Time traveller Thawne
Jun. 29th, 2017 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWatched Rogue Time.
Usually I watch this for Mick and Len, who remain fascinating, but this time watching all the episodes in order, Eo!Wells remains a mass of contradictions that have my full attention.
It don't feel like bad writing. It's in large part because he's a manipulative sod who wants to stay in control, and of course he lies a lot, though mostly by telling decontextualised truths. But bits of it, including times he's unobserved by any but us and Gideon, only make sense if he's balancing contradictory impulses himself.
But how he talks about time travel, with time as fragile construct that must not be broken, is frustrating, because it could be personal growth and becoming a responsible time traveller, but it could also just be steering Barry towards the decision he wants. Only one of those could plausibly be worked with.
The tendency to murder inconvenient people would have to be revised.
But this is the episode when the Rogue's code gets established, so, the Flash can clearly work with people who used to be killers.
Also it's a stupid and futile murder, because now even more suspicion. I mean he could have just stolen his data and called it a day. There are a million more subtle ways to get anything.
... I know criticising murder for inefficiency is missing the point, but, if it can achieve a goal then there's an argument about lesser evils, and with a whole timeline at stake who knows the scale Thawne is playing at?
I've seen the assumption that without Vandal Savage intervening Per Degaton will not release the virus. Don't know if canon spoke on that, only at the start of rewatch. But if Thawne is from a timeline where virus didn't happen then the scale is spectacular. And that's just one of a bazillion possibilities.
Most likely to me is younger Thawne thought time was relatively bulletproof, time wants to happen, so he played jenga with it until it all fell on him. Nora Allen's death. And since then he's spent fifteen years rebuilding and discovering how frustratingly fiddly it is to actively try to keep a specific line on track. And he's lost key players, if any of the names from explosion day are dead rather than gone meta and in hiding. So he knows it can all fall apart. And watching his ancestor with Iris has to be... concerning, because on the one hand he knows she ends up with Barry in the newspaper, but on the other his ancestor is clearly not shagging the right person yet and it's probably a worry. So he went from playing crash smash with time to actively rebuilding it, and has a different perspective on it now.
But he's trying to get Barry to fix Nora's death. So why make him think about what it might cost?
Because he's a smart young man who has watched time travel movies and will think of it and needs to get himself psyched up to do it anyway?
Or because come the day he'll think Eo!Wells is a bad guy made of bad advice?
And around that twist you can't trust a word he says, which, duh, and then you can't figure him out at all.
I've seen people being sad about Eo!Wells because the person he was pretending to be was entirely a lie, so we lost that person. Which, okay, possible. But it's also possible he is who he pretends to be, just with an agenda, a cheerful approach to other people's mortality, and a nasty temper. And then he takes more figuring out.
And so much of the morality of time travel depends on the physics of time travel, and DCTV is never going to tell us the whole rules of that.
But it's like with the Legends - the Time Masters were supposed to be guarding the timeline, but decided to change it to specific advantage. So Time Masters get blown up by Legends, for freedom. But then that makes things worse in some different ways so the Legends have to run around fixing the timeline instead. And they make some specific choices about which bits can and cannot be altered, and they don't always seem to be real conscious about it. And then some choice I can't be having with, but haven't seen the episodes for yet. And then whatever they do with next season, which will be... interesting. But their attitude to time travel has changed as they go along, so they have to have been doing the wrong thing pretty often.
And maybe Eo is like that.
But also maybe not.
... I am aware this entirely depends on what the writers want to do with him, and they're unlikely to do much with him on account of paradoxing him out of existence, but that's not the interesting bit.
And now I've got to get ready to go do the shopping, which is in local shops only because Norfolk Show, which means no getting my apple food, which means slight sulking. But I can find and consume many forms of chocolate so I'm sure that'll work out.
Usually I watch this for Mick and Len, who remain fascinating, but this time watching all the episodes in order, Eo!Wells remains a mass of contradictions that have my full attention.
It don't feel like bad writing. It's in large part because he's a manipulative sod who wants to stay in control, and of course he lies a lot, though mostly by telling decontextualised truths. But bits of it, including times he's unobserved by any but us and Gideon, only make sense if he's balancing contradictory impulses himself.
But how he talks about time travel, with time as fragile construct that must not be broken, is frustrating, because it could be personal growth and becoming a responsible time traveller, but it could also just be steering Barry towards the decision he wants. Only one of those could plausibly be worked with.
The tendency to murder inconvenient people would have to be revised.
But this is the episode when the Rogue's code gets established, so, the Flash can clearly work with people who used to be killers.
Also it's a stupid and futile murder, because now even more suspicion. I mean he could have just stolen his data and called it a day. There are a million more subtle ways to get anything.
... I know criticising murder for inefficiency is missing the point, but, if it can achieve a goal then there's an argument about lesser evils, and with a whole timeline at stake who knows the scale Thawne is playing at?
I've seen the assumption that without Vandal Savage intervening Per Degaton will not release the virus. Don't know if canon spoke on that, only at the start of rewatch. But if Thawne is from a timeline where virus didn't happen then the scale is spectacular. And that's just one of a bazillion possibilities.
Most likely to me is younger Thawne thought time was relatively bulletproof, time wants to happen, so he played jenga with it until it all fell on him. Nora Allen's death. And since then he's spent fifteen years rebuilding and discovering how frustratingly fiddly it is to actively try to keep a specific line on track. And he's lost key players, if any of the names from explosion day are dead rather than gone meta and in hiding. So he knows it can all fall apart. And watching his ancestor with Iris has to be... concerning, because on the one hand he knows she ends up with Barry in the newspaper, but on the other his ancestor is clearly not shagging the right person yet and it's probably a worry. So he went from playing crash smash with time to actively rebuilding it, and has a different perspective on it now.
But he's trying to get Barry to fix Nora's death. So why make him think about what it might cost?
Because he's a smart young man who has watched time travel movies and will think of it and needs to get himself psyched up to do it anyway?
Or because come the day he'll think Eo!Wells is a bad guy made of bad advice?
And around that twist you can't trust a word he says, which, duh, and then you can't figure him out at all.
I've seen people being sad about Eo!Wells because the person he was pretending to be was entirely a lie, so we lost that person. Which, okay, possible. But it's also possible he is who he pretends to be, just with an agenda, a cheerful approach to other people's mortality, and a nasty temper. And then he takes more figuring out.
And so much of the morality of time travel depends on the physics of time travel, and DCTV is never going to tell us the whole rules of that.
But it's like with the Legends - the Time Masters were supposed to be guarding the timeline, but decided to change it to specific advantage. So Time Masters get blown up by Legends, for freedom. But then that makes things worse in some different ways so the Legends have to run around fixing the timeline instead. And they make some specific choices about which bits can and cannot be altered, and they don't always seem to be real conscious about it. And then some choice I can't be having with, but haven't seen the episodes for yet. And then whatever they do with next season, which will be... interesting. But their attitude to time travel has changed as they go along, so they have to have been doing the wrong thing pretty often.
And maybe Eo is like that.
But also maybe not.
... I am aware this entirely depends on what the writers want to do with him, and they're unlikely to do much with him on account of paradoxing him out of existence, but that's not the interesting bit.
And now I've got to get ready to go do the shopping, which is in local shops only because Norfolk Show, which means no getting my apple food, which means slight sulking. But I can find and consume many forms of chocolate so I'm sure that'll work out.