1x08, "Refining Fire"

[seabream]

Got online about an hour after it went up. Procrastinated by reading the author LJs and the forum. Read the last part straight through, a first for the finale, on my Palm. Cried around the last lines of the song. Attempted to post and found that the forum as displayed on the Palm doesn't have the reply button. So here I am finally on a full computer.

Brava/o (because the episode needs the rest of the series too)

Can't do analysis yet. The part of the epilogue where Reyes turns all the lights off and then on again does something to me that I'm not sure how to say.

Jennett

(I've got a very specific obsession with people not messing with the inside of my head, and about memory. Which, fortunately, is not terribly possible for most people, but it's a recurring theme thing. Every so often, Reyes picks up those echoes for me, though I'm going to have to go through the season and see how much of this theory is out of thin air.)

I haven't found it to be the case, or even sometimes all that difficult for other people to mess with the inside of my head and memory, but YMMV. People can change the ways that one tells one's stories and in the process change the ways that one remembers what the events within them were and are about. Sometimes I'm happier about this than others.

[txanne]

Reyes is not entirely rational on the subject of the Anomaly. In fact, I think it's a good candidate for his crack. So what if Reyes gets anomalized?

[Carnadine]

Reyes is not entirely rational on the subject of the Anomaly. In fact, I think it's a good candidate for his crack. So what if Reyes gets anomalized?

Now that would be interesting to see (but please don't!).

[tamnonlinear]

Okay, now that I've had a few more hours to process all of this, here are a few more thoughts. This might be too general a discussion for here though.

One of the big themes of this series (well, often of any storytelling that deals with complex characters, really) is the idea of the core of the person and the surface of the person. In this universe we have a lot of things that look like people but aren't, in a lot of senses, people any more, they're just monsters. We also have people that go gamma and fight against it, and people that are monsters without being gammas (belong to the guys down the hall). Plus, of course, our beloved betas.

One of the things that occurs to me with Chaz... how did he find out about what his 'disorder' meant? Given what he'd already lived through in his life, what did it mean to him to learn he could become a monster? I'd assume that he and Hafidha had rather different impressions of the baseline of humanity (Hafidha seems to have had a life with a lot of love and support before converting). What do you assume qualifies as a monster when so much of your normal experience has been so horrible?

This makes his breakthrough, a power of reflecting back what he's given, stunning. I wonder what happens when he turns that power on in the presence of someone who loves him? Will that be just as hard for him to face?

But anyway, back to the idea of people and cores. So many of our team members have such different display colors than who they are inside.

Todd, I adore you after this episode. I really liked the weird, unreliable, idiosyncratic performer. I admire the hell out of the person who calmly responds to a runaway fuel truck and who stands between his potentially dangerous team mate and the people with the guns. You're a brave and moral person at the core, even if you play at being frivolous and unbelievable.

Lau, I really want to know what's in there. She seems to have a lot of protective coloration, the headstrong impulses of someone with a managed destructive streak trying to prove something, and a compact,  cynical dignity. She's bulletproof... so where did that armor come from? Superheros rarely have gentle origin stories.

Reyes... yes, I get that there was a perfectly logical train of thought behind his actions. He's a smart man, I wouldn't expect less. That it was a deliberate decision is baseline for him. That does not make it excusable. I'm sure our authors will give us information in the future that will do a lot to redeem him, and it was good to see him evaluating what he could do to help Chaz in the epilogue. That said? Still a cold bastard and I don't trust him worth a damn at the moment. Is all the world your enemy?

So... something in Reyes' past has him believing that what he does is justified because people are dangerous by default, and this is likely to end up meaning that the people he needs to trust most won't trust him if they find out? See how that comes around again?

Falkner truly is the best. This, of course, makes me wonder what horrible things we're going to see in the near future for her, but right now, I'm thinking about the odd contrast that most of the rest of the team spends so much energy on looking tough, and she's at the center of the group because of her ability to support.

(*checks LJ Shadow Unit filter again just to see if any of the team has posted yet*)

[txanne]

This makes his breakthrough, a power of reflecting back what he's given, stunning. I wonder what happens when he turns that power on in the presence of someone who loves him? Will that be just as hard for him to face?

Ouch. I think it will, since he doesn't really believe that he's worth it. OTOH, the team came for him after he'd given up on them....

Falkner truly is the best. This, of course, makes me wonder what horrible things we're going to see in the near future for her, but right now, I'm thinking about the odd contrast that most of the rest of the team spends so much energy on looking tough, and she's at the center of the group because of her ability to support.

She doesn't need to look tough because she knows to her bones that she is tough. She knows what her field-command voice is, remember? I hope her family is never harmed, because that's the only crack I can see--and even so, I think she's solid enough that the Anomaly would have a hard time exploiting it.

[peacockharpy]

So... something in Reyes' past has him believing that what he does is justified because people are dangerous by default, and this is likely to end up meaning that the people he needs to trust most won't trust him if they find out? See how that comes around again?

He's ex-Catholic, right?  "People are dangerous by default" = original sin, which is in his mythology.  (He says, in his bio, "The great thing about apostasy is that you don't buy all the shit, but you still own it.")

It is also quite possible that in his research on the Anomaly, he kept everything he was studying at arm's length -- avoiding bias, perhaps?  But also avoiding human response.  Which, given the things that gammas do, could be a defensive mechanism.  He made a grave error, though, in not doing something for Chaz.

