#emily bespin

[applebunch]

so you know how the stamatis siblings each have something in common with one of the main antagonists? nica with emily, dimitri with oliver, and leon with ethan? there’s something i couldn’t help but notice.

leon’s parallels with ethan aren’t as meaningful as the others’. sure, leon and ethan have a lot in common, but the other dynamics actually have the characters compliment each other. like:

“oliver is kinda what dimitri would be like if he refused to give up chasing mysteries.”/“dimitri is kinda what oliver would be like if he gave up on his “empire”.”

“emily is kinda what nica would be like if she decided to keep hurting people in her anguish.”/”nica is kinda what emily would be like if she finally decided to stop hurting people in her anguish.”

ethan and leon’s characters gain nothing from each other aside from:

“leon is kinda what ethan would be like if he was good.”/”ethan is kinda what leon would be like if he was bad.”

we don’t actually know that much about ethan OR leon. so i’m thinking: if their parallels are going to strengthen from this point on, then maybe we’re about to learn more about them both as characters?

my actual point, though, is that nica and dimitri’s relationship with each other is ALSO reflected in their counterparts.

emily feels abandoned by ethan like nica does with dimitri/oliver is abandoning his family like dimitri abandons nica.

we don’t see anything like that with ethan and leon, either. ethan doesn’t seem to have any meaningful relationships at all, actually. (except with the robots.)

is it possible that we’re going to learn more about them, BOTH of them, by exploring ethan’s relationship with another character? and if so, who is this new character going to be a demonstrative reflection of? are they going to be new at all?

anyway. my guess is that we’re going to meet ethan’s version of michael.

[saintfu]

[clonerightsagenda]

hiiii wishing you superbowl endurance!! reina valencia for the ask game? 👀

(Ask meme here)

I did not endure the super bowl, I went home at halftime and went to bed and found out the winner when people across the street started blasting fireworks.

First impression

She sucks.

Impression now

She still sucks. However, she is an antagonist in a story that focuses on small personal stakes, and she gets in the way of our protagonists' happy ending. If you zoom out... iirc she was not from a political or royal family. She married into royal politics, then Medea assassinated her husband and started the first war their planets had experienced in centuries, and she had to figure out what to do on her own. She's regularly described as young. Yes she fucked up - she was cruel, she manipulated people, she abused medications in ways that should be war crimes if they're not codified as such already - but I think there's a reframing of this story where she's more sympathetic as someone over her head and backed into a corner - much like the protagonists we do focus on. Still sucks though. Don't get me wrong.

Favorite moment

Sophie breaking up with her lol

Idea for a story

What will the history books say about her a few generations from now? She joined the PSA and ended Cassandra's independence, but the PSA was going to consume them eventually anyway. Will she be reviled? Revered? Stamped with 'it's complicated'? I lose track of which parts of the story are blasted across the newsfeeds and which are in private correspondence. I'm not sure how much the average Cassandran knows or will know in the future.

Unpopular opinion

Feel like this connects back to the 'impression now' section that she's not a one-dimensional villain. Not that I know if that's a widely held fandom opinion. See again: small fandom problems. It's a potential take I disagree with.

Favorite relationship

Sophie!! Mostly from Sophie's side. Is it a crush. Is it feudal loyalty. Is it her oath as a soldier. Is it her looking for someone who will give her approval, tell her all the blood on her hands is ok because it's for her sake. (Jane will not tell her that but ironically will forgive her for the most personal blood anyway.) The queen clearly values Sophie as an asset and a symbol but I'd love to know if there's anything else there as well. Does she have any personal attachment to her? Would she like to? They're both young. They're both national symbols. They're both in over their heads.

Favorite headcanon

Uhhhh I hope she is the same age as Jane and Sophie. I think that makes everything worse.

