argentnoelle: Light and L sitting next to each other (light)
decided to crosspost some of my meta from ao3 (here)

The huge pdf these notes are from is worth reading if you're interested in specifics; I didn't copy over anything detailed about the crimes they solved by using criminal profiling. I also don't know when these articles were originally written.

Criminal Profiling articles in the FBI archives

The meta/notes below are taken from the first two scans out of seven (I may or may not ever get around to looking through the rest).

Criminal profiling is basically behavioral science for the purpose of solving crimes. It's useful for a number of things, not just solving murders, but also in dealing with hostage negotiations or dealing with threatening letters.

Letter Writing

Some methods used in dealing with threatening letters. Every word in message is assigned to threat dictionary, compared to words found in ordinary speech and writing, used to figure out stuff about whether same person wrote letters or not [think the questions about whether all the jack the ripper letters were all written by same dude; people think probably not] figure out the signature words of the offender [i.e. shinigami] > used to figure out stuff about background. [where person came from I assume, as far as dialects etc or education levels]. This would certainly have been used when dealing with Misa as the Second Kira.

General Observations from the PDF

Crimes with a clear motive are easier to profile. Kira would actually have been an easy one for L, as the clear focus only on criminals would lead to the obvious assumption that Kira had some sort of connection with law enforcement, only added to by the leak early on in the show, which was combined with his showing-off nature. Then, during surveillance when Light showed the exact same characteristics, no wonder he suspected him.

Profilers lots of times work from photographs & preliminary reports/evidence & don’t always visit crime scenes. L mentions how he usually works apart from the scene, and in Another Note/the BB Murder Case you see how he likes to use investigators on the ground as well as evidence sent to him. Stuff such as where body was, murder weapon, signs of struggle, etc / even when people try to pass of one kind of crime for another there are usually inconsistencies. Woman killed in home with no sign of struggle, had been drinking, supposed sexual murder but no physical evidence of that? Husband did it as crime of passion, washed off hammer in sink & tried to play it off.

Criminal profiling often leads to suggested interview techniques. L realized early on that Kira couldn’t resist showing off to look smart and to taunt the investigators, so created an interview process with the tennis game and then the pictures that would lead Light to do the same if he were Kira. Light, even knowing what L’s tactic was here, still fell for it.

Criminal profiling uses brainstorming, intuition, educated guesswork, and familiarity with a large number of cases. The profiler creates hypothetical formulations—that is, a concept that organizes and explains information from crime scene data & the profiler's knowledge of other crimes.

Useful Information for the Criminal Profiler

Complete synopsis of crime, description of crime scene, time of incident, weather conditions, political and social environment. Complete background information on victim. Domestic setting, employment, reputation, habits, fears, physical conditions, personality, criminal history, family relationships, hobbies, social conduct. Forensic information. Autopsy report with toxicology/serology results, autopsy photographs, photographs of cleansed wounds. Medical examiners findings, impressions of estimated time of death, cause, type of weapon, suspected sequence of delivery of wounds. Additional aerial photographs, 8x10 color photographs of crime scene, sketches showing distance, direction, and scale, maps of the area.

What can this tell the profiler?

This evidence can reveal level of risk of the victim, the degree of control exhibited by the offender, offender’s emotional state and criminal sophistication. [the being away from crime scene of Kira, on top of the targeting of criminals, would add to that whole hands off/judgment from above thing that lead to L suspecting he had a god complex] WHAT NOT TO HAVE. Stuff about possible suspects, as that may bias the profile/investigation.

This information must be organized into meaningful patterns.

Here's an image of the criminal profile generating process that's pretty interesting:

table about fbi profiling
 

Types of Murder

Homicides are classified by type and style. Single homicide = 1 victim/event. Double homicide = 2 victims, 1 event/location. Triple homicide = 3 victims/1 event/location. Above that, classified as mass murder.

Types of mass murder are classic and family. Classic is a person acting in one location or period of time. Mental issues lead to violent lashing out against people who may not have anything to do with his problems. Shootings where people open fire on bystanders is a classic mass murder.

