I really need serotonin

Sydney Clarke is one of the quiet moral centers of Vicious, a character whose power, personality, and narrative function operate almost entirely in opposition to the novel’s louder, more violent figures. Where Victor Vale and Eli Ever dominate the story through obsession, intellect, and destruction, Sydney exists in the margins, watchful, cautious, and defined by survival rather than ambition. Yet her apparent smallness is deceptive. Sydney is not merely a supporting character; she is a stabilizing force in a world where power is born from trauma and often curdles into monstrosity.

Unlike Victor and Eli, whose near-death experiences push them toward grand, self-defining narratives, Sydney’s relationship to her ability is marked by fear and restraint. She does not experience her power as a gift, but as a liability something that makes her visible in a world where visibility is deadly. This is especially evident in her encounters with Eli Ever. Eli’s interest in Sydney is not personal in a human sense, but instrumental. To him, she is a tool, a key, a means to an end.

This dynamic introduces one of the novel’s most disturbing undercurrents: Sydney’s body becomes a contested site, valuable not for who she is but for what it can do in others. The threat is rarely explicit, but it is ever-present, creating a persistent tension around consent, agency, and safety.

Sydney’s response to this threat is not defiance in the traditional sense, but withdrawal. She runs. She hides. She learns to be careful with her touch, her presence, her trust. In doing so, Vicious presents survival as a form of strength, particularly for characters who lack the privilege of physical dominance or ideological certainty. Sydney’s fear does not weaken her; it sharpens her awareness. She understands the cost of power in a way Victor and Eli, obsessed with their own narratives, often refuse to acknowledge.

Her relationship with Mitch Turner is central to both her character development and the emotional architecture of the novel.

He is the first person to consistently prioritize her safety over her utility. Importantly, Mitch does not romanticize Sydney’s power. He treats it as something dangerous not because it is morally corrupt, but because it exposes her to harm. His protectiveness is not ownership; it is vigilance. In a story crowded with men who believe they know what is best for others, Mitch stands out precisely because he does not claim authority over Sydney’s choices. He supports her refusals. He reinforces her boundaries.

Narratively, Sydney functions as a counterweight to the novel’s central rivalry. Victor and Eli represent two divergent but equally destructive responses to power revenge and righteousness. Sydney represents a third path: restraint. She does not believe that having power entitles someone to use it freely. This moral position is not articulated through speeches or ideology, but through action and refusal. She does not activate abilities recklessly. She does not exploit others. She does not seek to reshape the world to fit her fears or desires.

Mitch protects Sydney not because she is helpless, but because the world has made her vulnerable. Sydney stays with Mitch not because she needs to be led, but because she chooses trust over isolation.

In the Villains triology, Sydney and Serena Clarke share one of the most emotionally fraught relationships in the narrative shaped by childhood affection, estrangement, betrayal, and a deep, unresolved grief. Sydney’s complex motivations in Vengeful hinge on what Serena did to her, and what Sydney almost hoped to undo.

Serena ultimately allied with Eli and even gave Sydney up to him — not out of simple malice, but from a distorted, fractured sense of self and loyalty. For Sydney, this was a second betrayal of the closest person in her life, and it reshaped how she saw her own power and her sister.This betrayal stays with Sydney for years.

Even after Serena’s death at the hands of Victor, whom Sydney learns killed her sister, Sydney keeps a bone of Serena’s as a token of hope, believing that she might one day resurrect her. She continues to practice and strengthen her resurrection ability with that single goal in mind.

After the main events of Vengeful, Sydney continues to nurture the hope that her resurrection ability could one day bring Serena back. She trains on animal bones and holds on to Serena’s skeletal remains with that purpose. This is not a trivial desire it is the emotional core of her continued dedication to mastering her ability.

However, as she grows stronger and confronts her own fears, Sydney begins to understand that resurrecting Serena would not simply fix the trauma between them. The sister who loved her before death is not the same person who lived through trauma and gained a compulsion power. For Sydney, the horror of facing that altered version of Serena and the potential harm she could again cause finally outweighs her longing. She ultimately steps back from trying to resurrect her sister, recognizing that what she truly seeks is not a resurrected Serena, but peace from that unresolved bond.

Sydney does not simply reject Serena; she wrestles with the memory of her sister’s kindness, the devastation of her betrayal, and the fear that resurrecting her would not restore love, but pain. Her struggle with Serena’s legacy parallels her struggle with Victor and Eli two men whose power reshaped her life without her consent. What unites them is that each once mattered deeply to her, and each left lasting marks on her identity.

Sydney’s presence also exposes the gendered dimensions of vulnerability within the narrative. While it never frames her as weak, it consistently places her in situations where her safety depends on the decisions of more powerful men. This is not accidental. Through Sydney, the novel interrogates who gets to survive power fantasies unscathed and who must bear their consequences. Her caution, her fear, and her moral hesitation are not flaws, but response.

In Vengeful, Sydney Clarke’s role shifts from that of a hunted survivor to a living paradox: she is safe, yet never free; protected, yet fundamentally altered. Where Vicious framed her power as a liability that forced her into hiding, Vengeful reframes it as something more insidious an ability that has quietly rewritten her relationship to time, agency, and identity. Sydney no longer merely survives power; she exists in a suspended state because of it.

One of the most striking aspects of Sydney in Vengeful is her arrested physical development. Her body does not grow. While others age, change, and accumulate history in visible ways, Sydney remains fixed. This stasis functions as more than a supernatural side effect it is a narrative metaphor. Sydney’s body reflects what her life has become: paused, contained, held in a state of perpetual caution. She is safe only as long as nothing progresses too far. Growth, in her case, is synonymous with danger.

