ceo of suncaeheng and chizhu

Let me preface this by acknowledging that my reading is informed by the fact that I ship them. I’ve been writing them as lovers since A Winter Night’s Lazzo came out, based solely on a familiarity with the Commedia dell’arte, a degree in identifying queer subtext, and a dream that Hoyo most definitely fulfilled. But the game is not being subtle here. Even if you don’t see their partnership as romantic, it is, at the very least, queerplatonic.

Regardless of how you interpret their relationship, the game makes it clear that Pantalone is the most significant person in Dottore’s life, more significant to Dottore than Dottore himself. Dottore’s primary record—his first memory in a game where memory is tantamount to life and identity—is a meticulously kept catalogue of every time his many selves saved and extended Pantalone’s life. It is Anomalous Tree Marrow I on purpose because Pantalone’s survival is written into every part of Zandik’s soul, down to the 8 year old who scolds Pantalone for misplacing his glasses. Forget the bickering Segments, forget the god-making, world-changing experiments—Pantalone’s safety, survival, and even comfort (looking at you, Alpaca wool) comes first.

I hardly have words for how incomprehensibly tragic they are.

Feofan spent 50 years with Zandik, the notoriously unsympathetic scientist who had already cauterized his compassion by the time of their first meeting. This is the heretic who preferred to view humans as test subjects and machines rather than leave himself open to more rejection than what he had already experienced.

This guy sets his eyes on Pantalone and immediately wants to keep him forever. Zandik fell hard enough for Test Subject 3 after a single meeting that he not only decided to refrain from experimenting on him, but went and learned his name, put in a good word with Pierro, and spent the rest of his life (and death!!!) guaranteeing Feofan's continued existence. This is U-hauling to the nth degree.

Now for some quick math: Pantalone is 72 years old when Zandik dies on his 85th birthday, meaning it was a 33-year-old Zandik who first met a 20-year-old Pantalone.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the 35-year-old Segment is the one who sees himself as the most selfish. He’s the closest to the 33-year-old Zandik who only needed one encounter with this nameless, injured, smooth-talking test subject before saying: “this one is mine. I’m keeping him. Not just until I get bored. Not just until I need a new test subject. Forever.” And this means that 35 is the first version of Zandik who sees himself as having something to lose. This is the Zandik who experienced a desire to keep Pantalone at his side for the rest of time. And also the Dottore who is still in the throes of NRE lol.

Prior to their in-game appearance, I headcannoned Pantalone as avaricious and possessive based on the Moment of Cessation artifact description. I still think he is in some respects, but Dottore definitely has him beat when it comes to sheer obsessive devotion.

If Dottore is the Segment who is closest—temporally speaking—to the moment in which he found a genuine partner whose views and values align with his own, then it doesn’t seem surprising that he would be the one most threatened by Zandik’s existence. Again, his selfishness is the same selfishness that made Zandik want to keep Pantalone in the first place. His envy is that of knowing what it is like for someone to look at him and not see a monster for the first time, and it makes him monstrous. Dottore might not have actively killed Zandik, but the Anomalous Tree Marrow III certainly makes it seem as though he, at the very least, persuaded the other Segments to agree to a DNR should Zandik end up in critical condition:

The fact that he often refers to his fellow Segments as “me” and “myself” makes me think he’s talking about getting the other Segments onto his side here rather than to Zandik, who he often describes as being somewhat apart from himselves.

I think it’s important to note that Dottore recognizes how Pantalone’s immortality cannot be guaranteed until Zandik dies. Zandik is the missing ingredient and Dottore understands this much. His willingness to let Zandik die can be partly attributed to his own selfishness and desire to supplant the original in all ways (including as Pantalone’s partner). But, regardless of intent, it also succeeds in ensuring Pantalone’s immortality, which has to be a fairly bitter pill for the latter to swallow.

Although Pantalone plays off the fact that he was unsettled by Zandik’s death and dissection (interjecting with “I never said that” when Dottore calls him on his past reaction during story time), it is abundantly clear that Pantalone experiences a potent emotional response every time one or more Zandik dies.

In the medical logs, for instance, Dottore makes a “joke” about developing antidepressants for Pantalone. But, given the timing and the fact that there had been no prior indication that Pantalone suffered from depression, one can easily assume that Pantalone is grieving and Dottore is being an envious asshole about it. (“Unsettled” also feels like a very Dottore way to describe someone suffering the grief of losing their partner of 50 years).

