Antoinette/Cecilia- WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY (no, like seriously!)
In all honesty, I been having a hard time defining their relationship to eachother (been in the trenches for almost TWO years now fuck these queer ass mfs).
So, how am I going to achieve my goal? I'll be guiding you through my interpretation of them as their character develops, and we'll see how it goes!
It's too much effort to go through the archives, so the early interpretations might be flawed or even incorrect to my opinion in that time, however, it still represents some of my opinions on them in that timeframe.
Let's start off by the easiest era: the beginning.
When I first thought about Antoinette, she was just a character, something as a plot device, I didn't really thought more of her character as more of just, a very selfish and self-centred person, and yes, she did fulfill her role in helping me shape a!ceci as a character, making her backstory...tragic i guess.
And during that time, my version of Ceci is, that they're a lesbian, no reason or explanation, they're just gay. While I don't think that this version of a!Ceci will still apply to their current character today, this trait is still something that spearheaded me into thinking about their relationship to other characters(though of course, this is them in the early seasons, so they are obviously very one-dimensional).
So yeah, Ceci is a lesbian, they like Antoinette. That's the end of it, right? Just a poor girl who was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time, who just wanted to be nice and be with her friend(crush). Their relationship was not meant to be something more than just a way to push the narrative forward.
And then season 1 finale happened. Congratulations your character is a...mother???????????????????? While I am pretty much chill with the finale today, 2022 Ceci was really fucking mortified ngl. S1 finale did make me consider one new thing, since Antoinette is a!sid's mother now, she is a character in her own right, not just a plot device, so now I have to think about her, because a!sid having a mother thats underdeveloped doesn't give his character justice.
Now that we got out of the easy part, lets move on to the next season
Okay, we're doing characterisation now. New season, new me. And that means that I try to understand their relationship again.
Before that, let's take a look at some really old lore excerpt:
From a unfinished writing project
(Did I forget to mention that a!Ceci is weirdly religious? Anyways)
Before the fight, it seems like they're actually good friends with eachother, or at least they're on good terms. One of the things that draws Ceci towards Antoinette is her intelligence, that shes very bright and confident. I'd say that it's a very strong admiration to her.
Coincidentally, if you saw my other post about them, intelligence is also the reason why Antoinette is drawn to Ceci, though its more like envy than anything...
Now that I look back on this, I could see the inferiority complex that I gave a!Ceci, it's definitely a character trait that was always in Ceci, it's just more apparent in these examples. Before i get out of hand and ramble too much, they always think that Antoinette is better than them, remember this, it'll be important.
Still, pretty one-sided, as most of their perspective are from a!Ceci, and of course, i am biased to my own character (i guess). Now that we're established Antoinette as a character of her own, she now has WEIGHT to a!Ceci. This is where guilt and trauma comes into play :3....
So now we have a new development, they're still lesbians (for now), but there's guilt and an inferiority complex thrown into the mix, and also Antoinette kinda hates her.
Ceci still really, really likes her, romantically, that's what I wrote them as during the most angsty moments of season 2, does Antoinette like her back, do we get any new insight about her, and their relationship? Not really.
We're in the second finale! Yay.
Confrontation stuff, even more confrontations but never a talk between them! Okay, thats on me. But past me did finally gave some more insight on a!Ceci's mind during the whole ordeal.
Still had that very gay admiration thing.
Now this is real, tangible evidence alright, this is around the time I start to look at the guilt aspect in the equation, what does it attributes to Ceci's feelings towards Antoinette?
Or a lack of feelings?
See, this is when the brainworms hit and I realised that- a!Ceci is far too guilt-ridden to develop romantic feelings for Antoinette, but what if there were no romantic feelings in the first place?
Let me explain, choosing to like Antoinette romantically is a choice, rather than from your feelings or whatever you guys think love is, for Ceci it is a deliberate choice chosen to assuage her guilt, because, if you don't care about your victim, if you don't love them, then they would've died a meaningless death, they would die in the hands of someone who didn't care, someone who hated them.
But, Ceci doesn't hate her, she has all of these feelings about her but not hatred, it was never hatred. They are trying to overcompensate her death by liking her, by thinking about her romantically, forcing themselves to think about Antoinette because the guilt doesn't go away, and it feels like they can't do anything about that.
At this point, I was pretty sure that this is their relationship, that Ceci never really lived Antoinette, she was just trying to make up for the fact that she (didn't) killed Antoinette, lying to themself because they couldn't cope with the fact that they didn't had any feelings towards her.
That was not the finalised version
Well, one or two months later i was again, hit with the brainworms. What if the feelings were romantic, or not, because I was more interested with the possibility of having feelings, but not to Antoinette herself. This is a build on off the previous version rather than a complete reconstruction.
Ceci likes the idea of Antoinette, the version of her that they have meticulously crafted inside their head, one that's not a person who wasn't envious of them and didn't try to kill them. Because they want a perfect victim, someone who was innocent and didn't do anything that would warrant her death, a person who deserves to live instead of them.
They are infatuated with what they THINK is Antoinette, but not Antoinette. What I think is the closest thing to this could be limerence, but Antoinette is far more than a crush, she becomes an object for obsessive thoughts, something that is used as a weapon to beat themself up over and over again.
SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!
Furthermore,
Nobody can escape my aroace beam. Remember when I said this was a retcon? This isn't a retcon, forget that I've ever said that, like what is going on here, is a natural character progression, okay they're aroace now, thats the first spoiler.
Now that adds another layer to the Ceci-Antoinette relationship fuckery, because now, Ceci is also infatuated with the idea of being in LOVE, while they don't feel any love themself, they themself don't even know that they're aroace they still think that they like girls, but they don't!!!!! What they're feeling isn't love, just a want to get closer, basic human interactions WHICH THEY LACK!!!!!!!
If I'm being honest at first I was thinking if I should make them aroace or not, originally they were planned to be aroace, but I them felt like it was too much of a self-insert(it kinda is), but now that a!Ceci had become a genuinely different character with ideologies of their own, this progression feels right. It all comes full circle :).
This feels like a rollercoaster of emotions, from being a full on lesbian with real,tangible romantic feelings to being emotionally repressed and then not feeling any romantic emotions to having feelings and you get the point, it's very messy, and hard to understand, if I'm being honest even if I created and wrote them, I still don't get them, I don't think I'll ever will, but that's also what makes their relationship so special to me.
Gone off topic for a moment there. What I've been trying to convey with this new development is that Ceci doesn't have romantic feelings towards Antoinette, but those feelings that they have is still something very raw and deep, not necessarily romantic but a mixture of it and 1827633869 other emotions, I don't know, these fuckers are confusing.
Now that we're done with a!Ceci
Lets talk about Antoinette's side of the relationship, because she is also as emotionally stunted as Ceci is, just in a different way.
Before we go further though, I'd like to remind people that Antoinette is
I lied i just wanted an excuse to add sparkly pride flags in this post.
Okay now that we got that out of the way, Antoinette in the beginning doesn't hate Ceci, of course not entirely, it's more of a envious one-sided rivalry than anything (#girlfail) And now that we're in 2024- I finally decided to give her some much needed character development.
Now digging deeper into her, is envy really the only thing that's on her mind? She clearly sees Ceci as an equal, someone who could be as good as her, so hanging out with her wouldn't hurt her (subconscious) superiority complex. Knowing her backstory and seeing her as someone who is always applying pressure to herself, that she always need to be perfect.
Being around Ceci gives her a chance to breathe, to live life as a normal person- a life that Gabriel wanted to give her, for once, she is able to forget about her duties and just be her-be Antoinette. Even if you argue that it's not enough for Antoinette to develop deep romantic feelings for Ceci, her opinion towards Ceci is more than a friend, it's something more like a confidant, someone you can trust.
I love the fact that the both of them kind of drops their masks when they're with eachother, they know the other so well to the point that they cant just see past the other's bs, so they just decided to be their real self around the other.
In terms of canon, there's genuinely no content for Antoinette lmao other than 1-2 rps, so I get to make shit up and you guys will have to accept it as canon because i am her creator.
I'd say that she has feelings for Ceci, but like them, it isn't fully romantic, because Antoinette feels equally guilty over what happened, she doesn't know how life goes after her death, she doesn't know Ceci kind of ruined themself, but she knew that she fucked up, and even if she already had feelings for Ceci, keeping them now feels cruel, considering what she had done to them.
Antoinette genuinely wants to fix things and for them both to start over, she likes Ceci and if things were different, she would think that they'd have a happy ending. (Do they know that they're doomed regardless of what happened?).
Spoilers for something that doesn't exist yet (my canon ending for a!Ceci). Antoinette died and for a decade, she's been working as an bartender, listening to (dead) people and giving them advice, she had become a better person, she had gotten kinder, more understanding. And she gets to visit Ceci in their dreams.
The funny thing is that, dead people aren't supposed to be able to interact with living people, but i guess dreams do work in a different way than real life, but still, it will still be a rare privilege to be given a chance. Being given one, Antoinette uses it not to meet her som, but to meet Ceci. They meet in the bar, Antoinette just wants to talk to Ceci, she misses them, but Ceci just doesn't want to see her again, they don't want to start over, they just want to forget her.
And it's not unwarranted hatred, Antoinette knows that, and she knows that she could never get back that relationship with Ceci even if she sacrificed everything, the bridge had already been burnt, and yet she's still standing there, waiting for them to cross the bridge.
She yearns for what she could've but couldn't had.
Both Ceci and Antoinette have requited feelings towards eachother, but due to their circumstances and baggage, they couldn't continue it further. Even if they did, I think that they're just wrong for the other, they're too fundamentally different. Though they bring the best out of the other, they also bring the worst. Their relationship is so beautiful because they both couldn't get what they wanted, and it's so complicated from both sides.
While in canon, they didn't get a happy ending, I think they got some closure out of it. And to me, and their character development, that's more than enough.
TLDR: a!Ceci goes through a bunch of character development and it also affects her relationship with Antoinette, usually switching from having romantic feelings to having NOT romantic feelings for Antoinette. Antoinette is a #yearner, they both liked each other, just not in a way that could make their relationship work