#bit of an abrupt ending but i want the following scene to have proper focus instead of it being shoehorned at the end

[papsiguesss]

Tarkin/Dooku drabblings: Sickfic 2, electric boogaloo

That’s right, I’ve written more for these boys, and Tarkin still is as horrible a patient as ever. (Part one here!)

TW very unhealthy coping mechanisms

Tarkin did not quite know how long he had been asleep when he woke up again.

In all fairness, he did not quite care.

All that he could focus on was how much his burns stung. That, and the fact that he was trembling so much that it became uncomfortable.

With how much his wounds were flaring up again, it almost felt like he was being electrocuted all over again.

The Governor clenched his jaw. Why did those memories still have such a chokehold on him...?

He thought that he had gotten past it by now. That any fearful responses had been completely beaten out of him during his training on the Carrion Plateau. For so many long years, he had learned how to face such feeble things like fear head-on, only for him to return to square one after this one incident.

The feelings that were haunting his mind were awfully similar to the ones he had experienced as a young child, back when his great uncle Jova had returned him home after his first outing on the Carrion.

Despite all the years that had passed since then, he still remembered those days vividly.

While on the Carrion, not a single day passed without him longing for home again. For the simple comforts of a soft bed, food that he would not have to hunt for and most importantly, rest. Rest for his aching limbs, which had been continually pushed beyond their limits without a single break. Rest for his mind, rest from the constant feeling that something was out there. Something that would tear your head clean off if it would be given the chance. He had been forced to live like a wild beast, and during those days there was nothing that he wanted more than to feel human again.

After being returned to civilised society, however, the return of those comforts he had so longingly wished for did not bring him any happiness.

Instead, it only made him feel more disconnected from everything that had happened to him.

Shutting himself off in his room, he could not get the images of death out of his head. The pungent odour of blood still seemed to haunt him, and when sleeping, his dreams were nothing but the crimson red of death. He had hated his parents for wilfully subjecting their own son to this torture, and he despised Uncle Jova even more. He had been filled with nothing but sheer anger, despite not having any outlet for it.

The more he had been subjected to his own nightmares though, the more he understood why he had been put through these trials.

Before long, memories that had made him cry in his sleep before became something that he felt nothing but numb about. His anger subsided; his fears died out. Instead, all that remained inside his heart was a hollow void.

A void that was now being filled with pain again.

Tarkin would not allow that, however.

Overexposure to his painful memories had made them harmless before. He would simply have to do the same thing all over again.

Moving his shoulders around, he felt his infected skin ache so intensely that it felt as if he was being lit on fire. Feeling the pain, he squeezed his eyes shut, envisioning his torture again. Given the state of his wounds, he did not even have to imagine the sensation of the electricity being forced through his body. He took deep breaths, suppressing any fear or panic that he was feeling.

Before long, those emotions would be entirely eradicated, he thought to himself.

He would not have Dooku seeing him in a vulnerable state like that again. The fact that his memories had given him a panic attack in the past had been embarrassing enough already, but the fact that the leader of the enemy had been a witness to it was downright shameful.

The state his body had been left in was an abhorrent nuisance, but at least it would help him bury his trauma, he supposed.

He froze in place, however, as a robotic voice called out to him.

“Detections of awoken patient. Good afternoon, Governor Tarkin.”

Tarkin's eyes rapidly widened themselves as he realised that he had not been alone in his room. Looking around wildly, he eventually spotted a medical droid standing near his bedside, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the thing with distrust. “...What do you want?”, he muttered grumpily.

“Count Dooku has tasked me with your medical aid”, the robot replied. “Diagnosis: infections in burn wounds, potential of sepsis. Level of severity: highly urgent care necessary. Treatment: antibiotics, which I have been equipped with.” It held out a metallic arm, holding a variety of small pills. “Do take your medicine, Governor.”

The captain gave a disdainful scowl. “Tell the Count that if he wishes to poison me, he is doing a very poor job at masking his intention”, he sneered, turning his back on the droid. “Leave me alone. I’ve sat out worse conditions.”

His robotic nurse gave no response for a while, making the Governor think that that would be it, but he soon groaned as he heard the droid respond. “The Count had informed me that you would be a reluctant and difficult patient,” the mechanical voice rattled, “but you really are something else. Do I need to switch to the juvenile protocol and give you a treat if you remain well-behaved, Governor?”

Hearing the cheek coming from that remark, Tarkin turned back rapidly, glaring at the robot with fury in his eyes. “If it were not for the fact that my wounds incapacitate me,” he snarled, gritting his teeth, “you would have been torn apart in seconds, do you hear me?”

Immediately after the words had left his lips, he suddenly felt himself becoming dizzy again, though. He slumped down again, his teeth clattering as his entire body felt like it was freezing. “…Curses…”, he muttered weakly, wrapping his blanket around him even more in a desperate attempt to feel even a semblance of warmth. “Just… leave me alone, for goodness’ sake…”

The droid did not move. Instead, it moved its hand closer towards the captain’s face, shaking the little pills it was still offering. “Your medicine”, it repeated. “I warn you, intravenous methods will have to be used if you leave it like this for much longer.”

A chill ran down Tarkin’s spine as he heard those words. He would rather not have a set of tubes jammed into his veins. He was reminded of the last time he saw his dying father, ailing from all kinds of complications and barely being kept alive by all the liquids being pumped into his blood. He gulped, remembering how ghastly the man had looked during his final living moments.

As much as he respected the family legacy, this was an aspect in which he wouldn’t like to resemble his father.

Besides, if he had to be poisoned, rather through pills than through an IV bag.

“Fine”, he groaned, rolling his eyes as he took the antibiotics. Gulping as he swallowed them down, he closed his eyes and let out a shivering breath. “…Can you please leave me alone now?”, he eventually asked.

The droid seemed to be weighing over the matter, before eventually giving a stiff nod. “I suppose we can leave temperature and blood pressure taking for later”, it responded. “I will leave you be for now if that is what you wish. Goodbye, Governor.” With those words, it soon left the room.

“Good riddance”, Tarkin scoffed quietly. He turned to lie on his back, staring at the ceiling as he let out a sigh. What in the stars’ name did he get himself in? None of it made sense. He did not understand why Dooku was being this kind with him, he did not understand why his mind had been in such a vulnerable state as of late, and most importantly, he did not understand all the emotions he was feeling. And even worse, he was now bed-bound and left to the Count’s care. Again and again, Dooku had seen him weak and vulnerable, and he hated every single moment of it.

That inexplicable friendliness was the worst part of it, the Governor thought to himself. He could not for the life of him figure out why the Count would be genuine, given that by all accounts, they should want each other dead. Plus, he was probably aware of the information that Tarkin held. Of course he was, that was why his underlings had tortured him for so long. Of course, he was just doing this to manipulate him into willingly giving him his half of the Nexus route coordinates. There was no other reason for him to be doing this.

Not that that was surprising. There was not much about himself that warranted kindness, the captain thought to himself.

Any observer might have called it self-hatred, but that was not how Tarkin saw it himself.

