she/her - 19 - questioning aroace-spec (idk man im something)
about myself: certified cat lover, realm of the elderlings fangirl, slow horses enjoyer, guitarist, reader
I found out about this just now because there's a big warning on F-Droid, which I recently installed.
According to KeepAndroidOpen.org:
In August 2025, Google announced that as of September 2026, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google. This registration will involve:
-Paying a fee to Google
-Agreeing to Google’s Terms and Conditions
-Providing government identification
-Uploading evidence of the developer’s private signing key
-Listing all current and future application identifiers
So, expect lots of Android developers and their apps to be flushed out of Play Store.
As Android device owners, we won't get to install what we want, only the g00gle-compliant apps from g00gle-approved developers.
This article presents a privacy-friendly option, explaining how to install GrapheneOS on some Android devices. Never a better time to try your hand at messing with your phone; as owner, you should be the only one who gets to do that anyway.
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Its current plan would involve a fee and government id verification for any android app developer, including for third party app stores.
This would be disastrous for open source projects.
Interested in taking tech privacy more seriously in our current..situation? It can be ridiculously overwhelming. When I set the intention to work on having a more private tech set up this year, it felt honestly kind of impossible. I'm not "techy" - I know some HTML/CSS from my neopets days and that's kind of it.
So I wanted to share some resources that have helped me along the way.
The Cyber Cleanse
This is a 21-day guided series to taking stock of where you're at and moving toward a more private set up. It's very easy to follow. Some of the steps may take a while - I haven't finished everything on the list - but it's been key to helping me understand how the component parts of privacy fit together.
Privacy Pack
This is a site that helps you visualize what services you're using that could be security risks and what some of the common alternatives are. It's constantly being updated so even for the categories where there aren't many options, it's worth checking back later for more. By having the names, you can poke around and research to see what's right for you.
Into to the Fediverse
Corpo social media is a privacy nightmare. They don't just collect what you post but they stitch it together with your real world travel and purchasing behaviors and manipulate you to stay on their platforms longer. What if there were social sites that *didn't* do that? There are! It's called the Fediverse. This linked video will get you up to speed. Neocities is also worth checking out!
I'd also recommend The Hated One on YouTube with a hefty dose of take what works. He's got some very good tutorials on phone privacy, how VPNs work, and other basics for those who like a video format.
It's process. Anything you can do helps you and people around you - so it's not just people the government hates using privacy methods and making it easier to target folks.
Every time I watch a piece of media where a person goes to great lengths for a non romantic partner because of a deep platonic affection--especially when it's specifically stated in the piece of media to be purely platonic--and people collectively and immediately are like, "Oh they need to kiss. They're definitely banging," I want to shoot lasers out of my eyes. I am so appreciative when a piece of media actually treats platonic relationships with the level of weight and importance I think they deserve to have so when there's an immediate, "Lol no that's lame. Anyway..." response it really annoys me. Like, I don't even mind shipping in general and friendship is a great foundation for a romantic relationship obviously, but I really dislike people treating friendships like they have to be a side dish and not a main course even when it's *literally the main theme of a story*.
The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.
So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.
This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.
That’s not sad, that’s awesome.
*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing
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Sometimes, a fic doesn't have to get published, it can just be a series of messages on a Discord channel, between a dedicated group of friends going "oooh, you know what else would be cool?" continuously over a period of weeks and months :)
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A pitcher with a circuit board-inspired motif, since my sci-fi-loving brain can’t help but imagine traditional ceramic objects with technological elements. The carved design is inlaid with a metallic copper glaze.
i do appreciate the way that we tumblr users have evolved our language to discuss our feelings related to The Character/The Guy. you used to have to just say he was hot or he was making your ovaries explode or he was a precious cinnamon roll even if he looked bad or was just kind of standing there or whatever. now you can say things like “the creature” or “he looks so sopping wet here” or “i want to chain him to my radiator” like it’s just more inclusive and adaptable to the situation
as someone on the asexual spectrum, this shift in language genuinely made me feel more comfortable and happy in fandom spaces. i've never once wanted to lick a man's abs. i HAVE wanted to chain a man to my radiator. and that's beautiful.
