Season 2

[Elizabeth Bear]

This would be a good time for refreshin'.

[txanne]

That's...well, Todd is fantastic, but we knew that. Reyes...I'm about to put his bucket in the shed next to Rossi's.

[Caryn]

Okay, tell me something, PTB: why does Reyes care so damn much?

It doesn't fit the role, it doesn't fit his job, it doesn't fit the facts we've been told, it just doesn't make sense. Unless....

[txanne]

We know absolutely nothing about Reyes' first contact with the anomaly. We know that other members of the team found out about the anomaly the hard way. Other than that, I try not to think about it too hard.

[Caryn]

Want to know. Heck, ALWAYS want to know why.

[Calluna Vulgaris]

Hunh.

Much more straight-forward depiction of the inside of Reyes's head than we usually get.  Must chew on this.

Meanwhile, y'all, about Reyes's first contact with the anomaly and the background of his obsession - it's true.  Many or most of our other characters have been given traumatic encounters which set them on the road to the work they do.  But I think it would be a drastic mistake to assume that everyone on the team has the same--etiology, as it were. 

Stephen Reyes is brilliant.  And unlike a lot of people (or characters) who have his kind of laser-focus incalculable intelligence, he has people skills.  People skills are his long suit - people skills and strategy.  He has...I'll just say this but not delve into it for implications...the kind of intuitive higher-level grasp of how people work that Chaz has for correlations. 

Presumably, he has been like this for a long time.  Presumably, even in his younger days, he read people and saw how they worked and what made them tick, where the vulnerable points were, how the vectors lined up: if I push just like *this* from this angle in this way in this direction, then--  He certainly has that now, and nothing has so far suggested that there was an identifiable moment when he turned from a just-yer-ordinary-guy-y'know into Stephen Reyes. 

And this means that for all his life - or something very close to it - there have been fascinations but no mysteries. 

But he can't understand the gammas.  He understands a little - they all do.  They learn it as part of their equipment for the job.  But he can't see what makes the anomaly tick. 

I think it drives him nuts.  He's obsessed with taking them alive for study because he's run up - it matters how, but it almost doesn't - against the thing that is intolerable to him.  A specific, "My daughter cracked at the age of 23 and killed my two baby grandchildren" or "ten agents under my leadership died horrible deaths that I was helpless to prevent" precipitating event would be possible, but almost redundant.


...Do you ever notice that conversations like this about what precipitates an SU agent becoming an SU agent is a whole hell of a lot like the conversations about what precipitates someone with a latent anomaly into becoming a full-blown active gamma?  What laid the groundwork?  What made it possible?  What made them crack?  What influences in their personal history affect how they proceed now that they've converted?

[txanne]

...Do you ever notice that conversations like this about what precipitates an SU agent becoming an SU agent is a whole hell of a lot like the conversations about what precipitates someone with a latent anomaly into becoming a full-blown active gamma?  What laid the groundwork?  What made it possible?  What made them crack?  What influences in their personal history affect how they proceed now that they've converted?

See above, where I try not to think about it.

[Cal]

...Do you ever notice that conversations like this about what precipitates an SU agent becoming an SU agent is a whole hell of a lot like the conversations about what precipitates someone with a latent anomaly into becoming a full-blown active gamma?  What laid the groundwork?  What made it possible?  What made them crack?  What influences in their personal history affect how they proceed now that they've converted?

Yup.  And then I think, of course they are, because we have tricksy PTB who are very good at the forward-planning and subtexty things...

Like your Reyes thoughts, by the way.  Yes.  People skills and strategy, and manipulation.  He's Ax Preston with Fiorinda armour, and isn't that a scary thought?  I also agree that someone like Reyes doesn't necessarily need a triggering incident.  For him, it might have been enough to just come across a mention, or a pattern he couldn't resolve, and pursue it as an intellectual interest that developed into a full-blown obsession, because for once in his life he's found a problem that he can't just solve.  It must be frustrating as blazes, but also addictive as blazes.

Edited for tyops.

[jennygadget]

....about Reyes's first contact with the anomaly....I think it would be a drastic mistake to assume that everyone on the team has the same--etiology, as it were. 

Stephen Reyes is brilliant.....But he can't understand the gammas.  He understands a little - they all do.  They learn it as part of their equipment for the job.  But he can't see what makes the anomaly tick. 

I think it drives him nuts.  He's obsessed with taking them alive for study because he's run up - it matters how, but it almost doesn't - against the thing that is intolerable to him.  A specific, "My daughter cracked at the age of 23 and killed my two baby grandchildren" or "ten agents under my leadership died horrible deaths that I was helpless to prevent" precipitating event would be possible, but almost redundant.
he

Oh, yes.  And then wow - great points about Reyes' people/deduction skills.