Family is if more than three members of the perpetrator’s family is killed. If perpetrator takes his own life, it’s classified as a mass murder/suicide. Without suicide & with four or more victims, it’s called family killing.

There are also spree and serial multiple murders [not considered mass murders]. A spree murder is killing at two+ locations with no emotional cooling-off period in between, and considered all part of a same event, which can be long or short duration. A dude took a gun, started walking through the neighbourhood and killing people for 20 minutes. It’s classified as a spree, not mass murder, because he changed locations.

Serial murderers. That is 3 or more separate events with emotional cooling off between events. [I have a feeling that Light would have been considered a spree murderer for the first five days he had the death note. Evidence that it was a single event and he didn’t spend much time thinking about it: he filled so many pages, lost five pounds, wasn’t sleeping, and was still in a manic state when he first met Ryuk]. After that first week, he would be considered a serial murderer. This type premeditates his crimes, fantasizes about them, etc. We’ve got the bus-jacking incident and all the experiments he does; it’s very premeditated. The serial murderer, after cooling off from last victim, proceeds with plans. This cooling-off period can be days, weeks, or months. But there are also other differences between this type and other murder types.

Classic mass murderers and spree multiple murderers are not concerned with who their victims are. A serial murderer on the other hand, selects a type of victim, and thinks he will never be caught. The serial murderer controls the events. Serial murderers may commit spree murders too. For instance, if tracked by law enforcement/hunted down. The change comes about with lack of cooling-off period, and happens because murderer is feeling desperate. Light changed from a serial murder to a spree murderer when he killed the FBI agents going after him.

Possible Motives of Murders

It's important to figure out the primary intent of the murderer. Killing itself might not be the intent. The intent may be criminal enterprise, emotional, selfish, or cause-specific, or sexual. Criminal ones include where money is the object, contract murders, gang murders, competition, and political ones.

Emotional, selfish, or cause-specific include self-defense or compassion, mercy killings/life support disconnection; family disputes may lie behind family killings, paranoid reactions can lead to murder. Symbolic crimes or psychotic outbursts. Even assassinations. Religious, cult, and fanatic groups.  Sexual ones pretty self-explanatory.

Risk Factors and What it Says about the Murderer

Victim risk can lead to stuff about how murderer is choosing victims. [high risk = bus depots, isolated areas, etc, plus other things that would make victim an easier target].

Offender risk is how much risk the offender had of being caught, and can generate assumptions about how he works. For instance, a low-risk victim sought under high-risk circumstances leads to ideas that criminal may not feel he will be apprehended, stresses, needing excitement, maturity level.

Light changing the times he killed people in response to their information about Kira is adding to his risk level by taunting them, it shows he needs excitement and that his maturity level is low. Although L already knew this from the Lind L Tailor broadcast. This is why L felt confident in saying that if they stopped Kira from killing criminals by ceasing broadcasts, he would probably move onto regular people. He’s recognized that this is partially an adrenaline/power-play thing.

Misc.

Escalation. Look at sequence of facts to predict possible escalation of crimes. In the Kira case, L refuses to pressure media to stop giving out criminals' names and faces fearing that it would lead to an escalation of Kira's killings.

Time factors. Length of time needed to kill the victim [with the Lind L Tailor broadcast, L discovers this can happen in real time]

Location factors add to details about offender. L uses the Lind L Tailor broadcast to quickly narrow down where Kira is operating to the Kanto region.


The Crime Assessment Stage


Crime assessment stage. Reconstruct series of events, behavior of criminal and victim. Assessments made about classification of crime, organized/disorganized aspects, offender’s selection of victim, sequence of crime, strategies to control victim, staging (or not) of crime, motivation for crime, crime scene dynamics.

