3x09, "The Small Dark Movie of Your Life"

[pling]

Singh still bothers me - because his mythology seems so meticulous. Why would he kill the person who listened to him? Why did he kill the driver? Yeah, the anomaly messes with people, but... it bugs me.

See, this doesn't bother me at all, it makes sense.  I'll try & verbalise how I see it - his thing, his driving force, is that even when you think you have everything under control you don't.  That everything can just go wrong, no matter how clever, how competant, how whatever you are.  It happened to him, it can happen to anyone.  And he is trying to get through to people he sees as where he was - young, up & coming, bright professionals.  And they won't listen, they don't hear what he's trying to tell them, so he shows them.  His tool for this is the sudden ability to cause cerebral aneurysms (because that was the cause of his own downfall & trauma) - and in all his previous cases he shows people how fragile & unfair & out-of-control life is by directly affecting them.

Then along comes Daphne. She "listens" to him, engages with him, answers the things he says - and it looks like on one level it works. He's finally found someone who stopped and listened.  And Todd thinks this is then the point where Singh thinks he can die coz he's "done his job" so's to speak, so commits suicide by truck - which I don't buy into as the whole story.  Because Daphne isn't really listening, is she?  She's not really paying attention to the message, she's acting a part in a play - it's scripted (even if she goes off script when she sees the need).  She may be responding to his words, but inside she's got a plan, and the plan is working.  The situation is under control, she's making the arrest, she's bringing him in.  So the gamma portion of him demonstrates that life is fragile, unfair, out-of-control - using the one tool it has to work with, just not in the same way. If he'd given her a cerebral aneurysm then that wouldn't be as good a demonstration of his central point, it'd be the risk she knew she was taking.

I really liked this episode (and I feel awkward saying this here because while it choked me up to read it, Daphne was never a real person to me, the fourth wall has always been intact for me, so I'm not grieving for her).  As soon as I realised it was real time (about halfway through Part 1 I went back to check the date on it) I figured someone with an internet presence was going to be in serious danger of death - otherwise where's the suspense, we "know they're all alive" if the story is taking place in our past.  And I guessed this time would be fatal coz we dodged the bullet last time (Chaz in Season 1).  And this episode (and in retrospect the whole season leading up to it) did that thing where you don't know what's going to happen but you can see all the pieces falling into place with all the inevitability & weight of ... well, a truck falling off a bridge.  And when it gets there it's unexpected but hindsight shows all the little pieces that meant you should've seen it coming & seen the narrative inevitability of it (and I really need to go back & re-read the whole season when I've got some time, just to see what looks different when you know what's coming).  And I love it when a story pulls that off, it's very satisfying to read.

My take on the "why Daphne?" question at the moment is ... well, if we're postulating a Moriarty or a Moriarty-effect of some sort that's fighting back against the team, how better to damage the team than to rip out someone at the heart of it? And Daphne was one of the two with the best coping mechanisms, with the best support network - the most solid & centered of the team in terms of her ability to cope with life and what it flung at her.  Look at that extra with her worrying about Chaz - she's dealing with her fear and worry, with the help of her wife, not falling to pieces.  I'd say Faulkner was the other one in the team with that solidity, but Faulkner's one of the bosses and so if Daphne dies Faulkner suffers and doubts herself (because ultimately it's partly her responsibility) more than the other way round.  And Daphne was loved by them all - look how she's the one that Hafidha can't bear to imagine a death for.  And if there is some puppetmaster that knows what's going on with other gammas, then he/she/it knows that too, don't they?

So if you want to hurt the team, you take out someone who is loved and who is one of those more likely to cope. And what're we left with?  We've got Reyes & Todd who hatched the plan and bear that responsibility, we've got Faulkner who could've reined them in but acquiesced, we've got Lau who knows it could've been her (c.f. the acid flinging gamma) and probably feels both guilty and relieved. Brady's already got issues with "should've protected him/her better" from Chaz's near death.  Hafidah & Chaz have lost (chosen) family, and to make that worse there are analogies between how Daphne died & how Erik died for Hafidah to keep turning over in her (already cracked) mind.  And Chaz had to be the one to pronounce her dead, which no matter how much he knows she's already dead has got to feel like killing her.

I'm still not totally sold on the idea of a puppetmaster, but looking at it from an out-of-story perspective it's got to be Daphne too.  In terms of story pay-off for Daphne's death, I don't think it can be that this is the team's darkest hour (just coz this is season 3 of 5 not season 4) - but it's another helluva big blow on an already fragile & cracked team that was just about putting itself back together again.  I don't see that can just be "to show us they could", more that this is part of the network of cracks that'll make the team shatter later.  And without it being Daphne, it wouldn't be such a big stressor.

