#murder solving

[theladycarpathia]

Hellcheer week day 3 - Meet Me at Midnight

Climbing out of the window isn’t as easy as she was led to believe. Neither is carefully inching her way down the trellis, hoping with every creak in the wind that it will hold her weight. Halfway down, she hears laughter echoing from one of the other rooms, someone still awake past curfew. She clings to the wall and prays that someone doesn’t choose this very moment to open the window for a cigarette.

She slips down the last few inches, neatly dropping to the ground. Campus is dead this time of night, a few lights still glowing in distant windows, the occasional bobbing torchlight of the night guard. She shouldn’t be out of bed, and sneaking off to investigate a murder is definitely frowned upon.

Especially when she’s a person of interest in that murder.

She slips away from her dorm room, sticking to the darkness provided by the girls’ building. Harrowdene rises above her, three stories and red brick, her home for the past three years. She knows which shower has the best pressure, the creak of the floorboards, how far out of the window to lean to get cell reception. First year she shared with Nancy Wheeler. Last year, it was Tina Watts, and this year she got Vickie Dawson. Vickie is in band, the LGBTQ club, and performed in last year’s production of Cinderella. She also hadn’t said too much when Chrissy had shimmied out of their window, along the ledge and down the large white trellis that goes from their floor all the way to the ground. She’d been in bed, feigning sleep but Chrissy had seen the glint of her eyes anyway.

Once she hits the rear entrance - the emergency fire door that gets propped open during the day and closed by Mrs Click every night - she makes a dash across the grass to the thick line of trees that surrounds Hawkins Academy. Mockett’s wood, the small forest that hides the school for the rest of the world.

Rumor goes that the original owner of the land - before it was a school - was a conspiracy nutjob and had it planted to keep anyone official out. Another rumor says that a girl was murdered by her teacher in a clearing after an affair gone wrong. This one is only half based in fact. Someone was definitely murdered here. 

It’s terrifying, walking through the forest after dark. Every crack, every rustle, the faint noises of a fox all make her jump and she wishes desperately that they’d agreed on another meeting place. She was here mere days ago, but in the setting sunlight rippling through the gold colors of the trees, it had felt almost magical. 

The bench in the woods is a relic from a time long gone by. Supposedly, once the school had a cluster of benches out in this clearing for students but they were nearly all removed over a decade ago. There’s just one left: the legs covered in moss, the wood faded and covered in scratched initials. More students have marked their names on it than even the bench can remember. 

He’s already there when she emerges from the line of trees, wrapped up in his denim jacket against the cold October bite. Her heart judders when she sees him there, tracing the wood with his long, elegant fingers. The silver of his rings glint in the light of her torch and he turns to look up, his face breaking into a smile when he sees her.

Stop, Chrissy tells her heart. We’re only solving a murder.

“Hey, you got out,” Eddie says, sounding impressed, as she slings her bag on the table and climbs onto the other side of the bench. “Not hard, right?” She narrows her eyes.

“How did you get out?” she asks, suspiciously. Apparently, the trellis trick is quite well known among the residents of her dorm, often used when sneaking out to go meet boys. Apparently the auditorium is a popular make-out spot…or it used to be. “The boys’ building doesn’t have a rose trellis.” He shrugs, looking unconcerned. But then again, he’s Eddie Munson, known dealer and outcast. Unlike Chrissy, this probably isn’t the first time he’s snuck out at night.

“The bathroom on the second floor opens out onto the roof of the administration building,” he explains, twirling the chunky ring on his index finger. It has twists of silver wound around a large amber stone. “Easy drop down and I just have to climb onto the bins to get back up. Unless some dick has locked the bathroom window before I get back but that hardly ever happens.”

“Okay,” Chrissy says slowly, and pulls out the black notebook from her shoulder bag. She barely had time to write all of her notes up after dinner but she’d needed to get them out of her head. Everything has been churning over in her mind for the last three days, ever since the body was found. She recognises how cliche it is to have a murder notebook and that true detectives probably keep everything in their heads but she just isn’t up for that. Everything makes more sense written down.