Organized vs Disorganized

Organized murderer plans out his crimes, chooses victims carefully, controls his victims, acts out violent fantasies, etc / disorganized is less planned, victims are more random & it may have less to do w fantasy than psychotic impulses. Knowing this can lead to knowing if crime was staged to look like a type of crime it wasn’t. If it’s staged in such a way that you can tell criminal had knowledge of police procedure that leads to knowing there is law enforcement background and that true motive/type of crime may be different than it appears. For instance, rape-murder disguised as extortion to throw law enforcement off his tracks.

Motivation easier to gather from an organized crime/planned out thing.

What to do next?

Create criminal profile, including how criminal will respond to different investigative efforts. Demographics, physical characteristics, habits, beliefs and values, pre-offence behaviors, plus recommendations for interviews/apprehension. Then, suspects are evaluated. Then, get suspect to confess.

The crime scene [what’s there] can show if criminal brought anything, that is, if it was planned or not. This can be different than death scene place. Weapons of opportunity imply that crime was not premeditated.

Task forces are assembled to deal with specific crimes.

If well publicized and offender knows police will get to him [since in the a case referenced in the PDF it means he’d lived or worked in same building] profilers concluded he would probably inject himself into investigation, appear helpful, but actually be seeking information. [Light’s cooperation with the investigation actually a mark against him once it has been narrowed down to someone associated with the task force].

There is no need for the confession if you get the physical evidence [in the case in the PDF, teeth impressions matched. Or, in Kira case, Misa and the DNA matches on the envelopes. The confession L wants to get from her is not to prove that she is the Second Kira—that is already proven—but to find out her method and to try to prove that Light was also Kira.]

At time this was written, they were starting databases about crime types based on interviews with incarcerated felons of different types. [They would certainly start a Kira database where they kept patterns of his kills/times/types/anything they could get about it.]

Observations about Personality Disorders and the DSM (direct quote)

“There are many types of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ behavior. Many of these behaviors may have a label attached to them by behavioral scientists. It is most important to bear in mind that such a label is merely an abbreviated way to describe a behavior pattern. It is nothing more than a convenience by which professionals communicate. The important aspect is the specific characteristics or symptoms of each person. The symptoms are revealed in the way the individual ‘acts out’ and in the responses which the individual may make to the professional. The labels may differ from doctor to doctor because they are simply each doctor’s interpretations of the symptom.

"A symptom, then, is the ‘visible evidence of a disease or disturbance,’ and a crime, particularly a bizarre crime, is as much a symptom as any other type of acting out by an individual. A crime may reflect the personality characteristics of the perpetrator in much the same fashion as the way we keep and decorate our homes reflects something about our personality.”

argentnoelle: purple tree (Default)
There have been four butler/master pairs established so far:

1) Sebastian & Ciel
2) Grell & Red
3) Agni & Soma
4) Wolfram & Sieglinde

Each of the other three relationships serve to parallel Sebastian & Ciel in interesting ways, and when they are introduced, how Sebastian & Ciel react to the pairs, and what happens in those parallel stories may even serve to elucidate the ambiguous nature of the relationship between the main characters. 
Partners in Crime: Grell & Red

The first pair introduced is Red and Grell, alias Jack the Ripper. This is the darkest of the four pairs to be sure. The duo are on a murdering spree driven by the righteous idea (on Red's part) that she is in some way dealing out justice, motivated by an obsessive personality and a trauma that she can't get over—that of losing her family. It's a clear parallel to Ciel at his darkest; in fact it becomes even more complicated when you realize that (spoiler) among others, including the man she loved, Red lost her sister, just as Ciel lost his brother.

What is established at once is that this is an unequal relationship—unequal beyond, and in a different way than, you might expect with one of them being the mistress and one the servant. In fact, their story is presented almost in the mythical way of a god becoming interested in a mortal due to some particularity of their character, or amazing talent; of course, one way or another, those stories usually don't end very well for the mortal. This is made even more explicit with the description of reapers as "death gods." At this point, with the way Grell frames his duties, he has ultimate power over the souls of those he weighs—in his words, he can decide "whether to let him live on, or to kill him" based on the assessment. Of course, this is overstating the matter on Grell's part, as in actuality, reapers are discouraged from allowing people to live.

