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blood-darkened-moon · 2 months

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(1/2) TEW question: If Ruben hadn’t been burned but was still a serial killer, what is his motive for killing? Since there’s no need for revenge, what would happen? SKs IIRC develop a fractured identity hidden behind a wall of primitive defenses, so it’s a horrible way of coping, like self-medicating (we know there’s trauma and a predisposition).

Ok, anon, I love horror movies and games and also read about some serial killers out of interest, but I’m not an expert on this topic, especially not on the psychological aspects. And I refuse to diagnose fictional characters with mental illnesses. The headcanons I write are just for fun and should be seen as an attempt to write a horror AU rather than an analysis based on the mindset of real people. I don’t think that I can give you a qualified answer to your questions, but I’ll try my best. Here’s a more analytical approach to the topic.

I agree with you that there was a predisposition, but was there trauma involved before the fire? I don’t think so, or at least I think there is absolutely no evidence for this within the game. Even Jimenez wrote in Research Entry #31, “After surviving the incident and subsequent abuse from his parents, it’s a miracle Ruben can function at all.” We know very little about Ruben’s past before the incident. Some information originates from Ruben’s documents or his recordings after the fire. At that time, he is deeply traumatized, hallucinates, and is overall mentally unstable, which becomes even noticeable in his records. His state likely influences his perception in a heavily subjective way. Due to this and the ongoing abuse by his father, he may evaluate his childhood as worse than it actually was. However, since there are no more reliable sources, I have to take his words for granted.

While I don’t see anything that could have traumatized Ruben as a child, I still think that there were conflicts that could have worsened even if the fire never happened. There was tension in his family, specifically with his father. Ruben already seemed to have a somewhat strained relationship with him before the incident. Yet, he still respected him, as Ruben stated in one of the recordings, “Father was a stern man. Proud, and I thought intelligent.” He was calm while he recorded this. Therefore, I think this statement is valid, and their relationship wasn’t that bad at first. On the other hand, Ruben also wrote: “He’s trying to punish me again. He always resented our closeness. Thinks he can use it against me.” He wrote this while he was clearly enraged, likely not fully accountable. It still indicates a conflict between the two.

The latter statement is somewhat strange, though. Why should Ernesto mind if his children get along well with each other? Isn’t this a good thing? Jimenez describes Ruben’s love for Laura as “almost on an incestuous level”, and considering Ruben’s records, that seems to be a legitimate interpretation. But the records are from after the fire when he was already a teenager or young adult. Moreover, he was locked up in the basement for years without any human contact (except for his father and a doctor, maybe). This long-term isolation would excuse Ruben’s affection for his sister reaching an abnormal level. Even in case little Ruben had a crush on Laura at that age (10 or younger), I think this would hardly be a reason to be concerned. He could likely outgrow it easily if he grew up under normal circumstances. So, it is unlikely that this was Ernesto’s issue.

I think it is possible that the statement relates to Ruben’s experiments in some way. We know Ernesto cannot cope well with problems that would damage his family’s reputation. After all, he preferred to lock his traumatized son away after the fire instead of organizing real help for him. Well, dissecting pig heads is not a normal behavior for a child, and yet Ruben had the equipment and a room where he could do his experiments. Why did Ernesto tolerate this behavior, which is significantly more concerning than suffering from physical and mental trauma after barely surviving a fire? (In the sense of the latter is an understandable reaction.) And why did he show it to Jimenez in the first place? This isn’t something that you show proudly around in the neighborhood. I assume that maybe Laura protected her brother, acted as the voice of reason, and convinced Ernesto that instead of punishing Ruben for his experiments, he should deal with it differently. Jimenez was just about 20 at the time he met Ruben. He can’t have been a doctor then. He was likely only a student. (The model in the game is older, probably due to time or budget reasons.) Jimenez wasn’t working at Beacon yet either. In Research Entry #16, he stated that he started working there but also mentioned Ruben, so he already knew him before that. Perhaps at Laura’s request, the Victorianos looked for someone with the necessary expertise to deal with Ruben’s behavior but who would do so in secrecy. Therefore, they went with a student. In the end, it backfired, and instead of talking Ruben out of his experiments, Jimenez confirmed his beliefs. Ernesto could take this amiss and think strict punishment would have worked better. This is highly speculative, though. Ruben also mentioned punishment in the document, but it is unclear what kind of punishment it was and when it happened. It could be something (long) before the fire, or he could relate to his recent confinement in the basement.