[hephaestuscrew]

My Greater Boston Indiegogo rewards arrived today! 🎢🚇🏙️🐐

[ID: Collection of badges and stickers themed around the podcast Greater Boston, including logos for the show itself and for the Red Line Yard Goats, The Underground, Wonderland, and Pizza Ghost.]

[somuchbetterthanthat]

Waves vaguely. I'll keep being the change I want to see in this world, or whatever. Nica&Emily, nebulous post s4 where it was Leon-in-a-weird-coma AU, I guess.

“You,” said Nica at last, unable to keep quiet anymore, “are a shitty, awful person, Emily.”

She could tell that Emily’s first instinct was to say “No, I’m not!”, because a spark of outrage passed through her eyes, her lips pursing into that childish pout she always got when someone criticized her. But instead of stomping her foot and proclaiming her denial, Emily went for her second favorite way to answer:

“So what?” she asked, voice high and vicious. “So are you! You are a two-faced, backstabbing liar who pretended to be my friend—”

“Yes, okay,” Nica cut her off, angry and exhausted. “I’m not saying I’m better than you. I’m saying you suck, and you’ve done and said horrible things and you can’t take those back and you know, I get it, okay? I know why you’ve done all this, I know what it’s like, to be all alone in the world and to be hurting badly and be so mad that nobody’s here to listen that you’ll lash out any way you can. I know. And I was lucky, because when I finally couldn’t take it anymore, I had Louisa to help me get back on the right path. I had someone.”

“Oh good for you,” hissed Emily. “I’m so glad you’ve got your happy ending—”

Nica groaned and grabbed her wrist. Emily made a high-pitched, offended noise, but she didn’t try to move away and that was ��something, thought Nica. It had to be something.

“I’m willing to be that someone for you,” she said, slowly, and clearly. “I want to be that someone. But I can’t be if you won’t admit you’re an asshole who’s so empty inside she doesn’t even know why she does half the things she does anymore, okay? I thought you coming here, to my family’s home, might be a sign you were ready, but you’ve been just as awful as usual and it’d be fine if it was just me, but you’re hurting Leon and I’m not going to stand by that. He’s suffered enough because of your shitty, insane husband. I’m not going to let you do worse. So either you own up to your mistakes, right now, or you can just go spend Christmas all alone in your car for all I care, Emily.”

Emily had frozen. For once, Nica couldn’t quite read her expression — rage or genuine hurt, or maybe something else entirely? Her bottom lip trembled, her eyes fluttering as they stared at each other in terse silence, and in that brief moment something genuine seemed to pierce through the eternal mask Emily wore. A pit of sadness and terror that mirrored the one that was still healing at the bottom of Nica’s stomach, hidden so carefully under layers of condescendence, entitlement and denial that Emily herself must have barely had to confront it herself in her life before those past months. 

“Fine,” she said, spiteful and frightened. “Fine, I’m sorry. There. Are you happy?”

“Not even close,” Nica answered, and quickly added: “but that’s a start.” As Emily frowned again. “It’s not me you’ve got to apologize for though, you know.”

“I’m not going to apologize for Ethan’s actions! I barely had anything to do with it! Do I have to remind you I was the victim there as well?”

“Yes, you were,” Nica pointed out and Emily winced, as if she hadn’t actually expected Nica to agree — as if she’d hoped Nica would argue about it. “And that means you could stand to be a little bit more sensitive around Leon. You know, if anyone might understand what you’ve been through —”

“I hardly think it’s the same—”

“You’re the one who just said you were both victims—”

“He’s my husband.”

“Was.”

Emily’s lip trembled harder. “How could he?” she asked. “How could he? After all I’ve done for his stupid dreams and his stupid amusement park and, and, and —”

When the first tear came, Emily was startled into silence for a second. She glanced back up at Nica like she didn’t know what was happening, and then more tears came, and hiccups, and soon Emily was ugly-crying loudly in the middle of the Stamatis’ backyard, sobbing like she’d never done it before, and Nica was hit by the stupid thought that she’d never looked so perfect as now, with snow melting in her hair underneath Dimitri’s old hat that she’d reluctantly put on her head before they went out, her make-up ruined, her nose red, her skin blotchy and her lips bitten up.

