#of the week they would only play a certain character focused episode and they were starting with part 3 (my beloved)

[bunnyb34r]

I had a dream Ohio was getting an until then California only fast food place (not in and out) and I was so excited and I drove past it to see when it would be open.... not until August 2099. 😭 wtf

[douglysium]

Episode 16 TMP Quick Thoughts

Housekeeping and Prologue

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(​What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers for TMP up until episode 10. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (Episode 15 TMP Quick Thoughts).

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don't really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you're getting all the nuances.

These articles are meant to be quick and short so sorry if there’s typos and if I don’t address every possible question or possibility. I don’t want to repeat myself too much in this series outside of the prologue so be sure to skim some of my other articles.

Oopsie

An addendum to my last article. In that piece I said ���The possibility of a target being in this episode is interesting since Bonzo’s target also seemed like they were wealthy or had a decent amount of money at the expensive club in Episode 12 (Getting Off). Wealth and money seem like another noticeable theme in Protocol so far.” I went back and skimmed that episode and there’s no mention of the men at the club being rich or having decent money. Just that the club is at best well known or prestigious.

Episode 16 “Anti-Social”

As always, we take in the events of the episode through some sort of device. This time, something is listening through one of the computers in the OIAR’s office. Sam and Celia are comforting Alice sometime after her encounter with the mysterious drowning woman. It is confirmed that the woman did in fact die in the last episode but after Alice ran away she “...went back afterwards. Couldn’t just leave her. Tape player was gone and she’d stopped speaking, and when the paramedics turned up and they just called it straight away. Said she’d been dead for ages.”

I don’t remember if I actually said this in the previous episode, but I originally assumed that the woman wasn’t one of the dead bodies mentioned by Gordon in Episode 11 “Marked.” My original assumption was that the drowning woman had been alive until she met Alice and died. So I thought she was a victim of The Deep or Gordon. Gordon even mentions “It belongs to the deep. I’m going to go get it and I’m going to find it and if they try and stop me I swear the ocean will claim us all” which sounds like a threat. Gordon could easily be on his way to becoming some sort of Avatar.

However, what the paramedics say does make my original assumption a lot less likely. It is more likely that this drowning woman might in fact be one of the dead bodies uncovered by Gordon’s crew in Episode 11. TMA has always had a weird relationship with death in the fact that not every dead character necessarily stays dead and they can come back, or mimic coming back, under very specific circumstances. The most obvious example of this would be with Avatars. In order to become an Avatar one must experience some sort of death. Sometimes this death is purely metaphorical but it can also be a literal physical death acting as the trigger for an Avatarification. Annabelle, Trevor, and Oliver from TMA are all examples of Avatars that had died or were declared dead only to seemingly return later.

So is this woman some kind of Avatar? It’s kind of hard to say. I would say that when an Avatar dies they seem to come back pretty quickly and don’t just suddenly regain life years later and become an Avatar. It’s possible the woman already was some sort of Avatar before her burial since we know people connected to the Powers can have their life extended but this usually requires them to appease their respective Entity in some way. Usually an Avatar being buried and unable to gather fear directly for their Entity would lead to them “starving” and dying. However, in TMA there were previous Archivists who were seemingly ancient and mummy-like with bodies that still moved, and there is the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead. However, the latter doesn’t actually preserve someone’s soul, life conscience, or whatever you want to believe but merely makes a copy of it. In MAG 154 (Bloody Mary) Eric states “I know that I’m not really Eric; I’m just a memory someone wrote down. It hurts, most of the time. I don’t like it.” We also know that Entities have ways of keeping people alive so that they can continue to torture them and draw out fear.

So the way I see it, there’s a couple of somewhat likely explanations on the table right now. First is that the drowning woman is some kind of Avatar. While this isn’t completely impossible or farfetched, at the moment I find this kind of unlikely. The second possibility is that the woman is someone who is being constantly tormented by The Deep and her conscience and / or body are somehow being maintained so that this Entity can feed on the fear or torment. It’s possible that while physically she reads as dead she is in fact alive and being maintained by a supernatural power or her vitals are so weird or wonky they wouldn’t read as normal vitals. The third possibility is that the woman actually is dead and someone or something is merely puppeting / controlling her body for whatever reason. There’s also the possibility that The Deep or some other Entity is recreating the woman’s conscience or somehow remembers what she was like before she died or this is some human-like manifestation / monster being used to scare or torture people (like a weirder version of Michael and Helen as the Distortion).

I should mention now that I think The Deep is an aspect of The Buried. It shares many similarities with The Buried, such as a call to return something to its grave and keep it there, deep waters in relation to drowning, etc.. While there are arguably some overlaps with an Entity like The Vast I would argue that they are overlaps that have always been present in terms of manifestations and themes in TMA. For example, both Entities had an association with tons of deep water and crushing weight (even if it was for often different reasons). Not to mention that two of The Buried’s names were “Forever Deep Below” and “Too Close I Cannot Breathe.” Both of which relate to The Deep in both name and themes of drowning and suffocation.

There’s also the tape that the drowning woman was carrying. If you know about TMA you should know why these tapes are so important, and if you haven’t experienced TMA I don’t know what possessed you to read this. Regardless, the fact that the woman carries a tape only for it to seemingly disappear is interesting and it’s very likely the tapes will have another important role in Protocol. Just like in TMA, it seems like something is capable of listening through the tapes but unlike TMA they don’t seem to be limited to just tapes and can listen through electronics in general. It could be something like The Web again and it just no longer has the exact same plans for the tapes, or it could be some other being or Entity using them.

The fact that the tape disappears is also suspicious. Last episode I had to wonder if something was attempting to give Alice the tape or some information on the tape but that raises the question of why the tape disappeared. Maybe some other force intervened. Something like ERROR (which we still have not heard about for a while) could have something to do with this and I could totally see the possibility of someone or something collecting the tapes or trying to give them to certain people. It could also be that something just wanted to make sure it was specifically Alice who got the tape and took it away when there was a chance Alice might have given it to the authorities or if the paramedics found it instead. The tapes also first reappeared in the episode ERROR was released from the Institute’s ruins so it’s possible ERROR and / or Protocol’s Institute is somehow related or connected to the tapes more directly. The tapes were also capable of somehow moving on their own in TMA. They followed Jon by using The Web’s lighter as a sort of tracking device or beacon but without such a device I don’t really know where they could be moving to or why.

We should also consider the fact that the tapes were connected to each of the Entities. Part of The Web’s plan was to let The Eye’s ritual go off so it could use the voice of the Archivist and the connection all the statements have to each Entity in order to drag them into a new universe. So it’s possible that the Entities are somehow drawn or even attached to the tapes in some way. I don’t think the tapes would be what’s keeping them in this world or anything but I wouldn’t be surprised if the tapes being around causes an uptick in supernatural events. In TMA the tapes were an artifact of The Web so it’s possible that the tapes are somehow being used to control things, such as the drowning woman, in some way.

Going back to this episode’s original scene, Alice also explains that the paramedics found tons of water in the woman’s lungs. So much water that there’s no way the woman could’ve been walking according to normal logic. Alice wonders if she’s finally going crazy, probably from listening to all the wild cases and how strange people like Colin have been acting, and Celia says “I believe you” and reaffirms her belief when Alice doubts her. Celia says “I’m serious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I know exactly what happened, but I don’t think you just saw a body and freaked out. That’s not the Alice I know.” Now I’m not going to lie, I’ve lost track of how much time has passed since Celia first met Alice, so maybe they’ve hung out long enough for Celia to get a good feel for her, but I think there’s a bit more to it. As I’ve mentioned previously there are a lot of hints that Celia could be from the TMA universe and / or is at least aware of the Entities at a bare minimum. She shares the first name of a character that appeared in TMA as a part of Georgie and Melanie’s cult, she asks for Sam’s help in looking for information about multiversal travel (which we know is possible with the gap in reality, and in Episode 7 (Give and Take) she asks “Oh I don’t know. Every case about being buried alive or meat or… whatever.” Which sounds like someone using cases related to The Buried and The Flesh as examples.

Not to mention that on her first date with Sam she reveals that she already believed the cases to be real and last episode she was quite wary around Lady Mowbray and refused to give the aristocrat her name. So we can infer that even before Alice’s encounter Celia already believed all the supernatural events that were occurring. So whether she actually trusts Alice that much or would have believed what happened regardless is up in the air. I think it’s interesting that Celia comforts and hugs Alice. Especially given that in Episode 14 (Pet Project) Alice seems to take some sort of issue with Celia going on a second date with Sam, but it doesn’t seem like there has been any bad blood since and Alice hasn’t really done all that much to stop Celia and Sam from continuing to date. Seeing Celia comfort Alice like this is just really making me wonder where their relationship is going and if Celia’s relationship with Sam will cause friction in the future.

As Celia and Sam reassure Alice that she’s not crazy Sam says “Same. And it’s not like it’s any weirder than half the stuff we read here.” and Alice responds with “(touched) Thanks guys. Maybe… Eurgh. (sighing) I know it’s selfish but, I kind of hoped I’d paid my horror dues working here, y’know?” Before Celia says “I think there’s plenty of it to go around at the moment.” This implies that at least a part of Alice believed the cases were real and that she simply hoped to avoid the supernatural or believed that there was nothing she could actually do about them. At this point it's safe to assume everyone working at the OIAR at least suspects something supernatural is going on while people like Lena already know. Alice’s comment about paying her horror dues is interesting because later in this episode Lena is extremely upset that Gwen invited Mowbray to the OIAR and she even says “Because that’s the only possible explanation I can find for why you would think it was appropriate to bring an External into our offices.” and “Safer? You marched a dangerous asset right through the office without taking any precautions! For goodness sake, you gave her a tour! You introduced her to your colleagues! That poses a completely unacceptable risk to personnel.” along with “Gwen, if the O.I.A.R. is to function it is imperative that the Externals respect us and the boundaries we impose upon them.”

While I don’t think there’s any sort of trade off or “horror dues” to be paid it does sound like the OIAR does in fact have some sort of procedure or protection (a protocol if you will) in place for its employees safety either officially or unofficially. At the bare minimum, these procedures apply to the workers while they spend their long odd hours in the office. Whether there’s any kind of protection or procedure for when the workers are not on site or off the clock is to be seen. Lena mentions how hard it is to find any workers but if a worker was suddenly taken by The Deep or some External outside of office hours I wonder if the OIAR would anything about it… could they do anything about it? It’s also possible that these are just in place to protect workers from the OIAR’s own Externals as opposed to any and all supernatural occurrences or beings. This is all a long winded way of me saying that Alice may actually have some level of protection granted to her by the company even if she doesn’t realize it. I think Alice believing she “paid off her horror dues” could be her mistaking this protection for some sort of odd metaphorical karma system or something. Then again, it could always just be some level of luck on the part of Alice. What Alice is saying also sounds like she was hoping for some sort of balance of sorts, in the sense that there were “horror dues” that could be paid off or if she experienced enough horror there was less of a chance she would run into it later. In episodes like 13 (Futures) and 9 (Rolling with It) both the case givers seem to be under the impression that there is some sort of societal or cosmic balance only to be proven wrong or screwed over. This actually seems like a continuation of one of the themes present in TMA. Robert Smirke was someone who believed some balance between the Entities could be achieved to safely harness them only to eventually come to the tough realization that this was a false assumption when The Flesh started emerging.

So it seems like Protocol is expanding on that theme. Protocol also does use some alchemy symbols in its logo and such and I could see the themes of balance and alchemy being related somehow. Maybe someone tried / tries to achieve some sort of balance with alchemy only to mess it up or realize the “alchemy” doesn’t work in the way they thought and there is no such balance. The balance thing also seems like a commentary on society. While we would like to believe that everyone gets their dues eventually bad people can still get away with stuff scott free and innocent people who didn’t do anything can get fucked over, even if if they did everything right (this is also something brought up in TMA, and it can even be seen with characters like Sasha. Someone even Gertrude admits was the most qualified for the Archivist but she got screwed over and killed anyway).

Sam asks Alice if she’s okay enough to work and she says “Yeah. I already wasted most of Sunday crying about it. Anyway, odds are Freddie will spit out a transcript of the whole thing. Least I can do is make sure it’s filed properly, right?” Again, I have to wonder what’s determining what the cases the computers choose. Are all the cases somehow related to the OIAR’s externals or only some of them? Are they all just connected to the OIAR in some way (so it could include any employee or hire)? Maybe they’re just more random and only some of them have to do with the OIAR or someone / something is submitting relevant cases for some reason? Sam does what every TMA fan has done at least once and attempts to categorize the encounter, much to an awkward silence: “So would that be Z for zombie or…?” Protocol seems to have some commentary on how unwieldy or awkward viewing the categories as a binary can be when going through statements / cases and this moment might be a funny little jab at fans (such as myself) who will sometimes say “wow that was totally Vast” after going through some sort of experience. Alice has also implied that Sam can talk about his job a lot and Celia admitted he could be intense so this might be a way of showing how Sam’s job is slowly spilling into how he interacts with people and thinks (even if he is literally at his job right now and Alice is talking about it). More likely though, it shows that Sam is actually thinking about the categorization systems and is probably trying to learn about them.

Also, Alice saying that she spent a good chunk of Sunday crying about her encounter could be a joke or hyperbole but it also points to the idea that sometimes Alice is putting up a facade of some sort or that stuff gets to her more often than she might let on at first blush.

Case

Part of this episode’s case is given to us by Chester (Jonathon’s voice) and it follows a series of videos made by someone going by Madam Electrum (according to the url given by Chester) and the transcript refer to her as Madam E. There are some hashtags that tell us a bit about her channel: “#Gothgirl #lifestyle #beauty #alternative #aesthetic” This is also the return of Ink5oul (pronounced Inksoul): “Madam E/Ink5oul - Tattoo Reveal! 30-10-2023.” We even hear Ink5oul speak finally, even if it isn’t much and doesn’t tell us a lot about them. Madam E reveals that she is getting a tattoo from from Ink5. She also says “And let me say, they are the absolute GOAT so I'm here for my very own, completely personalized, absolutely aesthetic, totally vegan, boujee ink, for free!” Apparently, vegan tattoo ink is actually a thing but I don’t know much about it.

Also, electrum is “a natural or artificial alloy of gold with at least 20 percent silver, used for jewelry, especially in ancient times.” This could be some sort of reference to alchemy since gold and silver are very important metals in alchemical belief. According to wikipedia “Electrum was much better for coinage than gold, mostly because it was harder and more durable, but also because techniques for refining gold were not widespread at the time.” Neither gold or silver rust even if both metals can tarnish. So there might be something going on here with the idea of an alloy that never rusts and is resistant to degradation.

Madam E explains “This is seriously… I’m going in straight blind and trusting the process, I am that full on Ink5oul stan. So, as I finna get marked, make sure you’re following on socials, subbed to my Youtube and OnlyFans (if you know, you know) and sending those like, like, likes!” and Ink5 asks “You ready for your heart’s desire?” Madam E saying she’s going to get marked is interesting. Obviously, she might just be referencing being marked with a tattoo but Episode 11 (Marked) has the term in its name. Once again, that could also just be a pun revolving around tattoos BUT in TMA the term “marked” was also sort of used to reference people who were being targeted by or had a direct encounter with one or more Entities. In MAG 019 (Confession) a possessed Bethany O'Connor says “I am not for you. I am marked.” and Jonah’s plan for Jon involves having Jon get “marked” by each Entity. So “marked” here might actually have an extra layer of pun to it. People are getting marked both literally and metaphorically. Or maybe the tattoos are some weird physical manifestation of being marked.

Ink5 asking “You ready for your heart’s desire?” is also kind of interesting. I previously assumed Ink5 was some sort of Avatar of The Flesh, and while I stand by the idea that the case in Episode 2 (Making Adjustments) probably had to do with The Flesh, I’m not so cure Ink5 is specifically an Avatar of The Flesh anymore. Ink5 might be more similar to Robert Smirke in the sense that they have some sort of technique or knowledge that lets them interact with or call upon the influence of one or more Entities in specific ways without being an Avatar themselves. Smirke had his architecture and Ink5 might have their tattoos. Ink5 commentary on “heart’s desire” does sort of resemble how they behave in Episode 2. In that episode Ink5 doesn’t start tattooing until Daria tells them that she’s an artist, to which Ink5 responds with “The artist becomes the canvas!” So there’s definitely some weird “passion” or “heart” thing going on. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the tattoos seem to relate to things that people desire taken too far or twisted (such as artistic perfection or internet popularity). We’ll get back to Ink5 and their tattoos later since there is definitely some other stuff to talk about (such as how their tattoos seem to have different effects and where they might be getting their ideas).

Based on Madam E’s reaction we can assume that, like with Daria’s tattoo in Episode 2, getting it was extremely painful. I mean getting tattoos in general seems painful but these tattoos might be abnormally painful. Daria mentions looking down and expecting to see a bloody mess but maybe this is just Daria’s own expectations despite how weird the rest of the session was (she mentions getting no after care for example). This does seem to parallel what happens to Madam E here since she also seems just as wowed by Ink5 tattoo but Ink5 almost immediately tells her “Now get out.” Once again, Ink5 rushed their client out the door. Is there a reason for this? Is it Ink5's way of protecting themselves from the supernatural tattoos they make or some other reason, like maybe they don’t want the other person to be able to confront them as easily when the tattoos start taking effect?

The next video is titled “Videos: Recent Ink5oul rumours! 19-12-2023.” Madam E has gotten into some sort of internet drama with Ink5 and as she explains it she reveals that the tattoo she got from them was that of a heart in addition to the fact that she and Ink5 were in a situationship. Dictionary.com defines situationship as “a romantic or sexual relationship that is undefined and noncommittal.” The point is they were in some sort of close and probably intimate relationship, which makes the tattoo being a heart more poetic / ironic. “So like, since getting that ink I been feeling AMAZING and I admit I mighta got a bit extra, simping on Ink5oul. So you knows ya girl was slidin’ into their DMs- Holla to all them other thirsty girls!- and got into a bit of a Kiki.” The most straightforward interpretation here is that this heart tattoo somehow relates to things like love or likes in some way.

Madam E asked Ink5 about where they get their tattoo ideas from but didn’t get a straight answer since Ink5 apparently just says “secrets” and Madam E says “and, sure, but that got me sus cos like, we was high key vibing then suddenly they’re just dead y’know?” (so Ink5 became more quiet or despondent). After a period of not talking Ink5 asks Electrum ““so are you a real goth or not?” And I’m like “I’m more goth than y’all can handle”, and they just send me ”from.vision.ruled, Thursday, two thirty AM”. Takes a tick for me to clock that it’s a three words but when I look it up, turns out it’s this patch up in Highgate Cemetery.” So Electrum and Ink5 sneak into the cemetery and “We head on through the graves and then they point to one of ‘em and just give me a look. I was no cap shook and then they just said “dig”. I laughed, ‘cause, like, the ‘hell? But they were serious. “I thought you were goth?” they said. Now ya girl is hella goth, but this, this was just nasty so I told them they were outta pocket and they just give me the look again and whisper “don’t make me break your heart.” And I’m telling you, I could feel the words in my chest y’know? Brutal. That does me and so I am out of there like that.”

While this account does seem to share some similarities with the body being stolen in Episode 11 (Marked) there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is actually a different body than the one Gordon was talking about. For one, this body is being dug up from a grave while the one in Episode 11 was taken from a medical facility as it was being examined. Not to mention that according to one of the email titles the cemetery Gordon found the bodies in was Padstow Civil Cemetery, but this is Highgate Cemetery. So this is probably a different body but it probably has its own special tattoo, like the one seen in Episode 11. Ink5 saying “don’t make me break your heart” is ominous and potentially implies a strange effect of the heart tattoo, as Electrum even says she could feel the words in her chest.

Electrum claims that she bailed and then the very next day there’s news of someone breaking into Highgate and robbing graves (presumably Ink5). Madam E says “Y'all gotta know what's up. And, like, where does Ink5oul get all their ideas huh? Are they really all that or maybe, maybe they’re just bitin’ stuff from some mouldy old bodies? Nasty. Ya girl is a goth, not a ghoul and I am done with Ink5oul.” This does raise an interesting point. It’s possible that Madam E just doesn’t know what she’s talking about because, like most people, she seems unaware of the supernatural. However, she still might be onto something even if she didn’t have the entire picture. In Episode 11 (Marked) Ink5 appears to steal another corpse that we know had a tattoo on it. In addition to that Gordon recounts “According to them the tattoo is an “Oscar Jarrett”, and that’s a big deal to some folks in that community – something to with Sutherland Macdonald whoever that is.” 

As I went over in the Quick Thoughts for that respective episode, “Oscar Jarrett doesn’t seem like a style or type of tattoo. Which points to the idea that Oscar is a person. Considering all the tattoos we are seeing, Oscar might be comparable to Smirke in some ways. In the sense that in the same way there was special Smirkean architecture, there could be special Jarettian tattoos if that makes any sense. Tattoos that are designed to have supernatural effects of some kind. It’s also possible that Oscar simply learned and taught some kind of supernatural technique, kind of like the techniques that The Boneturner’s Tale could grant someone in TMA or how Martin sort of ended up learning how to “disappear” by following Peter Lukas’ attempt to connect him to The Lonely. Oscar Jarrett and Ink5 are definitely people to look out for in the future. Sutherland Macdonald surprisingly did yield actual search results. He is apparently “a prominent English tattoo artist in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and the first tattooist in Britain with an identifiable premises open to the public.” This makes Sutherland notable for the same reason someone like Smirke might have been in TMA. A historical figure who somehow learned and / or spread knowledge about the Entities. Again, it’s possible that there are Macdonald style tattoos in the same way there is Smirke style architecture. It could also be that the Oscar Ink5 is referring to is in fact the body with the tattoo that Gordon found and Gordon just doesn’t know what they are referring to. It could also be that there are multiple tattoo artists or Oscar is some student or follower of Sutherland in the same way people like Jonah, Maxwell Rayner, and Mordechai Lukas all had a connection to Smirke via being students or associates. Some characters even explicitly got the idea of possible rituals from Smirke and his research, despite the fact that most weren’t concerned with Smirke’s ideals of balancing the Powers.”

This leads to the question of how exactly Ink5 taking inspiration from these tattoos works. It could be that Ink5 is taking inspiration from some sort of technique or style from each tattoo. Which would mean the tattoos don’t have to match exactly or they could vary. But Ink5 could be copying the tattoos 1-to-1 and major deviations, if any, might not be possible. So the question becomes this: When Ink5 comes across a new tattoo is that like adding to their style or is it just like adding a new kind of tattoo to their portfolio? As mentioned previously, in both of Ink5’s appearances their tattoos don’t seem to be picked randomly. With Daria Ink5 waits until they feel inspired and the tattoo Ink5 gives Electrum seems to be based on their situationship and E’s desire for internet popularity. Of course, all the grave robbing causes Electrum to break off her relationship with Ink5.

The next video is “Videos: Madam E – OMG That callout video! 19-12-2023” and Madam E says “Y’all probably heard by now that Ink5oul dragged me on their channels. It was… it was vicious pick-me trash and everyone bought it and their stans are seriously extra cos… yeah there’s been proper hate at me and y’know I try to rise above… but it’s hard.” Madam E insists that they're a good person despite all the callouts, death threats, and doxxing. Even the cops are trying to pin the grave robbing on Madam E despite Ink5 probably being the culprit.

But then something weird happens. Madam E lets out a gasp and clasps her chest before saying “It hurts. All that hate, all those people wanting me dead or worse… I can feel it. No cap, it hits right here. It’s like y’all are bees stinging me over and over right in the heart. I dunno if the camera’s picking it up but you can even see it… ” This is probably related to the warning Ink5 gave earlier “don’t make me break your heart.” She then says “That’s not okay. I’m not okay. I just, I just wanted y’all to listen but instead… ” before announcing the decision to take some time away from her socials.

The next video is titled “Videos: Madam E – Help (Unposted) 03-01-2024” and takes an even sharper turn with E coming to us from some sort of hospital room and sounding worse for wear. Electrum has been getting some comments expressing worry and E explains that the threats and doxxing have been getting worse: “So since that last vid, things got worse… started getting dodgy mail… then someone set my door on fire… The cats are okay but… had to move back in with mum and dad and now…” We then get more details on her condition as she says-

She coughs weakly. It sounds awful. 

MADAM E 

“I’m… in the hospital… there’s something wrong with my heart… but they’re not sure… She gasps again.”

MADAM E 

“It hurts… It hurts so much… mum says its stress but doctor says its an infection from the tattoo. but… I know it’s more than that…”

She coughs painfully again and begins crying. 

MADAM E 

“I just wanted to be noticed… I just… I don’t deserve this… please, please just stop… the views are cutting me... the comments hurt… I’m done… I’m done and… and…”

She struggles to breathe, an alarm starts beeping. There is the sound of tearing skin and a gurgled sound, as though something were tearing itself free of her flesh. The recording ends

In this dialogue even the doctors directly link Madam E’s sickness to the tattoo. Okay, where do I begin? I’ll start with the usual. If we were to view this through the lens of Smirke’s 14 the most obvious Entities that come to mind are The Eye and The Corruption for me. The Eye is the more obvious one since it relates to fears having to do with judgment, being doxxed or having information revealed. The Eye has also manifested as strange diseases in the past. Albrecht von Closen had an encounter with The Eye after coming across a tomb and taking a bunch of old books with numerous statements (something Jonah later stole). In MAG 127 (Remains to be Seen) it’s clear Albrecht is being beset by a strange illness and he is becoming sickly and dying (he’s also spouting statements and staring at people). Albrecht later dies from unknown causes (the mysterious illness) and an autopsy reveals that his internal organs, bones, and inner skin had been covered with eyes… So growing eyes or some other observational tool / organ where they shouldn’t be would be in line for The Eye and potentially explain the pain E feels. E talking about how the views are cutting her and the comments hurt could relate to The Eye and the theme of judgment or being perceived. The fear of people judging you and not liking you is very in line for The Eye. Ink5 threatening to break Madam E’s heart could tie into The Eye’s connection to judgment.

TMA also likes to play around with irony too when it can. This wouldn’t be the first time someone wished for fame or to be noticed only to draw the attention from a being that feeds off the fear of being perceived or known by others.