This physical immobility creates an uncomfortable parallel with Eli. Eli’s power also resists natural limits, preserving him beyond ordinary human boundaries. Yet where Eli interprets his condition as proof of divine correctness and moral superiority, Sydney experiences hers as a theft. Her youth is not preserved; it is withheld. She does not gain authority or freedom from her condition she loses a future. This contrast is essential: Eli’s immortality feeds his ideology, while Sydney’s stasis deepens her unease. Both exist outside time, but only one believes he deserves it.

Sydney’s hatred of Eli is absolute on the surface. He represents violation, threat, and objectification. He is the figure who reduced her to her function, who saw her body as an instrument rather than a person. Her anger toward him is justified and unambiguous. Yet beneath that hatred lies something more complicated: Eli is not just her enemy; he is her mirror in the most unsettling way. Both are marked by powers that alter the natural progression of life. Both are forced into isolation by what they are. The difference is not the nature of their abilities, but the conclusions they draw from them.

Vengeful appears, at first glance, to offer resolution. Eli is killed. The most explicit threat to Sydney’s autonomy is removed. Yet the aftermath complicates this apparent victory. Eli’s death does not free Sydney from his influenceit fossilizes it. His presence lingers not as a living antagonist, but as a scar. Sydney’s body remains frozen. Her power remains dangerous. Her role remains reactive. The man is gone, but what he did to her is not.

This is where Victor Vale becomes central. Sydney places her trust in Victor in a way she never could with Eli. Victor, for all his violence and obsession, treats Sydney as a person first. He listens to her boundaries. He does not demand her power; he negotiates it. To Sydney, this distinction is everything. It allows her to believe in a moral separation between the two men Victor as dangerous but human, Eli as monstrous and inhuman.

This is where Sydney’s stagnation becomes narratively charged. Her arrested growth mirrors her thematic position: she exists in the aftermath, but not beyond it. Victor Vale, though vastly different from Eli in method and affect, continues to anchor her relevance. Even when Victor respects her boundaries, the story still positions her in relation to his goals, his plans, his war. Sydney survives but she does not yet depart.

However, Vengeful subtly destabilizes this belief. Victor and Eli are mirrors of each other: both brilliant, obsessive, and willing to justify harm in service of a self-authored narrative. Sydney’s refusal to fully acknowledge this similarity is not naïveté it is self-preservation. To admit that Victor and Eli are alike would mean confronting an unbearable truth: that safety in this world is conditional, and that the line between protector and predator is thinner than she wants it to be.

Sydney’s loyalty to Victor, then, is not blind, but selective. She sees his cruelty, yet chooses to frame it as necessity rather than nature. This selective vision allows her to retain a sense of moral orientation in a universe that offers very few safe anchors. Victor becomes her chosen constant, much like Mitch a figure around whom she can organize her trust. Unlike Mitch, however, Victor occupies the same moral gray space as Eli, which makes Sydney’s alignment with him far more fraught.

In Vengeful, Sydney’s power also takes on a heavier ethical weight. Activating abilities is no longer just dangerous it is irreversible. Each use of her gift further implicates her in the cycle of violence she so desperately wants to avoid. Her hesitation is no longer only about fear; it is about responsibility. Sydney understands, perhaps better than anyone, that awakening power does not create heroes. It creates consequences.

Sydney Clarke in Vengeful embodies the cost of existing between extremes. She is neither villain nor hero, neither innocent nor corrupt. Her frozen body, her hatred of Eli, and her conditional trust in Victor all point to the same central tension: Sydney wants to believe that power can be mediated by care, that proximity can be made safe through choice. Vengeful does not fully confirm this belief but it does not deny it either. Instead, it leaves Sydney suspended, not just in body, but in meaning.

The question of whether Sydney can evolve into something beyond Victor and Eli is therefore not about power escalation. It is about narrative. Victor and Eli both see themselves as protagonists of their own stories. Sydney has never been allowed that illusion. Her actions are shaped by threat management rather than desire. For her to evolve would require a shift not in ability, but in narrative permission: the right to want something that is not survival.

What would it mean, then, for Sydney to move forward in the future installment?

True evolution for Sydney would not look like dominance or moral absolutism. It would look like separation. Separation from being a catalyst for others. Separation from existing as a safeguard, a liability, or a moral compass. It would require the narrative to imagine her not as a response to men like Victor and Eli, but as a subject with interior momentum. This is difficult precisely because Villains is a series structured around obsession and Sydney is not obsessed. She is careful. She is tired. She is aware.

There is also the uncomfortable possibility that Sydney’s stagnation is intentional. That her frozen body and limited narrative expansion are not set-ups for growth, but commentary on the cost of surviving power. Not everyone who lives through trauma gets to transcend it. Some people remain altered. In this reading, Sydney is not unfinished she is truthful. Her lack of transformation becomes a rebuke to the genre’s tendency to reward suffering with empowerment.

Yet even within that reading, the question remains: whose stories are allowed resolution?

Victor and Eli are granted arcs that expand outward, even when they fail. Their inner lives become engines of plot. Sydney’s inner life remains largely contained, visible only in hesitation and silence. If the series continues without allowing her a future that is not defined by damage control, then her stasis risks becoming less a critique and more a repetition.

Sydney Clarke stands, finally, at the threshold between two narrative possibilities. She can remain a figure of suspended survival a reminder of what power does to vulnerable bodies. Or she can become something rarer in this universe: a character who steps away from the gravity of obsession altogether.

Victor’s role as the strategist and leader establishes a structure in which Mitch and Sydney occupy supportive, subordinate positions. Mitch is the loyal lieutenant, the moral and physical anchor who executes Victor’s plans, often without question, while Sydney is the vulnerable but uniquely capable member whose powers and history of trauma both endear her to Victor and reinforce her position within the hierarchy. While affection is present, it is deeply intertwined with control, obligation, and survival instincts, creating a system that is functional yet fundamentally disordered.