Kindness was something that made you weak. By building up his walls, he was simply preventing that from happening to him.

It was why he quickly abandoned his hatred for his own family after being exposed to the Carrion. They were simply preparing him for the universe’s harshness. Doing any less would have been giving false hope, which was even more cruel in the captain’s eyes.

…It was strange to realise that the most kindness he had received in his lines was coming from someone from the enemy ranks instead of his own family, though.

Having zoned out for he did not know how long, he was suddenly alerted by a soft knock on his door. Opening his eyes again, he scowled as he heard it. What did this blasted droid not understand about the words ‘leave me alone’?

“Go away”, he groaned, rolling his eyes. “Do I have to tell you to back off every single second? For crying out loud, I’d expect your programming to be better than that.”

To his dismay, those words did not make the person behind the door leave. Instead, it slowly opened, though it was not the droid’s face that Tarkin saw staring at him.

It was Dooku’s.

“…I simply brought some food”, the Count said, carrying a small bowl with a somewhat confused expression on his face. “Were you hearing things? I… do hope you aren’t becoming delirious again…”

The Governor narrowed his eyes. “When you said that you were going to have a droid look after me, I did not anticipate you recruiting one to berate me like a disobedient child, Count”, he said grumpily.

Trying to hide a snorting laugh, Dooku tried to keep a straight face. “And you believe that you are not acting like one?”, he responded somewhat teasingly.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Tarkin flashed the Count a furious glare. “I swear to the stars, I’m going to strangle you as soon as my body stops acting ridiculous like this”, he snarled. “Do you derive amusement from seeing me like this, Count? Is that it?!”

Clearly surprised by his companion’s outburst, Dooku’s eyebrows raised as he put the bowl down next to the other’s bed. “That remark was made in jest, there’s no need to get angry”, he said calmly. “And what makes you think that I am doing this for nefarious means? Has there ever been a moment where I have shown harmful intent, captain?”

The Governor slumped down against his pillow, sweat trickling down his forehead as the fever felt like it was getting worse. “You have not”, he muttered with difficulty. “Which is exactly why I find it so suspicious.”

He eyed the Count for a while, a look of distrust on his face. “You are a Separatist”, he continued. “I fight for the Republic. I just so happen to possess information that would be vital to your war efforts, and have played a key part in dismantling your Holonet manipulations. There is no reason for you to not want to either use me, kill me, or both. So please, do explain to me… What is it you want with me, Count?”

Dooku looked away, staying silent. There seemed to be a thoughtful look on his face, though it was not calculating. It was more… introspective. The captain impatiently awaited his answer, his shivering limbs never distracting him from the utmost focus he had.

“…I genuinely do not have any hidden motive”, the Count eventually answered. “I understand why you do not believe me. You have every reason to. We are indeed supposed to be enemies, and what my men have done to you at the Citadel is inexcusable. Indeed, it would seem like madness to do this in the eyes of a logical man. Believe me, I know. My fellow allies have been giving me nothing but hate because of it.”

He paused, frowning as he stared off into the distance. “But then, I do not believe that this is a choice motivated by logic”, he continued, before turning to look at Tarkin again.

“…It is one motivated by emotions.”

The captain scowled with disgust as he heard those words. Not only did it sound ridiculous, but the fact that the man who was supposed to lead the opposing army was this prone to letting his emotions guide him was absolutely sickening to him. How could he possibly admit this weakness to one of his enemies? “I am going to pretend like I entertain this idea for the sake of the argument”, he eventually said. “What could you possibly mean by that?”

Dooku stayed silent, pressing his lips against each other as he looked to be in deep contemplation again. “…We know each other from before the war”, he began after a while, seemingly choosing his words very carefully. “This war has gone on for many long years by now, but I still remember those days as if it were yesterday. Of course, I tried to convince you to side with the Separatist cause, given the fact that Eriadu would make a powerful ally in the Outer Rim. During that attempt, I came across something that I had not encountered before when trying to gather allies.”

He paused, his dark brown eyes intently staring into Tarkin’s.

“…I was met with fierce resistance”, he eventually said.

The Governor frowned in confusion. “What does that have to do with-”, he began to protest, but the Count raised his hand, gesturing for the other to let him finish. “Try as I might, your loyalty fiercely lay with the Republic”, he explained. “And while I was disappointed… I could not help but… respect it. Admire it, even. It was a quality of yours that made me… well, fond of you.” A faint blush spread across his cheeks as he said those words, strangely enough…

“It is why I swore to keep Eriadu from harm”, he continued. “It is why I was appalled when I learned that they had locked you up in the Citadel. I… I respect you, Tarkin. I couldn’t allow you to be subjected to those atrocities, and so I decided to take some semblance of accountability by seeing to it that you at least heal.” He paused one final time, letting out a sigh as he did not break his eye contact.

“Do you still think that I am trying to kill you after all that, captain?”, he asked.

The Governor could not help but stare at the other with bafflement in his eyes after hearing those words. What was Dooku on about? Granted, he could also respect the Count’s war efforts, as well as his charisma, but none of those things would motivate him to make a blunder like that during war. “…Even if all of that was true, you are mad, Count”, he responded. “Mad, do you hear me? What has gotten into you?”

Dooku frowned. “…War is madness”, he eventually said, a look of… regret on his face. “Do you truly believe that sane men start bloodshed like this? But we have gotten terribly derailed, Governor. As much as the philosophy of warfare is a fascinating subject, that is not what I came here for.” He raised up the bowl he had carried into the room, a somewhat concerned look on his face. “I came here to bring you food.”

[goblinconceivable]

braindump: betty/daniel

I’ve been living with them for a while, notes taken, a few stories significantly started but there’s a gelling issue, which I’m hoping is at least partially down to a lack of proper braindumping.  So, in no particular order and certainly not comprehensive:

Frankly I also got too hooked on the last 2 eps, which is likely where I’m blocked.  It’s an abrupt emotional twist for them (esp Daniel), and in trying to make sense of that I’m losing focus on the 4 previous years.

- I’m a little bit obsessed in the scene where Betty tries to convince Matt she’s fearless by pointing out her bang-less-ness.  And then runs into Daniel, who is at that moment half brain-washed, but yet when she asks about her fearless quotient his response is immediate and natural and entirely lacking in irony: “no bangs.”  It’s a tiny little moment that shows how well he not only knows her, but understands her.  Without judgment, without fanfare.  Were I to have a husband, this is the sort of response that would confirm I’d married the absolute perfect guy for me.

- They’re too close for mirroring to be an important indicator, but there are two scenes that stand out in this vein: the first is when Betty thinks he may have pushed Christina down the stares and steals the video.  She’s backing out the door, and he follows, matching her step for step.  I love the direction choices because from her perspective there’s a sense of menace, Daniel as potential villain is stalking her.  But from his guileless perspective he’s talking to her and if she’s moving, so is he.  The second is from the penultimate, talking about Trista, where Betty’s rolling back and forth and he moves with her, rather than simply turning his head.  It signals his full engagement in the conversation, seeking her attention, and is why the scene plays as flirting rather than their normal banter.