[tylik]

pling -

I am generally in agreement with you. I think one of the blinders I brought to this episode is that I like Singh. I've known doctors that have lost patients. I work with bright ambitious pre meds (and residents, and doctors - and I've worked with med students in the past). It was pretty easy for me to get caught up in the pathos of his request, and not the bitterness of his manifestation. (Though it was pretty clearly there from the beginning - that whole "I should have listened, it's my own fault" bit... bleagh.)

While I am awful curious about a Puppetmaster, even assuming such exists, I don't think we have the information on how well they know the team, and how fine their control of the gammas they manipulate. I think the logic you cite might be well attributed to the writers... but in-world, Daphne might have died because she was the one there. (I also have some doubts about the gamma realizing that she wasn't listening. Heck. It was Daphne. I have some doubts about her not really listening.)

Regarding awkwardness and the fourth wall... I think I gave up feeling awkward for Lent, but when I say Daphne was a real person, I don't mean "because I read her LJ", I mean that she was written clearly enough and as a unique individual that she skates free of the trope. A lot of things are okay if they are written well. It just sets a higher bar. I don't particularly feel that a real friend has died (but then, having had a lot of friends die, in fairness, it's not like I ever know what to expect in terms of how I feel).

[DavidG]

along comes Daphne. She "listens" to him, engages with him, answers the things he says - and it looks like on one level it works. He's finally found someone who stopped and listened.  And Todd thinks this is then the point where Singh thinks he can die coz he's "done his job" so's to speak, so commits suicide by truck - which I don't buy into as the whole story.  Because Daphne isn't really listening, is she?

This is Daphs, I'm not certain she can do 'not really listening'. Particularly with something both medical and case related -- she needs to feed it back into the debrief and the growing profile of gamma motivations and whatever. There is other things going on there as well beyond what Singh wants, but if Singh is just after someone to walk him through the Last Rites of his voyage of self-destruction, then Daphne works fine.

What bothers me is the precision of the kill, Singh's a doctor, not an expert in high-speed vehicle impacts. I can buy his Bug stealing the opportunity to create mayhem and grief, but the mechanism is one with so many variables and potential outcomes I'm not entirely comfortable with it.

[DavidG]

Why do we need to remember that they'll go wherever they need to go?  Why can't we remember that when they go there?  I'm not going to argue anything about what made the writers decide to kill Daphne.  What I will say is that if they killed her just to prove that they could, I will be extremely annoyed.

It's not just where we are going, it's how we get there. How the writers make us feel along the journey is as much a part of the job as how they make us feel at the end.

In mythological terms it's 'the Hero's Journey', not 'the Hero's Ultimate Triumphant Homecoming'.

[pling]

Regarding awkwardness and the fourth wall... I think I gave up feeling awkward for Lent, but when I say Daphne was a real person, I don't mean "because I read her LJ", I mean that she was written clearly enough and as a unique individual that she skates free of the trope. A lot of things are okay if they are written well. It just sets a higher bar. I don't particularly feel that a real friend has died (but then, having had a lot of friends die, in fairness, it's not like I ever know what to expect in terms of how I feel).

Re-reading I realise I got a bit off-point & while the whole post looked like a direct reply to you it gets much more general from the third paragraph on - so it wasn't you particularly I was feeling awkward about, but more the general feeling of this thread so when I wrote something that could be taken as "I am pleased with the way your friend died" I felt awkward.  I should've put that bit in particular into the other thread over in the Leah Bobet forum.

Also - Daphne's real to me in that sense too, she's a well-rounded character, an individual who's more than the sum of her attributes.  Just she was never alive to me, so even tho her death was well written & emotionally affecting it stayed just as fictional as her life to me.

While I am awful curious about a Puppetmaster, even assuming such exists, I don't think we have the information on how well they know the team, and how fine their control of the gammas they manipulate. I think the logic you cite might be well attributed to the writers... but in-world, Daphne might have died because she was the one there.

Yeah, you're right, I think that's more likely as the in-world explanation too - that train of thought started from the answer to "why Daphne?" of "because they can", and BeatriceEagle's reaction to that. It was more an exploration of why I thought it had to be Daphne - and I guess I stretched too far to try & make an in-world reason.

(I also have some doubts about the gamma realizing that she wasn't listening. Heck. It was Daphne. I have some doubts about her not really listening.)