Merit Family

The Merit Family Victor, Mitch, and Sydney is often perceived by readers as a cohesive found family, a unit that provides protection, loyalty, and a semblance of care. On the surface, they function like a surrogate family, one that has been forged in fire, trauma, and shared experience. However, a closer examination reveals a much more complex and disordered system. Their bond is rooted not only in affection but in necessity, hierarchy, and conditional attachment.

The trauma that binds them is central to their connection. All three share experiences of betrayal, imprisonment, or near-death encounters, which establish a form of trauma bonding a psychological connection strengthened by repeated exposure to danger and fear.

Sydney’s near-death experiences and resurrection, Victor’s imprisonment and obsession with Eli, and Mitch’s prison trauma and displacement create a triadic system where loyalty and attachment are reinforced by shared suffering. However, trauma bonding is inherently unstable: it produces deep loyalty and commitment but rarely fosters truly healthy emotional interaction.

Within the Merit Family, this is evident in the way Mitch often validates Victor’s decisions through his compliance, inadvertently enabling Victor’s control, while Sydney’s dependence allows Victor to exercise authority and protection simultaneously, blending care with manipulation. Their family functions because each member adapts to the roles imposed by both necessity and trauma, not because the relationships themselves are psychologically healthy.

Even as the family is dysfunctional, there are moments that reveal Victor’s capacity to care. Across Vicious and especially in Vengeful, his protectiveness toward Sydney and his nuanced reliance on Mitch become more visible. Over the years, as their experiences accumulate, Victor demonstrates moments of genuine concern: he reacts to Sydney’s safety with urgency, weighs risks to Mitch with visible consideration, and occasionally softens in ways that suggest an emerging, if flawed, sense of empathy.

Yet even these glimpses of care are framed by the shadow of his obsession with fixing or controlling the consequences of his abilities his preoccupation with Eli’s impact and his own powers. The family’s affection is always tempered by the demands of Victor’s mission, the lingering influence of past obsession, and the unbalanced power structure that places him at the center.

Mitch and Sydney’s loyalty is steadfast but not unquestioning. Throughout both books, they support Victor while sometimes expressing frustration, skepticism, and even impatience with the extremes to which he pursues his “solutions.” This tension illustrates the conditional nature of their attachments: Mitch and Sydney care deeply for Victor, yet they retain moral and emotional boundaries that he occasionally strains.

Mitch’s role as enabler and mediator shows how loyalty can be both protective and corrosive; by continually buffering Victor and softening the consequences of his decisions, he ensures the group functions but also reinforces Victor’s dominance. Sydney, for her part, provides the emotional heart of the family while being constrained by her own vulnerability and the centrality of her abilities to Victor’s plans, creating a dynamic where care, dependence, and manipulation coexist.

The conclusion of Vengeful crystallizes the tension inherent in the Merit Family. Victor’s departure, even if motivated by a desire to protect Mitch and Sydney as he becomes a target, underscores the imperfect nature of their bonds.

His decision to leave, while arguably pragmatic, is experienced by Mitch and Sydney as a betrayal a painful reminder that even within deep attachment, self-interest, fear, and trauma can override family loyalty. The departure exemplifies how the Merit Family functions not through mutual understanding or unconditional love but through negotiation with trauma, obligation, and hierarchy. Their affection is real, their loyalty genuine, yet it exists within a system that is fragile, uneven, and sometimes hurtful.

Even as Victor demonstrates growth and a capacity to care, his past obsession, hierarchical authority, and ultimate choices highlight the fragility of their connection. Mitch and Sydney’s support, patience, and moral grounding allow the family to survive, yet the system itself is inherently precarious.

Trauma binds them, experience sustains them, and years of shared struggle create moments of authentic connection, and even in these moments, the structural dysfunction remains: Victor’s authority is largely unchecked, Mitch’s loyalty perpetuates the imbalance, and Sydney’s dependence enforces both hierarchy and vulnerability.

Across Vicious and Vengeful, the Merit Family is compelling not because it is "ideal", but because it is authentic: a portrait of survival, attachment, and care in a system where affection and dysfunction are inseparably intertwined, and where the cost of loyalty and love is often as high as the rewards

Victor Vale & Mitch Turner

Within the Merit Family, the relationship between Victor and Mitch functions as a complex blend of loyalty, facilitation, and subtle tension.

Victor clearly occupies the dominant, strategic role, setting the family’s objectives and making decisions that shape the group’s actions. Mitch, as his loyal lieutenant and moral anchor, provides strength, guidance, and mediation, often executing Victor’s plans and softening their consequences.

Their dynamic is one of mutual dependence, but it is far from equal: Mitch relies on Victor for purpose and direction, while Victor relies on Mitch for protection, moral buffering, and compliance.

Mitch is fully aware of Victor’s dangerous tendencies and the potential for harm he recognizes the ethical and psychological risks Victor carries but he often allows certain behaviors to repeat unchallenged. This inertia functions as both enabler and stabilizer: Mitch’s patience and deference allow Victor to operate without significant checks, yet this same restraint prevents conflict from escalating to the point of destruction.

Mitch’s awareness of danger and his occasional moral resistance create a tension within the relationship: he supports Victor and maintains the family’s cohesion, but he also experiences frustration and exasperation at Victor’s obsession-driven actions, particularly when these affect Sydney or risk unnecessary harm.

The age and maturity differences between Mitch and Sydney further shape this dynamic. As an adult, Mitch can perceive patterns, anticipate consequences, and regulate his own responses to Victor’s behavior.