I began working on this last summer. Like many veteran fanfiction authors, I lament the decline in commenting that I’ve seen in my fandom, the Tolkien fandom. I’m also a humanities teacher, so I spend a good part of my day teaching young people how to write, and one lesson I’ve learned the hard way is that each type of writing involves unique skills that have to be learned. And commenting is a unique form of writing and one that comes with added stresses around social expectations and public performance. My research on the Tolkien fanfic community confirms this: Many people want to comment, but they simply don’t know what to say.
As a teacher of writing, I often use sentence starters or mentor sentences. The writer uses these to jumpstart their thinking and writing, until they become comfortable enough to begin working independently. “101 Comment Starters” is built around this research-based strategy of teaching writing.
Some of the comment starters are simple enough that they can be merely copied and pasted. Others require filling in some blanks or providing some elaboration. In some cases, a because can be dropped if the reader isn’t comfortable providing that level of elaboration yet. In other cases, a more experienced commenter can add the because and elaborate more on their comment.
They also differ in their level of praise. They range from simple statements of how the author made the reader feel to compliments around an aspect of the author’s writing or their work in general. I’ve tried to limit words like really, very, and so as much as possible, except when it made the comment feel wooden. You’re welcome, of course, to add those words in if you feel they more accurately help capture how a story impacted you.
If you’re just starting to comment, please keep in mind that the vast majority of authors will love to hear from you! They don’t care how long or elaborate your comment is. They don’t care if your English is perfect or if you’re a little awkward. They just want to know that you’re reading and enjoying their work.
Finally, please feel free to reblog and share and add your own comment starters!
ETA: I’m officially declaring these in the public domain. If you want to use them in something, while I won’t turn down credit, don’t let the inability to give me credit for them to stand in your way. Share them, make stuff with them, whatever you want to get the comments flowing!
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Patrice is such an intriguing but enigmatic character in season four the show; I ended the season pretty fascinated by him (and how he fits into a certain type *cough* Yassen *cough*) so flocked to the books for more details. In ‘Spook Street’, he's one of our POV characters, so we get a much more internal perspective of his thinking, his character, and his history at Les Arbes.
So I've collated some quotes from the book that I think shine an interesting light on him, for general information, and as a fic writing resource.(please please write fic about patrice pls pls pls)
Under the cut are some book spoilers from 'Spook Street'. I've not yet read past this book, so there are no further book spoilers, and nothing here spoils major plot points that you won't already know if you've seen season four, though I highly recommend the books!
This is broken down into sections about...
His relationship with his mother and his father (Who is not Frank in the book,)
His attachment to Bertrand, (And how that connects to his interactions with River,)
His general character traits,
His indoctrination and relationship with Frank.
General Character traits.
One of the things that particularly struck me about Patrice, is how normal he's described as being, at least on the surface. He is careful, measured, and rational. He's clearly very good at what he does, but doesn't seem to derive too much pride from his skills, he wants to complete his targets, report his successes, and move on.
Starting with a more generalised collection of quotes, these passages give insight into his thought process, perspective, and relationship to his work and general character.
In pretty stark contrast to River, who spends most of his time flailing about without a clue what's going on, especially during his time in France -
'He knew precisely where he was-wouldn't dream of setting foot on hostile land without memorising routes-' p.223
His connection to his cold body, Paul Wayne, is something ingrained in him from his earliest memory; Paul doesn't seem to be a persona or someone with a notably different character and behaviour; Paul both is and isn't Patrice. Also, he can speak without a French accent.
“None of which was news to Patrice. Who wasn’t Patrice today, but that was hardly news either. His passport proclaimed him Paul Wayne, and this required no mental adjustment: Patrice had been Paul Wayne for as long as he could remember. And Paul Wayne was as much at home in London, even the bad parts, as anywhere in France; could order a drink either side of the river, and nobody would bat an eye. Because Paul Wayne didn’t just speak English, he spoke English English, the same way he spoke French French.
He’d have tied Henry Higgins in knots, and if that wasn’t enough to piss Higgins off, Paul Wayne could have gone on to kill him with his bare hands in about fourteen different ways, because that, too, had been part of the training that had been taking place every moment of Patrice’s life. Patrice’s life was about being Paul Wayne. And today Paul Wayne was taking one Sam Chapman off the board.” p.279
In a fight, he's able to keep his head, and stay focused on the facts. In the garage when he's trying to kill Sam, he manages to take down -
“Two of them, and both down. It had taken seconds.