I was thinking about the question of "how did they get into it?" last night (as I was cursing my lack of internet and therefore inability to access the latest SU extra) and Reyes was the only team member that I never even considered having a "defining moment" so to speak.  (I like how you compare them to the cracks that create betas and gammas.)

I think if there was any single moment, it was simply running right smack into something that didn't make sense...and then knowing that he had to spend the rest of his life trying to figure it out.  For the same reasons he feels so guilty about lying to Jessica; he obviously has very strong convinctions about personal responsibility.  I'm guessing he feels that, having this knowledge about gammas that no one else does, he feels obligated to DO something with it.

It's possible there was some single life altering event that sparked this, but I'm not betting on the possibility.  And I'm guessing if there was such a moment, it had more have to do with the discovery of gammas rather than the amount of trauma surrounding the event.  More along the lines of what led Daphne to SU, rather than how Brady got there.  Not that Daphne's event wasn't traumatic, just that it was as much the finding out that this was all a secret as it was the violence that led her to SU.  So, if Reyes had a "crack" it I think it involved less guilt over past events than Brady's, more "How can I do anything else when I know this is out there?" like Daphne's.

[Calluna Vulgaris]

So, if Reyes had a "crack" it I think it involved less guilt over past events than Brady's, more "How can I do anything else when I know this is out there?" like Daphne's.

Oh, nice connection.  You're absolutely right - Daphne *did* have a signal event, but the really powerful motivating factor wasn't the horror of the gamma she encountered, it was discovering she'd been kept in the dark about things she felt she needed to know in order to do her job.  Hers is a passion of vocation, not of intellect, but connected nonetheless.

And what's really interesting to me about that is that, unless I'm just forgetting stuff from season 1, we have been given less of a relationship between Reyes and Daphne than almost other pair of characters. 

[jennygadget]

You know, you are right, that is rather Interesting.....

I also find it interesting that Daphne is person whose pov we see first.  And Reyes is the one that started the group.  Which means that both the origin of SU (as far as we can tell) and our introduction to it are centered as much - or more - around they mystery and weirdness as they are around the violence of it all.

Which makes the WTF? nickname rather appropriate.  Not that that is a surprise, or anything.

[jennygadget]

(Ok, so, in retrospect, that last post was a weird combination of the overly obvious and random.  Let's try that again….)

I think what's also really interesting is that both the origin of the SU and our introduction to it center around the idea of a mystery to be solved, rather than an evil that needs to be vanquished…despite the fact that Reyes has defined the anomaly itself in terms of the latter, and Daphne echoes this definition for us in the first episode.

That's what the second installment really highlights to me.  That Reyes, the guy that's responsible for creating the unit in the first place, is deluding himself as to why he is there.  Yes, he feels responsible to an extreme degree, and he feels this way because he has a heightened sense of what is right and wrong.  But his sense of right and wrong seems to be very centered in truth and transgressions, rather than around the idea of being a helpful cog in the machine that is society - something that often requires bending the truth and forgiving transgressions.

I think that's why he has such a hard time dealing with Jessica.  His understanding of how right and wrong are defined doesn't really work in her case.  She is so broken that the idea of forcing her to take responsibility for her actions is ludicrous.  More pertinently, Reyes can't really imagine being so broken as to need to surround oneself with nothing but lies, because searching for the truth is so central to his self-definition.  (Sol, however, is the Obi Wan Kenobi of the group - he has perfected the art of telling the truth wrapped in comforting and misleading lies.)  So while Sol can make himself a part of her fantasy, Reyes simply feels the drive to shatter her illusions - even though he knows better than most people why she has them.

And yet, in way Reyes is broken as well (though obviously not to anywhere near the same degree).  He's so focused on solving the mystery…because he thinks he's the only one who can…that he's willing to do all kinds of not nice things that he would never do otherwise.  Just like Jessica.

And deep down a part of him recognizes this.  And that's why she bothers him so much.  She's a reminder both of what he has become and of what he could be.

I'd imagine Sol knows this too…and that's why he would never ask why Reyes wanted another copy of the picture.  He knows it's Reyes warning to himself of what he is capable of, and a way of punishing himself to atone for his sins.

And aside from this all being very fascinating by itself, it makes me wonder what exactly it's leading up to.  Because while the latest dvd extras seem to be very much triage for our feelings for Reyes after Refining Fire; I also can't help thinking that what is being built up will inevitably get knocked down again.

[Cole]

*claps* Very well said. I totally agree. And if TPTB are building up our opinion of Reyes just to knock it down again, I shudder to think what's coming!

[jeffy]

*claps* Very well said. I totally agree. And if TPTB are building up our opinion of Reyes just to knock it down again, I shudder to think what's coming!

I'm more worried that they're making sure we empathize enough with him so that when they do unspeakable things to him we'll understand him enough to share his pain. Nasty PTB, how we love thee.

[Emma Bull]

Why, hello there, new DVD extra and next-episode teaser! So glad you could join us this evening!

(In other words, check out the site.  )