 A natural way of thinking about the significance of brute necessity begins with the assumption that we are entitled to a default combinatorial assumption about modality: that for any pair of properties F and G, it is possible that there is an x that is both F and G, that x is only one and not the other, and that there is an x that is neither F nor G. The next step is to suggest that this default assumption can be defeated. Consider red and scarlet: on one view, to be red just is to be scarlet or crimson or cherry red or… The thesis that this is what it is to be red, if true, would provide a straightforward explanation of why the combinatorial assumption is defeated here: it is not possible for something to be scarlet but not red precisely because of what it is to be red. Where we take there to be no such explanation however, we should be loathe to accept an alleged necessary connection (cf. McPherson (2012); for a similar idea in a different context, compare Levine and Trogdon 2009). Call this constraint on our metaphysical theorizing anti-brutalism.