That she engages in flirty behavior doesnt mean she is the stronger person, much less the enforcer.
Flirty behavior and smiling are actually signs of weakness and submissiveness.
It is true that many women (and men) gain power through flirting and smiling, but they do so because they succeed in reassuring and chatming the person who potentially has power over them.
In this context, the flirty smiles and so forth just show that she is either in La la land or doing a good job of pretending. Either way, I doubt anyone is buying her flirting except maybe DT.
As to whether she was or was not dominant in the relationship, I think it is too simplistic to try to identify one or the other as dominant, because they appear to have had a symbiotic relationship.
I wouldnt be surprised if one of them threw the other under the bus, but it will probably take a while before they are ready to detach from their sick relationship.
I wrote a long couple of posts about this earlier but the computer was playing up too much to get them through.
Right now I would agree with symbiosis, maybe with her leading DT into taking certain actions by using those submissive gestures, and him completing the action to please her.
DT's face and eyes looked so different in this hearing, I think he said something like "Do you feel okay?". He looked a lot more in control of himself. I thought she looked very similar to before but maybe a bit of boredom?
The main thing I was thinking earlier was that maybe LT views the kids as toys. Toys to take out and play with, toys that won't always behave in the prescribed and desired manner, toys that need to be punished, toys that need to be locked away in the toybox when she gets bored or annoyed with them.
I wonder if when she needs the kids punished or put in line she turns to DT to fix it for her. I imagine the kids' experience of her being quite bipolar in nature, either very happy (too happy/fake happy) or hissing, spitting mad. I think maybe DT is more subtle in his switches from being "the strict father figure" to being "the enforcer".
I think those flirtations/coquettish looks from LT probably stem from childhood/teen trauma and part of it is a detachment from reality, and part of it a way to manipulate men.
I wonder if LT sometimes wishes she was younger and that the kids were her siblings, and I wonder if she and DT have developed a sort of father/daughter relationship with her being a child-woman going from needy to coquettish, and him acting as her protector, the one who fixes all her problems (including things like chaining up kids who she's got bored or annoyed with).
I think LT looks like she covets attention in a quite childlike way. I think she might be breaking apart a bit being in jail, I think she may have a lot of deep-seated psychological issues...which doesn't in my mind excuse what she's done but might contribute to how she's done things. When the sisters spoke about their meeting with LT in jail I thought the la la land might be pretense, but I'm now thinking she might be undergoing a deeper regression to protect her mind from what is really happening. I think she's been flickering between child/teen personas for 30 years and playing at being an adult, pretending to act like an adult when she talks with her sisters or neighbors, but I don't know if she's at risk for losing the adult persona entirely and regressing back to a sort of sexualized child persona. If I'm wrong about her I'm wrong and not afraid of being wrong, but I'd personally be ordering psych tests on her...I feel a bit scared of her maybe displaying quite inappropriate behavior if this goes to trial and she has to take the stand.
I agree they seem to be symbiotic and feeding off each other to contribute to each other's cruelty of the children.