If we translate this to Sebastian, we have a parallel to when Sebastian met Ciel—what, similarly, drew him to Ciel, the connection with death as his appearance is intrinsically tied up with Real Ciel's death. Similarly, once the contract is made, Sebastian gains the ultimate power over Ciel's soul—which might even include whether to let him live, or to eat him.

Grell becomes disappointed in Red when she refuses to kill Ciel; refuses, in effect, to let the game continue, to pursue her vengeance—so he kills her, saying as he does, "How disappointing, Madam Red. I am no longer interested... in an ordinary woman like you."

That this is one possible way the story could end for Sebastian and Ciel is in no doubt. In fact, it almost ended that way early on: when Ciel is recognized as Earl by the Queen, Sebastian asks him if he can be content with the life he's gained and abandon his vengeance. When he thinks that Ciel will abandon it, he starts to lose his "butler" form and reaches out to Ciel, obviously planning to eat him right then and there. When changes the story is that Ciel refuses to abandon his vengeance; and this moves Sebastian to an absurd degree. Still, you might argue that it is in that scene that Sebastian swears fealty to Ciel, that he in fact promises to play the game until the end, without messing around.

Even later, during the Green Witch arc, Sebastian is driven in desperation to repeating his question, when time has run out for them to remain in the village.
"Brooding over your fears and regrets, curled up in your blanket... is not what you should be doing right now. Come, get out of bed." Will Ciel abjure his vengeance, or does he still want to play the game?
Ciel says, "No."
"Oh? Well. You will abandon your position as the Queen's Watchdog then? Very well. You won't have to experience any hardship if you're no longer the Queen's Watchdog. No one will blame you for not wanting that forever. The servants will surely treat you well. However. Abandoning your revenge mid-way is against the contract. Ahhh. What an utterly boring end." Sebastian has turned from a human-looking butler into a darkness-tentacle-creature and starts to eat him. But even then, he doesn't stop trying to remind Ciel of his revenge, in a last-ditch effort to not end the game just yet. Sebastian asks Ciel why he actually made a contract with him, and Ciel reminds himself (or perhaps realizes for the first time?) that the reason he did it was, whatever he said or thought at the time, actually for himself. He breaks free of the cage and runs toward Sebastian. 

Ciel then says to Sebastian, "you... really tried to eat me just now, didn't you."
Sebastian says, "No, no, I was only 90% serious." (Real reassuring, Sebastian.) He then reminds Ciel that he is both a demon and a butler. 

Grell compares the relationship between him and Sebastian to that of Romeo and Juliet, and that along with his comment that he is an actress, casts everything about his relationship to Red as an extended act—this is made even more clear in the anime, where Grell is introduced as a butler in an earlier episode, and plays it up to a theatrical extent. Similarly, one could see Sebastian, and his butler aesthetic, as a similar type of act, where the "play" being put on is more important than the people involved; it is all about the artifice. Grell actually replays the famous balcony scene, saying to Sebastian "you and me shall be the cast in this show," and continuing to riff off of it: "why don't you throw away the unlucky name your master gave you, and just focus your attention on me!" —wherefore (why) art thou Sebastian?

Sebastian gives an answer: "all it takes is that one sentence. From the time when my master addressed me as 'Sebastian' that sentence became the newly formed contract. Since that day, I became 'Sebastian.' I made a vow to the moon."

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name..." continuing on to entreat Romeo to abandon the fact that he is a Montague and can therefore only ever be her enemy.

Romeo answers "call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; henceforth I never will be Romeo."

The way that Sebastian plays off of this exchange is clearer in the anime, and probably in the official translation too. Grell sets up the unstable dichotomy of death god/demon, who must always be natural enemies, but then positions Ciel, and Sebastian's connection to him, as what will keep them apart, and what Sebastian will have to refuse to get together with Grell.