There was no pride in the thought. He was simply monitoring the situation.” p.306
We see again his calm, unemotional response to combat during his attack on Slough House.
“He sensed that the woman’s gun was empty, because there was fear in her eyes, and she did not look like someone who would be scared holding a loaded gun. Microseconds, these thoughts took. Less. It was part of what he’d learned at Les Arbres, in its woods and in its cellars; that you measured a situation in the moment you became part of it, and that what you did next was less action than response—you became part of the inevitable: that was what he had been taught. What would happen next was fixed from the moment he’d kicked the door down. All that remained was for the bodies to hit the floor.” p.455
Natasha and Yevgeny.
In the book, the woman from Les Arbes that River meets, Natasha, is a bit different. Instead of Bertrand's mother, she's Patrice's. Similarly, Natasha was a local girl, who was impregnated when she was around 18, by an older man from Les Arbes, though in the books he's a character called Yevgeny. Deviating from the show, Natasha doesn't seem to have any particularly negative feelings toward Yevgeny, though she recognises their age gap, and how constricted her life would be if she stayed with him.
Yevgeny is Russian, 'of course', (p.256), a former KGB spy who had worked at the Russian embassy in London. (p.320). In his interrogation, Frank mentions a KGB member 'who specialised in what Harkness called mental calibration.' (p.495) It's unclear exactly what this means, but seems to suggest Yevgeny played a pretty central role in forming the minds of their home-grown assassins.
Natasha and Yevgeny meet in a bar, in the summer of 1990, and she eventually becomes pregnant.
'"My parents are very angry with me, and with Yevgeny too. He was much older than me. In his thirties."
"And how did he react?"
Her eyes became faraway again. "He is happy. He say he will be good father, and we will live happily ever after."' p.257.
Aware that this version of a happily ever after constricts her world to the two bridges that mark her village, and the next one along the river, Natasha feels constrained. She wants to go to Paris, wants to see the world - but doesn't seem to want to leave Yevgeny, instead, she wants -
'"Yevgeny to take me away. Not keep me here."
"Did you have the baby?"
"Yes. A boy, Patrice. And he does what babies do, which is cry a lot, and I was just eighteen... So one night... I leave the house with some money I have saved and I catch a train to Paris, which is how I get to see parts of the world which are not between these two bridges."' p.258.
During this time in Paris, she became a prostitute. She comes back to the area, after ten years or so, because her father has died and she's able to come back.
'“All that time Yevgeny has [Patrice], at Les Arbres. My parents never see him, my father because he does not want to, and my mother because my father. But Yevgeny sends her photographs. I have these pictures still. I will show them to you.”
“I went there, of course. To Les Arbres. But they do not let me in. Yevgeny, he comes out. He tells me I am not welcome, that I am no longer Patrice’s mother. That he has a family, and does not need me.”
“I’m sorry,” River said.
“I too. Because I know he is right, I am not Patrice’s mother. I give him birth, that is all. But still, I want to see him, I demand to see him, and then Frank comes, and Frank, he is very clear, very direct. He tells me that unless I leave, he will have police arrest me. He will tell them that not only am I a prostitute but a drug addict also, and other things like that. Threats.”' p.260.
Yevgeny sends Patrice's grandmother pictures of him until she dies when he is ten. This is the last photo she has of her son, and the last time she has seen him, but she seems keen to be reunited.
‘“If you find my son,” she said, “you will tell me, yes? You will tell me where he is?”
River lied to her, as sincerely as he knew how.’ (p.265).
Later, after being taken captive by him, River mentions both of his parents to try and sway or disrupt Patrice.
During the initial assault on the convoy, when he's about to shoot Flyte, River repeatedly calls him by his name, and tells him "It's not what Yevgeny would want." (p.359.) This is enough to make Patrice pause, not shoot Flyte, and question who this guy is.
River gets kidnapped, and him and Patrice have a weird date (which we will go into in more detail about below), and as he's taking him to Frank, River goes for another attempt at using his family to throw him off.
'“I met your mother today,” he said. “Natasha.”
Patrice said nothing.
“She misses you.”
Patrice shook his head, but still said nothing.
“She wants to know you’re all right. It worried her, when Les Arbres burned down. Any mother would worry.”
“I have no mother.”
