiki sort of came to a head with the release of SCP 3999, which is just monstrous and wonderful at the same time. Right from the quotation at the top of the page, which introduced me to yet another rabbit hole I'm still going down today*, and then finally closing out with (and I maintain this wasn't there when I first read it, though I'm not going back through the edit history to check) a triumphant rendition of 'Sunday (Finale)' from Sunday In The Park With George.

What is that third rabbit hole? Well, the SCP wiki has a neat little habit of cross-referencing other SCPs, whether by name or by some other aspect. Sometimes they're hyperlinked, sometimes they're not. The quotation I mentioned contains the phrase 'Eleven-Day Empire', which I took to be another SCP, so I googled it. Except...it wasn't. It directed me, of all things, to the Doctor Who wiki and explained that it was a reference to a Doctor Who spinoff I'd never heard of before, and with good reason. It's been described as 'Doctor Who without the Doctor', which isn't strictly accurate: there are a few Doctor-shaped holes in the texts, as people have noted. (Though for legal reasons, they aren't named.)

Maybe I've beaten around the bush long enough. It's Faction Paradox.

Toward the end of my attempt to write that project from before, I kept imagining someone standing outside the house where most of the narrative was taking place. Just watching. Then, in...I can't remember the year, or the month at this point, but I want to say it was either 2018 or 2019, I had a dream. I can only remember three things from it now: the Twelfth Doctor (who was only in it briefly), something about the TARDIS being a tree, and the phrase The New Omnifitense. The strangest part was, I'd skipped most of the Twelfth Doctor's run; not out of any moral stand or anything, I just missed one episode and even back then I knew that I'd be hopelessly lost next time around, so it sort of snowballed.

Each of those aspects I managed to work into Blood and Tears, in addition to the things from 3999. Blood and Tears is still close to my (pardon me for saying so) heart; it came out almost exactly the way I hoped it would, which is no mean feat given the scares I had in 2022.

If you somehow made it this far, thank you.

[alchemist-yamira]

Let's get to know each other <3

Tagged by @yeeticusdaweary Thanks! I'm gonna figure this out I suppose

-Last song : Pocket - Louie Zong (Going for the song that's been most in my head in the last 24 hours)

-Favorite color : Purple is the obvious, based on just my whole everything. However I also love teal/cyan so really it's just off-blues I suppose.

-Currently watching : Yea, uh. I've been wanting to watch more "Traditionally produced" TV, but in lieu of that, lots of comfywatches on Youtube: RTGame and Wirtual to eat/decompress, Moon channel and other video essays for more "Interesting" content.

-Last movie : The D&D movie at behest of one of my IRL friends. It's aggressively "Okay".

-Currently reading : I have House of Leaves on my end-table. I've been terrible with reading though as it's been sitting there for half a year.

-Sweet/Spicy/Savory : All good, but if I had to pick 1 it'd be savory, followed by sweet. I actually REALLY like spicy, the problem is that spicy feels like a modifier to other tastes. Many things I like are spicy, but you can have sweet/spicy, savory/spicy, and others, it's rare spicy occurs on its own, and life would be lesser with it gone so??? Maybe Spicy on principle...?? Idk, that one's hard.

-Relationship status : Single, I think I'd like a relationship but finding people through a "dating scene" sounds like hell to me.

-Current obsession : Pixel art, No longer a burning need but I'm keeping up with it! A few video games have been cycling through my brain the last month: Sea of Stars, Darktide, and Armored Core 6. Darktide probably has/had the most staying power due to its multiplayer nature.

-Last thing I Googled : The Guild Wars 2 paper bag helmets to show off to two friends. Before that was Lake Michigan Ice Caves (Very cool, highly recommend if you haven't looked at them before)

-Currently working on : PhD program trying desparately to keep up, like bailing water from a sinking ship some days. Want to experiment with RP ideas desperately but feel held back by my the mix of other interests and current life needs. Fucking around casually with pixel art experiments, trying to get more of a handle on adding detail and making 'bigger' projects.

Tagging for funsies: @probablypercyjackson @lacking-in-enthusiasm and @shadowgast4t

[iamafanofcartoons]

Media Criticism is DEAD, there are no more good critics. LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS!

One of my pet peeves is that a lot of the time, people hating on X thing will just regurgitate whatever video essay they got their opinions from verbatim, so you get the same, tired criticism play out every time. Yes, I've seen the hbomb video, and its garbage!