Sebastian's answer actually uses Romeo's words, saying that in meeting Ciel and in the creation of the contract, he was newly baptized as Sebastian; in other words, Grell can't be Juliet because Ciel is.  

In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo begins by swearing his love on the moon, and Juliet interrupts him, saying:
"O swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest thy love prove likewise variable."

So in saying that he's swearing by the moon, Sebastian is actually playing along with Grell's reenactment of Romeo and Juliet, while still refusing Grell's casting of himself as Juliet, and putting Ciel in that place instead. 

Soulmates: Agni & Soma

Agni is set up from the beginning as an incredibly good butler, just as Grell was (to Sebastian's disapproval) an incredibly bad one. The usual, 'oh no the whole house has been messed up' that was set up from the very first arc is flipped around, with Agni having done all this work incredibly well... this gets on Sebastian's good side immediately. Agni is also able to get the servants to work together and not break everything, which completely baffles Sebastian, leading to one of his awesome shocked faces. Agni explains his personal philosophy to Sebastian, and then explains that before he met Prince Soma, he was a very different kind of person. "Before I met the prince, I was an idiot that can be said to be hopeless. What I owe him can never be repaid in this lifetime." He explains how he had no faith, due to seeing his father misusing his position, and how he then continued to do bad things, saying "I took advantage of my social status and committed sins every day." But just as he was about to be executed for his crimes, Prince Soma arrived to say him, saying, "I've heard you are a wild person that is as strong as an untamed beast," and choosing to take responsibility for Agni. As he cuts Agni's hair, Soma says, "the 'you' who existed before today is now dead. You're hereby reborn with a new name and life." Agni interprets this memory, saying that from that day Soma became his god. He says "that day, I definitely saw a god emitting holy light inside of the prince's body! I swerved the prince ever since that day... the prince is my king and my god!" He continues to say that he will do anything for Soma, even if it costs him his life. 

While Agni is set up as literally the nicest person in Black Butler, his own story places him as a reformed sinner who has found god in the man he serves. Still, even in his "reformed" state, his dedication to Soma is shown to be potentially dangerous, as his fervor leads him to do criminal acts in Soma's name. There is no unequivocal good here, it must be pointed out. Still, everything that Agni affects, day to day, seems to lead to having friends and happiness because he's just such a nice person. This seems like a pretty weird comparison to Sebastian, but he certainly is a parallel to Sebastian. Not only do they both take pride in cooking, and are incredibly good at it, not only do they both have superhuman strength, but the story of Agni meeting Soma has some interesting resonances with Sebastian's own. 

Going back to Sebastian's description of his meeting Ciel to Grell, earlier on, a flippant reply that takes from Romeo and Juliet and the wild overstatements made by those in love can also be interpreted through the lens of someone who has found a god. The devotion becomes religious. There is, of course, the baptism mentioned in Romeo and Juliet, and by Sebastian in relation to his own story; Agni, as well, tells the story of a baptism, in which he gained a new name and a new life.

Soma's words when he first met Agni are also interesting. "I've heard you are a wild person that is as strong as an untamed beast." The connection to Agni's former existence, as an "untamed beast" is explicitly similar to Sebastian, who first appears to Ciel as a number of beasts, and is referred to as a beast multiple times, including in the Green Witch arc, when Ciel tells Sebastian that, in destroying the evidence of the laboratory, he has his permission to "feel free to go crazy like a beast." (Sebastian's reaction is notable. He thinks to himself, "My master. You're misunderstanding something. What I find most entertaining is playing the butler in my game with you. It's not behaving like a frenzied beast. However, if that's how you like me... I'll act accordingly.")