This is Daphs, I'm not certain she can do 'not really listening'. Particularly with something both medical and case related -- she needs to feed it back into the debrief and the growing profile of gamma motivations and whatever.

Perfectly possible I'm stretching again - and this is thematic resonance rather than anything actively done by the gamma. 

But my take on how the gamma "knows" she's not really deeply getting the message is because by that point he knows it's a plan doesn't he?  She's not just a random young professional walking past him, she was bait - she came "armed" with knowledge of him, with knowledge of what he wanted, with knowledge of what he does, with a sedative, with a plan.  She had the situation under control - and his big driving force is that no-one ever listens when he tells them they don't have things as under control as they think, and that he's showing them they're wrong.  And coming from that perspective isn't he likely to see it as yet another bright young thing who thinks they've got it all worked out?  Even if Daphne is actually listening?

And I'm struggling with words here - I do think Daphne is listening in the sense of engaging in conversation, I think she's listening in the sense of it all being information she needs for the debrief/profiling/job, I think she's even listening in the sense of it being a message that resonates with her, but she's also still believing that this situation here is under control so she's not "listened" enough to be thinking "but what if this isn't under control?".  Multiple levels of "listening" and really, I'm not sure anyone could've listened to Singh enough to satisfy him without their whole world crumbling into second-guessing & doubts and never doing anything because you don't know what might happen next.

(And he's fixating on individuals who have some strength of self-belief (to be up & coming young professionals, rather than dropping out of whatever field it was when it got tough), so they're least likely to go down into that spiral of worrying about things like the sky falling in when they leave the house.  So it'd be a nice double whammy - either he destroys someone's self-confidence & professional life by making them doubt themselves, or he kills them.  No good outcomes for the victim are possible.)

What bothers me is the precision of the kill, Singh's a doctor, not an expert in high-speed vehicle impacts. I can buy his Bug stealing the opportunity to create mayhem and grief, but the mechanism is one with so many variables and potential outcomes I'm not entirely comfortable with it.

Which would make it not suicide by truck either?  I dunno, I'm inclined to give this a pass on the grounds of narrative necessity - and if it turns out to matter, you get to tell me "I told you so"

[tylik]

Re-reading I realise I got a bit off-point & while the whole post looked like a direct reply to you it gets much more general from the third paragraph on - so it wasn't you particularly I was feeling awkward about, but more the general feeling of this thread so when I wrote something that could be taken as "I am pleased with the way your friend died" I felt awkward.  I should've put that bit in particular into the other thread over in the Leah Bobet forum.

And I didn't take it as all written to me, I was just unpacking insufficiently. (And in my head I still have this vague expectation that everyone will remember everything everyone else has said, and so that context is implicit... which is really, really stupid of me. And no little bit hypocritical, especially when I reading while as drugged as I have been the last few days.*)

Perfectly possible I'm stretching again - and this is thematic resonance rather than anything actively done by the gamma. 

And at the moment I think we're looking at a bunch of possibility, and don't really have enough information to make a call. I just enjoy the discussion.

Certainly, from a writing standpoint whether or not it's a gamma standpoint in world, the not listening, and these things can just come and wreck your life resonates entirely.

The whole suicide by truck strikes me weird, but I'm not attached to it. And certainly one could look at it as a typical gamma suicide in a way to traumatize as many people so as to optimize its chances of reproducing. Which doesn't even have to be conscious intent, it could just be an evolved reflex on the part of whatever makes the anomaly happen. I kind of like the idea of the anomaly as being akin to a virus rather than a conscious agent... And I am not against Daphne having been killed by bad odds and the general stochasticity of the universe, though there are some story arcs I'd liked to hear a bit more from one of these days.

* There is an curious symmetry in my life between this episode and Refining Fire. I read Refining fire a bit late, but got to it during some of the worst of the spine fruckage back in 2008 - which meant I both had a lot of time to play on the boards, but was highly drugged and in a lot of pain. And then the last couple of days I've been laid up while various nerves are poked and prodded and shot full of things. (Okay, technically it's the area around the nerves.) And stoned

[glinda_w]

She had the situation under control - and his big driving force is that no-one ever listens when he tells them they don't have things as under control as they think, and that he's showing them they're wrong.  And coming from that perspective isn't he likely to see it as yet another bright young thing who thinks they've got it all worked out?  Even if Daphne is actually listening?

