Talking meme 8: Alice & John, sittin' in a tree...

cesperanza said: Squee with me about how Alice (or Luther, or Alice and Luther!) is SO AWESOME! :D

Well, this one's easy! I've already written a little bit about how much I adore Alice and Luther as a couple, and how odd it is to find myself loving Alice, considering she would normally be a character I hate: she's a sociopath, a malignant narcissist, an animal killer, and cruel and cold as ice. And yet I love her. I didn't right away -- it took a few episodes for me to get over those hurdles.

But what happened was...I recognized Alice as a fellow fangirl. I know how odd that sounds, but consider what happens. She's brought in to discuss the murder of her parents, because she is the one who found them both dead, and John Luther starts realizing, slowly, that her story doesn't really hold, and that she's brilliant and flawed. So he tests her out, and she fails his test, and he knows she's the one who killed her parents. So his questions take a different tack, and in one look, we see Alice go from detached disdain and feigned innocence to utterly intrigued. In short order, she becomes obsessive about him, stalking him, tormenting his ex-wife, trying to find out everything she can about him, and when he engages back by trying to prove her guilt, she becomes even more intrigued and the balance of the relationship changes from pursuer/pursued (which flips back and forth a couple times) to fangirl and object of affection.

The way Alice reacts to Luther when she realizes he knows is exactly like how most of us react when we suddenly connect to a new interest -- I recognized that look when her eyes sparked, because I've seen it when I've shown a friend some new TV show or movie, or when people have discovered some fanfiction that changes their mind about something. We know that spark. Alice just gets a chance to interact with the object of her fannish affections (well, affections might be a nicer word than what Alice is capable of, but you know what I mean), and even to draw him in and he becomes intrigued with and attracted to her.

Of course, who wouldn't fall for someone with Idris Elba's face and John Luther's superb sleuthing skills? Alice would have been crazy not to obsess over him. She's not used to dealing with someone who's her equal in the brains and plotting department. But what I love about it isn't that she's obsessive about him, it's that she does it with such relish and at times she practically squees over him. She delights in teasing him with her bad deeds (terrorizing his ex-wife, breaking in to his ex and her new boyfriend's house, killing someone for him), like any giggly fangirl would over some kind of fannish activity. When he threatens to cut off contact with her, she bellows "NO!" at him, not unlike a fangirl who's had her show taken away from her. It's hilarious (well, for values of hilarity that include, you know, murder and other sociopathic behavior).

But in the end, she's the only one who can help him when he needs it most, because she understands him in a way no one else can, she gets his mind and how it works. Imagine getting to be the person your fannish obsession turns to in moments of crisis. Wouldn't that be awesome? Alice is living the dream, baby. And she's just so amazingly terrifying and wonderful at the same time, so in his own way, Luther becomes a bit of a fan of Alice. Especially once he realizes he can't prove that she did it, that he has to let her go and she will get away with murder -- he's disgusted, but he's also awed.

She's sassy, and funny, and droll, and really fucking scary, and there's really not any female character like her on TV, pretty much ever. They did not stint on the horrid aspects of her character, yet she transcends those things to become John's own object of twisted affection, and they're each other's biggest fans.