Deadloch - Blog Posts
Looks like someone had a busy weekend (highly recommend checking them out)
Looks like someone had a busy weekend 😴
Highly recommend checking them out ✔️
Something that I like in Deadloch is how men sometimes find Eddie kind of terrifying
Frilled-neck Lizard (Chlamydosaurus kingii), defensive display, family Agamidae, NSW, Australia
photograph by Rob Valentic
[Image dscription: A simple line drawing of a human facing a mirror, looking pleased, with their hands on their hips. Caption reads, "Be so completely yourself that everyone else feels INSATIABLE LUST." End image description.]
old people falling in love and solving mysteries > whatever angst the young ones in edgy, unnecessarily explicit shows are going through
Thinking about the way that Eddie makes her move aside instead of just going around her
Eddie my beloved, you fucking twerp, I would die for you
I'm fully nude.
Mmm. Yeah, I am very aware.
Thinking about the way Eddie stops in their tracks and looks down at their bare toes just for a second there. I love this gorgeous little oddball so much I'm tall and sometimes when someone I love is shorter than me it feels like a present. Like, how lucky, that what I most want to do is scoop you up and squeeze you, and you're the perfect size to be scooped up and squeezed!
Eddie and Dulcie's dynamic in the first half
Eddie and Dulcie in the second half
Deadloch fic rec: maybe, by groove_bunker
(Rated teen and up)
I love how much Dulcie cares for Eddie, and I love seeing the reasons why she feels that way, what it is about Eddie that she responds to. I really got such a physical sense of Dulcie, from reading this, of how she feels in this situation -- her intense need to find Eddie, to make sure Eddie is okay. This whole fic really made me go "Oh, my heart."
These two. I love them so, and @groovebunker has captured them so well, here.
Also: many of us have written fics in which Cath gets her shit together, and I like those; but I also like seeing Dulcie notice the ways Cath is really not behaving well, in this moment. Cath in canon is very unskilled, and it's refreshing to see that acknowledged.
Ugh. This really is just so lovely, and it really stayed with me after reading. Go read, enjoy, comment. <3 (Previously: Deadloch fic rec list)
Something that I love about Deadloch is how certain physical things in the environment of the show do not suit Dulcie. And how, in most cases, these are things that Dulcie has the power to adjust, but she doesn't.
For instance, at the station, in the little filing room where she sits to look at the station camera photos (and where Sven naps under the desk):
The computer mouse is on the right-hand side of the keyboard, even though Dulcie is left-handed. And she just sits there using her right hand, she doesn't move the mouse to the other side. The ergonomics of that whole desk setup are awful, actually -- and especially for someone of her height; when she's sitting there you can see how she has to hunch to look at the computer screen.
Also, her mirror in the station break room:
The lockers are shorter than her by a few inches, and as a result the mirror that she's hung on the inside of her locker door is about 5 or 6 inches below the level of her face. Around the beginning of S1E4 we see her having to bend her knees, stoop and make herself shorter just so she can check her reflection at her own locker. If she wanted to she could hang a mirror on the wall at the level of her face, but she hasn't done so.
And her clothes:
The pants she has on in S1E4 are 2 or 3 inches too short.
And on some of her shirts the body of the shirt is way too wide for her. I suspect that like many tall people who are slenderer than average, she's opted for an extra large size in order to get a shirt with sleeves that are long enough for her arms. She could take the time to find shirts and pants that fit her, or she could at least take in the side seams on her shirts, but she hasn't.
Also, this is a subtle thing but:
She seems weirdly uncomfortable in her shirts. I don't know how Kate Box managed to convey this but it really stands out to me. Something about her body language often seems like she's shrinking away from the fabric, particularly in the dark button-downs that she wears in S1E4 and S1E5.
All of this fits perfectly with Dulcie's personality, because she tends to be a people-pleaser, she hesitates to advocate for herself, she tends to tolerate the discomfort of a situation until she really can't anymore. And not just with Cath -- with other people too (Phil, Ken, Aleyna) she's compulsively polite, she's reluctant to interrupt them or even to walk away from a conversation she really doesn't want to be in. In my mind Dulcie is often a bit checked-out from her body and from how she's feeling. Contrast this with Eddie, who makes themself comfy in any environment: flopping over couches and armchairs, sprawling and slouching and leaning and lying splayed-out on the floor. All of which fits perfectly with Eddie's whole deal -- they're comfortable with conflict, they don't mind pissing people off, they're so in touch with how they're feeling and they don't tend to worry unnecessarily or borrow trouble about things.
