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Boothill & Aventurine analysis, P. I,5: Two faces of the same coin in a world governed by colonial capitalism, and how their character design translates their long term reactions to the opression they were victims.

This is not really a very well done essay, much shorter than the previous, not very well organized and I'm not gonna say anything new XD All here is very obvious. So that's why this is a 1.5 instead of a fully part 2.

Maybe somebody else already pointed this out before, but hey, y’all know I LOVE to do fk dissertations. But I want to say first, sorry for my grammatical and syntactic errors. I'm writing this in a fit of inspirational rage directly in English without using a translator.

Introduction

@/detectivepassingby (Miu) on TikTok did an EXCELLENT analysis of his design and personality: "Aventurine Design (& personality) analysis + speculations" dated 05/03, go see it. What caught my attention was what Miu mentioned about his literal rose tinted glasses, and not only how they represent a juxtaposition of his beliefs (I would love to debate this a little bit because I have different opinions on it and I LOVE Miu's take on it), but also, and this is where I want to enter, he uses them to literally cover his eyes. And I absolutely didn’t think of that before I saw Miu’s video, and when I was commenting on Miu's video, I had such a realisation I had to get up and explain it to my poor mother, who was chilling in the dining room.

As we all already know and I already thoroughly explained in my previous essay “Boothill, Aventurine and the IPC: Survivors of genocide and colonisation, loss of identity, loneliness and racial discrimination" (go also read it, pretty please), Aventurine suffers from canonical racial discrimination accentuated by one specific thing: his eyes.

For context for those who don’t know it, Aventurine, whose real name is Kakavasha, comes from the planet Sigonia-IV, where his specific clan, the Avgin, was heavily discriminated. They were accused of some heavy stereotypes, and finally, due to the IPC inference, they were all killed in a genocidal plan. One thing that actually identified the Avgin from the other Sigonian clans was their cyan & pinkish eyes. And the discrimination they suffered wasn’t only localised in Sigonia-IV, but it was everywhere. I’m going to re-cite my previous work again:

In Aventurine Character Story: Part I, they show us how the IPC received formal and informal complaints when he started working there, mainly "concerns about his origin":

"It's complaints about him, both formal and informal. My mailbox has been flooded with them like countless pieces of paper. I wonder... if it's worth reconsidering his inclusion in the Strategic Investment Department.” "What do these complaints say?” "Mostly about his origins. Those eyes of his…”

So yes, his eyes are a motive of racial discrimination against him. Miu explains very well in the video that while his attire is designed to attract attention as a way of protecting himself, he does so at the same time "he covers up the one thing that would make him stand out the most: his eyes" (Slide 7 of Miu's video). Miu also mentions, in slides 7 and 8, how his glasses are simultaneously a representation of the act he as to play as Aventurine, separating him from Kakavasha and his past, but also protecting him from the only part of his body that racially defines him as a discrimination target.

But the thing that Miu said that actually turned on the lightbulb in my head was on slide 8:

"His eyes are the one thing he can't outwardly change about himself".

Miu didn't mention this in-game conversation, but it immediately made me remember one specific dialogue Kakavasha had with Jade in a flashback from All Sad Tales, in the scene when they were reunited after he killed his previous slaver:

Jade: What pretty eyes. Tell me, do they shine in the dark? Kakavasha: Well if they did, I'd sell them in a heartbeat.

Now, this is when I enter myself.

And then I started thinking...

Since I wrote the first essay about Aventurine and Boothill, I really, really wanted to do a Part II exploring one very specific thing about both of them that I didn't explore in that essay: How they responded to their respective oppression and the genocides of their respective peoples.

Both are two faces of the same coin, two faces of the consequences of oppression: Fight or Collaboration. That's what I want to explore in a future. Both of them suffered the same origin. A genocide orchestrated by the IPC. But they responded in two drastically different ways: Boothill devoted his life to seeking justice and fighting the system that killed his people. Aventurine, on the other hand, is what we could very vulgarly define as a collaborationist, as he directly works with and benefits from the same organisation that caused the Avgin genocide and the rest of his misery. And yes, I'm going to be just with one thing: the Marketing Development Department (controlled by Oswaldo Schneider) and the Strategic Investment Department (where Aventurine works under Diamond) are different branches of the IPC. But it's still the IPC. I don't care if you work for Nescafé or Nespresso; it's still Nestlé, and we know that the SID is still villainous as fk. Point done... ¿What does any of this have to do with Aventurine's pink glasses? NOTHING AND EVERYTHING BABY.