Sydney, by contrast, lacks the same agency and experience, meaning she is more immediately vulnerable and dependent. Mitch’s tolerance of repeated behaviors Victor’s obsession, his controlling tendencies, or his occasional emotional manipulation reflects both his protective strategy and the limitations of a trauma-bonded hierarchy: challenging Victor too directly could destabilize the family, yet unchallenged compliance risks perpetuating harmful patterns.

For the characters themselves, this dynamic has significant consequences. For Victor, Mitch’s loyalty and patience function as a safety net, allowing him to pursue ambitious or morally ambiguous goals without facing immediate resistance.

Mitch’s presence legitimizes Victor’s authority and tempers the consequences of his behavior, but it also enables repetition of control-oriented patterns, reinforcing the structural imbalance within the family. For Mitch, this dynamic is emotionally taxing: he carries the weight of responsibility for both Victor’s actions and Sydney’s protection, navigating loyalty, frustration, and ethical awareness simultaneously.

Ultimately, the Victor & Mitch relationship demonstrates the dual nature of trauma-bound hierarchies: it ensures survival, cohesion, and functional operation within the Merit Family, while simultaneously embedding subtle toxicity, conditional loyalty, and the potential for long-term psychological strain.

Mitch Turner & Sydney Clarke

Mitch’s recognition of Victor’s danger, combined with his patience and occasional moral resistance, positions him as both enabler and mediator a stabilizing force whose very presence allows the family to function, yet also reinforces the structural inequalities and persistent dysfunction that define the Merit Family.

The relationship between Mitch and Sydney is often read as the most stable and emotionally grounding dynamic, and this reading is not incorrect. Mitch functions as the closest thing Sydney has to a parental or consistently adult presence: he monitors her physical wellbeing, notices her emotional distress, intervenes when Victor’s powers or decisions place her in danger, and offers care without demanding anything in return.

Mitch is one of the few characters who does not betray Sydney, exploit her ability, or explicitly abandon her. This consistency positions him as a rare source of safety in a world where authority figures repeatedly fail her.

However, this apparent stability should not be mistaken for full protection or moral authority. Mitch is an adult, and with that adulthood comes a level of responsibility that he does not always fully exercise. While he shields Sydney from immediate harm, he also allows and at times tacitly accepts ongoing exposure to Victor’s volatility.

Mitch understands Victor is dangerous, impatient, and driven by obsession, yet he often chooses mediation over confrontation. His role becomes one of damage control rather than prevention, which means that while Sydney is cared for, she is not removed from a system that repeatedly places her at risk.

This dynamic reflects a common pattern in dysfunctional family systems: the “stable” adult who prioritizes keeping the system functioning over challenging the authority at its center. Mitch’s loyalty to Victor constrains his ability to act decisively on Sydney’s behalf. Even when he disagrees with Victor’s methods or motivations, he rarely draws firm boundaries.

In practice, this means Mitch permits Victor’s behaviors to continue, trusting his own presence to mitigate the worst outcomes. For Sydney, this results in a paradoxical form of safety she is protected emotionally and physically in the moment, but not structurally. The conditions that harm her are allowed to persist.

For Sydney as a character, this has significant implications. Mitch’s care helps her survive, but it also normalizes a dynamic where protection comes with exposure to danger and where authority figures are allowed to be harmful as long as they are also affectionate. She learns that safety is conditional and that endurance is a form of loyalty. Mitch does not teach her to demand better; he teaches her how to endure what exists.

Looking ahead to Victorious, the temporary absence of Victor introduces a crucial shift. With Victor removed from the dynamic, Mitch and Sydney are no longer operating in his gravitational field. This creates the possibility for a fundamentally different relationship one not defined by mediation or hierarchy, but by mutual survival and shared agency.

Alone together, Mitch may be forced to confront the reality of his previous passivity: without Victor as the central authority, Mitch cannot justify inaction as balance-keeping. Responsibility becomes clearer, heavier, and unavoidable.

This separation also offers Sydney a rare opportunity to exist outside Victor’s shadow. Without his dominance shaping every decision, her relationship with Mitch may evolve from protector–dependent into something closer to partnership, or at least into a dynamic where her needs are not secondary to someone else’s mission.

Whether Mitch can rise fully into that role or whether old patterns of avoidance and quiet tolerance will reassert themselves remains an open question, but Victorious positions this relationship at a critical turning point.

The Mitch & Sydney dynamic is compelling not because it is perfect, but because it is honest. Mitch does not fail Sydney in the overt ways others do, yet he fails her in subtler, systemic ways by allowing harm to continue in the name of stability. Their relationship demonstrates that being kind is not the same as being protective, and that in dysfunctional systems, even the most well-intentioned adults can become complicit simply by choosing patience over confrontation.

Victor Vale & Sydney Clarke

The relationship between Victor Vale and Sydney is one of the most emotionally charged and morally complex dynamics within the Merit Family. On the surface, Victor functions as Sydney’s protector he rescues her from immediate danger, keeps her close, and repeatedly positions himself as the barrier between her and the world’s violence.

Yet this protection is deeply compromised by Victor’s egocentrism, his obsession with control, and his inability to truly prioritize the needs of a child over his own internal conflicts. In this way, Victor becomes an unsettling parallel to Serena, Sydney’s older sister: both care for Sydney, and both ultimately fail her by placing their own needs above her wellbeing.

Victor does care about Sydney, and this care becomes more visible over time, particularly in Vengeful. Years of shared experience soften some of his sharpest edges; he reacts strongly to threats against her, expresses concern for her safety, and at times allows her presence to influence his decisions.