- That bulletpoint was getting a bit long, so second point on the flirting is that it plays against Betty shutting down the conversation “none of my business,” leading to the fight over involvement in each other’s personal lives, leading to the revelation that they know each other at that deep personal level so very, very well.  Which was a very clumsy leadup to Daniel’s revelation during Hilda’s wedding speech, that could have been handled so much more deftly but those last two eps were quite rushed, I don’t know when they found out about the shortened season but it feels like they’d planned for more space and had to jab in exposition.

- Becaaaaause: they narratively broke his ‘aha’ moment onto “know you better than you do” while the strength of the message is really in the “do anything to protect them.”  Which is, I believe, where they cut to his softened expression.  Not coincidentally, this is precisely what a lot of fan-readings of the characters focus on: Daniel will do anything to protect Betty.  Bobby might have said he’d throw himself under a bus for Hilda, but Daniel HAS done that for Betty- in fact literally doing so would probably have been easier than publicly shouldering the blame for the Tornado cover and giving away the profits.  Due to the fact that he had time to consider the consequences and did it anyway.

- Which is tidy segue into an admission that I’m flying mostly blind on the Molly arc because I basically skipped all her scenes, but it’s my understanding that Daniel doing this was a pivotal moment for them.  Ie, she was impressed that he did this thing.  I mean, I really appreciate that he spent the whole press conference scene looking for Betty, so the show in no way undercut their relationship.  But then they very clearly built the Molly relationship on the foundation of not only the man Daniel had become due to Betty, but choices he was making in large measure for Betty: it’s not that he saw Betty beaten down and resolved the situation: he was upset but lost, she yelled at him, and THEN he resolved the situation by taking the bullet.  Did I break grammar by ending up with two colon’d clauses in the same sentence?  It’s a braindump, ain’t gotta be pretty.  XP

- Quick sidebar that the same thing happens with Alexis.  She was expecting to come back to one brother, but then listens in on his pep talk with Betty and finds she’s returned to a different brother.  This may be where I got the “an assistant” phrasing, if so, my bad.  But basically, she was impressed with Daniel’s actions, not understanding that it was Betty specifically inspiring his actions.

- Follow that a step further and did Molly ever acknowledge how important Betty is to him?  Legit question.  I think her line here was about him doing it “for an assistant” (?) rather than even “his assistant,” establishing Betty as a non-entity for her.  (Quoting a summary but I think I’m in the ballpark.)  And I’m sure I’d have read about it somewhere if she brought Betty up during their discussion on who he’d date when she was dead.

- Just one last note on Molly, (okay it’s a multi-part though it veers off her as a character) but a possibly incorrect beef is that I hate the Daniel/Molly relationship because there’s no interesting or even real conflict?  It’s perfect?  I’m supposed to think this is magical “true love”?  Molly has apparently been engaged for years to a man she doesn’t really love (and um... that’s lazy not strong), and helps inspire a vengeance filled betrayal by her ex because she’s so awesome everyone loves her?  But she comes out squeaky clean because any emotional cheating on her part is balanced and thus “justified” by Connor falling for Wilhemina.  And then the only “conflict” is that she’s dying, and is perfect throughout it?  That’s...  weak.

-That poem thing WOULD have been an interesting point of conflict but it was resolved by Betty’s intervention, rather than within the relationship.  Which actually is an incredibly interesting beat.  The problem with that being it’s so entirely consistent with the role Betty plays in Daniel’s life that it’s treated as just another beat, as if it doesn’t MATTER that a fundamental moment of intimacy and growth of vulnerability in Daniel’s very important romantic relationship is a door opened by a third party.  There’s a strong argument to be made for something but I broke off to write the next point and now can’t remember what that strong argument is.  I might remember later.  It may have had something to do with Molly being a stepping stone in Daniel’s arc, but the cult-thing was so long and dominating that it didn’t work, it tied him too tightly for too long and coinciding with a loosening of his relationship with Betty there was flailing.

- Quick one: Daniel’s fast-forwarded and time-bounded relationship with Molly is the analog to Betty’s time-limited relationship with Henry.  Which is a discussion I would like Daniel and Betty to have.  Esp. noting that Betty and Henry had issues they worked through together (ice cream foreplay being one.)

- Player!  So going back to a happy place, when Betty’s on the phone trying to fix the apartment situation and the camera pans onto Daniel just leaning against the doorway: this may be a legitimate little moment of “squee!”  There’s so much denial in his laid back attitude at Player, but I still love watching how the informality of the environment reflects in the informality with Betty.  He gives her free reign, and there’s many answers to “why,” and I (almost) don’t want to go into them because I totally adore how this Daniel is basically a College!Daniel only he’s latched onto Betty, who, meanwhile, is just being Betty.  OMG how different his life would have been if he’d met Betty in college...

- Okay I actually don’t feel like going into whys, it’s just an arc to enjoy.  With a small mention of how he TOTALLY was playing with the MODE book and handed it to Betty knowing she’d understand and use it to get them back in.  Such a crazy subtle manipulation, to the point where I’m not sure it wasn’t almost entirely subconscious on Daniel’s part.

- The YETI recommendation letter.  What I love is that this is another time when Daniel fvcks up, but fixes it, and more importantly displays competence and ingenuity alongside authentic caring and effort.  Here’s the thing: YETI wanted Betty, even if it was just a quota thing (which it wasn’t entirely, at least one of the board was generally enthused.)  So all that was necessary was to have them re-label her as from Player.  Daniel knew this and did this.  And told Betty that.  BUUUUT that point was purposefully (by script and character) overshadowed by the gesture of the lengthy rec letter he put significant time into.  Whose real audience was... wait for it...  Betty.  He even did a second draft!  Which is more time and effort and a cleaner product.

-  Also flaking on her practice run.  I also enjoy how he (finally...) bounced back into the office clearly having forgotten her schedule, but having mentally shifted from Molly-space into Betty-space.  He’s enthused, he’s engaged, he’s sort of bantering and I’d like to see where that scene would have gone if she hadn’t immediately gotten the acceptance call.

- So there’s this moment somewhat early on, pretty sure when Betty’s taking the writing class, and wants Daniel to give her feedback.  And he’s all “why?,” coming from his “I don’t actually know what I’m doing” place.  She responds that he’s her friend and wants to know what he thinks.  And he does a little double-take at that word.  Because until that point Daniel totally sees Betty as HIS Friend, and they’ve referred to each other as friends, with a little “f,” and he believes that.  But it wasn’t until this moment that he even considered that HE might be HER Friend.  Presumably because he doesn’t believe he has anything to offer her, beyond the power he holds as EIC and her boss - ie, “here run this show” and other such responsibilities.

- Which is a recurring theme.  Pronounced on relationship stuff especially.  When she asks him for input on the Henry vs Gio situation, when she’s trying to date the playwright.  His response is always “I’m in no position to offer relationship advice/judgment on relationships.”  He sorta dodges the first and is permissive on the second.  I don’t know where to go with that so I’ll leave it (for now).

