The one thing Valorant setting provides that very few other fandoms do is that you can write selfcest and stay very true to source material. α-Chamber and Ω-Chamber canonically worked together, and Chamber is the most self-obsessed prick there is. You CAN'T tell me that they'd never explore each other carnally if they had such possibility.
So...the Welcome to my world cinematic, huh? Let's talk about it. (Yes I'm ever so slightly late to the party but shhh.) Also, this has a lot of large gifs in it, so they may take a while to load if you're on mobile. You've been warned.
I'm going to be breaking the entire cinematic down sequentially, but I might double back every now and then—we'll see. Now, without further ado: opening scenes. More precisely, how these scenes perfectly set up the rest of the cinematic and specifically how Viper processed this event.
This shot is the first one of the cinematic, and here we see A-Reyna shooting at Brimstone, Viper, and most importantly, Chamber. There are others, obviously, but she's the only one we can see, and that's important. Why? Because it's heavily implied that Reyna is the one who shoot and thus critically injures Chamber. That's important to note.
And then we get this. We see here that Chamber is scoped in and looking at the enemy, but what gets him to fully take his eyes off the enemy? Viper. It's difficult to tell if they lock eyes here or not, but either way, he looks away longer than he needs to. Keep this in mind as well.
And to wrap up this opening scene, we get Brimstone's greatest crime in Viper's eyes: forcibly pulling her away from Chamber. Yes, she always took issue with his approach to fighting A-Earth to an extent, and seeing how many O-agents have died because of it makes it clear why she's reached a boiling point—but that isn't the crux of the issue, not really. As much as she would pretend otherwise, Viper operates on an extremely emotion-driven and personal level, and the only reason she's able to disguise that as cold efficiency is because she's almost always driven by her own priorities rather than that of others. We're seeing exhibit A of that right here. At her core, Viper is protective and possessive, and that's exactly what fuels her never-ending desire for vengeance.
But I digress; why am I calling attention to these three things? Because they perfectly sum up who Viper blames for Chamber's state, and we see the ripple effect of that blame throughout the rest of the cinematic.
First and foremost is Brimstone. This is who Viper is putting the most blame on, and even in this scene it's obvious. The others are looking at the dead and critically injured agents solemnly, but Viper? She scoffs. It's also deliberate, here, that we don't see her eyes. Her mind is already clouded by anger, and she's physically incapable of containing it. Even as she looks toward Sage, her face is set in a half-glare, and Viper is likely aware of this, hence why she looks away and closes her eyes before making actual contact with Sage's stasis chamber. Despite Viper's voicelines toward Sage, here she seems only pained by Sage's state. Her anger isn't directed at her whatsoever despite the fact that, (il)logically, she could place blame on Sage for not being able to heal Chamber right now.
In contrast, when Viper looks at Brimstone, he receives her glare at full-force as well as a shoulder-check, which I go into a bit here. This isn't just her anger, it's her looking at Chamber and Sage and nonverbally telling him "This is your fault." Brimstone knows it as well, because he looks pained here, and when he meets Viper's eyes his expression only tightens further. He knows exactly what she's thinking. Side note: the reason I say she's also attributing Sage's state to his leadership is because of the framing here. It was a deliberate choice on the animators/story-boarders' parts to zoom in on Sage behind Viper, and considering this scene is very much in Viper's perspective as well as the behavior I pointed out just now, this almost certainly indicates that Sage's state is weighing on her mind as well and that it's factoring into her anger with Brimstone.
Moving away from Viper for a moment, we see exactly what the cinematic just told us we would—the reason each of Viper's assembled team fights for their world, the reason that drives them. Each of the children here are amputees just like Breach is; his passion and drive comes from helping them live with all the freedom of a "normal" kid. These children are also very clearly fond of him, based on the third child's behavior (tugging Breach toward the playground), so it's likely he has a deeper bond with them all and looks after them.