However, this care is inconsistent and conditional. Victor’s primary focus remains his own mission, his obsession with fixing himself, controlling his powers, and correcting the damage caused by his past, particularly his fixation on Eli. Sydney is important to him, but she is never the center. She is incorporated into his orbit rather than protected from it.

This dynamic mirrors Serena’s relationship with Sydney in troubling ways. Serena, too, loved her sister, yet used her ability as a means of coping with guilt, grief, and fear. Victor repeats this pattern, albeit in a more controlled and calculated form. Sydney’s resurrection power becomes not only a source of comfort for Victor but also a tool that fits neatly into his worldview one where people, including himself, are problems to be solved.

In both cases, Sydney is valued not simply as a child who needs care, but as someone whose ability eases the emotional burdens of the adult in charge. The parallel underscores a central tragedy: Sydney repeatedly becomes the emotional support for those who should be supporting her.

Victor’s failure as a parental figure is not rooted in cruelty, but in self-absorption. His worldview is fundamentally egocentric not in the sense that he lacks affection, but in the sense that all relationships are filtered through his internal logic and goals.

He protects Sydney insofar as she aligns with his understanding of necessity and order. Emotional availability, reassurance, and unconditional care core components of healthy guardianship remain largely absent.

Victor can shield her from bullets and enemies, but he cannot shield her from fear, confusion, or the psychological weight of being useful.

For Sydney, this relationship reinforces a dangerous lesson: that being cared for requires being valuable. Victor’s protection teaches her that safety is earned through compliance, usefulness, and silence rather than granted through unconditional concern.

She trusts Victor deeply, often more than is warranted, because he represents stability in a chaotic world. Yet that trust is built on imbalance on her dependence and his authority and it limits her ability to recognize when care becomes control.

Narratively, Victor and Sydney’s dynamic is compelling because it exists in this uncomfortable gray space. Victor is not a villain to Sydney in the way Serena ultimately was, but neither is he a savior.

He occupies the space between those roles, embodying the tragedy of an adult who wants to protect a child but refuses to relinquish control, ambition, or self-focus in order to do so properly. His care is real, but it is never sufficient.

In the end, Victor Vale does not fail Sydney because he does not care. He fails her because caring is not enough. Parenthood biological or chosen requires self-displacement, a willingness to place another’s needs above one’s own.

Like Serena before him, he becomes another figure who loves Sydney but uses her presence to stabilize himself, leaving her once again protected, valued, and deeply alone.

More.

The Merit Family remains one of the most compelling dynamics in the Villains series precisely because it refuses to be clean or comfortable.

It is also one of my favorite relationships in the narrative but appreciating it does not require softening it. Too often, fandom readings smooth over its sharper edges in favor of an idealized vision of “found family,” ignoring the power imbalances, emotional failures, and repeated patterns of harm that define the trio’s interactions.

Recognizing this does not diminish the Merit Family. What makes their relationship compelling is not the fantasy that they heal each other, but the truth that they love imperfectly, protect selectively, and survive together while remaining fundamentally damaged.

E N D ×××

A close reading of Vicious by V. E. Schwab allows for an interpretation of the relationship between Eli Ever and Serena Clarke not merely as a utilitarian alliance or a failed romance, but as a deeply coercive dynamic rooted in manipulation, loneliness, resentment, and compromised consent. This reading does not absolve Eli of responsibility for his actions, nor does it flatten him into a passive figure. Rather, it insists on holding two truths simultaneously: Eli is capable of extreme violence, and he is also enmeshed in a relationship that systematically undermines his autonomy. Within the logic of the novel, Serena’s power literalizes abuse in a way that demands ethical attention, especially when read through the lens of sexual and emotional coercion.

At the core of this analysis lies Serena Clarke’s ExtraOrdinary ability. Her power is persuasion so absolute that it erases resistance. When she speaks, others comply not because they are convinced, but because they are compelled. The text makes clear that this power is not subtle suggestion; it is domination of will. When such a power exists within an intimate relationship, the concept of consent becomes structurally unstable. Any affection, desire, or compliance on the part of the non-powered partner cannot be fully disentangled from coercion. Even if Eli experiences genuine attraction toward Serena, that attraction does not arise within a neutral field of agency. It is filtered through a dynamic in which Serena always possesses the capacity to override refusal.

This is what makes the relationship troubling on a fundamental level. Abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is not defined solely by overt physical violence. It is defined by the absence of freely given consent. Serena’s power annihilates the possibility of that freedom. The novel never needs to depict explicit sexual assault for the relationship to be read as abusive; the abuse is structural, systemic, and ongoing. Eli’s body, emotions, and choices exist within a space where Serena’s will can overwrite his own. In this sense, their intimacy whatever form it takes is inherently compromised.

One of the most commonly cited objections to reading the Eli Ever & Serena Clarke dynamic as abusive is Eli’s demonstrated resistance. Unlike a stereotypical depiction of coercion, Eli is not consistently compliant. He argues with Serena, contradicts her assessments, refuses her commands, and at times actively undermines her authority. The text even suggests that Serena enjoys this resistance that she is drawn to his attempts to oppose her, to test her limits. This detail is crucial, not exculpatory.

In many real-world abusive dynamics, particularly those centered on power rather than affection, resistance does not disrupt control; it intensifies it. Abuse is not negated by defiance. On the contrary, the abuser’s pleasure often lies in overriding resistance, in asserting dominance precisely where autonomy is asserted. Serena’s fascination with Eli’s defiance does not indicate equality. It indicates that his resistance functions as a stimulant to her authority rather than a threat to it.

Serena’s power is absolute, but she does not deploy it constantly. This restraint is itself a mechanism of control. By allowing Eli moments of opposition, she preserves the illusion of choice. He can believe he is acting freely because he is not always compelled. Yet the asymmetry remains intact: Serena always retains the final override. The fact that she does not use it does not make it irrelevant. Eli’s resistance exists only because Serena permits it.