Another issue Ruvik mentioned is his hatred for the church and his father always supporting them. He said, “Somehow he always supported the church, no matter what the newspapers said. He waved away the allegations as if they were infallible. The wretched, the vermin, the stern... All were taken in by that church.”, followed by “They were promised salvation and eternal life. But there’s nothing they could promise that I couldn’t take away.” Where his hatred for the church originates from is again not clear. We know the church was a shady place, but had it anything to do with child-Ruben? I think it is also possible that Ruben developed his hatred later during his time in the basement. He thought his father had taken Laura away from him, the one person he loved the most. Perhaps he then decided to take something away from his father that he cherished deeply.

This covers the conflicts at home we know of. None of them seem to be a major issue before the fire, though. I doubt that these alone had the potential to set up Ruben on the path of a serial killer unless drastic changes occur. However, there are still some other aspects.

Jimenez is one of them. He is not a good influence on Ruben at all. He could have tried to channel Ruben’s interests onto a healthier path. Instead, he affirmed that ethical and moral standards in science must be questioned if true greatness is to be achieved. Ruben knew very well that his experiments were unacceptable when they met for the first time. Jimenez probably had a chance of convincing Ruben to give up on them. Later, he continues to be a toxic influence. Despite his sympathy for Ruben, Jimenez often disregards his poor mental state and only tries to gain profit from Ruben’s results. Only after the experiments reached an extreme level of gruesomeness and the death toll went through the roof did Jimenez realize that he made a big mistake. “I had taught him from a young age that the end shall justify the means, but I could not have predicted things to be this extreme.” Not that it would stop Jimenez from leeching further on Ruben’s work.

Now, before I come to the possibility of Ruben still becoming a serial killer without the fire, I want to speculate a bit about his early experiments, because they could hint at a predisposition. We know that Ruben dissected pig heads, but I think this can’t be the only thing he has done. I assume the pig heads are slaughterhouse waste. (He can’t have killed and decapitated a large pig alone at the age of 9, right?) Little Ruben doesn’t seem to have the proper equipment to prevent the decomposition in his room. (How fresh were the heads when he got them?) As far as I know, brain matter decomposes rather quickly, though. How far can he get with a half-decomposed pig brain? He can develop and improve his surgery skills. However, Jimenez mentions Ruben’s studies, and he is really impressed by them (“… but Ruben... Comparatively insignificant, but even at his young age, his studies are remarkable.”). While it is not shown or otherwise described in the game, I think it is likely that Ruben also experimented on other smaller animals that were either still alive or killed shortly before he started. We don’t know what kind of studies he performed, but I think you likely need a fresh or well-preserved brain for most experiments. Ruben was also hesitant to show his experiments to Jimenez. He said they are gross and that Jimenez now thinks he is a monster. Ruben did not try to justify them. Would this be the case if he only used slaughterhouse waste? It would still be gross and off for a child but a little less disturbing than experimenting on animals he had killed first. At least assuming that Jimenez might think he was a monster for doing so seems like an exaggeration to me since the pigs were slaughtered beforehand anyway.

Edit: In the room where Ruben dissects the pig’s head, there is an eviscerated dog carcass (which I’ve apparently always overlooked). So he has definitely killed other animals and experimented on them. The cages in the room also point to this. Judging by the size of the cages, he probably mainly used cats and dogs.

