#but with bonus insecurity issues masquerading as a savior complex

[spacecasehobbit]

Truly, I think there is a valid and also extra fun reading of Saltburn in which a good chunk of Oliver's fumbling of Felix was down to an early misreading of one of Felix's core personality traits.

That what Oliver read as Felix having a massive savior kink was actually more of Felix having a, "Growing up with Elspeth for a mother and playing witness to her rotating cast of poor dear friends in my formative years instilled within me a deepseated insecurity over the complete lack of interestingly Traumatic Events that I have experienced due to the wealth and privilege I was born with, coupled with an inability to look directly at or acknowledge that wealth and privilege because that would be, like, Bad?? maybe?? so instead of examing or dealing with this deepseated insecurity in any healthy way, I turned it into a weirdly intense and equally unexamined association with 'Struggles and Trauma = How to be Cool'," kink.

Evidence for this theory includes: -Felix delightedly telling all his friends the story of how his bike got a flat tire and he had to be Dramatically Rescued by an Intriguing Stranger! One slightly bad thing happened to that boy and he was so eager for it that he was telling everyone he knew at the first and also probably every opportunity for days -Felix responding to Oliver's early lies with things like, "You're really brave," and, "Seriously, you're a fucking inspiration, mate" -"What did they teach you in boarding school?" followed by Felix, listing off a few non-answers before staring deeply into Oliver's eyes and smacking a hand on Oliver's inner thigh before finishing with, "annnd... child abuse." -Felix seeming genuinely baffled by Annabell's assertion that none of her friends would want to sit next to Oliver at a dinner party, because... of course Oliver is interesting??? Oliver has Trauma! What do you mean his Traumatic Backstory makes him less interesting, this literally does not compute?? -The one thing that makes him instantly ditch Oliver, on the other hand, being Oliver calling him out as rich and spoiled while calling his room disgusting, which happens on the same day that he ditches Annabell, aka that girl with the baffling and nonsensical opinion that Being Rich is, like, more interesting that Having Trauma?? -Felix being a Harry Potter fan? Allows him to both appear totally normal because everyone loves Harry Potter, while also publically indulging his guilty little daydreams about how cool he could have been if he'd been a sad little orphan with a Tragic Backstory, but one who also got to still be wealthy and important via inheriting huge amounts of money from his dead parents and being the prophesized savior of the world -Felix sharing his family's rock throwing tradition but needing to awkwardly include that he's only ever done it for his dog = simultaneously a trigger for all his insecurities over his own lack of interesting Trauma but also an opportunity to live vicariously through Oliver's much more interesting Trauma -Felix being furious and deeply betrayed by Oliver, while also deciding that he couldn't possibly kick Oliver out before his birthday party, as the idea that literally no one at all except him and maybe Elspeth would have even noticed if Oliver was completely absent from his own birthday party does not even cross his mind, because he's the only one who knows that Oliver doesn't have interesting Trauma actually

And anyways, I like to imagine that half of this Felix's issues with the discovery that Oliver was lying was over the fact that it required him to grapple with the incomprehensible idea that Oliver did not, in fact, have much in the way of Interesting Trauma in his life either, apparently, but he'd still convinced not just Felix, but Elspeth that he was Interesting anyway?

And Felix's brain was neither prepared nor remotely equipped to process this idea in any way whatsoever besides just running away, sticking his fingers in ears, and going, "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU," until the uncomfortable thoughts and also Oliver went away so he could get on with turning The Oliver Situation into his first real interesting Trauma that was already over and thus cool now, instead of still there and making it deeply and unpleasantly obvious that maybe traumatic events were actually just, like, really terrible things to live through while they were still happening, in fact???