Another frequent objection centers on Eli’s intelligence. Eli is not naïve. He is methodical, disciplined, and capable of evading law enforcement for years. If he were truly endangered by Serena, the argument goes, he would have left. This logic, however, rests on a flawed understanding of how coercive relationships operate articularly for individuals whose emotional lives are already constricted.

Eli may have stayed because he could leave. That distinction matters. Staying under conditions of constraint is not the same as staying freely. Eli’s intelligence enables him to rationalize his situation, to frame endurance as strategy, proximity as utility. He does not remain because he is unaware of danger, but because the relationship fulfills functions he cannot or will not access elsewhere.

Serena is, by the text’s own admission, his only sustained relationship for years. This does not mean he likes her. In fact, Eli frequently demonstrates disdain, irritation, and emotional distance toward Serena. But abuse does not require affection to persist. Loneliness is not alleviated only by warmth; it can also be alleviated by familiarity, by routine, by being recognized as something other than alone.

What makes Eli particularly difficult for readers to categorize is that he is not emotionally expressive in ways that align with familiar narratives of victimhood. He does not plead. He does not seek rescue. He does not frame himself as harmed. But victimhood does not require self-recognition. Many victims, particularly those socialized to value control and self-sufficiency, reinterpret harm as endurance and coercion as compromise.

Eli’s vulnerability to this dynamic is inseparable from his psychological state following his rupture with Victor Vale. Victor is not simply Eli’s former friend; he is the axis around which Eli’s identity once revolved. Victor was his intellectual equal, his mirror, and his witness. Together, they created meaning. When Victor becomes, in Eli’s mind, a “devil wearing his best friend’s skin,” Eli loses not only companionship but ontological grounding. His certainty about the world crystallizes only after this loss, hardening into absolutism as a defense against unbearable ambiguity.

Serena enters Eli’s life precisely at this moment of profound isolation. Crucially, she resembles Victor in ways that matter to Eli: she is an EO, she understands power, she operates in moral gray space, and she is dangerous. But unlike Victor, Serena does not challenge Eli. She affirms him. She validates his crusade. She supplies him with information, targets, and logistical support. The dossiers on EOs compiled by Serena are not incidental details; they mark her as an enabler of Eli’s ideology. Where Victor was confrontation, Serena is compliance.

This compliance, however, is itself a form of control. Serena does not oppose Eli because opposing him would destabilize the bond she is constructing. By aligning herself with his mission, she embeds herself into his sense of purpose. Eli becomes dependent not emotionally in a conventional sense, but existentially. She fills the void Victor left, not by replacing him, but by offering a distorted echo: a partner who understands the darkness without threatening his authority within it.

It is in this context that Eli’s complacency must be understood. He is not unaware of Serena’s power. He knows what she can do. And yet he allows her proximity, her influence, her partnership. This is not because he is immune to manipulation, but because he is willing to accept control in exchange for purpose and connection. His complicity does not negate his victimhood; it complicates it. He chooses the cage because the alternative is isolation.

The sexual dimension of this dynamic emerges precisely here. Attraction does not require freedom to exist, but consent does. Eli’s desire if we accept that it exists is shaped within a relationship where refusal is never fully possible. The more he relies on Serena for validation, companionship, and operational support, the more entangled his body and will become in a system that erodes his autonomy. This is why the abuse reading is not an accusation of Serena as a one-dimensional predator, but an acknowledgment of how her power corrupts intimacy by default.

Sydney Clarke becomes the focal point where this corruption turns outward. Eli’s attempt to murder Sydney is often framed as the logical extension of his EO-hunting ideology, but this explanation alone is insufficient. Sydney is not just another EO; she is Serena’s sister. She represents a vulnerability Eli cannot otherwise access. His resentment toward Serena resentment he cannot consciously articulate or act upon finds an outlet in Sydney.

Sydney’s power is everything Eli claims to despise: overtly unnatural, life-defying, uncontrollable. But symbolically, she also embodies Eli’s own compromised state. Like him, she exists because of death. Like him, she violates the natural order. And like him, she is tethered to Serena. By attempting to kill Sydney, Eli performs a symbolic purge not just of EO transgression, but of the part of himself that feels trapped, manipulated, and unclean.

The scene itself underscores this dynamic with chilling clarity. Serena orchestrates Sydney’s presence. She encourages her to demonstrate her power, using the same smooth, coercive tone she uses elsewhere. When Eli moves to kill Sydney, Serena’s protest is weak, delayed, and ineffective. This is not resistance; it is performance. The structure of the scene reveals a division of labor that mirrors abusive systems: Serena positions the victim; Eli executes the violence. One controls, the other enforces. Responsibility is shared, but not equally.

What makes this relationship tragic rather than merely monstrous is that the attraction between Eli and Serena can still be read as real. Abuse does not require absence of feeling. On the contrary, it often thrives on it. Eli’s loneliness, his need to be seen as righteous rather than aberrant, his craving for connection after Victor all of these make Serena’s presence intoxicating. She offers him a version of himself that feels sanctioned. In return, she gains proximity to power and validation of her own existence as something other than a monster.

In the end, the Eli&Serena (everclarke) relationship is best understood as a bond of mutual corruption. It is not a romance, but it is intimate. It is not consensual, but it is not entirely resisted. It is a relationship where control masquerades as partnership and attraction becomes a mechanism of captivity. Eli remains responsible for his actions, especially the harm he inflicts on others, but acknowledging his victimization within this dynamic does not weaken the narrative. Each uses the other to avoid confronting their own emptiness. Intimacy becomes not a refuge from monstrosity, but its most efficient vehicle.

