InsaneJournal

Meta on damage and purpose
Spoilers for the entire first season of The Mentalist, all of Torchwood and, er, Blurred Lines.


Following my Mentalist marathon and a discussion in lefaym's Torchwood rewatch about Ianto, I have major thinkies now about Patrick Jane, Ianto and Pepper. Because they're all very, very different people, but at the core of them they still have similarities that very much fascinate me in characters - the brokenness and damage and the idea that they could take very, very different paths in life to the one they chose. And in these three in particular, quite an obsessive streak. It struck me in particular watching the end of the final episode of season one Mentalist, where Patrick and Lisbon have the following conversation:

"You should have waited. We agreed on that."
"What if Hardy had killed you right here?"
"Then he would have led you straight to Red John."
"But you'd be dead."
"But you would have Red John."
"I don't think you mean what you say. I think you choose life."
"Well you think wrong."
"No. No, you think wrong. Can't you see there's people who care about you, who need you? You're being selfish and childish, and I want you to stop it."
"I wish that I could, but you know, some things you just can't fix. Me being angry(?) is just the way of the world."

As well, the fact that Patrick still wears his wedding ring, tells women that he's married, that he doesn't like to talk to the grateful families at the end of a case. He hates to be thanked. That he didn't care that they saved Mya in 1.23, because they can save a hundred girls but Red John's still out there. In a lot of ways his inner child is very close to the surface - and he's very good with kids, through the whole season you can see him interacting with young people, entertaining them and connecting to them, frequently wandering away from adult conversations to engage with a child instead. He's lost his daughter, so there's a rather obvious link there, and you could probably riff a hundred different theories from that part of his character. And he plays games with his coworkers, but ultimately underneath it all, just like walking through his home giddy after a public appearance and opening a door to his worst nightmare, he doesn't care. He has another purpose and nothing is more important than that, even his own life. He probably wouldn't throw it away just for a couple more clues, but if his death would result in Red John's capture, he would (or he thinks he would, which amounts to the same thing for these purposes) absolutely make that trade.

That's something that Lisbon can't understand. The team sees the charming and funny Patrick, the guy who can be a jerk but also does amazing things like win hundreds of thousands of dollars at a casino and gives it all away. They don't realise that he's dead inside.

I don't have much to say about Ianto Jones that hasn't already been said, except that the discussion on the Day One (the season one episode with the sex alien, not the travesty of Children of Earth) was largely centered around his internal narration of his life story. In CoE: Day Five it's revealed that one of the meagre details we had about him, that his father was a master tailor, is a lie, and the implication is that pretty much everything we see and infer about Ianto is equally fictitious. But you can't wear a mask all day, every day, and not start to believe in it. Ianto tells himself things so repeatedly and so emphatically that he half convinces himself that they're true. And I think that that is actually an important part of his obsessive streak and loyalty - he genuinely loves Lisa, but he compounds on that by telling himself over and over that she's the love of his life, he has to save her, he can save her, they'll run away together, everything will be fine.

In Day One he asks Jack, "Need me to do any attackin', sir?" Four episodes later, he says that he doesn't like the excitement, that the rest of the team gets a rush from danger and he hates it. Later on, he becomes a field agent and gets just as gung ho as anyone else. You can read this a couple of ways - the surface, that he did hate it, but that once he got used to it he changed his mind, and that his offer to Jack was as much of a lie as the mild-mannered butler disguise. Secondly, that Countrycide is two episodes after Cyberwoman. We know from Greeks Bearing Gifts that he's still hurting deeply and it's likely that he has resentment against Torchwood and the team themselves as well. He sees them rushing into danger, the thrill they get from it, and he characterises that as Torchwood and decides he's not like that. He's different. Except that he's not, and as his resentment lessons he has no need of that lie anymore and it fades away. In regards to "need me to do any attackin'?" I think it's actually a combination of both. He's molding himself into what people expect and want of him, but because his loyalty is to Lisa at this point it's only a surface change and there is willingness to fight underneath anyway.

