I've got a story that's being stubborn and a drabble sequence that's eating my brain, so I thought it could use some fodder to munch on
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tl;dr NWA musings part 1marshwiggledykeApril 11 2009, 09:07:28 UTC
Despite Skinner's claim that the situation was simple, everyone in that group had their own selfish motives, which were lumped under the approval of Frank 'for the greater good'.
Skinner hated Merchant for being more commercially and financially successful than he was, and for flouting the 'customer only' parking by buying a Snickers and then spending the rest of the day in his office. Skinner would have suffered financial losses due to the bypass, as Angel pointed out, but that doesn't classify as the greater good- until someone finds an excuse. Merchant was done in by Frank's say-so; for having an awful house. Frank has his people in both circles- police service and NWA- but Skinner obviously needs to have his own under him, loyal exclusively to him, which makes his apathetic employees the perfect private army. Skinner would probably be the first to come to blows with Frank, for being extremely territorial
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tl;dr NWA musings part 2marshwiggledykeApril 11 2009, 09:08:13 UTC
The Prossers are probably the ones to find fault first with Eve and Martin for stealing the spotlight from their- aging, and extremely uneventful- acting careers. (Straw Dogs and Prime Suspect? They came out in 1971 and 1991/1992, respectively! Also, you can see them in the new poster when Annette dodges her head out of the shop just before the big shootout, so they're obviously benefiting from their deaths.) From the tone of Annette at the first attempt at arresting the NWA, she got hooked into the drama and scandal of the affair- possibly jealous?- and the rest of the NWA agreed after they had to see Martin's blatant and brain-raping 'modern' ripoff of the Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Eve's laugh sounds like the worst excuse out of any of them, so the idea that personal issues coming into it sound like the most motivating- and potentially conflicting and self-destructive- reasons for the group being together
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tl;dr NWA musings part 3marshwiggledykeApril 11 2009, 09:09:09 UTC
Treacher never says a word all movie, so it's impossible to gauge his personality and his possible selfish interests, or even if he has any friends among the NWA. James Reaper is only ever seen with his mum and a few others in the background in the pub (he's also suggested by one of the deleted scenes at the stone table to be homophobic). Doctor Hatcher might be the most sociopathic of the bunch (competing with Skinner for this category), bringing up the fact that he was the acting midwife for Danny's birth at the moment where he intends to kill Danny- he might just hate people in general (his motivation in the aforementioned deleted scene is that he hates dodgers and bodgers- which means people who don't care about the final outcome of their jobs, and the former possibly in reference to people who dodge work on doctors' notes who aren't really ill). He could be another one of the loners on the outskirts of the NWA.
I've always really loved the idea of Weaver finding out about Gabriel, actually. There's so little known about their character dynamics, and whether Gabriel lived with his grandfather, or if he was just a heavy influence in the boy's life.
Part of me wants to believe that Weaver's bug nut insane, and would stop at nothing to rid Sandford of all the nasty that he thought was infesting it, but then, yeah. He did go and just hide out for the entire Battle of Sandford. Why would he do something like that, if not because he didn't actually really want all the bloodshed?
Just like there's a rift between Skinner and Frank, there would be another rift where Weaver's concerned, I think. Whereas Skinner clearly wants power, and Frank seems to just be insane, Weaver would probably be skirting a line somewhere closer to a "is all this REALLY necessary" stance, I think, and I can see the Porters being on that side of the whole implosion, for some reason.
Agree on the Skinner/power and Frank/delusion line. For Frank it's personal. I get the impression Skinner is only using the NWA to get what he wants.
I think Weaver is bug nut insane, and I really really like the word combination of 'bug nut insane' for some reason. He might be also a bit of a coward for not participating, or have been told by Frank to hold down the fort.
Weaver's the ultimate voyeur. He's so fixated in seeing the whole world from his little booth and collecting all the information he can that there's no sliding scale for him anymore- for him, catching the leader of the hoodies on camera is just as important as ID-ing a murder suspect (of course, George Merchant's death wasn't any mystery to him, but he still failed to act appropriately) and I wouldn't be surprised if half the reason he's able to seem- and be- so scarily in control at the meetings is that to him, his role probably has that perfect control and safety and unreality you get from watching everything through a TV screen
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there has been a real life, isolated little town controlled by gun-toting, crazy people: jonestown. some of them believed the mumbo-jumbo, most of them did not.
whether the nwa implodes or not, their activities are bound to be discovered, since they were becoming too bold. at some point the authorities would show up, and i think it a possibility nwa members would have turned their massive cache of weapons on their own citizens.
