Saint James Infirmary 185: The Brains of the Outfit

[Daphne]

Coming Friday, May 3rd!

[jmundt29]

This could be Claudia again, it could be Q running another break-in, it could be Zenon running his own game, or it could be either of the Kuppler brothers.  Heck, it could even be Rain.  So many possibilities with that title.

[Haight]

Ruh-roh shaggy.  But do Q and Kanti even know what the watch is?

Everything before the last panel is nice - I'd hope to see more of this. 

[jmundt29]

As you say, I don't think this is Q and Kanti yet--for a couple of reasons.

1. I think we'd actually see Kanti's infiltration because it has such potential for fun and
2. That box is completely empty now.  No polaroids, no swoosh book, no watch (although I don't remember it being pink the first time we saw it).

Which leads me to some other interesting possibilities

A. Mallory and Marliese could have relocated everything when they took over programming detail,
B. Marliese could have stolen all that stuff for Rain to further Rain's as yet unclear plan,
C. Mallory could have reshuffled everything as part of her cataloguing (though she tends to arrange things on the floor at home), or
D. Erin could have swiped all items of interest and power in a fit of pique when she discovered the picture of Adrian and Echo before she had any context.

The Watchmaker?  Big Daddy Kupler?  But again, why does Rain know this?  Was she present for the design of The Watch or did she serve as its creator's inspiration.

More importantly, how does Laura suddenly know Dani so well that she can categorically make that statement about her?   Not that it isn't true, but I don't get the sense that she and Dani were friends before The Night of the Watch, and they haven't exactly spent a lot of time together since then.  Just one night of fantasy fulfillment that we know of.  So, why is Laura making that statement?  How does she know that?

[Werdna]

I can't tell if the title of this issue refers to Laura as the brains of the outfit or whether it's an ironic comment on Adrian's near total lack of intelligence.  I mean, WTF is that guy thinking?  I'm glad the expression on Laura's face at the end is one of shock and disgust, because Adrian really carried the idiot ball (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall) on this one.  Wow. 

[jmundt29]

I'm not gonna call it the Idiot Ball in his case though.  He has more of the picture than most, but he's still processing.  And it could be that once he found out that the Watch's programming was too corrosive to realistically try rewipes that he just hoped it wouldn't be used again.  He wasn't thinking about security.  Now he will be.

Again, though I lean more toward this being ironic or referring to Rain as the manipulator than it's being a reference to Laura.

[Haight]

I'm pretty sure Laura is being referred to as the brains here - if only because she's the first one to be thinking about security.

[GodWilling]

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[Werdna]

I'm hoping Dani took it and is using it to bring Raven into the harem.  When not suffering the nightmares/hallucinations, she seems really happy about the harem and has boasted about helping to grow the previous one.

(Just because my theory is unlikely doesn't mean I can't hope for it.)

The way Laura describes the level of programming she's under (btw, "I'd love you for doing it and hate you for keeping me from you" is some damn fine writing), and the way Adrian talks about how further use of the watch would only screw things up more, leads me to have even more sympathy for poor Danielle.  The watch, if what Adrian and Laura are saying is true (and we have no reason to believe it isn't), really is a permanent personality override.  So what really is going on in Danielle's mind?  And how did she get to this state?

[Haight]

My second guess would be Raven, operating under Rain's instructions.

Did I miss something or is there any particular reason for Raven to be operating under Rain's instructions?

[GodWilling]

.

[Haight]

Which makes it odd that it all stopped with the Night of the Watch.

Well, I think Erin asked about Raven at one point, to which Adrian said no.  I think the girls need Adrian's approval before they can do that.

[mns_95125]

Very interesting.  This confirms the long-standing hypothesis explaining Adrian's change of attitude towards the harem -- the Watch's effects are not trivially reversible.  My guess is that the Watch can be used to implant beliefs, which the subject has to accept as true.  If you were to use it to implant contradictory beliefs that would set up an irresolvable tension between the two, with who knows what kind of consequences.  I doubt that mere multiple exposure would have the same issues: Jacqui was programmed twice to no apparent ill effect.  Her programming was probably consistent across sessions, to make her Adrian's slave.  Contrast that with Danielle who, at the very least, was programmed at two points to have two different masters -- and who is now suffering from noticeable mental distress.  This distress could even predate her induction into the SJI harem, if we think that #G3 is a flash-back and not a flash-forward.  The seeming irreversibility of the Watch programming does raise questions about just how Danielle got away from the Watchmaker in the first place.

