#callhimarcher

How much influence do the Directors have over the authorities of the Marshals? I only ask because despite how much Viv was alleging that she wouldn’t hesitate to terminate Sin, I’m starting to question whether the Directors would’ve even allowed her to. Same with Seong. I know Hsin was Connors’ pet project, but the Directors took an interest in Hsin ever since he came to the Agency and with how much money was put into him and how he’s the best agent the Agency’s had, I’m starting to think Viv and Seong are just full of hot air. And based on your answer, it’s clear that the Directors’ opinions do matter to Seong at least. I know the Directors are working the Agency like a chessboard, but Hsin’s the perfect example. If the Directors say no to something, is that the end of discussion? And did they ever say no to Hsin being terminated?

AND

How much are the Directors aware of what’s going on at the two Agencies? Again, based on your answer, it sounds like the Directors would’ve known if she’d bugged his apartment. That kind of surprised me. Do the Directors have the Agencies under a microscope like the Agencies do with their agents? Because holy crap.

Ok so these two were the ones that slowed me down to reply, I’m sorry! I don’t have a long answer for you right now because part of it is something we would have to discuss at length for a really detailed answer. We started to talk about it but were thinking two different aspects of the same thing and never got the chance to finalize every detail of it.

So the best way I can answer it right now is this:

Vivienne doesn’t lie and she doesn’t overstate her abilities. If she threatens something, she only ever threatens what she fully believes she can do. And she usually researches the extent of her abilities ahead of time so she isn’t making empty threats. That being said, the Agency did specifically lie to her/cover things up to her in the past, and she didn’t realize it even with her research. Not because she isn’t good at what she does (she’s very good at it) but because they had a vested interest in burying something out of her view.

As for Seong, she is someone who’s much more willing to misdirect or lie if it’s part of her plans or to get to what she wants in the long run. She also tests people a lot. So whereas Vivienne doesn’t outright lie for the most part, and instead tries to control the situation ahead of time so she can get what she wants out of it, Seong is much more willing to adjust as she goes and be more unscrupulous in her means at that time if it serves her purposes.

For however it happened, Vivienne would have had reason to believe she would be able to terminate Hsin if needed for her to make that threat or comment that it was within her power, but Seong wouldn’t need any such reason to believe it because she would say whatever the hell she wanted to get what she wanted out of the other person or the situation. Vivienne’s threats don’t undermine her integrity because Vivienne’s integrity is very important to her (at least in terms of her pride) but Seong didn’t care about any of that because Seong was more ruthless.

So basically, Vivienne wouldn’t say she could do something knowing full well she couldn’t because the reason she makes that threat is to warn the other person to listen to her and get their shit together so it doesn’t get to the point where that is the move she makes. She’s giving forewarning in an attempt to get them to not be an idiot, in her mind, basically. But if pushed then she has to believe she has that right to do that thing. 

Seong doesn’t care if she does or doesn’t have the right to do a thing she threatens because she’s threatening it typically to keep a person in line and/or get their eyes off this other thing happening where she’s doing something else. The threat itself is less important if it’s true or not because she’s willing to kill people or completely fuck with people with or without their consent, so whether or not that initial threat is believed doesn’t matter since she has plenty of other options to keep people in line or eliminate them if needed.

And then on top of that, the Directors could or could not have changed their mind over time about things and that could or could not affect what they actually told people like the Marshal and/or Inspector, and therefore what they were or were not allowed to do.

Was she looking to take out Carhart simply because she wanted Katsaros instead? With how she was very much “if you get your work shit done then you are following rules but if you fuck up because of personal shit then I will fuck you up”, it seems like Carhart was still kind of the exception to that even though she knew he was doing a good job and didn’t have it out for him. It seems that she was still trying to fabricate a solid reason to take him out since they couldn’t find any dirt on him. Why? (or was that Katsaros doing it?

The Katsaros part you’d have to check with Santino because Katsaros is his character. I feel like part of all that was Katsaros. He was the one who ended up more emotionally invested in Carhart than Seong was. 

Honestly I’d have to reread it all to remember for sure but I think it was more like, she gave Carhart the warning she gave others, and he more or less followed it on the surface of things. Some of the things he obviously wasn’t following, but some of that was hidden from Seong so she didn’t have proof or knowledge of exactly the extent to which he was doing things.

One thing that Seong would have used against Carhart, had it happened, was if Boyd had told Emilio and Carhart about Hsin and if Carhart had then interfered in any way. tbh I think Seong assumed that would happen, and she was waiting for that. But Boyd (rightfully) realized he would be endangering them by passing along that information, so he never did, and in doing so he ended up protecting them and Hsin even though he put himself in a shittier position in the process. So Carhart was never put in a position where he had to make that choice, which meant in a lot of ways he continued to not really technically do anything “wrong.”

If you think about it, aside from the whole defection + hiding the mole thing that Viv and he worked on (that they successfully kept from Seong so she didn’t have as proof of his actions), Carhart really didn’t do anything “wrong” after Seong took over – not until the end when he clearly experienced the immediate consequences. Prior to that, he more or less toed the line. All the real “traitorous” activity was done by Emilio, Boyd, etc, because Boyd always went to Emilio instead of Carhart on those iffy situations, and because Emilio was the one who was sort of being a double agent.

