Words, Words, Words

Women and enbys just existing in their different bodies and personalities. They are TRULY distinct from one another, not like those groups of friends in shows that are "different" but most of them are skinny, white and young with slightly different personality traits. Deadloch characters are caricatures and at the same time the most raw and real I've seen in a long time. Women who work and sweat and wear comfortable clothes and no make up and have white hairs and diverse body shapes and are in their 40's.

But they are also very flawed and grey characters in a lot of ways! Eddie is a child, un-collaborative, rude, almost kills a dog while drunk, drunk drives, fucked up big time with his father and couldn't even apologize property without Miki forcing her/them to do it, doesn't put an effort in learning people's names (in season one), is emotionally constipated, doesn't shower much and smells bad, can't (or don't want to) read the room in serious situations... Dulcie cheated on her wife, suspected her friends all the time, betrayed Skye and Eddie, neglected her marriage, is emotionally constipated too, didn't realize her white privilege, doesn't have much empathy for animals, has too much trust in a corrupted system...

But despite all that you see them for who they are and can't help but to love them. You see them grow and try to fix their fuck ups. And they can't do it alone, they have eachother to keep them accountable. Cath has Dulcie to tell her, even if she disguises it as caring for others, she's too self centered sometimes; Dulcie has Cath to tell her she has lost herself in the police force system; Abby has Leo to tell her she's trying too hard and developing an unhealthy attachment to the detectives; Eddie has Miki to tell them/her to fix things instead of running away and cutting people off their/her life, etc etc. They change and evolve thanks to their support network.

So I didn't think I could love Eddie more, and then S2 happened.

Something I really love about this series is the way it highlights the importance of community in figuring out who you are. Eddie has lived all her life in the NT a very specific way, with a whole load of assumptions, and as a result they think they know who they are: a loud-mouthed tomboy sheila who likes fucking blokes and isn't interested in vag, not that she's prejudiced, nah, course not, she's just not interested, don't be a fucking weirdo about it.

And then in S1 she meets Dulcie and Cath in a town where lesbianism is normative, and eventually asks, in a way that could be a joke but might not be: Were you always into women, or was it something you had to work on, like a muscle?

And then S2 gives us everything we could possibly have dreamed of: Eddie reconnects with Miki, meets Leo, and crucially, now has a sense of what a queer relationship looks like, a context they can imagine themselves in. So while it took us all of S1 to get to Eddie seeing queerness as an option, they start noticing their attraction to Miki almost immediately in S2, and then it only takes us four episodes to get to "They to they--" "They?" "Yeah. Probably. Why not?"

Even though Eddie is physically in a place that discouraged them from being anything other than straight and cis, the presence of Dulcie and Leo and Cath changes everything. It's not that it would have been impossible for Eddie to find her way there without them: the gay nightclub opposite Darwin police HQ was always there, Miki was always there, queer people generally--as represented by the lesbians in Breathless Falls--were always there, often without being noticed. But Eddie liked guys (even though frankly almost everything we hear about her sexual experiences with men sounds so unsatisfying) so until she had a community around her, she didn't notice; she thought those things couldn't also be for her. But once they had Dulcie and Cath and Leo as examples, they slipped into queerness easily, and were accepted easily.

Anyway, as a bisexual woman who spent a lot of time in relationships with men because they were right there, and then felt like that history meant I wasn't queer enough to pursue relationships with other genders until I found myself in a majority-queer context--I have a lot of big feelings about Eddie's storyline.

But I also love how S2 showed us the flipside of being surrounded by people who give us a template for how to be: while Eddie is exploring her queerness, Dulcie finds herself more and more drawn into the normatively racist and sexist environment of the police force. She doesn't notice it happening; she rolls her eyes at the lazy cops joking about their group chat, but she doesn't notice Col and Pat's complicity, doesn't realise how following procedure makes her complicit and is changing who she is as a person. It takes Cath, someone from outside that context, to make her realise how badly off-course she's going.

"I am OVERSTIMULATED and in SENSORY DISTRESS"

"I'm gonna cuntpunch you so hard, you're gonna double as a hand puppet!"

Carol is both Correct and also acting from a place of privilege— the way this plays out is that she has no fucking idea how to talk to the other survivors. She doesn't fundamentally understand the appeal of the hive mind so she can't convincingly refute its claims. Her failure to empathize has removed her ability to be convincing. More than that, she is Bad At Being Manipulative. She can't say the words "it killed my wife". She can't do it. All of those people might have understood her better if she could, but she can't! She can't do it! And so she is doomed to present herself as a blind arrogant rich white woman, and that is all the others see her as, because she can't express the missing pieces. She can't explain herself.

Likewise, when she excludes the non English speakers, she doesn't understand how that LOOKS. she doesn't understand optics. She doesn't understand that she's standing in front of the American flag telling people from other countries that her way is the right way. It's no wonder they don't want to talk to her! Think about how she LOOKS! but I think we are supposed to understand that this isn't how she IS. it's just how they see her, because she has failed to make herself understood, because the hive is better at optics. She makes a shaky conspiracy home video, it makes an infographic presentation explaining the same thing but sounding extremely pleasant. She looks hysterical because the hive is so good at pretending everything is normal.

But plot twist.

Darem spotted the Hot Klingon and made a beeline straight for him, flirting in the most Klingon way imaginable.

But Jay Den did his research and he knows that that’s not how humans flirt (yes Darem is not human but he looks human-y) and he interprets it the way he does - that Darem is an asshole and a bully to be avoided.

Meanwhile, Kyle uses the most basic vanilla pick up lines and flirting 101 and it works because this is how humans flirt. Jay Den picks up on it immediately.

Are you not respecting dinner?! x