Aventurine is someone we know as a fact that he sees his life as a quantitative value. He uses his life as a bet multiple times in the game. I don't really think he is fully suicidal (give him time, because I'm really worried for his state of mind after they reconstructed his cornerstone, dooming multiple planets for it), but he is absolutely highly depressed and mentally exhausted, and we have seen he doesn't fight the prospect of dying if he really think is inevitable. And even betting on his life, another definitive trait of him is the fact that he is in a constant survivalist state of mind. He bets on his life PRECISELY to survive. In that meeting with Jade is when he "bets" his life to work with the IPC, because that was his only way out of being condemned to death.

He didn't have an option if he wanted to live. And this is a key difference with Boothill that I'm going to explain later.

And BECAUSE I remembered Boothill, I started thinking in a very cynical way about all of this and what Miu said about his eyes being the only thing he cannot change about himself... Yes, it's true. He cannot change that about himself. Not only because, from the psychological standpoint, it would be fully reneging on his past and origin, but also because those are literally his... eyes. Easy as that. Right? Actually no.

He absolutely could if he wanted. And we know that precisely because of Boothill.

He is a cyborg, but he wasn't always like that. Before he was a cowboy from the continent Aeragan-Epharshel, on a planet whose name we don't know. This continent suffered a violent repression and genocide directly at the hands of the IPC, without intermediaries, to colonise it and extract metals, and for it they launched a massive bomb attack that killed everybody from Boothill's tribe and others, including his daughter. Boothill was a milician in this conflict trying to fight the IPC, but they lost purely from the tecnological stand point. After that, he swore vengeance, and he DECIDED (this is important) to undergo a massive surgery to transform his own body into a cyborg in order to accomplish his fight for justice. And that includes his eyes. They are also synthetic.

I saw a lot of people pointing out that, actually, Aventurine eyes really do shine in the dark, we don't know until what point it's a game stylistic choice or it's something unique to his eyes. And these same people pointed out the sad irony of this, because if he knew that, he would have sold them. But I absolutly DISAGREE with this. Not because he can or cannot, but because he is scared.

He is a survivalist. And a survivalist is ALWAYS scared. It's the key definition of people like that, and this is actually referred to by one very important detail in Aventurine's physique: his hands.

Aventurine's flesh body

As we are directly told in his Character Story: Part II, "his hands tremble slightly" after he literally shot himself SIX times in the heart during a russian roulette with a 6-shot revolver that had 1 bullet. Mathematically, he should have died. But, in honour of his extreme luck, the revolver jammed at the sixth shot, allowing him to actually raise the gun directly at Mad Bull, knowing there was a bullet ready to be fired. He tempted fate, and he almost killed himself in a very extreme way. And his hands trembled afterwards, while he put on a cheeky façade.

"You used our lives as bait, making them believe there was internal strife between us, and then you eliminated them all... A clever trick, although a bit reckless." He greets the woman with a smile, although his hands tremble slightly. (Character Story: Part II)

We could argue that it's normal. And it is. But this "trembling hand" is a constant for Aventurine. From his trailers and in-game animations, we know he ALWAYS hides his left hand behind his back every time he makes a big gamble (usually his life), because it trembles. This demonstrates something very important about him. He is bluffing.

And for a bluff to work, you need to be seen as confident. A poker face, minimum. And Aventurine wears confidence in his luck as a constant mask. But a trembling hand... It could ruin him, because then the illusion is broken, and his enemies can see that he isn't as confident as they thought. Because in reality, he is scared of dying. He is scared of pain. Of being hurt AGAIN.