- When  he was supposed to be in Rio, Betty wasn’t even at MODE, she was working for the “enemy,” and he was sending her regular postcards?  First, they’d have been postmarked in New York and presumably with local stamps, so I’m not 100% on Betty not cottoning on.  But it’s super cute that he was thinking of her when he was incommunicado with literally everyone else.  Did he want her to figure it out (subconsciously)?  It’s an act of reaching out, but also of convincing: he’s created a fictional narrative of being in Rio, fed and embellished by the media and swallowed by coworkers, but it’s through Betty that he’s establishing the fiction in a definitive way.  He wants HER to believe it, because if SHE believes he’s there and having a good time, then he can believe it too, with a small piece of his imagination.

- Same convincing as in Player.  BTW, how did all those messages on her phone work?  He was 99% totally hiding the situation from her.  a) why wouldn’t he just call her from his phone, as he always did in the past?  b) he was creating another fictional space.  Where her “number” was literally on a post-it on his temporary assistant’s monitor.  It’s all play: “call Betty” happens many times, and every one is the act of doing it while knowing that he’s not really doing it.  c) Betty does not point out that he should have been confused he never heard back, or more to the point, that he never heard her voicemail message.  d) he was in a state of limbo waiting for her to come back, nothing is real until she does.  At which point there’s lovely dramatic tension since he both wants her to fix it and get them out of there, and wants to draw her into this new reality and thus make it feel viable.

- 100th Anniversary edition.  I love the idea that he’s hep on her writing his bio because he needs her name, at least, to be next to his.  His identity as EIC is predicated on her being his partner, and needs that shown, even if it’s functionally an “in joke” because it’s not like she can be featured.  In musing over his thoughts while flipping through the book right before deciding to quit, I usually come back to a realization of the transience of the role, but I want it to be a gutpunch of how he assumed, without being aware, that Betty would be next to him in picture, and that’s what they were heading for.

- I’ve actually got through most of my notes, so just a couple more.  Daniel is super impressionable.  He did what Becks told him to in the pilot.  He did what Natalie told him in the cult-situation.  Both against his better judgment - his look after Betty when he kicked her out for being “drama he didn’t need” - that’s the same look when he told her to clock out and was dragged off by the not-16-year-old.  I’m too tired to go check the pilot, but assuming similar look there.  He does what he’s told by anyone telling him to do something, but he WANTS to be rescued from the bad influences, who are so often so forceful.

- Final scene: okay so it turns out quick a lot of my thoughts are trying to understand Daniel.  His growth is blatant and deep.  So a second round will be more Betty-focused.  ‘Cuz I identify strongly with her and don’t have a lot of surface questions about her motivations, but I’m LOST on side of the romantic coin.  And plus she deserves a close look regarding how she grows during the series.

- I watched at least part of the reunion and very much like how AF answered the question of the final scene versus what EM says.  Because I think they each, as actors, see it from the perspective of their characters, which means it was played authentically and grants insight.  AF basically says that she saw it as Daniel coming to say thank you, and how it came down to Betty teaching him that he was good enough.  Which came across a little funny because her phrasing implied they’d never talk or see each other again or something and that’s an alarming finality.  But also implies that Betty really did see moving to London as a significant parting of ways, something that started as soon as she became an editor and their relationship changed.  Probably before.

- She then challenged EM as to why Daniel didn’t say goodbye (as if she didn’t know and hadn’t thought about it?  I’m guessing this was panel performance: asking the question “in character” and throwing the question to the other relevant actor.)  But anyway, EM’s answer was “Because things were just starting.”  Which is blatantly a shippy answer, and he even explains Daniel’s “revelation” as when he “really saw Betty for the first time through and through.”

- At some point in these things you’re like: oh but I thought of something else, and only stop when your brain falls asleep.

- I thought of something else.  And then I forgot it.  My brain is failing!  But not yet failed.

- After Betty gets her braces off there’s this scene near the end, at the shoot.  Daniel sees her and crosses quite purposefully to talk with her.  He wants to banter and share this exciting moment with her.  And the scene goes a little strange when Betty kinda goes “yeah, going now bye.”  I expected more eye contact, a big smile, more conversation.  That’s Betty.  That’s them.  But instead it’s a little awkward so Something Is Happening Here.  Is she self-conscious?  Did she see and hear something in Daniel’s look and comment right after she was detached from the bra and isn’t at this moment comfortable with him?  Is this all fallout from her dream in which she and Daniel slept together/he thought she was a bad person/rejected her only they chose not to explicate this/cut a useful scene/thought I’d get that right away but I’m obtuse?  I don’t think it’s the last one because while I can be horribly obtuse, I don’t think it was coded.  But that’s what the obtuse would say.

- At any rate they don’t pick up on it again, next scene (next ep) they’re back to normal.

- But Daniel does immediately chase after Amanda and let go of her.  Which is payoff for his convo with Betty earlier where she sort of disdainfully asks if he WANTS a more serious relationship with Amanda.  I did sort of wonder if he actually does, but Betty’s judgmentalness is what convinces him he doesn’t.  Usually I’d say Betty understands him so well she knows he doesn’t, but they’re not as close at this point, Betty is living her own life much more, so I dunno.

- But I don’t actually think Daniel was falling for Amanda, or that the show wanted us to think that was ultimately a viable path.  Because of that moment when he’s in a car, calls Amanda, says “I really need to see  you” and she turns him down.  It parallels his text to Betty when Molly died.  One text and Betty came over.  This was an actual distressed voice convo and Amanda doesn’t care enough about him to be there, which is really great development for Amanda even though we don’t see her!  She previously went after Matt when he was in jail, she’s interested in Tyler here, she’s not totally pining for Daniel!

- Daniel of course was using Amanda and their earned if mild emotional intimacy as a crutch, trying to fill the space Betty left.  Also note when Amanda turned him down for sex and he stayed to “hang out,” - this is not supposed to be an analysis of Amanda but I wanna note I like that moment because it felt like she was pleased to think she wasn’t just sex to him, while still being over him romantically. Because she does care about him.

- Or for pete’s...  I have this bad habit of writing notes which I later look at and am like... “huh?”  This is a fic idea, from Daniel’s POV: “Betty had moulded him, often by sheer force of her iron will, into being a man who almost deserved Molly.  And he'd turned right around and become a man who would never deserve Betty.”  And I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT THE SECOND HALF MEANS.  Specifically.

- Wedding dancing.  Happens twice.  Hilda’s wedding, we know what that is.  But at Daniel’s wedding.  I like that he wasn’t 100% Molly focused, ‘cuz, shipper.  And I know why the show had Matt cut in, because gotta keep things moving.  But isn’t it a thing that you don’t cut in on the groom/bride?  It’s their day.  Daniel just sort of nonverbally asks Betty if it’s okay (to leave her with Matt), but can’t help a) thinking he was a bit put out and b) want Molly to see his expression looking at Betty and have some sort of “aha” moment where she - do Molly and Betty have any scenes together?  I don’t remember seeing any and I think I did skim through all the eps, but I need to do that again.