And I'm struggling with words here - I do think Daphne is listening in the sense of engaging in conversation, I think she's listening in the sense of it all being information she needs for the debrief/profiling/job, I think she's even listening in the sense of it being a message that resonates with her, but she's also still believing that this situation here is under control so she's not "listened" enough to be thinking "but what if this isn't under control?".  Multiple levels of "listening" and really, I'm not sure anyone could've listened to Singh enough to satisfy him without their whole world crumbling into second-guessing & doubts and never doing anything because you don't know what might happen next.

Hmmmm. I don't see her that way; if nothing else, from her initial contact with the Anomaly - she *knows* how badly things can go wrong, out of nowhere.

Not terribly coherent today, I may pick at this a bit more. Or not.

[glinda_w]

As soon as I realised it was real time (about halfway through Part 1 I went back to check the date on it) I figured someone with an internet presence was going to be in serious danger of death - otherwise where's the suspense, we "know they're all alive" if the story is taking place in our past.  And I guessed this time would be fatal coz we dodged the bullet last time (Chaz in Season 1). 

And Reyes, in the episode with ... Hope? . (sorry guys, blanking on names/titles here, feel free to add that info?)

(And I originally typed in the last name of my friend Hope, so... grargh.

[jimsmyth]

I am suspicious of the truck's accuracy.  Though, to be fair, if it was a large truck, less pinpoint targeting is required.

I think it was the team who was thinking things were under control, not (just?) Daphne.  I think the out-of-pattern aneurism was a sign of trapped-and-desperation flailing.

I don't think a puppetmaster nor an intelligent "bug" are required by the story here, though some sort of organized anti-BAU group might well be.  (Not that they're ruled out, mind you -- they're just not needed.)


The Anomaly spreads by exploiting 'cracks' in the psychological stability of nearby minds.  It inclines its host to further create such cracks, for reasons of survival or transmission.  (I think there's a big Anomaly Theory post coming.  This is not it.)  It makes sense to me that it could react to the presence of minds with such 'cracks', furthering transmission and forcefully using its host to greater effect in such cases.

Ugh. 

This implies that, in general, having more experienced agents confronting a gamma increases the chance that things will go bad.

[tylik]

This implies that, in general, having more experienced agents confronting a gamma increases the chance that things will go bad.

And yet strangely, we haven't yet seen new cases of anomalous manifestation (Hafs and Chaz were both betas before they joined the team) in the people who have been most often exposed to the anomaly.

Thereofre, I will advance the cheerful and reassuring vaccination theory, wherein repeat exposure without manifestation results in acquired resistance. (Okay, so the n is way too small, and the means of transmission way too hazy. Still. Cheerful. Reassuring.)

Ya gotta wonder what promises Reyes and Sol made eachother, way back then when it was just the two of them.

[InkRose]

I am suspicious of the truck's accuracy.  Though, to be fair, if it was a large truck, less pinpoint targeting is required.

I think it was the team who was thinking things were under control, not (just?) Daphne.  I think the out-of-pattern aneurism was a sign of trapped-and-desperation flailing.

Which is something I also thought a few days ago. I dunno, maybe Singh's anomaly somehow levelled-up off Daphne's acknowledgement (or just leapfrogged towards the other people she was worrying about?) and was able to sense the team's relief when they'd taken the few step they managed, and then, with its new, broader scope, it saw the appropriate vehicle (I will accept a punishment of one hundred lashes for that pun) for maximum pain.

This implies that, in general, having more experienced agents confronting a gamma increases the chance that things will go bad.

Now isn't that just dandy... It does dovetail nicely with the accumulating exposure line of thinking, though.

[BeatriceEagle]

Why do we need to remember that they'll go wherever they need to go?  Why can't we remember that when they go there?  I'm not going to argue anything about what made the writers decide to kill Daphne.  What I will say is that if they killed her just to prove that they could, I will be extremely annoyed.

It's not just where we are going, it's how we get there. How the writers make us feel along the journey is as much a part of the job as how they make us feel at the end.

In mythological terms it's 'the Hero's Journey', not 'the Hero's Ultimate Triumphant Homecoming'.

It is.  And what I'm saying is that I feel that every stage of the journey should have a purpose.  I dislike it when something's in there just to show that it can be.

Okay, basically what I'm saying is this.  So, you've got a character that you're invested in, that the author has spent a lot of time making sure you care about, and he dies.  And nothing comes of it--the other characters are sad, they grieve, but the rest of the story plays out exactly as it would have otherwise, and it doesn't affect anything in terms of making the story more realistic (you know, characters have to die in climactic battles, etc.) or exacting a price for a risk or stupid decision.  All that the character's death really accomplishes is to make you and the characters cry.  To be clear, that is the only case I'm talking about here.