A little insight: Aventurine seems to be actually left-handed. So by doing this, hiding his left trembling hand, he is playing with his non-dominant hand, the right one. We could also argue that this also goes in his favour, as usually people are more used to right-handed people, and him using the right hand to play wouldn't draw attention. It's, again, an extension of how much he "hides", "disguises" himself.

It's objectively disgusting to even think of having to change yourself so you won't be discriminated against, killed, etc. But Aventurine had to do just that, betraying everything that connects him to his past. The way he dresses, with too much colour, luxury, etc, as Miu said, is a disguise. He uses it to disconnect himself from his past, protect himself from possible discrimination by demonstrating that he has power, like a peacock flaunting its colours to the world. This is sadly very real in our world, as people who are usually discriminated against (for their gender, race or sexual identity) and have a position of power, they suffer from more scrutiny than the rest. And that happened to Aventurine in-game. So he wears sunglasses to conceal his eyes, and he shows them when he can use them to his advantage. He uses his right hand to conceal his fear, because it's his dominant hand that trembles. The Avgin people were a humble clan in their worship of their Goddess, usually alone, as they thought that more pompous means of worship weren't respectful to HER due to HER humble nature. And still Aventurine uses HER name loudly and his very proven luck to inspire doubt in his enemies, even when his faith is almost non-existent.

But he never took his eyes off, nor did he cut his left hand so people wouldn't see it tremble. He never took out of his own body the parts that actually give him a disadvantage. He can be as pragmatic as you want, a survivalist of all sorts, and even he tries to conceal himself, but he is scared. He has always put a monetary value on himself, but at the end of the day, he was already sold and used in the most cruel and inhumane way.

So yes, he is bluffing. That's his whole act of survival. A constant bluff. And what he said to Jade was a bluff. He would never sell his eyes. Not even given the option of having synthetic eyes like Boothill, because he is not fighting. He is surviving.

And he will never do it, nor should he.

Their body's as reflections

Now... I'm going to start fully comparing Boothill and Aventurine. As I said before they are two faces of the same coin, to a point it's scary. And this is going to be VERY important for the conclusion I want to demonstrate, because it has everything to do with Boothill.

And it's how the materials their respective body are composed are a reflection of their lives and paths.

Boothill's original flesh body doesn't exist anymore, but he didn't actually renege on his past: the metal his body parts are made of is the same metal that grew in his continent and for what they killed everybody there. His body is an absolute ode to his origins. Metal is a subproduct of land, and Boothill, whose new name literally means a burial ground for cowboys and outlaws killed violently, wears his whole body as a burial site for all his lost companions and daughter. He is A Boothill. They are buried in metal, and they are buried in his memory. We don't know his real name, only that it means "loaded-gun" in the ancient language of his continent. We don't know his real body. He changed everything, but he doesn't conceal it. He wears his past, the changes that this caused to his body, with short clothes, as a pennant visible to anybody who dares to understand for whom he fights and who he fights. No victim should be forgotten in his body.

Boothill literally is Aeragan-Epharshel's last metallic loaded-gun forged by the land where he grew up and the memories of his tribe's suffering.

A literal moving burial site for the world to see and a symbol for other victims in a cosmos controled by capitalistic colonialism.

But while metal is hard, fabrics are flimsy and skin is fragile. Aventurine design is purely show. While there is metal present in his clothes, it's decorative. A luxury. It's golden. Flashy. Not like Boothill's metal that has construction applications and is used as a defensive weapon. Both of them show their chest, but only one of them it's really exposed and that's Aventurine. His flashiness doesn't protect him from a bullet because he doesn't need it, that's where his luck enters the scene, but it protects him from something far more dangerous. Other eyes. Other's opinions. He is scared. He doesn't dress up with the luxury that his opressors made him work for because he wants, but because it's defensive. He doesn't need and he doesn't want to change more, because he already changed everything that made him, him. He is surviving without weapons, flaunting his body like a bullseye of others rage and envy. He even puts on the act of falling, purposefully, into the stereotypes others had of his clan.

Boothill, with all the changes he did, he still maintains a big sense of identity trying to defend the others.

Aventurine, without doing so much drastic changes to his body, he actually did loose his sense of identity and he conceals it, and he is not doing it to defend others, but to protect himself.

