Lavender

Starting this off with a disclaimer, I do not have an official diagnosis and I am not a psychologist, I'm just a guy with specific experiences who likes projecting on characters.

For this specific reading of Sarmenti, I will be partially nullifying the canon lore, because I do not view the melody as an eldrich force that exists materially, rather as something exclusive to Sarmenti's psyche.

Sarmenti's adoption of the Jester persona is the first notable instance of him actively choosing to disassociate himself from his past as an attempt to ease the current version of himself, to detach himself from vulnerability for the sake of surviving the court. In this he assumes that the mask and persona are enough to keep him safe, as long as he forces himself out of his own human weaknesses and becomes purely a performer.

As his torture continues, so does the apparent inability to keep the act up. Sarmenti can't survive this and he is forced to reckon with the reality of it. He is no longer choosing to take the role of a character, rather he has started to lose the thread on what is the performance and what is him, because neither is capable of responding and existing in this space.

The Jester persona isn't an alter as much as it is a now failing attempt to cover up the depersonalisation that Sarmenti experiences. Amidst said depersonalisation and derealization (judging by the visuals on his second puzzle) is when a fracture starts forming.

Sarmenti is not a violent man, he doesn't want to hurt people, even less to end a life, his morals burying the rage of his mistreatment times and times again. In a court which offers him a simple kill or be killed, he will die simply for not being able to go through with murder. It is there that something capable of killing is finally formed, a companion unafraid and capable of exacting vengeance, of balancing Sarmenti's trembling hand when he reaches the knife.

The melody doesn't take over, neither then, nor now. Instead of it, it lingers close by, guiding Sarmenti to commit what he can't will himself to do. It becomes the guiding hand to a cursed song, the arm balancing his when he points the dirk, the sword to a man of soft flesh and much softer heart.

To Sarmenti that is a nightmare come true, a curse in need of curing, haunting him like the memory of the crimes he has commited. He doesn't want to participate in this so in turn he tries to get rid of it, first through cutting his pinky and then through facing it. Choosing to point the blame to something tangible inside himself rather than the people hurting him, people he couldn't understand no matter what.

Eventually the melody settles, at the end of the road, at the foot of the mountain, when Sarmenti no longer needs a guardian, it lays itself to rest until it's needed. In turn Sarmenti is relieved, of his curse and of his struggles at least for a time.

Years later, when the dust has fully settled, when he is no longer looking for a tangible fault in himself to reason his abuse, the melody no longer carries the sound of a curse. Sarmenti sees it for what it was - the reason he survived.

Corsets were a trend for a month on tiktok and I was like woah I want one, surprisingly I could not find one that fit and that was not exceptionally dysphoria inducing in style.