Since you brought that up again. Another aspect of Ellie is that she is very often underestimated, for example Rachel thinking she is incapable of handling electronics for some reason. She already has a strong will, but MC helping her to let go of her fear will make her a formidable woman I think.
I kind of interpret that differently. I see it more as a means of manipulation.
ie, Ellie doesn't
want Rachel to know she's good at electronics. So she deliberately plays dumb. She lets her guard down around us with the laptop because she doesn't feel as strong a need to hide.
I could see a scenario where Rachel was like "Oh, if we get you a phone and you can text and we can get around you not being able to speak!", and Ellie deliberately shut that down because she doesn't want to speak to Rachel.
Which ties into...
But the weird thing is that she didn't start speaking. Later Katherine said after prodding her that Ellie is perfectly fine.
So why would she not speak again?
It's also sort of implied at one point that Ellie might be talking to Jada. Now, that
could just be Jada reading into what she thinks Ellie wants/means and extrapolating, but she often seems to talk about ideas and concepts that would be way too elaborate for Ellie to convey just through awkward body language. And at least one thing Jada says sort of explicitly hints at her admitting Ellie can talk when she wants to.
If that's the case, Ellie's muteness isn't really psychological at all (at least not as a trauma coping mechanism), but is a deliberate choice on her part. And likely a very manipulative one (which is something Katherine would probably be able to figure out on her own, even if she doesn't reveal to Ellie that she knows).
I think it's mentioned in the dialogue with Steph that CJ had his fingers in hiring you. Or a least encourages Steph to engage more with the mc as he knows she is shy and doesn't have time dating and he wants to help her.
Steph tells you that she's the one who initiated the project - CJ didn't even know they needed it, but agreed with her after she brought it up. It's pretty clear that he's a very hands-off sort of boss. Which in turn leads you to ask her if she's the one who hired you.
She doesn't deny it, but she changes the subject and dodges the hell out of your follow-up questions. The one straight answer she gives, you immediately point out the logic flaw (Why would you hire a new, unknown developer to save costs, and then pay them twice as much as the average salary?).
It's blatantly obvious that she's the one who had full authority to hire you specifically, and had ulterior motives for doing so. So much so that it feels like the only reason you were hired at all was to specifically get you to come back to the town.
There's also a line where you mention that Steph couldn't have just hired you because she thought you were attractive, because you didn't attach a picture of yourself to your job application. Granted, it's possible she looked up your name online and found a picture of you and immediately swooned at your impossibly good looks, but the implication seems to be that she might have known who you were even before you applied.
Odds are she's another Katherine scenario - someone from our past who we've completely forgotten but who we left a much stronger impression on than we realized.
But I don't remember mc telling her where they will be staying. Here's where Maggy comes into play.
It would also be extremely easy for Maggy to deliberately put you in the worst possible apartment she can find, knowing that it would make you much, much more likely to accept Rachel's offer to come live at home.
It doesn't even necessarily need to involve direct collusion between Maggy and Rachel - if Rachel calls Maggy to tell her that you're back in town and she met you in the cafe, and that she offered to let you stay with her but you had no interest, Maggy could easily take the initiative to tell you there were no available apartments other than the shittiest one in town to steer you towards Rachel, because she felt like reconnecting and coming to terms with your past would be better for both of you.
It might also tie into the idea that, if Maggy
was the "precious" on the phone with Rachel, that she could have been actively encouraging Rachel to pursue a romantic relationship with you. ie, Maggy's trying to do what she thinks is best for Rachel without Rachel knowing.
I'm not sure I'd call them addictive, I mean they're medication to suppress her panic attacks, so if she feels a panic attack coming on she would need them to help her with that. I wouldn't call that them being addictive if what she's addicted to is 'not having panic attacks'.
She doesn't really take them when panic attacks happen, though. They're general anti-anxiety pills that she takes on a regular schedule, at a specific time.
You could argue that she was just worried that if she stopped taking them at all she'd start feeling bad, but she's really desperate for them when she's drunk ("I neeeeeed it!"), and she's super-awkward about them when she's asking for them back. And she kind of repeats the "
I need them" line when you ask if she's ever gone a day without one. And she mentions they'll "make her feel good" when she's drunk, in a way that kind of feels like it leans into more of an addictive model.
You could argue that her dependency is more mental than physical, but it definite feels like more of a case that they're either addictive or she's just too afraid to stop taking them than it is that she just needs her meds and it's a perfectly innocent thing.
Now that we've got so much closer to her though, I do wonder if we'll be trying to help get her off the medicine (like I believe we talked about trying to) by spending time with her and trying to help her calm down without the pills.
I'd definitely like the idea. We already voice our concern with whether or not she should be taking them, and suggest she starts weaning herself off them, it would be nice to see a payoff for that where we can help her stop. Or even just have a moment where we bring them up again and she's like "Oh, I stopped taking them a week ago."
Plus, if she's mostly taking them to cope with the pain of her past, and us being there and reconnecting (in more ways than one) is starting to heal old wounds, it would be nice to see her start to feel like she no longer needs them, and can stop.
If anything, I think that's why she's on experimental drugs in the first place. Normal psychotropics weren't working because she doesn't actually suffer from clinical depression or anxiety, as much as she's just stewing in her own grief and pain and regret. She's taking the drugs to block out the pain of her own bad memories. Which is why they're addictive - when she takes them, it's the one time she can just
forget, and stop hating herself.
Of course, the pervert in me wants her to let us stay with her while she takes one, with a coy 'you aren't going to take advantage of me are you? That would be just awful~!'
Or she
doesn't take one, but still acts like she's drugged, because she wants to
remember you taking advantage of her.
In at least one of the scenes, I was convinced that I was going to walk in and assume she was under, but there'd be indications that she didn't take her pills that day and was just playing along (or not playing along and acting confused about why I was being so weird). Not necessarily in a sexual context, but just in a "this relationship is going to get even more awkward and complicated!" sort of way.
I still wouldn't be surprised if it happens at some point in the future.
Bonus points if she was never taking experimental drugs at all, they're just placebos with a made-up label, and she's been scamming us the whole time, because she felt like she could be more honest with us and with herself if she was pretending to be drugged. Sort of like a crutch that lets her say what she wants to say, but would be too ashamed to ever just come right out and say. But I don't really feel like the story is going that way, as interesting a twist as it might be.