And she can’t keep a big whiteboard in her room so this will have to do.

“I put down everything that we have so far,” she says, opening it to the correct page and turning it around for Eddie to see. Eddie pulls out his phone and turns on the torch function, holding it up so that he can see her neat handwriting. She’s outlined everything as best she can: possible suspects and motives, a sketch of the auditorium, a timeline of the victim’s last day.

“This is good,” Eddie says finally, setting his phone down on the table beside them. “Really good. Is that timeline finished?”

“I think so?” Chrissy hedges, chewing her lip. People have been less than helpful with the details but she’s been able to get enough. “There’s half an hour just after class ends that I can’t account for. No one seems to have been with him then.” Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up so high that they nearly blend with the dark mass of hair on his head.

“Shouldn’t you know?” he asks, incredulously. “I mean…weren’t you guys dating?”

“No,” she says defensively, because she resents explaining her former relationship with Jason to someone who is essentially a stranger. Even though she’d…even so, she doesn’t want to explain it all to Eddie. She’d loved him as much as she’d hated him and then his body had been found three days ago, which made things much more complicated. 

“We broke up,” she says, folding her hands up into her lap so he can’t see her digging her fingernails into her palm. She’s drowning in grief and guilt and confusion, and she doesn’t know which to feel first. “The day before he died.” Eddie rests his chin on his palm, looking at her. 

“And that’s why the police wanted to talk to you?” he asks and she hesitates.

“No,” she says, eventually. It still feels like bile in the back of her throat, the cold look on Jason's face when she’d told him that it was over. How the news trickled through the dining hall the next day at breakfast that a body had been found in the auditorium. How the first feeling that flowed through her body was relief. “Because no one knew. I hadn’t told anyone and Jason didn’t either. I think he thought…”

It’s both too obvious for them to voice out loud. Jason had expected to get her back, and he’d probably never doubted that she would eventually do just that.

“Right,” Eddie drawls, his voice dripping in contempt. “Of course. What Lord Carver wants, he gets.” 

She swallows. She can’t speak ill of the dead, but she also won’t say it wasn’t true. Jason had…expectations. 

“Anyway,” Eddie says, seeing her discomfort. “It’s good shit. Couples of leads, a few suspects. People who aren’t us, which is the vital thing.”

She nods, because that’s the whole point of this little alliance. The drug dealer who’d had a very public fight with the victim only a few days prior to the murder. And the girlfriend who’d suddenly ended what everyone else thought was a picture perfect love story.  Police tended to suspect people who had motives like that.

“Were they horrible to you?” she asks, because she hadn’t been the only one pulled out of class for questioning. Everyone with a connection to Jason had been taken to the principal’s office at some point since it had happened. Chrissy, Patrick and Billy, and all the other guys from the basketball team, that freshman kid, Lucas, who found him…and Eddie. Even Steve, who’d never really been friends with Jason, had been pulled in. 

“Nah,” Eddie says, but there’s lines around his eyes that betray the lie. The police hadn’t even been very nice to her, and she has a reasonable alibi for most of the time frame of the murder. “It was fine. They can be dicks to me because I’m not a minor. They just asked about the fight.”

Chrissy knows better than to ask about the fight. There have been rumors flying around school, and there are even more now suggesting that Eddie had lost his temper and murdered Jason in a fit of rage.

People have too much time on their hands.

“What’s your alibi?” Chrissy asks, suddenly. They’re partners in this and she doesn’t know. But Eddie’s face turns guarded, a little defensive. 

“Why do you ask?” he says and she shakes her head.

“I don’t think you did it,” she assures him, because in a school full of doubters, she doesn’t want him to think she’s one of that number. “But what did you tell the police about where you were?”

“I was just…writing songs on the roof,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. There’s a delicate flush to it, rising just above his Hellfire Club t-shirt. “Alone.”