She reached up and hugged her, pulling her close enough that she could smell her perfume and feel her gold earring against her cheek, and Emily let her, almost fell against her, hiding her face into her shoulder. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “I can’t be alone, I’ve never been alone, I can’t be alone, he can’t leave me alone, they can’t —”

“You’re not alone,” Nica whispered, her throat tight. “You don’t have to be alone, Emily. I promise.”

[tantive404]

Leia Organa as the Gothic Heroine

“Through a dream landscape, . . . a girl flees in terror and alone amid crumbling castles, antique dungeons, and ghosts who are never really ghosts.

She nearly escapes her terrible persecutors, who seek her out of lust and greed, but is caught; escapes again and is caught; escapes once more and is caught . . . [and] finally breaks free altogether, and is married to the virtuous lover who has all along worked (and suffered equally with her) to save her."

-Leslie A. Fledler, Love and Death in the American Novel

The gothic novel is a genre of literature that has grown increasingly compelling to me. Defined by its mixture of romanticism and horror— or “wonder and terror”, with a “loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting”— these stories are known for their forbidden castles, ghostly mysteries, and, most centrally, their heroines, fleeing terrified into the night in a flowing white gown…

Over the years the gothic has become a genre dominated by the feminine and by women writers. And even though the first example of gothic literature, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, was written by a man, the story is largely focused on its heroines. The central plot thread sees a corrupt tyrant prince pursuing a much younger princess for the sake of marriage and her desperate attempts to escape him, as she flees through his castle, through twisted corridors, trap doors, and all manner of danger.

I began to think of the relation between the archetype of gothic heroine and Star Wars’s female lead, Princess Leia Organa. After all, she is typically clad all in white and on the run from a dastardly Imperial villain of some sort. And it would not be so difficult for the Death Star to serve as an old manor, filled with secrets and danger… trap doors (garbage chutes), gaping chasms, masked phantoms (Sith Lords) and terrible, power-hungry old men.

The gothic heroine is a young woman often characterized by her virtue, innocence and beauty. She may be born into a position of high social status, with a wealthy or aristocratic family, or even be full-fledged royalty. Some time early in the story, however, she loses her privilege and power… orphaned, imprisoned, or otherwise inconvenienced. In Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, for instance, our protagonist Emily St. Aubert lives an idyllic life with her well-to-do parents, only for both to die and her fortune to be lost in the first act, where she is then given into the power of her aunt and eventually her villainous uncle-by-marriage, Montoni. Leia, too, was a happy and beloved child as the Crown Princess of Alderaan, even with the shadow of the Empire looming overhead… but is captured on a fateful mission for the Rebellion and sees her planet destroyed for her troubles.

And while a gothic heroine may be physically frail she has the mental fortitude and agency to be the one who drives the plot forward. Leia, too, subverts being placed the box of “damsel in distress” with her strong will and her active fierce participation in the rebel cause.

The consistent pattern of “escaping and being caught” is another that Leia follows quite clearly throughout the original trilogy… when we first meet her, she is fleeing from her Imperial pursuers, only to be overpowered and captured. She’s taken aboard the Death Star, endures torture, and gets rescued… only for the next movie to involve yet another game of pursuit between her and Vader where she’s eventually caught yet again at Bespin. After another escape, she opens the subsequent film with an attempt to rescue her (not-so) “virtuous lover” from his prison… and she is made a slave. She escapes with her own ingenuity to rejoin the Rebellion, is nearly defeated in the perilous final battle at Endor, but with the help of her allies, wins the day and all is made right. A typical fairy tale ending.

And then there are her villainous persecutors, of which there are primarily three— Vader, Tarkin, and Jabba.

