THE MAYOR HAS ME IN THE VOTING POLLS AND SHE WONT LET ME OUT
This is fair, but in my perception, the mayor had a “perfect life” where she was looked at, but never seen. She didn’t go outside. She was aloof, got good grades and was a goody two shoes in a school of troubled kids. No one like that tends to be popular. Her childhood was spent almost completely alone, save for Ryker, who wasn’t even supposed to be a friend. She saw people when she was only school aged as a way to move up. Because that’s what she was taught as a kid. People aren’t people, they’re pegs, including herself. Her mother’s death reaffirmed that, and then going to a catholic school? Without getting to much into it, being told she has to repent for things she didn’t do, being given rules by someone she couldn’t see, being kind to others not because they deserved it, but because it moved her up a peg in the eyes of her teachers. The mayor is lonely to me. The kind of lonely that people can’t fix. I love that in a character. I love the mayor can you tell chat? But they also love control, which is something else that stems from an unstable childhood. If she controls everyone and everything in her little radiated snowglobe town, nothing will surprise her, catch her off guard, or not go their way. They won’t ever not know when someone they love is going to be killed, when their life spirals etc. the times so far where we’ve seen the mayor distressed is in times where she doesn’t have control. (Also when Ryker isn’t there but,, alas) in these moments she finds ways to regain bits of control. Blaming others, reshaping the situation in her favor, denying that something happened. They’ve even come to terms with their own death BECAUSE they phrased it in a way that put them in a place of control. She even does this to herself! They’re always very composed and well spoken, charismatic until they lose that control. When they do, they don’t know how to deal with it, and it triggers a fear response. Ryker seeing her injured or weak is her losing control over his view of her, and so she gets angry, scared, and defensive. She’s been desperate for control I’m sure since she was little. She’s had no control over her appearance or where she went, who she talked to, probably even what she said. And then there was this moment where every piece of control she may have thought she had was shattered at her mothers funeral.
after this, I think she was starved for control. She was sent to SJM and that’s where her control branched over people, until it was the school. And then it was the election. And then it was the town. And so on.
I think she sees Ryker as something stable, that she has control over, and has never not had control over. When she loses that, everything spirals out of control. control is the only safety the mayor has.