The title could be a sardonic reference to Adrian's carrying the Idiot Ball, or to Laura being the smart one.  She does seem to be one of the smarter characters in the comic -- the other characters whose educational backgrounds we know are typically BA or at most MA in the humanities, while Laura is an MIT grad and Ph.D candidate in a hard science.  I'd put her in the top 3 for likely intelligence along with Q and Vik.  She certainly asks more penetrating questions about the harem and its existence than the others.  Adrian's apparent lack of curiosity sometimes makes me want to whack him with a brick.

And, of course, we now have the new burning question: what happened to the Watch?  I have some random possibilities, in no particular order:

• One of the SJI harem members took it into her own hands to expand the harem without Adrian's permission.  Unlikely given that Erin asked Adrian for permission regarding Raven instead of acting on her own.
• Raven swiped it on the night she spent at the Infirmary and is planning to use it to make Erin her slave.  Unlikely since there's no evidence she knows anything about the Watch at all.
• Q and/or Kanti broke into the Infirmary looking for Adrian's stash of Pink Clouds, stumbled across the Watch and took it.  Also unlikely since they don't seem to know of its existence or significance.
• Swiped by the same thief who broke into Vik's lab in #161.  There's someone in town collecting mind control methods... if he somehow knew about the rediscovery of Pink Clouds, could he also know about the Watch?
• Swiped by Rain in a double-cross rivaled only by the 1968 Richard Burton/Clint Eastwood film WHERE EAGLES DARE.
• Danielle took it in a psychotic fugue and is doing God knows what with it at this very moment.
• Zenon called Danielle, triggered her over the phone and she's now delivering the watch to him.  (Do we have any evidence that the Watch is even capable of removing Zenon's post-hypnotic triggers?  Whatever the Watch does it doesn't look like regular hypnosis.)
  
• Derek the Moron broke into the Infirmary on his own, tossed Danielle's room and swiped the Watch for himself.  He knows where it is, he may know what it does, he's got mad B&E skillz, he's got reason to dislike Adrian and he tends to think with his dick.  Motive, method, opportunity?
• The Watch, having gotten a taste of enslaving the women of Kearsage, got tired of sitting around and struck out on its own.  (Ok, that's just silly.)

We've got what, 5-6 more episodes before PK's vacation starts?  Seems like events might be speeding up to a cliffhanger before the break.

[GodWilling]

.

[Haight]

It always feels a bit dodgy to be pulling at threads like this because you don't know which ones are safe to be pulled at. But this makes me think that the Night of The Watch can't be taken at face value. It seems to me that the second cohort was somehow the point of what happened. Someone who may have been Rain turned up to speak to Marliese just at the moment Dani was being "rescued" from Derek by Adrian (for the first time). Marliese was the one who figured The Watch out. She was the one wearing the trousers. She was the one with the weird penis hand shadow (76). And despite apparently being as much Adrian's slave as the rest of them, she's had no contact with him since that we've seen. So we have a first cohort of Mallory (who seems to have an interest in weird stuff), Erin (who has her Wicca stuff), and Marliese (who has a clear connection to Rain). Jacqui is a victim of those three, like the others, but she didn't get the same programming as the second cohort. Which emphasises the division. Dani was the girl with The Watch who knew how to use it; now it appears that she doesn't have The Watch and for all we know she may no longer know how to use it.

Yeah, I definitely got the idea that Marliese was sent in there on the Night of the Watch to make sure that things panned out more or less as they did.  The fact that Marliese has had more or less no contact with Adrian since that night... probably just logistical problems, considering how many women Adrian's got wanting to get on his dick at any one time.  It's also worth noting that Marliese is the only inductee who has more or less all of their induction shown to the reader... I'm always slightly frustrated by the jump cuts, as with my particular arsenal of kinks seeing a naked hot woman semi-coherently talking about how she will worship her master's cock is pretty damn hot, even better if their previous resistance is slowly broken by the mind control method (Damn you guys for always cutting away when the watch is used!).  But then again, if Rain sent Marliese in there, how unwilling was she really?  Was the use of the watch on her just a formality?

Oh yeah, and one more thing the watch could be being used for - Erin, Mallory, and Dani could have busted it out in a misguided attempt to fix Dani's issues.  Which, as we've been talking, is likely going to be extremely problematic.