<blockquote>Raleigh “Rally” King was Axial Conglomerate’s sweetheart. Redrender’s knight in shining armor. You’d watched him sweat in high definition all through season twenty-seven’s desert sequence, his sword gleaming in the sunlight. You’d watched him cry too—big tears rolling down his cheeks whenever someone died and he couldn’t save them.
At the time, you’d rolled your eyes. Audiences love sentiment, so of course Rally would cry. The drones are always watching-cutting-streaming the tastiest morsels of Redrender for everyone at home. He’s faking it. It’s acting.
You know better now, after eight seasons as a cast member on Redrender. The show gets inside your head. You can think you’re going to treat it like a game all through the psychological profiling and the camera tests. You can tell yourself it’s just reality television while signing away the rights to your DNA samples and signing the contract that agrees that termination is at the studio’s discretion. You can pretend it’s all fake until you’re shipping down to Redrender and then it’s not a game anymore. It’s your life.</blockquote>
➤ it's about an intense and important relationship of trust (platonic or not? not relevant) where they can't actually know each other in any real way because they're always having to play for the cameras! ambiguous ending but good
