No, see, I think what led him to chain up Rebecca and freak is that he's an arrogant boy. Which is completely separate from his involvement in BDSM.

Well, having the chains there at all was related to his involvement in BDSM. But I completely agree with you otherwise.

He was after him for a (series of?) rapes. Did they establish whether he was or wasn't guilty of those, though?

All we know for sure is that the charges were dropped.

My semantics are like yours, Steph.

I'm not calling him perfect! I'm saying there's a difference between playing at something, and not being the best (or even, honestly, good) at it. I think they imply very different mindsets. Brandt took BDSM seriously -- probably too seriously, which is what led him to chain up Rebecca and then freak. That's not playing, in my book.

Hmm, I _think_ I see the disconnect. I say that he's "playing" at S&M because he's not following the established rules and expectations, he's doing what he thinks S&M is. He talked about how the general consensus is that the submissive has the power, but if he really believed that, he wouldn't have tried to tie Rebecca up. He didn't release her because she said the safe word, he released her because she scared him.

An analogy to what I mean-- a guy reads a book about sculpture, buys a spot welder and welds together a bunch of scrap metal and calls it art. To him, it is art, he worked very hard at it, and it's legitimate. However, critics and dealers may call it junk.

I *can* picture him saying "Oh, holy FUCK, I thought you wanted this, crap sonofabitch crap crap crap," and letting her out of the cuffs. Which I wouldn't call freaking out as much as making a HUGE error in judgement (or, perhaps, a total LACK of judgement), and getting a rude awakening.

So far as they knew, he immediately fled the scene (his home, to boot) upon releasing Rebecca. I'd say that qualifies as freaking out, even if it was warranted by events.

But part of his arrogance causes/is manifested¹ in an attitude that BDSM will cure anything that ails ya.

Yes but, were he not involved in BDSM, I have no doubt he'd have some other thing to assist in the manifestation of his arrogance. Tantric sex, yoga, stamp collecting. At the end of the day, he's the kind of guy who's always going to have something so he can pat a girl on the head and tell her he knows best how to fix her.

And yet, quoting his exact words back to him creates a link between S&M and sexual violence.

Brandt makes that link by non-consensually handcuffing her. It starts as seduction and she's going with him, then he breaches that trust and recalls her emotional traumas.

He's the one who crossed that boundary, and she quotes his words back at him (a) to sting him, (b) because he'd understand it, (c) because she really meant it.

It's semantics for me, Steph. It's what I'm calling freaking on his side.

And, honestly, the same thing could have happened if he had actually done the right thing and asked her if she wanted to be cuffed and she said yes. Sometimes you think you can handle a scene and it turns out to trigger something when it actually happens, and you freak. Which makes the dom get a little freaked, too.

Cashmere, that's my take on it. It's just that for some reason I thought that there were other rapes not related to the murders that Strong or other policepeople suspected him of. But it doesn't really fit well with the rest of the storyline, so I may have made that up.

I thought the ex accused him of rape, then recanted. Then the investigating officer became so determined to prove him guilty, he started following him and then got caught up in the fantasy and started committing the actual crimes (the rapes and then the murders? because they started out as rapes and then progressed to murders, right?)

Gotcha, I'd forgotten. So, were we supposed to take something from that - Paul and the rest of the team, really, were so focused on This Must Be The Guy because of the S&M (and, to be fair, the attitude), that their investigation was going off the rails a bit without their noticing. It suddenly feels to me like maybe there was supposed to be a parallel there with Strong's obsession.

I *can* picture him saying "Oh, holy FUCK, I thought you wanted this, crap sonofabitch crap crap crap," and letting her out of the cuffs. Which I wouldn't call freaking out as much as making a HUGE error in judgement (or, perhaps, a total LACK of judgement), and getting a rude awakening.

I could call it either, and mean more or less the same thing.

I thought the ex accused him of rape, then recanted. Then the investigating officer became so determined to prove him guilty, he started following him and then got caught up in the fantasy and started committing the actual crimes (the rapes and then the murders? because they started out as rapes and then progressed to murders, right?) against the women who associated with Brandt--making him a natural suspect on all of them.

This is what I thought happened, too. I'm not sure that it's known, but it's not contradicted by anything, and it makes sense.

Well, the fact that the rapist took the victim's underwear and Strong kept the dead women's hair is a little confusing to me, but I can ignore that easily.