“She didn’t abandon you, you know. Or at least—she came back. She wanted to see you, to be with you. They wouldn’t let her.”
“I have no mother,” Patrice repeated.
“She was there for years. Never far away. In case you needed her.”
Patrice looked at him and said, “Those things never happened. Stop talking.”
“I will if you want. But I don’t think you do.”
As casually as if he were swatting a fly, Patrice reached out to slap River’s cheek, but River had been expecting this, or something like it, and blocked the blow. But not the second, which was aimed at his throat. Patrice pulled it at the last second, or River would have been laid out on the pavement.
Patrice said, “Stop now. Or I’ll make you.”' (p.406)
From this, we can understand that any mention of his mother wanting to be re-united was kept from him. His insistence that he has no mother, seems to suggest he was told nothing about her at all, other than that she abandoned him, not even Frank's story of her being a drug-addicted prostitute.
Patrice is unwilling, or unable, to consider that his mother was so close all that time, and still wants to see him and cares about him. He defaults to violence to make River stop voicing these challenging ideas.
His connection with Yevgeny is less clear, but what we hear of him is interesting. His wanting, and being excited for a child, which might have been him fulfilling Frank's orders, keeping Natasha away after she abandoned them, again fits with Frank's wishes to keep the mothers away, but possibly reflects a genuine sense of betrayal, and belief that he is giving Patrice all the family that he needs.
And the pictures; taking a picture of his son every year to send to a woman he doesn't see, who doesn't approve of him, but who is also so clearly in her husbands's control that she wouldn't be in much of a position to kick up a fuss about it if he didn't, creating a potential security risk in circulating evidence of them all together, of the children all together, it's a hell of a thing to do. It introduces this really compelling nuance about how much, if at all, the men at Les Arbes loved their children.
Bertrand
In the pictures Yevgeny sends Patrice's grandmother, sometimes he is in the company of the other children raised at Les Arbes. The book tells us -
“The eldest two, they were at Les Arbres from the beginning. I do not remember their names. And here,” and she plucked a photo from the pile of her son at five or so, with another boy, slightly younger, “this is Patrice with Bertrand. Bertrand is Frank’s son.”
“There are six or seven children in the end. All boys. The first two, and then Patrice and Bertrand and two or three more.” p.261
This seems to suggest Patrice and Bertrand were born at a similar time, and possibly constitute their own age group separate from the older two, and younger two(or three).
It's clear that Patrice and Bertrand were close, and he's upset about the likelihood of him being killed, and the possibility of him being taken captive by Mi5, but he can rationalise his death, based on the mistakes he had made. He feels his emotions, expresses them, and then moves on.
'Patrice loved Bertrand like a brother, but facts were facts; Bertrand had been known to falter at critical moments.' p.223
'Squirting cleanser onto the wind-screen, he watched as the wipers smeared the seagull's mess into a grey film. Another clean-up job that made things worse. Then he cried, very briefly, for Bertrand, who was probably dead; squirted more cleanser, and ran the wipers again.' p.225
When River comes back to London using the Adam Lockhead passport, unlike in the show, in the book Patrice thinks it might be Bertrand; here his connection to Bertrand, being the only emotional connection he has left, is displayed again.
"Attachments were encouraged only because without them, there was nothing to purge. Bertrand, though, had been the attachment Patrice had never purged himself of. If Bertrand was alive they could complete this mission together and get the fuck off this godforsaken island.” p.350
Re-uniting with, or freeing Bertrand, finishing their mission, and leaving the country is therefore a top priority.
“Life at Les Arbres had taught him to grasp what needed doing, which here meant reaching St. Pancras before the action moved on. If Bertrand’s passport was flagged, there’d be security waiting. And of all the things that couldn’t be allowed to happen, Bertrand falling into the hands of MI5 ranked way up high.” p.351
Attacking the convoy and discovering the prisoner MI5 have isn't Bertrand, is evidently an upsetting experience for him.
“Because he wasn’t Bertrand, but in that first moment, Patrice thought he was: they had the same features, almost; the same hair. Eyes. Something was going on; crawling under the skin, like a worm inside an apple.” p.350
“Who are you?” Patrice repeated.
“Adam Lockhead,” River said.
The name cut a groove through Patrice’s expression. “No. Where’s Bertrand? And why . . . ” p.360
And thus kicks off Patrice and River's weird little kidnapping date, a sequence that is significantly longer and juicier in the book than being shoved in the back of a stolen car.
