Come on you two lovebirds, enter the ring! Two entities enter: lovers of life and death. Only one will leave and continue on with the game. Who will it be?

Baudelaire: I have no clue how to begin. Ladies first..?

Rossetti: Being chivalrous, are you? That’s certainly unexpected.

Baudelaire: Christina, please. Neither of us wants to be here. Pick a starting point and attack.

Rossetti: R..right. The topic of death is still unfortunately on my mind since the last challenge. Let’s talk about how you’re oh so willing to give up on the beautiful life God has given us?

Baudelaire: Keep bringing up religion and I’ll crucify myself. Let’s stick to the facts. I embrace death because I don’t want it to be this great unknown figure in my thoughts. Celebrating and accepting death allows me to not be afraid of it when it comes to me. If you run away from it, all you’ll achieve in life is a sense of fatigued fear. How can you honestly live life to its fullest when you’re preoccupied with dying?

Rossetti: You should fear death because it’s that fear that drives you to continue living. “Life out of death!”

Baudelaire: Why do you torture yourself with that logic?! Don’t you know how much happier you’d be if you didn’t live in constant fear of death? Or giving into temptations every now and then?

Rossetti: Do you take me for a sinful woman, Charles?

Baudelaire: Sadly, I don’t. You’re the perfect example of the woman I mention in my poem – “nearly collaps[ing] in a swoon” after you first smell “the stench so wretched” of the discovered carcass. So innocent in nature, so… incessantly pure it drives me mad!

Rossetti: What kind of good, sane person would not faint at the smell of decaying human flesh?!

Baudelaire: A person who’s lived life! A person who takes death for what it is: an inevitability that can show up at any time. A person who’s willing to ignore the bigger, unanswerable questions in life and instead focuses on what makes him happy. Look. I appreciate your drive for life and all, but I cannot wrap my head around your need to remain blandly pure in order to stay alive. It’s… depressing! And people say my poems are depressing!

Rossetti: My poems are filled with light and happiness and a sense of moral righteous! What’s depressing is that at any given moment, you could be one step closer to death and all you’d be worried about is whether or not you’ll be drunk enough to smile as it all happens! I refuse to take this argument any further with you, it’s hopeless!

Baudelaire: No. Don’t say tha-

Julianna: I believe we’re done here!