Some possible counter-points: If Victoria and Kate are in an open relationship Victoria may want a slice of Ashe herself, especially if Kate has filled her in on their extra-curricular activities. Getting a duplo as your unicorn third? Especially turning a platonic family friend and neighbour into your sexual plaything, that's a lot of juice for someone that gets turned on by any of that, and the only thing the blackmailer has touched on is sex. Bonus theory, Victoria is a secret duplo too, and wants to help Ashe reach her full sexual potential.
I mean at that point, Ashe is already technically intimate with Kate so all Victoria would have to do is to just.. ask?
Going out of her way to blackmail Ashe seems so roundabout compared to just sending a text being all like "Hey, I know you're fucking my wife, I find it hot and we're in an open relationship so let's organize something".
I dunno, I don't think I'm buying this possibility, it seems so contrived and unnatural, so let's see the other points.
Hungover00 said:
If they aren't in an open relationship then it definitely feels like it could be more malevolent, and it's motivated by revenge. Which is still a powerful motivation, and doesn't fully negate her potentially wanting Ashe for her self in some way, but that has a power play layered on top of it.
That's possible, power-play or coercion could be a type of kink for her, though I feel like it
should be more malevolent if her blackmail comes from a perspective of "hey, you fucked my wife you piece of shit". Usually those types of blackmails attempt to land the victim in a much bigger mess, but as noted it's been very benign thus far.
Hungover00 said:
The reason to involve Delilah would be assistance and logistics. Victoria is off, wherever, on a business trip (or 'business trip'), while her daughter with an ill-hidden crush on Ashe is right there. Maybe Victoria, with her connections, helped Delilah get that internship. Maybe she's convinced herself and Delilah this is all for Ashe's benefit in the long run. Maybe she's taking advantage of Delilah's crush and using her to better plot and enact her revenge. But tracking Ashe, observing her date with Vanessa, these are much harder to do if you don't have someone on the ground to help. My theory is drones for surveillance, combined with Delilah moped(motorcycling)ing around behind Ashe, finding a place to set up, then piloting the drone. Someone seeing one of the places Ashe and Vanessa went on their date, not too difficult, but both? Some random rooftop patio and then the college girl house? That's much trickier, in my book.
That's fair but it also seems a bit strange from the perspective of a parent to not just hire someone. If it's mainly for surveillance then using someone who Ashe knows quite a lot is very much a double edged sword as Ashe likely wouldn't even realize if she saw some random chick more than once while being out on the town, but she knows Delilah and would be able to recognize her fairly easily, meaning that if Ashe spotted her more than once in conjunction with the blackmails then her naturally anxious personality would instantly start to raise red flags.
Plus, wouldn't Fiona potentially pick up on it aswell? Delilah quite obviously sucks at a poker face so even just a random "hey, where have you been?" question from Fiona towards Delilah after Del was out spying on Ashe & Vanessa would likely have her acting REAL suspicious.
Hungover00 said:
Delilah seems too involved to be a pure red herring, and the whole scheme seems a bit too far for her to have done by herself, especially with how in this last chapter we see her behaving conflicted. Which is why it seems likely to me she is involved, but not the mastermind. And who could she possibly accept that dynamic with, when Ashe, her longstanding crush, is the target. Someone she deeply trusts. Family. Kate seems unlikely, since she walked in on Ashe and Zoey, and is already 'corrupting' Ashe, making the blackmail redundant. Fiona...it seems like a stretch she'd collaborate with Delilah on something like this, or have a plan with so many moving parts. Who else does Delilah know? Evelyn, Rachel, probably Isabella. And Victoria. I don't see Evelyn ever being a part of this, she'd rip them apart with her mama-bear paws. Rachel...that'd be a fucking betrayal and a half if it was her, especially with the distance she's put between herself and Ashe, and I don't see Delilah getting roped in to something that messy. And I can't see how Delilah would side with Isabella against Ashe. So, by process of elimination, Victoria comes up again.