Boothill had the option to decide whether or not to transform his body, and he actually did it without concealing his past and with a motive far away from mere survival.

Aventurine never had the option to choose whether to change himself or not, as he was already sold from the start. His body was never his from the start. We could argue even that this was from the moment he was born and Gaiathra Triclops blessed him.

Aventurine is a forced chosed one from the moment his Goddess blessed him, his name it's even another mirror or his lack of self-identity. His sister choosed saving him and she died. He was chosen in a slave market. He was chosen by Diamond to work under the IPC. He was chosen by everybody but he could never chose by himself, and he never wanted anything that was forced upon him. And chosen ones are alone.

Boothill was the contrary. He could choose because he never was a chosen one. Not a doomed one, at least. He was a militian. Aeragan-Epharshel had the opportunity to fight the IPC, even if it was a lost match from the start. And he did. He opposed them with his companions. His whole community. He wasn't special inside a community that worked together, not like the Signonians who separated themselves from the Avgin. One knew peace, while the other was surviving from the moment he was born in a segregated community.

There is also another thing here: Boothill was already an adult when the violent and direct colonization by the IPC started. Aventurine was a child when the IPC moved the strings to cause the Avgin genocide. Both their ages and the way the IPC presented themselves in the conflict have a LOT to do in their respective decision-making capacities. Aventurine never had the capacity to make his own decisions because he was a kid in a world who couldn't see the mastermind of the conflict behing a fog of manipulation and destruction. Boothill had, from the start, much more capacity of decision as an adult in world that could actually see who the enemy really was, because a fog of only destruction it's much more transparent than the manipulation one. That's why I'm also sure that Boothill sees the IPC as a whole, while the disdain Aventurine has is more personal to Oswaldo Schneider and his specific branch inside the IPC that right know is maintaining him alive and protected.

Aventurine believes he need something bigger behind himself to protect him, as that what his life taught. Gaiathra Triclops or the IPC, his shield comes from behind him to protect him from the front in form of luck, luxury and power, but it's a little shield, as he only cover him. Boothill, on the contrary, took the shield himself, from the soil of his own origin and he understood he didn't need something bigger to protect him, but that he should be that protection from others (yes, he has the galaxy rangers, but he started this before joining them). His shield is bigger and on his own hand, and he has the decision to use it to protect who he wants, not only himself, capacity Aventurine doesn't have.

THE FK CONCLUSION I DIDN'T NEED A FULL ASS ESSAY TO JUSTIFY

We could argue then that Boothill deciding to "sell" his own body to the cause is a direct confrontation of Aventurine bluffing about selling parts of his body but never doing it, as a metaphor of their different approaches to dealing with their past and their relation with the culprits, one fighting the system and sacrificing his body to the cause by his own decision, while the other economically benefits and collaborates with the same system that massacred his clan and to do so he hides preciselly those parts of himself (eyes and hands) by the very literal courtain of luxury that his opressors allowed him to wear.

I want to say that I'm not saying that Aventurine should change his literal body. As a mather of a fact, Boothill should have NEVER been in a position that actually make him choose what he choosed. Both are victims. None of them wanted this path if the IPC never arribed and I don't feel confortable romantising why Boothill is a cyborg, even tho it's a clear difference between them that Boothill HAD a say in that and that's something I fully respect. He choosed it. He could had another more "peaceful path", but he choosed to fight. And as Argenti could say, that decisition has some beauty in it.

But Boothill today should still be a full human, in Aeraghan-Epharshel, with his real name, his family and friends, teaching his daughter how to play music and walk, sorrounded by mountains and the fresh air of the plains. Aventurine, even if he never knew that same peace, he should have been able to. His happy life should be with his sister and parents in Sigonia, without the disdain of other clans and the menace of the IPC to make them a casualty. None of them should be in the place they are today. But they are. And they manage it whoever they are able to.

----

DAMN WHAT A BREATH I JUST TOOK.

This wasn't well done at all, nothing new, repetitive as fuck, but I needed to write it. And all of this bullshit was inspired by Miu making me realize his rose tinted sunglasses LOL thank youuuuu

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