#fish talks

if aaron is the victim that allows the viewer to see peachfuzz's heart at his most authentic, then sara is the "final girl" that allows the viewer to see inside the mind of PF. one of the most distinguishing characteristics of PF's targets is that they're all experiencing hardships one way or another (surprise, killer goes after vulnerable people!) but i think what creep 2 does best is show from the get-go how exactly PF underestimates his victims. sure, for aaron, that might have been a reasonable conclusion to come to because his character is meant to be an empathetic one (as proved by the alt ending), but for sara he believes he has her all figured out. he knows her intentions for wanting to film him and therefore can maintain control and fuck with her throughout the movie (towel scene, tantrum at the river) --but he never for a moment considers the idea that she just...won't break. and its because of this miscalculation and damselfying sara that allows her to escape a situation that should have left her realistically absolutely fucked. at least in aaron's case, he didn't look behind him (much to the mockery of PF) because he had no ill beliefs towards a presumedly mentally ill man, but in PF's case he didn't look behind him because he thinks of his life as one big collage of movies and fractured memories (hinted at by the creep tapes).

as an aside to the movie mentality, id like to offer my own interpretation as an autistic viewer. personally, i know that relying on movies for messy memories and social interactions can be comforting, and having that coping tool called out (or, ruined in PF's case) can be distressing. for PF, with the way he films his victims so that he can look through their controlled story once they're gone, it reads that for him, murder becomes a way to ensure people he loves (in his own way) will never be ABLE to reject him and his intense love, because he'll kill them before that happens, AND, it becomes a way to make his life feel like a movie of sorts. every movie has a predictable beginning, middle, and end; his day with his victim should follow that same structure.

it is for that reason that i find the fact that sara haunts the narrative so very interesting. her survival symbolizes a few things for PF:

sara escaping ruins his whole "movie" of how he thinks murder should always go

sara escaping symbolizes that even when he had literally EVERY upper hand, this "deer" managed to outsmart and surprise him (he needs to keep future victims at much more of a deliberate disadvantage, see Mike, Jeremy, Mark, etc)

bottom line: he let sara live too long (is probably his idea) so he has to start cutting down the amount of time he spends with victims so they don't get a chance to leave him (aka REJECT him) again

The Creep Tapes supports the idea of sara's influence on the narrative more directly (Ava, the deer figurine) but i think its present throughout the way his whole MO starts to shift little by little between the time of s1 and 2 (as briefly touched on in the bullet points).