There have been plenty of criminals being conflicted with what they're putting someone through, so it isn't really an indication that she's not the mastermind. If anything, it feels like it is more indicative of it given that her thought process is likely along the lines of "I don't want to put her through this, but it's for <insert reason here>". I'll delve more into it below.
I think the main issue of it is the severity or lack thereof. We've both noted that it's too benign to be done with harmful intent, and it seems to be geared towards mentally cornering Ashe and becoming more sexual and if we look at it from that perspective, we know that the blackmailer is someone who stands to gain from Ashe in that scenario and given that also focuses on stressing her out and mentally cornering her, it seems to more point to someone in Ashe's immediate surrounding that also could theoretically find out about Ashe's duplo status.
-Victoria, following that logic, wouldn't really fit as she doesn't really gain anything from blackmail if her and Kate is in an open relationship, and it's too benign to be revenge aswell if her and Kate aren't in an open relationship. Plus, while we don't know much about her, I doubt that she would pull Delilah into something as illegal as blackmailing. It's hard to thumb on the bonds of family like that, it would mean that Victoria doesn't really value her daughter much as a hired goon would be much easier to do and to deal with that also wouldn't have any annoying strings. She's also far away and wouldn't really gain something from blackmailing Ashe into becoming more sexual
right now unless it's to fuck Kate more? But at that point, as said, it would be easier to just talk to Ashe about it?
-Delilah herself still, in my eyes, remains a candidate solely for how benign the blackmail has been. We know that she's way too into Ashe and that she's weird about it, she's woefully naive and seem to have some sort of romanticization towards her. One of my running theories is that she's gotten herself into a "knight in shining armor" complex where she wants to corner Ashe to make her come to Delilah with her problem so Delilah can "magically" fix it. It would explain why she's so conflicted about it, and why she blurted out about knowing that Ashe is a duplo, to reassure Ashe that "hey, you can trust me, I just want what's best for you" type deal.
-Fiona could potentially want to monopolize Ashe herself. She's been telling Ashe to get laid for a long time but she's also more or less ALWAYS been at Ashe's side, she could have seen Ashe during the sleepover and she might be telling Ashe that Delilah is weird to make sure that Ashe
doesn't end up with Delilah. Her infatuation might be for Ashe herself, or she might be projecting Rachel onto Ashe and figuring "it's close enough". It's a weaker theory given that Fiona doesn't really behave in a way that would indicate her doing any blackmailing.
-Kate is pretty much written off for me, I really can't see any reason as to why she would blackmail Ashe given that she's already (potentially atleast) intimate with her so she doesn't need Ashe to become more sexualized and I don't really think she even
knows that Ashe is holding back due to her status.
-Zoey is also someone that I've written off, she seems to just be into dicks and wants to fuck around as much as humanly possible, it would be out of character for her to focus so intently on one person when she can just devour a random dick at will like some sort of turbo succubus.
-Moira has the means of finding out Ashe's duplo status due to her status and potentially accessing medical files. She might have picked up an interest from the ill-fated dinner date and wants to fuck around with someone her daughter likes, or she might want to put Vanessa in her place by manhandling Ashe as a sort of 'hey, I can get to whomever I want, obey me' type of spiel. However she doesn't come across as someone who seems to stoop to that level and it feels like she'd view blackmailing as a waste of time for someone like Ashe when she could just sic bodyguards or hire people for shit as you said, it just feels off.
I think out of the people we are aware of, Delilah still feels like the most logical culprit thus far out of the people we know, but it feels like it's going to be someone we've never heard or seen of before. Or it might be tied in with information that we haven't gotten to know in the game thus far which would be.. kind of annoying and underwhelming.
Rachel would be a fucking
WILD twist and it would thoroughly cement that character as my most hated in any form of media. Kind of praying that it isn't something like that.
EDIT- out of the characters we do somewhat know, I would rank Victoria second solely due to your arguments making more sense than any of the other characters for sure, but it doesn't click well enough for me to be convinced to push her to a #1 culprit status.