Then there’s The Corruption. The Corruption is an Entity that embodies fears relating to disgust. As I’ve mentioned previously, this does include non-physical things. People can find specific actions, mentalities, or kinds of relationships gross and / or off putting (which is where The Corruption’s connection to toxic relationships often comes from). Not to mention, that The Corruption can have themes of self-loathing stemming from disgust one might feel towards one’s self. Hopefully, you can see how this could easily relate to the fear of others finding you disgusting. I would go as far as to say that the fear of judgment is something The Corruption and Eye can very easily overlap in. Being afraid of being judged and found gross often go hand and hand, and someone judging you might label you as gross.

So there could be the fear of Electrum’s fans becoming disgusted with her. Not to mention that Madam E seemed to find Ink5 digging up bodies gross, since she says “Are they really all that or maybe, maybe they’re just bitin’ stuff from some mouldy old bodies? Nasty. Ya girl is a goth, not a ghoul and I am done with Ink5oul.” You could also relate this to The Corruption’s theme of unhealthy or gross relationships because this all happened due to Electrum’s situationship with Ink5 (which didn’t seem healthy considering the threats). You could also make an argument for Electrum having an unhealthy relationship with her followers or people on social media. When E describes the pain in her heart she describes it as “bees stinging me over and over right in the heart.” The Corruption has an obvious connection to bugs since they are often thought of as gross and The Corruption has manifested as things such as wasps and hives in the past. Not to mention, out of all the Entities, The Corruption has the greatest precedent for manifesting as diseases due to the connotation sickness has with feelings of disgust.

Something also sounds like it might be bursting out of E’s chest at the end of the video, I can’t say what exactly though. It’s possible something was gestating in her heart like some sort of parasite or hive but maybe her heart just sort of… walked away? I know that sounds stupid but Ink5 did threaten to take her heart so maybe they literally got it somehow.

As for other Smirkean categories that could relate to this case, there’s The End and maybe The Slaughter with the death threats, The Desolation in regards to Electrum’s home being threatened from the door being burned down, and The Web with Ink5 trying to manipulate E and Madam E feeling a negative backlash when she doesn’t follow their command. There’s also themes of The Flesh with something potentially emerging from, or distorting, E’s body.

CHESTER

In episode 12 (Episode 12 TMP Quick Thoughts) I went through each of the voices on the computers to see if there was any sort of pattern. I won’t go through all of them here, but I argued that CHESTER, Jonathan’s voice, seems to show up with cases that have heavy themes of curiosity or someone looking for something. The most obvious example of this would be CHESTER covering the case of RedCanary investigating the Institute’s ruins to find unexplored areas and sate their curiosity in episode 1. There is an argument that this specific episode could have similar themes when you consider that it involves Ink5 looking for a body and trying to dig it up while Madam E is trying to get more followers on the internet.

It’s also possible CHESTER covers cases related to the Institute but we can’t say for certain if Ink5 has any relation to the Institute yet.

Rest of the Episode

This case seems to be getting to Alice and as she walks off Celia and Sam go to comfort her. The cases are probably starting to hit a bit too close to home after her experience with the drowning woman.

Gwen enters the room just as everyone left and exclaims “For god’s sake! The second I’m not around…” She probably assumes everyone is ditching work or something. The transcripts clarify that Gwen “...leans over starts reading Sam’s case.” which is interesting. I wonder if she was about to categorize Sam’s case for him to finish his work or just wanted to see the last thing he had been reading.

“Lena angrily knocks on the glass of her office.” and Gwen is clearly annoyed. Gwen tries to get out of the situation by saying “Look maybe you didn’t notice but no one is at their desks and the case load tonight is” which might imply that Gwen was about to do Sam’s cases for him. It might also point to Gwen being a bit of a workaholic or overworking herself unnecessarily. She might also be doing all of this to try to cope with horrors such as Mr. Bonzo or avoid Lena.

After Lena tells Gwen to sit down she begins to tear into her.

LENA CONT. 

“Are you stupid?’ 

GWEN 

“(bristling) Excuse me?” 

LENA 

“(louder) I said Are. You. Stupid?” 

GWEN 

“I don’t”

LENA 

“Because that’s the only possible explanation I can find for why you would think it was appropriate to bring an External into our offices.” 

GWEN 

“I just thought it might be safer if they were in a controlled environment.” 

LENA 

“Safer? You marched a dangerous asset right through the office without taking any precautions! For goodness sake, you gave her a tour! You introduced her to your colleagues! That poses a completely unacceptable risk to personnel.” 

GWEN 

“I was with her almost the whole time. Besides, Lady Mowbray is a lady, an actual, married into the house of lords, Lady. It’s not like I was holding doors open for Mr. Bonzo or anything.” 

LENA 

“You have no idea how dangerous she is.” 

This is actually a very interesting interaction because it sheds light on the general relationship that the OIAR has with its Externals. Lena describes them as a dangerous asset that shouldn’t be brought into the office. She even says that introducing her colleagues posed a risk to Gwen’s coworker’s. That point in particular is interesting. In the last episode Lady Mowbray takes an interest in Celia and asks for her name. Luckily, Celia doesn’t give her a name but this would point to the idea that if Celia had she probably would have been put in some sort of danger. Nigel also mentioned it was probably for the best he and / or Bonzo didn’t Gwen’s name. This could mean that not revealing certain names is a part of the OIAR’s protocol.

This conversation also reveals that there is some sort of protocol or standard (be it official or unofficial) in place to help keep the OIAR’s workers safe / safer, at least while they are at the office. It also shows that the OIAR’s Externals might not usually know that much about the OIAR or what’s happening within it.

Gwen tries to defend her actions by arguing that Mowbray isn’t a monster like Mr. Bonzo. As we know from TMA, plenty of monsters and Avatars can look like normal people. Also, I don’t find the argument that Mowbray is a British aristocrat, so she can’t be evil, to be very compelling given what I know of history. 

LENA 

“You have no idea how dangerous she is.” 

GWEN 

“No, I don’t, because you don’t tell me anything!”

LENA 

“And I will keep it that way until you have proven to me that you can be trusted to think before you act.” 

GWEN 

“Or I die right? Because I can’t help noticing that you’re happy to send me out alone to meet all these dangerous Externals that you are too afraid to even let into the building!” 

LENA 

“Gwen, if the O.I.A.R. is to function it is imperative that the Externals respect us and the boundaries we impose upon them. Otherwise”

GWEN 

“Fine! No Externals on site, understood. Happy?’ 

LENA 

“It’s becoming clear to me that you are struggling with your new position and so I think it might best if you”

GWEN 

“Give me another assignment.” 

Gwen is obviously starting to lash out because of the lack of answers. This is all too familiar if you’ve seen TMA. Since Jon and co also got very annoyed on several occasions as Jonah strung them along and refused to give a lot of straight answers. So here we have another weird boss putting their subordinate in extreme danger for seemingly unknown reasons. Gwen explains that Lena never told her not to bring Externals on site and seemingly manages to get another chance or at least wants to prove herself. It’s plausible that the reason Gwen invited Mowbray was in an attempt to get answers but it’s also possible that she was just scared and what she said about the controlled environment was her actual justification.

This situation is kind of ironic because for all of Gwen’s talk about how dangerous this job seems, Lena actually didn’t think Gwen was ready for the job. Gwen forced Lena’s hand by blackmailing herself into the position. If it was up to Lena Gwen would probably not be in this position. This does make me wonder who was acting as the Externals Liaison before Gwen or if there are any others though.

Conclusion

If you want to see the categories for this episode’s case in the transcripts they are-

CAT1RB1565-30102023-25032024 

Tattoo(influencer)-/- Cardiac 

Incident Elements: 

- Cyber Bullying 

- Intimidation 

- Harassment 

- Mentions of: heart problems, hospitalization, tattoos, needles, 

exhumation 

- SFX: Tattoo gun, screaming, coughing

If you want to see my previous articles you can read them here: TMP Quick Thoughts Archive

[forcebookish]

Sometimes I think. You know. I probably would have enjoyed only friends more if I didn’t see people saying stuff like “Boston and Nick had the healthiest relationship among all the couples!” On this hellsite.

I actually don’t think it was terrible. Especially after rewatching it. But I can see the flaws and things that could have been done better.

I saw someone say that it’s a show that feels like halfway through airing someone edited the episodes badly not caring about continuity. Like that there was meddling somewhere along the way. And honestly I sort of agree. Something feels. Off. About the way things were handled. Like if the Top and Mew smashing stuff scene was removed from its episode, why was it still in the trailer for that episode? Was it that down to the wire. That seems like a bad idea to edit major scenes out that close to air time.

I will forever mourn the loss of a scene of Force acting his ass off as Top while realizing he isn’t over Mew cause he can’t hook up with someone else.

Anyway. It was still nice to see the actors all get to stretch as performers and go outside of high school and tell slightly more mature stories, even if it was far from perfect.

oh, p'jojo literally confirmed that they were re-editing every week based on fan reactions. it doesn't just feel like it was meddled with, it straight up was! and definitely to the detriment of the story.

however, there are some glaring issues that still would have been present without the hack-job the series got, because it's not just the editing that goes off the rails in the end: the writing suffered as they ran out of ideas while also trying to cram ideas that didn't fit into the narrative (read: boeing's pointlessness). they should have spent more time workshopping and fleshing out boeing's character. in a series full of well-rounded, realistic characters he just felt tacked on and couldn't even serve the purpose of developing said characters. it's like they couldn't decide between being a show that actually explored these relationships and friendships or being a show where everyone just kissed for no reason. you can thread the needle between horny and well-crafted storytelling, but it fell apart.

it is HYSTERICAL to me that people think that nickboston was the healthiest. yeah, the couple where one of them bugged the other's car out of jealousy then listened to the sounds of him fucking another guy on repeat, leading to the other shouting at him and hitting him at his place of work... only to end up together literally only because nick was the only person left in boston's life who loved him... broke up because boston, despite saying he wanted a relationship, kissed some rando while on a date with nick. they only ever talked about what they really wanted out of the relationship in subtext and code or when it was too late.

yeah. picture of health.

i really need fandom, BUT BL FANDOM ESPECIALLY, to stop measuring couples based on their "health." although it can be a perk to certain ships, it's not the point. nickboston being unhealthy is what makes them interesting! they're both super fucked up and the unpackable baggage between them makes them fun to watch! that's not to say that a fictional couple who are healthy can't be interesting, but that just doesn't apply to nickboston.

THAT BEING SAID, topmew are easily the healthiest couple in the series, but a fandom that focuses on top having to "change" for mew (soooo, quitting drugs for someone is only good when ray does it?) of course isn't going to notice the way they navigate the relationship through talking about their feelings and desires while setting boundaries is what a healthy relationship actually takes. and even without the inciting incident, that dynamic was still interesting because there was still tension within the relationship. that's what actually makes relationships in media interesting: tension. the characters have a give and take, either they clash or play off each other. a healthy relationship is about wanting the same thing out of it and working toward that goal together: that goal can still be interesting.

and i'm not just saying that because i prefer them over the other couples, because I WANT TO REITERATE, THE HEALTH OF A FICTIONAL RELATIONSHIP IS NOT SOMETHING NEEDED FOR IT TO BE APPEALING. and it's really annoying how fandom will just say that a ship is healthy when really they mean, "i like it." you can just like things, mary.

and yeah, i probably would have enjoyed the series more if i hadn't seen this fandom's bullshit every week - but even if i'd binged it those last episodes would have driven me crazy with how much they lost the plot. and i just... really can't get over how annoying ray is. if i do rewatch it, i'm probably going to skip most, if not all, of his scenes because i truly cannot stand his whining. i see those "na, naa, naaa, naaaaaa" compilations and i go ????? really???? you all like this??? "you would give in too" no i would the fuck not

maybe i'll just stick to that topmew-only cut for the time being🤷‍♀️

as always, i wrote too much and i mostly just repeated myself, but thanks for stopping by and giving me an excuse to rant, anon!🥰

[marlasomething]

(my) Mag a Week: Unknown Known

Hello there!

I am participating in the "a mag a day" idea by @a-mag-a-day which is BRILLIANT and I decided to do "statement a week", rolling dice with the characters and fears that were ftw that week in the episodes I have listened. For today I rolled Archivist!Martin Blackwood's TERRIBLE Mom and The Flesh (Eps. 177+178+LifeShow+S5HiatusWTG). It's a Season 5 style one...second time!

As usual, please do forgive my quick tipper and non-native speaker mistakes, Marla

Allons-y!

CW: body horror (very mild), reality distortion, self-identity struggles, manipulation

Also on AO3!

Of double vision and false identities.

Audio recorded by The Archivists, in situ.

 You reckon that you should have a name. Not because everybody has a name; you have never cared about the fact that everybody is supposed to have one, after all. No: you ought to have a name because you are worth it. You were…you are… someone.

There was a life you wanted to go back, a life in which you…

…hold on a second, were…are you really one person ?

Come to think about it, there was very little in common between the harsh man you were in your office and the kind single man that tried tirelessly to find an especial someone Friday after Friday using the cornier lines imaginable.

There were two…there they are. Yes, indeed, you are staring at them right now, as they stand in front of the third you. The fake you , if you are being completely honest. The one that truly really just simply doesn’t exist.

You are an asshole at work and a too nice guy (even for your own good) outside. The middle person is just a fever dream. Look at them, look at them closely ; both alone, both missing parts that should be fundamental for a complete individual but, after all: What do the ass at your right need a left arm for?

Or, why would keep the one at your left the most practical-focused part of the brain?

The figures become increasingly blurry and confusing, just as you start to assume that this third yourself is your actual reality. You want to scream to these people, yell that you are right behind them. Perhaps they can help you feel less…the real you. Play pretend again. Faking it one more time would be nice, a lie you can believe, understand even.

But that ship flew far before the carrousel music started playing…you always hated carrousel music…

 …my partner had told you what you see, and he is right and your misery is unescapable. (For our delight). It isn’t the only disgrace upon you, though: what are those things you don’t manage to witness?

Because you are absolutely certain this emptiness around the pieces you so like to pretend to be part of you is not really empty . There is a thing . The very same thing you used to use these personas against so it wouldn’t reach you, because it always hides in the dark and nothing that hides can be good. Nothing that you don’t understand can be good.

You don’t understand yourself, after all.

 Stop pretending not to notice the sounds that are no more the ones of a carrousel, there are already plenty of people hearing it, even those who somehow had managed not to get entrapped as you and many others have. There are even animals…you were always a dog person, you could have a dog…or what remains of a dog in there…

…you just have to let loose, get rid of a lifetime of playing in the knowhow.

In what you have always got clear.

 Come to the sounds you cannot place, melt with the two people you used as a Greek mask and become a fourth thing that will never be alone…

…there are plenty of people who will choose not to choose and, then of course, they are going to need an entertainer.

And the entertainer is going to be thankful of having them.

  “You know what, Hope?”

“What Breekon?”

“I think we shouldn’t have payed attention to the scrawny previous Archivist. A Stranger Apocalypse would have been better”.

“Yep. At least we have each other; and the lot of them, whinny souls”.

“Yeah…Wanna to find that dickhead of Joshua Gillespie? I think we might have to properly scare him”.

“You know me too well, mate”.

[iguessitsjustme]

About Youth - Mini Music Analysis

***Disclaimer! I’m just a tiny internet person. I’m not a musician. Please form your own opinion and feel free to disagree with me! I’m not always right. Also this was written before episode 7 and 8 aired and I did not have have the mental energy to update it.

@heretherebedork asked for an analysis of the music in About Youth and this one was honestly the hardest one. I feel like I don’t have a lot to say about this soundtrack, but to be fair, I only went back and rewatched part of episode 6 so I’m basing this off of that. The soundtrack is good, and it fits the show, BUT the show utilizes silence a lot. The soundtrack really does become something more akin to background music. Something you don’t even notice is playing, but it’s there. It reminds me of when I lived close to my older brother, and we would go to a hotel bar to listen to his musician friends play music in the lobby. The music was there, but ultimately, we were more focused on our conversation and our food than anything else.

Overall, the soundtrack pretty calming and it matches the characters and the scenes well. It kind of feels like a less deliberate version of the OFC soundtrack (which as we all know I am quite literally in love with). Which is not to say it’s not deliberate! Just...less. Whoever was in charge of the soundtrack for About Youth knew what they were doing. It’s extraordinarily subtle. For the most part, it’s quiet and it’s calm. So when we have the scenes of Qizhang singing with his band, it stands out even more. The music in those scenes have an impact because they are a direct contrast to the rest of the show. The songs are upbeat, peppy, they make you want to bop your head along to the beat. I also cannot stress enough how much I enjoy the opening song. I pretty much only listened to this song on repeat last week (I only stopped because of a recent album release from one of my favorite artists), and I do actually listen to music quite a lot.

What can I say about the opening song other than I love it. I feel like this song works for the opening really well when you watch the scenes that were paired with certain parts of the opening. This is an opening song that I didn’t skip. Not once. And I typically skip opening songs. It is upbeat, it’s hopeful, it’s beautiful. It tells the story of Qizhang and Ye Guang and it lets us know that they are going to be okay.

This wasn’t much of an actual musical analysis, but I guess I’ll at least give the soundtrack a grade. It gets an A+. Any soundtrack that successfully sets the tone and doesn’t distract from what’s happening in the show is a good soundtrack. Now, I need to go listen to the opening song on repeat some more.

[dornish-queen]

GQ MEXICO - PEDRO PASCAL 2021

It seems that Pedro Pascal is in all possible universes. Here and there. In the past, in the present, and in galaxies far, far away. Today, the actor is considered the great entertainment reference and one of those in charge of saving a franchise that seemed lost. Enough reasons to talk exclusively about discipline, gastronomy, creeds and how he traumatized his father in 30 seconds.

The RAE defines 'creed' as the set of ideas, principles or convictions of a person or a group. For example, by creed, one can leave his country and be in exile. It happens that one can leave the loved one behind. Or simply live in another reality. And also one can put on a helmet to pretend never to take it off again. If that is the path to follow, the creed says that it must be done with the profession of faith and without stopping to look. Turning the pages of the script for The Mandalorian , the Disney + series that revived passion and nostalgia for the Star Wars franchise , Pedro Pascal came across this definition in every dialogue and moment, and reflection carved his way.

More than two decades have passed since the Chilean-American, Pedro Pascal, began his acting career and today, named as the great reference of 2020 , he misses the theater and it still hurts him not to have the discipline to exercise and maintain a diet sana while acknowledging the irony of having the best year of her career in the midst of one of the worst in recent history. But even in physical solitude, the man who carried the best-selling Christmas baby rescues many positive things and shares his vision of the universes he has traveled through, his passion for distant galaxies and how to traumatize your family with a simple scene of TV. In an interview, the Mandalorian of Latinamerica.

IMDB named you the 2020 benchmark in entertainment, a year in which the world took refuge in fiction. How was living your best time locked up and what do you rescue on a human level from it?

The strength of family relationships and friendship. For them, we endure this physical loneliness. I do find it ironic that in 2020 I received projects so well received by the public, although they were carried out before the pandemic and their impact was during it, and that year I was isolated and alone. But I must emphasize that this loneliness is a privilege when many people had to continue working, surviving and maintaining the functioning of the world. We only had to be alone, but they more than that and you must value it too.

Among the activities you have missed, how much do you miss the theater?

Much indeed. It's something that I miss the most and being with people without being afraid. See a play and return to those experiences of being with people doing and living things in common. That is what I need most, in addition to my loved ones.

Disney fully entered streaming and its strong letter has your face, what do you think of the discussion of platforms against movie theaters?

There are incredible things in streaming and many people develop great projects that they did not have access to before. The diversity of voices is gaining ground and it is important to recognize that opportunities grow exponentially and boundaries change. It is incredible the availability that we have to very well made content and how creative people can share their work in different ways. But I also want to be honest: limiting the experience of watching content only on our gadgets or at home is a mistake that affects the stories we can tell. You have to achieve a mix of opportunities and challenges.

You jump between the fictional universes that mark the last decades until you reach the universe of universes. What is your first Star Wars memory and how do you summarize the essence of this legendary story?

For me, Star Wars is nostalgia itself. It is one of the primary things in my memory, of my childhood. I came to the United States with my Chilean family when I was less than two years old and one of my first memories is going to the movies with my dad to see the saga ; it becomes one of those romantic childhood things that opens your mind, so imagine how special it is to participate in this project. I think the creators of The Mandalorian perfectly understand this nostalgia and that power, and they managed to count on that element as a great ally for the world of Star Wars and I couldn't be happier to be part of it. (From which we expect the third season The Mandalorian)

The Mandalorian exploits the power and nuances of your voice, did you have that letter on your resume?

I didn't know I could do it, but I resorted to my theater preparation, which was very physical on all levels and feelings. There are elements that have to do with and that are essential to create a role, and they teach you that the voice is something primary, something you have to start with and you cannot hide. Now I have learned much more about the importance of that, and how to use it economically. The body also has to do with that, because something very subtle communicates something. In The Mandalorian , I had a great time figuring out how to do it, they gave me the opportunity to develop it in different ways. The opportunity to be very intense at it.

What happens to the ego when someone works under a suit and a mask?

In the conversations about the project, before doing it, we were communicated the idea and the concept of the entire season , so I clearly understood what it was. I wanted it to be the most powerful version of what they were trying to accomplish, so there was no point in involving my ego, you know? It was already very clear what the project meant, so I knew about the character , the piece that it represented for him and the opportunity that it was for me, so I was only focused on executing in a better way the part that touched me in everything this. In the theater, I worked several times under a mask and it helped me develop the experience.

It seems that The Mandalorian has a very theatrical base ...

Exactly, and thanks to the physical experience of working in theater, doing a play a few times a week, discovering how your body and your voice communicate , being part of a whole image, and how you will tell that story visually, I achieved this character. I never imagined that it would be something I would have to use on such an important Star Wars project .

On the list of entertainment greats, there are names like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, do you think John Favreau should be added to the list?

I think your name is already included. Without a doubt, it is in that category and it is incredible. His vision fascinates me. I remember an episode in the second season , and I had some boots and I walked so much in the snow, it stuck to them. He figured it out, so he talked to the art department about the kind of boots you need when you're out in the snow. They approached me and gave me new ones that fulfilled the idea I was looking for. He noticed it in an instant. It is such a wonderful detail and it is repeated to scale in every session with him. He thinks of absolutely everything and his vision of the use of technology is admirable. He is someone who makes you feel motivated and always sees how to achieve the goal.

One of the reflections in the series is on how and under what circumstances a man can break his creed and way of life. What makes you break with your beliefs?

I think that you must follow your heart so as not to regret anything; Although sometimes it brings pain or conflict, deep down when you look back, everything is worth it because it was what you heard in your heart. I am very afraid to deny that feeling or not to attend to it. I am 45 years old now and I cannot believe I have a finer philosophy. Make it more disciplined. It's ridiculous, but I'm trying to accept that I am and it's all I can say, "follow your heart." Although, you know, I'm not on a good diet yet, I still have trouble sleeping or exercising.

Still good at Chilean empanadas?

Yes, I couldn't stop. And also how good that I do not live in Mexico City because I would only spend it eating. I could move my whole life to defe just to eat.

I want to deviate and ask you, with whom did you see the chapter of your death in Game of Thrones and what traumas did you cause in your family?

For me, no trauma. I separate myself well from the characters , although I fully understand that if I were a Game of Thrones audience and loved that character, it would make an incredible impression on me. Thank you that it was not. I had to interpret it and there was a model of my head to be crushed that way with the tubes and the fake blood, you know? Me lying there, with pieces of my meat, it was funny in the end. But not for my family. For them there is nothing funny but traumatic. My dad's voice changed completely when we saw the episode, he turned around and said: “I didn't like it, Pedro . No, Pedro , not this ”.

The media found similarities between your villain in Wonder Woman: 1984 and Donald Trump. When playing a character with characteristics like this, do you humanize him or do you understand him?

The project had nothing to do with the former president. They always told me that my character in Wonder Woman: 1984 was emotionally messy, and I took that and took that as far as possible. Instead of creating it with images or certain inspirations from life, it was more to work with what was on the page. Personally, what made sense to me is the size of the story that is being told and there is always more, and we all want more. Creatively, if this makes sense, that meant "blowing her out of the park." Connect a hit with the character and be committed to telling his story faithfully, in a way that was true to me. So all the exterior elements found their way.

What a way to start 2021 with the theme of the Capitol ... How do you perceive that moment?

I am not a politician and it is not that I do not have an opinion about this type of event; however, it is not necessary to state the obvious. My opinion would be very simple compared to that of a person who studied this, who knows how to act in these kinds of scenarios; I believe that I am next to the majority who experienced this, which is the logical result of what we have experienced during these years and we are all horrified . It was distressing to see this violence.

If you had the monolith in your hands, what would your wish be?

My wish would be… it's impossible, really (laughs). I think it is to be together again, with less fear and that people have the opportunity to connect.

What is your position on the reality that Chile has experienced in recent years and how has the relationship with your country been since exile?

It is something that I am developing and I continue to do in my life, trying to understand that it is my home. To be in Chile is to be at home, but my life has been very nomadic, living different things and having many influences; so it is strange, I do not feel with the title of a complete Chilean identity nor with an American one.

Neither here nor there?

In a sense, but I'm also completely both. My parents are Chilean , my brothers were born there before my parents traveled, and I came back sometimes because my family is very large; in fact, my parents came back. It has always been there, it continues to develop, and it will be a part of me. I don't know if it answers your question, but it has a lot to do with who I am.

What is your relationship with Latin American cinema? Are you interested?

Much, it has invaded me in life like American cinema. The movies that I carry in my heart, seeing something like Y tu mama was also something that changed me; I also love the work that comes out of Chile , and the only thing I can say is that it is a cinema that needs more access and projects.

Today you have a comedy with Nicolas Cage on the door, can you tell us something?

It's my first shot at comedy , as a complete story within the genre. Speaking of American influences , in the 80s I saw all the films where Nicolas Cage appeared , he came into my life and it's great to be his partner after seeing all his performances.

How is the relationship you have with the comedy genre?

I love it, I have done a lot of comedy in the theater, what happens is that in film and television issues , I was always part of drama castings . And in the cinema, you go where the doors open; Although I identify with one or the other, I think that being an actor , one goes and does what one has to do. Comedy is something unique, it is very challenging because it must be very real to be funny, you cannot hide or use normal tricks. I was very excited to have this challenge in front of a camera.

Finally, Pedro, after going through so many fictional worlds, literally, what do you dream about when you sleep?

I dream that my bathroom is dirty, that I haven't done my math homework, that the oven is on and all that stuff. Sure, there are times when I close my eyes and see myself in all these projects , although my conscience is with the anxieties of the day that you can imagine.

