dangermousie | Veronica!!!!! And loving your computer. Really, really, REALLY loving it.

I am still on the crazy high from Veronica Mars' "Not Pictured." But oddly enough, the character I've been thinking about lately is Duncan.

I know he is not a liked character in the fandom. And he is not the most interesting of the bunch. But I do like him. I think now that the Duncan arcs are closed and I can contemplate the character in his entirety, I've come to an understanding of him that makes me find him interesting, and pity him.

Duncan is very reserved. He has an emotionless facade but he isn't emotionless. He has feelings, but he is very good at repressing and at keeping composure. In a way, it comes from his particular circumstances: Duncan is someone who's had to live with a potentially crippling illness and not tell anyone about it. His parents, his whole life has been about not letting the world know about it, about maintaining composure and outward semblance of utter normalcy. Of course, this is also because giant agitation can help induce his fits (just like Logan's acting out and extraversion is a reaction to his circumstances: his parents never caring for him).

Duncan is all about control. Keeping it, maintaining it, never letting it slip. He only does lose it when the pressure is too great: his outburst to V when he thinks she thinks he is the killer, in 1.21 when he bashes his car on seeing Logan/Veronica, his fight with Logan in early S2, his outburst about Meg. He's been trying so hard to not show he still cares in all of these, to project normal, but the stimuli overflow. In a way, that makes him a dangerous enemy because he feels certain things strongly but he is capable of being reasoning about it. Emotion doesn't make him necessarily lose control: see the hit on Aaron (and shows that Aaron is a ridiculous narcissist: he has just gotten off for murder of a daughter of someone powerful, who threatened to kill him for this murder, and implicated the son of the family, who the family went to unlawful extremes to protect. Hire a bodyguard, dummy). In a way, Duncan is very self-sufficient, and self-contained. As long as he is satisfied with himself, with what he is doing is right or good, he doesn't seem to particularly care about opinions. He kidnapped baby Lilly because he thought it was right, because he wanted his daughter and didn't think she should be brought up by Mannings, but not because of any 'I really should do this because people think' feelings. In a way, he is self-sufficient without Veronica. As long as he is doing what he percieves is the right thing, he will deal. And unlike Logan who can be destroyed by his emotions, Duncan, whatever his feelings, is good at control.

P.S. I loathe, loathe, LOATHE the Angel/Spike comparisons. I was a huge Angel fan, and an Angel/Buffy shipper yet Logan is my favorite male character in VM and I am all about L/V shipping. Seeing Angel=Duncan kind of riles me up, especially when it's usually 'everyone dislikes Duncan who is deadly dull, and Duncan=Angel, so Angel is the deadly dull one no one ships with the heroine' vibe. It's quite possible to be B/A and still not find Duncan fascinating and be about L/V.

Oh, and my favorite post 2.22 fic is Molasses and Taffy(it's Keith, Logan, and Veronica centric and it's L/V). Check it out.

In other news, I've started watching and enjoying the delightful Chobits. It's funny (Chi's quest for underwear had me rolling on the floor), I love the pastel, pretty artwork, and I like the characters. The story (and it is one unitary one) centers around the life of Hideki, a poor student attempting to get into university by studying at a cram school, and in particular his relationship with a persocom (a computer designed to look like a person) called Chi, who is a Chobit: a sort of super-persocom with abilities far in advance of normal Persocoms, most remarkably emotions.

If I were inclined to taking it too seriously, I could really work up myself into a problematic state about feminism or lack thereof of the story, as it can be interpreted as someone literally building yourself a wife, as when Chi is first found she is a figurative infant who doesn't talk and Hideki has to teach her everything: she is a literal blank slate to be molded, physically and emotionally. And there is a fact that her switch is at her vagina (!!!)

But I don't particularly care to get into that, not just because the creators of the show are all women, but because it's a funny light-hearted story that doesn't take itself seriously, and because the other side of the story is finding individuality and personality in individuals (in this case A.I.) that people normally don't think are possessed of a will. Everyone tells Hideki Chi has no soul, she is a machine, but Hideki treats her as a real person, he can't help it (Hideki is hilariously boyish, but nice. He might be 18 and sex-obsessed but he blushes whenever he is in contact with girls and he always turns away when Chi needs to change, even though Chi doesn't yet understand the concept of personhood and privacy. He is a very decent human being. And in a way, it's his belief in her as human that 'makes' her human. I am sure if someone had never seen her potential to be a person, she wouldn't be. He doesn't train her into someone who'd be a 'barefoot and pregnant' yes-woman, he tries to get her to be a functional person. And that's a very positive message. So I am just inclined to view it as cute fluff and neither a feminist manifesto nor bizarrely regressive. And also a cool commentary on people's dependence on computers and a potentially deleterious effect on real world as they might prefer the perfectly manufactured/tailored artifice to the flawed reality, as manifested by real people who can be willful, who you can't predict, and as manifested by Chi herself.