This is a personal interpretation of mine but I feel like the Savoys siblings have a pretty perverse interest regarding Mordecai, especially Serafine.
We know that in volume 2, Serafine and Nico invite Mordecai to join their congregation and explicitly say they had been considering him. This alone suggests that Mordecai wasn't a random choice, they had clearly been watching him for some time, long enough to learn about his past and his attachment to Atlas. That knowledge feels too specific to come from casual workplace interaction. It implies that Mordecai had already been “marked” as someone of interest well before the ritual.
And what’s interesting is that Serafine seems to see Mordecai as someone fundamentally similar to herself and Nico, not in personality of course, but in destiny. Someone displaced and ultimately claimed by forces larger than himself.
But the most disturbing element is the mark itself.
Mordecai does not consent to the congregation, yet Serafine forces the ritual on him anyway, probably held down by the other members. The mark is carved directly over his heart, which feels too symbolically precise to be accidental. It feels closer to a forced initiation, something meant to bind him whether he accepts it or not.
And there's a deeply unsettling subtext here: Mordecai is physically overpowered and marked against his will. The ritual isn't shown in full, which arguably makes it more disturbing, we only see the aftermath, but it's easy to imagine how little agency he had in that situation.
If you look closely, you will notice that his jacket and shirt were not pierced by the dagger and that therefore...they had to partially and forcefully undress him.
The subtext becomes creepier when you see Mordecai talking about it with this dude that imagines a whole other thing in his mind.
It's worth noting that Serafine repeatedly crosses his personal boundaries, physically and symbolically. In Keepsake, she deliberately invades his personal space in a way that feels far more intimate than necessary. Combined with the forced marking and the earlier observation of his life, it creates the impression that Serafine has a kind of disturbingly focused interest in Mordecai.
Not necessarily romantic, but something closer to fascination, as if she sees in him someone who belongs to the same world she inhabits, whether he admits it or not.
dededos
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
2087
romaincrisis
