Sorry someone asked me about the self harm post and I got really out of hand writing stuff that wasn't really relevant and just mansplaining how I view double life's mechanics in a metaphorical sense as a whole. This really is not anything but I feel like I wrote too much to just delete it now so here
Scared that this is gonna be someone else's bdubs unsweetened lemonade situation but:
double life's mechanic, in essence, is "your life and wellbeing have direct impact on someone else" so when you combine that with the players actions and how they abuse the mechanic to control and punish their soulmates, you get some pretty cool stuff that could be translated into symbolism. If you're insane, of course.
I feel like I should note that I'm not going to go into the queer reading of double life and the anti-soulmate themes because I feel like other people have summed that up better than I could even though I do feel like that is one of the strongest reads of anything in the series. For the sake of argument we're going to be equating a soulbound with someone you have a genuine connection with emotionally and not just your watcher government assigned husband because I do think both are applicable to every soulbound pair in the series.
so with that being said a good chunk of the players, the worst offenders being divorce quartet, instead of seeing their soulbound as a reason to be more careful use their physical pain to punish their respective partners, while hurting themselves in the process.
Scott + Cleo are the most straightforward example, to me. They feel snubbed by Pearl and Martyn so they "teach them a lesson" by hurting themselves, knowing that it will impact their partners. They also enable and push eachother to get more and more dramatic with their "punishments", i.e. through the mutual axe crit morning routine they'd established. They call themselves chosen soulmates but through both the axe crits and other behaviour (e.g. cleo admitting she was "using" scott) it is shown that they don't truly Care For eachother, rather that they simply need eachother to enable themselves.
Pearl is also pretty straightforward: Scott hurts her, so she hurts him back. Despite her gleeful mocking and giggling through it all I'd argue this is not something Pearl ever really wanted to do, especially since the soulbound isn't the only way Scott hurts her in the series (I'd even argue him socially isolating her is worse than the axe crits) and this is the only thing Pearl has to get back at him -- through hurting herself. I also think it's kind of fucked that despite the fact Scott is hurt by this (as in the mechanics apply to him), he always treats it as more of an annoyance until it gets to the point where he's worried about his own life (e.g. when joel chases down pearl, scott specifically yells "Pearl run! MY life isn't worth it!")
It almost becomes this messed up toxic competition for Scott and Pearl to see who can push things further. There's this one part I think about alot where Pearl is doing her usual powdered snow tick damage ("just a tickle", as she puts it) and Scott leaps off a massive cliff and takes out a huge chunk of their healthbar to get her to stop. And he does this all without saying a word.
Martyn is kind of the outlier as the one who engaged in hurting himself the least and even Cleo chills on the axe crits after awhile, I like to think due to her and Martyn's conversation on the bridge and her realising what she is doing isn't fair to him. However, Martyn is not without his own demons since his first reaction to Cleo teaming with Scott was to fucking start hitting her, despite the damage reflecting back onto him (he even pulls out an axe and starts going for crits).
seriously though I haven't seen anyone else comment on this. what the fuck man.
Martyn continues with this later as well, when he catches Scott and Cleo in the middle of one of their axe crit routines and, once they explain what they're doing, starts hitting Cleo again (again, despite the damage reflecting onto him and having just taken an axe crit). This part was especially interesting to me because he never hits Scott even though he's the logical target (no soulbound), the one who actually did the axe crit and just as responsible for the split as Cleo, but afaik he never lays a hand on him.
In fact I'd even say it's worth noting that Martyn is almost on friendly terms with Scott, despite talking behind his back. When Cleo and Pearl get into a game of chicken to see who can stay longest in a pile of powdered snow, Martyn and Scott suddenly start taking damage and, instead of getting angry at their soulbounds (like Scott and Cleo had at the start of the series), Martyn places down his own powdered snow and asks Scott if he wants to do it too, to which Scott giggles and agrees. It seems like Martyn is more or less only concerned about His soulbound.
Like Cleo slowing down and eventually stopping with her axe crits, Martyn stops hitting her after awhile too.
Now while I do realise the imagery is very uncomfortable, it's worth noting that Martyn hitting Cleo is pretty much equivalent to Cleo hurting herself to get back at him, if anything Martyn hitting her does less damage. So at least in the confines of this post the comparison is less beating your wife = cutting yourself and more "here are two people who do mutual harm onto one another, with different methods but the same outcome".
Cleo is also pretty smug through the whole thing and doesn't seem emotionally impacted whatsoever by Martyn hitting her (aside from taking offense) and the two make up relatively quickly as well. What I'm trying to say is Martyn Wifebeater Littlewood is not real but he does suck. It's not Literal physical abuse and it's not Literal self-harm. Other than in Pearl's case I think you could make a case for that literally being the equivalent of her hurting herself because it's all she has to get back at Scott with.
This also opens up a good question of: if hurting their soulbounds is the goal, why aren't all of them doing what Martyn is doing? After all the outcome is the same, the method is just more direct. There's this interesting point here I think then of Martyn being the most outwardly hostile of the four, but also the most direct and willing to communicate, even if he does it in a really awful way.
ALTERNATIVELY that is literally what is happening and both Martyn and Cleo are just insane people.
Outside of the divorce quartet, things get even muddier.
I feel like one of the pitfalls for the purposeful self-damage = self-harm take actually comes from Etho and Joel, early on in the series when Joel is building the RelationShip. Etho purposefully jumps off a ledge to do fall damage to Joel everytime Joel takes damage while building to "teach him a lesson", according to him. He even does this in front of people whose reactions range from amused to slightly taken aback.
Now this could easily be read as controlling behaviour but I feel like that would be severely out of character for etho, who historically has not wanted anything to do with team-ups on any level past convenience. It could be argued that this is what the soulbound system brings out of him now that he is forced to keep track of one other person (and imo he's pretty clear he doesn't care deeply for joel as a soulbound whatsoever) but he is otherwise so unbothered with anything Joel does and, if anything, let's Joel lead their decision-making ("the ship burns, everything burns" was certainly not etho's doing).
The damage he does to himself + Joel is also minimal enough that it doesn't ever get to the point of worrying either of them past being annoying and it's not something Etho does for more than one or two episodes.
So with that what I'm trying to say is there's definitely wiggle room for what it means for individual soulbounds and its overall impact seems to be very dependent on who is doing it and what the intent is behind it.
Which is relevant for the last pair I feel like this is especially important to: Scar and Grian. What does, for example, Scar showing Pearl the powdered snow signify? Is he enabling her like Cleo and Scott with eachother? Is he doing it out of amusement? Does he relate to her plight with Scott due to his own situation with Grian and want to feel some sort of second-hand justice?
It's not really clear, especially added to him hurting himself to get back at Grian for the cheating thing. I'll be honest I'm very scared in general of speaking on Scar's character because he's kind of an enigma to me and I've heard every take on earth about what he actually is like.
There's definitely more to talk about here but this is too long lmao chile
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