Further, this sounds really similar to the meeting between Gilgamesh and Enkidu in Gilgamesh.  Gilgamesh is described as "two thirds god, one third man" and like Soma, he starts the story thinking a lot of himself; to say that he's arrogant is an understatement. Enkidu is created as someone who can temper this, basically Gilgamesh's soulmate, and spends the first part of his life as a literally "untamed beast" of a man, living with the other wild animals and having more in common with them than with humanity. But after he's shown human things through having sex with a priestess who comes to tame him, he can no longer go back to that state of innocence, wildness, or beastliness... now he is unavoidably human, and that can't change. He and Gilgamesh have a number of incredible adventures, and Gilgamesh thinks that together they can do anything, but Enkidu eventually dies, and the rest of the story deals with Gilgamesh's grief and anger at what he feels is the unfairness of death. He goes to extremes, and journeys for a long time, to try to become immortal himself, but discovers that like anyone who is mortal (even one-third mortal) death will inevitably come for him. Still, he eventually gains some measure of peace and grows as a character. Perhaps Soma is also on a similar journey. And, if Soma is a parallel for Ciel, who has been going on his own angry journey, through the manga, against the fact of death, both of his parents and of his other half—his twin brother—perhaps Ciel himself might come to some measure of peace as well.

So, Agni is the epitome of a butler, and as he dies, he thinks, "Master Soma, that day, when you saved me, you were probably just acting on a whim. But from that day forward, you have always been the sun in my sky."

(In Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet appears, Romeo says,
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon...")

Agni continues, "no matter the circumstance, I remained bound to you. As your orders were the light illuminating my path. What's more, just by exuding your shining confidence down from the sky, you have saved more lives than you will ever know... because you were my sun, were there for me, my days could finally begin. ... I was... your khansama was... extremely happy."

Soma is, in Ciel's words, who he might have become if not for "that day". Soma's description of his life in the palace, where he as the youngest child had everything he could ever want, materially, but felt as though he was cut off from expressions of love, is what motivates him to cling so tightly to Meena, who was always there for him, though she was secretly resentful. (Oh my! Perhaps the way that Madam Red was always there for Ciel, and yet secretly resented his existence because she was jealous?) While Soma originally saved/hired Agni just because he was supposedly really good at making curry, the butler has come to mean everything to him. (This reminds me of Ciel's meeting with Klaus, where he says that one of the reasons he keeps Sebastian around is because he makes the best sweets ever. He's being flippant, it's not a serious reason by any means—and Sebastian couldn't cook when they met—but it's still interesting.) Soma says to Agni, later, "Ciel reminds me of my younger self. I would always be chasing after the love of my parents and Mina, but I never paid attention to the affection you were giving me the whole time." He says, "No, not quite the same. Even though he is aware of al the affection he is receiving, he refuses to accept any of it. It's as if he is afraid of obtaining happiness. Ciel says that he lives for the sake of revenge. That's why he lives a life of solitude." (Of course, that's the only reason Ciel is still alive instead of being eaten by Sebastian for having broken the contract.)

In this iteration of butler and master, the butler dies for the master—something that Sebastian states that he finds admirable. Indeed, this has also almost happened in Sebastian and Ciel's own story. When they're on the Campania, Sebastian gets stabbed by Undertaker when he's trying to protect Ciel, and could very well have died in the process. He didn't, and so the story continues...

Parent and Child: Wolfram & Sieglinde

Sieglinde is a genius brought up believing one story—that she's the Green Witch, someone with a special duty handed down through the generations to keep her village safe—when really she's being manipulated by an old woman (her mother, though she doesn't know it) into making a gas that will cause death and destruction. This is rather interesting. If Sieglinde's story is a parallel to Ciel, just as Madam Red and Soma's stories are in a sense a parallel with Ciel, then Ciel might be believing a false story too. He, like Sieglinde, takes pride in his position—in his case, of being the Guard Dog, and keeping order in England. It's couched as a special duty, but perhaps he, too, is being manipulated by an old woman (the Queen? Hm). It's certainly made clear that the Queen has her own aims, and that she's interested in preparing for war. The idea that she might even be the one behind his parents' murders isn't so far off, and indeed, in the anime, she *was*. On an even more disturbing note, perhaps Vincent Phantomhive was more manipulative than he appeared...?