[Cal]

I think there could be some very interesting analysis of the interactions of episodes/LJs/writers/readers in this one. But unless there is already an academic Delta with interests in the right part of academia, I'm not sure they'd be getting the gestalt. Because the finale was a gestalt of the prior episodes, the teasers, the LJs, the fora, and the way it was episodic over the week, in very near real-time to the unfolding of the story itself. And that was a once-off. The experience of reading it now is not at all the same as reading it over the week in small pieces.

Well, there's me.

Brady: Nice to see you wake up to a few things.  You can stick around.

Not quite getting what you mean on this one.

What happened to him really could have been a lot worse.

Lau:  Shut.  The Frell.  Up.

Ok, totally not getting you on this.

I don't like her.

[erinya]

I think there could be some very interesting analysis of the interactions of episodes/LJs/writers/readers in this one. But unless there is already an academic Delta with interests in the right part of academia, I'm not sure they'd be getting the gestalt. Because the finale was a gestalt of the prior episodes, the teasers, the LJs, the fora, and the way it was episodic over the week, in very near real-time to the unfolding of the story itself. And that was a once-off. The experience of reading it now is not at all the same as reading it over the week in small pieces.

Well, there's me.

Brady: Nice to see you wake up to a few things.  You can stick around.

Not quite getting what you mean on this one.

What happened to him really could have been a lot worse.

Lau:  Shut.  The Frell.  Up.

Ok, totally not getting you on this.

I don't like her.

Any particular reason?  I'm always interested in why people respond to characters in a certain way.

[Cal]

Any particular reason?  I'm always interested in why people respond to characters in a certain way.

She reads to me as one of the more tedious varieties of tryhard.  I guess her personality rubs me the wrong way, that's all.

[erinya]

Any particular reason?  I'm always interested in why people respond to characters in a certain way.

She reads to me as one of the more tedious varieties of tryhard.  I guess her personality rubs me the wrong way, that's all.

Mmm.  I think her "tryhard" quality has a lot to do with her experience of being a woman in a man's world (I don't mean just law enforcement, but her family of brothers who were valued over the single girl-child--see: family portrait, Ballistic.)  In her world, the world she grew up in, she always has to prove that she's as good as the boys--or better than them, to be perceived as "as good."  There's no room for human error there, for showing weakness.  Any such weakness is the equivalent of being Not Good Enough.

Not that anyone on the team would take it as such, but that is her mythology.  And as a woman in a male-dominated field, I understand its basis all too well.

[Bunny M]

I think there could be some very interesting analysis of the interactions of episodes/LJs/writers/readers in this one. But unless there is already an academic Delta with interests in the right part of academia, I'm not sure they'd be getting the gestalt. Because the finale was a gestalt of the prior episodes, the teasers, the LJs, the fora, and the way it was episodic over the week, in very near real-time to the unfolding of the story itself. And that was a once-off. The experience of reading it now is not at all the same as reading it over the week in small pieces.

Well, there's me.

Oh, good.

Brady: Nice to see you wake up to a few things.  You can stick around.

Not quite getting what you mean on this one.

What happened to him really could have been a lot worse.

Well, yes, things can always be worse. I think you are being a touch hard on the Cowboy, though. Chaz at least had some knowledge of the Anomaly, whereas as far as Brady was concerned, the world was a (mostly) sane and rational place until he came home one night to find his boyfriend was a serial killer with super-powers, and then had to kill him in self-defense. That's world-breaking, and I think he's done well dealing with it, but that's just my opinion, no more or less valid than yours.

Lau:  Shut.  The Frell.  Up.

Ok, totally not getting you on this.

I don't like her.

Is there something in specific that you dislike, or is it just a gut feel kinda thing? Me, I'm really looking forward to learning more about what goes on behind the bullet-proof facade.

[Cal]

Is there something in specific that you dislike, or is it just a gut feel kinda thing? Me, I'm really looking forward to learning more about what goes on behind the bullet-proof facade.

Like I said to erinya, to me she comes off as a tryhard, and one of the more tedious sorts at that.  It's not the girl-in-a-family-of-brothers thing so much as that I get a sense that she's always 'on show', and that there's a fairly hefty component of ego underlying the show, too.  And her personality in general grates.

There's always one character in a story series that I dislike.  In Criminal Minds it's Elle.  In Harry Potter it was Ron Weasley.  In Firefly it was Kaylee (oh, and Jayne).  Here, it's Lau.  Nobody gets along with everybody.

Conversation done, I think?

[Bunny M]

Nobody gets along with everybody.

Quoted for truth.

Conversation done, I think?

Does look that way, yep. ^{*sticks a fork in it*}

[juliansinger]

Ouch. I think it will, since he doesn't really believe that he's worth it. OTOH, the team came for him after he'd given up on them....

But he had to save himself. Yeah, they came to get him, but he got himself out, in the end. That crucial final effort. In some cases, that's a really really vital difference. In some cases, it's not. I'll be fascinated to see how that plays out-- current trauma layering over past trauma. It's the new onion!

I really quite a lot want to see... Well, the origin of Reyes' damage, because my, there's a lot there. Obsession, trauma, hyperfocus. Depersonalizing. But passionate.

I have more to say, but I want to just savor this, for a bit. (Read the whole season over the past couple days. Need to go read LJs and stuff soonish. Brain overloaded, a bit.)

Oh-- and it was the Kent State reference that made /me/ cry. And that's not even my era! But man did it resonate...

[Elizabeth Bear]

There's always one character in a story series that I dislike.  In Criminal Minds it's Elle.  In Harry Potter it was Ron Weasley.  In Firefly it was Kaylee....

Cal hates all my favorites. *g*