3x07, "Ligature"

[tylik]

Actually, the front page teaser is the gamma of the week, but she's not the perpetrator of that scene. She's the victim.

(You can't scream while you're being garroted. *g*)

So, a gamma harvester? Honestly, I was creeped out enough at the suggestion of a gamma farmer. Though I guess the one implies the other.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Actually, the front page teaser is the gamma of the week, but she's not the perpetrator of that scene. She's the victim.

(You can't scream while you're being garroted. *g*)

So, a gamma harvester? Honestly, I was creeped out enough at the suggestion of a gamma farmer. Though I guess the one implies the other.

That would put it pretty far out of chronology. And I just said you can't scream when you're being garroted. It's definitely in Viv's POV, however.

[tylik]

Oh. Bwah.

Hm. I wonder how common that is, with identity.

[jeffy]

Late reader here. I foolishly started reading it at work yesterday and of course ended up reading the whole thing instead of working.

It was very fun and ECR inducing having the show set in a city I know and love. And unlike with most shows they actually filmed in Seattle instead of making Vancouver (or LA... shudder) stand in. Most refreshing. And I'll second tereshkova's pointing out that the locks aren't pump operated. All gravity which is kind of magical.

Right up until she pulled out the jar of acid I was assuming that the burning was part of her anomalability.

More evidence of a vigilante gamma hunter certainly seems to be charting our course for the next little while. I wonder if we'll find that zie has privileged knowledge of how the anomaly works and is largely trying to keep Idlewood from acquiring any more test subjects.

I was very confused by this bit at the locks:

It would have taken her down, too. Chaz saw the way she reeled. But Ippolito was a taller woman that Paliotto. Lau's perfect, incapacitating throat-strike nailed Paliotto right between the eyes.

Where this earlier bit seemed to indicate that she'd switched to impersonating Nikki rather than Ippolito by that point.

Her hair shortened, darkened. She seemed to shrink--

The Tuckerizing act V was pure joy as someone who's eaten at the restaurant and met MG. But I don't usually go in the lounge so I didn't know about The Button. Must try that next time I'm in.

[DavidG]

Late getting to read this one, I've been feeling icky and mentally sluggish all week and that's not really a good start to letting the PTB play with your mind! Or put another way, SU is too good to read when you aren't in a state to appreciate it fully.

Creepy opener, particularly creepy to see a birth metaphor in those circumstances. Phoenix rebirth this isn't. And the final denouement gives this a real delayed sting.

Reyes, on leave? Some mistake surely? Which brings us neatly on to Airplane! jokes

'Vitriolage' -- one of those words you would almost prefer not knowing!

List the victims and nowadays I immediately start trying to profile them by potential ethnic origin! SU has changed the way I approach crime fiction.

I'll join in the appreciation of the Seattle setting, even if it's not a city I've ever been to it's one I know from books and TV and gaming, not to mention a long time regret that a secondment there fell through, and it was good to see the team in that environment, including, of course, the Night Kitchen.

Spotting the Gamma's restricted movement from the way she moved. I'm just getting over a frozen shoulder so there was a rather creepy resonance there.

Like Jeffy I was late to realising Viv was using actual sulphuric acid as opposed to some sort of alchimerical attack based on her anomability. I was jarred out of it by Daph's comment that it wasn't a dangerous anomability.

Geo-tracking the gamma via anonymized GSM -- bizarrely/creepily/serendipitously I've been noodling around a law enforcement application for precisely that in the past couple of weeks.

Sol and the rubber glove, I've mentioned it already in the 'my arm is complete' thread, but half my neighbours probably now think I've completely lost it from the uproarious laughter echoing out of the house.

Gammas cleaning house. Did she run because the team spooked her, or did she sense there was someone else watching her. Did Viv burn the pictures, or was it the other, the maybe gamma.

Using cameras to spot her, reminds me of the mirror arrangements used as gunsights in the British vampire series 'Ultraviolet'.

Nikki in danger, oh my! I got there about half a paragraph before the text did and just knew who Viv was going to target on, and who would barrel straight at her nonetheless.

Still not 100% on the whys and wherefores of Reyes yelling 'fetch!', but Chaz got the job done in spectacular fashion. I particularly liked 'Boo!'

And all ending up with serial killers within serial killers. What Chaz seems to have overlooked is how would he, or any other member of the team, have found Viv in order to kill her? Her trail was completely cold and the entire team had broken contact. We aren't just looking for a period of time in which someone could kill her, but a period of time in which they could find her, subdue or kill her, and get her into the house for the final display. And all that without a cop on guard being able to remember seeing anyone. Now who do we know that can make people forget they've seen her....