There's a bit of meta on the idea that Ianto suffers from PTSD, and while it was never really explored in the show (which is a huge pity, honestly), it's a strong possibility considering everything Torchwood puts you through, as well as living through the Battle of Canary Wharf. One of the symptoms of PTSD is inappropriate emotional responses, which is why I bring it up, because if Ianto is feeling the need to create a life story for himself, there must be some element of awareness of how other people see him. It's a reach, because we just don't know enough about him, but it's quite possible that this riffing off how people see him, what they expect of him, what they want of him, extends to not just what they think he should be, but how they think he should feel. Obviously this is my own personal theory and since I've been watching The Mentalist and RPing I'm in his mindset the least of these three people right now, but I do think that at the start of season two in regards to Jack, he seems unsure about the emotional side of their relationship and would rather deflect or change focus to the physical, which is much easier. Also that bit in Meat when he's kicking arse and taking names and emotionally he's very understated. The "pray they survive" of course, he's angry and rightfully so, and very focused on his team, but are tasering someone in the forehead, looking into their eyes and threatening them the actions of someone who hated the adrenalin rush from danger a few months ago? I don't know. I just don't.

What I can say is, Patrick and Ianto? Both definitely broken.

So. Pepper. I love that I know the game is ending soon because I can work with the bad points of his mental state without worrying that I'm going to play myself into a corner. I don't know who's going to win the final battle, and I have two different scenarios for what happens depending on how that goes - if the Death Eaters win, I suspect he'll die from his injuries. Because ironically, mentally speaking, he's better off if the Death Eaters win. Even if he's put in Azkaban, there is the smallest of possibilities that he could one day manage to keep fighting back, that he still has a purpose. If Albion wins, and with Jo dead, Mill dead, Aubrey dead, Aloysius consumed by guilt, Rufus with Amelia and a baby, Pepper has no purpose. He'd rather be dead, utterly and completely, but despite the fact that he's willingly and almost cheerfully tortured and murdered, suicide he still considers to be a mortal sin.

His internal narrative, man. It's fucked. He's not only dead inside, he thinks he was never really alive in the first place. He's a weapon, a tool, a very complicated and smart weapon, but divination and prophecy are real and despite his bitterness and cynicism towards the Catholic Church he still has religious tendencies, and all that means that he can believe that his existence is just to serve a higher purpose. That's it. Of course he has emotions, he likes people, he can have friends and a wife, but his emotions are what sculpt him into a weapon, aren't they? Because a weapon is more efficient if it's really, completely, determined to destroy. And for that it needs investment. But once the war is won you don't have a need for weapons anymore, and he's okay with that, because what does a weapon care about its own existence? It's just a tool of the people who use it. It's what they need it to be, and then when they don't need it to be anything they can discard it, or he can die, in this case, and for him that will be a relief.

But there's a difference between "long" emotions, like loving someone, and "short" emotions, like the transitory happiness doing something fun gets you, and his short emotional responses are really failing him. In the past he's looked at other people for how he should be feeling, but with the news that Alice and Frank were dead, he forgot to even do that. And he got called on it, and I love that.

Incidentally Sab and I were discussing this chess metaphor that Pepper and Severus are using, and I said:

I think Pepper would almost say Rodolphus was a bishop, and he doesn't see the Longbottoms as as important to Albion as they are to the Order, but he's a bit biased there of course. And obviously knights are huge symbols of, you know, dashing heroes who protect the little people from dragons, where bishops are advisors and probably there's issues there with the morality of them, because the Church was not pure and innocent in those middle centuries that he's thinking about. And Rodolphus was supposed to be the whole moral pillar of the purist society, except that those on Albion/Order's side see it as immorality, and obvs Pepper knows he's not the most moral person around either. But on the white side the knights ARE the admired ones. On the black side they're the ones who fight, who are better than pawns, and the power is in the queen's word and those who are closest to her (lol talking about Voldy as female makes me giggle), but warriors are expendable, whereas on the white side they're lauded as brave and good and the regulations, rules, tactics-planning people are still admired and all, but they're representatives of the people rather than the be all and end all. So there's a stronger similarity in respect between the tactics and fighters than in the DEs, where the tactics guys are more important.

It's not laid out to be perfectly understandable, I couldn't figure out some of the right words to use, but that his first instinct is to talk using a complicated chess metaphor, a game that's all about tactics and nothing about emotions is interesting, I think. Also that he's bringing up asides in their conversation about trivia and the history of the Church and politics. He's sorry that the Longbottoms are dead, absolutely, and I think later on it will hit him a bit harder particularly about Frank, but his first reactions were all led by his mental defense systems and shell-shock that he's put up so that everything that's happened won't completely break him.

You know, more than it already has.