Without a doubt, Pedro Pascal is a particular type .

English Tranlation: Google Translate

SOURCE:  GQ MEXICO

[rumblelibrary]

The Diary of Doctor Laszlo Kreizler

Chapter 1  -  Chapter 2

Synopsis: Alienist’s notes are private, sometimes gruesome, secrets of others and of himself.Those pages belongs to secrecy and decadence, have a glimpse to this world made of drafts, notes, accidents and reflections. Or maybe it is you the only person that should ever reach for it.

While you read this imagine Laszlo mostly at the end of his day, scraping the ideas and the thoughts, adjusting previous notes with additions, closing the day behind himself with a couple of sentences while sitting in his evening robe, a good glass of whiskey and his glasses bridged almost at the tip of his nose. Or maybe imagine yourself, you sneaky thing, reach for it from a far shelf.

Word count: 3.5k

Warnings: listen, this is the set of ideas and confessions of a man living in the 1890’s. Most of them will be outdated, rough, even deprecating in some analysis of the roles of men, women and social status, religion, etc.So be prepared, my point is to make Laszlo reflect upon those topics, but to be as faithful as I can to his time. Mention of death, mutilation, self harm and sex. Psychologically troubled young children ahead! Author’s note: The story is placed between season 1 and season 2. Thank you for everyone that encouraged me to keep going. I have to wait for my local drop of serotonin to get fully Laszloed to go through this.

Lyra’s Contellation, Illustration taken from Uranographia by Johann Bode

Routine. Routine is comfort. Habit stabilises the character.

If you follow a routine, you won’t ever be victim of imprudence, of evil jokes of fate. The stability earned through calculated and repeated actions brings a sense of fulfilment that forbids other thoughts to come bashing in, breaking rules, breaking hopes that a solid scheduled routine forbids to have. I take my time to begin this week, I planned the things to do, the next steps for the case, the people to meet, the resources I am allowed to contemplate. I feel good, I feel back to myself and the events of the weekend seem far from me and my own perception. I probably got ahead of myself, carried by some instinctual though and random rush of emotion, to be always in contact with the same people and mostly kids probably doesn’t help my stance in the presence of other adults. I feel silly now reading back the last page, I felt tempted to tear it off, but to keep it there should be a small memento of not losing my temper so easily. I read it over and over and I know I am not as charmed as I thought I was. I am just lonely. I have always been and it is normal to face ups and downs even for a man of my age who is more accustomed to it.  To desire a partner is a natural instinct, to find somebody attractive is meant by nature, it is the body calling for the natural fulfilment of the reason we are put on this very Earth.  But even in a state of nature my own condition would be forbidding me to be part of the natural process of growing my own kind. I am the type of male that would be excluded because of his impossibility to give the protection to the pack, therefore it is just more reasonable to me to adapt to my condition. No matter what my Potentia generandi might be (the ability to procreate).

With all the smugness that characterises him, Niki showed off that he passed my challenge. But to be really of an help to his antics I didn’t show any kind of surprise. I treated him like he did the bare minimum, like he didn’t prove me any kind of superiority. He has a natural attitude toward challenging the figure of power, he is trying to overpower me, but I won’t satisfy his need. I have noticed he has a very technical brain, he finds ways to solve problems in ingenious way and not by throwing himself into the task. I proceeded giving him to work on a clock, an old broken one we had in the institute, one of the kids hit it with a ball years ago and nobody ever worked on repairing it. I gave him the clock, a couple of screwdrivers and a book. He called me a number of German names I won’t transcribe, but it gave me a certain amount of satisfaction. If my intuitions are right, I am sure the clock will be repaired by next week.

Analysis of the victim’s body through John’s eyes. The drawings and sketches are as detailed as I requested, all of this thanks to you joining him. I deal with art critic section, I am used to notice these things. You assure me, you play yourself low and I wonder why, nevertheless you did notice things neither John or I did, which pleased me. It fooled me, distracted me from my purpose to not give in to your witchery, as I leaned closer watching your pale hand move across the pages tracing this or that line, showing how this must be done with the killer on this side and not that side, with words so deliciously elaborate, your way of composing your speech is compelling, you could sell the drawing of a kid like it was a Botticelli. I noticed the shape of your hands, the way you move them, I wonder if you play an instrument, or played, some habits just stick with you through life. I focused on taking notes, your ideas and instructions giving me a new point of view, a new stimulus. What if that is the only way the killer can communicate? Or what if this is the communication that works for him? Could our killer be mute or deaf? Or that’s how society made him feel? This man, or woman, needs a listener and I am afraid that now, since he got our attention and the public’s, he won’t stop. Another killing could be just as close.

Scheduled: meeting with the parents of Alex Garel for new admission, Monday next week at 11 am. Love at first is a fetish and like all fetishes it is based onto an object that hides a deeper meaning, like gloves mean hands, to love at first sight means to see somebody that you think, and think only, to have the chance to share not only a sensual kind of bond, but an intellectual. Love at first sight is based onto not knowing someone well enough, but having the time to idealise most of that someone. I can see why I feel this attraction, using a particular phrase that Sara often mutters when investigating: you tick all the boxes. I know you do, your beauty is everything but conventional, you’re the kind of face that painters would paint and musicians would write hymns about, but any animal on the street would never be allowed to see. You have the grace of the body and the fire in the eyes, and then you speak. When you speak, I realise, you could bring the world to its knees. Also, you never speak out of context, and if you do it is to ease somebody’s position. You do it often with John or with Stevie, you say something really silly in order to put them back to a place of comfort. Some women would call it self deprecating, but I see that you only pick wisely your fights and your wins. You don’t need to earn your peace and quiet by neglecting, but by lifting up the others. I wonder if you do it with me too, if your silences are just you allowing me to be in a better place while instead your judgment is tearing me apart. I shouldn’t care, but I keep wondering, sometimes I take my time to answer you, I analyse every shade, every peculiarity of your question, I am looking for sarcasm, for a condescending voice, for something to hang on and bare you open. To prove myself you’re not perfect. But deep down I know that you do, you judge me and you do well.

Mother never said so. That’s what one of the girls in my care said today. Ursula. She is tough. Skin as thick as an alligator and the tendency to pull her own hair at night or when under a massive amount of stress, enuresis alongside erratic episodes of mutism. I tried the soft approach, it didn’t work. She is too accustomed to be indulged. Therefore today I pushed her a bit overboard, I teased her over opinions on the female body, the female role, she is only 12, but she is soon to bleed, she knows, I can tell from the way she clenches to her skirts, from the way she looks at me as a threatening figure. I am the incarnation of danger to her. Under her steady silence, I pushed a bit more, asking how her mother taught her to be nice and submissive. Does her mother tells her she is going to be a good wife? The phrase, which I reported at the top of the page, surprised me.  What is her mother teaching to her then? What closed her so much, locked her soul away, making a small bird like this choose the silence and the retirement of self inflicted pain over, what? Mankind? Or just Men? Is that even a curse? Should I cure her from a truth that her own mother whispered to her ear one night before bed and made a child decide that the world wasn’t a place to share her time with? Am I the man supposed to teach her that men are worth of trust? In the eyes of modern society, who measures its own value over the modesty of the women, she would be a champion, but at what price? I can’t in any way let her parents bring her back home after our recent meetings. Nevertheless, I have to make up my own mind on how to give her troubled soul ease without making her believe in fables. I, as a man, regard myself not worth of any of the trust they expect me to teach her.

In all of my years practicing with people’s feelings and traumas, I challenged myself to find those same traumas within my own mind. It is a tricky game, terrible, anguishing at times. But it straightens me, the pain of others, the pain of kids mostly, so unadulterated and pure, breaks the curtain between me and the lies that I often surround myself with. Pain is made of method, you can open it up, you can scrutinise it, part it piece by piece dividing it in sectors and, partitions, centre part, side part, heart of the problem. Pain is reliable. Happiness is not. It is random, cruelly sudden, unexpected, it washes over you in such deflecting way only to leave you alone a moment after ashamed and alone. I saw you again today. You were in a table full of what I could only guess as your former university colleagues, I saw pain in you, not heavy but constant. Annoyance, a bit of sadness. Your head titling on side and your eyes drifting on the left, you’re imagining something away from them.  A place? An object? Or maybe someone? Your hands play circles at the bottom of the flute of your drink like kids do, your smile only one sided. I don’t see you speak at all, only listen.  What could keep your voice down? I almost gulped down my own breath as you looked up and I realised how I must have looked. I was having lunch on my own, in a very private table and even entertaining myself with a newspaper on the side. I wish you didn’t, but you came over, your eyes shining.  Did I save you? Or maybe I was just a good excuse to leave that painful meeting behind. Don’t be so nice to me, it is not healthy. Don’t look at me like you expect anything more from me than me listening. I won’t smile back at you, I won’t give you care, attentions or thought. I won’t lean for your perfume, I won’t obsess over that dress you wore, that pin that adorned your neckline keeping your undershirt in place, a silver robin, I remember. I won’t remember the number of the buttons on the side of your glove, three. I won’t observe the little moles just under your ear. A small constellation, I later realised, hidden between your ear and the beginning of your neck. I don’t need to check in my books. It is a constellation. It is Lyra. Why? Why you must be like this? Are you the Lyra? Are you the instrument of Orpheus come to me to drag me out of Hell? The Tartarus holds my soul and you should know already, I am not worth the quarter part of Eurydice to be saved and she never came back anyway. I won’t be now recollecting the way your teeth sunk in the inner side of your cheek when you apologised for the annoyance.  You apologised twice, I ignored you both times with a raised hand to request peace and silence. I am not letting you in.

Reserved: Tickets for Wednesday’s evening Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. The guest female lead promises a beautiful show.

Leonardo, as I am learning through Paul Valery essay, is who I would define as a figure of projective identification of the Subject or, to better explain it, of the knowledge of the Subject that formed and grew through the use of sketches in the experience of the Artist. I have always thought that the finest form of art was the representation of knowledge duly undressed by any personal identification. Leonardo, instead, proceeded to represent the figure through the essence of the artist, a representation technically unlimited on objects and symbols and that keep expressing the transformation and development of Leonardo’s own being.Some artists are testimony of the destruction of the world, of the loss of eternal beauty over decadence. And then you have Leonardo, who creates an art that is the gravity of the world’s system, of the nature, of thoughts and abstractions. I wonder if our killer does the same, if the way they presents the victim through their own personal view, if what we can read there it is their stories, their pains, their needs. Their happiness and troubles. What are they trying to tell me?  I need to know, I need to know to save a life, of course, but I also need to know to be able to sleep at night. Hair, hair are the epitome of femininity in any era. I keep studying Ursula and her habit to pull the. I took notes on it: she picks them by the bottom, slowly separates them until she gains an amount her mind defines satisfactory and then she rolls her finger and pulls, she does it until her finger is empty and there are no hair left. I find her process incredibly interesting. In men’s case the display of physical attributes is not as vital, a beard can be appreciated but does not modify the power of seduction of a grown man. On the contrary, for women hair are a vital part of their attractiveness toward the opposite sex, society sees the hair of a woman as part of their vital characteristics, also in ancient times for a woman to cut her hair or have her hair cut was a sign of deep separation from the society. Only heroines or whores wore that mark and the association of the two is so rooted into the way society always parted the role of a woman in two that it is nauseating to think of. I am still fearing to let Ursula go away, the repulsion that she is showing toward her own body makes it difficult even for me to crack her shell open as a man, but my deepest worry is when that hate will take a scarier and deeper tool on her. How a girl with such  a fear of what her body can do, like sex or pregnancy, can endure in the future to have an husband? Or even to be courted by anyone?

John is helpless and I admire him for that. He doesn’t hide it, he just is. He is vulnerable and exposed, he is an open well bursting with doubts and feelings and troubled waters. He is genuine in a way I could never be. Maybe that’s why I despise even more him talking about you, how he sees you every morning, how you greet everybody, how you behave even with interns, how you like your coffee.  Your talents, your wits, how you said this and acted like that and reasoned through him. How you forbid him to drink even when he felt tempted. How you stayed late over to help him collect all the informations I requested him to get. To him. Not to you. The evil demon of envy scratching in the back of my head screaming like a siren out in the sea, he demands to be heard, he demands to be allowed a part in this game. I won’t allow him that. I won’t allow myself any of that. This is a pure game of chess, if I give in a pawn now, I will lose my knight, and I know it. I advice him to not be so closed minded when he praises you, only to get surprised by the charms of a natural logical mind. I find a way to hurt him, he is an easy target, I look at him as his eyebrows twitch and he summons his patience on me. He lost the plot about you already, his bruised pride taking over. You won’t come into my life.

“Un dì, felice, eterea, mi balenaste innante, e da quel dì tremante vissi d'ignoto amor.”  (“On a day, happy and ethereal, you appeared in front of me and from that day, trembling, I lived on an unknown love”)

The words of Alfredo in the first act of the Traviata keep running through me, a chant that won’t let me go, almost painful. The Opera House, that was my hiding place, a place where in plain sight I could let out myself, unleash. The catharsis of the characters involved running through me, I didn’t need anything but their voices and those musical instruments to let out my fears, doubts and anger. When Alfredo came to the scene tonight, the lights were strong and slightly pinkish, the performer bursting out of the seams with passion. My eyes diverted only to see you there. Alone. Those blinding lights gave you the the radiance of a vision singing the notes of greek myths and heroes, that dark blue evening clothing rang through my eyes like it was a bright yellow, the little shiny details that adorned you so clear against the heavy lighting to look like transparent pieces of water collected to adorn your beauty. I wasn’t me, but Alfredo, and I was helpless against you sitting so far and yet too close from me. I was naked in front of thousands. I am aware of the effect you have on me and our last conversation was barely regarded as one. This is infatuation, this is the pure work of a lonely mind and not something worth of any of all the words that I am dissipating here. Yet. I saw you cry at the climax of the opera, Violetta, the protagonist, heartbroken falling on stage consumed by pain and regret for her lost love and ultimate sacrifice. Your eyes shone as you tried to hide the tears and collect yourself. Through my binoculars, I saw your throat tremble and gulp down something more than just a sigh of pain. Your jaw clenched, your gloved hand moves to hide your shaking lips. I reckon, I have never seen such sad lips look more inviting. You look at the wall on your side breathing through your nose and not even that can save you by the strength of the voice of the soprano. You’re defeated and so you brought a fine silk handkerchief to your eyes, your shoulders bent inward in self defence.  The Opera won. It won you like it always wins me. I wonder if you felt like this because of a past lover, somebody that broke your heart and made you feel wrong in any way.  And because of that little wonder it is even more clear to me why I am a man worth of no trust. Because for a moment, I know, I wished to be the one that broke your heart. That gave you just the pain you’re inflicting on me so mercilessly by offering intoxicating kindness and beauty.  To own your thoughts, tears and shame. To be the one man you have to look away from. I want to own all of that and, maybe, I will be freed of you the day you’ll be just another human being that hates Dr Laszlo Kreizler.

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[beautyofthend]

Kate Fleming - A Character Study

There were many things that annoyed me about the series finale of Series 6, I could talk about it for days on end. But the one thing that perhaps annoyed me the most was the way in which Kate went through massive character development throughout Episodes 1-6 and then that got all but dropped by Episode 7. Dropped in the sense that every piece of character development within Kate through those first episodes had been obvious, explicit; we can see very clearly that Kate had changed in the time she had left AC-12 and joined MIT, but as we got to Episode 7 this character development dropped to mere subtext and having to read between the lines just to understand Kate’s motives. 

I’m going to be exploring that and finding the best possible explanation for Kate’s character because I feel as though it would be very easy to misjudge her without explanation. 

To start I just want to say that this is all my opinion, I’ll try to back up my points as best I can but it is just my interpretation of how I’ve seen Kate as a character. Enjoy. 

Character development is crucial in shows that have multiple series, more so when it’s main characters are prevalent throughout. We, as the audience, need to see these characters go through change, they can’t stay as the same person the whole time. They can have certain characteristics and arcs that remain as we watch their journey but when characters go through situations, like real life, they don’t come out the other side as who they were before. We as humans change everyday, I am not the same person I was last week. Of course, not in a drastic way but events change us, we develop. So when we watch programmes we expect to see similar changes in characters. 

And we do. Throughout Line of Duty we see our main characters, Kate, Steve and Ted, put through many events, some major, some not so. They are often put in danger or will be witness to catastrophic moments: Kate and Steve were present when Tony ended his life, Kate was present when Dot got shot, she was also present when Danny got shot. I could go on but you get the point. We’ve seen our characters go through a lot so we should expect to see their development. I shouldn’t expect to see that Kate remains fairly the same between Series 1-5. 

But let’s dig into that more. Kate is a strong, steely, kick-ass character. She doesn’t put up with things and isn’t afraid to tell someone when they’re in the wrong - she has quite happily pulled Ted up on his wrongdoings over the years. We see Kate in numerous undercover operations, we know that she is an expert at hiding her true feelings as a result of that. She can manipulate people into giving her information and she’s very good at playing on their emotions - but this only occurs under the guise of being a UCO. 

Kate follows a set guide when she becomes a UCO and we see this throughout. I find that she is pushy, never letting her questions up when she hasn’t been given the answer she wanted. She earns their trust by offering her support and being emotionally available for them (some more than others). One particular thing that she always does without fail is slate AC-12 as a means of gaining trust. Everyone she goes undercover for are under the watchful eye of AC-12 so she must show that she has nothing to do with them, that her aliases: Flynn, Foster, Francis, do not side/agree with the actions of AC-12 - this is excluding the first series where we see her using her real name Kate Fleming but she still sticks to the idea of bad-mouthing AC-12 to earn trust. Some examples over the show being: 

“AC-12, they’re robots them lot. They don’t get the difference between a corrupt officer and a decent one who made a mistake.” - To Tony Gates in S1E3

“AC-12, they twist everything and make everyone look guilty.” - To Lindsay Denton in S2E2

“You know what they’re (AC-12) like, fishing for inconsistencies. Anything they can pounce on.” - To Jackie Brickford in S3E3

“AC-12 leaving with their tail between their legs.” - To Roz Huntley in S4E2 - this is more telling as this scene actually takes place in front of Steve and in E3 she does it again, going as far to call Steve a “wanker” in front of everyone. 

The only time we don’t see her using this tactic is in S5, because she has no reason to - she’s not undercover at any point so she doesn’t need to gain anyone’s trust - and in S6 where in which she actually uses her knowledge of AC-12 to reassure Jo. 

“I know the kinds of cases that AC-12 are into, boss.” - In S6E2. She’s not trying to distance herself from AC-12 she’s trying to show Jo that she doesn’t have to worry about anything since “It’s just the way AC-12 operate.” - You could argue that she has no need to bad mouth AC-12 since Jo is fully aware of Kate’s connections to anti-corruption though. (She does also mention that she got “fed up of nicking coppers,” but this is in relation to her own personal feelings rather than AC-12 itself). 

But that doesn’t mean to say she doesn’t slate AC-12 at any point during S6, it’s just that she does this directly to Steve, “You spend too much time on anti-corruption, it starts to change the way you see things.” This shows that despite, in a way, defending AC-12 to Jo she doesn’t particularly side with them and feels very strongly about her reasons for leaving them in the first place.

All this is proof that Kate will go to a number of lengths to keep her cover, appearing to hate AC-12 and people that she trusts just to get close to the people she’s investigating. And she does this fairly successfully, she manages to pull the wool over their eyes - to an extent - and proves that she is a good officer, she is good at cutting off her emotions for the sake of the job. As Dot says to her in S3E2 “You’re a brilliant liar that’s all. Kind of unsettled me,” and Lindsay says something very similar to her in S2.

Kate is a master manipulator when it comes to her undercover operations, okay she isn’t always successful and has had her cover blown a number of times but they’ve always ended up being worthwhile and they manage to bring down the person that they were investigating. It shows that she is very good at her job. And her ability to control her emotions so well, really go against this stereotypical idea that women aren’t in control of their emotions, which isn’t a bad thing. 

We instead see this trope throughout Steve’s character - and Ted to an extent. Where Kate can take control of a situation and push her emotions to the side, Steve isn’t as successful in that department. He is an extremely emotional person and often lets those emotions get in the way of his job. For example, his anger and frustrations towards Tony Gates in Series 1 meant that his vision was clouded and he couldn’t see the wood for the trees, similar to his dealings with Dot -  both occasions needed Kate with her lack of emotions and clear vision to help him. 

Whilst I think it’s good that Jed is challenging these stereotypes and telling us that men can be just as emotional as women, and women can be closed off and cold - even the fact that Kate is a mother and she remains so steely is very telling - I don’t think it always works. I love that Kate is the resident heroine in Line of Duty, she’s always there to save the day and that’s great. But that doesn’t mean she can’t show emotion and that doesn’t mean she has to be so closed off all the time. We see in glimpses that this emotional side to Kate does exist however, after she hears Ted slate Dryden for having an affair with Lindsay (it’s an unknowing attack on her own situation), when she gets locked out of her house and most notably during S6E6 - there is a lot of emotions at play so there is a lot to talk about for that particular episode. 

With that being said, Series 6 does delve into this emotional side to Kate - with Jo being integral in bringing about that development. Unlike the previous series, this one perhaps focuses on Kate the most, showing her in a different setting through MIT and showing her making genuine connections with people outside of AC-12. 

When we have seen Kate outside of the realms of AC-12 it’s only been through her undercover operations, where she is having to pretend to be another person to get information out of others. But finally, in Series 6 we see her perhaps being her most true self. This is shown through the change in her wardrobe, she’s wearing clothes that she hasn’t necessarily worn before. I could go deeper but people have already done that and could explain that much better than I can. But to put it into simple terms, her wardrobe for Series 6 is vastly different from her wardrobe throughout Series 1-5, right down to the shoes. 

(Won’t go off on a tangent too much but one thing I did notice was the fact that throughout Series 1-5 Kate, most of the time, wears heeled boots - on occasion she can be seen sporting trainers or flat pumps but it’s rare - but in Series 6 she starts wearing flat, doc-style boots and can be seen wearing them, along with other flat shoes through the series. Up until that meeting between her and Jo and she’s wearing her heeled boots again - no doubt symbolising how the events of this meeting cause Kate to almost cut ties with Jo as she returns back to AC-12. She continues to wear these heeled boots through the next couple of scenes but returns to the flat ones she’s been wearing this whole time when she goes to save Jo - symbolising that yes she’s letting Jo go but she’s still on her side despite everything.)

Series 6 Kate stands out from what we’ve seen of her from the other series - she seems genuinely happy. She’s able to be herself, not having to pretend. Not having to manipulate others for information or form false friendships. Instead, she forms a close, emotional bond with Jo Davidson and there are many indicators that this is real and genuine and not Kate “pretending” as Jo so aptly put it. 

From the first episode it is very clear that Jo and Kate are close, the first time we see Kate in this episode the two of them are flirting with each other - in front of their team as well. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice DI Fleming skulking in last minute like the dirty stop-out.” 

“Don’t go there, boss, glass houses.” 

It’s showing that Kate has settled into this new team and new dynamic and is very comfortable. Further pushing this sense of casualness that has been set up between Kate and Jo is in a later scene when Kate comes into Jo’s office and Kate is leaning on the back of the chair next to Jo’s desk.  

When we usually see Kate in a scene with a senior officer she can be seen doing the typical ‘stand to attention’ and the fact that she isn’t here is very telling. She also goes on to say in this scene “I haven’t shared this with anyone else, boss.” Telling us that there is a level of trust that has already been set up between these two - Kate doesn’t need to earn Jo’s trust, she already has it. 

This is very different to how we’ve previously seen Kate, she usually has to earn people’s trust: 

“I just want to help sir,” “Just give me the chance to prove myself to you,” “I’m here if you need to talk,” “If you need my help, just ask,” “I could make it disappear.” - Various phrases she said to Tony Gates throughout S1.

“Anything I can do boss?” Along with telling Lindsay that she’ll say that she was with her the night Lindsay’s neighbour alleged Lindsay attacked her during S2 and turning up to Lindsay’s apartment with a bottle of wine - trying to form a friendship. 

“Thanks for letting me in on this, ma’am. Look, I know we’ve had our differences but, for what it’s worth, I don’t think they’d have replaced you as SIO if you were a bloke,” to Roz Huntley in S4 - she’s also very good at working out how to get to people. She knows that the lack of female diversity and patriarchy is a weakness for Roz so Kate plays up to that (although how much of that is Kate pretending is another story but will get into that later.)

The only time she doesn’t use this ‘buddying up’ tactic is in S3 where she takes on a whole different approach with the ‘MOB.’ Where she had been previously seen, with Tony and Lindsay, to play nice to the people she’s investigating, to earn their trust, in S3 she almost aggravates them. She’s straight in there with questioning them and probing them so that they’ll crack - but I think she also knows that they’re weak, they don’t have that close a bond so if she pokes them enough someone will break away. 

But we don’t see this set up between Kate and Jo, we are thrown into an already established and trusted connection which is done on purpose to show that Kate and Jo have been close for a while prior to the events of S6. Further emphasising this, is Farida’s accusation that Kate and Jo are having an affair - it’s not said without reason. We see repeatedly throughout the time that Farida is in MIT, she is keeping a watchful eye on the interactions between Kate and Jo and it’s enough for her to suspect a relationship/affair. 

What is most interesting however, is the fact that this is the first genuine female connection that Kate has had on-screen. Of course, we became aware of her friendship with Jayne Akers but Kate was also sleeping with Richard, Jayne’s husband, so it couldn’t have been that close of a friendship. We also see a glimpse of a friendship between Maneet and Kate but it’s never delved into enough to make it relevant. 

This is the first time we’ve seen Kate work alongside a fellow female officer and have their connection be something that is real rather than faked - I think this also plays into a lot of Kate’s confusion surrounding her feelings towards Jo. Is her connection with Jo related to the fact that they’re both women who have had to work their socks off to get to the top or is it the fact that there is something deeper bubbling under the surface between them? 

Whatever it may be, there is a strong level of trust between Kate and Jo that sets them apart from all of Kate’s previous UCO interactions. Where she would normally have to dig for information from people, asking leading questions etc, Jo gives Kate information freely (obviously this is done on purpose on Jo’s part since we later find out that Jo wanted Kate on the team to solve the case and henceforth free Jo from the clutches of the OCG). All Kate has to do is ask if Jo is okay and boom, Jo opens up - not totally, but enough to emphasise the trust. 