In that way, letting Carhart do his thing meant between Carhart and Emilio, she could continue to generate information about other problem children in the Agency and track what they were doing to see if they needed to be taken care of, since Carhart’s reputation in the Agency had been pretty steady for years.

But at the same time, his unit wasn’t as efficient as she wanted, and she and/or Katsaros felt it could have been governed better. So the unit itself was also in question, putting Carhart himself in question as well due to that same reputation I mentioned earlier. His reputation and personality was sort of a double-edged sword for him, because he was well-liked and generally did a good job, generally didn’t really do shit that went directly against the Agency that people knew about, generally he toed the line, and yet he was also known to have favoritism toward Hsin and sometimes others. 

So I think part of it is she did want Katsaros in there since she felt he was more reliable for her purposes, but Carhart also was sort of in the position for most of the story the way Boyd was in the beginning of Fade. Except Boyd was more dramatically so. Boyd was known as a major problem child and way too devoted to Hsin above the Agency and didn’t have the numbers to back up his work as an agent, but then Vivienne saved Boyd by sending him out of Seong’s grasp when she first took over, and when Boyd returned he’d done a good job and made some pretty significant headway for the Agency in one aspect and Hsin was gone so she gave him that whole warning of “I’m willing to let all your past shit slide but next time you fuck up, you’re done.” Then Boyd didn’t fuck up for quite some time, and provided them info with Hsin, and then he was targeted so she was like, “That’s it, he’s done, just like I said.”

Carhart was probably similar in a way except he had a much more stable background of having done a lot more good for the Agency, in general, for many years. He didn’t betray the Agency as easily or as often or as obviously as Boyd did, but there were still some aspects of him where it was clear he had let some things slide when a harsher person wouldn’t have and he still was known to be preoccupied with Hsin. So it’s like, Seong knew Carhart couldn’t fully be trusted, but there was still the chance he would fully devote himself to the Agency with Hsin out of the picture. That is sort of the test she was doing for him as a person, but simultaneous to that there was him as the General, and what was both his performance measures as well as those under him? How was his unit doing?

Those and probably other things came into play when looking at Carhart’s “worth” for the Agency, and that and other things fluctuated a bit over time, plus there was Katsaros’ view of Carhart vs Seong’s view, and their different interactions, and more. I don’t know whether Seong specifically had it out for Carhart so much as she figured at some point he would hit a limit and that was the point at which he would make a conscious choice of which side of the line he would fall on: in the Agency’s full interest, or not. From her view, Carhart had spent so much time on the line itself, not fully committing either way, that she didn’t feel he could be fully trusted the way Katsaros would be, which is why she thought Katsaros would be a good replacement for him. But at the same time, from what she knew when she actually took over and even most of what was recorded that she was given from before she came, Carhart was able to retain some of the “good soldier” mentality. 

He did things like, for example, advocate for Hsin to have the collar as a means to control him in order to let him out of the box, but that worked in the Agency’s favor overall by having Hsin out as a tool. He did not help break Hsin out of Agency custody ever, like Boyd or Emilio did. Emilio couldn’t really be proven to have done those things but Boyd was often really obvious about shit he did related to Hsin (ie, very reckless at times) so he could be proven to be problematic in the Agency’s eyes. But Carhart, even in helping Hsin, often still stayed in the Agency’s rules. Most of the time when someone did something reckless, if they went to anyone of the parent’s generation they went to Emilio for help and didn’t tell Carhart about it beforehand, so Carhart had more of an ability to maintain plausible deniability on a lot of things.

That meant that Carhart really didn’t fuck up that much from the Agency’s viewpoint in terms of his personal matters. The collar helped the Agency and in a lot of ways helped Hsin, but it also hurt Hsin. So even when Carhart was trying to help, he still didn’t commit 100% the way Boyd did where Boyd did things that were 100% to help Hsin at the expense of the Agency (in a very obvious way; Carhart could have done stuff but he was more subtle about it when he did). I only give Boyd as an example so you can see the comparison of like, Boyd very clearly was a problem for the Agency, whereas Carhart was good about staying visibly in line for the most part. And Carhart was well respected on compound, well liked, and in a supervisory role. So if Boyd was given a second chance even as problematic as he was and without any of that supervisory aspect and technically without even the partner for which he was hired, Carhart would be given even more leeway because he did way less problematic shit than Boyd did. But Carhart’s reputation was that he had some favoritism for his unit. 

So then the question became, to what extent did that favoritism exist? To what extent was that favoritism affecting the unit itself? To what extent was that making it inefficient? And a lot of other questions too like, personally vs professionally could he truly be trusted? If not, why? What would or would he not do? etc. It was figuring out a lot of those questions.

So I don’t know if it’s that she was really targeting Carhart so much as she was observing him to see to what extent he could actually be trusted. And then building the case for whether or not he should be replaced. Because he held a pretty high position in the Agency which meant it was important to have someone there she felt she could trust and/or use, but at the same time if he was doing a good job she wasn’t going to fuck up everything to take him out when she had other stuff she was still focusing on first. If he fucked up enough for immediate response, then she would swiftly take action. Otherwise it was a lot of observation. But that observation itself was really stressful for Carhart in general, even moreso because by that point he actually was working against the Agency in the background in a lot of ways, more than he had outright in the past, so he had more scrutiny at a time when he was doing the most dangerous things, than he’d ever had in the past. Which  put him in a really tough situation.