Polly Demy

Lucy is the most obvious and most “by the book” example of said trope. it was sheer luck that saved her, and now she’s not only heavily traumatised by witnessing death of all her childhood friends in that mill but also suffered from townsfolk’s judgemental looks at her. “did she chicken out and left others to die?”, “if she helped, would have others make it to the morning?” that’s the hardest part in being the last survivor - others will judge you for the fact that you are alive. no wonder Lucy had left her hometown.

Lockwood is… well… how do i put well an orphan. but he’s also the last survivor of his parents’ idea. yes, he didn’t know it till the very end, but he’s been unconsciously following and improving upon it. if Celia and Donald were killed because of their discovery, and Jessica died due to her inexperience with ghosts, Lockwood had overcome all of it. he completed his parents’ work and neutralized many sources to save even more people.

George, on the other hand, isn’t that much of a survivor in the literal sense, unless you look at it from very specific angle. George was eager for knowledge, he was asking questions, was trying to get to bottom of it ever since he worked for fitties. but times and times again he was punished, restrained. where others had given up in their researches, embraced propaganda, George stayed true to himself. yes he was fired, in order to cut him off the access to said knowledge, but he never gave up. also worthy of note: he was the only one who survived looking into bone mirror.

out of team of four Holly was the sole survival. that traumatic experience made her leave agent path but stay in the agency, now working in office of rotwell. Holly has great fear of poltergeists, and that fear isn’t gone, on contrary, after events in aickmere’s store, it might have gotten worse. she probably blames herself in both cases, too.

Kipps is a miraculous survival of fitties regime. not only he worked so close to them, but constantly was going against inner agency’s plans. yet somehow Kipps wasn’t all that affected. he quit and wasn’t chased after or anything. maybe fitties dismissed him as a threat and just didn’t want to waste any resources on him. another point to make is that Kipps lived to his twenties. not many children in that universe make it that far.

Flo however is at most interesting example, because her trauma had broken her. no fantastic overcoming the harshness, no trying to make things work. just compare her livelihood to others: she developed severe claustrophobia (where she barely can stay in doors and have a roof over her head) after what she went through - death of her colleagues and nightmare of protecting herself with improvised weapon till morning. Flo left her agent career for good and cut ties with everything from her life prier the event. she works alone and far from people, barely resembling a person herself. it’s tragic really

even skull! last of Bickerstaff’s followers who couldn’t pass on after what they’ve discovered during theirs’s life time. all of them were obsessed with death, yet, scared of it immensely. mirror had turned those people into restless souls not ready to leave living plane, but only skull, last remaining witness of device’s creation, came in terms with death and moved on by himself, without his source being destroyed or thrown into fire oh wait a second

its not to do with the “traumatic backstory to kick off main plot and motivation” used for the three of them, but more with how even though they all had every member of their teams die when they couldn’t do anything about it, they all reacted differently afterwards.

lucy threw herself into agency work in what I read as an “I failed then, but maybe I can save people now”. she still doesnt like or trust adults, or supervisors, and she still tends to be reckless (i.e. leaving bacause the felt like a safety risk) but she would do anything to save the people she cares about.

holly didnt quite leave agency work all together, but the did step back from working as a field agent, preferring a more administrative position when she still worked with rotwell, and stays mostly the same when she joins lockwood & co, and even then although she does still occasionally do agent fieldwork, she mostly chooses to keep just the admin work.

All the L&Co. kids are “sole survors” because they were in one way or another used and discarded by a fundamentally flawed and corrupt system created by a capitalist government in response to a genuine crisis. It is the system that traumatized them, the ghosts are merely the tool by which they suffered.

What I find interesting is that by the end of the book all characters are no longer a part of the system in a meaningful way, but they still help manage the crisis that precipitated it. Lockwood and Co was not absorbed into DEPRAC after Fittes fell, it remained one of the few private companies in London. Last chapter heavily implies the next step of the agency is a sort of consulting one, where they help Barnes but are not subsumed into UPRA.

There is an interesting parallel here, historically, because this has sort of already happened with modern law enforcement as we know it. There used to be private policing companies in London during the growth of the industrial revolution. Sometimes they had uniforms, they were usually armed with sticks and swords and were supposed to manage nighttime crime by scaring off individual criminals from a specific area (docks, warehouses etc.). These individual policing agencies were often corrupt, competed with each other more than helped anyone, didn’t solve anything, never looked at the source of crime as a systemic issue and were just as much about perception of safety than actual safety. After a few unsolved but high profile murders London eventually got a centralized police department, a very controversial thing in its day. Cops were basically not trusted almost as soon as they appeared lol. But in the media the human obsession with true crime and dislike/distrust of police force led to the rise of the private detective. A figure both within the crime fighting system and outside of it.

And at the end of the books Stroud sets up Lockwood and Co. to be basically a collective paranormal Sherlock Holmes analogue. A consulting detective agency. One of a kind. Filled with highly talented people familiar with the system of ghost hunting as practiced by DEPRAC and UPRA but not part of out, not beholden to it’s rules.

- I hope u all have a beautiful pride day! Support your queer friends and share only love today! 💖

Go read something queer!

[id: an ink portrait of Lucy Carlyle (Lockwood and Co books) looking to the side with a worried expression. on either sides of her face are a total of four skulls positioned in rotation of turning away from her until their gazes are averted./end id]

without you there is no me my bag of bones bring your body on home sweet heart of stone you've gone and left me all alone