“Do you do that a lot?” Chrissy pushes, and tucks her hands inside her jumper. It’s colder out here than she’d expected and she’d tried so hard to not disturb Vickie that she hadn’t stopped for anything like a hat or gloves. 

“Just when I have some good inspiration,” Eddie mutters vaguely. He’s avoiding her gaze, nervously strumming his fingers against the dry wood. She wonders if their meeting in this very spot nearly a week ago affected him as much as it affected her.

“Okay,” she says, deciding to let it go. She pulls the notebook back towards herself, squinting at the pages in the dim light. 

“I don’t know if we can get into the auditorium yet,” she considers, thinking of their next move. “The police are done but the staff still have it sealed off…what?” Because Eddie is grinning widely.

“I can get us in,” he says, in a low voice, jabbing a finger at the page, and her outlined sketch of the crime scene. “I have a key. The janitor is very forthcoming if you're willing to supply him with weed.”

“I’m really glad that your law-breaking helps us commit further law-breaking,” Chrissy says, flatly. But she sighs and stuffs the notebook back in her bag. What’s a little more rebellion?

“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” she admits and is startled when Eddie pulls himself out of his seat, sweeping her bag off of the table.

“What? We might as well go now,” he says, her bag dangling by the strap from one finger. “No one will be around and the guard patrols get less frequent after midnight. Less chance of being caught.”

“Sure,” she says in a daze and takes her bag from him, slinging it over her shoulder, easily falling into step with Eddie as they leave Mockett’s wood. She’s tired and it’s only a matter of hours before she has to roll out of bed and go to her classes like nothing has changed. Like her ex-boyfriend isn’t dead. Like she hasn’t snuck into a crime scene after dark. Like the idea of a killer hiding at school doesn’t terrify her.

Like the boy next to her isn’t the whole reason for breaking up with Jason in the first place.

“We probably shouldn’t hang out much together during school hours,” Eddie says awkwardly, as they head back towards Harrowdene and the shape of the drama building and auditorium beyond it. Maybe her dorm’s easy access to the murder site is what has the police thinking she makes an ideal suspect. Motive, access, relationship…all the dominoes in a line. 

The frank acknowledgement of it stings but she gets it. Any sign of a closeness with Eddie, another person of interest, might send those dominoes tumbling down. The police would probably love the idea of a murdering teenage Bonnie and Clyde.

“Oh hey,” Eddie says suddenly, noticing the goosebumps clinging to her skin. He unwinds the thick black scarf from around his neck, something chunky and handmade from wool. He deftly wraps it around her, looping it carefully around her hair. It’s soft, something well loved and she catches the faintest smell of his skin on the material, something woodsey and deep, like the inside of a guitar. 

“Thanks,” she murmurs and swallows heavily.

Oh yeah. She’s screwed.

@hellcheerweek

[skipppppy]

shoutout to gay detectives and their husbands across history

[yeehawpim]

[stars-obsession-pit]

“Murder” Mystery

A crash. A yell. In just a moment, a young man’s heartbeat goes silent.

The pencil in Clark Kent’s fingers snapped. He was used to overhearing unpleasant things. He’d been living with super hearing for his whole life, and usually he could step in to help.

But that didn’t make situations that he couldn’t any less crushing.

Being Clark Kent and not Superman was important. It let him help people in ways he couldn’t with just physical might. But in moments like these, a guilty part of him wondered if he could have saved more lives if he’d just been there, been ready.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. All he can do now is make sure the killer is stopped and brought to justice before they can cause any more harm.

Danny Fenton—currently Danny Phantom—sighed deeply as he looked at the debris strewn across the floor of the hotel room.

He’d been looking forward to this trip. A break from Amity’s own ghost troubles, even if it was to attend an Ecto-Science convention. Finally he’d have the time to relax for once without any ghosts interrupting. Plus, Metropolis had its own guardian to take care of its problems.

But nooo, he had to get caught up in an attack here too.

Ugh.

