So a quick (but long) post on this tragic anniversary about something I noticed a little while ago (and don’t think I’ve seen mentioned?) that I think adds a lot of weight to the ‘Root’s ‘death’ was planned’ theory (which I now consider canon after writing this).
Recently I was reading through the TDTWWA dialogue and noticed something I hadn’t paid much attention to before during the car scene.
Root: And I know this is an ugliness you never wanted, but sometimes you have to fight a little.
Harold: We're fighting a war that's already over. All this mayhem? It isn't some plucky underground resistance movement. It's an extinction burst.
*Root sees Blackwell--gets shot*
What I finally noticed? Extinction Burst.
In the context of the conversation I think I just assumed this was his way of commenting on the literal sudden burst of people dying, but then my Psych 101 vocab list shot into my brain when I read it and I realized that’s a thing.
A thing that means Harold knew what was happening, and that all of TDTWWA was based on a psychological practice to force Harold to make a new decision.
(this gets long so I’m putting a cut)
Basically an extinction burst is something that happens as part of trying to get rid of a conditioned behavior (I recommend looking this up cause I’m about to butcher summarizing this). An example often used for conditioning is a pigeon learns that by pressing an electronic button food will come, so whenever it wants food it learns to press the button. The extinction process of that would be that when the pigeon presses the button food stops coming, so it eventually unlearns pressing the button for food. An extinction burst is that short amount of time when the food first stops coming and the bird likely frantically presses the button over and over before learning the food is no longer coming. Got it? Maybe.
So that changes the meaning of what Harold just said.
All this mayhem? It isn't some plucky underground resistance movement. It's an extinction burst.
He’s saying that he knows that everything happening is on purpose to change something--change him. So if Harold is the subject, then what’s the conditioned behavior and who is trying to change it?
It has to do with Harold’s Rules (I wish I could put ‘rules’ in big block letters covered in sarcastic glitter). Those moral rules he’s held onto this entire show that made Samaritan coming online possible and basically directly led to the death of his friends because he didn’t want to be in charge of life or death decisions (although his lack of these decisions or handing them over to someone else was in itself making that decision... but that’s another conversation).
So Harold is the subject, his rules are the behavior trying to be changed... so who’s in charge? Is this Samaritan trying to get him to change his rules to join them, or TM trying to get him to keep her an open system and give her the tools she needs to fight back? Both of these were propositions given to him earlier in the episode--When Harold was captured and talked to Greer and then Root at the beginning and at the safehouse. Both would require him changing his rules.
Greer: My dear Harold, Samaritan doesn't want you dead. Samaritan needs your help. Granted, Samaritan knows that you won't hear its appeal in your current state. One day, a day you may not be able to see now, you will work for Samaritan of your own accord.
vs.
Root: What if I said I hard-coded a little something extra into the system before you closed it for good? I gave her the capacity to defend herself.
Harold: There are rules, Ms. Groves. Rules I did not arrive at casually.
Root: Don't worry. I added a safeguard. She'll only act if you ask her to. It's entirely your decision.
(Also, notice both Greer and Root mention ‘one day’ or ‘when the time comes’, as if both were anticipating his decision based on the death of Root.)
So all this mayhem was two AI’s battling to try and sway Harold one way or the other? Absolutely.
Now, this doesn’t mean Root is alive, I think it just confirms she and TM knew what was about to happen and that it was necessary for Harold to ‘unlearn’ his rules (which we all knew but didn’t think was canon). Root understood her part in this, and Harold knew he was being manipulated. I don’t think he knew how--based on what he said at the very beginning of the episode I think he thought it was about him dying. But he says “I know I’m probably going to die. I accepted that a long time ago”, which to an AI meant threatening his life would be meaningless (Samaritan was listening because they recognized his coffee order). Like Root said, Harold’s flaw is he cares about people, and if you want to get him to behave a certain way you have to hurt someone else.
So I 100% believe Root knew what was going to happen. Again, doesn’t mean she’s alive, but also, doesn’t it? I mean, come on... if she and TM knew they would have planned an out.
Would love to hear others thoughts and interpretations of this!
(AN: I’ve always been strangely fascinated by liminal spaces even before I had a word for what they were…transitional places that are visited only on the way from one point to another, like airports, bus stops, waiting rooms, train stations, hotels. Places where people aren’t supposed to stay for any length of time. I started thinking about Root in conjuncture with liminal spaces which led to this post which led to this fic).
The bus rolls out of the station, engine rumbling and smoke billowing from the tailpipe. Root doesn’t even look out the window as she gets carried away from Bishop for forever. She doesn’t know where she’s heading, but that’s okay. She doesn’t need a destination.
It’s two in the afternoon and the sun overhead is unrelenting. It’s hot out (even for summer in Nevada), the air is dry, and she’d kill for a bottle of water (she’s killed for way less).
She licks her cracked lips and swings her feet back and forth in space. She’s taken up residence on a wooden fence at the side of the empty dirt road. It’s a crossroads; two dirt tracks meeting at a harsh right angle, both stretching away into the endless expanse of nothing.
Her car broke down a few hours ago and she’d tried to walk to somewhere she could hitch a ride, but there is nothing and no one out here except her. It’s almost peaceful.