So much to the background, now what could have happened without the fire? Firstly, Laura was 17 when the fire occurred; Ruben was only 10. Laura probably wouldn’t have stayed with her parents forever. Maybe she would have gone to college the following year. Ruben spent his teenage years in the 80s, so no internet, and telephones weren’t constantly available either. He still has to live almost without Laura for several years. As I said before, I assume that Laura protected Ruben in some way from Ernesto. After she leaves, Ruben has to deal with his father mostly on his own. Their relationship was already strained before and would certainly not improve over the years, rather the opposite. I can’t say how far Ernesto would ultimately go with his punishments if Laura isn’t on-site without further information, though. We should also bear in mind that Ruben is getting older and can probably hide his activities better from his father. Jimenez might also be able to help him with this. I think, it is unlikely that the situation would take on similarly traumatizing proportions as after the fire, but there is still a certain conflict potential.

The bigger problem is, in my opinion, Jimenez. Without Laura and with a tense atmosphere at home, Ruben would probably spend more time with him. At least initially, Jimenez seemed to understand and support him. He recognized Ruben’s talent and was his mentor, even if not entirely for selfless reasons. I think it’s possible that even without fire, he could lead Ruben down a similar path as in the game, but probably at a slower pace. Seeing Laura again would no longer be Ruben’s driving force, but she wasn’t his only motivation in the game anyway. Ruben took a lot of pride in his research. He became furious when Jimenez stole and published his results (“That cockroach, that sycophant; living off of me, feeding off of my work.“). Sure, Jimenez is an asshole, but he was somewhat correct when he said Ruvik couldn’t have published it in a reputable journal otherwise. If Laura was really all Ruben wanted, he shouldn’t have been so angry about what Jimenez was doing. So, Ruben’s own ambitions as a scientist may have played a role, albeit a subordinate one.

Jimenez has persuaded Ruben from the beginning that the end justifies the means, plus there is Ruben’s potential predisposition, now adding some overambition, nurtured by his mentor, on top. Ruben would probably not shy away from human experiments, as they would be more reliable than the ones with animals. Jimenez would certainly provide him with test subjects, and he might even urge him to take this step once Ruben’s abilities were sufficient. After all, Jimenez also wants to profit from his work.

I don’t think Ruben would become an ordinary serial killer, but, for instance, I could imagine him evolving in a similar direction to Josef Mengele. In the game, he no longer sees the people he experiments on as people. He describes them as vermin and microbes. Without fire and the years in the basement, he should feel less hatred towards others, but with Jimenez as a mentor, he may have come to the conclusion that the death of some people is justified in order to help others through scientific advancement. His test subjects may no longer be vermin to him but laboratory supplies. He still would use and kill them as he pleased.

Serial killers often have a traumatic past and use the killing as a coping mechanism, but not all of them. It is not impossible that someone could become a serial killer for different reasons. The scenario above is the best I could do with the little information we have. I guess my answer isn’t really what you wanted, but I cannot see a canon reason for Ruben to snap if the fire and the abuse afterward never happened. If we knew more about his past, perhaps this would change. (I left Mobius out for simplicity, by the way.)

#the evil within #ruben victoriano #ruvik #marcelo jimenez #laura victoriano #ask #meta #tew meta #🩸🌙#i wanted to post this more than a week ago but i ran into writer’s block #the last week i spent writing and rewriting the last couple of paragraphs #still not happy with it tho

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pavi-kinnie · 9 months

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This is a theory I have been working on for a bit, feel free to use it in a fanfiction or art if you want :)

What if Laura Victoriano never died?

Logically, I am aware that Laura’s death is the driving point of the series, without her death most of the events of the franchise would never have happened, but what if Laura never died at all?

Now what we know about Laura’s death is incredibly vague. We know she was left in a coma after the fire, and was likely in the care of either Marcelo or Valerio, since Valerio ran the hospice in Elk River and Marcelo was involved with Beacon, both were heavy in the medical field. Now there is never a single document found in the game that shows proof that Laura died. We have the newspaper that mentions that Laura and Ruben survived the fire, although Laura was in a coma, and we know that Ernesto told Ruben that Laura died. Overall, that’s not any kind of proof about her death. Ruben himself believes it to be true because he knows they were both horrifically injured during the fire, so he never digs any deeper.