Wolfram is in a similar situation as Finny. Both were used in experimentation in Germany, and both didn't have a name until they met Ciel, in Finny's case, and Sieglinde, in Wolf's case. ("For this mission, we gave you a name," he was told. "Lieutenant Wolfram Geltzer.") That's a pretty long list of people who were given new names, including every single butler—besides Grell—to date. (But, quite interesting is the recent reveal that reapers are, along with their names, which most of them use, also referred to by a number code within the organization.) (As a side-note, Wolfram is responsible for Sieglinde's crippled feet, just as Sebastian is responsible for Ciel's blind eye, but beyond that obvious similarity, I'm not sure it has any significance.) Wolfram describes his life before Sieglinde as being colorless, and that they had a duty, and acted, but without ever knowing the reason. This "patriotism" is then set against the personal loyalty he ends up having toward Sieglinde.

Wolfram's past, on learning how to be a butler, is similar to Sebastian's, as he is baffled by having to deal with a child and with the idea of having to play with her and deal with her whims, instead of just killing people. He thinks, "after meeting you, for the first time... I discovered the bright colors of the world... and felt the desire to protect something. I found a reason to fight." He thinks this as he has been wounded, and reaches for Sieglinde through the haze of his memories. There is even a shot of their hands reaching out toward each other, as Sebastian and Ciel reached out to each other when Sebastian was wounded on the Campania, and he slipped into his early memories of their time together. 

Wolfram is saved though, and Sebastian says, gently, "Mr. Wolfram. A butler... isn't allowed to die before their master." (Agni should've listened to you!/Tanaka. But Agni, of course, is really the only one who can get away with disagreeing with Sebastian, and still change his mind.)

This story isn't really told to it's end, but it's different from the others in that Wolfram was originally working at cross-purposes to Sieglinde, and was in effect on an undercover mission to use her. But instead, he ended up throwing in his lot with her, and abandoning his army. Furthermore, at least to the present moment, though he would give his life for Sieglinde, he doesn't have to. Sieglinde actually forgives him for his deception, realizing that his actions since then show his care and his regret. 

argentnoelle: purple tree (Default)
(also on tumblr)
This is the episode order I worked out for The Prisoner. It actually makes a lot of logical sense! I was surprised to find that there is much more in-episode continuity than there might seem at first, if you look carefully for it.

I love seeing other people’s orders, but I especially like to see their reasoning, so I can see if the order makes sense to me. For that reason, I’ve put the in-depth reasoning for the placement of each episode below. Enjoy!

My Episode Order 

1 – Arrival
2 – Dance of the Dead
3 – Free For All
4 – The Chimes of Big Ben
5 – Checkmate
6 – The Schizoid Man
7 – The General
8 – A, B, & C
9 – Many Happy Returns
10 – A Change of Mind
11 – It’s Your Funeral
12 – Hammer Into Anvil
13 – Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling
14 – Living in Harmony
15 – The Girl Who Was Death
16 – Once Upon a Time
17 – Fall Out

My Episode Order – with reasoning ->

Read more... )
argentnoelle: purple tree (Default)
One possible answer lies in the mechanics of Leaping itself. Imagine your life is a piece of string. Tie the ends together and you have a loop. Ball up the loop and the moments of your life touch each other… this is how the Leaping process is described again and again. Though very simplified, we must assume this is accurate.

So, how do you find the ends of your life anyway? One end is the moment of his conception, the farthest Sam has ever been able to Leap backwards in time [when he wasn’t leaping inside someone else lifetime (having traded places with his great grandfather because of similar genetics in the Civil War episode)]

But to get a loop, one has to have two ends to tie together. In Genesis, Sam is successful at making a time loop out of his life, and it’s very plausible that by the act of making that first leap he created the other end of his life. It doesn’t matter how long Sam would have lived, had he not leaped; by leaping, he tied off the ends and therefore his lifetime no longer exists after that point.

The only time Sam leaps farther forward than the moment of his initial leap is in The Leap Back, when he leaps inside Al’s timeline because of the Simo-leap.(In the same episode, Al leaps back to a time within his own life but before Sam’s).