[dukeofthomas]

"Are the Robins child soldiers" It depends. If the story is super serious and into exploring complex morality and grounded from reality's standards, then yes. If the story is lighthearted, made for children, fluff, etc., then no. If it's somewhere in the middle, it might depend.

If an author wants to write a story seriously delving into the fucked up-ness of children fighting criminals, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

If an author wants to write a fun story about villains and heroes featuring Robin in a world where that's not an issue, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

If an author wants to write a serious story but not apply IRL-logic to Robin, they can, and if you don't like it, you can read something else.

[dad-dumpster]

harry keeps stealing victim’s boots

[starfish-spencer]

POV you're a corpse laying on the autopsy table:

[everysongieverwrote]

I need S8 of 9-1-1 to be the Buddie Team Up Season. Listen, we already got Hen and Chim teaming up in Hero Complex and defeating the bad guy with the Power of Friendship™ (lol) and S7 was basically the Bathena Team Up Season. All we're missing is the Buddie Team Up Season/Episode. Yes, I know they're work partners and they do team up a lot during calls but do you know what I mean?! I need them to be their silly badass little selves for a whole entire Arc. Let them solve a murder or something.

[izzystizzys]

TW: discussion of something approximating suicidal tendencies but with the usual crack programming of this blog

“Ah, High General Windu”, says Fox, pleasantly. “So we meet again.”

High General Windu raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, Fox thinks, though it’s getting hard to tell with all the blood rushing to his head. “If I let you go, will you try to throw yourself out of another window?”

Fox makes a vague shrugging motion - or tries to, anyways. It’s hard to tell where any of his limbs are going, hanging upside down in the air as he is. “I am willing to discuss terms.” A bridge will do just fine.

Impossibly, the High General’s eyebrows climb even further up his forehead. “A compromise, then, esteemed Commander.” And so, he righths Fox the head way up in the air, but leaves him floating just above the ground, at which point several painted shells come skidding around the corner followed by billowing robes and screeches.

“WHAT”, says Kote, calmly, “THE BANTHA-KARKED, FORCE-LOVING KRIFF, FOX.”

“You’ll short out your helmet mic”, Fox advises him, sagely. Fondly, he thinks back to decimating his own on only his second time in the newly-christened official Coruscant Guard Scream Closet. He’d just received the comm about the Zillo Beast being transported to 000, and made sure to take his bucket off thereafter to improve the quality of his closet time.

High General Windu’s face does something complicated between sympathy and constipation.

Because the Galaxy doesn’t hate Fox enough already and Cody wasn’t enough on his own, Wolffe elbows his way through their batch to plant himself in front of him, shoulders squared and shaking with repressed rage. “If you try that again, dickhead”, he begins, in a low growl that quite frankly sounds more cringe that intimidating, “I’m going to resurrect you and then kill you again.”

“Ah, Wolffe”, Plo Koon says, in his deep, shivery timbre, “Remember our conversations about effective conflict resolution and communication of needs?”

Wolffe’s eyes narrow at Fox, because all non-Guard are sweet summer children who walk around buckets off on 000 like absolute lunatics. Fox prays they never have to find out why that’s a bad idea. “I feel”, his ori’vod presses out between clenched teeth, “that if you make me watch you throw yourself out of another window, I’m going to jump after you and strangle you on the way down, you little bitch.”

“That’s fair”, says Fox, and watches High General Kenobi bury his face in his hands. Wolffe twitches in place and makes an aborted groaning noise, the hypocrite.

“Excuse me, High Marshall Commander Fox, but I fail to see what’s so dire about this situation that the Jedi High Council and your brothers cannot help you solve”, says Windu, the only sane one left on this Force-forsaken bloated corpse of a planet. Behind the gaggle of Jedi and ori’vode already gathered in front of Fox, the rest of them come veering around the corner in a commotion that’s quite frankly embarrassing. High General Yoda is mounted on Skywalker’s back like he’s a race-Eopie, which is Fox’ only consolation.