- Ooh, one of the things I forgot en route!  I like that Betty has revolving love interests, because that’s textual argument for Betty never having feelings (romantic) for Daniel.  Which is super, super important in this iteration of the story.  There’s a couple moments - pilot and the first bridge scene - where she arguably has a momentary crush, which quickly settles into a developing platonic relationship.  

- Jump back to Daniel finally seeing Betty as a true equal = romantic feelings.  It’s a thing.  Look my brain is deteriorting and wording is hard!  So there’s two sided imbalance throughout.  Daniel always saw Betty with this veneer of youth, and a great deal of his use for her is helping her “grow into the woman she’ll be.”  And that’s the roadblock in him seeing her as a romantic possibility.  Which was initially quite awesome because he was sleeping with people younger than her, even the “she’s actually 20″ girl was younger than Betty.  And yet always saw her as in many ways more mature and competent than her.  And double-yet he still saw how much further she could, and would, grow.  His belief in her knows no bounds.

- Meanwhile Betty sees him as...  someone who’s also becoming.  Who has great potential.  Bullying him into it if necessary.  And because he’s guided by her, she can’t crush on him, he’s like her pet.  Were she to have a crush, much less fall for him, it would have been horrifying.  She needs to have a moment when she sees him as a true equal, someone who - look, everyone is always still growing so it’s not like he needs to be fully formed, and it’s a little murkier what the moment would look like when she finally sees Daniel “for the first time.”

- ‘cuz as noted, Betty has been there for pretty much every important moment of growth and crossroads in every facet of Daniel’s life.  Whereas Betty consistently had many things and relationships in her life Daniel was not involved in.  She’s always been way more self-reliant (not the word I wanted, is there one that starts with c?)  It’s why they did sort of need to peel away through a chunk of S4, because Daniel needed to learn to cope without Betty propping him up, because it’s like a Miranda-thing:

- “I don’t need Gary.  But I want him.”

- Daniel has to be able to be find without Betty before Betty can see him as a viable romantic partner.  She has to see something she never has before.  Daniel saw that the seedling he’d been protecting was not only strong enough to survive on its own had grown up and bloomed (process begun early in the season when he was being overprotective and she shut that down).  For Betty...  I guess Daniel...  ...  .....  it didn’t happen in the show.  As EM noted, for Daniel, the ending was the beginning.  Because his moment isn’t leaving MODE, that’s just the corresponding moment to Betty shaking him off.  His moment is further down the road when he puts into practice everything he’s learned and ...  something answered in fanfic because it’s spec and I’m tuckered.

[pagerunner-j]

Before I begin, the obligatory disclaimer: the following is a bit of a feelings dump, and it’s more personal than I meant to get, especially since I’d intended to avoid posting personal stuff here at all. When I say “please don’t reblog,” I mean “PLEASE LISTEN THIS TIME AND DON’T REBLOG.”

But there’s a lot I’m trying to process about last night’s story, the friction between narrative and game mechanics, and the emotional repercussions of this sort of scenario. It’s been a long build-up that all kind of came to a head for me last night. Ergo, this post.

To give proper context, though, I need to back up a bit to the first campaign and explain why Percy’s second death, brief as it may have been, was ultimately worse for me than the first.

—

2017 did not start well. One January day I got a call from my audibly ill father saying that both he and my mother were in the emergency room. She’d been admitted for congestive heart failure. He was diagnosed within the day with what turned out to be stage 4 colon cancer. He’d been avoiding appointments, ignoring symptoms, and putting off the inevitable, until the doctors went in only to find that the tumors had spread to the point that there was nothing they could do. I still have a clearer mental image than I’d like of my dad’s scars, along with bags and tubes hanging out because what was left of his system couldn’t do its job anymore. They stitched him back up as neatly as they could, but there was no fixing the real damage. It was done.

I didn’t have much room to breathe for quite a while. My life was pretty much consumed with trying to figure out how the hell to handle any of this. I did manage, for better or for worse, to keep carving out a little bit of time each week to watch Critical Role, because I needed something good to think about while everything else was falling apart.

Unfortunately for me, it took less than two weeks between the day all that began and the final battle with Raishan.

I was braced for possible bad outcomes, considering the severity of the fight, but what I wasn’t prepared for was for someone to get felled in a way that was basically mundane. Sure, it was a dragon that did it, so much of the situation was fantastical: an enormous mythical monster, and a swipe of larger-than-life claws. But what I had to deal with, because it was, of course, described in detail, was an evisceration. It was, to be blunt, my favorite character getting his guts ripped out. And because Pat had to go and up that ante, writer that he is, I found myself sitting numbly through a scene afterward of Kerrek beside Percy’s body, trying uselessly to put the ruined mess back together.

I still can’t think about that scene without feeling sick. I couldn’t even feel properly relieved when Percy got revived. I wanted to. Obviously I was glad that he was there for the rest of the campaign, because I wanted to see his story find a less abrupt end. I just didn’t feel any better about the idea that well, sure, he got a magic fix. It just kind of ended up spotlighting the futility of what I was staring down.

My dad died in May that year, on a Thursday night. I got home very late after hours of trying to deal with things, and found myself alone, overwhelmed and unsure what to do with myself. For lack of anything else better to do, I pulled up that night’s VOD. I couldn’t really focus on it; I kept drifting out and only sort of coming back to. I let the episode keep running for a while, though, at least wanting some friendly voices to listen to.

Then I realized what everyone was doing, and I looked at the timestamp, and I counted backwards. And I froze.

While the party was playacting at speaking with the dead, I was sitting in a hospice room listening to my father pleading with us to let him go.

I only got a few seconds further in before I stopped the video and turned away.

Despite the fact that I’ve watched almost everything Critical Role has ever done, I still have no idea how that episode ends.

—

After all this I went in for my own medical tests, since my own heretofore-handwaved-by-my-doctors health concerns suddenly seemed more pressing. It turns out, unsurprisingly, I inherited all the fun stuff. Fortunately, none of the growths were cancerous yet, because at least my unfortunate genetic legacy is something that, with proper screenings and care, it’s possible to stay ahead of. But I was told they’d need me to come in in another six months, and probably every year after that forever — or until something finally goes nuclear, whichever comes first.

Guess we’ll see.

My shorter term problems were enough to deal with on their own. The day after the test, I found out I was losing my health insurance. Two days later I found out I was losing my job. Everything since has basically been trying to patch things together from scraps. Sometimes things are sort of okay. Sometimes it’s a bottomless pit of uncertainty. Obviously, nothing in the wider world has exactly improved since, either. In sum total: fun times, especially considering I was already struggling with severe anxiety before all this began.

I wasn’t really sure how to emotionally process the ratcheting stakes in Critical Role at that point either. When you’re still watching the show because you need a breather from months of continual crisis, but your beloved characters are facing down things like, oh, a dread god and the very real possibility of everything going straight to hell, it’s…not exactly something you can turn to for relief, per se. I kept on going, because the bright spots were still so good, but I can’t exactly say I was enjoying myself for significant parts of the run, either. It was also where I started to feel a very real frustration with D&D and the inherent capriciousness that can creep in.