She can’t go back to her car (which has an unfortunate case of being full of bullet holes from a job almost-gone-wrong), and she won’t make it out if she tries to walk the whole way. That’s okay though. For right now she’s content to sit here, waiting.
Maybe, she thinks, when she gets out of here she’ll take that job in New York she’d thought about passing on. It isn’t a very interesting job (some political assassination) and she hasn’t been planning to take it at all, but being in a city sounds nice right about now. Much less chance of dying of dehydration and exposure, for starters. And she always meets the most interesting people in cities….
(Poiintheattic/poistills here) I'm super curious about what you said about Root and liminal spaces--what are your thoughts on that?
Hey! Really like your poi gifs/stills…good stuff!
So, my thoughts are a mix of canon and headcanon and this is the first time I’m trying to sort through them and write them down in a logical format, so bear with me.
Liminal spaces are spaces/places that are transitional, visited on the way from one place to another. Airports, rest stops, parking lots, waiting rooms, stairwells and elevators, hallways. They can also include places like hotels, or hospitals in some circumstances. Places where people visit only briefly, that aren’t destinations. (I’d also argue that trains, planes, and cars themselves can be liminal). Everyone experiences these places differently, but they can feel odd, off, out of sync with the world. Time doesn’t seem to flow the same way. The outside world is on pause until the visitor leaves the liminal space and arrives at their destination.
Root moves around a lot, presumably from the time she leaves Bishop onward. When she was a hacker/assassin she went where the work was. When she becomes the analogue interface she travels the world for the Machine. She’s never shown to have a place where she lives. So in a very literal sense, Root’s life is moving through a series of liminal spaces, never stopping or resting for long in one place. Never having a home.
Now, in a less literal sense, or a less physical sense (and this will go more into headcanon), Root herself isn’t a fixed space. Her identity is constantly moving, changing, a thing to get her from one state of being to the next, but never settling anywhere. It’s why she’s so good at assuming roles, changing identities. I’ve seen a lot of headcanons about Root not having a firm sense of self, and having her mind and body out of sync with each other. Maybe Root’s body, which is a fixed physical entity, and her mind, which is more changing and fluid, don’t mesh well with each other. (I want to think more about this point).
All of this fits into her character development over the seasons in an interesting way. In terms of physical locations, I see a lot of comments on how Root decorates her room at the subway in s5 like a college dorm because she’s never had a place of her own to personalize before. I tend to agree with this (also she’s a huge nerd and just really like lava lamps, okay). The subway is the closest she ever gets to a home that we know of.
As a character, Root arguably has the most dynamic character arc, evolves the most over the seasons. In terms of identity, working for the Machine keeps her changing identities, moving around like she’d been doing her whole life, but it also gives a focus to all of that. A goal. Even if she’s still in motion, there’s a destination to work towards then, a path to follow. She’s all these different people, but under that she’s the Machine’s analogue interface, a fixed identity with a purpose. Think about how lost and hollow she is at the end of season 2, and how the Machine’s voice fills her with life.
And then, of course, there’s Shaw. If Root has the most impermanent identity, Shaw probably has the most defined. Shaw’s a straight line, an arrow, she doesn’t need to change and isn’t particularly susceptible to being changed. (That she is incredibly fixed in reality is part of why the effects of Samaritan’s method of torture are so jarring to watch). There’s a very popular trope in poi fics of Root either moving into Shaw’s apartment, or Shaw moving her in and I think this stems from the idea that Shaw willingly or unwillingly becomes a place Root can return to. Shaw is a destination for Root. A way out of liminal space. In TDTWWA, Root talks about finally belonging somewhere. To me, that sense of belonging is the home she’s found with the team, the purpose she’s found with TM, and the relationship she’s found with Shaw. These aren’t things she’s using to get from one point to another. They’re her destinations.
The specific gif I had the tag on about root and liminal spaces wasn’t in itself a profound moment, but the juxtaposition of Root in the stairwell, running up endless spirals searching for Shaw, fit into a lot of this other stuff I’d been kicking around in the back of my mind for a few weeks. I want to reread all this a bit and think about it some more and come back to it, but that’s sort of where I was headed with that tag.
No! I love this! Most of the time people try to understand human emotion through words or feelings, but I’m a very spatial person and study the neuroscience of architecture and am crazy into studying psychology through physical spaces. I haven’t really tried to analyze POI through an environmental lens yet and this just opens up a lot.
In terms of the experience of liminal space, would you say that’s what The Machine experiences? Especially because she rehoused herself in those boxes all over so she has no concept of a physical form and she exists everywhere at all times, as if nowhere at all. Maybe that’s why she and Root bonded so well? They both experience the world so fluidly and detached from reality–and why Root started to rebel once she started forming a home.
Whereas Shaw has such a clearly defined sense of self at her core that her surroundings don’t really matter. Harold is very routine oriented and has his specific places and objects and rules and probably hates moving around or traveling too much. John is a dead man walking and moves like a ghost in the world, hiding in the shadows only to come out to heal or hurt people. Joss existed almost solely as a cop, even with her family, and Fusco was a man of the people and very often seen interacting with others and his son in the park.
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