The gothic heroine is often menaced by a powerful man,?usually bearing misogynistic or patronizing sentiments. He is dark and threatening, yet can also be alluring… and the heroine strives to escape his oppressive power. So too with Leia, as representative of the Rebellion, seeking to destroy the oppression of the Empire.

In short, Star Wars is a very melodramatic, archetypal tale, and Leia’s journey both illuminates and subverts that.

[tanoraqui]

Other things I like to think happen in the wake of Leon Stamatis’s final death:

The will Uriah Connolly found wasn’t the first anyone had seen of Leon’s will, because of course Leon had updated copies backed up with his lawyer, bank, and a public notary. Instead, it was a draft of his next update, which he hadn’t yet finalized enough to officialize—not fully legal, but clearly intended. To Uriah’s mild embarrassment, it included 6 months of rent and etc. utility payments to himself and other relevant parties on behalf of Michael Tate and/or anyone else who might be sleeping on Leon’s couch at the time of Leon’s death.

Ben Affleck produced a eulogeic biopic of his friend Matt Damon. He considered starring in it as Matt Damon, but eventually decided (on advice of his new friend and formal jail neighbor Nica Stamatis) to direct instead. To Nica’s discomfort, he wrote in Nica in as the misremembered role Matt Damon initially gave her. He offered to let her play her own part; she declined. She asked Nicole if she wanted it and Nicole thought about it seriously but also declined—she likes being a newswoman.

“Matt Damon: The Story of Matt Damon by Matt Damon’s Friend Ben Affleck” may not have been a perfect movie, but it was made with so much obvious love that it won several major awards and launched Ben Affleck back into a real directing career.

Michael invited Autumn and Ada to the premiere. Carrington Vanderbilt, the man Matt Damon died trying to save, had minimal screen time, but in what he had, he was presented as a regretful and loving failure of a husband and father who is robbed of his chance to apologize just as Matt Damon is robbed of his chance to continue being Matt Damon. (Ben Affleck had consulted on the script with Nica, who'd forwarded him to Louisa.) On balance, it was…

Yeah, it was even weirder and more awkward than their first Wonderland date. But in a good way.

Michael and Autumn resumed dating shortly thereafter. He moved in with her and Ada in Providence and they got married in Wonderland. Tyrell was their wedding planner, of course. Louisa broke her own rule to photograph her best friend’s wedding—they were going to hire someone else; they did hire someone else, and Louisa kept telling the other person they were doing it wrong, and taking over. Phil smuggled himself back into Boston to sit on Autumn’s side of the aisle.

There are exactly 2 photos of Phil at the wedding: 1 from the other photographer of him throwing a delightedly laughing Ada (ringbearer ofc) in the air, and 1 clumsy one from Louisa of Phil tripping on a stray streamers and faceplanting in one last pile of cheese. There’s a less clumsy, though still not professional, photo taken by Gemma of Louisa in her Best Woman dress bent over with laughter as she wrestled her camera into place for that shot. Wendell has it framed.

Louisa and Wendell neither get married nor have children, though they do get a beagle. Bagel the beagle helps Louisa sniff out clues (usually food) and likes to harmonize with Wendell. Wendell actually makes this work, musically. He briefly blows up on TikTok for being “the guy who sings with his dog.”

Meanwhile, the Redsistance is still hard at work helping people get by, a task that has alas grown no easier with Emily officially resigned and living in New York. However, typically, it’s MD:TSoMDbMDFBA that really kicks off the downfall of the Bespin regime and everyone associated with it. She basically killed Matt Damon, and that other guy, the loser dad! Legion remains present in everyone’s homes, and its shops are still everywhere, but the people boot out Mayor and elect something like a moderate Democrat, who promptly drops 95% of the exploitative fare and jail things, and un-exiles the Wonderland community…though doesn’t do much to re-provide housing for them…(to be fair, other people do live there, now)…

That’s manageable, because also meanwhile, Dimitri and Mallory have befriended the secret rodent civilization living in a parallel city below Boston (as secret rodent civilizations live beneath most major cities in the world). They—the rats, mostly, but also mice, squirrels, etc—have become allies and business partners with the Wonderland community, much like at the end of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Pratchett).