He got up this morning at 0300, bleary-eyed and with a pounding headache as always, and all was right in the world. And then Fox got called into the Jedi High Council’s chambers and was ceremoniously informed that in the wake of Chancellor Palpatine’s unfortunate demise (hah), and through the emergency state of the Senate, as well as several invented promotions foisted on Fox to make the delegation of any and all paperwork less shady, he was now next in the chain of command and-

Well, Fox is the acting Chancellor, in short.

Haha, he had said, and been meet with several seconds of silence, until it got both awkward and exceedingly painful. Wait, he’d said. You’re kriffing serious.

Kriffing serious, we are, had said High General Yoda, and thus Fox launched himself out the first best window with a maniacal cackle of, you’ll have to catch me first!

And catch him, High General Windu sure did.

“The will of the Force this is”, Yoda interrupts Fox’ train of thought. He scans him thoughtfully from beneath his wizened brow, and hems to himself. “Shake things up, this will. Determine the fate of the Galaxy, this shall. A feeling, I have, that a good Chancellor you will make. A better one, hmmm.”

“That’d be high praise, if not for the fact that a dead lemming would make for a better Chancellor than the last one”, says Fox, drawing and indignant gasp from Skywalker. He doesn’t bother with either that or the green goblin’s cackle, lost in the deep sense of resignation that settles over his shoulders like a suffocating blanket.

“Alright, then, get me Thorn on the comm. As my first act in office, I’m firing all the Jedi. No offense, but you’re kind of a disaster. Then, someone get me to the Chancellor’s office, I’m calling Dooku to let him know the war’s off. And please get me Judicial, they’ll be up all night working on my datafolders - I’m having the Senate arrested.”

“Who - is - arresting - “, Bly pants, hands on his knees from where he’s just come sprinting around the corner with his Jedi.

Underneath his bucket, Fox smiles a smile that’s all teeth. “The Senate”, he says, sweetly, wondering if he’s just imagined the shiver that’s gone through the room. “I’m suing the Senate, and taking them all into temporary custody for abuse of sentient rights.”

[swordmaid]

a girl who is a noir detective man and a guy who is a femme fatale

[benrybenrybenry-chr]

they are bees now lol peep their tiny hats

[starcurtain]

Hey! I apologize if this question has been asked before since it seems like a pretty obvious one, but where do you think the idea of Aventurine being a sex slave came from? Other than the obvious factor of it being something fun for the fandom to mess around with, I mean.

It's something I kind of took for granted as being true before playing his quest, but after finishing it I realized there wasn't really any indication. The only thing I can really think of is his master's comments about him having a good body. Is there anything in his behavior you can think of that would lead to this conclusion if it wasn't a popular fan interpretation already/kind of just an easy conclusion to reach with a slave character?

(also kind of related but what do you think of the idea that he sleeps around/with his clients to make deals? he's obviously willing to sexualize himself with the boob window, but that doesn't necessarily mean he goes further.)

As far as I can tell, the idea that Aventurine was involved in sexual slavery comes from three (maybe four) places:

First, the comment from the master about Aventurine's appearance. People were holding this comment up as refutable proof that Aventurine was used in sexual slavery on top of being tossed into the Hunger Games; however, the response from other players on this interpretation, especially the Chinese side of the fandom, was very mixed, with a lot of people pointing out that the context in the game probably meant the slave master was talking about Aventurine's ability to attract attention from fans watching the literal Sigonian Hunger Games, rather than having a direct sexual-slavery connotation.

Second, the comment from Sparkle about stripping naked and getting on his knees for Sunday. This one has way more implication in English than I think it might for an Eastern audience, actually. In English, this pretty much sounds like Sparkle saying Aventurine trades sexual favors for success in his gambles. However, I suspect the original intention in Chinese was more about humiliation. Western audiences don't have as much history with honor-based prostration, i.e. accepting corporal humiliation as a form of reconciliation that Eastern audiences might be more familiar with. And in any case, Sparkle is Sparkle. She probably just went for the lowest blow she could think of here.

