Mick and Len and the time pirate break up
Aug. 20th, 2017 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe whole Mick and Len split in Legends season one is plenty well written and makes some really sad sorts of sense
because they have had very different experiences on this team, and quite deliberately so.
Rip splits them up or leaves them behind whenever he can. And then in the cell he admits why. He never wanted Mick along in the first place.
That changes the survival math, and puts a whole different spin on the very recent being left in prison to be tortured incident. Rip sent people in after Stein, Len broke the plan to go for Mick. And then Rip got his shit together and things ended different, but by then Mick was nicking alcohol on the way out. He has no reason to believe Rip is, at that moment, interested in saving him.
Or capable of it.
And his last information is that his partner is dying, slowly, running out of life support on the Waverider.
Rip tells him to imagine he's the captain and think of a plan, and Mick does. He just doesn't prioritise the guy who just told him he wasn't wanted.
Mick makes a deal that lets him go back for his partner. Save his partner.
Meanwhile as far as Len is concerned the team saved Len while he was out loud confident Mick would be saving the other half of the team. And he doesn't hear Mick's reasons, doesn't hear Rip tell him he was never meant to be in in the first place, so has no reason to believe that he'll consider himself out. So when he sees it, it's betrayal.
Rescue looks like betrayal because of different data sets.
And then they fight, and from Mick's point of view Snart just very unexpectedly turned on him, even though at first he shot only the guy standing next to him. But Mick doesn't get aggressive exactly, he just goes for the time travel whatsit that'll make it possible t go home, and according to his out loud plan just never sign up for all this mess in the first place. At simplest he's sticking to the deal he just made, which might save the team at the expense of the ship, or the bits of the team he cares about. But it might be a time traveller plan to never be in this mess. Which sounds like it would have worked even if the pirates had killed Len already. Which would have been handy.
Mick sticks to the deal and shoots at Sara, and then gets shot by Len, but non lethal in both cases. Which ought to be really difficult with their weapons, but those guns work however the plot requires. Still, it's easier to kill than it is to do what they did.
... not killing each other is a really low bar, they should clearly do better, I'm just saying.
Mick's plan would have saved him and his partner at the very least. His partner turned against him and picked a fight the other half of the team had already lost once. And won, so, that worked out, and split the forces left on the Acheron, so the other half of the team won.
So if Mick had done it just to lead time pirates into a trap and then turn against them, that would have worked out... but it would not have got him home to hit reset on this fools errand that will, as it turns out, kill his partner.
So that seems to be what Mick wanted more, right then.
Logical.
Len dragging him out of the ship in the middle of nowhere... saying they can't leave him in 2016 because everyone they care about is there assumes that time will continue to pass after they've left 2016, and Mick might do very bad things. He's acting as if Mick turned against them all and is a scary guy. And he hasn't had a quiet word with Mick because unconscious. Different data sets again.
So Mick wakes up after being shot, which was probably a surprise in itself, and Len is dragging him into the woods, and then there's yelling.
And apparent murder. But we know better. Thankfully.
I do think Len always meant to go back for him. But that wasn't real well thought through. Because Len was having feelings.
What I've seen of gifs of season 2 made everyone complain because right here we see he wouldn't kill Mick. Except just a little while earlier we saw he would *shoot* Mick, in the middle of a fight, to protect one of his team. Which was exactly what he did, just with a fully charged gun on a different setting or something.
... if he feels for any of the Legion the way he feels for Sara I'm not sure I want to know. Those guys are such dicks...
So I still really hate what season 2 did, but, it did it. So we could look at this as, there's circumstances where he'll kill Mick, but these aren't them.
He won't look him in the eye in the middle of nowhere and then kill him.
He will shoot him in a fight.
... hate it, but, logic.
So those two were having feelings, and we're meant to think of Mick as crazy and scary, and we saw him stare at fire and let Ray be beat up. So we're meant to believe he could just betray them. Ship worse than prison, can't light stuff on fire. Also can't look out a window or see more than seven other humans. I can see Mick's point on that one. He has plenty not to like.
But he's also acting logically if his goal is to save Len and get them out of a situation they were conned into by a man who just admitted he doesn't want Mick around. And they're from a world where when you're out you're out - leaving means a bullet in the back, even if you were once necessary. And Rip tried to treat Stein like that when he was captured. By survival math he's used to, Rip is a life and death danger, if they want to walk away.
Mick did logical. Len did logical. They just had different data to logic with.
And were having too many feelings in too much danger to compare notes and talk it out.
So all that all happened.