This is a completely new dynamic for Kate, yes she’s close to Ted and Steve but even then there’s a professional distance set between all three of them. They know hints about each others lives but they don’t know everything; it wasn’t until Mark phoned Steve in S2 did he find out about Kate’s situation. And it isn’t until the last episode of S6 that Kate finally learns about Steve’s painkiller misuse. They are friends and they are close but there’s a small wall between them. But Jo is the one to break that wall and invites herself into Kate’s personal life via the small dates we see them on and Kate wanting to see Jo at the weekend outside of work. 

It’s not just a new dynamic for Kate but also a new dynamic for the audience. The only consistent friend Kate has had across the show is Steve, we see them leaning on each other in a sense and going out to the pub or for takeaways. We see that they’re close (even if they don’t necessarily reveal everything about themselves) and now all of a sudden, we are seeing Kate meeting up with someone else. Talking to someone else, having a friendship with someone else. And it’s nice. Kate deserves to have someone else outside of Steve and outside of AC-12, it hints that she’s able to have a life outside of her work. 

Note: Steve’s “Do you see a life for yourself outside the job?” In S2. Jo is proof to Kate that she can exist outside of her work. 

But now that this trust has been set up between Kate and Jo, we then delve into the moral dilemma that Kate is thrown into once Steve asks her to become a CHIS on behalf of AC-12. 

“Great. So either I’m accused of being a traitor or I become one to avoid being accused?” 

She doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle because she has loyalties to both parties. The trust formed between herself and Jo showing that she wants to stick by her but there’s still trust between her and Steve despite there being distance - this is told through her clothing later on (as pointed out by wecantseeyou here) and also by the fact she doesn’t strictly tell Steve she won’t do it, rather that she will think about it.  

Returning to Kate’s relationship with Jo and what solidifies the bond that has been set up between them is that scene that takes place at the end of the first episode. We see Kate watching as Buckells is laying into Jo about her decision to not charge Terry Boyle. Kate appears to be the only one watching, or at least the only one that cares enough - shown by the fact she follows Jo out when she leaves the room. If this was undercover Kate this would be something we expect to see, she would use this as an opportunity to swoop in and provide emotional support. But Kate isn’t undercover, she’s going after Jo because she genuinely wants to see if Jo is okay. 

She doesn’t ask Jo about what Buckells had been having a go at her about, she only asks “Boss, you okay?” - that’s the first one and Jo delves into the reason she had become so upset/why Buckells was having a go. This wasn’t something Kate asked about but she lets Jo talk and get it off her chest. As Jo goes to leave Kate then asks again, “Boss, is everything okay?” She wants to know how Jo is feeling within herself, why else would she ask twice? Kate is interested in the welfare of Jo, not in finding out the gossip of what was said in that room. 

What happens next is monumental and this is where Kate’s confusion really begins. Everything that happened between Kate and Jo before (dirty stop-out scene, talking at the same time etc) could all be passed off as them having a close friendship, nothing more. But there is a shift in this scene that pushes their relationship in a different direction - the music playing in the background only emphasising this.

Kate’s reaction to this moment is very telling, the way she looks down at their joined hands, she knows how it would look if someone seen them now; it’s not exactly how colleagues act around each other is it? We’ve not seen her form a romantic connection with a colleague (you could maybe argue Dot but it wasn’t set up in the way Kate and Jo have been set up) let alone a woman so this is all new territory for her but it is definitely romantic and this is the shift towards that. Kate’s panicked look towards Jo as Jo is leaving, she knows that something deeper is going on between them from this point on.  

Before I continue with Kate and Jo’s relationship I have to talk about that scene between Jo and Buckells and why it’s so important that Kate is the one watching that interaction and why she is the one to comfort Jo. I have said in a previous post about how there are many parallels/similarities between S4 and S6. I also said that it wasn’t necessarily related to Kate’s character but it absolutely is the more that I think about it. 

Series 4 heavily plays on inequality within the police force, how women are at a disadvantage to men when it comes to getting promotions and what not. This is portrayed through Roz Huntley, her frustrations being that she is now having to work extra hard to prove herself after returning to work from being a mum - this coincides with Hilton blackmailing her and putting the pressure on her to close the case. 

Now although Kate goes undercover to investigate Roz, they do bond over one thing: they are both women who are striving to be the best. Kate throughout S4 is persistently undermined by Ted, yes she gets a promotion to DS - something that Steve gets rather jealous over - but even after passing her inspectors exam and being more than capable of being a DI, Ted still turns her down, telling her that it was more than likely going to go to Steve since he has more experience. 

Kate is visibly hurt by this but does well to hide it. This moment in particular we can see that Kate is feeling isolated, she’s put on her own in the lift, pushed to the back of the frame, she holds herself - a visual representation of how women often feel in a male dominated workplace. This is no dig at Steve (it is, sorry) but Kate is a much more capable detective than Steve. Kate even swiftly points out how Steve’s attempt at an undercover operation had landed them in court. He’s not a bad detective, he is an extremely good one and does the job well but in comparison to Kate, he doesn’t match up. But simply because Steve is a man he gets a better chance of promotion before Kate - or at least that is how it appears. 

This brings me back to my earlier point of when Kate uses something Roz feels strongly towards and sides with her to gain her trust. But I don’t think this is Kate necessarily pretending, it’s convenient to have the topic come up but I do think it’s also something Kate feels strongly about. She’s just experienced first hand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of inequality and in a way, despite being there to investigate Roz, she does share her feelings on this issue. 

There is a defensiveness to Kate’s tone in this scene between her and Steve:

“It’s a crucial item and any irregularity…”

“Is something to throw in Huntley’s face?” 

“This isn’t personal. She’s at the centre of everything, I just want to get the truth.” 

Obviously Kate’s opinion on Roz does turn back to believing/knowing Roz is guilty but for a brief moment it appears she takes the view that AC-12 might just be investigating Roz simply because she is woman who made a couple of mistakes. We also go on to see Roz and Kate having a confrontation and sexism comes into play, with Roz lowkey telling Kate that she is worth more: 

“How old are you Kate?” 

“31.”

“I’ll tell you about my road to 31. I’d been a DI two years already. Then, I made life choices in the best interest of others. Not in my best interests, at all, as it turned out. And from what I know, you won’t make that mistake. You’d give up anything to get to the top. But despite all your ambition, you find yourself on the wrong side of the line.”

“What do you know?” 

“That you’ve got a son you barely see. Hardly holier than thou.” 

(Remember Roz’s “You’d give up anything to get to the top,” it’ll be important later).  

These words get to Kate because she knows they’re true. She is an ambitious woman who keeps getting knocked down simply because she is a woman. And the fact that she has given up her life with her son in order to pave the way for her career and yet it still hasn’t paid off clearly annoys her. She might not like Roz but they do agree on this. 

Something else that Roz brings up in her series is something that was mentioned briefly by Steve, Kate and is later mentioned by Jo - bringing in the link there. The something being The Masons. We first hear it in S3 in reference to Ted Hastings and Patrick Fairbank. And since Fairbank ends up being corrupt I think it’s fair to say that The Masons now = a form of corruption. In the same series Kate goes to meet a female AC-3 officer in order to request permission for an undercover operation, said officer goes on to say “Because I’m a woman, I can’t be a Mason,” this further solidifies that The Masons are synonymous with corruption. I mean, they are an organisation that exclude women from high ranking positions and get away with it. The fact that Kate seeks authority from a different, female officer because she knows that The Masons are technically a corrupt organisation is very telling of how she feels towards them. 

Roz accuses Ted of being a Mason and henceforth explaining that that is why he is always more interested in investigating female officers and why there is a lack of diversity within AC-12. This is a play on Kate since she had just been turned down the DI role in favour of Steve - and I think it’s fair to assume that Ted then only gave that position to Kate later because of what Roz revealed in that interview, and if he didn’t put a female officer in a high ranking role after what he had just been accused of, it would’ve looked bad on him. Which is really rather annoying to be honest, Kate should’ve got that role because she makes a good DI not because Ted got called out on his bullshit, but we move. 

In S6E3 Jo says to Kate about Buckells employing Ryan: 

“Family friend or something, probably got a nudge down at the Masonic Lodge.”

Now that one line was enough for Kate to know, at the time, that Jo wasn’t ‘bent,’ since she had just spoken out against a form of corruption. Jo had shown a dislike towards the idea that Ryan got a job on merit for simply being a man and that gives Kate ammunition to go after Buckells and find the evidence that would prove Buckells is corrupt. The fact he does end up being ‘The Fourth Man’ further pushes the idea that The Masons = Corruption. 

So Kate witnessing Buckells laying into Jo is another reason for Kate and Jo to share a bond; they’re both women in a very male dominated workplace who are more likely to be subjected to bullying by fellow male colleagues. If we do get another series I wouldn’t be surprised if it digs into The Masons and that form of corruption. 

In summary, Kate feels very strongly about inequality within the workplace since she is always undermined by her male colleagues and it wouldn’t surprise me that if half the reason why Kate feels so comfortable within MIT is because she’s working alongside a woman and she isn’t undermined nearly half as much. 

See: Jo’s constant, “That’s a good point, Kate,” “You’re right, Kate,” as opposed to Ted’s constant, “Steve’s right, Kate.” 

Back to Kate and Jo’s relationship. The shift in their relationship post that corridor scene becomes more obvious as it is from that point on where Kate starts to defend Jo to Steve:

“For Christ’s sake Steve, she’s my gaffer, you want me to rat on her?” 

And that moral dilemma comes into play again as Kate warns Jo that AC-12 are going to storm MIT and seize files. Kate isn't happy with what she’s done, you can see that from a mile off but she knows that she needed to do it since her loyalty now lies with MIT and she needs to protect the case she and her team are working on.  

I also think it has something to do with what she previously says to Steve:

“You know what it’s like being ex-anticorruption. I’ve had to work my bollocks off with them lot.” 

She knew that if she didn’t warn Jo about AC-12 then her whole team would turn on her and accuse her of being undercover/colluding with AC-12 when she isn’t (necessarily). And we’re back to the point she raises to Steve about her being seen as a possible traitor. 

We later see the first ‘date’ scene between Kate and Jo and much like how we were thrown into Kate and Jo’s relationship/closeness, we are thrown into this scene. We assume they’ve been there for a while and they’re in the middle of a conversation when we join them. And Jo is leading the conversation, she is talking freely whilst Kate is listening - once again, there’s a lot of trust between them. 

What is striking in this scene however is the parallels to a similar scenario between Kate and Tony in the first series. Context is different since that meeting is arranged as a means for Kate to dig for information from Tony whereas with Jo, it’s a chance for Kate to be a ‘sounding board’ as she puts it, she’s being emotionally available for Jo. But there is something that really stood out:  

Kate’s reaction to both being very different. With Tony she makes light of the situation whilst with Jo she doesn’t say anything, just simply nods her head. It’s all explained when given the context, she’s undercover with Tony and rule number one is to not form too close a relationship with the person you’re investigating as it could jeopardise the case she’s working on, so she has to keep it impersonal. But she puts it in a way that shuts down the allusion but doesn’t give anything away. 

Her reaction to Jo, on the other hand, is striking. She nods, not saying a word. She wants to call her Jo, she wants to cross that boundary and there is nothing stopping her from doing that so she can agree to it.

But whilst we’ve brought up this parallel we might as well look into other parallels concerning Kate’s relationship with both Tony and Jo. Tartan grey suits aside, Tony and Jo are quite similar, they were both groomed by Tommy Hunter - Jo in a much deeper and longer way but the point still stands. Tony was the one to introduce Tommy into the show and Jo was the one to take him out - not in a literal sense but she revealed the most information that would shut down the era that could be deemed as Tommy Hunter’s era. Both Tony and Jo form a close relationship with Kate, Jo’s being more genuine whereas Tony’s is faked and all smoke and mirrors. 

The proof is in the pudding here:

It’s awkward and unwelcome. Vastly different to this scene: 

Jo and Tony are perhaps the only two of the ‘bent coppers’ we see that don’t really do anything - at least nothing drastic like murder anyway. Out of all the ‘bent coppers’ they’re the most innocent. The fact that they both have connections to Ryan Pilkington as well is very telling. But I won’t go into it too much since this is about Kate. 

The difference between Kate’s relationship with Tony and her relationship with Jo is that it is made very obvious that she doesn’t like Tony. She shows no sympathy towards him at all when talking to Steve in private - once again proving how good of a liar she is since that isn’t given away in the slightest during her scenes with Tony. Jo, on the other hand, she is very fond of, even after Jo lures her to the lorry park to be murdered Kate is still defensive of the woman and still, in a small way, takes her side. 

That being said, of both relationships there are assumptions made. Nigel makes the dig “Her cover wasn’t the only thing she blew, ask Tony,” and Farida’s “Smart money’s on Kate Fleming,” to which Jo replies, “Kate and I have been shagging on the sly for months.” 

Now what would’ve made a REALLY good parallel between S1 and S6 would’ve been this conversation between Steve and Kate:

“He saved my life.”

“He put you in danger in the first place.”

A wasted opportunity there considering how many parallels there have been between these two series with all the callbacks to old characters and little references that have been made. It would’ve made the parallels between Tony and Jo even greater; Tony lured Steve to be murdered (note how Ryan is present there also) but ended up saving him and Jo lured Kate to be murdered but ended up saving her by taking the blame for Ryan’s death. It would’ve made for a very good reference. 

Moving back to the ‘date’ scene between Kate and Jo, I think I’m pointing out the obvious when I say that it has clear romantic undertones, from the lighting to the music that plays underneath - notably increasing as Kate says “Nah, not really my type.” The close up shot of this moment making it even more intimate. 

Then we move onto Kate being the one to ask Jo around for the weekend, which Jo initially turns down and Kate adds, “Yeah, no pressure,” before initiating the hug that then changes Jo’s mind. We have not seen Kate in this situation before at all. Not in a heavily loaded romantic scene anyway, not even with Richard Akers. There was a sense of a deeper connection with Richard, they were sleeping with each other after all, but it also felt impersonal. Kate would turn up to his house, they’d sleep together, they might have a small scene together afterwards and then Kate would leave. We didn’t even see them kiss. They were just two lonely people, stuck in a loveless marriage wanting to feel something that they were both missing in their relationships.  

But there’s an intimacy that’s been set up between Kate and Jo, this is more than just a friendship and it’s coming from both parties, with Kate being much more explicit about it than Jo; offering drinks, seeming happy that Jo turned the two men down and then asking to see Jo more - this is all Kate. But it’s not in the pushy way we have seen with her when it comes to her UCO’s. She’s not digging for information from Jo she just wants to love her. 

They also reveal their relationship status to each other in this moment, “It’s Mark’s turn to have Josh this weekend,” “I’ve just come out of a long term relationship.” If that isn’t screaming that what is happening between Kate and Jo isn’t just friendship then I don’t know what is. 

We then have Kate watching Jo as she leaves, there’s a pensive look on her face. She’s just crossed that boundary, she’s all but asked to spend the weekend with Jo and then followed it up with a hug. She’s made the first move and is clearly nervous about it. The romantic music continues under this and it sounds hopeful/happy. A stark contrast to how the show usually feels so the fact it’s playing up to this and taking the time to set Kate and Jo up shows that it’s important - the show doesn’t focus too much on personal lives. And because of that, it only signifies more, how annoying it is that these two got dropped to subtext after having it be so obvious. 

And with such focus on Kate in this moment it show it’s integral. Kate is finding herself in a position that she has never been in before and because she knows that AC-12 are now investigating Jo, it only worries her more. She might think that AC-12 are wrongly investigating Jo but there’s always that chance they could be right and if they are, then her professional integrity is going to be questioned for the first time. She’s finding herself in a position that is usually filled by Steve. And Kate is highly judgemental of Steve in that department. 

Then we have this scene in the third episode: 

This is their first sort of argument and Jo has pulled Kate up on her interviewing techniques, telling her that she was too harsh and that she’s “gotten used to nicking coppers.” It bothers Kate, she taps her foot, ponders for a moment and then follows behind Jo. She knows Jo’s right and we know this because she says to Steve in the next episode “You spend too much time on anti-corruption, it starts to change the way you see things.” 

She’s actually taken something that someone has said to her on board. This is rather unusual for Kate, who is extremely stubborn and isn’t a fan of people criticising her (but will happily criticise others - Kate really is the epitome of AC-12 isn’t she?) But the fact she listens to what Jo has to say and it changes her in a sense just goes to show how much she really likes Jo and she wants Jo to like her and also shows how much change Kate has gone through in just the first three episodes of S6. 

I am still trying to figure out why Kate made the decision to follow the patrol car but then I suppose it can be easily explained if you think of the fact that Kate will never be free of AC-12, no matter how hard she tries. Kate is AC-12 through and through, she is so deeply embedded in it she will never get out - it’s a stark parallel to how Jo is in a similar position in regards to the OCG. Going to be ~controversial~ here and say that I don’t think AC-12 makes Kate happy. It’s her home, it’s where she feels safe but it isn’t what makes her happy. S6 is, perhaps, the happiest that we have seen Kate. There were small hints throughout S5 that Kate no longer enjoyed working as a UCO/for AC-12, a number of quotes alluding to that, S5E1: 

“She couldn’t stop the hijack but the best she could do was limit the loss of life.” 

“Oh Christ I’ve been there. The lies, the fear. Got only knows what she’s going through.”

S5E2:

“Look Kate…Corbett’s embedded in a group of hardened criminals who’d execute him if they discover his true identity.” 

“I’ve been there, it’s not nice.”

S5E2 again:

“(About UCO’s) Ask her. She was undercover. Perfect job for a selfish arsehole that don’t give a toss about his own family.”  

“Look what Corbett’s missus said about undercover work, that was never you.”

“Thanks Steve, but she was right.” 

All that does is hint that it wasn’t just Ted’s betrayal that pushed Kate to leave AC-12, rather it being the last straw and it giving her an actual reason to want out. 

She does, however, go back to AC-12 in the end because she has nowhere else to go and her job is her life. She’d rather sacrifice her happiness to keep her job and to keep doing what she’s doing.

When she returns to AC-12, for the first time this series, she hits us with the “My first duty as a police officer is preservation of life, sir. That’s why I’m here.” Her job always comes first, above everything else (it’s half the reason why her marriage broke down). Other examples of this include this moment from S2E6:

“I was undercover with Denton, and I blew it. And now we’re blowing the whole case. I need to close this, Steve, or I’ve got nothing.” 

And in S5E6:

“I’m just calling it as I see it, Steve. The truth comes first…I’m not going to sit around and wait for a kicking off the gaffer or Carmichael when there’s police work to be done.”

Kate is highly committed to her work and will stop at nothing so she can complete it; no matter who she might be investigating/building a case upon. This causes her to come across as callous and cold but this is Kate. Her job is her life. And honestly, out of all three of the main characters, Kate is probably the straightest. The only thing coming to mind about this not being the case would be the concealment of her relationship with Richard Akers but even then, it wouldn’t have effected the case too much since Jayne and Kate never had that phone call. This idea that Kate is the straightest out of all three of them does change in S6 however, since she is the one to shoot Ryan and she lets Jo take the blame for it. But despite that, Kate still continues with her holier than thou attitude which we’ll delve into more later. 

I know I keep switching back and forth between Kate and Jo’s relationship but Jo really is integral to this development in Kate that I can’t not talk about it. There’s further proof that Kate is more interested in the welfare of Jo rather than wanting information out of her shown via this scene:  

Kate can be seen listening to the conversation between Jo and Steve but it isn’t until she hears Jo’s voice falter after hearing about Farida in prison does she then turn to look over at Jo. It peaks her interest and it explains why she brings up the topic of Farida at their next ‘date.’ 

“Look boss, I, uh, don’t want to speak out of term but…well, (Farida) claims that you two were close.” 

She’s not asking Jo a question here which is interesting. UCO!Kate would ask the question, she knows how to work people to get information out of them if she needed to. But she leaves this opened ended sentence that gives Jo the option to answer if she wants to (you could argue that since she knows how to work people then this is her way of working Jo but it doesn’t ever come across that way in my opinion). And she doesn’t, but this doesn’t necessarily bother Kate, at least not enough for her to push another question on Jo. 

“I imagine everyone’s got off on that little scenario. No life of their own so they pick holes in someone else’s. Especially if you’re a single woman.” 

“Yeah tell me about it, all it takes is a short haircut.”

Typical Kate to make a joke in this situation, it’s very much in character (made me think of her making a joke about putting Lindsay’s cat Bella into an evidence bag). The light joke doesn’t go down well with Jo and it causes her to back off. But we must remember that this is Kate’s first proper female friendship, we’ve only seen her in male dominated groups and she’s used to their way of making jokes. Prime example of that being half the jokes made by Dot and Nige during the first series, hardly stuff you want to hear but unfortunately it’s true to life. Being used to that sense of humour meant that Kate didn’t see much wrong with what she said until after she notices that Jo closes herself off: 

“Whatever you’ve heard Kate, it’s wrong. Farida’s a liar. That’s not me.”

“Okay.” 

Kate knows it’s a lie but doesn’t push it. Her obvious confusion is pointed out when Jo leaves the room: 

I can’t tell you what’s going on in Kate’s head but it’s probably a mixture of wondering why Jo had gone so cold on her suddenly, if she had said anything wrong and if everything that has happened between them in the past three episodes has been all in her head? 

But what happens in this scene and what is spoken about isn’t necessarily subtext. Okay they don’t actually say the word ‘lesbian’ or ‘bisexual’ it’s more alluded to. But this is a very obvious and deliberate conversation about Jo’s sexuality/Kate trying to figure out her own and wanting confirmation from Jo that she hasn’t just been imagining it. It’s done on purpose because they’re setting Kate and Jo up to go on that route - and once again, this is what makes it so annoying that they did get dropped to subtext by E7. They had painted a very clear picture in the first couple of episodes - Kate and Jo are falling in love with each other, it’s a doomed love story but it’s still a love story. 

Despite Jo being hurt by Kate’s not very well thought-out joke, she still carries a lot of trust in Kate by the fact she leaves her belongings on her seat. This seems minimal and unimportant but it rules out the idea that Kate was asking about Jo’s relationship with Farida for more information, from a case POV. If she had been and if she was interested in finding out if Jo really was as bent as AC-12 are making out then she would’ve seized that opportunity to take a look through Jo’s bag (we see her debate that opportunity when Tony leaves his phone behind after their drink at the pub in S1, but before she has chance to he’s already noticed he’s forgotten it and takes it back). But Kate is too busy wondering why Jo had lied to her, once again showing that she’s interested in Jo from a relationship standpoint. 

One thing I do love though and just from this alone we know that Kate and Jo are genuine is the fact that they bond over their hatred for Ian ‘what a twat’ Buckells: 

“I hope he’s going to give credit where it’s due.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“You brought Ryan onto the team, boss.”

“Not me. That was Buckells’ idea.”

I’m not going to underestimate Kate in this moment however because she does pull a very clever move. She doesn’t ask outright but she is able to get an answer to a question she might have been asking. Steve made a dig earlier on in the episode about how Jo may have employed Ryan onto MIT herself, allowing Ryan to interfere with the Gail Vella files. Kate doesn’t play up to that accusation but you can see that she keeps in mind, she doesn’t want to believe that Jo picked Ryan on purpose but there is always the chance that she has. So, she uses this opportunity to find out if that was the case. Knowing now that it wasn’t, she’s reassured and she feels more confident in defending Jo as we see in later episodes. 

And as previously discussed, Kate starts looking into Buckells after Jo’s quip about the Masonic Lodge. And once she gets all the information she needed she then takes it to Jo and we get this line: 

“I knew you’d come through for me.” 

There’s a perspective change, we’ve seen before how Kate actively pushes how she will be able to do something for someone in order to gain their trust, “I’ll make it disappear,” in S1 and once again, telling Lindsay that she’ll say she was there that night of the ‘alleged’ attack on Lindsay’s neighbour. But she doesn’t investigate Buckells on Jo’s behalf, or because she wants to gain Jo’s trust. It’s quite ironic really isn’t it? She’s always tried to gain trust from these ‘bent coppers’ by offering to cover their crimes - which they never take her up on to be honest - and then the one time she does something off her own back and without any of those intentions, she does - sort of - cover for a ‘bent copper.’ But as we know, Buckells does end up being bent so Kate wasn’t in the wrong to look into him, just a shame they never clicked on to his deeper corruption sooner. 

And then Jo follows up with the line: 

“I needed someone on my team I could trust completely. Someone with no chance of being bent. Who better than an ex-anticorruption officer?” 

Oh if Kate only knew the deeper meaning of that line at the time. But in the same way as The Mason dig Jo makes, this is confirmation to Kate that Jo isn’t bent and AC-12 have got it wrong. If Jo was bent, why would she encourage Kate to flush out the corruption? 

It isn’t until Episode 4 where we actually learn more about Kate’s reasonings for leaving AC-12 and it comes at no surprise that it is due to Ted’s indiscretions during S5. But what is surprising about Ted and Kate’s conversation is that Kate doesn’t hide her true feelings and tells Ted the truth: 

“You made your choice to move on, and I know that the disciplinary action against me was definitely a factor. It put you and Steve in a really difficult position.” 

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie.”  

But considering that Kate isn’t all that shy being honest in front of Ted it’s not that surprising. But given it is a tender, emotional topic for Kate I suppose you’d normally expect her to hide away her feelings but it’s quite nice that she doesn’t. She wants Ted to know that she hasn’t totally forgiven him for what he’s ‘alleged’ (at the time) to have done. 

And then we get the conversation between Kate and Steve and we get Kate’s second defence of Jo. And this time it is said with more confidence because she’s witnessed key moments first hand that have confirmed to her that Jo couldn’t be bent: 

“Without Jo we wouldn’t have got Buckells. Look, you haven’t seen the change in her I have. Now that Buckells is off her back, she’s on the Vella case 100 percent.” 

Typical love is blind moment there, ‘you don’t know them like I do.’ And the fact that she mentions that Buckells has been on Jo’s back for most of the case, is pulling it back to my previous mention of how Kate witnessing the argument between Buckells and Jo is so important - she’s now using it as an excuse to Steve about why Jo may have been lacking in her investigation into Gail Vella’s murder. 

(Just want to drop in and check that you’ve had drink or something, this is about halfway through I think so...continue).

Later on in the episode she’s seen defending Jo again: 

“He’s watching her.”

“Or meeting with her.”

“You got evidence of that?” 