Third, the general assumption that if Sigonian slaves were being chained, branded, beaten, sent to death matches, etc., it seems logical that they would also be taken advantage of in other ways. I honestly think this is probably the fairest take--many, many real slaves around the world faced (and still face!) sexual abuse, so if slaves from Sigonia were treated so poorly you could make them fight to the death for entertainment, it stands to reason they were probably also not safe from other forms of assault. We also have no idea what happened to Kakavasha in any of the years between his being a tiny child fleeing the massacre and then being purchased as a slave as a late-teens-early-twenties person. That's a very long time for a child to have to survive on their own on an extremely hostile planet and not face risks of all kinds or end up needing to do unspeakable things to survive. So I think this is at least not that far-fetched, although it's important to say there's nothing in the game that directly confirms this.

And fourth: I read a tweet semi-recently that stated that one of the Chinese (or maybe it was Japanese) names for a quest Aventurine was involved in was actually a reference to a book about a teenage sexual assault survivor. However, when I tried to verify this myself, I couldn't find any quest Aventurine was in that was based on a book about sexual assault in either English, Chinese, or Japanese. It's possible I just missed something, but I'm taking this one with a bit of a grain of salt currently, since I can't confirm it personally.

Regarding your other question, about whether I think Aventurine sleeps around to make deals...

I definitely think he does not, for one major reason.

First, I will admit that Aventurine is definitely willing to use his appearance to his advantage. This is pretty obvious. He wears incredibly flashy clothes, baths himself in cologne, overloads on glittering golden jewels, and absolutely calls attention to his appearance when working with clients.

We see him actively doing this in his Moment Among the Stars video, where he is clearly using his looks as an equal tool (to his wealth), to daze his target.

It's not an accident that he says things like "Use me as you wish," with all the explicit connotations preserved. The implication is there. However, unless he was absolutely backed into a corner, I think that implication is all it will ever be.

The reason I think this is that the devs go out of their way to give Aventurine three fairly noticeable physical behaviors in his in-game scenes:

For one, he has some of the most closed off body language of any character in the game.

Aventurine's default conversation pose is arms crossed directly and tightly in front of himself. This is like "Defensive Body Language 101." By crossing your arms, you put a symbolic barrier between yourself and the person you're speaking to, and also ensure that your hands are up and available in case you actually need to physically defend yourself.

Virtually all of Aventurine's conversations take place from this stance, no matter who he is speaking to (from the Trailblazer all the way to Topaz). He deliberately closes his pose off and tightens up his silhouette, which just sends a glaring "Don't touch me" message.

This closing off is also blatantly apparent when you compare it to the deliberately open poses he strikes while trying to make himself seem accessible to others (like tempting clients) or seem powerful (to intimidate):

Complementing this habit of closing himself off is a second noticeable aspect of his body language: He frequently avoids eye contact to the point that he even holds conversations while entirely facing away from the person he's speaking to.

I might be a bit lenient and say maybe he's doing this to on purpose to be mysterious, whoo~~ But... in all honestly, he just does this with everyone, even with Ratio while trying to talk about an actual important issue (wanting to look into Acheron's real identity). Hell, even the fake Aventurine does it to himself!

We can even say that wearing the rose-tinted glasses in the first place is another intentional barrier, one Aventurine deliberately removes in specific moments to give people the (false) impression that he's "letting them in" to his circle:

Now, this might be a bit more complicated in Aventurine's case, because eye contact has a whole extra meaning when eyes are the defining trait of your species and come with particularly challenging racial stereotypes. So it may be that Aventurine is simply used to conducting conversation while looking away to minimize racial prejudice against his eyes' unique appearance.

However, I'd also argue that the devs deliberately turned his entire model away in cutscene after cutscene to create a clear sense of being inaccessible, unapproachable, and unwilling to engage in the physical intimacy of standing closely, directly facing, and staring at his conversation partners.