Ugh this show is just SO GOOD and I'm still not over it
Sidenote, if anyone hears anything about a timeline for S2's release please for the love of god tell me, I need it like I need air. I'm haunting reddit and instagram but have had no news since shooting moved to Brisbane.
When Dulcie covers Eddie's entire face with her hand and Eddie is so Thwarted. It's good bc normally Dulcie is the Thwarted one
These two fight each other so cute.
DEADLOCH Madeleine Sami and Kate Box as Eddie Redcliffe and Dulcie Collins
Kate Box as Dulcie Collins in “Deadloch” on Prime
I specifically love it when Eddie takes a figure of speech and turns it into something weirdly sexual. So "it's curtains for you" becomes "it's beef curtains for you," and "you're like a dog with a bone" becomes "you're like a dog with a boner." There are a bunch of them sprinkled throughout the series and I love MS's delivery, I love that it's not clear whether this is something Eddie's always doing on purpose or if once in a while some of it might be unintentional. I have spent so much time thinking about how Eddie talks and why, because sometimes they seem to be intentionally doing a bit, but other times ("colloborate," "Duleese") I don't think they are. I have a whole headcanon that they don't subvocalize so they don't automatically practice the sounds of words while reading/thinking, and also they have a mild auditory processing disorder. Those two things combined mean that sometimes their way of saying a word or a turn of phrase wanders off from consensus reality. I think they realized very young that they had some kind of struggle around this, and at some point as an older kid or a teenager they decided -- as with many things about themself -- to lean into it harder and make it weirder than it naturally was, to turn it into a gag so that people would just assume it was deliberate.
eddie + her colourful similes
I am LOSING MY MIND with excitement.
(Via M.S.'s instagram x)
I do feel it was a fair-play mystery, but only just. Behind the cut is the one clue I spotted, along with some hints. (I didn’t solve it before the reveal, so all of this is stuff I only figured out on rewatch.) Also apparently I wanted to talk about the killer's reasons for outing themself.
In episodes 1-3, it was definitely meant to be a secret that Sam was their main suspect.* You can tell that it was a secret because around the beginning of S1E3 we see Eddie and Dulcie at the station, grilling all the other cops and demanding to know who among them leaked this info. For me this was the biggest clue that Ray was the killer: Ray was the only civilian* who knew that Sam was their main suspect, and and immediately after Ray learns this, Sam’s boat is set on fire, and Sam’s body is left out in plain sight.
*EDITED TO ADD: just kidding! @dodger-chan has pointed out that Ray wasn't the only civilian who knew. In fact, on reflection, Eddie also shared the Sam-is-the-killer theory with both Vic and Skye on the night of Skye's restaurant launch. I still think it's a clue that Sam's boat is burned and his body is left out in plain sight immediately after Ray learns Sam is the prime suspect, but @dodger-chan is correct that this wasn't a strict secret, more controlled information. In light of this, I think I actually agree with @dodger-chan that Deadloch only barely qualifies as a fair-play mystery, because this makes it more plausible that someone else could have learned that Sam was their prime suspect. Good call.
The other hints that I noticed are far subtler:
I do think the swimming thing is a hint. For one thing, it's true that not all people who sail can swim. But most can, and I think this was Ray's way of deflecting suspicion -- of making himself seem less like the sort of person who would own a boat (the kill room).
Also, if you watch Ray during the scene when he tells Eddie that Lou is dead, his crying is fake. Eddie’s too distraught about Bushy to notice, but it’s very obvious if you look. And when Eddie walks away to go and get in the passenger side of the truck, Ray’s face instantly changes, because he was never upset.
Also, serial killers (most famously Ted Bundy) sometimes fake an injury or other signs of weakness in order to make themselves seem nonthreatening to their victims and to onlookers. Ray does this in a general way, both with the swimming thing and in other scenes via body language. In E4 while he’s helping to carry the paella he makes a little “ouch” noise and grabs his back as if it hurt him to lift something heavy. And when Eddie's interviewing him after Jimmy’s body is found, Ray has let them give him oxygen, and has a very smol-and-weak way of huddling under his mylar blanket. (Weirdly, this pretending-to-be-smol-and-weak thing was the one thing that jumped out at me on my first watch, I think because of Eddie's "you're a meaty, meaty lad" line. He is! Ray's a meaty, sturdy person, and that line made me start to notice that he was pretending not to be.)