Btw at some point Dimitri and Nica went on a road trip down the coast, maybe to visit relatives in Virginia. Along the way, they met the Jersey Devil (literally some sort of supernatural creature), and Mothman (a now-old man who played a prank with a good costume in the 60s and felt obliged to keep it up. Dimitri puts him in touch with Darby Cooper and they become happy penpals for the last years of Darby’s life.)

Isaiah and Melissa become a crack political activism team. They don’t always agree on exactly what the best path forward is, but they agree on most of their goals and it sometimes seems like they can almost read each others minds.

Mark Wahlberg starts vengefully stalking the guy who plays Matt Damon in MD:TSoMDbMDFBA, and ends up with a restraining order from Boston entirely. Fuck Mark Wahlberg.

Nica works in the Redsistance but she also goes back to work in Singer’s Sewing Machine and Vacuum Repair. Yeah, she’s rehired partly because of the amazing advertising of MD:TSoMDbMDFBA, but also because she was the best damn sewing machine repairer they ever had. She starts part-time—she’s also busy with the Redsistance; an unnoticeable, forgettable face is a real asset—but it’s not long before she’s full-time, and not long after that it becomes Singer&Stamatis Sewing Machine & Vacuum Repair. She keeps the name when old Mr. Singer finally retires, though she branches out to repairing more odds and ends of common household mechanisms.

It’s an innocuous little store. In the back room, while the proprietress repairs, she also hosts visiting revolutionaries, politicians, and the press, Hollywood directors and local artists, and one famously missing man who always comes home between adventures—who sometimes tugs her out, laughing, onto the road with him. She also welcomes anyone in the neighborhood who needs a good listening ear.

At some point, someone dies. Probably suddenly, maybe violently (they ARE all making trouble for powerful people, after all). Don’t ask me who; I refuse to contemplate it! Instead of moving on, however, they’re caught by Gemma in another crystal ball.

She hunted down the original supplier who made them for Magic Staples, see. “What the fuck, Gemma?” ask multiple people. “So we can say goodbye in our own time,” she says.

“…and it was an incredible tactical advantage for a bit there,” she admits. “Just briefly! Until they’re ready to move on!”

“…and I wanted to see if I could still do it,” she eventually confesses. (It’s all fine, though. Mostly, they all just get that extra chance to say goodbye, then Gemma breaks the ball.)

It turns out that the person who used to bless those crystal balls is the same seer who sold Dimitri those parting puzzle boxes. They’re completely unhelpful, information-wise, but they do advise Dimitri to visit China. Dimitri is still pretty busy fighting omnipresent capitalism in Boston, so he books a flight rather than try to get a job as some sort of sailor again. His plane goes down over the Pacific, but only one passenger is lost…Dimitri, of course.

Nica fights to remain calm. She’d know if he was dead, she’s sure. Somehow. Anyway, it’s Dimitri. Adventures just happen to him. He’ll be fine, and he’ll come home.

She’s right. Dimitri arrives home about a year later having found Amelia Earhart on one of those one-coconut tree islands where time doesn’t really move. (She, too, is Like This.) He brought her home with him. Dimitri and Amelia get married couple years after that.

They try to use Dimitri and Amelia's weird tropiness to bust Ethan's evil necromancy/mind control/cheese robot lab on Coney Island. Surely THAT'S a mystery to reveal to the world! Their attempts at contrivance keep failing, though; eventually they conclude that this sort of thing depends on whatever-it-is being an unsolved mystery to Dimitri and Amelia themselves (until they solve it). And they already know about the evil necromancy/mind control/cheese robot lab.