While he faces away, he controls both the figurative and the literal direction of conversation, forcing people to keep their eyes on him while he is free to move as he pleases. Over and over again, it just says "I want to be the one in control. I'm not afraid to show my back to you, but you are not welcome to come near me."

And, in fact, that's a third aspect of his character's body language that I am sure the devs did not include accidentally: More so than other characters, many of Aventurine's conversations are conducted from weirdly far distances. Like, half the time he's talking, he's standing all the way on the opposite side of the room!

This habit of speaking from a-larger-than-normal distance is apparent in the first scene with Himeko...

And then in just about every other conversation too:

The bubble is twenty feet in every direction.

Like yes, he does approach and have conversations like a normal person... sometimes... But it is significantly more noticeable with Aventurine than with other characters that he often conducts whole conversations--even with his allies--from a distance. Just genuinely weirdly far apart.

Leaving space for Gaiathra, I guess.

And it's because these significant decisions were made with Aventurine's in-game body language that, when he deliberately alters his own behavior, it is instantaneously noticeable.

In 2.0, he closes the distance, the glasses come off, and he gets directly up in the Trailblazer's face.

It's uncomfortable not just because the player is suddenly being loomed over, but because this behavior has already been subconsciously established for the player as out of character for Aventurine.

The barriers the character himself was putting up are deliberately stripped away so that he can use physicality and demanding eye contact to intimidate his target. He has to reverse his own normal body language in order to come across as domineering (and, I guess if you're into that, appealing in a domineering manner).

And ummmm, just a tiny aside here because I can't resist:

This does mean that when the game goes out of its way to demonstrate Aventurine altering his own normal habit of distant and defensive body language, it is absolutely intentional.

Yes, this is a Ratiorine post in disguise. There literally isn't any other character in the game that Aventurine is shown being comfortable standing so close to and interacting with in this manner. This doesn't occur in every one of their scenes, but Ratio is the only character that this happens with repeatedly. It's not an accident that the devs literally added "They were walking side-by-side" as flavor text.

But look, I'll be fair: There's a great example of this in Aventurine's scene with Acheron too, where he closes the distance and attempts to make eye contact with her--seeking her guidance and closeness--and she is actually the one stepping away, speaking with her back turned, demonstrating her power and control (and issues with connection!) in that scene.

Anyway, this was a whole longggg tangent into analyzing Aventurine's body language, but my point is that, overall, the devs deliberately adjusted his model's actions in-game to give the impression of a person who clearly wants to be in control of every interaction he has with other people, who insists on distance over intimacy, and whose stances and habits suggest that he is significantly less accessible and open than his "Use me as you wish" motto might suggest.

Long story longer, I think that there is almost zero chance Aventurine is willingly ceding control over himself or the actions expected of him to anyone he isn't 100% comfortable with, and I think that using physical intimacy of any kind would be an absolute last resort for him. Frankly, he comes across as more likely to shoot himself in the foot than let someone he doesn't trust lay hands on him.

To me, he reads very much as "You may look, but you may not touch."

[whaliiwatching]

gay people judging you

[greatgodempresspan]

Listen, if you’re gonna remake Scooby-doo with the express purpose of making it all “adult, sexy and edgy” and you *don’t* take that opportunity to make the four of them a polycule who solve mysteries with their adorable, cowardly junkyard dog, you’re a fucking coward - I don’t know what else to tell you.

[dingustripas]

I just finished watching Glass Onion for the third time so now you get to hear my rant about it but the details are out of order in the timeline because I’m lazy

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

When Miles lifts the gun off of Duke, we can actually see it pre-Blanc explaining it. The scene where the two hug you can see Miles take the gun and slip it into the back of his jeans.

Following the gun thing, we, the viewers actually SEE the gun itself (pre-Blanc’s explanation) when Miles goes back to the mini bar to put it in the ice bucket. Although it’s kind of hard to see it’s very clearly a gun but our eyes manipulate our minds into thinking it’s a drink because it is indeed a minibar.