We know why Kate is so defensive, she’s falling in love with Jo and she trusts her completely. But even still, it’s very interesting since she has never defended anyone quite so fiercely - at least not in private to Ted and Steve. 

In S1E5 Steve and Kate have this conversation about Tony Gates: 

“He didn’t kill her.”

“No?” 

It’s short and simple but enough to prove that no matter how much it appeared on the surface that Kate liked Tony it was all faked and she didn’t trust him in the slightest, going as far to say that he was capable of murder. 

We also see in this scene that Steve grows suspicious of Kate’s closeness to Jo (or at least that’s what it appeared to look like at the time and maybe if Kate and Jo’s relationship was acknowledged by Steve then this moment would’ve made more sense): 

There is also another paralleling conversation that Kate and Steve could’ve had in S6 from S1. And once again, this is in reference to Kate’s relationship with Tony: 

“Something happened between you two.” 

“Like what?” 

“Nothing, forget it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I shouldn’t have asked, it’s private.”

“Yeah, it is.” 

It’s very interesting that all the ‘moments’ between Kate and Tony were all faked on the basis of Kate wanting information between him but because of one comment from Nigel, Steve decided to pull Kate up on that accusation. Yet in S6, despite appearing suspicious of Kate and Jo’s relationship he never once brought it up? You could argue that Steve knows Kate better than anyone and he has learnt not to push her on those topics because she will just tell him to piss off, but, how many times has Kate slated Steve for getting involved with witnesses/suspects? That would’ve been Steve’s perfect opportunity to tear a strip off Kate and say that she is no angel and she’s not protected from falling in love with the wrong people. But alas Jed Mercurio would rather have focused on a straight relationship where one half only appeared in a handful of scenes <3

But back to the ‘You got evidence of that?’ Moment before I get too annoyed, the fact that Kate wants to reveal to Jo about Ryan’s movements is very telling. She wants to protect Jo and she genuinely believes that Jo is a good person/isn’t bent. We see that this trust runs even deeper when she goes ahead and tells Jo anyway despite Ted telling her not to - but she’s clever enough to not mention any collusion she has with AC-12.

“I need to talk to you in private.”

“Something wrong?”

“It’s not personal. It’s work.”

This is the first use of the word ‘personal’ from Kate and the fact she feels the need to state that what she wants to talk to Jo about isn’t to do with them and their relationship is…interesting. A few people have pointed about how the use of personal within Line of Duty could be argued to allude to relationships/love interests - Farida left for ‘personal reasons’ after all - for Kate to use it here and to make that separation between personal and professional shows that Kate and Jo’s relationship runs deeper than being just colleagues. We know that already from how they’ve acted around each other but now we’ve had it explicitly confirmed. 

Ironically though, this is the moment Jo starts taking a step back from Kate in order to protect her. She now knows that Ryan is watching her and if Ryan is watching her then he will be able to see what’s forming between herself and Kate and that puts Kate at the centre of danger. Look what happened to Farida, she was in a relationship with Jo and then she ended up in prison. Worse could’ve happened but Jo did what she could to protect Farida - she used harsh words to hurt Farida and push her away (a similar tactic used by Tony Gates to his wife), but because Farida kept pushing and ended up ratting on Jo, Jo had to take drastic action by planting those burner phones. 

And now it’s happening to Kate but she knows that Kate isn’t Farida and she won’t cave as easily - as we go on to see later on. 

That being said, Kate does give Jo a confidence boost. She tries to get rid of Ryan. But Kate’s support isn’t enough, it’s too late for Jo. But just the fact that one word from Kate gives her enough to stand up goes to show how much Jo has come to rely on Kate and how much she trusts her. 

But as we know, Jo gets threatened by Ryan so Jo does the only thing she knows how to do and that’s to push Kate away. 

She tells Kate to drop her issues with Ryan otherwise she’ll request a transfer for Kate. Kate mouths the word ‘ma’am’ completely unable to use her voice. She’s annoyed and evidently so. But she isn’t just annoyed at the fact Jo has told her that she would get rid of her if it came down to it. She’s annoyed because, in her eyes, Jo doesn’t know the danger she’s putting herself in by keeping Ryan on the team. (Of course we know that Jo knows Ryan and his connections but Kate doesn’t, she’s been defending Jo to high heaven and truly believes that Jo is innocent). Kate has seen firsthand the sorts of things Ryan has been involved in - she doesn’t learn just how much he’s involved until later on but she did see some of things he got up to as a kid and knows that he could be just as dangerous now as he was then. 

You could argue that she’s also annoyed at the fact that she went against AC-12 and people she inherently trusts in order to protect Jo and now she’s just got that thrown back in her face.

And then we move on to the big episodes. What happened at the end of E4 clearly created a rift between Kate and Jo, we see Kate trying to pull Jo to one side but gets rejected, and she’s hurt by that.  

Kate expresses her hurt to AC-12 in the following scene: 

“Jo’s become cold and distant towards me, I don’t know what’s going on in the background.” 

Shows that there’s a distance between them now but Kate is still sympathetic towards her. She doesn’t like that Jo is pushing her out and I think this is when it really starts to click for Kate that something isn’t right. She gets those suspicions evidently confirmed when Steve reveals that Jo’s DNA was found at Farida’s house and henceforth that she’s related to Tommy Hunter. (Also the fact that Kate is using ‘Jo’ here and not ‘Davidson’ as you would expect her to reveals her personal relationship with Jo).

Despite that distance, Kate is still defensive of Jo and still trusts her: 

“You’ve put Jo under surveillance, why?” 

“Our in-depth forensic examination of Farida Jatri’s home detected Davidson’s DNA.”   

Her face the moment she finds out that Jo lied to her about her relationship with Farida is heartbreaking but I think the fact that we see Chloe and Ted’s reaction to this also, is so important. They’re very clearly aware of the feelings between Kate and Jo even if it is never said, and we’re back to being annoyed that Kate and Jo’s relationship wasn’t acknowledged in E7. Everyone was aware of it so why wasn’t it mentioned?!

“Davidson’s DNA is a partial match for Tommy Hunter.” 

…

“I know, from Steve, that you’ve formed the view that Davidson isn’t bent, Kate. But I’m sorry, it appears that she’s pulled the wool over your eyes.” 

And then there’s the explicit confirmation that Steve is aware of Kate’s feelings towards Jo.  

She’s just been bombarded with a lot of information, information that goes against everything that she has believed in/defended for the past couple of episodes. She’s conflicted and doesn’t know what to think. Kate Fleming, who is usually calm and collected and in control of her emotions is now finding herself caught in a moment that she usually isn’t in. And now she’s wondering why she couldn’t see it, why she couldn’t see that something wasn’t right. She’s usually so sharp, quick to pick up on corruption - she spotted Dots pretty early on. But she knows, deep down, she knows and I think that scares her more. 

Kate has always pulled Steve up on his lack of integrity, for getting himself stuck in situations that would cloud his vision and now suddenly the tables have turned. It’s her getting in that situation. It’s her having her vision blurred because of her relationship with someone and she doesn’t know what to do. 

That being said, her trust in Jo is still very much there. It’s why she formulates the plan. She wants to prove that Steve and AC-12 are wrong about Jo, that just because she’s related to the OCG overlord doesn’t mean that she herself is corrupt. But she also needs to prove it to herself, she needs to know that she didn’t get it wrong. That she didn’t let a corrupt officer slip through her fingers because she fell in love. She’s an ex-anticorruption officer, she should be able to spot when a police officer is bent, more so than anyone else. 

She later reveals what her plan had been to prove Jo’s innocence to Ted and Steve, she wants to shout it from the rooftops that she was right about Jo and they were wrong: 

“Only one site was disclosed to MIT officers. However, I took the decision to inform DSU Davidson of all three possible sites.” 

“It’s a big call, Kate.” 

“Well, I believed it paid off, sir. You said yourself the information on Jo’s family history strongly suggests she’s colluding with organised crime, but that doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen first hand. We needed to know one way or another. She had plenty of time to tip off the OCG and she didn’t. As far as I’m concerned that’s proof she isn’t bent.” 

It’s the fourth defence of Jo and is said with even more confidence because now she has evidence to back it up. She knows for definite that Jo isn’t bent and her conscience had been appeased; she didn’t get it wrong.  

And even after all that, after everything Kate does, Ted still hits her with the “Steve’s right, Kate.” She’s undermined yet again. She wants Ted and Steve to trust and like Jo as much as she does because she loves Jo. 

And then we get another hostile scene between Kate and Jo but Kate is still trying to let Jo know that she is on her side, that she has her back, that she has spent months defending Jo’s arse to AC-12 and Steve: 

“I’m telling you the truth, Jo, because I trust you with it.” 

Jo fires back by telling Kate to request a transfer but this has come after a warning look from Ryan. Jo knows what’s going to happen next and she wants to get Kate out of the way before she’s asked the unforgivable, she evens mentions that AC-12 would take her back in the hopes that that would be enough to turn Kate. 

“You’ve been distant with me for days, is this personal?” 

“I’m your senior officer, I should be distant.” 

“I thought we were friends, what’s happening here?”

“So you can tell AC-12?”

“No, I wouldn’t tell them personal stuff.”

And there’s the ‘personal’ again, twice. They’re talking about their relationship, Kate is making it about their relationship. She’s trying to tell Jo that the reason she trusts her so much is because she loves her and that’s something she wouldn’t tell AC-12 because it doesn’t concern them. 

“And as for requesting a transfer, I respectfully decline. I’m not leaving.”  

That is very much in character for Kate, sticking to her true stubborn self there. But she’s angry at Jo because she won’t let Kate help her. Jo is angry because Kate doesn’t realise the danger she’s putting herself in - a nice parallel to the other conversation they shared where the roles are reversed and Jo was trying to help Kate by getting her to drop the subject of Ryan and Kate was annoyed because Jo was blind to the danger she was in. 

Kate’s ‘I’m not leaving,’ does have much more meaning to it than we first realise however. After shooting Ryan, she runs off with Jo - she has no reason to, she was lawfully carrying a firearm and serving her duty as an officer. But she gives Jo the chance to tell her everything, she doesn’t leave her side and does everything she can to protect Jo i.e the car chase scene. She takes Jo’s side despite everything and sticks to her words of ‘I’m not leaving.’

Later on, Jo manipulates Kate, playing on the one thing Kate wants to address, “The personal issues we discussed,” she knows that’s the only way Kate will come out with her (at least, that’s what she thinks). Kate is desperate to explore whatever is going on between them and Jo plays on that.  

And judging by Kate’s hopeful face, it seems to do the trick. Kate’s hopeful face being that she thinks Jo might actually open up to her and tell her the truth, and invite Kate into whatever is going on in her life/head. Poor Kate.  

She knows deep down that something isn’t right but she goes along with it because she trusts Jo so much and I think she truly believes that she’s gotten through to her. 

There is a dilemma going on within Kate here, she wants to trust Jo but knows deep down she can’t because of the AC-12 officer that is embedded in her (Ted’s ‘That’s my officer out there,’ coming into play here). She keeps the gun on her person which shows despite her constant defence, she’s still suspicious. However, she doesn’t phone Steve until after she’s arrived at the address showing that the trust for Jo is still there. Obviously that changes when she realises that the location is dodgier than she probably first thought. 

“Let’s not hang around here Jo, we’d rather be inside with a glass of wine.”

Sticking to her character once again here, trying to be hopeful, trying to be right about Jo’s character. 

“Jo wanted to give you a way out.” 

This line from Ryan is crucial for Kate’s trust in Jo. It may get lost amongst the other, more pressing events, but even just hearing first that Jo tried to save her probably brings her some reassurance in the long run. From this line alone she knows that Jo never intended to kill her and was coerced into setting the scene up. 

“I’ve done my bit. I don’t have to stay here and watch.” 

Jo was only told to ‘get rid’ of Kate. She was never told to kill her. She was the one to entrap Kate but she was never going to be the one to kill her, that was on Ryan. This is another crucial moment adding to the reason why Kate would run away with Jo and give her the chance to talk. 

E6 opens up with Kate being her typical self and taking control of the situation. But even so, she’s struggling. As I’ve mentioned a lot throughout this, Kate is normally calm and collected, she very rarely lets her emotions get in the way of what she wants to do. But there’s no room for her to hide from her emotions here, she hasn’t had the time to compartmentalise them, she hasn’t had the time to process and understand them. And that unsettles her, she wants to take control - and she does as best as she can - but she’s faltering. The person who she loves has just lured her to her death and she doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“You lured me there to be murdered.” 

Confirms that she knows that Jo wasn’t going to be the one that actually murdered her, just that she was the one to lure her. 

“Kate.”

“Didn’t you?”

She cuts Jo off, she’s angry and understandably so. But because she hasn’t had time to process her emotions she isn’t being as cool as she normally would be in a high-stress situation.  

She is really struggling and it’s understandable of course. And then we have that scene:

“I always worried you were pretending.” 

“Pretending?” 

“You know what I mean…to lure me into trusting you.” 

Kate’s ‘pretending?’ Is more offence at the fact Jo felt she had to suggest it - Kate was far from pretending, her behaviour across the series is enough to prove that she is in love with Jo. I also think it’s to do with the fact that Jo had the audacity to ask the question now, of all situations to bring up the topic, Jo could’ve picked a better moment. But Jo doesn’t let up, using Kate’s preferred tactic of getting information out of people:

“You still won’t answer, were you lying to me Kate?”

“This is about you Jo, not me.” 

Deflecting the question that she has every right to deflect, given the circumstances. But she neither confirms nor denies said question - she’s trying to keep control of the situation, she’s trying not to let her emotions get in the way of what she needs to do. She needs to find out the truth, she needs Jo to tell her everything before the law inevitably catches up with them. 

She turns the question back to Jo, asking if she was the one lying, that maybe she didn’t want Kate on the team at all. She then goes on to reveal that she knows Jo lied about her relationship with Farida. It’s coming from a place of anger and frustration and like I said, Kate is well within her rights to feel like that.  

Then we have Kate doing something surprising, she drives away as she hears police sirens. I’ve been trying to place why she was so determined to keep Jo away from the police, to give Jo that chance to explain herself but then all of a sudden, Kate hanging the phone up on Carmichael made it all make sense. 

The moment Steve told Kate that the observations on Jo and Ryan had been pulled as a result of Osbourne and Carmichael, she knew that something bigger was at play here. If Osbourne is the real H/The Fourth Man (extremely bloody likely) and Buckells was just the messenger, then it’s fair to say that it was actually Osbourne who ordered Kate’s death. And if that is the case then it makes sense he would pull the observations off, meaning that there would be no witnesses to the murder. But Kate’s not a stupid woman, she’s worked for AC-12 for God knows how long and she’s been part of the investigation into H/The Fourth man for just as long. She knows it’s someone higher up in the force and that information from Steve told her that something was going to happen at the meeting. 

But upon hearing that Jo tried to give her a way out, she knows that she can trust Jo, that she is just another pawn in this sick game, that she’s vulnerable and in need of protecting/saving. She must guess pretty early on, that it is The Fourth Man that is manipulating Jo and she knows that Jo isn’t going to reveal that in an interview, especially if it is someone high up. So that’s why she takes Jo out of the situation, that’s why she sacrifices her credibility and her integrity, as Ted said Ryan is a ‘sprat’ - he’s not important - she can get more information about the top man from Jo. Kate gives Jo that chance to talk and to prove herself before she is silenced by Osbourne and Carmichael. It helps that Jo trusts Kate and wants to tell Kate the truth. 

And then we have the emotion, oh the emotion:

“Jesus Christ, Steve’s in on it.”

She’s lost control of the situation, she’s lost control of her emotions and everything has just come tumbling down on her. And for a brief moment she feels as though everyone has turned on her: Jo, Steve, Ted, everyone she trusts most in the world and she can’t bear it. I can’t even begin to imagine how utterly alone she must’ve felt in that moment.  

“You bastard, Steve!”

“Stay there, Kate.”

…

“You gave me up! You told them!”

“Kate, I give you my word, I didn’t.”

“That’s bullshit.”  

“I promise you, I’ll get you to safety. Both of you.”

Kate doesn’t comply until after she’s assured that Steve will protect both her and Jo - shows that despite everything she still has a loyalty to Jo and she still wants to protect her. Despite what’s happened she can see that Jo is vulnerable and has been used her entire life, she gets that impression just from the little bit that Jo reveals to her. She feels for Jo, sort of in the same way she felt for Dot but this is on a much deeper level and to be fair, Dot did worse things than Jo. Kate might be an expert at compartmentalising her emotions but she still has a heart - we see it in glimpses across the whole show but it comes in tenfolds where Jo is concerned, as a result of how they’ve been set up. As much as she’s angry and upset and how much she feels betrayed by Jo, Kate still wants her to be safe and protected. Kate knows that Jo has been trying to get out of the clutches of the OCG i.e employing Kate in the first place. Jo holding the gun and taking the blame gives Kate enough assurance that Jo is being true to her word when she says she wanted out/didn’t want to kill Kate. That’s why she wants Jo safe, because she believes in her. 

Being put in that cell on her own now gives Kate the chance to compartmentalise her emotions, she has time to think over the events of the night. She has time to think about her feelings for Jo, the love, the loss, the betrayal. We see that this works, later on when Patricia tells her that Jo had taken the blame for Ryan’s death.   

She’s back to her usual stoic self, emotions cut off. She can’t allow herself to react about what Patricia has told her because it would give too much away, if she reacted then it would make it even more obvious that Jo wasn’t the one who shot Ryan. She can’t even show that she’s relieved or grateful that Jo had taken such sacrifice for her/kept to her word. 

“Are you sure you’re okay? I know nobody’s coming after you over Ryan Pilkington’s shooting, but if you ever need to talk about it.” 

That is not the face of someone who is fine. She’s very clearly trying desperately to push her emotions down, put them to one side because she has a job to do. Jo has given her this chance to solve the case and she sure as hell isn’t going to let her down. 

“Did she say anything about her family history? She told me her dad was a police officer.” 

“No. Never even gave us that much.” 

Proving my earlier point that Jo inherently trusts Kate and was willing to give her more details before they were interrupted. 

“She’s scared, Steve. After what happened to Tommy, Dot, Lakewell, never mind John Corbett.”

“That’s why we’ve got her on the VPU at Brentiss, security cameras monitoring access to her cell.” 

Even now, after everything Jo put her through, Kate is still defending her. She still has Jo’s back and it just makes it even more annoying that Steve doesn’t bring up the Jo conversation to Kate. He has seen Kate defend her this whole series, he knows that Jo lured Kate to her death and now he’s there, listening to Kate defending Jo and worrying over the fact that she’s scared and vulnerable. I know at this point there’s a sense of trust between Jo and Steve (as a result of Kate) and Steve is much more aware of the situation Jo has been in her whole life, he does feel for her and understands Kate’s defence of her. But the fact that he’s not even suspicious of how Kate’s opinion hasn’t changed despite learning of Jo’s collusion with the OCG and almost being killed, just highlights how Jed was so quick to drop Kate’s development, pushing it to the side for the sake of making a political point. 

And here comes the complete reversal of all the development Kate has had across this series, and more to the point, the memory loss she seems to go through. 

“The stuff he’s hiding. I never thought I’d look at the gaffer like this.” 

But she did? In S5 when they were only suspecting that Ted may have ratted John Corbett out to the OCG. She was willing to report it, that was how much she believed it. And now she’s acting as if that never happened? 

“Maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie.” 

“Come off it Steve. How many times have we criticised coppers that’ve took retirement to dodge disciplinary action?”

It’s a valid point and strengthens my previous mention of how she might be the ‘straightest’ out of all three of them. She is the embodiment of AC-12, truth and integrity - or at least she likes to believe that she is. Kate often sits in a place of judgement and thinks of herself as an innocent being that could do no wrong. This is hardly the case, she has made plenty of mistakes and although she hasn’t got herself into the vast number of predicaments that Steve has found himself in, she isn’t exactly free from this sense of ‘corruption.’ It does get pointed out to her on two occasions, the first from Richard Akers, “Holier than thou doesn’t suit you Kate,” and the second from Roz Huntley, “Hardly holier than thou.” 

The fact it’s mentioned twice and is very much the same quote shows that this attitude Kate upholds, is a part of her character. And we see it again with this moment: 

“She’s got a right to know what happened to her husband.” 

“Maybe she already does. She might be blackmailing the gaffer.” 

“Steph? No.” 

“You seem pretty sure…what?” 

“We’ve become…”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Steve.” 

Before I get into the main issue, I think it’s made pretty obvious in this scene that Jo isn’t the only one Kate is being cold towards, it’s everyone. She’s coming across as very cynical and unsympathetic. But you could argue that this is Kate, she’s almost the stereotypical ice-queen who has no emotions and doesn’t care who she hurts which, if this was pre-S6 Kate I would say is very much in character. 

But this isn’t pre-S6 Kate. S6 has shown the more emotional side to Kate, it’s seen her with her walls broken down, she’s opened up, fallen in love. And I know the events of the previous episode would be enough for her to put those walls up again but surely, if you are going to go to the effort of developing a character you could at least show the change that this development has had on her? 

I would’ve fully expected her to shrink away after what happened, I think that’s a completely normal reaction, even more so where Kate is involved. But given how she has gone through things in this series that she hasn’t gone through before, I would expect a different reaction from her? More emotional or more obvious that she’s trying to hold herself together. But I don’t see that, I just see her back as her S1-5, AC-12 self. 

It’s so hard because it makes total sense for Kate to revert back to her old self, she’s been burned and she’s hurting. But like I said, if she’s gone through this development over the course of S6, it’s set up in a way to make you think that she’s not going to handle this situation as she normally would but she ends up doing exactly that - any development Jed has put her through has now been reversed. 

But my main issue with this scene between Kate and Steve brings me back to my earlier point. Steve is shown to be aware of the possible thing that’s happening between Kate and Jo - little looks when Kate is defending Jo, the fact that Ted mentioned how Steve had been talking to him about Kate’s trust for Jo. 

Now Kate, throughout the entirety of show, has consistently berated Steve on his lack of control when it comes to women. She has torn a strip off him at every opportunity, when the situation with Lindsay occurred, she was so unbelievably angry and annoyed with him, that he had just quite possibly ruined the entire case because “Steve can’t keep it in his pants,” (thank you Lindsay Denton for summarising that up perfectly). 

This would’ve been the PERFECT opportunity for Steve to turn it back around on Kate. He’s aware of the situation and he would finally be able to pull Kate up on something that he is known for doing and something Kate never stops short to criticise him on. He could’ve taken that opportunity to humble Kate and make her aware of the fact that she’s not innocent and she’s certainly not free from falling/being interested/getting involved with the wrong person. A simple “What and Jo’s different?” From Steve would’ve sufficed. We don’t even need a verbal reaction from Kate, just a look that one, would’ve acknowledged Kate and Jo’s relationship and two, would’ve put Kate in her place and make her realise that she should be the last person to pass judgment on Steve since she has now found herself in a very similar position.

What’s more, and I have mentioned this before and it’s what makes E7 so frustrating, Kate and Jo have been constantly paralleled to Steph and Steve throughout the series, all the romantic scenes, alluding to relationships bubbling for our two main characters. So that scene is where I would expect the parallel to occur again but it doesn’t? And I just have to ask, why on earth would you parallel these relationships, show their romantic scenes side by side, have their development evolve in similar ways just to then only focus on one relationship? 

Okay the possibility of a relationship occurring between Kate and Jo went out of the window the moment we knew Jo was colluding with the OCG but Jed still took the time to explore it, to delve into it. So for it to not even be mentioned or acknowledged, I just think, why waste our time if it’s going to end up not being relevant? I mean the fact that a heterosexual relationship where one half got barely any screen time took precedence and verbal acknowledgment (aka not subtext) over a queer relationship occurring between two of the main characters of the series? I don’t even need to say it. 

But if subtext was all we’re going to get for Kate and Jo in E7 then I’ll just get back to analysing and reading between the lines because Jed can’t stick to and acknowledge storylines that he has spent the entire series building up and I need to make sense of it for some peace of mind. 

I’m going to call this outfit the ‘Proving Jo Davidson is innocent’ outfit since Kate wears it when she hatches her plan to prove just that and again, when she’s gathering evidence that would mean Jo would be able to get witness protection.   

I promise you that these are separate scenes but honestly the fact that we have the same shot with Kate sitting in the same place, from the same angle only just emphasises my point even more. This was Kate on her proving Jo is innocent mission that she never let slip. Her goal hasn’t changed since E5, but perhaps now she is even more determined because she now knows that it’s what Jo wants. Jo got Kate on the team for a reason and now that is what Kate is doing. 

And because I’ve *briefly* touched on the fact that Kate/Jo are always paralleled to Steve/Steph I think it’s only right that I point out how in both of the scenes shown above, there is a Steve/Steph scene paralleled to it, either before or after. Both the Steve/Steph scenes taking place in Steve’s car with Steph on the phone/over voicemail with the scenes showing that Steve is unsure about his relationship with Steph - which you could argue is the exact opposite to Kate and Jo. Kate might be unsure of her feelings and how deep they go but she is sure of one thing and that Jo is innocent and will do everything she can to prove it. 

We go on to next to see AC-12 discussing new messages that have come through entailing The Fourth Man’s plans for Jo. Kate refers to her as “Davidson” a stark contrast to how she has previously referred to her in the presence of Steve and Ted but this is most likely to do with the fact that has had to cut her feelings off for the sake of saving Jo so she is trying to make it as impersonal as possible. 

I won’t even talk about how easy it could’ve been to include a scene between Kate and Jo in that ambush scene. Before or even after, if Jed wanted to keep that element of surprise that AC-12 had managed to intercept before the ambush could take place. A simple moment where Kate went into the van and said “You alright?” would’ve sufficed. 

“You’re safe now Jo.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean really safe. To apply for witness protection. All my notes, all my records will show that you acted under the control and coercion of others. You can live the life you should’ve lived. Be free to be the person that you really are.” 

I have spoken about this before but will briefly go into it again. ‘The person’ that Kate is referring to is the person Kate has been defending for this whole series. Kate was the only person to see through Jo’s walls and glimpse the person that existed outside of the clutches of the OCG. Jo could be herself around Kate, probably felt liberated and had moments where she realised that Kate is something she could’ve had if she wasn’t stuck in that life, so it’s only right that Kate was the one to set her free - even if it’s at the expense of her own feelings but we’ll get into that now.