River
River and Patrice have a really interesting dynamic. They're both clearly fascinated by the other, and want to know what's going on. Patrice has technically kidnapped him, and is threatening and hurting him, but River's not exactly trying too hard to run away.
During the attack on the convoy, Patrice tells him they will be leaving together.
'Patrice spoke so calmly he might have been choosing fruit. “We. You and me. Or I’ll kill you here.”' p.361,
River tries to punch him, but he's not totally opposed to the idea -
‘Last thing he was doing was leaving Patrice’s side; not until he’d had a chance to question him about Les Arbres, about the commune, and about why Patrice’s comrade-in-arms had come to kill the O.B.’ p.387
“Not quite a prisoner, then, though hardly an accomplice, he stayed by Patrice’s side." p.387
The two travel by tube, where phone connection means any news about the attack on Pentonville Road would travel slowly, and anyone who thinks they might recognise them easily dismisses it. Also, Patrice pretends to be River's boyfriend.
“Patrice stayed close; one hand on River’s shoulder, as if for balance.” p.387
“Patrice hit him so quickly that nobody saw: not the passers by, hurrying through the rain; not the fellow travellers still sheltering from the downpour. Certainly not River. First he knew about it was, Patrice was lowering him into a sitting position, murmuring calm words.
“He’s okay.” This for the benefit of those nearby. “He gets claustrophobic, that’s all.”
To River: “Maybe put your head between your knees?”
Somebody said, “Are you sure he’s all right? Should we get help?
“He’ll be fine. I’m always telling him, we should take taxis. But no, he insists on the underground, and here we are again.”
“My boyfriend’s just the same.”
Any other time River might have protested the emphasis on My, but at the moment he was coping with a lot of frazzled nerve ends, as if Patrice had laid into him with a cattle prod rather than his little finger, or whatever it was he’d used to do whatever it was he’d done.” p.389
“Patrice maintained the fiction established for them by sitting next to River and putting his arm round his shoulders. He leaned close, as if whispering sweet consolation, and reminded River:
“That required no effort on my part.”
River said, “Last time someone hurt me like that . . . ”
He paused for breath.
“Yes?”
“I knocked half his brains out with a length of lead pipe.”
Patrice made a show of looking here, there, in front, behind.
“Don’t see any lead pipe.”
“You won’t.”
Patrice’s phone chirruped. “Do you mind? I really ought to take this.”
He stood and walked a few paces off. River looked around for a length of lead pipe, but his heart wasn’t in it.” p.389
Patrice and River's weird dates continues on to his meeting with Frank, River leading the way when he knows the destination, on a boat painted to resemble dazzle boats from the first world war.
“Patrice said, “That’s something.”
River, as if explaining an object of national pride to a tourist, said,
“They were painted like that to confuse submarines. It made it harder to sink them, to pinpoint them as targets.”
“And that worked?”
“Well, this one’s still here.” p.404
Meeting with Frank, Patrice gets some kisses and a pep talk we don't hear, then comes back to say goodbye to River and tell him how they ought to do this again sometime, and melts away into the rain to go murder all his friends & and his Grandpa.
“Patrice paused, then leaned forward, hands in pockets, and kissed River on the cheek. One cheek only.
He said, “We will speak again soon.”
Then he walked back the way they’d come; just a man hurrying through the rain, eager for the next place of shelter.” p.409
Frank
Patrice's most notable moments of internal fucked-up-edness come from when he's reflecting on his past, his education at Les Arbes, and his connection with Frank. His loyalty is unshakeable and goes as far as hurting himself when he thinks critically about him.
What we learn about a childhood (or the absence of one) at Les Arbes, is also very notable.
Like Patrice, like Bertrand, like all of them, Yves had had his childhood removed even while it was happening, and replaced by qualities Frank favoured: obedience to him, and reliance on no other. p.350
We can see this focus on total obedience to Frank being ingrained very early on, with orders, or 'instructions', being performed without question.
“And an instruction from Frank, who had been giving him instructions since he was a toddler, and who had ensured, way back then, that there was no question of Patrice not carrying them out.” p.428
And then there's the cellar.
