INDEXING: REFLECTIONS episode #1, "Forbidden Doors."

[seanan_mcguire]

The first episode of Indexing: Reflections is available now! This is your talkpost and discussion zone. There will be spoilers in the comments here. As always on talkposts, I have partial comment amnesty, and will not be responding to everything

Comments

[gement]

I'm pondering rag-tag bunches of misfits.

- Brementown Musicians (type 130) - Group of animals standing on each others' shoulders impersonate a loud and terrifying human to scare off criminals.

- The Six Servants (type 513A) - one can lift anything, one can swallow the sea, etc., and they each cross an individual challenge to meet the objective.

These are just the ones that spring to mind from my own childhood. Anyone have others to add to the list?

My source for codes since I don't own the tome:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimmtales.html(Edit: Yes, Wikipedia has the list too, but didn't help me match up the names I remembered

[lilisonna]

If I were the Agency, I'd have swapped out the key for one that didn't work. Ciara may be great at not peeking, but why take chances?

Also, I apparently have a thing for subverted Bluebeard stories. Ciara's and Ursula Vernon's short story both make me super-happy.

[deor]

Agree on the X-raying, and wondering if the husband knows he's a potential Bluebeard. And if he's not hiding the bodies of his previous wives in the garage, just what is in there that's so private? Also, in his wife's place, I think I would put the key in my safe deposit box and the key to that buried under a flowerpot, so there's no chance in the world that I would open that door on impulse. Or sleepwalking. Or lose it.

[gement]

"wondering if the husband knows he's a potential Bluebeard"

That's nagging at me as well. I realized the flaw in my X-ray idea is that Ciara does not want her husband arrested, thank you very much, because she is happy in her marriage.

She's going on the assumption that he had to have been married to kill a partner, and maybe she has the Bureau's energy readings to back that up, and maybe the thing in the garage isn't criminal but he's just really shy about it? Which is a lot of maybes, but there are also a lot of things people do in garages that don't cause anyone harm, and she is just crossing her fingers really hard it's one of those. I can appreciate that stance in the absence of any other warning signs.

It doesn't seem like too much of an overprojection to observe that husbands who get physically violent at what seems like trivial things... might not need a first wife to open the garage to cross the line.

Which is all to say, I hope Ciara has a *really good* couples' counselor monitoring for signs of abuse and coaching anger

[bree_ramsey314]

I imagine putting the key someplace safe and hard to get to isn't an option, the narrative won't allow her to do that.

[gement]

I wouldn't like to risk how he might react if he thought you lost the key.

[deor]

Hmm. Point. Still, carrying it around rather increases that risk, Could ceremoniously lock it in a home safe, or put it on a mantel or something.

Really wondering what his POV is, and whether she's right in her assumption that because he hasn't been married before, he can't have already been a murderer.

[skelody]

Well, *we* know he hasn't murdered anyone because Seanan has explicitly said he's committed no crimes and there's nothing for Ciara to actually find. As for Ciara, there was something said about her activating the Bluebeard story, so perhaps she had a particular experience (or a special device) that confirmed the activation, hence confirming that he *hadn't* been playing the Bluebeard role before?

[fooliv]

I find the comments about how they share interests to be kind of disquieting in a Bluebeard context. That could cover all sorts of sketchiness, from harmless BDSM playacting to couples-therapy serial-killing sprees.

[skelody]

If we believe Word of God, it would have to be non-criminal serial-killing, which I'm trying to figure out what that would be. I feel certain that human ingenuity would cover this somehow -- aside from institutionally sanctioned forms of murder, of course, which would be noncriminal but typically not considered "serial killing".

[jenfullmoon]

Maybe he's offed someone else's wives?

[gement]

One more rag-tag group, and this one's Leverage all over:

- The Four Skillful Brothers (type 653) - More competitive than the servants, the brothers each go get a specialized skill and then together do a heist to rescue a princess. Then they fight over who gets the cheeseburger princess, so they end up all getting wealth instead.

Not exaggerating about the heist. Hacker, Hitter, Forger Astronomer, Huntsman, Tailor, THIEF.

Multilingual Folk Tale Database is helping me look up from stories to codes and vice versa, and has summaries even for the Types that have no specific examples, such as Sloane's 315. (Ooh, there's a variant where she could be a cannibal.)

[seanan_mcguire]

Because Ciara is the FIRST wife, there's nothing to find. It's her ignoring a seemingly reasonable request that triggers the rest of his story. Right now, he's committed no crimes, and pre-crime isn't a thing even in this world.

[lilisonna]

That's what I understood from the episode, but thanks for the clarification!

[gement]

Thanks emphatically for the clarification; for obvious real world potential parallel issues, I was reeeeeeal suspicious about villainy leakage there, so I will just set my mind at rest about the garage, knowing the author has X-rayed it.

(I would be so dead in this story.)

I do also love the possibility of a flip in that relationship. She does have an "if I told you, I would have to kill you" job...

[vesta_aurelia]

Huh. I had a Cupid and Psyche reaction until I looked at the comments....