They show how Miles places the drink in Dukes hand pre Blanc’s explanation but quickly distract us with the groups dynamic and Birdie.

Phillip is skeptical of Helen when she asks for Blanc, we can assume that he and Blanc have had negative run ins with people from jobs. Also Phillip might be judging Helen’s character, who she is, because he doesn’t want to put Blanc into a situation where he’s in true danger. He’s a detective not Batman.

Birdies mask at the beginning of the movie at the boat is just fucking chains across her face in diamond pattern.

Blanc doesn’t have a gag reflex when the dude in the white suit puts Miles “covid vax” down his throat. (Bc he’s 🏳️‍🌈)

Andi, when she first comes up with the idea for Alpha and starts working with Miles, is wearing dark colors. The dark blue pinstripe suit, her completely black ensamble when we see her at the Glass Onion (the bar). But when she’s challenging Miles she’s wearing both Black and white. At the trial she’s wearing a light almost off white suit. Why is this important? Because what color is Helen wearing when she shuts miles down? White. The color white is, in itself, a color that symbolizes Miles downfall.

Connecting back to the white idea, Whiskey is wearing all white (her bathing suit) when she reveals crucial information about Miles giving her the Taurus necklace for her birthday. (Which leads to his downfall when Blanc puts 2+2 together that he killed Andi)

“Im really bad at dumb things” -Blanc. The reason he didn’t catch on to what was going on with Miles earlier was because Miles is stupid. Miles is so dumb that he fucking befuddled Blanc because Miles is so stupid.

Blanc isn’t uncomfortable about his arousal around Birdie when she put her legs up on him while Miles talks about being ‘Disrupters’. He’s uncomfortable because he’s GAY and has a BOYFRIEND/HUSBAND.

There’s a bunch of owls and small trinkets of birds in Birdies room.

The movie, at the very beginning, with Miles mystery invitation box thing hints at where the envelope is hidden. The fibonacci sequence on the box has the center blocked out in black, where we will later see in the film is red which is where Miles is hiding the envelope. For fucks sake the movie even goes out of its way, with Dukes mother, to point out the sequence. (“The first one’s a fibonacci sequence” -Dukes mom).

During the dinner Whiskey is wearing the same golden chain body jewelry that Birdie was wearing earlier at the pool. So this could mean two things: 1. They have the same chain and 2. Whiskey borrowed the chain from Birdie.

Now connecting to my first point about the chain jewelry above. The reason why Miles likes Whiskey, despite her sleeping with him for the sake of Dukes channel, is because Whiskey reminds him of younger Birdie. Birdie even talks to Peg about how dazzled and amazed Miles was when he first met her and how she wishes it was like that again. Then when they’re smashing the glass sculptures, the first thing Whiskey smashes is a sculpture of a bird. Hence smashing Miles perception of her as another person he can use like he used Birdie.

“You have him turn around so he can have deniability” -Aaron Burr in Hamilton (Basically what Blanc was thinking when he walked out of the room)

When Blanc is trying to light his cigar in the “Smokeless garden” the reason the alarms go off is because because just the smoke and small flames from Blanc’s cigar could cause “another Hindenburg”.

The ending scene with Helen and Blanc after Blanc asks her if she’s ready to go home, Helen’s sitting stance mimics the Mona Lisa. Miles said “It all started with her” in reference to his success being inspired by the Mona Lisa. But it all ended with Helen and her stance at the end mimicking the Mona Lisa is meant to represent that. The beginning and end of Miles Bron.

Blanc refers to alchol as offering Helen “some courage”. Ofc as we all know alcohol is commonly referred to as “Liquid Courage”.

We should’ve known Miles was the killer for this simple reason: The glass he handed to Duke. Duke dying holding Miles’s glass is literally like a signed note. Duke died with Miles name literally written on the crime scene.

[bentley0nfire]

Watching psych is the ultimate form of procrastination because I get to watch other people procrastinate on more important things