Bored with the old new content topic...

[DavidG]

Aaiee! There are connections we knew about, and connections we didn't (and I sound like Donald bloody Rumsfeld), and Moriarty is as good a hypothesis as any for the fingerprints that have been left on the WTF and those they hunt.

Moriarty = Patient Zero?

Reyes may be jumping ahead of himself assuming a source inside the team:

Oh, bugger, think I've got it.

You ever hear of remote viewing?

The anomaly is the paedophile -- every other incident of ligature strangulation, every other hint at a puppetmaster has involved a beta or gamma. Chaz's involvement in the Joshua Lynch case muddies that, draws it into the WTF's orbit, but it isn't as clean a link. Was there something personal about that kill, or was it just another offering/taunt to the BAU/WTF?

Oh, and for truly poignant, found this in the Danville LJs a couple of entries down from Daph's entry above:

"How do you not go screaming bonkers doing this?"

I did.

Didn't you notice?

*does the Bugs face*

[tylik]

Moriarty = Patient Zero?

Unless we're looking at a model wherein infecting someone gives you power over them, I don't know why that would be the case.

Hm. I'm actually reminded of evolutionary models in a form more like models of an a-biotic origin of life - it's not that the first one is important, it's the first one that can replicate itself. Well, a gamma that can influence other gammas, and perhaps shape their manifestation, anyway. Yeah, this is a weird metaphor even for me, but one of the undergrads I've been working with has been doing artificial chemistry with an eye towards autopoietic models. Though this is almost more like Conway's game of life (which is fun, but, uh, pretty abstracted compared to what J is doing.)

The anomaly is the paedophile -- every other incident of ligature strangulation, every other hint at a puppetmaster has involved a beta or gamma.

Well - and mind, I'm not attached to this hypothesis - I think "classic" investigation of an anomaloid focuses on looking for a foundation for their mythology. So the anomalous case might tell us a fair bit about what makes them tick.

[DavidG]

Moriarty = Patient Zero?

Unless we're looking at a model wherein infecting someone gives you power over them, I don't know why that would be the case.

Not automatically, but potentially, though we'd be looking for quite an old man/woman by now (unless we think immortality is a viable sideline in mythology).

Hm. I'm actually reminded of evolutionary models in a form more like models of an a-biotic origin of life - it's not that the first one is important, it's the first one that can replicate itself. Well, a gamma that can influence other gammas, and perhaps shape their manifestation, anyway. Yeah, this is a weird metaphor even for me

It actually seems perfectly reasonable to me.

like Conway's game of life (which is fun, but, uh, pretty abstracted)

Not quite so much fun when you've been shanghaied into making it your final year project and aren't convinced the model your tutor wants you to implement makes sense

[hollyxu]

Whenever someone mentions Moriarty, I think of Moran as well - is it possible that there's another team out there, under the control of the primordial gamma (or as dwg says, Patient Zero)?

The implications are pretty terrifying.

[eschatonic]

So if Moriarty is someone who has met Hope and probably at least one other member of the team, I nominate Chaz, and I suspect the gamma is somebody who has worked with troubled children in the southwest over the last few decades. Probably a pediatric shrink of some kind, because at they're a little thin on the ground, and one individual would see a lot of kids over quite a lot of territory.

He could have come through Hope's hospital, or interacted with her after she was discharged to the halfway house. If he showed her some minimal kindness and supported (or expanded upon) her delusions, she could have come to trust him. Especially if he's the one who started giving her chaotic misery a clear shape and a goal and things. You're special! It's these people's fault that you're suffering! Sic em.

Chaz's general contempt of and hostility toward child psychologists and psychiatrists means he wouldn't necessarily remember one as particularly weird, and as a child he'd be much less perceptive of other people's personal oddness, especially in a clinical situation where the focus is supposed to be on how weird Chaz is, and he's already mainly thinking about how to get out of having to come back.

And they seem to have a lot of cases in the southwest, especially compared to population density. And Todd noticed that there were rather a lot of gammas in Texas. Which is still sort of part of the southwest.

[txanne]

Fred, Texas, is definitely part of the South, but Las Vegas...yeah. Addie runs away from the Relative into Moriarty's clutches.

[el_jefe]

I bet Renee knows who Moriarty is.

[el_jefe]

el_jefe - most appropriate icon ever. (Mind, I don't know when I last ate popcorn. But it's kind of like going out for coffee - there's actual coffee and popcorn, and then there's ritual.)

Mmmmmm, coffee. . . .

Yup, I'm the same way. Except whereas popcorn is the sitting-on-the-couch-watching-movies ritual, coffee is more akin to religion. 

[DavidG]

So if Moriarty is someone who has met Hope and probably at least one other member of the team, I nominate Chaz, and I suspect the gamma is somebody who has worked with troubled children in the southwest over the last few decades.

Yeesh, that's just creepy, but fits the facts rather well. We shouldn't forget Hope's father in this, there's clearly another Gamma beyond the Relative who has managed to have kids, and he's had 20-odd years to father more of them. I suppose trolling the DNA databases for familial matches to Hope's DNA would be regrettably unethical.....

And they seem to have a lot of cases in the southwest, especially compared to population density. And Todd noticed that there were rather a lot of gammas in Texas. Which is still sort of part of the southwest.

They do, don't they

[tylik]

I bet Renee knows who Moriarty is.

I like that thought.

It's much better than wondering if Renee is Moriarty. (Which just seems awfully unlikely from what we know about Renee. So it's intellectually as well as emotionally better. But still. Icky.)

[DavidG]

It's much better than wondering if Renee is Moriarty.

Ligature strangulation as a way of sending a message that won't be forgotten even when you're the Invisible Girl? That's icky even for the PTB! Email would be so much neater... Which is actually a serious thought, does Renee's betability work at a distance?

[tylik]

Ligature strangulation as a way of sending a message that won't be forgotten even when you're the Invisible Girl? That's icky even for the PTB! Email would be so much neater... Which is actually a serious thought, does Renee's betability work at a distance?

A beta-ability that makes you forget email that you really wanted to remember?  ...sounds kind of non-fictional.

[HebrewRose]

Fred, Texas, is definitely part of the South, but Las Vegas...yeah. Addie runs away from the Relative into Moriarty's clutches.

As a San Antonian, I submit that Texas encompasses the Southwest as well.

[ebony14]

Fred, Texas, is definitely part of the South, but Las Vegas...yeah. Addie runs away from the Relative into Moriarty's clutches.

As a San Antonian, I submit that Texas encompasses the Southwest as well.

To quote Little Feat, "Texas is a world all of its own."

[eschatonic]

Texas is like California: half of it is the Southwest, half of it is the other nearby geocultural region, and all of it is it's own weird thing that defies classification.