I do agree that there are some loose ends that just never got wrapped up, like where Ray was storing the bobbing bodies and how he got William’s car. I’m curious about these questions but it feels realistic to me that not everything gets explained.
These aren’t clues but I have thoughts about Ray and his motivations:
1. Ray reveals he is (or was once) religious during his monologue in the barn. Speaking to Skye of their early friendship in Sydney, he says, “You could see I was struggling with my faith, and with my purpose.”
2. I agree with you that after he met Eddie, Ray was probably mostly leaving clues as a way of showing off to Eddie and keeping Eddie around...but I do think that Ray was toying with Dulcie as well. For a start, Eddie wasn't in Deadloch when Ray very deliberately left Trent's body on the beach. And when he left Gavin's body out, he and Eddie hadn't met yet -- or even seen each other, as far as we see in canon. So I think that at minimum he left those two clues out in plain sight for other reasons, and not because he was interested in Eddie.
I think it was because of Dulcie. Here's why I say so:
Later on in canon (S1E8) we learn that back in Sydney Dulcie was assigned to work a serial killer case that was never solved...because Ray was the killer then, too, and he left town. It's interesting that Ray was friends with Skye, in Sydney, and I have to wonder if maybe he befriended Skye as a way of getting close to Skye's friend Dulcie, the detective who was hunting him. It's not clear if Ray moved to Deadloch before Dulcie or afterward EDITED: Just kidding, Ray moved to Deadloch before Dulcie did -- we know this because he killed Sam before Dulcie arrived. Thanks again for the sharp eye, @dodger-chan. :-) What a hilarious surprise that must have been for Ray, when Dulcie followed him there but still had no idea he was the killer she'd been hunting back in Sydney.
So for the past five years, Ray has been living cheek-by-jowl with the detective who failed to catch him in Sydney. I imagine it would have been something to savor, for him: to know that this woman who had spent so much time and energy hunting him had no idea that he was at it again, right under her nose. And I think he left the first two bodies out because he wanted her to notice at least those two murders, to notice and to start to suspect a connection between them. He wanted her to worry, he wanted to be on her mind, even though she wouldn't know he was the same person she'd been chasing in Sydney. And eventually, he wanted her to know that as well, because it was too tempting not to show off -- hence his using the name of a Sydney victim to book the Airtaskers: he wanted Dulcie specifically to realize that it was him, her old enemy, that she'd been letting him get away with it again. That stabbing was deeply personal, he meant to kill her and honestly I'm surprised she survived. I think Ray was much more interested in Dulcie than he let on, as an enemy, as someone to defeat and dominate.
So, I spent the last week rewatching* Deadloch to determine if it really is a fair play mystery, and my answer is: yes, kinda. Yes, in that you do get all the information the detectives do before the reveal (though sometimes the information will be withheld for a scene or two for dramatic effect). Kinda because the clues given in the first seven episodes** are not enough to point the finger at the murderer without looking at the show as a piece of art, and considering what its themes are and which of the viable suspects would best reflect those themes. Specific spoilers under the cut. Do not read until after you have watched Deadloch, which you should do as it is amazing.
*reading the subtitle files and watching a few key scenes
** I'm not including the 8th episode, where the killer is revealed, because by that point you're not getting clues, you're getting answers.
Every clue I noticed that implicates Ray, with commentary
(episode one) Cath mentions going to treat Ray's pet: Not super useful, as we see Ray with Lou later, and learn that Lou is old and likely to need medical treatment. It doesn't mention the pentobarbital, though presumably Lou is Ray's excuse for getting it from Cath. It also gets his name in the show right away.
(episode two) When Ray takes Eddie to the shack, he mentions Skye O'Dwyer is his best friend. We also know he works for her mom at the bakery, and seems to care for the whole family. So when we start considering who would kill Sam O'Dwyer, he's definitely close enough to the family to be a suspect.
(same scene) We learn Ray isn't from Deadloch, but has been living there for some time. But the line is vague on when specifically he moved. It would have been helpful to know he moved before Sam was killed.
(same scene) Eddie lets Ray know she's leaving as soon as they find Sam and his boat, where she thinks (correctly) the murders happened. It's not a secret, but he's the only non-police character we're shown specifically being told this information.