Additionally, in Mirror Image, Sam may have died. After the bar, he leaps as himself to Beth, similar to the guardian angel in It’s a Wonderful Leap. It’s also notable that the bar “exists” on the day of Sam’s conception, which would make his death fall at the moment of his birth. Presumably, then, in his post-Mirror Image leaps, he could travel outside his own lifetime, because he would no longer be trapped in the time loop of his life.

I think it’s quite possible that this is what the series was going for; there’s a lot of build-up to the idea/evidence that ties the arc of the series together especially in season 5.

The only upside of this is that it means Sam would not have to leap forever. Though he may not be able to go home, he could presumably move on when he had helped enough people/was ready to do so.

argentnoelle: purple tree (Default)
 I wrote this back when I'd only seen up to 12x11, & I'm still not caught up to where the show is now, so this might have been retconned at some point, but here we go: 

-Angels seem to be sexually nondifferentiated (that is, at least so far it seems that angels cannot procreate with other angels but that any angel, if in a male vessel, could procreate with a human female to create a Nephilim.)

-on the other hand, angels do not seem to be agendered. They refer to each other as brother or sister, he or she, and these references seem to be consistent across vessels (so probably not just a fact of them using English terms when on earth). They also seem to show a slight preference for having the sex of their vessel match their gender, although they don’t really care that much. Some examples I can think of: Hannah chose a female vessel before a male vessel, Raphael chose a male vessel before a female vessel, and on Lucifer’s vessel-hopping spree the vast majority of them were male and not female.

-there is no connection between biological sex of angels (which is all the same) and gender, but it must be fairly integral to the species to have genders. If it wasn’t an integral part of the species to have genders, Naomi and her people would probably have tried to wipe that out too as being part of dangerous individualism.

-and something I never thought of, although it seems pretty strange that I never thought of it - there are no societal ramifications of gender for the angels. It is a completely personal thing. The angel hierarchy is based on power and rank, and they are all soldiers, without any type of differentiation being based on gender.

-plus a thought about the choice of metaphorical business suits in the representation of heaven. they do a couple of things:

-represent bureaucracy
-give an aesthetically cold feel that fits in with the glowy white walls
-mirrors hell (where they also wear business suits)
-is a uniform, basically - which reminds you that they are all soldiers

and the choice of suits is also interesting because it is a very non-differentiated choice of clothing. The male and female suits differ by cut, but all look pretty much the same, which speaks to both the uniform/non-individualizing feel of the place but also is a very natural and unobtrusive way of getting rid of the connotations that come with gender differentiation in clothes, and so, along with the fact that there is no connection between gender and role differentiation, serve to add to the creation of a society without the baggage of sexism [this is also an interesting mirror to hell, which is entirely the opposite]

-Plus a random note about Chuck/God and Amara, because it’s something I noticed and thought was really interesting, in the finale of season 11. Technically, Chuck is male and Amara is female, but it gets somewhat more complex than that in a way that was revealed in that conversation where Chuck explains why he created the earth. Because really, if you think about creation, especially creation from (almost) nothing, it’s more tied to birth and motherhood than fatherhood, and something about that speech in particular seemed to somehow point to this gap, because Amara, unlike him, can’t understand the creation of children on an emotional level, though she can come to understand it eventually as a beautiful work.

argentnoelle: purple tree (Default)
 A Meta on the probability of the above. Also: weird science facts.

(
this has a lot of summaries from scientific articles, and those things are complicated, so it’s possible there may be slight mistranslations in the process. See sources for most accurate information)

Read more... )

Read on tumblr or ao3
argentnoelle: holmes and watson hanging out (sherlock holmes)
 “This is indeed a mystery,” I remarked. “What do you imagine that it means?”
“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?” [A Scandal in Bohemia]
Read more... )Read on tumblr or ao3

 

Page generated Jun. 9th, 2025 04:29 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios
OSZAR »