Fortunately, while Legion did immediately use its massive information-gathering reach and money to purchase as many of those fully functional glass balls as they could, and hired some skilled but unscrupulous psychics to summon ghosts into them, it turns out that it's an incredibly rare ghost who has both the wide-welcoming compassion and clockwork-like mind to function as the massive inter-human connector that Ethan and Legion seek. Leon was, as we all knew, both incredible and unique.

It all comes to a head at last when a young girl's grandmother dies, in one of NYC's many districts of immigrants. The grandmother was special because, among other things, she was strict and precise but always loving, and enough of a witch to own a really good old crystal ball (not one of the half-plastic knockoffs you get these days). The girl is special because, among other things, she, too, has some innate supernatural talent, and she doesn't want to let her grandmother (and sole guardian) go, and also she can talk to animals like the youthful protagonists of the Rescuers movies.

Cheese robots steal the crystal ball containing her grandmother's spirit. Her friends among the secret rodent city underneath NYC reach out to their allies in Boston for aid. The Bostonian rats tip off their trusted humans. Legion is still a massive evil international corporation which may or may not actually be run by humans, but its necromancy/mind control department is broken for good by the power of bildungsroman.

Emily files for divorce.

[ofdreamsanddoodles]

emily bespin is such a bad person but i always end up feeling so sooooo sorry for her. like, yeah, she is ruining everything but not even a republican deserves to be mind controlled by her husband

[seaweedsawyou]

Emily Bespin. Cringe fail mayor of train city. Horrible racist piece of shit building her free workforce on prison labor. Spent all the money on robots and baseball instead of paying wages. Queen of nonsensical pet names. Her husband left her with a cheese robot in his stead, and she still loves him way too much. Came thiiis close to making an actual friend, but then promptly threw her into jail. "Keep red lining on". "Red lines matter". Who's doing it like her?? Can't wait till she gets crushed between the cogs of her capitalistic ghost robot prison industrial complex by meta textual demons

[myownlittlecornerandchair]

What is Emily’s end goal?

Like…

After Red Line has been sucked dry and sold off bit by bit to different shell companies belonging to Legion, what will that get her?

Will she finally be at peace that she couldn’t get her dream Happily Ever After with Ethan (who still cares more about Wonderland and his robots than her btw)

Will being mayor even MEAN anything, after everyone jumps ship from Red Line’s gentrification and her half baked policies?

When there’s no one left on Red Line but Emily.

Will it all have been worth it?

Or will it just be a second Atlantis in the Middle of Boston.

Hell is a city without her people, and Emily seems to be doing a fine job of making her own personal hell.

[incorrectredline]

Emily: Would you date a man that’s shorter than you?

Charlotte: No.

Emily: That’s kinda shallow.

Charlotte: I’m gay, Emily.

[applebunch]

michael: dont you think it’s messed up that people who are just trying to use the red line to get to their jobs have to sneak around in your city because you made “trespassing” illegal?

emily: people SIGNED the PAPERS that means they’re CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED to COMPLY TO MY LAWS.

michael: oh you mean like how you and your husband signed those marriage papers?

emily:

michael: funny how that works isn’t it? 🤔

emily: never talk to me again.

michael: 🧡

[vonkarma2]

emily bespin

[clonerightsagenda]

Jumping back into podcast posting with a pretty heavy one, but I was talking to someone about this phenomenon recently, and so I was thinking about how Greater Boston depicts Emily Bespin leveraging white womanhood.

To start with, I'm writing this from the position of being a dfab white person who society is going to read as female. There is a long history - continuing into the present day - of white women capitalizing on being perceived as vulnerable/delicate/innocent and using that to harm Black people, especially Black men, by casting them as dangerous aggressors. I could list several examples even from recent news stories.