(episode two) Ray doesn't have any lines after he leaves Eddie at the shack, so I watched the end of the episode and he doesn't rejoin the other main characters at the Bush Wolf. Not suspicious in and of itself, but if you go back and look for alibis, it's clear he doesn't have one for planting Sam's body/setting the boat on fire
(episode three) Sam's body is planted immediately after Eddie keys in on him as a suspect. Amusingly, this seems to be less about Ray wanting to show he's smarter than to cops and more about making sure Eddie stays in town.
(episode three) Eddie again tells Ray she's leaving as soon as they have the DNA match, then leaves him after taking a swab. The next guy in line goes to Ray to get swabbed for the test. This implies it's possible he didn't submit his sample and that's why the blood on the boat didn't match him. It's also possible that the blood was from a previously undiscovered victim. I don't think we ever find out which was the case. My assumption is the latter, because why would he hand over a DNA sample if it might implicate him?
(episode four) Kind of an anti-clue: Ray at the beginner swimmer class. An experienced sailor isn't necessarily a good swimmer, and he used a boat for the first five (discovered) victims. Of course, this turns out to be a lie and Ray's actually an accomplished swimmer, but it doesn't make sense that he'd be pretending to need lessons.
(episode five) Ray is one of the first people to find Jimmy's body and reports it, fits with killer wanting to see other people reacting to his art.
(episode five) Another anti-clue: Ray vomits when he sees the body, and again while telling Eddie about it. The character might have been able to fake it that first time (he was preparing food, he could have snuck a slurry into his mouth like the actor actually did) but I think the character had to be genuinely vomiting the second time.
(episode five) Even with my glasses on I couldn't read the list of names the priest faxed over while it was on the tv. Taking a screenshot and zooming in gave me a better look, but while one of the names looked like it might have been Ray McLintock, it wasn't clear. Given that Eddie didn't know his name (he told her when she took his DNA, but it didn't stick) I think it would have been fine for us to see his name on the list, but not have it ping with her. (Spouse and I were calling him "Ray Pies" when we talked over the episodes, so I doubt the name would have pinged for me, but it would have been nice to have confirmation he knew about the religious stuff).
(episode six) “I’ve made some mistakes with women, and I’ve had some pretty weird interests” okay, it's not much of a clue by itself, but in retrospect, yeah, I think he has.
(episode seven) The six extra bodies surface and it turns out they were frozen and had defrosted over the last forty-eight hours. This means the killer started to defrost them around the time of the DNA testing. Also when Eddie told Ray she'd be leaving soon.
(episode seven) Eddie admits to actually liking Ray. She's a mess with shitty taste, there had to be something wrong about him.
That's pretty much it for clues within the show. It's not a lot, and I'd argue it's not enough to consider the mystery solvable. It's fine when clues don't seem to be relevant before you know who done it, but I think they need to be a little more conclusive when you look back over them. In the first seven episodes we don't know that Ray has access to pentobarbitol, or that his pet is still alive, or about Sam not being his first kill. At no point do we find out where he was storing those frozen corpses for years (sure, Skye has a cool room for her restaurant, but she would be using it) or how he got his hands on William Carruther's old car. And we don't know he moved to Deadloch before the murders began until we find out he was committing them.
Still, if you start with the theme of reinvention, and you eliminate suspects based on definitive alibis and not psychological profiles, Ray is one of the better suspects left, especially if, like me, you'd been assuming Margaret killed her brother from the moment we heard he'd left the country. Ray being the killer wasn't a shock, but I didn't know ahead of the scene in episode eight where Eddie finds Lou, even if I joked about Ray being the killer because Eddie liked him. So in conclusion: fair play, kinda.
This was more challenging than the station because we don't get as many scenes/angles of the house. Still fun, but in places where we don't know what's there I've left it blank and noted that.
Part of the house is an A-frame. As I was drawing the floor plans I realized that they could be hard to understand for that reason, so here's an exterior view as well to hopefully clarify.
(Please note, I do not have any insider knowledge of this set's floor plan. I have reconstructed this from what we can see in the series.)
(Previously: the station)
I love that Cath is even in character X-D
It’s no mystery that we’re stoked about this news! #Deadloch is coming back for a second season on Prime Video
I'm too stoked. I can't focus, can't work, I can't think about anything else right now. Here is some stoked music:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *breathing deeply* OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDD
(link to article)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!