In short, I desperately, desperately did not want this battle to go wrong. I didn’t want to have to face a story that I’d become so invested in going completely south not because it necessarily made narrative sense, but because the dice (as they always have the opportunity to do) said “fuck you.” Yes, the feeling was probably more selfish on my part than anything else. But I still hope it’s understandable for emotional reasons, and it also got me thinking again about the entire logic of “that’s just how the game works,” and how far you can run with that before you finally trip and hurt yourself.

I’ve always had problems with a few common things in game design. One of them — usually less of a problem when we’re talking about high-level D&D, although it can still surprise you — is when things arbitrarily become harder in the game than they would be in real life. (Floor/jumping puzzles in video games where you can’t step diagonally For Reasons, I’m looking at you.) Another is any kind of gameplay mechanic that robs you of your turn or otherwise puts you out of play. Varying degrees of success or failure is one thing, but I could never understand what’s ever fun about being stopped from participating in the thing you’ve come to do. Still, one way or another, there are so many ways for that to happen. Failed dice rolls, getting stunned or disabled, outright death: there are so, so many ways.

And it’s one thing if that’s happening during the course of, say, an everyday board game, but it feels different if it starts changing the course of a full-blown story.

Part of this is the editor in me talking (who will have words with me about this post, I’m sure), because she has Opinions about it all. She always wants to keep the story on track, not go off on useless tangents, and not drop things without getting proper resolution. She’s big on structure and pacing, suspicious of too much chaos. She does not get along well with D&D. This isn’t to say that this forms the entirety of my opinion, mind; I can still appreciate the way the game works, and the fact that so many interesting and unexpected things can be born entirely because of the random element, improvisation, and decisions you have to make in the moment. But dropped threads, unfinished plots, interrupted ideas, the things that get lost, or the characters that do…those can end up haunting me.

Honestly, and this is probably always going to be a fundamental disconnect between me and any D&D game: I’ve discovered both through watching CR and playing the game a bit myself that I don’t really care about the game as much of anything except as a skeleton for storytelling. If it supports the narrative, if it gives structure, if it enables activities, if it provides opportunities for play, I’m all for it. If it yanks the rug out from under you just because, again, the dice decided to say “fuck you,” or the rules get weird, or there’s something else that just doesn’t mesh between player and scenario and/or DM, I have a harder time with it.

And it’s crushing when stories I care about collapse or turn sour because the game says so, and for reasons that feel almost cruelly arbitrary — particularly when I’m getting more than enough of that in real life.

So for CR, the ending of campaign 1 was an exercise in protracted anxiety. I was in a space where I needed something to work out, but even the entertainment I’d been turning to was becoming dangerously precarious. Wasn’t the best feeling.

In the end, luckily, it ended about as well as it could have: not without consequence, but without everything crashing down. I felt relieved, and satisfied, and glad we got a chance for resolution with the characters we’d been following for months. If anyone had to permadie, the character who was already bound to the goddess of death was not a shocker, and in many ways it’s the kindest choice; he got more resolution than any human being in the real world ever will. It barely even registered as a sad ending. I envied him, really.

I’ve watched far worse go down.

Meanwhlie, i was also thinking that even though it would be tough to say goodbye to these characters, it could also be a refreshing reset. We’d get new characters needing to find out who they are, what they want, what they’re good at, how to relate to each other, how to begin. Smaller stories, with not everything having to be about the END OF THE WORLD (again). Lower stakes. I was fine with the idea of lower stakes for a while, and less threat of impending death and pain.

Well. Like I said. It was an idea.

That brings me around to Molly, and to story decisions and gameplay decisions that both broke my heart seven ways from goddamn Sunday.

—

It took me a while to come at this part, because it took some time for the thought to crystallize that I wasn’t only reacting to the rolls of the dice in last night’s scenario. That was part of it, absolutely. Luck is a thing, strategies work or don’t, fate is capricious. I wish that several things had played out very differently, and I’m especially upset that the way things fell out, it stopped a story in its tracks that had barely even started. (I’ll come back to that.) So the start of the thought was still game vs. narrative, and it’s part of why I wrote that whole run-up you just read.

That said, the more I poked at it, the more I got upset that we were playing out a scenario like this at all.

I was thinking aloud about this in another post, but to preface it a bit better: There’s an entire meta level to three players being gone last night that everyone knew about. I understand the impulse to avoid metagaming, but it also creates some odd situations, like everyone trying (and failing, because — yep — the dice said “fuck you”) to investigate the area and find out why their friends were gone. So we had to start with a big, clunky process of the characters figuring out what the audience and the cast already knew: that Matt had written Jester, Fjord, and Yasha out by having them get kidnapped. The story is streamlined enough. The gameplay around it, not so much.

But here’s what I got hung up on once it all sunk in: why did this have to be the story in the first place?

I’m not thrilled with how a situation that arose in real life because of pretty much the prototypical joyous event (i.e. a new baby) and something that had been mundane on the show until now (Ashley being away) got turned into a brutal story about a triple kidnapping and trafficking, which promptly resulted in a death. And it says a lot about the underlying plot they’re dealing with, which is not something I’m sure I’m willing to ride with much further. I’ve been leery for a while – starting off with mutterings about an evil god only a few episodes in put me on edge from the start – and then there’s the political unrest and the religious conflicts and people disappearing…it’s all going somewhere really unpleasant really fast.

It’s also derailed a story I wanted, which hurts like hell.

We’d barely even gotten to know Molly. Molly had barely even gotten to know Molly. We got tantalizing hints, and plenty of suggestions that there was more to discover — probably an entire character arc’s worth of material. And then…this. My inner editor? Yeah, she’s screaming with frustration. In any traditionally structured narrative, this would not have happened, because even if a death was in the cards, ether it would have been timed differently so that you could get further down the road with him, or if the character was always meant to die early, any decent edit would have trimmed out most of the details that suggested at things that never got payoff. But it’s D&D, and so it’s the push-pull at work: game vs. story, plus a(n un)healthy dose of “unavoidable meta circumstances vs. the apparent need for A: drama and B: to barrel right ahead into a crisis even though there were other choices that could have been made in the light of said meta circumstances.” And…here we are.

Here we are, with a dead character who should not, let’s be honest, be dead, and a story left hanging, and far fewer obvious options for fixing it than we had at any such crisis point in the previous campaign, and lots of miserable, hurt people.

One of them being me.

—

There’s a reason this shit hurts. Personally speaking, it would hurt even if I didn’t have over a year’s worth of unfortunate circumstances making narrative swerves like this even harder to take. It hurts because the story and the characters are so engaging, because they’re worth the investment, and, yes, because when things go wrong, sometimes they’re for reasons that make me want to flip a goddamn table. And yes, maybe it’s silly to get worked up when they might — might — be able to do something about it. But we can’t count on it, and so yes. It hurts. It hurts to have a source of joy becoming something else, especially when there were so many other options. It hurts to watch favorite characters get hurt and killed, yet still be expected to write it all off as “that’s just how the game works!”, as if having emotions about it is a weakness and to be scorned.

