#obspec4

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Good job, happyjacq. 

#OBspec Episode 4: Deleted Scene! 

"Oh honey, you'd smell that."

In the first draft of Episode 4, our very own thewetcloud ended up having a little too much fun in suburbia. Who knew that our weird, edgy Haf would have the suburban wine mom voice down so perfectly?! 

Friends of the Clone Club Community Theatre!

Tonight's the night we do our reading of OBspec episode 4: Tinged By What Absorbs It!

Want to play?  Send us your top 3 character choices when our Ask box opens at 9:30 PM EST.  At 10:30, we'll send out a link to our tinychat, where we'll gather the troops and make sure all the roles are covered, and THEN once we're all set, we'll head to a Google Hangout to record.

Don't want to play, but just want to watch? The Google Hangout will be livestreamed on YouTube!

After the show, we'll head back to the Tinychat, and talk about the episode!

Excited?  SO ARE WE!

OBspec readers! Haf here. I know, "oh geez, this girl again?" But wait -- I swear this will be informative AND enlightening. So let’s dig in for a minute. Because E.4: "TINGED BY WHAT ABSORBS IT" was fun right?

The Suburbs and Syphilis! Dramatics and trouble? Move aside, Lord of the Rings, why, it must be Alison Hendrix and her Merry Gang. Alison is amazing to write. Amazing is the only word I can think of, honestly. Alison is just...amazing! The characters that have followed her into OBspec are extremely fun to pen. A cool thing about the suburban arc of OBspec is that it doesn’t remain a wholly self-contained entity. Alison is like this whirlpool existing on the fringes of the clonespiracy and every so often, she sucks someone in—Felix, Cosima, even Sarah when she has a mo'. And it’s very important that the core sisterhood remains connected, even when it comes to seemingly removed suburban shenanigans and syph scares.

Bringing Alison and Donnie back together in a camaraderie capacity was also very important for her arc in our telling because, with neighbors like Audrey running around, you’re going to need some backup. Even if that backup is eating, farting, sex-in-the-toolshed Donnie.

Oreos And Pencil Shavings The Cosima & Scott BROTP is close to my heart, and something I really want to see developed more in the show. Thank goodness for OBspec, so I can BROTP as much as I want! Or within reason. Oreos, sciencing, and all, they’re a ton of fun. Scott is, we are convinced, the gnarliest Straight Best Friend a girl could have, and it’s a great little path he treads throughout this spec season. 

Cosima and Rachel prove to be a killer combo to write together. Identical faces be damned, the women could not be more opposite of each other, so putting them in a room is pretty much like trying to put two opposing magnets in the same box — things explode, threats are made, bombs are dropped, pencils fly. You could technically say the same of Rachel and any of her doppelgängers, but with her and Cosima especially, with both of them being invested in the science side of the conspiracy, and both being intensely intelligent and crafty women, their interactions turn into an interesting, and dangerous, game of psychological strategy. For a writer, it’s hella juicy stuff.

Art and Angie I love Art and Angie. They're a fun duo. They don't always get to do as much as I would like, but when there's an opportunity to get them deep into the nitty gritty, we take it. As of now, we see that Art’s caught himself a pretty big fish, and it’s not really clear he knows quite how to cook it yet. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion…

Hacking With Team Lumberpunk Team OBspec has lots of little headcanons that we’ve slipped into this spec season, and their primary purpose is to fill in some of the grayer areas of certain characters, such as Cal, Mrs. S or Felix. For Cal, we decided that, based off of his established characteristics and knack for getting his hands on information, he had a network. Giving Cal a “network” of global gear heads proves infinitely useful in getting Sarah where she needs be. Enter, eighteen and a half year old Delaney, wunderkind and computer whiz. One of the many we will presume operates on Cal’s frequency. As Delphine says, it’s good to have friends in the Brave New World, and snarky young Delaney certainly is one of them. I’d like to think Delaney gets a spinoff, Better Call Saul style, in which she sasses/Skittles her way through a conspiracy she doesn’t know exists…yet. 

Eye To Eye With Rachel Duncan Eyes. They’re nifty, right? They’re the windows to the soul, some say. So what happens if you’re missing one? Or have a fake one? Are people only seeing half of your soul? What’s going on — what are you hiding?? Or maybe an eye is just an eye, whatever. With Rachel Duncan, at least, we’ve found that eyes take us down an interesting forked path of psychological and mythological subtext. 

Psychological: The eye is imbalance. And Rachel desperately needs balance. She understands that, but at the moment, her balance is manufactured. False. And it affects everything she does. Rachel is erratic. Vengeful. Dangerous. 

Mythological: Odysseus blinded the Cyclops with a stake to the eye. And if you examine the timeline of events, you might come to a conclusion of some confidence that Orphan Black is kind of a modern day Aeneid. Let’s not forget the Ancient Egyptians and their religious eye fetishes.

The characteristics of the Eye of Ra were an important part of the Egyptian conception of female divinity. [x]

Which gives you an interesting angle to look at the Eye of Neolution from, given the series’ concentration on female agency…

Eyes aside, there are very fun things going on with Rachel Duncan for OBspec. And we very much look forward to disturbing you with them.

The Other Lost Children Mark and Gracie are two important side-players in our spec, if you look carefully at the emotional content and subplot implications. With these two lie an important piece of thought in terms of the actual series. Gracie is a clone child's surrogate who got suckered into a danger she never sighed up for. Mark is an AWOL Prolethean and disavowed soldierboy struggling with his nature, his loyalties, and his emotions. The psychological and emotional plotting ground here is very rich and should for sure not be discounted.

The Complicated Discoveries of Felix Dawkins Poor Felix really gets the short end of the clonespiracy when it comes to the juicy bits. Luckily, he’s got slippery fingers and knows how to nose about when he needs to. The question for Felix is, when is too much information too much information? He’s consistently betwixt needing to live his own life and needing to be there for his sister and niece — to be there for his very best friends. Both of those needs come with the sacrifice of the other. And I feel that at a very important point—both for Orphan Black and OBspec, Felix will have to face that very difficult choice and make a final decision.