I’m incredibly tired after a busy, long, but also fun-filled weekend at The German Outlander Gathering in Cologne. I made so many lovely memories and heard so many interesting, funny and entertaining stories, that I could – and will!! – fill a few blog posts with it all. Here are a few of my over 200 photos to tide you over. By the way, I’m so grateful I bought a good bridge camera last year not just for vacations in Scotland, but also for shooting decent photos with a zoom at events like these. Even though there are still a lot of rubbish ones, because either my hands were shaking (nerves? laughter? probably more the latter *g*) ore because they were wildly gesticulating on stage.

Below the photos is my theory about Richard’s Rankin’s character on “Thirteen”, which a few fans have asked me about on Twitter. If you haven’t seen this mini-series yet and don’t want to be spoiled, just don’t scroll down below the images.

Click on these thumbnails for larger images, as usual…

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As you’re reading this you’ve clearly watched all episodes of “Thirteen”. Or maybe not, but then it’s your own fault if this doesn’t make sense, because I won’t recap what happens on the show.
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Last Spoiler Warning :-)
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From very early on I had the impression that Elliott Carne, the police inspector (or whatever his exact title is) in charge of this investigation, was overly invested in this case. That he really cared about Ivy for some reason. I never felt like he had romantic feelings for her though, so his motivation stayed a mystery for a long time. Why was he so driven and why was he crossing so many lines especially towards the end? He broke into her therapist’s office to look up her chart, for crying out loud!

But then there was one scene in episode 4 (I think) when Ivy got sick of the interrogation and asked him “How would you feel, if someone asked you all these personal questions?” and then she started asking Elliott similar questions and he went along with it at first until she inquired about his mother and Elliott didn’t answer and Ivy noticed that and kept digging “Why don’t you know where your mother lives?” and Elliott clearly is uncomfortable with this question. THAT was the moment I thought: Oh, he doesn’t want to talk about it, because it’s too private or too painful. Something happened with his mother. That’s his motivation!
 
I really wanted to ask Richard about that either at the Q&A or the M&G and opted for the latter, because I felt more comfortable asking this kind of complicated question in front of just a few people and not a few hundred. Anyway Richard basically confirmed that, yes, it was personal for Elliott and yes, it had something to do with his mother.

Which honestly made my day!

Richard also seemed a bit impressed, that I caught on to that. Or at least he was glad, that I noticed that in this scene, because this clue – or whatever you want to call it – had been intentional. He talked a good while about how he had approached the role of Elliott and that similar to me as viewer he at first had a hard time figuring out what Elliott’s motivation was. But then he also talked about Elliott’s backstory, which explained quite a lot about this character and one of the parts from that was, that his dad had been an alcoholic and that his mother had left when he was 4 years old. And basically that Elliott had a pretty shitty life before he left home and joined the police and so on.

In full disclosure I should admit that when I had watched the show and had realized that Elliott didn’t have a relationship with his mother, because she obviously either died or left him, my theory went more in the direction of “what if his mother had gone missing as well and her case had never been solved?” as motivation for him to be so driven in this case. But I didn’t mention that when I talked to Richard about it, so he didn’t have to burst my bubble and rebut this part of my theory ;-).

Anyway, I was just thrilled to have been right to a large extent and even more to have Richard acknowledge that. I’m such a fangirl after all *sigh*