Although Kate is coming across as ‘cold’ during this scene, she isn’t unsympathetic. Everything she is saying to Jo is coming from a compassionate place. It’s vastly different from the previous scenes shared by Kate and Jo so it feels more harsh but Kate is having to cut her feelings off to provide the protection for Jo and to henceforth save her. She still cares deeply for Jo but she’s not allowed to show that, and it’s more for her own sake than anything. 

If Kate allows herself, for even a moment, to let that emotion escape then it’s all going to come out. Everything she has have ever felt for Jo will be free and then she won’t be able to let Jo go because then it will be even harder. She can’t let herself come to terms over what she feels for Jo because she has to set Jo free, she can’t be selfish, it’s either her feelings or it’s Jo’s freedom. And considering she has spent so long defending Jo it’s obvious what option she favours. 

Then she gets straight back to the point, not allowing her facade to drop:

“If you tell us who the top man is.” 

Now remember how I said to remember Roz’s quote because it will be important later? Here’s why it’s important, “You’d give up anything to get to the top.” ‘Top’ in the context of Roz and Kate’s conversation is referring to Kate wanting to better her career but ‘Top’ could also refer to the fact that Kate, along with AC-12, have spent years digging into institutionalised corruption to find out who the orchestrator behind it all is, and now she’s so close to finding out who the ‘top’ man is, because of Jo. 

You could argue that this idea completely reverses the points I’ve just made and offers the alternative that Kate only cut her emotions off in order to get to the top - which is what Roz’s quote alludes to. But I do think that both standpoints can coincide with one another. She cuts her feelings off for Jo so she can save her, but because she has had to do that, that makes her able to dig for information and solve the case and hence find out who the top man is. 

And therein is the last scene that Kate and Jo share and to quote Kate Fleming on this one “Thanks for making me feel like shit.”   

But Kate’s story isn’t over just yet so we will continue. 

“Sir, during an unlawful search an item was found that relates to the sum of £50,000. You’re not under caution so anything you say to us at this time can’t be used in evidence. That’s loyalty right there.”

I know she’s having a dig at Ted’s previous comment about loyalty to Steve whilst he simultaneously reveals Steve’s issues from across the series to Kate, but I also like to think it’s a dig at the fact that despite Ted continuously undermining Kate, she has still stuck by him and still fought his corner - to an extent. But the fact she does stand up to Ted and isn’t afraid to do so is something I have to give her, she is staying very true to her character there. 

I think this has been pointed out before and although it probably is a reach but this is Kate’s reaction after Ted says “…of a woman I cared deeply about…” 

I do think that this is a moment where we’re meant to assume that Kate could be thinking about Jo as a result of Ted’s words. The focus is on Kate’s reactions rather than Steve’s so I think it’s a fair assumption/association to make and it’s not out of the realms of possibilities. 

“If I decide to come back.”

“Will you?”

“Well someone’s got to keep you lot in line.” 

She just can’t stay away from it, no matter how hard she tries. AC-12 will always pull her back. 

“You don’t realise what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

It’s a loaded statement from Kate and comes with many meanings to it, her missing AC-12 ( to an extent) and wanting back in, her missing her friendship with Steve and now losing Jo without having the chance to tell her how she really feels/that she wasn’t pretending. 

“You just going to stick to the one drink?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Still early enough to drive up to Liverpool.” 

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to keep seeing Steph.”

“But you want to?”

“Yeah. But what chance has it got?”

“You wanna be careful mate, you’re going to end up on your own.”

Having to read between the lines here again but Kate is encouraging Steve to go for Steph because she can’t go for Jo. It makes sense when you consider how much those two relationships have been paralleled against each other, one was doomed from the beginning but at least the other has a chance to *be* something. And this conversation could’ve been spun differently to acknowledge Kate and Jo’s relationship also:

“But what chance has it got?”

“More chance than me and Jo.”

It’s really that simple. I’m fine with subtext, it works sometimes. Not everything has to be said. But across the whole series Kate and Jo have been everything but. Everything that has happened between them has been obvious and deliberate. So the fact it got dropped to subtext in the last episode doesn’t make sense? If their relationship from the beginning had been pure subtext then fine it works, but like I said, it hasn’t. Kate and Jo’s relationship needed to be addressed and acknowledged, otherwise why the set up if you’re never going to bring it up properly? 

Okay, you can argue that it dropping to subtext and having to read between the lines is a representation for how Kate is having to suppress her feelings for Jo but your audience deserve better than that Jed. And not to sound like a stuck record but you don’t have your character go through massive development for her just to end up as the exact same person she was before she went through said development. She has to change, even if it’s just a little bit. No one stays the same after what Kate has been through. 

 Which brings us to the therapy scene. 

“Me and my partner are separated.” 

I have also already spoken about the vagueness of this line so won’t go into it too much but, subtext again, she could also be referring to Jo. I would just like to point out as well that music that underplays the moment in which she talks about Steve is very different to the music that underplays the date scenes between Kate and Jo and the scenes between Steph and Steve so you could say that that rules out any allusion to a possible romance between Kate and Steve (and honestly thank God because there’s more sexual tension between two planks of wood than there are between Kate and Steve and if they EVER went down that route, another type of anger would escape my body because, just let women and men be friends without it being a *thing* please).

She looks so washed out and unhappy in this scene - a striking comparison to how she looked during E2. 

She looks drained but it’s understandable considering that this is the first time that’s properly opened up and given way to accepting her emotions and feelings - even if she isn’t addressing the elephant in the room. So, you could argue that this scene is that small change we have from Kate as a result of her development from across the series. But given that this scene, at a push, lasts 30 seconds, it’s not enough. I’m not expecting a half an hour scene of Kate opening up about everything but something a bit more than a nod to her kid and husband that she has only mentioned once throughout the entire series - along with a couple of text messages in the first episode. It just felt as though this scene was chucked in because they couldn’t show Steve going to therapy without showing Kate going as well, considering that they’ve both been through similar ordeals. 

But I’ll take it because it’s still part of Kate’s development, in a sense.

Digging into it more, it’s very obvious that Kate has lost the happiness we seen her with at the beginning of the series, she’s lost her warmth - a warmth that was depicted via Jo through clothing and scenes they shared together. There is a warm light in that scene but it’s situated behind Kate, a visual representation of how Jo is in her past now and how the loss of warmth in her life has left her cold and miserable - which further explains how she comes across in this episode. 

I’m going to return my earlier point of Kate not necessarily being happy at AC-12 here. I’ve mentioned throughout how Kate is AC-12 through and through and she will never truly escape it. She goes back to AC-12 in the end because it’s her home, it’s where she feels safe and comfortable but that doesn’t mean to say it makes her happy. And I think the fact that when we see her at the end of this episode and we see that she is the most unhappy she has been this entire series, it’s meant to signify that (and like I mentioned before, there were a few moments throughout S5 & S6 that emphasise how she might feel that undercover work/being in anti-corruption might just not be for her anymore). 

Kate set Jo free from the OCG but who’s going to set Kate free from AC-12? Jo did for some time, made Kate realise the life she could have outside of anti-corruption but that got ripped away from her and now she’s gone back to them, tail between her legs and probably feeling even worse than she had when she left in the first place.

Questions I wanted to address throughout this piece, is Kate Fleming a master manipulator?

Yes, to an extent. She knows how to use people and their feelings to her advantage. She knows how to get information out of people, we have seen that time and time again across the show, but it’s only ever under the guise of being a UCO and half the time I don’t think she enjoys it all that much (as we see in S5 with her allusions to that there). Outside of being undercover Kate is a genuine person, we see that via the connection she makes with Jo. She never pushed Jo for information, they built up trust between them and shared a bond. Jo worries that Kate would go running back to AC-12 with all the dirt on Jo but Kate reassures her, “I would never tell them personal stuff.” And she doesn’t. We know that she could, we see her do it with Tony Gates the moment she finds out the extent of his relationship with Jackie Laverty. But the fact she doesn’t, is telling us that outside of being undercover, Kate, despite what people might think, is an authentic person who can form relationships without it being faked for beneficial reasons.

Are her motives clear?

Not always. On the surface she is quite a hard person to read but once you pick her apart and piece everything together, you realise that she is an incredibly smart woman who, despite holding her cards close to her chest, plays them very well. She doesn’t reveal things easily which is testament to her being a good undercover officer but when you dig into it, I think her motives can be clear. She’s very career-driven, often putting that above everything else. She always want to get the job done and to the best of her ability. As I’ve mentioned throughout, she is the embodiment of AC-12, integrity and truth. She very much holds up the law. 

That doesn’t make her innocent and doesn’t mean she doesn’t bend the truth/law to her all the time either. But I do think that’s Jeds way of saying that no matter how hard you try to be good, you’re always going to end up in tricky situations that you have to worm your way out of, as depicted by Steve’s quote in S2 “Maybe there are some people out there who always tell the truth and ones who always lie. The rest of us choose our moments.” 

How has Kate been developed across the show? 

In short, she hasn’t been developed all that much and where she has been developed it’s been reversed by the end of it. From S1-5 she remains pretty much the same person, not much bothers her or effects her. Partly think that’s because of her burying her emotions and her trauma but I don’t want to give Jed too much credit where it isn’t due. 

S6 was where we seen the most development from Kate. We seen a whole new side to her, we seen her experiencing things for the first time, having feelings that have never been delved into where Kate has been concerned. S6 Kate felt miles apart from S1-5 Kate, or at least she did until E7. Kate had the potential to be fleshed out and to be shown that not even Line of Duty’s resident heroine is free from trauma and emotions but that, like I’ve said, got scrapped for the sake of a political point. We needed more than a 30 second therapy scene to address the issues and dilemmas going on in Kate’s head. We needed the relationship that she had been involved in, that had been set up, to be acknowledged and addressed. That relationship with Jo was so integral and important to Kate’s development, it needed to be brought up, even if it was just in relation to Kate’s development and Kate’s character. 

Jo and Kate were never going to end up in a relationship, it was doomed from the beginning but it still brought about a change in Kate and her character deserved to have that tied up and acknowledged to an extent, at the very least. We, as an audience, deserved that also. Kate went through so much in this series and the fact that all we got was a 30 second scene therapy scene to address it is, quite frankly, insulting.

I don’t care that Buckells was H, looking back on it’s obvious. I understood the political point of it and Jed was making a good point, in a sense. But with shows like Line of Duty, where it’s main characters remain constant throughout you have a due diligence to develop them and flesh them out into 3D characters who have good sides and bad sides - and that goes for ALL of them, Kate included. And she is but to an extent because she isn’t explored enough. Jed will start it, pave ways she could go and then forgets about it. As much as we all follow along for the plot and wanting to find out who these corrupt officers are, we also become invested in the characters, we want to know more about them. We want to see them go through things, we want to be able to relate to them and go on journeys with them. 

As much as we watch for the plot, we’re also watching for the characters. Like come on how many of us shouted “Oh God Steve, watch your back!” When the van toppled over and not “Oh shit they’re about to be ambushed!” I could go on but you get my point. The main plot is interesting and well thought out but we’re also watching the characters and we want to see them be developed with justice. 

Kate Fleming is a complex character and she deserved to be fully developed throughout S6 (and the whole show considering, you know, she’s a main character) and didn’t deserve to have that development fizzled out for political point scoring.  

And if you made it this far, well done. Have a drink. 

[cocogukkie]

2020 in review: kdramas (the heart fluttering, the disappointing, the saviors of 2020)

it’s december 31st! the new year is quite literally upon us (some of y’all are already in 2021) and my procrastinating self has chosen to upload this today. i’ve always loved these rec lists and I wanted to do one for 2020! this year was a rollercoaster for kdramas with some excellent ones and some not so excellent ones. i watched all of these in 2020 but not all of them were released in 2020.

if you want to use my questions to make your own list please do!! or give your favs in the tags, i’d love to read them. (fair warning, some of these have multiple answers bc i just can’t choose one!!)

drama that made me laugh

When The Camellia Blooms (2019)

i finally got around to watching when the camellia blooms this year and it. was. so. funny. oh my goodness, the comedic timing in so many scenes was pure excellency and im kinda mad at myself that i didn’t watch this last year. this isn’t just a comedy for those who are interested, its a thriller/romance but its also so fucking funny. definitely watch this if you want to laugh (and be touched bc the emotional scenes in this one are beautiful)

drama that made me cry

Sweet Home (2020)

hahah….. um this one is gonna go to sweet home friends. i went into this one with zero expectations and the first couple episodes didn’t really wow me? but i kept watching and holy shit fam. this show really picks up story-wise around ep 4 and makes the viewer love a lot of these initially unlikable characters. all i can say is that the end was devastating for me and i cried quite a bit. (warning, there are a lot of mature themes in this one so make sure you look for trigger warnings or send me an ask and i’ll list them all out for you) 

best OST

Itaewon Class (2020) 

i loved the ost for itaewon class!! the music is just so inspirational and pump up music, its so good. my favorites are ‘you make me back’ by woosung and ‘start’ by gaho.

drama with chemistry royalty (aka the best couple) 

i have three for this one because i just cannot choose one. 

It’s Okay To Not Be Okay (2020)

we recognize this one as one of the best things to come out of 2020. go moon young and moon kang tae have some of the best chemistry i have ever seen in a drama couple. i waited on the edge of my seat every single week for the next couple of episode just so i could fawn over these two. they work so well together, lift each other up, and so fucking funny together and support one another. while they’re not the chillest couple (lmao) they’re most certainly one with the most personality. they’re so cute and bicker and they just get each other. who could ask for more.

Flower of Evil (2020)

our badass mom and dad 😭😭. this was another peak drama that came out this year and our married partners-in-crime-but-not-really had amazing chemistry. baek hee sung and cha ji won were so cute as a married couple but they were even more precious later on in the drama after certain things unfolded (no spoilers). they both just get each other and protected one another as well as on the most precious kdrama children this year, their daughter eunha. they were so wholesome, flower of evil is so very worth a watch.

Into The Ring (2020)

this was one of the more underappreciated kdramas of the year but hoo buddy was the main couples chemistry top notch. they were so friggin cute and i just couldn’t. goo se ra is highkey one of the best female characters i’ve ever seen, she’s absolute chaos, lawful chaos, but chaos nonetheless. her other half, seo gong myung is opposite from her as lawful neutral. he’s just along for the ride that is se ra and loves her. they’re both so very fond and protective of each other and back each other up!! very very cute and you’ll definitely replay more than a couple of their scenes together.

most disappointing

Record of Youth (2020)

it’s sad but true… i went into this one with so much hope and excitement (i was riding off that ‘psycho but its okay’ high) and i was vastly disappointed. the plot mostly focused on the male lead, and there wasn’t much characterization for the female lead which i didn’t like. honestly, i only cared about maybe 3-4? characters in the whole drama. the rest were absolutely terrible or plain boring and i ended up skipping eps 14 and 15 and just watched the finale. i would not recommend tbh.

drama you can’t really get through

Crash Landing on You (2019)

this one is absolutely on me, i want so badly to love this one. but i just… can’t seem to get past ep 2? i’ve tried!! i swear, but i just cannot get through it. maybe in 2021, i can try again and i’ll enjoy it more.

drama everyone else liked but was meh

Kairos (2020)

i though kairos was a bit predictable tbh. i know those of us who did end up watching it really liked it but maybe its because i watch so many crime/mystery shows that this one didn’t really do it for me. the writing is quite solid and everything connects well, i would recommend that those who don’t really watch thrillers, to watch this one. (also the friendship between the female lead and her two friends is suuuper cute and worth it alone to watch kairos)

favorite romance

It’s Okay To Not Be Okay (2020)

yeah… this one wins again lol. what can i say, i just loved it so much and the main theme of the show is romance (its also a comedy and a mental health/healing drama) all i can say is watch this if you haven’t yet, its definitely worth it!! 

favorite mystery

Memorist (2020)  & Watcher (2019)

i really enjoyed these two mystery dramas. both were super fun to watch and very kinda unique in their own ways. i liked memorist because it was lowkey funny and i liked the relationships between the characters, but most importantly i couldn’t guess the main antagonist by the end! i really thought i knew who it was and then i was completely wrong lmao. watcher was also very good, the main trio had really good chemistry and i really cared about all the characters. (also i’ll never say no to watching seo kang joon) plus the plot twists threw me a bit at the end which is always a feeling i welcome, i love being surprised and wrong (as long as it makes sense)

favorite slice of life

Hospital Playlist (2020)

oh my goodness, i was late to the hospital playlist party and i regret it because this show is so. so. good. its just a slice of life following 5 friends who are doctors and work at the same hospital together but its so much more than that. this is honestly one of the first shows i’ve seen that are optimistic? in the show, every time i thought a plot was going to play out a certain way (usually negatively, as tends to be life unfortunately) it surprised me by taking the more optimistic wholesome route. characters in subplots changed for the better, became more understanding, chose to do the right thing, etc. if you want a feel good drama where the main characters have wonderful platonic chemistry and just care about each other but is also super funny, watch hospital playlist!! (season 2 is coming out early 2021 and im so pumped)

favorite fantasy

The Untamed (2019)

this one is a cdrama but i watched it in 2020, mostly because of how many people on the internet were adamant that the rest of us watch this and ngl they were v right. the untamed was very very good and im really glad i gave it a chance and watched it, its also my first cdrama ever. the chemistry between the male leads is honestly what makes this show and its worth the 50? i think? episodes. to be completely honest the fanfiction for the show are peak and if you do watch this, go straight to ao3 and you will not be disappointed.

dramas that saved 2020

The Uncanny Counter (2020) & Run On (2020)

these two dramas are among those that started airing at the end of the year and will go into the beginning of 2021 and absolutely saved the end of 2020 for me. while neither of these are finished, both have been excellent so far and worth starting. uncanny counter has the best use of the found family trope i have ever seen. i fucking love the four counters and their relationship with each other, how protective they are of one another. they all have amazing chemistry and the actors have amazing chemistry in the making films.

run on has one of the cutest couples that will definitely make my best chemistry list for next year. i didn’t put them on this list bc they actually haven’t gotten together yet but once they do, they’re gonna be freaking adorable, i can already tell. there’s no specific grand events propelling the plot forward, but just following the lives of these unique, interesting and relatable people who have casual yet entertaining conversations with each other. the show is super soft and the main couple are so straightforward and honest (plus theres mutual pining!!)

best dramas of the year

here are my best dramas (and one movie) watched this year, no further explanation given lolol. just watch them and enjoy because these are fucking excellent in the feels department. trust me 💞

It’s Okay To Not Be Okay (2020)

Flower of Evil (2020)

Itaewon Class (2020)

Hospital Playlist (2020)

One Spring Night (2019)

Midnight Runners (2017)

Hot Stove League (2019) 

I hope this gives you some fun stuff to watch!! or convince you to start that drama in your watchlists! 

[pocketramblr]

The followup to the Thought™

"Ugh." You say, waving to the screen. "Look at that, now that's who should have been the main character-"

"Oh?" I say, a small glowing figure appearing in front of you. "I can show you that if you want, wish granted." I wave my magic wand, and you blink to find yourself watching a different universe's show.

It's about a blond boy, with a minor superpower that's difficult to work with. He only has one friend, with major anxiety. Both of them want to be heroes, which is about the coolest and nicest thing anyone can be in this world.

But the blond boy is only in middle school. He doesn't get the best grades, he's a bit of a class clown, a bit of a delinquent. He's not exactly cool or over powered, but his earnest, bright nature endears him to the watchers and readers of the story. He's nice, and not worried about competition. He'll put cheering up his best friend over studying- and he'll put just enjoying video games together over training his power on his own.

He doesn't, by the way, train on his own. He makes meager progress in the class provided, and works hard when he's thinking about it, but he honestly doesn't even know where to start with his power.

He takes the entrance exam, and by some manner of luck, manages to permeate through blasts and rubble while shoving other students out of the way. He's used to watching out for his best friend, at least, and that carries over in his natural, if clumsy, attempts to help others here.

With more luck, he is accepted into the school on those points. So is his best friend, though they're in different classes. He still doesn't have many friends, but they meet a new girl in his bf's class: she's gorgeous and powerful- the most raw energy in any of their quirks, and no anxiety or complications holding her back.

She's a bit of a ditz, though, a bit much for others to hang around all the time, so even though she should be a shoe in fit the most popular, she slides easily into their group instead.

The fandom likes her a lot, and you feel impatient. This isn't the story you wanted to see, not really.

"Don't worry," I say. "Time flies when you're actually a school story instead of a daily battle with villains story."

And it does- they compete in the first sports festival. The main character, to little surprise, doesn't do well. But he manages to keep himself and the others smiling and laughing through it, and that brings the attention of the mentor.

The mentor that you like, of course, the mentor you believe was right.

The mentor trains the main character. It's hard, but he can actually break down what exactly he needs to improve on, and now that he has support, the main character takes it seriously. Like all children do, he rises to the expectations on him when he's given the material to do so.

Not made to find the material. The kid would have never dreamed of just assuming and asking such a high ranking hero to focus on him. Rather like another boy, but we'll get to him later.

It's another year. The girl tried her best at the beauty pageant. The best friend tried his best at the liscence exam. The main character has still been training at his internship.

"His second year." You say, thinking. "Now this is when All Might shows up in the timeline, ten months before February in what would be Mirio's second year."

I raise an eyebrow, but wave my magic wand.

All Might does appear. The mysterious top hero, always in the background- ads, all over the mentor's office. They used to work together, but no one in this universe knows anything more than that.

The mentor and the principal happily tell the main character that the number one hero wants to meet with him directly! The boy is nervous, of course, excited, of course, and a tad confused.

But meet they do.

And offer his quirk, he does.

The episode and chapter end on that, of course, and you feel a surge of excitement. Finally!

You look around and realize others in this fandom do not see it that way. Many critique the twist as coming out of nowhere, with no build up that it was even possible, breaking the established rules for no reason. Many others are proud of how much the main character has to work at the difficult power, and do not want him to have a second before he masters this one. Some feel it's a trap- a secret test of character, or a villain in disguise who will ruin him. Some wonder if it's more metaphorical- he's offering the power of support and more guidance, maybe a connection, but not his literal superpower.

You do not know how to feel about it, but you know this will be for the better. He will be perfect for it.

At the beginning of the next update, the boy turns down the quirk. Grateful, more than he could say, but he's worked so hard for his own power and he's not even up to snuff with it yet. He's unsure he's the best option. The girl, after all, is used to weilding such power, maybe he should try her, maybe he should keep looking.

The top hero nods, and asks if he can visit again later, if he can find no other. The boy is a good hero after all, and maybe he needs to believe in himself as much as he is telling his friend to. It will be hard to train a second quirk, yes, but he can manage. It will make him stronger and pay off, after all.

The boy agrees, tentatively. No one can really say no to the number one hero, after all.

"Ok." You say, nodding. "There's an opening. It can build more, since that's how the story is here, way more slowburn."

I shrug. That's what happens when you start the story three years early, but whatever.

The story goes on. The main character does better in the sports festival, but not by any measure good. His friend finds a mentor, a character popular. Much warmer than the blond's mentor. The girl gets a really good mentor, a top tenner.

And then they start to get really good. They're used to training now, and getting it all bit individually and together. The mentor is motivated as of by fury, pushing more and more. And the main character grows to reach it.

Another year. They're seniors, now. Just one year left before they're pros, but they're already about at that level. They're called the Big Three.

The third year is different. Chaos every few weeks. A class of first years attacked.

"Oh, because All Might is still looking for a successor among the students- checking over the freshmen but they won't be able to compare."

I hum in a way that could be interpreted as agreement.

The sports festival. Finally, real victory. They do so well, even with one anxious at crowds. And one that is seemingly allergic to staying clothed. They do well.

The chaos continues, always at the sides. The others in this universe who follow the story talk about that and the offer the top hero made. Is he getting weaker? Did that power leak somehow and now someone wants it?

The tension grows, especially for you. If the hero doesn't give the main character the power before the summer....

The main character doesn't get the power before the summer. The hero falls on tv while the blond and his friends watch in horror.

After the summer, the main character decides to meet the freshmen. You wonder who will replace a certain someone's seat, or if this is playing the original quirkless hero storyline.

When the main character challenges the class of freshmen and you see that sparking green, you seethe.

"I said I wanted Mirio to have OfA! Why is he-"

"Actually," when I speak, you cannot. "You asked for him to be the main character. He still is. A beloved one, even."

"You know what I meant!"

"Perhaps. But then you asked for another change, and so I allowed All Might to meet with him a few days before he would have in the old timeline. He had a chance, he turned it down. Why are you mad at him having his own ambitions and autonomy?"

"He was supposed to take it! He's the worthier option, and you know it."

"What makes him worthy?"

"He works hard!"

"So does Izuku."

"He worked hard before he was offered everything by All Might!"

"Yes," I will admit. "Though, that's only because he met Sir before he met All Might. Were you so focused on how slow it was going that you didn't actually watch what he was doing?"

You will not admit to anything, still angry.

"He'll get another chance." I remind you.

You huff, but the story continues on.

The main character takes a liking to the boy you despise. So does the fandom, dubbing him the cutest little kohai. He's awkward and eager and sunny, like a fusion of the main trio.

He's also impulsive, and on their first patrol together they run into who will obviously be the big bad of the arc- and his abused daughter.

The fandom is split on if the story is going to go with a "In this arc, the blond must pass his experience on patience to a boy who it all about speed and too naive" or if it's "In this arc, it's the mouth of babes- the boy will inspire the main character to do good more impulsively."

You sit and wait for it to be "the boy will finally fork over the power he's now spent over a year working to hold and use to the real main character."

The raid happens. We finally see how the main character met his best friend. It's very sweet. The girl is a lead character and gets focus on her fight too, though the two freshmen working with her don't really. There's another funky freshman boy who turns out to be more like the best friend than we thought.

Finally, we get to the main fight.

And the main character is shot, quirk erased. For good, if the villain who's really not actually that good an example of a scientist is to be believed.

"Oh. What if the former top hero offers his power again, after this arc? It's about loss but always moving on?" The fandom asks. They aren't sure if the buildup to this is better than before, but it's certainly am interesting turn, and not as controversial as the last time.

The best friend saves the day by awakening right at the perfect moment to drag the teacher in. The quirk is kinda super deus ex machina for this arc though.

At the hospital, the mentor dies. The former number one hero is there.

The fandom wonders whether to hope or fear how long he'll wait to replace the mentor and the quirk.

You wait, knowing it's soon.

Then the freshman offers his quirk, and the fandom flips again.

"We should have known!" They cry. "He had super speed and strength the whole time, maybe the sparks are from his own quirk, but it's the same power! Oh, this hurts much more than just if it had been the retired hero!"