Honestly, I found myself screaming “FUCK THE GAME” aloud last night (and probably upsetting the neighbors), which sums my feelings up succinctly enough that I should have started right there. :\

But…again, here we are, and here I am, struggling with feeling hurt and sad and exhausted with so many things veering toward pain again when I was hoping for something different, and writing big long word-vomits of posts about it.

Because D&D.

(Memo to Editor Brain: I’m tired, and I’m not going to give you another three hours to edit this post into something more manageable, so you will just have to cope. Not everything or everyone gets good endings anyway. Apparently.)

[firebirdsdaughter]

Really…

… The disbelief I have for Naki and Fuwa’s ‘relationship’ is largely from the same place as the disbelief I have for Jin and Aruto’s ‘friendship’… In that I feel like it was fast forwarded through in the name of getting to the next ‘plot point’ or whatever, rather than having any meaningful build up.

At the very least, Jin and Aruto had some kind of history. Fuwa and Naki literally just met… What? A few days ago? Sure, they were in his head, but he didn’t know that, and they were deprived of any awareness during that time. They only ‘met’ when they were both capable of being aware of each other—when Fuwa knew they were there and Naki’s personality resurfaced. He spends the majority of the time rejecting their presence (understandably so), until, suddenly… Poof! Magically, they get along for one fight.

While I can buy that, maybe, w/ some assumptions of what happened offscreen, going on adrenalin, fire-forged friends, or something… We then very quickly fast forward to them being removed from his head and he’s… Just as magically able to break the Ark’s control?

I’m sorry, what?

The only way I can justify it even semi-logically was that the ‘control’ was easy to disrupt bc it was so new, that Naki had only actually been connected for a few moments, or maybe that the Ark wasn’t as invested in keeping control of Naki as she seems to be w/ Horobi. That maybe Naki and Raiden/Ikazuchi are ‘less important’ to her plans, so she doesn’t really ‘care’ as much. That’s the only way it makes any sense that it would happen that easily, just bc some dude they’ve only really known for a day was kind of loud. Yes, they were in his head and objectively know about him, but that’s not really a ‘relationship,’ that’s more like the FBI agent watching you through your webcam or something. They weren’t capable of being emotionally invested in his life, they just knew the data.

I feel like this would all feel less abrupt if, again, it had been paced out more. If we’d seen Naki and Fuwa develop and get used to each other. If we’d seen them impacting each other and getting to know themselves and other characters a bit more. As it was, it just felt like they had a few scenes and magically were supposed to be a deep relationship? I dunno. Maybe I’m overthinking bc I’m grumpy about one of my favourite relationships getting shafted, but it just feels very… Chopped and rushed to me. Naki’s implementation doesn’t feel natural, it feels like they… I dunno, condensed a proper character arc and introduction. Same thing they did to Raiden/Ikazuchi, really, just… Minus the dying.

So… Basically… Takahashi’s ‘broad strokes’ and ‘connect the dots’ style strikes again for me. I dunno. The relationships they seem to suddenly want to focus on feel like they’re just jumping from ‘level’ to ‘level’ w/out bothering to justify development, while the relationships that seem to have been actually developing (like, say, Horobi and Fuwa, and Izu and Fuwa, a little bit, and kinda Aruto and Fuwa, what w/ the whole Aruto still not being allowed to show concern for Fuwa… did he even notice Fuwa was missing???), seem like they’re being brushed aside.

To me, it just doesn’t feel fair to anyone. I think we should have met Naki a bit sooner. Should have had some eps about them developing properly, them and Fuwa actually getting to know each other properly, them getting to know other people. Other people dealing w/ them, figuring out how to differentiate between them, establishing themselves as separate people. Then do this separation plot.

… Basically, I feel like I would shuffle and extend a lot of the plot and stuff. I should say, I am in no way calling Takahashi’s style objectively bad. It is not bad. Bad writing is not a thing. But it just doesn’t do it for me, not completely. It’s the hit and miss thing. He has very… Well, kinda oddly fast paced writing, in a way? I often really love his ‘set up’s, but he also kinda has a very ‘plot driven’ style that can seem like it jumps from bullet point to bullet point, and some of the finer details, like in depth character interactions, kinda fall through the cracks. I’m sure, actually, I know, there are people who like or even love that kind of style and Takahashi’s storylines. It’s kinda… ‘Action based’ in a way, I guess. In the end, not so much on the interpersonal stuff for the characters. Which is a little sad to me, bc he often creates some truly fascinating characters w/ some really great potential, but as someone who is more interested in character relationships, it can be disappointing.

It’s not ‘bad.’ It’s just a style I’m not really a fan of. He creates some really great characters and set ups, but I don’t usually find the way he follows up very satisfying.

[fictionadventurer]

Father Brown Reread: The Flying Stars

“The most beautiful crime I ever committed,” Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, “was also, by a singular coincidence, my last.

This flips the regular detective story in multiple ways. The focus is on the criminal, rather than the detective. We’re trying to find out why he repented, rather than how he got brought to justice.

In one sentence, we see Flambeau showing some shocking character development. Not only does he stop committing crimes--he becomes “highly moral.”

Once again, if we know what Flambeau was like in his old age, when are the Father Brown stories supposed to take place? Given that Chesterton later mentions some “old Victorian chandeliers”, and that he often discusses “modern” political and philosophical fads, I think he’s engaging in a bit of literary time travel, where the stories take place in the “present day” but give us glimpses of the characters’ futures. (Sayers sometimes does something similar in the Peter Wimsey stories).

This is a strong contender for my favorite Father Brown story. I’ve read it at least six times. (It’s been a Boxing Day tradition for a few years. I’m listening to Christmas music right now to get me in the spirit.) As such, I may have a lot to say. I’ll try to restrain myself.

It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group.

Flambeau, here’s a hint: most criminals don’t care about the aesthetics of their crimes. You’re not a thief. You’re an artist. Your trouble is that you create your works of art using other people and their possessions.

Did Flambeau ever really need the money? Or was he just carried away by the romantic idea of being a trickster and creating those types of tales in real life? Brown’s speech at the end suggests he used the latter to justify the former. (“I’m not a criminal. I’m an artist.”)

I really think my imitation of Dickens’ style was dextrous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.

So Old Flambeau has repented of his crimes in a moral sense, but he still appreciates them on artistic terms. He’s reformed, but he hasn’t lost that flair for the overdramatic, or that arrogant self-confidence.

I’m suddenly struck by the desire to see Flambeau meet Lord Peter Wimsey. They’d be two obnoxiously self-confident artistic snobs who’d end up getting drunk on the good wine and doing ridiculous acrobatics to break into someone’s house.

Flambeau would then proceed to tell the story from the inside; and even from the inside it was odd. Seen from the outside it was perfectly incomprehensible, and it is from the outside that the stranger must study it.

Why does the stranger have to study it from the outside? We heard the first part of the story from Flambeau. I want the rest of Flambeau’s version!

Not that I dislike this version, of course. It’s too much fun to wish for any change, and we do need to keep some aspect of the mystery intact.

Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure. “Oh, don’t jump, Mr. Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much too high.”

I believe my first suspicion was that this person was Flambeau--he would do just that sort of acrobatic nonsense. The suspicion’s quickly squashed, but it’s a nice little misdirect.

It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that Chesterton was trying to mislead us by naming one of the suspects “Crook”.

This is also a parallel to Father Brown’s conversation with Flambeau at the end of the story.

“I think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”

Even if Mr. Crook’s not literally Flambeau, he’s certainly a symbolic parallel. This is the sort of philosophy that Flambeau uses to justify his crimes. Perhaps Flambeau was a bit like this before he became a thief--which makes it more meaningful that he reforms at the end of this story.

With him also was the more insignificant figure of the priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel’s late wife had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had been trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel had always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him to such family gatherings.

I can only imagine Flambeau’s dismay at discovering this priest showing up yet again. (I doubt that he knew about this family habit beforehand). After making such elaborate preparations for the heist, he couldn’t just abandon it on the fear that Brown would recognize him.

Did this make it more fun--a chance to finally pull one over on the priest? Or did it make it more awkward--the guy did convince him to repent last time, after all.

“I’ll put ‘em back now, my dear,” said Fischer, returning the case to the tails of his coat. “I had to be careful of ‘em coming down. They’re the three great African diamonds called ‘The Flying Stars,’ because they’ve been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track; but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have kept their hands off them.

What made you think these would be a good present for your goddaughter? Just what every girl wants--three diamonds that’ll draw every big-name criminal to her house.

Also, why put them back in the tailcoat? I imagine the house has a safe, if he thought they could keep the present. Unless they plan to put them in a bank later?

... What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?” “A saint,” said Father Brown. “I think,” said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, “that Ruby means a Socialist.”[...] “A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it.” “But who won’t allow you,” put in the priest in a low voice, “to own your own soot.”

I’ve always loved this bit. Father Brown shows that religion doesn’t necessarily line up with any political fashions.

The major philosophical tension in this story is the question of property--who has it, who deserves or doesn’t deserve it, how we should distribute it. Crook supports redistributing property and attacking policemen in theoretical terms. Flambeau takes the initiative to do so in practical terms.

"Why couldn’t we have a proper old English pantomime--clown, columbine, and so on.

As in “The Blue Cross”, Flambeau’s artistry is his downfall. He could have stolen the jewels by sleight-of-hand at any moment and been gone long before the policeman arrived. Instead, he decides that a much better plan is to throw together a pantomime.

But no matter how insane the plan is, I have to respect how well he pulls it off. He gets the whole household in on the plan in a matter of minutes, and no one thinks to question him about this “actor friend”. 

I adore this whole section. The wild energy of their slap-dash little play is infectious, and very Christmassy.

The harlequin, already clad in silver paper out of cigar boxes, was, with difficulty, prevented from smashing the old Victorian lustre chandeliers, that he might cover himself with resplendent crystals. In fact he would have done so, had not Ruby unearthed some old pantomime paste jewels she had worn at a fancy dress party as the Queen of Diamonds.

I know Flambeau would have adored smashing that chandelier (and I love the image of him trying to do it) but he really lucked out that Ruby had some paste jewels. If he’d smashed those chandeliers, I doubt her father would have been in a mood to let the pantomime go on.

He was supposed to be the clown, but he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an author), the prompter, the scene-painter, and, above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

I’m surprised at how much Crook gets into this. He’s almost as enthusiastic as “Blount” is.

The fantastic @isfjmel-phleg has located recordings or sheet music of all the songs mentioned in this story. Definitely a post worth checking out.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front doors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlit garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the great Florian, dressed up as a policeman.

How did Flambeau explain the lack of policeman during the rehearsal? Everyone was okay with the explanation of “He’ll show up in the middle of the show”? For that matter, how did they open the doors just when he showed up? There’s no mention of him knocking.

“Wife!” replied the staring soldier, “she died this year two months. Her brother James arrived just a week too late to see her.”

Flambeau knew that Fischer had the diamonds two months in advance? And ingratiated himself to the family that long ago? Talk about elaborate planning. Was there really no other moment he could he could have retrieved the diamonds? I suppose the day of gift-giving would be when they were most vulnerable.

“Chloroform,” he said as he rose; “I only guessed it just now.”

Apparently Flambeau carries chloroform on him at all times. Nothing like being prepared, I suppose.

Father Brown’s detective style is the opposite of Sherlock Holmes’. It’s truly deductive reasoning--starting with the “big picture” and finding details to support it. So far, we haven’t really seen Father Brown collect clues. He’s just living life, quietly observing, until he gets a sudden flash of inspiration. Only then can he pick out the little details to support his theory and show how the crime was done.

There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible.

Here Chesterton shifts from past tense to present tense for a page. There’s no explanation. Sayers does these kinds of shifts sometimes, too. Were writing rules different back then, or is this a failure of editing?

The present tense does give it a bit of a “stage show” feel, paralleling the dramatics of a moment before.

“Well, Flambeau,” says the voice, “you really look like a Flying Star; but that always means a Falling Star at last.”

Does Father Brown practice these one-liners?

Flambeau’s disguise must have been pretty good if Father Brown didn’t recognize him until now. But once Brown understood the crime, it must have been easy to figure out the criminal’s identity. Who else would do something so overelaborately artistic?

You were going to steal the jewels quietly [...] You already had the clever notion of hiding the jewels in a blaze of false stage jewellry. Now you saw that if the dress were a harlequin’s the appearance of a policeman would be quite in keeping.

The stage jewellry can’t already have been a part of Flambeau’s plan, not if he planned to steal them quietly.

However, just before he got his letter, he was ready to applaud Ruby’s idea of a little show. Perhaps Brown meant that this gave him the idea to use a Christmas show to hide the jewels, and he got the idea for a pantomime a moment later when he heard about the policeman?

“I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last in that trade.”

Father Brown already got Flambeau to repent and return his stolen goods once before. This time he has to be more specific. It’s not good enough to just give back the goods. He has to give up this life entirely.

Flambeau may be the criminal, but there’s an innocence about him. Father Brown, for all his cloistered lifestyle, has a much grittier and more realistic view of the world. Yet another example of how these stories invert the typical detective story tropes.

“...I know the woods look very free behind you, Flambeau; I know that in a flash you could melt into them like a monkey. But some day you will be an old grey monkey, Flambeau. You will sit up in your free forest cold at heart and close to death, and the tree-tops will be very bare.” [...] “Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before you die.”

This page is one of the best monologues in fiction. This entire speech gives me chills, but the ending is especially powerful.

The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humor, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of the world.

Chesterton loves highlighting this bit of irony. It’s also a nice bookend to “The Blue Cross” where this irony was the turning-point of the whole story.

After the chilling dramatics of the garden, it’s nice to end on this lively, cheery, Christmassy atmosphere.

I wonder how Flambeau first got back in touch with Father Brown. The next time we see him, he and Brown are already good friends. It must have been an awkward, dramatic, and epic moment when a fully repentant Flambeau reapproaches the man who convinced him to reform.