Picking up the Night Kitchen act as semi-detached from the gamma of the week, other people have already pointed out how it circles back around to the opening, to how Chaz and Daphs really care for each other, and then it stabs us in the heart by reminding us of their missing sib. We all knew MG was getting a work-on (Freudian slip!) at some point, but this added up to so much more than I was expecting (but precisely what I should have expected). The team, particularly Chaz and Daphs, have a depth that extends beyond the episode structure into friendships with people like MG and it's nice to see that weaving back and forth between the LJs and the text.

One last thought: "September, 2010", when was the last time the episode dates were that close to real time?

[DavidG]

So, a gamma harvester? Honestly, I was creeped out enough at the suggestion of a gamma farmer. Though I guess the one implies the other.

Ick! What would you harvest, the essence-of-Anomaly that is the spark of conversion?

Harvesting, or artificial insemination?

[DavidG]

Of course, the entire idea seems technically impossible in the timeline because I can't see that anybody had time alone to get back to the apartment and to kill her before making it to the restaurant.

It's not just the killing her, but the reconnecting with her that is the real issue, IMO. The only connection the team had was that they knew her hunting grounds, and at the end of the scene at the locks she's running from her hunting grounds, not towards them. The only way I can see it working is for someone to have her under surveillance that isn't broken by her flight, or to know where her new nest is (assuming she's even had time to find somewhere). And no one on the team can maintain surveillance after the locks, while the second is very iffy. The scenario that seems to work best is a secondary observer at the locks who didn't lose contact and then moved in for the kill.

But there's more to it than just simply whodunnit, there's the whole issue of breaking back into the appartment and staging the body for the team to find. That argues for someone not just killing gammas, but deliberately messing with their minds. Someone who knows what the WTF is and is not in accordance with its aims. I think that rules out a simple gamma, I'm not convinced it fits anyone close to the team -- not enough damage inflicted to make the risk worthwhile, but it potentially fits into the mythology of the Yardston puppeteer (assuming there was a second-level puppeteer behind Simon Talliwell) or that of Hope Mitchell's murderer, assuming they aren't one and the same.

[DavidG]

Ugh, that teaser at the start of the episode is no throw-away tone-setter. *

Because while she's dying, you are being born.

Could we be seeing the first evidence of a second-stage Gamma here?

Or perhaps someone deliberately trolling for conversion by being up close and personal when Gammas die? And the simplest way to make sure you're close enough is to kill them yourself.

[DavidG]

I've also been thinking about the comment that ended with wondering if Chaz will wind up as Gollum, Frodo or Sam. At this point, given what we know and don't know, my speculation is that the Mysterious Strangler will be Gollum, Chaz will be Frodo and Daphne will be Sam.

You know, Daphne really is a very good Sam! (Pretty much the point Reyes makes when he pats himself on the back for recruiting her).

[DavidG]

And push The Button! (I really need to make red buttons that say I Pushed The Red Button At The Night Kitchen.)

Is there a picture of the Button/Jacob's Ladder online anywhere?

I'm pretty sure "evolve" is the usual term for the progression of a serial killer's MO. They say it on CM all the time, anyway.

Yeah, evolving is the perfection of their craft (ick!)/mythology, devolving is when they lose all interest in anything but the kill and the forensic countermeasures and elaborate preparation go by the wayside. Picture self-control graphed as a bell-curve on the way up, and a parabolic arc on the way down.

[eschatonic]

But there's more to it than just simply whodunnit, there's the whole issue of breaking back into the appartment and staging the body for the team to find. That argues for someone not just killing gammas, but deliberately messing with their minds. Someone who knows what the WTF is and is not in accordance with its aims. I think that rules out a simple gamma, I'm not convinced it fits anyone close to the team -- not enough damage inflicted to make the risk worthwhile, but it potentially fits into the mythology of the Yardston puppeteer (assuming there was a second-level puppeteer behind Simon Talliwell) or that of Hope Mitchell's murderer, assuming they aren't one and the same.

I think the original murdered woman in the opener must be a jammer the team never identified. She dies either at the hands of, or in the presence of, the Mysterious Strangler, thereby passing on the Anomaly to him/her/it.

Since she dies screaming, he obviously didn't strangle her. She died in some slower manner, probably related to MS's nightmare about teeth falling out and skin falling off. I don't know what would produce that effect. Radiation poisoning? I'd say that's a ridiculously implausible way to kill someone, but at least one person (this guy) has actually been murdered that way.