My theory is that Laura did not die, and is likely either still in the coma or awake and kept away from her brother. With the Jimenez brothers’ involvement with not only Ruben and Laura’s care but also Mobius, it’s not a complete stretch to say that Mobius may have been involved. In the canon timeline Marcelo met Ruben in 1984 and already saw how intelligent Ruben was. The fire happened in 1985, so Marcelo met Ruben prior to the fire. Given how intelligent we know Ruben to be, even though he would have only been around 9 at the time he met Marcelo, it’s highly likely that Marcelo told people in Mobius about Ruben’s intelligence. Perhaps after the fire happened and Laura was left in a coma, Mobius saw this as an opportunity to shape Ruben into what they wanted him to be. Mobius wanted Ruben to work for them, and wanted him to be completely obedient to their every command. What better way than to use the one person Ruben cares about? Mobius could have transferred her to one of their facilities and faked Laura’s death, waiting for the moment they might need to use her to blackmail Ruben. Now Ruben stayed mostly in Mobius’ good graces until the STEM project was almost complete. We know canonically that Mobius had much different intentions for the STEM system than Ruben did, and when Ruben would not comply they wanted to get rid of him. Laura may not have been used as blackmail at this time for a specific reason: If they were trying to convince Ruben to adapt the STEM project into what they wanted, using Laura against him would only make the situation worse. Ruben was building STEM to be able to reunite with his sister, and revealing that she was alive, even for blackmail purposes, would only motivate Ruben to drop the project altogether. As influential as Laura would be against Ruben, she would only make the situation worse.

This would also explain Laura’s weird manifestation within the STEM system. The monster version of Laura that we fight against in the game is a creature born from Ruben’s mind, that symbolizes his vengeance. This monster takes the appearance of Laura because he wants vengeance against the people who hurt him and his sister. This makes sense that it’s a figment of Ruben’s twisted mind, because it wouldn’t make sense for her to appear in this form. But in the first DLC The Assignment, there’s the Laura easter egg with the two broken doors. In this easter egg where we play as Kidman, we see this version of Laura to resemble how she looked before the fire. This would not make sense at first, as we know that monster Laura is a figment of Ruben’s imagination. Furthermore, if he did manage to bring a non-corrupted version of Laura into the system, he would immediately look for her and try to find a way for both of them to escape the STEM system. But what if this version of Laura we see in the DLC is the real Laura? If we work under the previous assumption that Mobius would take Laura as a way to potentially blackmail Ruben, it would make sense to keep her at Beacon where he worked. She would be nearby if they needed to blackmail him, and knowing how close she was to him could motivate him to do what they wanted. Everyone in Beacon was pulled into STEM when Mobius turned the system on, so if Laura was inside Beacon, she would be pulled in with it. As to why Laura resembled how she looked before the fire, it is possible that if she was still in the coma, her mind would take the form of what it last remembered her to look like. Since Laura would have still been in the coma she had no way to know what she looked like post-fire, and so she would take the form of what she looked like before the fire. Therefore, the easter egg may be more than just something the developers put in for fun, as it could be the real Laura if we can prove that she is alive. Ruben would not have been aware of this version of Laura in STEM, because he believes her to be dead, and if he did see her he would likely think she was just a hallucination, as we know after he was told she died he suffered from hallucinations of her for a time.

Laura’s status as potentially being alive could also serve as a future plot point if another game is ever made in the series. The end of the first game highly suggests that Ruben was successful in escaping STEM inside of Leslie, due to Sebastian seeing that Leslie acts completely unlike himself as he leaves Beacon before Leslie completely disappears. If Ruben managed to make it out through Leslie, he likely would have been captured again by Mobius, and this time they could use Laura to blackmail him, perhaps into working on STEM again. Ruben could have secretly helped with Union, and if a third game is ever made, Ruben and Laura could play a vital role in it.

Once again, feel free to use this idea for any work (fanfiction, art, etc.) if this inspires you, just please tag me in it if you do, I would love to see it!

#The Evil Within #laura victoriano #ruben victoriano #ruvik #theory

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