I used to have a friend who basically just parrots certain opinions and it's super annoying because you can literally see him change his own opinions to suit critics, like at least have some original opinions man!

Its genuinely exhausting that everyone today is a mini critic. Every new game, movie, show, ect has to be criticized to the ends of the earth, even if some of those criticisms make no sense at all. even before a new game is out, people have to say it'll be shit with no evidence. can't even discuss a new game coming out in a discord of people who play the first game because they're all 100% CONVINCED without a shred of evidence that it will suck and the devs will fuck it up beyond belief, despite the fact that the only thing we've seen so far are concept arts and 2 trailers. Nobody can be fucking positive about anything anymore and its god damn atrocious. I'm so sick of it.

I'm really sick of people cynically criticizing everything over the most minute details, and it's exhausting talking about media with people like that. 

Obviously people can criticize things but a lot of the time it feels like people are trying to use criticism to make their opinions "objective" instead of just... not liking it. 

You can't just say "not for me" anymore, you gotta write a video essay on why this thing is actually bad.

If you say "I think RWBY is really good" of course people are gonna disagree and that's fine.

 But what I find annoying is that you'll go "Hey this RWBY fight/character is cool" and you'll get flooded with "RWBY BAD WATCH THE HBOMB VIDEO!!"

Imagine spending 2.5 hours watching bald neckbeard cinemasins take a giant dump on a passion project, but somehow you don’t have 5-10 minutes to use google search to see if any of what he said was true. Spoilers? Most of it was slander and libel.

And these are the same people that never recognize forced straight ships that pander to heterosexuals.  Examples?  Sorry, I don't have the time to list 95% of all media with a romance that aren't romance genre.

God forbid someone wants two fictional women to kiss...or two men for that matter.  LGBT media is always criticized more harshly than shows with no representation at all.

It especially sucks because I do think people should have the right to criticize things, and that no piece of media is above criticism, but when everything is 100% criticism 100% of the time it just… doesn’t even mean anything anymore.

It's also hard to criticise things like this when something actually is poorly written, because the worst bigots and haters come out of the woodwork and latch onto your criticism as a "look, we're right" kind of thing. It makes it hard to actually critique progressive media a lot of the time.

A lot of folks just want to hide their hatred for LGBT and for women. I guess I’d rather have poor representation than no representation at all.

Let people enjoy things instead of being a pretentious killjoy who's never had fun in their life unless they're shitting on someone else's fun.

It gets tiring to hear the exact same criticisms of a character I like every goddamn time I bring them up. It may be new criticism to people saying it, but it's mentally taxing hearing the exact same points a hundred times.

[purplesurveys]

1727

Did you get enough rest last night?  I really didn't. I slept at 5 AM thinking that would surely let me sleep in the entire morning, but my body still automatically woke me up at 9 and didn't let sleep again by then.

What was the last thing that kept you awake?  That would be right now – I finished off the entire first season of D.P. which I ended at around half past midnight, and now I'm back in my room downing the rest of my coffee with no intention to sleep yet, even with just four hours of rest haha.

If you have pets, do they sleep in your bedroom at night?  No, they have their own corner in the living room.

Can you sleep with background noise or does it keep you up?  It helps me fall asleep as the light noise gives me a sense of security, so I kind of need it.

Do you ever take naps? Do you take long naps or little power naps?  Occasionally. I can never do power naps as they always end up feeling super insufficient for me, and I prefer having 3-4 hour naps.

What helps when you have trouble sleeping?  I'd need to go through my phone and watch a lot of videos since that quickly gets the job done.

Who was the last person to cook you a meal? What did they make?  My mom made pasta for sharing a few days ago.

Who was the last person you cooked a meal for? What did you make?  I don't cook for anyone, because I don't cook.

Who is your female celeb crush? (If applicable)  Song Hye Kyo, Park Jihyo.

Who is your male celeb crush? (If applicable)  RM of BTS.

Tell me about an interesting article you’ve read recently.  Andi shared a pretty unique piece with me this morning which was basically a personal essay of why McDonald's' Coke seems to taste better than Coke literally anywhere else. It was silly yet insightful, mundane yet so weirdly intriguing and fascinating. For somebody who doesn't even like soda, I found myself reading until the very end. I liked it a lot and subscribed to that author right away lol.

Do you have a favorite Marvel character?  I'm not into anything superhero.

Favorite DC character?  Yeah, no.

Do you read comic books?  I tried getting into them but I got tired of faking it LOL so I just accepted that comic books and superheroes and I will never mix.