So this person, newly *Anomalized, goes out into the world with a (new?) desire to strangle people. Or at least, to strangle gammas. MS was aware of his conversion at the moment it happened, and is not happy about it. Possible anomabilities: gamma detector, ninja stealth powers,

MS isn't Sylar. He's Dexter.

*like weaponized, but worse.

[DavidG]

Wait.  I got it.  The DexterGamma is Celentano. 

That's actually pretty much my working theory for Red John in the Mentalist.

[DavidG]

But there's more to it than just simply whodunnit, there's the whole issue of breaking back into the appartment and staging the body for the team to find. That argues for someone not just killing gammas, but deliberately messing with their minds. Someone who knows what the WTF is and is not in accordance with its aims. I think that rules out a simple gamma, I'm not convinced it fits anyone close to the team -- not enough damage inflicted to make the risk worthwhile, but it potentially fits into the mythology of the Yardston puppeteer (assuming there was a second-level puppeteer behind Simon Talliwell) or that of Hope Mitchell's murderer, assuming they aren't one and the same.

I think the original murdered woman in the opener must be a jammer the team never identified. She dies either at the hands of, or in the presence of, the Mysterious Strangler, thereby passing on the Anomaly to him/her/it.

Since she dies screaming, he obviously didn't strangle her.

But Bear said:

the front page teaser is the gamma of the week, but she's not the perpetrator of that scene. She's the victim.

(You can't scream while you're being garroted. *g*)

Which is anomalous But I think I've figured out two ways the logic can work and either of them are the icky, ECR-y kind of twist the PTB love to inflict on us.

Option 1)
There are three participants in the scene, not two.

Viv can be the victim in either of two ways, as the murder victim, or as a person with a crack physically close enough to have been infected when the victim here, a gamma herself, is murdered. She's brought into the world anew as a gamma by a murder and taken from it by another.

So the scene is in her POV, but it's an Anomaly-informed POV as she cracks wide open into gamma-hood without necessarily being there as the strangling happened.

The icky question that flows out of this is whether the first murder was deliberately committed to infect her, and whether her murder was committed because her value to the anomaly had been destroyed now that she was known to the authorities, and likely to be caught before striking again, and was best realised by killing her to spread the misery of being a gamma on to someone else -- burn a compromised asset to create a new asset. (Umm, blast, that's rebirth, after I said half a dozen messages ago it wasn't a Phoenix metaphor).

(I'm not sure if this is what Tylik was alluding to with the harvesting comment or not)

Option 2)
There is one participant to the scene, not two.

The person being murdered is Viv, the beautiful, sane, non-anomalous Viv who has just had acid thrown in her face, hence the face-peeling visuals, and the person being born is Gamma-Viv. It's the death of personality, not the death of body. (And again it's rebirth)

I think I favour option 2, simply because it's a tremendously elegant piece of writing interpreted that way.

(Edited option 1) because I initially described the opening scene victim as a strangling victim and that isn't what the writing actually says - hopefully before too many people have been confused by it)

[DavidG]

The PEPCK reference totally cracked me up. I think I know one of the researchers

I saw CWRU on the citation and presumed you had put the PTBs onto the research!

[DavidG]

I don't understand the inclusion of Act V at all.  It neither advances the action of the episode nor permits any significant character development;

Beyond what's already been mentioned, SU is a multi-level narrative. The basic level is the writing found in the episodes, but then there's the meta-world in which Chaz, Daphs, Hafidha, Sol and Nikki have an existence outside of the stories and cross into the real world, where they tweet and are LJ friends to many of us here, such as MG (and myself), with interests outside of work such as cooking and gay rights. Given the degree to which Chaz and MG interact in LJ it would actually be out of character for him to go to Seattle and not try to get to Night Kitchen, ditto for Daphs, particularly with Chaz trying to cheer Daphs up.

And beyond that meta is the one in which Chaz is a character on a TV show played by Robert X. Aguilera, which I guess makes half the deltas (including me) fictional characters!

And beyond all that is the meta in which we interact with the PTB on the SU website, and invite them to play with our minds, such as giving us a lovely, warm act of comfort food in which one of us gets to interact directly with Chaz and Daphs onscreen, and then stabbing us in the heart with a reminder that Hafidha can't be there.

Writing works at multiple levels, SU more than most, and sometimes people seed their writing with in-jokes and hidden puns and Tuckerizations that not everyone will get. That's not wrong, just another level to explore and wonder and debate about.