Sergeant Horsehair and the Gremlin will be back!!!
Me, right now:
How much is too much detail to get into for the sake of a fanfic? Asking for a friend. (Please note, I do not have any insider knowledge of this set's floor plan. I have reconstructed this from what we can see in the series.)
Every once in a while I remember that this photo happened and my day gets a little bit better.
Not sure if this counts as fanfiction exactly, given that it's the actors from canon who created it. Apocrypha, maybe?
(Via N.O.'s instagram. x)
My favorite thing in this fandom is how everyone drools over this look. Because it's the most boring outfit imaginable, and yet she's just glowing. Compared with how she was the entire rest of the series, the difference is night and day.
I also love that they kept her looking kind of windblown -- her hair's messy, her clothes are a little rumpled, something about her belt is just slightly off-kilter/cattywompus. And I love that she's still a bit shy or something, that even though she's happier and more alive now she's still recognizable as the same gorgeous awkward weirdo she always was.
Ugh. This was just really well done and I love it.
watched the finale of Deadloch and my main takeaway is this look™️
Deadloch fic rec list!
There's some really enjoyable fic out there in this fandom — this is by no means an exhaustive list. In fact, my whole reason for posting it is to encourage people to explore what's out there, if you haven’t yet.
That said, here are my personal favorites. I really love a fic where a character's voice has come through really well, and that's true of all of these.
Eddie, Dulcie and Cath:
north to the ocean, hotter than the sun by halfeatenmoon (explicit)
This is so hot and so funny. I love this Cath: so in-character and so completely excellent. So many of her and Eddie’s lines in this made me die laughing ("domestic"!!). And I really love Dulcie and Eddie’s vibe, here; their interactions made me flail so hard.
Deadloch, day eight by Despire (teen and up)
One of my favorite things about the show was the way Eddie looks at Dulcie, and how it changes over time as they get closer. This fic...has somehow managed to capture that energy perfectly, and it really got me in my feelings. I love Eddie so much and I love Eddie with Dulcie so much.
Keep On Gruckin’ by kirazi (explicit)
This fic includes a lot of little character notes that feel so absolutely right, to me, particularly for Dulcie and Cath. I love how…sort of shy Dulcie and Eddie are around each other. And I love seeing what Dulcie loves about Cath; I love seeing those two in a really believable, really happy relationship. Searing hot, as well.
house rules by halfeatenmoon (teen and up)
This has two things I love: Eddie and Cath becoming friends, and Dulcie playing the straight man/stooge who has to deal with their shenanigans. This is so in-character and so cute and fun.
despite all my bad decisions by DeanBean (explicit)
I love this version of Dulcie SO MUCH. She has a lot of overlap with how I see Dulcie, actually. I really buy her — I felt very convinced by this and like I could see the things that were happening while I was reading. Excellent, and also so hot.
In Plain Sight by applesforthis (explicit)
I feel awkward reccing my own fic. But, well — I posted it on April first, and afterward a couple people pointed out that tumblr was full of boops that day and that many people may have missed it for that reason. If you want a very character-driven, slow-build Eddie/Dulcie(/Cath) story leading to polyamory, with lots of personal growth and relationship-building and a very happy ending, then this is for you.
Abby-focused:
The difference is kissing someone you actually like by Lenore (teen and up)
This Abby is so absolutely in-character. And so is Deadloch. Can a place be said to be in-character? I don’t know but this fic has nailed it. I love seeing Abby’s ups and downs as she works on doing something daunting without the support that she’s used to. I love how much she loves her job, and I love the happy ending.
Everything Good Happens After Midnight by skyvillage (teen and up)
This is so sweet. I really liked Abby and Sharelle being friends in canon, and this feels like such a natural extension of that.
In hindsight I think this was the moment when I began to stan Madeleine Sami <3
Thinking about the way Eddie tightens her messy bun after she kisses Ray and tells him off
I loved everything about this scene. Because Cath is just all the way out there saying out loud that she wants other people to be turned on by her wife. When Eddie says "I don't want to muff-dive your wife," Cath gets so offended.
And I love that Dulcie's first desperate, mortified reaction is to stuff as much food into her face as possible
"I cannot speak, I am too Eating"
when you're actually a very sexual person. you radiate sexuality like a... floodlight, at an airport. they all can feel the sexual energy wafting off you. aleyna and gez have discussed it.
That feeling when both halves of your inner monologue are perfectly cast
