::secretly hoping work *does* notice and accuses Emily of being into S&M to the power of eleventy one::

knows perfectly well Hec is jealous of the silvery MAGNIFICENCE.

knows perfectly well Hec is jealous of the silvery MAGNIFICENCE.

This is absolutely true, and I recommend that every Buffista explore their silvery magnificence this weekend.

I'm exploring my silvery magnificence right now.

You don't even know how fucking great it is.

You don't even know how fucking great it is.

I...I know.

Am I glad I didn't watch this show with my parents. The last time I was home an episode of House prompted my mother to ask, "What's a dominatrix?"

You guys are seriously talky meat in this thread. I was only 1/2 a day behind watching the ep and I just now caught up in the thread. I fear that by the end of the summer I'll be trying to catch up in a closed Minearverse 4: Support Group for Clumsy People while you are halfway through Minearverse 5.

Minearverse 4: Support Group for Clumsy People

Yes, please.

OMG, that's the name for the next thread!!

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.

It was my understanding that a woman cried rape; the police officer, over the course of the next 5 months tracked down and interviewed all of Brandt's sexual partners and believed that each of those encounters was rape, but Brandt's sexual partners didn't agree. Then, after that 5 months of trying to build a case for Brandt being a serial rapist, the first one recants and says she is in love with Brandt. He said Brandt "got to her", implying that Brandt was seducing her over the course of that 5 months. Later, it seems more likely that she was one of his BDSM partners who didn't like it that he'd moved on.

Rebecca's line about "what made them that way" and Paul's freaked out reactions to his ex-crush's sexual tastes--are that only fucked up people go in for BDSM.

I don't agree. We've been given compelling evidence that you have to be fucked up to work for Web. It doesn't seem like a long way to go to assume they're seeing it through their own broken lenses.

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

I agree. Maybe she didn't mean that anyone would be stronger; but she believed he would be.

There were some things that interested me. Brandt said the women had to use a word, but he didn't use the term "safe word." When Paul and Rebecca broke in to his apartment, the woman removed her gag and, it sounded like she said, "is this part of the thing?" when she ought to have used the word "scene" instead of "thing."

Granted, she might have been new, or I might have misheard. Brandt, I believe, viewed himself as a seducer, but she didn't look particularly new. I thought her reaction to the dead bodies was disturbing and, while funny, not appropriate. That made her fucked up (and not just viewed through Web's cohort's cracked lenses). No one I know, whether they like to be spanked or not, would be turned on by a picture of a dead person.

Something else. Web asked Paul if he'd considered that Rebecca had made the call. He didn't say she definitely had. She might have, but he might have as well.

I keep going back to when they had Brandt in interrogation and he had already started his attempt to seduce Rebecca. Her stance is pretty submissive, so he may have thought she was attracted to him. I think she was actually attracted to him. I believe Web thought so too. Web was, after all, watching--and recognized that Brandt knew too much when he said that Paul wasn't in charge. I believe, because I like machiavellian brains, that Web recognized that Rebecca was attracted to Brandt--perhaps not sexually, maybe just how/why he ticked the way he did--and used it. That would fit, imo, with the re-enactment scene.

One further thing: Brandt did cross lines. He may have believed, as a some sort of great seducer, that discussion of safe words would have screwed up his seduction, and so didn't discuss it with Rebecca before he cuffed her, but he could have, and should have if he wanted to be "safe, sane and consensual." The moment they said he "didn't play nice" at the club, that's what I assumed -- that he didn't give his bottoms the safety of being able to stop things--so cuffing Rebecca just went along with my expectations of him.

I thought her reaction to the dead bodies was disturbing and, while funny, not appropriate.

Oh, was she turned on? I wasn't sure what was happening. Actually, I thought she was evidencing signs of a fever because she'd actually been poisoned by the killer and was dying a slow but implacable death! but then I realized I was thinking of some other show. Though I can't quite figure out what.

I like it better with Rebecca doing it, partly because I'm liking Web grey but not actually black, but also because I'm not sure Web doing it makes sense -- if the guy really was the killer then Locke would probably have been dead before anyone got there, and if he wasn't, why bother having her go in at all?

He said Brandt "got to her", implying that Brandt was seducing her over the course of that 5 months

My interpretation of that was that the detective thought Brandt had threatened her to get her to recant.

Brandt did cross lines. He may have believed, as a some sort of great seducer, that discussion of safe words would have screwed up his seduction, and so didn't discuss it with Rebecca before he cuffed her, but he could have, and should have if he wanted to be "safe, sane and consensual." The moment they said he "didn't play nice" at the club, that's what I assumed -- that he didn't give his bottoms the safety of being able to stop things--so cuffing Rebecca just went along with my expectations of him.

Yes this. Except,

that he didn't give his bottoms the safety of being able to stop things

I think he would have stopped if his partners got the message through, but I think he didn't want to mess up his seduction routine by explicitly talking about safe words and how to stop. And, there's a problem. You need to set up parameters before the play starts.

And, I think this leads back to his control issues. Subs have control over the control. They decide who to give it to and under what circumstance(s) they want to take it back. Brandt didn't want to mess up his flow by talking about that exchange of control and how to safely give and receive it.