To read their relationship through the lens of abuse particularly as a dynamic rooted in power rather than affection is not an act of sensationalism, but of fidelity to the text’s moral architecture. Vicious is not interested in clean victims or singular villains. It is interested in how harm reproduces itself through proximity, how control disguises itself as partnership, and how people can remain, willingly and unwillingly, inside relationships that wound them because those wounds feel preferable to silence.

In this light, Eli Ever and Serena Clarke are not lovers, nor simply allies. They are co-conspirators in each other’s captivity bound together not by desire, but by the shared refusal to be alone with what they have become.

This chapter functions as one of the most ideologically crucial moments in Vicious, marking not merely Eli Ever’s transformation into an ExtraOrdinary (EO), but the crystallization of his moral worldview. What unfolds here is not a descent into madness in the traditional sense, but the emergence of a coherent, internally consistent belief system one that fuses science, religion, and utilitarian violence into a personal theology. By the end of the chapter, Eli is no longer simply reacting to trauma; he is actively constructing meaning, authority, and identity around it.

From the opening scene, Eli is defined by absence. He repeatedly notes the “gap” between what he should feel and what he does feel grief, horror, guilt, fear all exist conceptually, but not viscerally. Importantly, Eli does not interpret this absence as damage. Instead, he treats it as information. The lack of emotion becomes evidence that something fundamental has changed within him.

“Something in Eli had gone missing—fear, that’s what he’d told Victor—right down the drain with the icy bath water.”

Annotation: This line establishes the central metaphor of loss through cleansing. Fear is not ripped away violently; it is drained, washed out. The bath water functions symbolically as both baptism and death, prefiguring Eli’s later fusion of religion and rebirth. Notably, Eli misidentifies what is missing. He claims it is fear, but immediately contradicts himself. This misnaming is crucial: Eli is not yet ideologically equipped to recognize emotional dissociation. Instead, he reframes absence as strength.

This is a critical distinction. Eli does not mourn the loss of fear or empathy; he studies it. His dissociation is framed not as a symptom of shock, but as a functional adaptation. His mind “makes space” for action, compartmentalizing panic so that his body can perform efficiently. This early framing allows Eli to later reinterpret emotional numbness as moral clarity, rather than psychological fracture.

In this way, the chapter carefully avoids portraying Eli as unstable or impulsive. His calm is unsettling precisely because it is purposeful.

Eli’s early lies to the police omitting the knives, fabricating self-defense training are not driven by fear of punishment, but by narrative control. He is already curating reality. What matters to Eli is not what happened, but what must be believed for the larger structure to hold.

"Eli left out the knives, having scrubbed and returned them to their drawers before the police arrived.”

Annotation: This is not a panic-driven lie. Eli acts methodically, calmly, and before external pressure exists. The act of cleaning and restoring the knives suggests an early instinct to reorder reality, not merely conceal it. The knives being returned to drawers reinforces Eli’s belief in restoring “proper order.” Violence is acceptable if the appearance of order remains intact.

This marks the beginning of his ideology: ends justify means if the end is moral order. Victor becomes the aberration, the corrupted EO, the proof that some outcomes of power are intolerable. By framing Victor as a monster, Eli implicitly positions himself as something else different, restrained, righteous.

Crucially, Eli does not yet fully articulate this difference. He only feels it as a tension, a pressure to define himself against Victor’s failure.

“The Victor that he knew was dead, replaced by something cold and vicious.”

Annotation: Eli splits Victor into two beings: the friend and the monster. This rhetorical move is essential to Eli’s ideology. If Victor is no longer Victor, then killing him is not murder but correction. This logic will later be applied universally to EOs Eli deems “wrong.”

By splitting Victor into “before” and “after,” Eli avoids confronting the possibility that power itself is morally neutral. Victor becomes a monster not because of circumstance, but because of inherent failure. This rhetorical move allows Eli to implicitly cast himself as the opposite: controlled, righteous, restrained.

Lyne’s death is not presented as rage-driven or accidental, even if Eli briefly entertains that ambiguity. What matters is not intent, but justification. The moment Eli witnesses his own healing, Lyne ceases to be a person and becomes a threat a future vector of sin.

Eli’s act of killing Lyne is ritualistic in tone. He kneels, speaks calmly, explains the moral logic of what he is doing. This is not murder as loss of control; it is execution as doctrine. Eli frames himself as preventing further transgression, sealing knowledge away permanently.

The line “This research dies with us. Well with you.” is especially telling. Eli excludes himself from culpability even as he commits the act. He is not destroying knowledge out of selfishness, but acting as its final arbiter.

This is the first moment of self-mythologization. Eli begins to see himself as a necessary instrument someone who does what others cannot, for reasons others are too weak to accept.

“We make it possible to find EOs, and then what? … someone decides to stop studying and start creating.”

Annotation: Here Eli crosses from ethical concern into theological condemnation. The problem is not harm, but creation itself. Knowledge becomes temptation; curiosity becomes sin. This is a direct inversion of scientific ethos. Discovery is no longer neutral it is morally corrupting by nature. This mirrors the biblical Tree of Knowledge: the act of knowing is itself the transgression, not what is done with that knowledge.

The Triumph of Justice — after Gabriel Metsu, 1828–1833

Eli’s encounter with Detective Stell reinforces his belief that restraint is part of righteousness. He feels the urge to flee, described as an external voice urging “go,” yet he resists it. This resistance becomes proof of moral superiority. He is not like Victor. He does not panic. He does not abandon order.

By cooperating, by appearing traumatized, Eli further refines his role as the acceptable survivor. Trauma becomes a shield, a justification that allows him to exist unquestioned within society while carrying out acts that contradict its laws.