Similarly, when Dottore eradicates the rest of the Segments, he pithily describes Pantalone as behaving like “little more than a decorative vase” at the Harbinger meeting, which again comes across as a rather cold way of telling us that Pantalone is dissociating to cope with the grief of losing five more versions of Zandik—aspects he had, by then, lived with for four centuries. Ouch.

(At least Dottore thinks he’s pretty.)

Pantalone never shares his emotions with us players directly—his feelings are always focalized through Dottore’s mocking asides about Pantalone’s behaviors—but that honestly makes me think that Pantalone was even more distraught than what the text tells us. If even Dottore is making flippant comments that speak to him picking up on Pantalone’s distress, then it has to be pretty bad.

Partners, at the End, Even Still

And so Pantalone’s ongoing decision to maintain his partnership with Dottore is utterly excruciating on multiple levels. There is, of course, the fact that it dooms them both to death—Dottore immediately (big asterisk here because I don’t think he’s dead for good but that’s another essay) and Pantalone once the Elixir runs out and old age finally catches up to him. But the emotional registers beneath all this are, in my mind, even more devastating.

Dottore is all Pantalone has left of Zandik. And yet Dottore is also the reason that he’s all Pantalone has left of Zandik.

When Pantalone follows Dottore and stands at his side, he is standing beside his partner and his partner’s murderer at the same time. The only way Pantalone can reckon with the abject tragedy of this fact is by holding onto the belief that Dottore is Zandik and Zandik is Dottore and that he will always be part of him.

Feofan and Zandik had 50 years where they (presumably) continued to learn, grow, and evolve together. Dottore is fixed in time at 35, but Pantalone is mentally fixed in time at 72, the year Zandik died, after which 35 perfected the Elixir so that it would pause physical and mental aging.

When Dottore explains that the other Segments had erased his “uniqueness,” he talks about how “a soul living forever in the past inevitably holds different views than he did in his later years,” acknowledging that he’s imprisoned by the moment of his own creation. The fact that he immediately pivots to then focus on Pantalone’s preservation is important because it reminds us that Pantalone is also frozen in time. He says:

There are a lot of ways we can read these lines. On the surface, we can simply read it as expository information to give the player some background on Pantalone—it definitely is that for sure. We can also read it as an example of Dottore’s callousness, how he casually brings up Pantalone being trafficked.

But I think there’s another layer, too. It’s an example of how Dottore still latches onto the Pantalone that Zandik met at 33. And this isn’t the first time in the conversation that Dottore demonstrates how fixed his perspective is. Nearly four centuries have gone by and yet he still thinks the reason Pantalone is helping him is because he spared him as a test subject. Pantalone has already had to remind Dottore that he ascended to the rank of Harbinger on his own merit and that he isn’t there because of some quid pro quo from centuries ago. Rather, he sees their values and goals as fundamentally aligned. Pantalone is there for Zandik because he still sees Dottore as Zandik.

And so, when given the opportunity to say his final farewell, Pantalone says goodbye to Zandik. Despite the literal words he speaks, I don’t think he’s actually asking what 35 prefers to be called. He already knows that 35 sees himself as Dottore from their prior conversation. What Pantalone is really asking is who he can say goodbye to in this moment, at the end, when they are finally free from fate itself. After the enormous personal sacrifices Pantalone has made, Dottore gives Pantalone the choice to see him as Zandik. And how heartbreaking is it that Pantalone does even though, by this point, it is Dottore who has spent some 330 years with Pantalone—centuries more than Pantalone had ever experienced with Zandik.

It is, as far as final acts go, surprisingly selfless of Dottore to recognize what it means for Pantalone to see him that way, even though he himself despises being forever tied to Zandik. It is especially surprising coming from the Segment who wholeheartedly embraces his own greed and repeatedly proclaims himself to be the most selfish of them all. So much for not being able to change!

For me, their greatest tragedy is the fact that they are out of time from one another, asynchronous, yearning for each other in different forms and ages. Dottore is forever looking for the Feofan he met at 33; he sees their present relationship as contractually predicated on saving Feofan in the past. Pantalone, frozen at 72, looks for the remnants of the man who shared his worldviews in the most selfish version of Dottore.