Has a horror film ever actually scared you? Which one(s)?  I found Paranormal Activity to be a refreshing horror concept for its time and it successfully gave me the creeps, especially with the multiple endings. The sequels unsurprisingly didn't hold up the same magic but I'm very much willing to defend the first movie to my grave haha. OH Midsommar was also super freaky. I nearly refused to drive home that night because I was afraid of seeing the trees in the neighborhood suddenly pulsating.

What was the last horror movie you saw? The Menu counts as horror-ish, no?

What was the first horror movie you remember seeing? What did you think of it?  The Exorcist. I was 12 and immediately downloaded a torrent when a quick "what's the scariest movie ever" Google search led me to that movie. In hindsight, though, because I already had expectations of how scary it is, I think that sort of pre-conditioned me to be more sensitive to the jump scares and all the freaky shit that happened in the movie – so 13 years ago, I was definitely spooked.

Realistically though, I feel if I watched it again now at 25 I'd probably find some of the effects more comedic than scary, BUT one thing I'll never get over are *those* demonic images that pop up like three times across the movie. Regardless of how old I get I feel like I'll always look away from those lol.

Name a few historical figures you find interesting. Why?  I recently learned about Herbert K. Pililaau, the US soldier who fought off Korean soldiers on his own while the rest of his crew? platoon? (idk terms) had been assigned somewhere else at the time. Fucking dude kept firing until he was out of ammunition; then switched to grenades; then when he ran out of those too, ended up with knife in one hand, fist in the other to fight the best and longest he could before he was finished off; when he was found, he was surrounded by more or less 40 soldiers he managed to kill. Obviously I don't support war and this is a shitty story all around, but this scenario is straight out of a movie.

What is your favorite historical film and why?  Gone with the Wind. I have yet to understand the complexities and deeper contexts behind the Civil War and all other questions related toit; and when I say it's my favorite it's largely because of the production value and how unprecedented such a movie was to have come out at the time it did.

Do you usually enjoy historical films?  Yes, as long as they don't extremely deviate from or betray things that actually happened, especially if we're covering atrocities or human right violations.

Name a sequel film (any franchise) you like better than the first film. Why is that?  Shrek 2. It's the Shrek movie I grew up with so I'll always be biased towards it.

Which do you find most interesting: Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology? Why?  Eugh, I really dislike mythology haha.

Which tale from whichever mythology you listed above do you find most interesting?  I read Percy Jackson and that's the most I'll read as far as mythology.

Do you collect anything? What was the last item you added to that collection?  Just BTS merch. Last things that arrived were my copies of D-Day and Face, but I'm expecting my orders of Jack in the Box and Layover to arrive October latest.

Do you have any houseplants?  We do, but it's my mom who takes care of them.

How do you like your tea?  As coffee.

Who is your favorite Muppet?  Wasn't really raised on Muppets.

What is your favorite type of bird?  Penguins. < Yes.

Which streaming platform do you use the most, if any?  Spotify.

What is a skill or useful piece of knowledge you wish you’d learned sooner?  How to pack smart.

What is your favorite vampire movie?  TWILIGHT SAGA ALWAYS AND FOREVER

Your favorite fictional couple?  Chandler and Monica from Friends; Glenn and Maggie from The Walking Dead; Mark and Joanna from Two for the Road.

Do you have a favorite historical couple?  Not really, no.

Have you received any good news recently?  Nah.

Have you learned anything new recently?  I took the 16 personalities test earlier for my ~annual check-in and found out I've switched from an ESFJ to an ESTJ. No big change other than the fact that I apparently think more with my head now hah.

[victory-cookies]

spoilers for the dino game lost media video bc I need to talk about it. you should watch it tho

I have literally never ever been got by a piece of unfiction before. Like. I love unfiction and I find it a fascinating genre and there are some truly amazing stories told through that lens. But I’ve never actually watched an unfiction video that I wholeheartedly assumed was real.

this one I did.