Well written, and I like it
but stopping the episodes there for the night led to reading a lot of fic, because you can't just leave them like that...
because they have had very different experiences on this team, and quite deliberately so.
Rip splits them up or leaves them behind whenever he can. And then in the cell he admits why. He never wanted Mick along in the first place.
That changes the survival math, and puts a whole different spin on the very recent being left in prison to be tortured incident. Rip sent people in after Stein, Len broke the plan to go for Mick. And then Rip got his shit together and things ended different, but by then Mick was nicking alcohol on the way out. He has no reason to believe Rip is, at that moment, interested in saving him.
Or capable of it.
And his last information is that his partner is dying, slowly, running out of life support on the Waverider.
Rip tells him to imagine he's the captain and think of a plan, and Mick does. He just doesn't prioritise the guy who just told him he wasn't wanted.
Mick makes a deal that lets him go back for his partner. Save his partner.
Meanwhile as far as Len is concerned the team saved Len while he was out loud confident Mick would be saving the other half of the team. And he doesn't hear Mick's reasons, doesn't hear Rip tell him he was never meant to be in in the first place, so has no reason to believe that he'll consider himself out. So when he sees it, it's betrayal.
Rescue looks like betrayal because of different data sets.
And then they fight, and from Mick's point of view Snart just very unexpectedly turned on him, even though at first he shot only the guy standing next to him. But Mick doesn't get aggressive exactly, he just goes for the time travel whatsit that'll make it possible t go home, and according to his out loud plan just never sign up for all this mess in the first place. At simplest he's sticking to the deal he just made, which might save the team at the expense of the ship, or the bits of the team he cares about. But it might be a time traveller plan to never be in this mess. Which sounds like it would have worked even if the pirates had killed Len already. Which would have been handy.
Mick sticks to the deal and shoots at Sara, and then gets shot by Len, but non lethal in both cases. Which ought to be really difficult with their weapons, but those guns work however the plot requires. Still, it's easier to kill than it is to do what they did.
... not killing each other is a really low bar, they should clearly do better, I'm just saying.
Mick's plan would have saved him and his partner at the very least. His partner turned against him and picked a fight the other half of the team had already lost once. And won, so, that worked out, and split the forces left on the Acheron, so the other half of the team won.
So if Mick had done it just to lead time pirates into a trap and then turn against them, that would have worked out... but it would not have got him home to hit reset on this fools errand that will, as it turns out, kill his partner.
So that seems to be what Mick wanted more, right then.
Logical.
Len dragging him out of the ship in the middle of nowhere... saying they can't leave him in 2016 because everyone they care about is there assumes that time will continue to pass after they've left 2016, and Mick might do very bad things. He's acting as if Mick turned against them all and is a scary guy. And he hasn't had a quiet word with Mick because unconscious. Different data sets again.
So Mick wakes up after being shot, which was probably a surprise in itself, and Len is dragging him into the woods, and then there's yelling.
And apparent murder. But we know better. Thankfully.
I do think Len always meant to go back for him. But that wasn't real well thought through. Because Len was having feelings.
What I've seen of gifs of season 2 made everyone complain because right here we see he wouldn't kill Mick. Except just a little while earlier we saw he would *shoot* Mick, in the middle of a fight, to protect one of his team. Which was exactly what he did, just with a fully charged gun on a different setting or something.
... if he feels for any of the Legion the way he feels for Sara I'm not sure I want to know. Those guys are such dicks...
So I still really hate what season 2 did, but, it did it. So we could look at this as, there's circumstances where he'll kill Mick, but these aren't them.
He won't look him in the eye in the middle of nowhere and then kill him.
He will shoot him in a fight.
... hate it, but, logic.
So those two were having feelings, and we're meant to think of Mick as crazy and scary, and we saw him stare at fire and let Ray be beat up. So we're meant to believe he could just betray them. Ship worse than prison, can't light stuff on fire. Also can't look out a window or see more than seven other humans. I can see Mick's point on that one. He has plenty not to like.
But he's also acting logically if his goal is to save Len and get them out of a situation they were conned into by a man who just admitted he doesn't want Mick around. And they're from a world where when you're out you're out - leaving means a bullet in the back, even if you were once necessary. And Rip tried to treat Stein like that when he was captured. By survival math he's used to, Rip is a life and death danger, if they want to walk away.
Mick did logical. Len did logical. They just had different data to logic with.
And were having too many feelings in too much danger to compare notes and talk it out.
So all that all happened.
Well written, and I like it
but stopping the episodes there for the night led to reading a lot of fic, because you can't just leave them like that...