Then we have Yoru. Just in that last picture alone, we can see he's single-handedly saved at least 8 people, and we also clearly see how much it pains him to leave even one person behind. Despite the whole isolated-tough-guy act he puts on, his drive, much like Breach's, is primarily an altruistic one: saving as many people as he can, even to the point where his radiance is beginning to physically harm him.
I won't lie, Sova stumped me for a moment purely because of the righteous light he's usually painted in. But to be quite honest, I think that both the flashback of A-Sova taking his eye as well as his body language toward Sage here indicate that his main motivation at the moment is genuinely vengeance—or at least damage control. He's looking at what the enemy is capable of, directly touching the result of it (Sage's state) and Brimstone's leadership, and he knows that they can't continue to let A-Earth trample on them like this.
Now then; back to Viper.
It's pretty clear here that her nightmare was exactly what we saw—and flashes of what happened to Chamber are to be expected, but what I find more intriguing is the fact that in her nightmare, the viper that's meant to represent her (or some facet of her) lunges at her. I've discussed Viper's self-loathing and fear of losing control over herself in the past, so I'll omit reiterating that, but in this situation, I almost wonder if the implication here is that she sees herself only as a destructive force. Not only in terms of her getting Chamber hurt in her eyes, but also in terms of Brimstone. In the scene after this, the imagery of the viper destroying the statue of Brimstone seems to soothe her, but her knee-jerk reaction here was still terror and, if I had to hazard a guess, some level of repulsion. It's only once she's calm again that she looks up at Brimstone's statue calmly with a glare, and given that she and Brimstone (or should I say Liam) are genuinely close, I think this is the moment where she realizes she can meet her dark urges in the middle. The idea of killing her own Brimstone horrifies her, but A-Earth's? Well, that's doable. That's cathartic.
(For analysis on Viper using her mask as a self-soothing tool, reference back to the post I linked earlier.)
Here are a few details I didn't note on my first watch, though: the items on Viper's nightstand (mask notwithstanding). First, the hourglass—at first glance it's easy to think this is very indicative of Viper's desire for efficiency, the strict schedule she keeps herself on, etc. but she has a digital clock for that. We see it in the Snakebite short, and though it isn't visible in these screenshots, it's visible on her desk. This leads me to believe that the hourglass is actually evidence of her ongoing obsession and distress surrounding the Scions of Hourglass and why they wanted her assassinated (and, most likely, if they intend to try and kill her again).
Second is the pills. At first I thought they were colored bullets of some sort, but upon rewatching, it's very clearly a pill bottle on the nightstand in the first screenshot, and in the second we can see the pills themselves flying off the desk as Viper scrambles for her mask. Because I'm really dedicated to this analysis, apparently (and also because I'm insatiable when it comes to Viper lore, sue me), I looked up what pills have a white/off-white and green color. My research was cursory, mind you, but even so, the primary two candidates seem to be Prozac (an anti-depressant) and Temazepam (used to treat insomnia). I'm leaning toward the former, however, as Temazepam is intended for short-term use only, though you could argue that she might only be using it in the wake of Chamber's incapacitation. The fact that she's also keeping his broken glasses on her nightstand is yet another indicator of how tightly she's holding onto the memory of him being injured, so it's definitely plausible.
Moving on to when Viper and co. "overthrow" Brimstone, there isn't too much to note here, but the way everyone reacts the situation is interesting. As Brimstone looks around at each agent, Breach lifts his head in defiance, Yoru tilts his downward solemnly, and Sova's expression flickers like he's doubting his decision in real time. Viper's gaze wavers, but her expression is still with her resolve; as for Brimstone, he honestly doesn't look all that surprised or upset. I think he probably blamed himself a lot as well, or maybe he just had a feeling Viper was going to snap—in any case, we can see him realize what's happening in real time, and he doesn't fight them on it. His hands aren't bound and no one is holding any weapons, so he isn't being physically threatened here. He's choosing to give in.
So, for those who don't know, this location is Reyna's sanctuary where she cares for and protects many people, most of whom are likely radiants (if not all of them).