Once again, the fandom divides. Many can't bear to see the kohai they love shoved aside after this one moment. Will be be able to use his original power? Then they won't mind the strength for the blond. Some say to wait for his power to come back. A few pipe up about the possibility of him doing it quirkless. He has trained physically too, after all these years.

"No thanks," he says again. He does smile though- just like Sir told him to- and tells his kohai that he’ll do great things with the power, just like All Might did. Tells him that he already has.

You're past the point of fury now.

"Why?" You demand.

"Keep watching." My tone is cold. "Keep watching, the next five months where he does nothing but babysit a girl in hopes she'll magically make himt not quirkless again. He doesn't even ask if he can be a quirkless hero. He doesn't even go to school to keep training. You demanded the other boy figure it out himself. This boy doesn't. He just hopes the same thing that did this to him can undo it."

You don't know what to say about that.

"Neither took it seriously in middle school. That's the nature of middle schoolers. Neither of them tried to go solo quirkless, when no support was provided. But they're both good kids. Hard workers. Heroic. They love each other, honestly, they're friends. It's sweet. And it's sad that it took me doing this for you to see it."

I shake my head.

"Sir Nighteye never saw how Mirio was much more like Izuku than All Might. That was his mistake, because he didn't know the meaning of worthy. Not that it was his choice to make even if he had. There's no magic to this. OfA isn't Excalibur or Mjölnir. All sorts of people have had it. And All Might wasn't doing much to train before he found Nana ether, as much as he got into trouble. OfA is more about connections they have to each other. It's about people's relationships. As it happens, that just doesn't include Mirio and wouldn't be at its most meaningful if it did."

"You just are too much a Deku stan and hate Mirio-"

"Accuse me of hating Mirio again, and I will leave you here." I threaten, pointing my wand at you. "Now. Did you learn your lesson?"

You grumble, but you do nod.

"Good." I say, before waving my wand one last time. You're back where you were before, not a trace of me or magic.

The lesson, though, sticks.

[strawberries-and-hairpins]

For the start of this season I told myself that I would do things differently. Season 7 was a terrible viewing experience in general because I got so caught up with those who keep track of Candice's filming schedule far in advance or whether Barry and Iris were going to interact in an episode or be the focus. So it was a miserable and negative atmosphere of dreading and hating future episodes based on that alone, being annoyed that certain characters or couples were getting scenes over Iris and Westallen.

At the end of the day I enjoy the watching the Flash and seeing what storylines get developed or adapted from the comics. I love Grant Gustin as Barry and Candice Patton as Iris. With that said there was no Westallen scene this week, and Iris only had a small scene towards the end. Obvs that sucks as being one the viewing highlights of the show, but I also realize how much better it feels to simply just watch an episode and not stress over that and just let the storyline play out and move on to see what's next.

I don't know how long Eric plans to play out this time sickness storyline, but I'm certainly not going to get caught up over every ep where Barry doesn't notice something going on, been there done that with the mirror storyline. I'm just along for the ride and will take what content of Westallen and Iris I can get while I'm on it.

At the end of the day when the show is over, no one is going to be like, hey remember the episode where Iris only had a minute of screentime? Fans are only going to be focusing on Westallen as a whole and gifing/discussing all the good content that was given to us. This episode will be a blimp on the radar by the end of the season or another upcoming episode when we do get more Iris and Westallen content.

[douglysium]

Episode 1 TMP Quick Thoughts

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(​What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers light for TMP up until about episode 6 or 7.

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don't really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you're getting all the nuances.

So let’s get started and I’ll try to keep this short with episode 1 “First Shift”.... After I address two common theories first.

Addressing “THE THEORY”

Something I want to get out of the way right now is that to me whatever government O.I.A.R. organization Sam and the gang are working for are clearly aligned with the Eye or some similar Entity. Now, I know what some people are going to start saying. There’s been a popular theory going around that the Entities have changed to new fears or are now based around desires instead of fear but to be honest I heavily disagree with those theories and they are extreme reaches in my opinion.

First off, we are told at the end of TMA by Jon, Annabelle, and The Web itself that according to its plan when the other Entities are dragged to another universe it should end up with them being dragged back outside the universe in the same state that they were in TMA. I’ve seen people argue that the Powers might have been separated, fused, or reshuffled but it’s important to note that the powers have always been heavily connected and nebulous in most aspects. 

In MAG 80 (The Librarian) Leitner compares the Entities as being but pieces of a larger body: “Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?” Meanwhile, in MAG 111 Gerard compares them to colors: “I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works. And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.” Gerard and Jon also go on to state “O-Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like –An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once.” So while I would personally argue the Dread Powers still sit on a sort of spectrum, the spectrum in question is a lot more soupy and amorphous than a strictly barebones color wheel and the edges bleed together. 

Jon later points out to Martin that the categorization of Entities can’t always be simplified  into neat little boxes. These also are important to understanding Jonah’s mass ritual as Jonah states in MAG 160 “Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down. To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down. Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.” Basically, what Jonah is saying is that light cannot exist without darkness or shadow to contrast it and light by its very nature will cast a shadow. So even if people say light and darkness are opposites they are really two sides of the same coin and need each other to exist as distinct concepts. The concept of darkness cannot exist unless you have light to compare it to and vice versa. 

So I don’t think any Entities are being removed since losing an Entity would be like all the Entities blowing off their own arm if we use Leitner’s body analogy. The chance of the Entities being shuffled isn’t zero but the categories have always overlapped so it’s probably more likely that the new characters may use different categories than Smirke when referring to grouping the Entities. However, that wouldn’t suddenly mean that the Desolation or some other Power doesn’t exist, just that they are being viewed through a different lens than the previous universe.

Now, there has been a super popular theory floating around Reddit that the Entities are now drawing power from desires instead of fear. Which is a theory I personally don’t buy for a single second. There’s the earlier aforementioned point and goal of The Web’s plan sure but I also think the theory makes little sense since nothing about the first few episodes so far has really changed how the Entities have behaved in my opinion.

The truth is the Entities have always been heavily tied to desire, even in the original TMA Gertrude mentions that the Eye is also connected to the desire to know and understand even if in doing so you could get hurt. 

We also know that people with certain desires or personalities are more likely to be attracted to certain Entities as they are more likely to intentionally or unintentionally cultivate their respective fear. It goes without saying that a person prone to violence and the desire to attack others is more likely to feed the Slaughter. If you want more specific examples, Jon is noted as being extremely curious and wanting to understand so he gravitated towards The Eye (an Entity revolving around the fear of knowledge, information, having secrets revealed, being found, etc.), Peter was an extreme loner so he gravitated towards The Lonely (an Entity connected to the fear of being alone) and Annabelle gravitated towards The Web and she is noted as having been extremely manipulative as a child.

Desire isn’t anything new in TMA and it acts as the flip side of the Powers that encourages people to hurt others due to specific desires and wants. For example, in TMP RedCanary fits with what we’ve seen of people connected to the Eye and a desire to know / see, and Daria’s desire for physical perfection resembles the gym we see Jared Hopworth running and the people in it trying to get the perfect body in TMA. We even see Daria’s roommate freak out when she sees her so I would say it’s more likely that the Flesh or some other similar Entity was reaching out to her and / or make her an Avatar, and Daria might not have even been the target for the Flesh’s fear but rather her roommate or the people around her. Then again we do get the description of a lot of fear during the tattoo session in the episode and the idea of someone permanently mutilating your body physically is very Flesh. 

Hopefully, you understand a bit where I’m coming from now and why I won’t be using some of the common theories floating around as my frame of reference, since I feel like they sort of miss the complete picture or just try to pretend like TMA didn’t happen. So I’m working off the assumption that at most the Powers might be viewed differently but they are still intact enough to ascribe them to Smirke’s categories. This might turn out to be a mistake in the future (especially since this episode seems to be poking fun at those categories) but completely disregarding established information or trying to start from complete scratch is as equally likely to end up being a mistake. I also find the idea that the Fears just did a 180 and started feeding off of desire even though they are acting how they always have to be a stretch. Of course, the uncertainty and guesswork is part of the fun of doing these I suppose.

Episode 1: “First Shift”

Okay, back to what I was saying before. The O.I.A.R organization Sam, Teddy, Alice, and their coworkers are working for is almost definitely associated with the Eye or maybe some other similar Entity. We know in this universe the original Magnus Institute burned down at some point so it’s possible that the Eye looked for a new main center of power or place to conduct its ritual. We know the organization Teddy is working for is a government one and the Eye is also the fear of being watched. A fear that often goes hand-in-hand with the fear of government or something governments sometimes do to keep people in line. 

The ability of the computers to play statements by searching through the internet and snooping into various forums, servers, private messages, etc. to find information it shouldn’t and share the with other people is very Eye and ironically in TMA we have seen a website that might have been aligned with the Eye called Sparksfly.com in “What The Ghost? - The Devil's Dance” as one of the podcast’s sponsors. Georgie Barker pitches the website by saying “Wouldn’t it be great if your dating service knew you as well as your friends do? Well, SparksFly.com does! In fact, they know you better than anyone. With SparksFly, there’s no need to fill out lengthy surveys; they get all the information they need from your browser history – Wow. Okay! What The Ghost? listeners get a month’s membership for free! No need for a code; (voice climbing higher) they already know who you are! (still at a markedly higher register) SparksFly: Privacy is just another word for loneliness?!(really fast) I-went-out-with-someone-I-met-online-once. (exhale) We didn’t have a lot in common; I mentioned the podcast, and he spent the rest of the night complaining about the Ghostbusters remake. But we had Thai food, so it was an okay date. I got the tofu Massaman curry.” So it’s a website that revolves around knowing too much.

We also see Sam share a major trait that those attracted to the Eye often have, extreme curiosity. Jon had this trait (which is partially why he was picked as being the Archivist by Jonah) and Jon, Tim, and Melanie went to the Institute for answers about their encounters with the supernatural. Once again, if you want to hear my full thoughts and explanations about the Institute you can see it here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss).

Further emphasizing the Eye connections, it seems like something is watching and recording the people working in the facility. This could be The Eye but it’s important to consider that it could be The Web spying on people again for some new plan or in order to manipulate The Eye again. Right now it could go either way because we don’t know if the Eye can watch everyone in this facility like it could in The Magnus Institute so it might need to use devices such as cameras and microphones in this specific instance but it could also be The Web basically posing as The Eye again (like how several characters assumed the tapes to belong to The Eye before it was revealed to be connected to the Web in TMA) while it gathers information if we want to assume that The Eye would already know everything happening in the facility.

The computers in TMP have been pretty interesting. They are pretty old and while Entities can and have manifested as very modern technology, such as cameras, they are noted to be more likely to manifest as old objects (probably because things that have been around longer are more likely to be more engrained in the social conscience and have more associations an Entity can use). It could also simply be to highlight the oddity of the computers. They are too old of models to have any voice reading software yet they do anyway. Which probably implies something supernatural because the reading itself can't be coming from any technology. It could be coming from some sort of person, monster or even directly from the Eye. Of course, the computers are reading out statements. When asked what programs like FR3-d1 (FREDDY) do Alice says “It searches online databases, newspapers, forums or whatever for incidents, flags them, then passes them through to us for assessment.” Which just ties into compiling statements and what I said before about The Eye gathering information.

The job assigned to Sam and his coworkers seems to be to sort through statements which is one of the jobs the Archivists like Jon and Gertrude technically had in TMA. It was actually a major plot point that Gertrude purposefully made the Archives disorganized and Jon tried to reorganize them early in the series. When Sam starts reading the statement given to him he pauses and says “This is…” to which Alice replies “Yeah, they're all like that. At least this one is short, nice easy start for you. So, once you've read it, you get out the binder…” So… the statements are probably just as horrifying as ever and it’s important to point out this has always been one of the major themes of The Eye. The Eye doesn’t seem to just be the fear of being watched but knowledge in general. This can take the form of someone watching you or knowing secrets for sure but it can also take the form of you yourself having seen too much or witnessed something you didn’t want to. This is why Jonah can shove horrifying information into the heads of Melanie and Martin in TMA (he can force them to see or know things they don’t want to).

Additionally, in MAG 200 (Last Words) we learn in what order the Powers were born in and the fears that led to their creation and we get this: “and struggle at learning, so too did they learn to fear that their eyes might deceive them, or show them too much.” Here the “fear that their eyes might deceive them” is the Spiral while the fear of “being shown too much” is The Eye since none of the other fears mentioned in that statement match up with the Eye and clearly correspond with the other Entities. 

So statements aren’t always just the fear of someone hearing a story but the idea of being forced to live / relive or witness something horrifying. 

Anyway, after Alice pulls out a binder this interaction occurs

ALICE CONT. 

“...And look up whatever’s mentioned most in the case. Looking at this one we go to “D” and… Sam, eyes on me now. We go to “D” and, right, would you say this is more "Dolls comma watching" or "Dolls comma human skin".”

SAM 

“(a bit shell-shocked) I- Uh- I mean- I guess the human skin bit is only implied, so... both?”

ALICE 

“Nah you can only pick one, Freddy's dumb as rocks. Right, so, after each entry there's four numbers. That’s the DPHW. So, “dolls comma watching” is... 1157. Then you cross reference with the table here, that would be a 2-C, and then you type that into the box here, along with date of incident if there is one and today’s date. Which gives us… Alice’s quickly types.”

ALICE CONT. 

“CAT2RC1157-12052022-09012024 and then we hit submit.”

This is actually a very enlightening interaction. Something TMA touched on is that while sorting the Entities can be useful for noting certain interactions or behaviors it can easily reach a point of hubris if one tries to perfectly map and understand the fears. As Jon points out to Martin Post-Change, the categories of the Entities are just boxes and they don’t always fit cleanly into them. The Entities are actually all connected as one larger whole and can overlap greatly or multiple Entities can be at play at once,

In MAG 80 Leitner compares all the Entities to being body parts of a larger whole and the seemingly obtuse way of organizing the statement Sam is seeing are actually thematically very similar to a Domain we see in MAG 183 known as “The Monument.” Jon described the Domain as “homage” or mockery to people like Roberte Smirke. “A monument. To him and those like him, who tried to… categorise the world with themselves at the centre. In so doing, constructed the architecture of its suffering.”

Martin even points out that the architecture looks similar to the Institute to which Jon says “It makes sense. After all, it was built on the ruins of what Robert Smirke constructed.” So while the categories are fun and useful, TMA goes out of its way on several occasions to show that trying to cleanly organize, separate, and / or understand them perfectly is an act of hubris. I’m not sure if the Entities have a sense of humor but considering that an entire Domain was meant to comment on the absurdity and obtuseness of trying to perfectly organize the Entities and range of human fear as pointed out by Jon then something on a smaller scale could very well be possible.

The fact that Sam and company are only allowed to pick a single category for the dolls “wearing skin” or “watching” despite both being present further highlights the oversimplification at play. Wearing skin is something often seen with The Stranger and it has a connection to many dolls because of the fear of the uncanny valley. However, The Eye has a major emphasis on watching and the idea of an unblinking glassy eye fits very well with what we know of the Entity. Also, as mentioned earlier Entities can manifest as almost everything and on top of that we have seen people, Domains, and artifacts connected to multiple Entities at the same time. Martin was connected to the Lonely and Eye, his Domain was connected to the Eye and Lonely, and Gertrude mentions the Key of Solomon being a leitner connected to more than one Entity. There have even been statements with multiple Entities appearing and attacking the same person, such as in MAG 20 (Desecrated Host) with Father Edwin Burroughs. Who at least encounters The Eye and Flesh and possibly even more Entities.

After Sam submits his report he becomes curious as to where it goes but Alice doesn’t seem interested. In this regard Sam is actually quite similar to Jon and many other followers of the Eye and their attempts to understand everything that is happening. I’m not sure if Sam will become an Avatar but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up pulled into The Eye’s clutches (if he’s not in them already).

We then get a statement from NORRIS which Alice pauses and explains that apparently the voices started appearing about a year ago. There is a rather shoddy explanation about a sound card so I think most likely this was of supernatural origin. The appearance of the voices could potentially mark when the Entities, like The Eye, showed up in this universe but it’s important to mention that we don’t actually know when the Entities showed up in this universe. We know that time can become finicky when traveling from universe to universe. This is shown in MAG 114 with Anya. Interestingly, when she went into the gap in reality The Web was making it was April 23rd 2009 HOWEVER when she came out it was April 9th 2009 and when she gave the statement she said the 23rd was somehow tomorrow which made no sense. So one thing we have to ask ourselves is how parallel does this univere’s timeline run with the original because it seems like different universes may be at different points in their timeline even if this universe is very similar. So much so that one universe may be several days “behind” another as a possibility. So when the Entities got dragged to the new universe we can’t actually rule out that the Entities may have shown up way earlier in that universe than when they left the TMA universe due to these universal “timezones” at play. They could have easily ended up years or decades earlier in this universe than the TMA universe we started in. Heck, it’s not even impossible that they were sent to the beginning of this universe (but that’s less likely than the idea that they just appeared during the stone age or something).

Alice also mentions that Colin wanted to “destroy the computers with a hammer” when the voices started which ties into what I said earlier about The Eye and not wanting to know something via sight or hearing.

Before we talk about NORRIS’ statement it’s interesting to note that there are three voices, with CHESTER and AUGUSTUS being the other two, and NORRIS and CHESTER being the most common. This is an interesting detail and may point to some factor at play that is preventing the voices from being completely random. Maybe they each read different types of statements or statements with different qualities? Maybe they pull statements from different places, different entities, or it’s just that they are loosely based on how much fear the statement might elicit in the listener or even just the length? I can’t say.

Anyway, we listen to NORRIS’ statement from Harriet Winstead and it appears that her partner, Arthur, was at some point taken in the night and replaced with something. When Harriet asks “Arthur” if it’s really him he says “Some of him.” This is almost definitely The Stranger at play. This plays out basically exactly like an encounter with other Stranger related beings such as the infamous “Anglerfish” from TMA. If we believe Annabelle’s explanation from TMA it’s even possible that the Anglerfish got pulled into this new universe due to being part of the Stranger as a monster. The Stranger embodies the fear of the unknown and the uncanny and while this statement does take place at night and mention shadows I can’t really say it relates to an Entity like The Dark all that much. Considering how strangely Arthur is noted to be moving I assume that the Stranger is feeding off the fear of encountering something uncanny (in that it resembles something / someone you know but is noticeably off) or the fear of someone changing so much you don’t know who they are anymore if not just the idea of someone being replaced by a total stranger. It could also be more simply encountering someone who has an issue you can’t identify.

Sam mentioned how upsetting the statement was which ties into what I said earlier and seems similar to the statements on the tapes in TMA. Martin was similarly noted to be rattled or mentally worn down when taking statements on at least one occasion.

Gwen is very interesting since she seems super invested in accurately categorizing the statements, unlike Alice. This obsession with categorizing and understanding the Entities or their manifestations is something we have seen with Angus Stacey (a previous Archivist who apparently wanted to recategorize Smirke’s Fourteen) and even Smirke himself. So this desire to categorize does have a precedent, especially for Eye related people or factions as we see with Angus. Gwen also prides herself on her accuracy.

Gwen is pulled into Lena’s office who confronts her about her behavior from earlier in the episode and Lena says “If you hate working here so completely, you are perfectly within your rights to resign. No one is forcing you to stay here.” to which Gwen responds “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I think this might actually be a cheeky TMA reference since within TMA Jon and company were quite literally being forced to keep working at the Institute due to a magically binding contract. How much Lena actually knows about the Entities or if there’s a similar force at play here is up in the air. Lena could be being quite literal here or sort of challenging Gwen to try it / call her bluff. It might also be ironic that a Bouchard has the option to quit but doesn’t.

Gwen also reveals she really wants Lena’s job which is extremely interesting since we later learn her last name is BOUCHARD in the credits. The last name Jonah took when he stole Elias’ identity. The fact that a Bouchard was the boss of the Institute in the previous universe and Gwen wants to be the boss of this organization is a very interesting parallel. It could point to the fact that Gwen knows something but that remains to be seen.

Sam encounters Colin and Colin eventually explains that he’s been tasked with developing an app and maintaining / fixing the computers but it’s very obtuse and nonsensical as he metaphorically bangs his head against it. This desire to understand a piece of old hardware is actually similar to an Eye related statement from TMA in MAG 148 (Extended Surveillance) involving a “Security Camera Instruction Manual.” Upon reading the Leitner the victim ends up metaphysically fusing with the camera system the manual is tied to but that’s not the important part. The important part is what led to Samson Stiller reading the manual in the first place. Specifically, a desire to understand and fix the camera system. Similarly, we have someone here struggling with an old system of technology that might also be tied to The Eye.

Gwen encounters Sam later and they have this interaction-

GWEN 

“So what is it then?”

SAM 

“Hmm?”

GWEN 

“The awful, terrible thing that landed you here?”

SAM 

“Does it have to be awful and terrible?” 

GWEN 

“Usually.”

This is very interesting because it shows Gwen is recognizing a pattern. A pattern we also see in TMA with characters like Jon, Tim, and Melanie who all joined the Institute looking for answers after strange encounters with the supernatural. It wouldn’t surprise me if, like the Institute that has burned down at this point, the O.I.A.R acts as both a way to feed off the fear of various encounters but also as bait to draw curious people to The Eye who then either give statements or end up aligned with the Eye.

Chester then gives us another statement (2 statements in one episode is quite the treat). This one is about someone named “RedCanary” investigating the ruins of the Institute during some spelunking. The Institute is noted as being “cleared” despite having no pictures which I think ties into The Eye’s relation to the idea of curiosity and wanting to see something even if doing so could put you in danger. When RedCanary attempts to upload the pictures they take they mention that they aren’t uploading. I think this could be The Eye trying to stoke curiosity since the lack of pictures means more people are likely to interpret the ruins of the Institute as not cleared and investigate the ruins in the future. It’s very possible or likely that despite being ruins the Eye still holds a lot of power there. RedCanary mentions that the ruins are in surprisingly good shape and seem like they haven’t been touched since the fire. But if the area is marked as “cleared” I wonder if someone did actually go to the ruins before but since they couldn’t upload the pictures there was just no evidence.

RedCanary says “It's got a really cool vibe, though. Like, if you’d told me it was a Victorian asylum or something before the fire I reckon I’d have believed you” which is ironic given that the Institute in TMA was heavily connected to a panopticon (which is a type of prison “with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed”). Although, the original Institute wasn’t actually located on top of the panopticon and was later moved to London and built on top of it.

RedCanary mentions picking up a strange box and they are warned to not take it from the site. To which RedCanary says this “I know the rules. I’m going to go put it back, ok? So you can call off the dogs. I don’t need anonymous DMs calling me a thief or threatening me. I can dox people too, you know.” Doxxing is defined as “search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.” which ties in very well with The Eye’s theme of being found or revealing secrets.

RedCanary then begins to act very strangely. They post an image that’s taken down with the caption / description “Canaries should stay above ground.” An image so horrifying it needs to be taken down or people don’t want to see it ties into what I said earlier about the Eye and “seeing too much.” This is further emphasized by FlowersUnderground saying “Gross! Can we get some Mod action over here?” BadGrav31 says “What the hell is that? Are those eyes? Are you alright?” Pointing to this most likely be an incident relating to The Beholding since it likes to manifest as eyes in order to let people know they are being watched. It could be one of the other Entities like The Flesh and its body horror but I’ve already pointed out how much of this statement seems to parallel The Eye the most (and I think it’s rather fitting). It’s even taking place within the ruins of the Magnus Institute. Which was a place that was connected to The Eye (at least in the original timelines).

It’s also interesting that this specific statement plays after Gwen questions Sam as to why he’s here and we later learn Sam is trying to find information on the Magnus Institute. I wonder if The Eye or someone else is feeding Sam this info to stoke his curiosity, like both The Eye and Jonah did to Jon in TMA.

After that whole thing we later get this interaction between Alice and Sam

ALICE 

Was it really that bad?

SAM 

No worse than you warned me.

Although setting me up like that with the IT guy was

ALICE 

Hilarious, I know. It’s win-win - you get a job, I get a fresh victim. It’s all in your contract. 

SAM 

Don't remember signing that particular bit of the paperwork. 

ALICE 

Gotta read the fine print, kiddo. 

This could be a reference to TMA since Jon and co signed a contract that tied them to the Institute. Making them fresh victims for Jonah and we know that the contract in the Institute wasn’t a normal one. Of course, I’m not saying Alice is being literal, I’m saying this is a moment of irony for TMA fans.

Alice and Sam have another interesting interaction.

SAM 

Do you- Is there- What’s up with them? You think they’re real? 

ALICE 

Alice exhales. 

I don’t see how they could be? Mostly I try not to think of them like that, like, things that might or might not have really happened. They're just words on the screen. 

SAM 

I've no real idea what the OIAR even is.

Alice mentions she tries to not think about them, which ties into what I said about the idea of seeing or knowing too much in relation to The Eye. Just don’t think about it and try not to perceive it, you don’t want to, and ignorance is bliss.

We cut to one of the computers turning on and we hear Colin say this “(slightly manic) You’re not as clever as you think you are. You think you've got us all fooled, that no-one knows you're listening, But I do. I know. I’m going to find you and then… ” So someone or something is definitely listening. Whether it’s the Eye, Web, some monster or person aligned with one or more of them remains to be completely confirmed. Of course, the fear of being monitored or watched feeds the Eye.

Closing

Anyway, that’s my quick thoughts on this episode alongside some of the early TMP threads. I’m going to try to do one of these for each episode as they come out and I’ll try to keep them shorter but that may be hard.

[thealexchen]

One Year On: Life is Strange 2 Critique

December 3rd, 2020 marks a year since Life is Strange 2 ended. I was inspired by @smitethepatriarchy‘s text posts (here, but there are several other answered asks worth reading) and @suhaplays’s text post (here) criticizing Life is Strange 2 to write a critique about how Life is Strange 2 handled certain themes and social issues.

(tw: gun violence, police brutality, animal death, incarceration, racism. In this essay, I use the word “queer” in a reclaimed sense, as a queer person myself. Of course, spoiler warning for all five episodes of Life is Strange 1 and 2).

A year on, my feelings about this game have soured... a lot. When the game was first announced, I was overjoyed that our new protagonists would be two Latino boys. Finally, we would have a culturally meaningful, groundbreaking video game with people of color and their experiences at the forefront! 