“For one brief moment, he remembered the cellar. Each of the boys, on their twelfth birthday, had been locked in a cellar at Les Arbres, with no natural light and just one candle. Every morning, a single bread roll and a beaker of water was delivered. And every morning, they were told they would be released as soon as they asked for their freedom. Bertrand, Patrice remembered, had lasted just seventeen days before asking to be released. Patrice remembered Frank’s look of disdain at his son’s reappearance, as if it were an act of cowardice, or betrayal. Patrice himself had lasted a full month: at the time, a new record. Yves had lasted two.” (434)
I'm fascinated by the cellar. I'm fascinated by how long a boy is supposed to stay in the cellar. Bertrand, at seventeen days, clearly does not last long enough. Before Yves, no one had done better than Patrice's record of a month.
(Also, a brief note bc I spent too long fretting over it when I was writing my fic but; just one candle? How are they meant to light the candle? Is there a way to start a fire in the basement? Do they need to ask? Is asking for light also a reflection of weakness?)
From this passage, we can infer quite a lot about these three boys. Bertrand, who had been 'known to falter', does poorly, with his seventeen days, and Frank is clearly very disappointed in him.
(Diversion again bc I'm curious if this sets a trend for the rest of their relationship, where in conversation with River later on, he's able to discuss his son's death very unpersonally, their connection being as vague as "Someone he shared a lift with once," being dissapointed that he'd managed to let the an old man get the best of him, "It's like, lesson one. Don't let your guard down just because the target appears harmless." p.410
He tells River he's 'screaming inside', and hurting over Bertrand's death, but needs to focus on the mission, and that mission having pivoted recruiting River, is also cracking jokes about doing his whole 'I am your father' speech in a Darth Vader voice. (p.425, p.410)
Back to the cellar and Les Arbes. Patrice sets a record; lasting a whole month is evidently seen as an achievement, and doesn't seem to earn any of the scorn and disappointment Bertrand does.
Yves two months, though, is apparently somewhat alarming - from the books we learn that Yves was basically too into everything at Les Arbes, and took his terrorist training too literally, too extremely. Natasha is unnerved by her memories of him, and singles him out from the others as being creepy, looking at people 'like they are a different species... Like they are insects, or worse. Lower than insects.' p.264
We see Patrice's opinion of Yves carried on in this extract, when he talks about on his seventh birthday, being handed a photo of his mother who he'd never met, staring at it for five minutes, and then being handed a box of matches by Frank, and burning it with no hesitation, and 'glee in his eyes.'
"Patrice had been frightened of Yves, a little. He sometimes wondered if Frank had been too." p.350
Reflecting on their time in the cellar, Patrice briefly thinks about how...
“Frank should have known that there would come a time when Yves’s desire to prove he could go further than any of them would see him step over each and every line there was.” p.435
This thought, that a child-soldier radicalised from birth and pushed to the edge in every conceivable way, might end up going a bit far, and the all-knowing figure of total obedience in their life should have realised that, requires instant self-inflicted punishment from Patrice.
“But this thought, that Frank should have known, demanded punishment, and Patrice submitted to the moment, lashing out at the pebble-dashed wall, then licking the resulting blood from his knuckles. He had deserved that. Nobody could have known where Yves’s demons would take him. It was this place that was breeding such ideas: rainy London, its blues and greys seeping into his soul. Well, Patrice wouldn’t be here much longer. This last task done, he and Frank could vanish back to the mainland: Les Arbres was smoke and ashes, but they’d find somewhere. And the others would return—except for Bertrand, of course; except for Yves—and life would start again.”
Here, we have this moment of self-flagellation for thinking critically about Frank, which seems so instinctual I have to believe it's another thing drummed into them from an early age, also backed up by Patrice hurting himself again during his assault on Slough House -
“Deliberately, he banged his head against the wall, twice. Clarity of a kind returned.” p.450
In addition, we also see how Patrice can rationalise Frank's failures as not his fault. It wasn't Les Arbes that corrupted Yves, but London, and being in London was corrupting him too. He can't escape with Bertrand, and the only home he's known is gone, but he wants to reunite with the others and have his life start again.
people talking about male characters: I loveee this guy he sucks so bad but he's still my favorite #myguy #ilovemoralnuance
people talking about female characters: idk I don't hate her I just feel like we wouldn't get along in person and also she does things I personally wouldn't do so that's a bit off putting.