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Date Posted: Tuesday, June 27, 12:51:38pm
Author: Nell
Subject: Re: One more thing
In reply to: JayBee 's message, "Re: One more thing" on Tuesday, June 27, 12:36:21pm

Their critique of Nikita has nothing to do with Paul, in fact, other than the coincidence that he happened to hold the position she eventually took over.

Well - there is a strain in some kinds of TR/anti-Nikita commentary that argues that Paul/Madeline were an effective team that ran Section well, and that Nikita wouldn't - because, unlike them, she was incompetent and unskilled and naive - not so much with the impulsive and self righteous thing, because of course Paul had that in spades.

Take cyaniade's story about Nikita's failures as Operations - it opens with a scene of Nikita undergoing torture because she had been set up and lured out of section. The story presents this as a typically stupid Nikita-ish thing to do and implies that Paul/Madeline would not have done this. Only, in canon, Paul *did* go out of section at times to take a personal part in missions when it seemed critical (or personal) to him. He just got away with it.... until of course, he died. In the story, though, which is very anti-Nikita, this choice to leave section - for which she is hugely punished throughout until she too dies - is presented as a fatal flaw and a sign of Nikita's essential incomptentence, especially in comparison to Section's prior leadership.

I think in my head this blurred with other kinds of anti-Nikita commentary, and separating out the different threads is sort of what I'm playing with now, prompted in part by Nostalgialj's post.

They would have made the very same unfavorable comparisons if someone else, with very different character traits than Paul, had been in his place (George, or Petrosian, or Adrian, or Madeline, or any other character you can come up with). Paul, as a person, was actually irrelevant.

I know - or, rather, I'm coming to realize that - but the confusing overlap in characteristics between Paul and Nikita is also part of what I'm trying to tease out.

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