I forgot to throw this in earlier, but I had a thought that the reason Chief Inspector Kenneth is so upfront about getting rid of Nicholas is that he's secretly putting Nicholas undercover as a blind agent, fully aware of the massive list of missing persons, and wants him to sort it out without the NWA making it all disappear, in Danny's words. If Kenneth'd told Nicholas beforehand, Nicholas probably would have ended up killed like the previous agent (Sergeant Popwell!), because Nicholas does not strike me as being very good at lying or pretending in any way shape or form. The twitch Kenneth has at the beginning might be his attempt at a wink.
Not much to do with the NWA, I guess, but just the outlying reactions to their activities.
Honestly I think MarshW and Zed hit many fascinating points and really got into a lot of what I had off-handedly been thinking, only they did it better so it, you know, makes senseI did think of the following
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I think I may take some of this discussion into consideration for tampering with and changing slightly in that one fic I'm writing where I got the idea from Mikey.
Keen! I just wanted to get some thoughts from other people's brains to help shake things up, and hoped that I might spur some interesting conversation on the way. So it's mission accomplished on my end. :D
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Skinner hated Merchant for being more commercially and financially successful than he was, and for flouting the 'customer only' parking by buying a Snickers and then spending the rest of the day in his office. Skinner would have suffered financial losses due to the bypass, as Angel pointed out, but that doesn't classify as the greater good- until someone finds an excuse. Merchant was done in by Frank's say-so; for having an awful house. Frank has his people in both circles- police service and NWA- but Skinner obviously needs to have his own under him, loyal exclusively to him, which makes his apathetic employees the perfect private army. Skinner would probably be the first to come to blows with Frank, for being extremely territorial ( ... )
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I dunno, does any of this long rambling help?
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Oh, totally! This is a nice analysis. The Leslie/Joyce contrast is interesting; I hadn't noticed that before.
I do think that Frank probably takes part in the killings. He's the ringleader, after all, and I think he likes to keep his hand in...
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Part of me wants to believe that Weaver's bug nut insane, and would stop at nothing to rid Sandford of all the nasty that he thought was infesting it, but then, yeah. He did go and just hide out for the entire Battle of Sandford. Why would he do something like that, if not because he didn't actually really want all the bloodshed?
Just like there's a rift between Skinner and Frank, there would be another rift where Weaver's concerned, I think. Whereas Skinner clearly wants power, and Frank seems to just be insane, Weaver would probably be skirting a line somewhere closer to a "is all this REALLY necessary" stance, I think, and I can see the Porters being on that side of the whole implosion, for some reason.
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I think Weaver is bug nut insane, and I really really like the word combination of 'bug nut insane' for some reason. He might be also a bit of a coward for not participating, or have been told by Frank to hold down the fort.
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Also, if it was his job to hold down the fort, he did do a rather piss-poor job of it, really. ;)
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there has been a real life, isolated little town controlled by gun-toting, crazy people: jonestown. some of them believed the mumbo-jumbo, most of them did not.
whether the nwa implodes or not, their activities are bound to be discovered, since they were becoming too bold. at some point the authorities would show up, and i think it a possibility nwa members would have turned their massive cache of weapons on their own citizens.
Reply
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I forgot to throw this in earlier, but I had a thought that the reason Chief Inspector Kenneth is so upfront about getting rid of Nicholas is that he's secretly putting Nicholas undercover as a blind agent, fully aware of the massive list of missing persons, and wants him to sort it out without the NWA making it all disappear, in Danny's words. If Kenneth'd told Nicholas beforehand, Nicholas probably would have ended up killed like the previous agent (Sergeant Popwell!), because Nicholas does not strike me as being very good at lying or pretending in any way shape or form. The twitch Kenneth has at the beginning might be his attempt at a wink.
Not much to do with the NWA, I guess, but just the outlying reactions to their activities.
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I've seriously had this story on the "back burner" for over a year. It'll be so nice to finally get it DONE.
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