“Run run run, hissed the thing in Eli’s head.”

Anotation: but he resists it. This resistance becomes proof of righteousness.

The irony is deliberate: the very trauma mechanism that creates EOs, becomes the institutional excuse that allows Eli to operate without suspicion.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas — Caravaggio, c. 1601–1602; Bildergalerie, Potsdam // Love Slowly Kills #1 — Adrian Borda, 2012

“Wouldn’t You?” He cut deeper, through to bone, over and over, until the floor was red. Until he’d given his life to God a hundred times, and a hundred times had it given back. Until the fear and the doubt had all been bled out of him. And then he set the knife aside with shaking hands. Eli dipped his fingertips in the slick of red, crossed himself, and got back to his feet."

This passage is one of the clearest moments in which Eli Ever ceases to be merely a man and consciously reshapes himself into something mythic. Not a hero, not a martyr in the traditional sense, but a self-sanctified figure both the lamb and the altar, both the sacrifice and the god who demands it.

At the core of the scene lies a theological paradox that mirrors Eli’s internal conflict: EOs are wrong, and I am an EO, therefore I must be wrong. Eli rejects this equation instinctively, not through logic, but through belief. He accepts the premise EOs should not exist yet refuses the conclusion when it comes to himself. This is not denial; it is exceptionalism. Eli does not believe he is innocent. He believes he is chosen.

The language of the passage is saturated with faith, even as it dismantles organized religion. Eli no longer seeks moral truth; he seeks sanction. He does not ask God whether what he does is right, he asks whether God will stop him. The knife becomes a test of divine authorship: If I were no longer of Your making, You would take this power back.

This is where the biblical imagery becomes explicit.

By cutting himself and offering his blood, Eli positions himself as the sacrificial lamb. In Christian theology, the lamb is innocence given willingly, blood spilled not as punishment but as proof of covenant. Eli reenacts this ritual alone, in silence, without priest or congregation. He becomes priest, sacrifice, and witness all at once.

The imagery strongly echoes Isaiah 53:7:

“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter.”

But Eli’s version is inverted. He is not silent because he is powerless he is silent because he has already decided. His suffering is not imposed; it is chosen. Each cut is a reaffirmation of his belief that he is different, set apart, untouched by the corruption he condemns in others.

The moment Eli dips his fingers into his own blood and crosses himself is not an afterthought it is the culmination of the ritual. Up until that point, the act can still be read as doubt, as desperation, as a plea for divine intervention. The sign of the cross transforms it into something else entirely: not a question, but an answer.

The parenthetical passage intensifies this transformation:

Until he’d given his life to God a hundred times, and a hundred times had it given back.

This is resurrection imagery. Not metaphorical resurrection, but literal, repeated refusal of death. In Christian doctrine, resurrection is proof of divinity or divine favor. Eli reads his healing body not as a biological anomaly, but as confirmation. God does not reject the sacrifice. God accepts it and returns it.

Here, Eli crosses a critical line: he no longer believes in God as an external authority. God becomes a force that acts through him. The “hands, strong and steady” guiding him are not separate from Eli’s will; they sanctify it. Violence becomes liturgy. Certainty becomes faith.

The moment Eli dips his fingers into his own blood and crosses himself is not an afterthought it is the culmination of the ritual. Up until that point, the act can still be read as doubt, as desperation, as a plea for divine intervention. The sign of the cross transforms it into something else entirely: not a question, but an answer.

In Christian tradition, the sign of the cross is a gesture of blessing, protection, and belonging. It marks the body as God’s. It is usually performed with holy water or invoked in the name of the Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eli replaces all three elements. There is no priest, no church, no sacrament.

The act of crossing himself in blood seals this transformation. This is blasphemy and apotheosis at once. He does not reject Christ he replaces Him.

This aligns with John 1:29:

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

By using his own blood, Eli does not ask for a blessing he confers it. This is not repentance; it is consecration. He sanctifies himself with the very substance that should, by all religious logic, condemn him. Blood, traditionally the price of sin, becomes the proof of grace.

This act strongly echoes Hebrews 9:22:

“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

But Eli inverts the theology. The blood shed is not Christ’s, nor is it offered to atone for wrongdoing. It is Eli’s blood, spilled voluntarily, repeatedly, and without remorse. Forgiveness is no longer something granted by God it is something Eli assumes has already been earned.

Eli does not take away sin. He redefines it. Sin becomes something that applies to others, never fully to him. He is the lamb not because he is pure, but because he believes his blood has meaning beyond morality. By surviving the sacrifice, he proves to himself that he is necessary.

The gesture also parallels baptismal symbolism. In baptism, the believer is marked as reborn through water. Eli is marked through blood. Where baptism symbolizes death and resurrection into Christ, Eli’s ritual literalizes both. He dies a hundred times and is returned a hundred times, reborn not as a follower, but as something closer to a living testament.

Once again, Eli collapses symbol and subject. He is the lamb. He is the blood. And by marking himself with it, he claims purity not through innocence, but through survival. The blood does not stain him it authorizes him.

Crucially, this self-blessing replaces external morality with internal certainty. The cross, traditionally a reminder of sacrifice for others, becomes a symbol of exception. Eli’s body heals. The blood remains. The meaning is clear to him: God does not reject the offering. Therefore, the offering is righteous.

In this moment, Eli becomes mythic not because the world sees him that way, but because he does. He is no longer a man seeking approval; he is a figure who creates his own divine logic. The fear and doubt are “bled out,” not resolved. Faith replaces ethics. Certainty replaces accountability.

This is the true blasphemy of the scene not that Eli wounds himself, but that he dares to bless himself and believes the blessing holds.