If that works for you, that's awesome.  To me, it makes me feel like I was cheated out of a cool character.  But since in the end, that just comes down to personal preference, I guess there's not a lot of point debating it.

[nebula]

Why do we need to remember that they'll go wherever they need to go?  Why can't we remember that when they go there?  I'm not going to argue anything about what made the writers decide to kill Daphne.  What I will say is that if they killed her just to prove that they could, I will be extremely annoyed.

It's not just where we are going, it's how we get there. How the writers make us feel along the journey is as much a part of the job as how they make us feel at the end.

In mythological terms it's 'the Hero's Journey', not 'the Hero's Ultimate Triumphant Homecoming'.

It is.  And what I'm saying is that I feel that every stage of the journey should have a purpose.  I dislike it when something's in there just to show that it can be.

Okay, basically what I'm saying is this.  So, you've got a character that you're invested in, that the author has spent a lot of time making sure you care about, and he dies.  And nothing comes of it--the other characters are sad, they grieve, but the rest of the story plays out exactly as it would have otherwise, and it doesn't affect anything in terms of making the story more realistic (you know, characters have to die in climactic battles, etc.) or exacting a price for a risk or stupid decision.  All that the character's death really accomplishes is to make you and the characters cry.  To be clear, that is the only case I'm talking about here.

If that works for you, that's awesome.  To me, it makes me feel like I was cheated out of a cool character.  But since in the end, that just comes down to personal preference, I guess there's not a lot of point debating it.

I think one of the difficulties with fiction is knowing what the purpose is. I know what you mean about stories having elements that are there "for the sake of it" but the difficulty is that we all as readers create a different story as we read. My cool character might be your annoying character whose absence makes the reading easier - and vice versa. Likewise, one reader may see a character's death as having achieved a particular purpose, whereas other readers may not.

As a side note, I wonder about the pressure on fanfiction writers to warn readers of impending Character Death. I may be alone in this, but to me that always seems like spoilers. Doesn't it have more impact on you as a reader if you don't know it's coming? I was really shocked by the most recent ep of Game of Thrones because I haven't read the books and I'm glad that I didn't know a death was coming up.

As for death accomplishing nothing but making people sad - I guess that's what death does in real life so why not in fiction?

[Lioness]

Okay, basically what I'm saying is this.  So, you've got a character that you're invested in, that the author has spent a lot of time making sure you care about, and he dies.  And nothing comes of it--the other characters are sad, they grieve, but the rest of the story plays out exactly as it would have otherwise, and it doesn't affect anything in terms of making the story more realistic (you know, characters have to die in climactic battles, etc.) or exacting a price for a risk or stupid decision.  All that the character's death really accomplishes is to make you and the characters cry.  To be clear, that is the only case I'm talking about here.

If that works for you, that's awesome.  To me, it makes me feel like I was cheated out of a cool character.  But since in the end, that just comes down to personal preference, I guess there's not a lot of point debating it.

Please forgive me if I am being hopelessly dense in what I'm about to ask, OK?

This is clearly a thing you feel strongly about, and I'm wondering what story or stories bugged you in this particular way. (I'm figuring it's not this one, or at least not yet, because you're waiting to see it all unfold; please correct me if I misunderstood that.) 

I ask about the specifics because I'm getting confused by the generality of the argument, and I think I am missing something important about what you're saying. (Probably because I don't know any writer I respect who would ever kill off a character "just because they could," so I tend to lump that sort of thing under "bad writing" and scathe it equally with other authorial blunders.)

[jeffy]

Death is inherently meaningless. Any meaning it carries in life or in fiction is what survivors attach.

Daphne was a first responder. Dieing in the line of duty (while trying to avert the deaths of others) is a first responder's most meaningful possible death.

In fiction, I, too, prefer it when character deaths have a narrative purpose beyond tension heightening (*cough*Joss, you bastard*cough*). I don't see that being a problem with Daphne's death or with any potential death in the team. Part of their characters is the fact that they have chosen work where they are put in harm's way for the greater good. They might die. If no one did, that would almost be more of a cheat.

And narratively speaking, Daphne's death profoundly changes every one of our characters' paths far beyond the fact of their grief. It's plenty meaningful.

Still sucks. I'm mad at the PTB in exactly the same way I'd be mad at the universe if she had been a meatspace friend.

Yes, PTB, and Leah especially, you've done this very well.

Still hate you.