Emily is a young white woman who runs a successful mayoral campaign relying heavily on racist dogwhistles and white resentment. She runs as the Red Line Bride - leaning into that pure, virginal image. She scapegoats a Black teenager to cast doubt on her opponent, his aunt. (I don't recall if she knew about the plan to frame Isaiah beforehand - either she was part of the plan from the start, or she saw a Black teen arriving at the scene of a crime and immediately named him as the likely culprit due to her biases). She calls people protesting her actions dangerous terrorists and wins votes from commuters and railway workers who are mad about being inconvenienced. Once she wins the election, she kicks people out of their homes and begins a coordinated plan to make the city unlivable for poor and working class citizens, many of whom are people of color.

Whenever anyone brings this up, Emily insists she's not racist. She's married to a Black man, after all! (Ethan interrupts to say he identifies as mixed race, but she talks over him.) She may genuinely believe she doesn't harbor any racial resentment. It doesn't matter. She is consciously using her racial position and racist stereotypes to manipulate people and secure power.

America has an (increasingly legislated) determination to view racism as an individual moral problem caused by 'bad people'. Characters like Emily are often portrayed as simple bigots. And there are plenty of those out there! There are also people who are genuinely clueless and benefit from education - American society is so segregated that some white people can get pretty far in life without ever really talking to a person of color. (And boy do our politicians want to make that even worse.) But there are also many people who know exactly what they are doing, and I think Emily is a great depiction of that. (And in turn how she is a miserable and isolated person who's being used by larger corporate and political actors, because people lacking support systems are more likely to get radicalized.) Racism isn't perpetuated just because people 'don't know better' or are 'mean'. Racism is a tool that benefits the people wielding it. Emily is chillingly familiar in a way some more over the top podcast villains aren't.

Given all that, it makes me distrustful of how to interpret her ongoing mental and emotional deterioration. Is she the neglected wife of an unloving husband? Or is she doing exactly what she has shown herself to be very good at? Emily isn't a character we get a lot of interiority from, so it's hard to say to what extent the listeners are also getting played.

[hephaestuscrew]

Everyone is worth remembering.

I can't stop thinking about Leon saying "Everyone is worth remembering" in the latest episode of Greater Boston. I think that might be the core idea of the whole podcast.

It's why the show started with a large cast and can't seem to stop adding characters, because the city is full of people worth remembering and we want to hear from as many of them as possible.

It's why Poletti's commune, who were mostly introduced as a joke, became real and human characters in their own right, why Poletti himself becomes more than just a caricature. It's why Greater Boston can't just use a mailman as a featureless plot device - the show gives him a name and a personality and an arguably supernatural ability. It's why, having brought up the existence of a Red Line baseball team, the show is making sure we hear from one of its players, because this show doesn't like people to remain abstract concepts. It's why characters connect and come together in unexpected ways and impact each other even if they aren't aware of it.

It's why - despite being dead - Leon is an important character in S1 even before it's revealed that he's stuck around as a ghost. It's why Leon scheduled acts of kindness into his calendar, why he took care of Michael even when Michael had given up on himself. It's why Michael writes so many farewell letters, even to people he hardly knew (like Chuck Octagon) and people who weren't very nice to him (like Wanda and many of the other third sight employees), because they are worth remembering and so is he. It's something that Nica forgets when she's desperate to do something worth remembering. It's why Leon clashes with the Narrator, because everyone is worth remembering and so everyone deserves to have their story told in a way which respects them.

It's an idea that the antagonists (Oliver West, Emily Bespin, the Narrator, Legion) don't understand or care about. It's an idea that drives the desire to make a city - even a crazy city like Red Line - better for everyone who lives there. In different ways and with varying degrees of effectiveness, it's the principle behind Isabelle's boycott and the exodus to Wonderland and Charlotte's motivation as mayor and even the referendum for Red Line to become a city in the first place. It's a thread that runs through everything about this show and that's so important to me.

[somuchbetterthanthat]

My brain spends wayy too much time trying to redeem Emily Bespin when she's given me exactly zero reason to, beyond the fact she loves her asshole husband and had 1(one) moment of vulnerability with Nica that one time