Like. This guy clearly makes lost media video essays. He followed the format so well. The Reddit post about a weird game a few people remember, and he remembers it too! He had a genuine reason to be invested in the search! And so he googles and googles and combs through game review sites and website archives, all things you should be doing looking for a lost game from twenty years ago, and he finds some false leads (real ass games!!) and finally he finds what could be the game’s title. and it is. and he finds a trailer. and he finds the company that made it. This is all so common for a lost media search!! He finds some emails and gets one mostly unhelpful response. And I’ll admit, when he reveals he didn’t originally check with his family to confirm they didn’t still have it I was confused bc that’s a great place to start, and the obsession bit seemed a bit much but i was willing to believe it was a piece of spooky hyperbole for the sake of a good video. But then he finds the game! And it’s good at being a horror game! And it seems legit! There’s full gameplay! And commentary on the idea of lost media bc video essay bitches love to wax poetic. And then it hits you with the end and it hits you with the fact that it’s unfiction and I’m just sitting there, jaw on the fucking floor bc I was so able to believe this was a real game. A real search. Sure the game was creepy but it’s clearly a horror point and click. it didn’t seem haunted, just weird (okay maybe the end was haunted, and the disk wiping itself was a little much so be believable but at that point it’s already hitting you with the fact that it was all made up anyways). But it was fake the whole time.

I really have to commend it. I think what made it so good and so genuinely convincing was how conservative it was. It looked so much like a cut and dry search for a creepy old game that would have scared some kids into remembering it. It wasn’t written like a creepypasta, he didn’t find it at an old garage sale or on a weird website or whatever the fuck, it was a tale I’ve heard a million times with lost media searches. The game wasn’t filled with ghosts, it was just a good horror game. It was a guy who worked his ass off to find an old horror game so he could play it again. And it was also all made up. Completely fictional. God. Like, again, this stuff is almost never convincing to me. I like unfiction bc it’s fun to play along. But this had me so able to believe it was real and it was presented so effectively and I really really enjoyed it and I’m gonna be insane about it for a while I think

[theaceofskulls]

Time for a YouTube rant because honestly the adblocker thing has finally pissed me off enough.

Youtube has fundamentally become a fucking awful experience as of late so its insistence on you watching the ads is laughable. It's a fundamentally worse experience than it was 10 years ago and it only continues to get worse.

About 5 years ago I had to start curating my own suggestion feed because its algorithm promotes controversial videos and ragebait reactionary content over more researched and well produced videos. And this is after the algorithm had already been hitting creators hard in a way that directly promoted those types of creators rising to the top. Animation, video essays, anything that prevents regular, speedy uploads were being buried while reaction content (either people watching something and reacting to it or having hot takes on current events) were being rewarded.

This led to megachannels, effectively production companies which would use a large amount of smaller creators to supply more constant content, which had their own issues as all these types of ideas do. But in terms of a user experience, it also made following these channels annoying when you were only there for one creator or show.

And then there's the issue of the change to ads from sidebar content, to popups, to full on adroll inserted in the middle of videos. Ads got more intrusive and made the viewing experience worse. Over the past few years I began to despise opening videos on my phone that I quickly searched for only to be greeted by a half loaded ad that blared at top volume.

And these ads aren't curated. It's laughably bad what random ad can be shown to you, including content that breaks Youtube's own terms of service.

Added to all this is the fact that Search Engine Optimization has been gamed by so many different people over the past decade that all the larger sites are awful to use to find things anymore. In the past year I've had to deal with no less than 5 extremely frustrating points where I knew exactly what I'm looking for but Amazon, Google, and Youtube have recommended me everything tangentially related to what I'm looking for, even when I'm including half of the specifications into their search bars. Hell I've found youtube results crowded with reaction content to the original stuff I was searching for that was on youtube itself from people I've never heard of in my life and only because they linked the video themselves in the description did I find the original.

And on a personal note, those familiar with this blog will know I enjoy video games, anime, and Warhammer, so I have to fight a regular battle with youtube to not try to send me down a far-right pipeline. One which will randomly reset channels I've told it to hide.

Because of this, earlier this year I turned off my watch history because the homepage was getting to be 80% content reacting to content I was interested in rather than my subscriptions or even more of that type of media and 20% of those random suggestions were ragebait. Turning it off meant that my homepage would still try to give me suggestions but it was way more tuned to content I enjoyed and skewed with more of my subscription content.

Well halfway through the year, youtube decided that for the crime of turning off the setting that was making my homepage actively intolerable that the homepage would now look like this permanently

It just keeps getting worse to use even as its competitors begin to cement themselves more in the public consciousness.

Now while they've made the experience worse and worse and sold a "solution" to ads, they have the gall to fight with adblockers in preparation for rolling out anti-adblocking across their browsers in general.

Fuck this company. I hope it bleeds money and keeps bleeding it until the internet begins to heal from what its helped do to it.