Then the game was met with immediate backlash and I utterly exhausted myself defending it for weeks on Reddit and Tumblr. Throughout 2019, as the episodes came out I became increasingly disillusioned, frustrated, and disappointed with where the story was going. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so damn miserable while playing this game.

Then in the summer of 2020, when Tell Me Why began rolling out pre-release material, I noticed that they posted a Q&A about transphobia, gave content warnings, and discussed at length about their collaboration with GLAAD, Checkpoint, and the Huna Heritage Foundation to make the game with sensitivity and proper research. I cannot speak for trans and gender non-conforming people on whether Dontnod succeeded at doing so with Tell Me Why. But Life is Strange 2 did… none of that.

Essentially, I realized that the reason why I was so frustrated with LiS2 is because it focuses way too heavily on a trauma narrative. This comes off as insensitive to players of color without any content warnings or extensive research.

Sean didn’t have to get kidnapped, kicked in the face, and called a racial slur by a gas station owner. Daniel did not need to watch his puppy get mauled by a mountain lion for the sake of a “difficult choice.” Sean didn’t have to lose his eye for the sake of heightened drama. Sean didn’t need to get called a racial slur and humiliated by his native language/beaten in the desert for refusing to sing. Daniel didn’t need to get shot— twice. Hell, all of “Faith” probably could’ve been cut— how is a church cult that brainwashes Daniel and beats Sean half to death relevant at all to the story?

Even if not all of the game’s violence was racially motivated, the consistent trauma that Sean and Daniel endure does not make for positive representation— or even good characterization. There is a difference between sympathetic characters and well-written characters, and trauma does not make Sean and Daniel any more complex or likable-- just more fucking traumatized.

LiS2 is more grounded in reality, but that also makes plot holes that much harder to excuse (Daniel’s powers being spotted, most of the Parting Ways ending, Sean’s prison sentence). But most of all, it grounds all of Sean and Daniel’s pain and trauma in reality. 

There is no magicking away a town-destroying storm with time travel. Sean can’t keep his dad alive by ripping up a Polaroid. After Max unlocked her powers, she was still a Blackwell student, reconnecting with Chloe, taking photos, saving lives, and uncovering a murder mystery. After Daniel unlocked his powers, the Diaz brothers lost everything. 

The game never lets you forget that Sean and Daniel are homeless, wanted, constantly in danger, and that they are never getting their old lives back. It permeates the entire game, and for players of color, just reinforces a sad, miserable, grim reality about living in the United States. It is, as @smitethepatriarchy said, potentially triggering for players of color, and it is certainly not something I needed to be reminded of.

And the representation of POC? It feels shallow and ill-researched. It would only take a Google search to find out that Dia de Muertos (a holiday to honor the dead, no less) was from October 31 to November 2 in 2016, the year the game takes place, but Daniel only talks about Halloween in episode 1. Sean and Daniel never discuss any Mexican customs, foods, or holidays. Sean doesn’t speak Spanish with his immigrant father, only during a scene when he’s traumatized (again!) by two racists, and again when talking to Mexican immigrants— in jail. Daniel doesn’t speak Spanish at all. Most of their allies throughout the game are white, including Finn and Cassidy, who appropriate Black culture with their dreadlocks.

So what’s left? Sean and Daniel’s existence as people of color is, at worst, just a narrative prop to justify everything that happens to them. They are people of color on the surface only. In a meta-sense, the game only considers the color of their skin and their last names as what is narratively important… yikes.

I don’t have anything against people who genuinely loved the game and were moved by its messages and story. But I can’t help but feel bitter that white players have the luxury of only thinking of this game as a work of fiction and not feeling any personal reliability to Sean and Daniel’s racialized trauma.

I don’t regret playing LiS2, but I do regret all the time and energy I spent defending it in the beginning. I understand now that I shouldn’t let people’s opinions get to me, nor should I feel obligated to like or defend a game for its attempts at representation. But now, I think I understand how queer fans must have felt in late 2015 when Polarized released. After following the game for 10 months, to see that Chloe’s ultimate destiny was to die and Pricefield is another ship plagued by the Bury Your Gays trope (in the ending that the devs clearly put more work into) must have been just as disillusioning and infuriating. I understand why some fans were so quick to unfollow LiS or develop mixed feelings about the series, because that’s how I feel too after following LiS2’s development from September 2018 to December 2019.

Before I end, I will admit that Life is Strange 2 arrived at a time when I needed it. I still stand by my belief that DN did a great job characterizing Sean, Daniel, and Chris without toxic masculinity, which is the best thing they could’ve done for a male-focused follow-up to a game about queer women. I love that Sean is still a canonically bisexual man of color in a major video game and that DN didn’t forget their queer audience. I love the world and characters that DN built, but I still prefer AU fanfictions of their normal lives, without all that trauma. 

So, I will continue to treasure Lyla and her 10 minutes of screentime (aka the only shred of Asian American representation I can get from this series). I still reblog LiS2 fanart to support the artists. I still support Dontnod, because as Tell Me Why has shown, they are capable of researching and writing stories with more sensitivity. And let’s be honest-- I’m still gonna be hella excited if Life is Strange 3 is announced.

But so many aspects of Life is Strange 2 were bungled that it came off as a remarkably average and forgettable experience. A year on, I don’t hate Life is Strange 2, but I am writing this to move on from it.

Thank you for reading.

[paperclipninja]

Some finale thoughts

I’ve been sitting with the Younger finale the past couple of days and trying to wrap my head around it all and why I feel the way I feel. And how do I feel? Great question - sad maybe? Disappointed? Underwhelmed? A little bit of all of the above? But most of all I think I feel duped. And that is the feeling I’m having the hardest time reconciling with my overall love for this show. Also, heads up, this post is focusing solely on Liza and where her story ended up.

I want to be clear that this isn’t to do with who I wanted Liza to end up with romantically. Yes, I have always been an unabashed Charles and Liza fan, but I am first and foremost a fan of good storytelling. I am genuinely a showrunner’s dream audience because you tell me a compelling, well written story and I will follow you wherever you want to take me and appreciate the heck out of the journey and find satisfaction in the resolution. Because good storytelling isn’t about appeasing factions of an audience or taking pleasure in exploiting the trust viewers have in the way certain narrative conventions play out, only to hoodwink them at the 11th hour. It is about striking the balance between the predictable and unpredictable, staying true to the story that has come before and the endpoint that has been set, but doing so in a way that acknowledges that there are ways that certain conventions need to play out in order for an audience to feel satisfied. And for me, this is why Younger has fallen so incredibly short in the finale.

I am here every day of the week for a a clever twist but I have said it before, when it comes to executing any kind of bait and switch well, there is a really fine line between an audience feeling elated because they ‘got it’- they read the cues correctly and get the sense they were ‘in on it’ - and feeling like a fool. The Younger finale left me feeling as though my entire understanding of this season (and maybe series) was completely wrong. I was led to believe that I was supposed to be Team Liza, to be rooting for her to find success in life and love after starting over again. 

So imagine my elation when during this entire season Liza seemed to have identified who she wanted in her life romantically and so, as the drama of season 7 unfolded, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that the heavy focus on Liza’s relationship with Charles was going to culminate in her FINALLY getting who she wanted romantically, while achieving the career success she desired (and set her on this journey in the first place) would be the final obstacle for the character to overcome. Is that route predictable? Maybe. Could it have maintained the follow through that we come to expect in this kind narrative but still have delighted with unexpected ways of getting there? Absolutely. 

To feel like this entire season has been working to convince me that romance was a big part of what Liza wanted in her life, fabricate an inordinate amount of drama around the character she wanted to spend her life with, reunite them and then suddenly try to convince me in the final episode that the lie, which has not been mentioned once in two and a bit seasons, is an issue between Charles and Liza, only to have the protagonist serve as some kind of example that if you lie you can’t have it all...I’m sorry, what? And wanting to bookend the series with the bar scene, I totally get it, full circle, it ends where it all began - it’s a basic storytelling technique that I have marked in many a high school essay - but it once again comes back to me wanting to feel a sense that this was a looming possibility, that it was earned and I was ‘in on it’. 

An effective twist doesn’t come out of nowhere and any argument that this didn’t, it came from the start of the series, is rubbish. In the context of this season, which is what any viewer holds in their mind as a season winds up, Josh and Liza reconnecting in this way was completely tacked on and contrived. Again, it could have been a really sweet moment if the break up that had just occurred between Liza and the man she had been desperately in love with for the entire season, didn’t render the entire season redundant, or if Josh and Liza had had more than one 2 minute interaction in episode 1. Like, what was the point of any of the drama from this season if the focus of the series was never meant to be the romantic relationships? And if the series was never meant to be about the romantic relationships, why end with the possibility of reconnecting with Josh at all and instead end with the four women toasting one another's’ success? 

And THAT is why I feel duped. It’s not about who Liza may or may not have ended up with or the mental gymnastics required for the finale to make any sense in relation to the rest of the season. I feel duped because all the way up until this final episode I was under the impression that I was watching a different kind of show. One that was feel-good and light and fluffy and had its fair share of drama but the fun kind, and resolved in ways that were sometimes predictable, sometimes not, but always satisfying.

I was under the impression that by rooting for Liza, I was rooting for her to succeed and that telling a lie to combat ageism was worth it because the ridiculous premise paid off and she did get it all. Is it cheesy and too happily ever after? Maybe. But you know what? That is what I felt like I was sold all these years. A happy escapism that would often take the ridiculous and make it delightfully entertaining and never take itself too seriously. And with that comes certain expectations of the way storylines will build and resolve: reducing such a significant aspect of Liza's story to a cautionary tale on the perils of lying seemed completely out of place for the tone and type of show Younger has always been.

So perhaps I did misunderstand the type of show I was watching all these years, perhaps my expectation of my favourite series (and yes it remains my fave) to end all wrapped up in a neat way that saw these characters I’m so invested in ride off into the sunset with everything they desired was unrealistic (or perhaps for many they all did and if that’s how you felt then I’m honestly thrilled for you). 

The loop back to the moment when the lie was conceived, right down to the verbatim dialogue from Josh and Liza’s first interaction, essentially creates a Groundhog Day scenario - Liza is back where she started, sure with some career success and some pretty great experiences, but the character growth has been stagnated by this lie from the very beginning apparently. And again, if this season had been working towards this moment of another reset, starting over once again but without the lie in place, I’d be so on board because I actually really like this idea. But to expect an audience to make the leap from one story that’s been told the entire season to this one is too much of a leap at the last minute IMO.

I will always love Younger, I was excited that season 7 seemed to be really deliberately building towards a clear ending, but I will be forever perplexed by the choices made in that finale. 

[resistanceisfeudal]

Season 2 Retrospective

Did anyone ask for an overly long opinionated rant about the mixed bag that was Picard Season 2? No. No one did.

Season 1 and Context

I had a really negative time with the first season of Picard. There were things I liked, namely a lot of the new characters (Raffi, Soji, Rios, Elnor and Agnes), but as the series went on it kind of got under my skin and irritated me.

I didn’t like what they did to the federation/starfleet, I didn’t like the dark, pessimistic tone. I thought Narek was fun, but the other villains felt underdeveloped. I also thought the script was often just awful and a lot of it felt really shoddy. ... Sorry if this is mean but you know when a show just pisses you off and replaces your body with a synthetic copy made entirely out of hate and negativity? Yeah, that happened to me.

I also felt that Season 1 pandered heavily to nostalgia for The Next Generation (TNG) and was overly focused on Jean-Luc  himself. I thought that a stronger ending for the season would have been for JL to die for real (instead of the corny fakeout), and the new cast to form the crew of a ship named Picard, and that could have been the set up for further seasons. I don’t think I was the only one to feel this way.

This is important context for how I feel about Season 2. I went into the second season expecting:

Fan service and pandering

A plot that is focused around Picard himself with the others playing supporting roles.

I also had fairly low expectations in general. So, bear that in mind, I guess.

Nostalgia

Season 2 also leaned into TNG nostalgia. I've read that it apparently also made heavy reference to The Voyage Home and First Contact, neither of which I've seen. (Well, first contact was on telly the other week and I saw Zefram Cochrane go take a piss in the woods... I don't think that was referenced here?). Overall, I wasn’t too bothered by this. I enjoyed Guinan and Q, and I appreciated the easter eggs. (Skull Dukat my beloved). The big exceptions to this were in the final episode. The Khan reference felt clumsy and I was not here for Wesley. But hey, some people seemed really happy to see him and I'm happy for them.

Maybe if I'd seen these films all the way through then I'd feel differently, but to me it felt similar to s1 in this respect. I.e. a lot of pandering but at least they're doing new storylines with it.

I will say that this season felt more Voyager influenced than s1, but that might just be me. The borg stuff felt like they were pulling from Voyager and to be honest I appreciate the vibes.

Picard, the Protagonist and the Plot

The main theme of this series is about mental illness. The need to protect and inspire Renee, and the need to reconcile JL's feelings about his mother. We also have Jurati and the Borg Queen, which ties into the series theme of forgiveness, self-forgiveness and second chances. There's also a lot of commentary on the state of the world today, fascism and nihilism in the face of what seems like certain doom.

So, much like Season 1, we have an overarching plot that meditates on complex psychological themes and political commentary, all leading to a mostly feel-good conclusion. I think this worked really well. Specifically, I thought that the performances were great - Patrick Stewart was noticeably stronger and more engaged this time round in my view - and that the political stuff felt more appropriate when they weren't warping what the federation is in order to tell them. Yes, they did end up spending 8 episodes in the 2020s and, yeah, it feels like too much. But still, overall, I liked it.

I was surprised by how deep they went with the mental health stuff, and I personally like abstraction and metaphor in these kinds of stories, so the stuff with JL's mum worked pretty well for me.

I thought things came together pretty satisfyingly in the final episode and I really loved the final conversation with Q. It was all a lesson: what did we learn?

Other people's lives aren't yours to control. Their choices and mistakes are their own and your pain at this is inevitable, but nevertheless something you can heal from

There's more to say here, but in general I liked this part of the show. The main story of JL and Tallinn, and Agnes and the Borg really worked for me.

The Rest of the Crew

Seven, Raffi, Rios and Elnor were once again in supporting roles, with Soji seemingly replacing Agnes in terms of importance this time around... except, that's not really accurate is it?

One thing that the plotting of S1 definitely did better than S2 is that S1 remained quasi-episodic in structure. Each episode had new things happening in it and there was an attempt to keep them each uniquely memorable. This was a mixed bag in terms of success but the intent was there. S2 on the other hand struggles to do this. Aside from the first two episodes, the others all sort of merge into one big mush, and there are very few new story beats and locations introduced. This isn't inherently good or bad, but it causes some problems here. Namely, that each character functionally has one thing going on with them and it's all they do all season.

Seven, Raffi, Rios and Laris/Tallinn are all present throughout the season. With Seven, Raffi and Rios, their roles are aruguably more one note than in S1.

I adore Raffi and Sevens relationship. I've seen people argue that the writing comes across as prioritising Seven over Raffi and I agree to some extent. It's not present throughout, but I felt that in episode 9 in particular. Raffi gets a token resolution to the Elnor thing, then she's free to react to what Sevens got going on and give her a pep talk. That said, I still love what her and Seven have going on in this season, both as individuals and as a couple.

Rios' subplot with Teresa is, um, clearly controversial around these parts. I don't hate the idea; the actors have chemistry and the performances are mostly good, but I will say it feels like something a 90s trek episode would've covered in, like, 20 minutes... maybe more if it was in a 2-parter. I've heard people say that he's been "sidelined". I'm not sure that's the right word for it but there's something to it. His storyline is initially tied into the political themes of the show but eventually just becomes a romance subplot which is nice enough but not really about anything important.

The elephant in the room is that Santiago Cabrera was known to not be staying on for S3 long before the show itself confirmed it. It's not clear who's decision this was but regardless, his storyline feels geared towards providing a reason for him not to be in S3. It's distracting and kind of irritating. The announcement that even more TNG actors would be returning for S3 puts a real sour taste to it as well. The new characters were the best part of the show and I'd much rather see more of them than reintroducing the old gang.

Soji and Elnor: Now That's What I Call a Sidelining

Soji appears in episode 1, but isn't present for the BQ encounter and doesn't go on the main adventure. However, Isa Briones does reappear as Kore. I was pleased to see her again and she is really strong in this role but... it's a bit of an insult, right? Soji was a major player in S1: the biggest role after JL. Kore is basically a cameo.

Similarly, my son Elnor appears as himself in the first two episodes, but then dies and is relegated to cameo appearances as hallucinations, flashbacks and a hologram. I spent the season assuming he'd be brought back by the end of it. I was very happy to see this confirmed in the finale episode.

Once again, I think some of this would be fixed if the plot structure was different. Imagine if this were 90s trek, and the story was densely packed and more episodic. Sidelining a few characters for an episode or two because they don't fit the story you want to tell works in that format. But when it's a sprawling, drawn out arc over 10 episodes, you can't do shit like this and it not feel like you hate your own characters.

It's also worth acknowledging that it was two white characters (Agnes and Laris) who's roles were expanded in Season 2 and two or three POC who were sidelined. The show clearly has good intentions with diversity and I don't think it's deliberate at all. But when you look at the characters in order of how important they are to the plot, the white characters dominate and... I don't know if I have a conclusion about this. I think it's important and I'm still working out my own feelings on the matter.

It Gets Worse

Rios' departure from the show was a known fact, and as the story went on it became pretty obvious that Agnes was unlikely to return in a major role either. However, Isa Briones and Evan Evagora have since been revealed to not be returning for Season 3. Unlike the other two, there is no in-universe reason that they wouldn't be around. Elnor still works for Starfleet. Soji is still queen of the androids, and Kore is traversing spacetime. I have to conclude that they've been written out of the show because the writers had no plans for them.

urrrghgh

I can't help but have this affect how I feel about the season in retrospect. I was expecting both Soji and Elnor to return. Now it seems unlikely that we'll ever see Elnor again. It's possible that Kore could appear in literally any other show, given the whole time travel thing. Elnor doesn't even have that possibility. It feels like the writers just didn't have faith in their own characters. It leaves a really bad taste in my mouth and retroactively I've lost a lot of good will towards the show. I don't want to watch TNG part 2. I wanted to see these crazy kids go on adventures. Fuck's sake.

Final Thoughts

In a lot of ways S2 is an improvement on S1 in my book. I was still hyped to watch it each week and it held my interest. I felt the dialogue, costume & set design and scene construction was much stronger.

S2 is not free of its problems. Aside from the character stuff I've already discussed, it's also got covid thumbprints all over it, among other issues.

There are a lot of criticisms out there that I disagree with. There's been a fair few posts that claim a thing happened that didn't, or that a character said one thing but they actually said something else, or that something contradicts canon when it categorically does not -

BUT

Theres also a lot of points that I disagree with but I see where they're coming from. And ultimately, if you've caught whatever bug I had during S1 and the show pissed you off enough for you to just have a whole reservoir of resentment that you need to unload, I get that. I've been there. And I think I've made it clear that I do think there are a lot of things to be pissed off about.

[juleswritesthis]

Roswell NM 3x11 Thoughts (I have a lot of thoughts!!!)

Contrary to popular opinion I really liked this episode. Yes, the science was so made up it was funny, yes certain character choices are hilariously silly, yes there was a lot of scenes filled with exposition dump, yes characters disappearing for episodes not to be mentioned as if they don’t exist is jarring & annoying, and omg yes, the Wyatt arc (if you can call it that) fell flat and was a complete waste of valuable screen time. So yes, I agree with most everyone’s assessment. That said still a very enjoyable and entertaining episode setting up the final concluding 2 hours of the season. Let’s get into it.

Jones is highly entertaining, overly good looking, and sometimes hilarious villain. Nathan shines bringing charm and depth to the role. Its important to note that Jones hasn’t caused any lasting damage to the group. Sure, he has tried to kill various members, he’s responsible for putting Maria in a coma & has kidnapped half the cast basically, kept our heroes busy all season. But when it comes to killing or destruction it’s really been focused on the dregs or racist folks of the town, the poor scientist in Santa Fe (I think it was Santa Fe) & the lady at the university last week. No one of any real consequence to our heroes. Now I have no idea if Maria’s vision arc has concluded because it hasn’t been mentioned in forever, but I’m assuming that there will be a major death by season end. Noah killed Rosa and the 2 other girls, abused Isobel for 10 years and destroyed the lives of all the mains. For Jones to be a real big bad there’s got to be some long-lasting consequences to one or more of our mains. Though I’m going into the final 2 episodes with excitement there is some concern. I don’t think any of the mains will perish but I do worry about Sanders and even Heath. (I’m really worried about Sanders y’all especially after that promo!!!)

Jones negotiation with Liz was bizarre. Why negotiate at all? Wouldn’t he just threaten to kill or maim people…what the heck is Liz’s bargaining chip against an all-powerful, evil dictator? If she doesn’t do what he wants he can just start killing folks she loves. It really is that easy. I get the whole creativity inspiration thing but fear for those you love is a great motivator. I was so amused that after hours of discussion Liz pulls out the big guns… free the sheriff. Was that her wild card? Really Liz? She may be a kick-ass scientist with a boatload of courage and sass, but I wouldn’t have her negotiating any of my needs anytime soon.

Isobel and Rosa scenes continue to delight. I think it’s clear Rosa won’t be in Season 4 much. As much as I will miss her, I’m glad that she will find some peace and joy at art school, she deserves it. Unlike Wyatt who does not deserve any tranquility because his redemption (if you can call it that) was not earned. Instead, his memories were wiped along with it any true feelings of guilt and remorse. How can we believe he has truly changed? What happens if his memories return? So silly and completely wasteful screen time (no offense to the actor who is quite good and likable).

The Dallas and Max scenes were wonderful. Don’t get me wrong I prefer the show not tell method. And Dallas conveniently having the entire Oasis history in a memory from his father then regurgitating those memories to Max (and the audience) was not the best way to convey the story. However, the actor who plays Dallas is ridiculously charismatic and I could listen to him recite the phone book (do those still exist?) and be entertained. Plus, for one moment I truly believe that Dallas had gotten through to the constantly self-sacrificing, martyr that is Max Evans. But as the promo for finale proves with Max asking Michael (why Michael?) to kill him, the words didn’t stick. Oh Max…

Speaking of, I truly feel so bad for Max. He’s had it rough. In a span of couple weeks, he’s been told he is a clone of an evil dictator, he isn’t the Savior but in fact a weapon to bring down the real Savior who also isn’t really a savior but a genocidal maniac (Michael’s words not mine) who slaughtered half his planet. Not to mention the “there has to be 3” doesn’t include him, as he isn’t part of the triad. And that because he is a clone, he doesn’t actually have biological parents or siblings or anything, well Michael, by DNA sort of, maybe? Oh, and he is the only thing tethering the evil, psycho dictator to life. I mean…

My hope for Season 4 is that Max gets to process everything he has learned about his existence. He hasn’t expressed how he feels the entire season and he deserves to. I hope the writers don’t have him get over it by season’s end with one scene or worse just sweep it under the rug. Like being a clone of an evil psycho, to be used as a weapon, without any real connection to Isobel and Michael? That’s got to have some lasting effects…please writers let me see it on my screen.

Speaking of show not telling, Michael’s new powers. I not a fan of Michael telling us a story of how he used his mind control powers accidently when he was 18. Can we please see these scenes so we can feel the true emotional impact?

As for these powers, strap in, this is a doozy (and might be controversial). I, like Michael, feel that taking someone’s free will, no matter who they are is not a good power to have; it’s not fun, it’s not cool. Michael is right that’s some dark shit and a power that needs to be used very sparingly and with a ton of responsibility.

I loved the scene between Sanders and Michael, but I have a couple issues with some of the dialogue. Sanders is the only living person (other than Jones) that knew and loved Nora. Thus, he can speak about her with authority. He is also the only person who is any kind of real parent figure in Michael’s. Thus, him saying Michael has no darkness can be believed. He knows Michael and he knows Nora. However, Sanders doesn’t know what its like to have powers, especially an immense power such as mind control. Though I appreciate Sanders’ perspective (and agree with him about the purity of Michael’s soul) I wasn’t a big fan of him brushing away Michael’s fears about having mind control powers and not wanting to use them. Yes, it’s important for Michael to recognize just because he has Jones’ power doesn’t mean he is or will ever become Jones. It’s not the powers that make a person. But the line about Nora not fearing her powers was not helpful. Nora’s powers were telekinesis, engineering (if genius is a power) and possibly miraculous crop growth. None of these powers take away a person’s ability to control their actions (well telekinesis to a certain point but in nowhere near actual mind control). So of course, Nora didn’t fear her powers.

I wish someone had validated Michael’s fears instead of brushing them away with a few words of you have no darkness or in Isobel’s case you aren’t like Jones/Noah. A person does not have to be evil or bad to misuse a power like mind control & for that misuse to have dire consequences. Can you imagine being able to make people do what you want them to do at any time? Even if your intent is to do good, it doesn’t mean it’s something that should be done or won’t have major consequences. Sort of like the ends justify means conversation between Jones and Liz. What is the line, do you recognize it and what’s to stop a person from inches towards the line and what happens if you cross it?

So, my wish for next season is for Michael like Max is given time to process what he has learned about himself and his powers. My wish is for Michael is to continue to struggle with when, how and if he should use the mind control power. That way even when faced with a racist sheriff that is holding a gun to his friends, he is careful, asks for consent and never takes advantage of this tremendous power. In addition, I do think it would be very interesting to continue to explore these powers and how they maybe could change a person? Take Max’s power to give and take away life force. He killed Noah and used that life force (and his own) to bring Rosa to back to life. Seems like a good exchange but ethically and morally having a person decide who lives or dies? And how would this all fit into religion with Dallas being a priest? These could make for some great conversations and strong character development. Fingers crossed we see some of it and not just get told in passing.

The music in the episode was amazing. The beginning with Nothing Else Matters and Jones is a tux… I mean… Also, the ending with the fight sequence, building the suspense, only for the reveal to be that Jones had wanted them all to come so he could trap Liz, Dallas, and Max along with Isobel and Michael (for extra leverage) in his mind. I’m confused about why everyone was sitting but Michael was standing? Is he able to move or is he able to resist his father’s mind control? I’m really looking forward to next week and for Team Human to come to the rescue (maybe).

Favorite lines of the episode:

Sanders to Michael: “You are just a pair of sad puppy dog eyes and a cowboy hat”

Jones to Team Alien & Liz: “Well, everyone seems a little tense” (LOL I love Jones!)

Dallas (or Isobel) writing on the wall to Jones: “KNOCK, KNOCK”