Remember how I said Reyna was seemingly the one to shoot Chamber? Yeah. Viper didn't forget about that. She deliberately chose to attack the Alpha agents while they were still at Reyna's sanctuary with their guards down.
To summarize the confrontation itself, Raze is either incapacitated/killed off-screen or is kidnapped, Reyna is knocked out, A-Sova's good eye gets shot by O-Sova and he may have been killed after O-Sova rips the arrow out, KJ's fate is left unknown, and A-Brimstone...well. Viper absolutely murders him, no question. And I feel the need to emphasize that—what she did was not killing the enemy on a battlefield. It was personal, passionately cruel murder.
First of all, I'd like to talk about Viper hallucinating Chamber here. I've always headcanoned that she's dealt with minor hallucinations (not that I ever thought it'd become canon), but I'm not completely certain whether she actually saw this or if she just thought about him here and that's how the animators chose to illustrate that. With how Viper visibly reacts and her overall unhinged behavior during this entire sequence, I honestly think both are equally believable.
Second of all, her fighting style is horrifyingly cutthroat. I saw some people in the Valorant discord server joking around about how she has a custom knife skin, but I don't think people realize that it's much more than that; her knife has chemicals in it. She's not only going for the most debilitating body parts (between the shoulder blades, the tendon of his knee) with near-inhuman agility, but doing so with a knife that's directly leaving a trail of her chemicals inside the fresh wound. She doesn't give him a chance to breathe. And, a fun side note, the way she moves around him here and attacks from all angles is very reminiscent of, you guessed it, a snake suffocating its prey.
Third, honestly most intriguing to me, and something I haven't seen anyone else point out yet, is the fact that Brimstone is very visibly choking on her gas with red and irritated eyes, and Viper also provided her entire team with gas masks that cover their entire faces, but Viper...isn't affected by her own gas. At all. She's breathing heavily, yes, but only due to high emotions, and her eyes are very clearly their normal white color. She even rips her own mask off without hesitation once it's broken. So that begs the question: how?
Fade's dossier on Viper from back in the day classified her as human, so two possibilities immediately come to mind. 1) Fade was wrong and no one else knows Viper is radiant, or 2) Viper somehow augmented herself using radianite to make herself invulnerable to chemical attacks. Either way, seeing her rip off her mask totally unaffected while Brimstone is actively choking on her gas was insane.
Like I said before, this was an incredibly cruel way to kill Brimstone—but the thing is, that's exactly what Viper needed. Or at least, what she thought she needed. Notice how she continues to grip onto Brimstone's head, holding him up even when he's clearly already dead or dying. Viper was in distress here, yes, but make no mistake: this was cathartic for her, and she doesn't regret it. She is afraid of herself, and she was very clearly breaking down during the entirety of that fight (throughout it, you can even hear her yelling and almost sobbing as if against her will), but she's also able to force herself to calm down extremely quickly once Brimstone is dead. Viper is well-practiced at masking her own emotions, but if she were truly horrified with what she just did, she wouldn't be able to cover up her emotions that quickly.
Even so, she is forcing herself to calm down here. This very obviously isn't natural. You can see the moment she comprehends her own vulnerability and on-display emotions (widened eyes, heavy + mouth-open breathing, pinched eyebrows) and reins herself in. It's just that she wasn't distressed because of her own actions; she was distressed because of the emotions that drove her to do them in the first place, that incessant rage and desperation and need for vengeance that she can never escape.
Some theorize that A-Viper or A-Sage is going to have to take over because of A-Brimstone's death, but in all honesty, I'm skeptical of that simply because A-Sage is in much better condition than O-Sage and therefore still able to revive Brimstone. In which case, they would go back to operating as usual—and the current event's visuals being Brim vs. Viper seem to support that. Still, I could be wrong.
For the time being, this is all I got. If you bothered to read this entire essay of a post, you're awesome. Feel free to share your guys' thoughts, because I'd love to know what other people make of all this :)
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