Legends of Tomorrow: Destiny
Aug. 26th, 2017 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI just rewatched Destiny
:(
... I would not have believed I'd be actually upset at the death of Captain Cold, not when I first watched the Flash.
And yet here I am having spent like a year obsessing on it.
So... the thing with not rewatching the upsetting bits is the balance can wander off.
Like: We know Len knocked his own hand off and then saved Mick from the rest of the team. But he couldn't have known that was what he was doing. Sequence of knowledge incorrect. Chronos told him he was going to kill Lisa, Len knocked his own hand off, he found Chronos in danger, and he saved him. But he only knew about the threats Chronos was making, not the danger Mick was in. Chronos knew where to threaten him so he got scared so bad he maimed himself.
And then it turned out Mick was still in there. Which he also didn't know at the time. Season one had a whole thing about who could be saved and who turned out to have a hero within, and tada, it was killer, klepto, and pyro, all three. One hundred percent heroism save rate.
But Len very nearly didn't get that far. He was all for running and not even trying to save the team. At least out loud. He didn't pull the trigger, which we know he can do quite casually, so he cared about some of them enough to hesitate. But why want to run? When Mick was in prison, he went to such lengths for him.
Well aside from the drama of inconsistent character moments...
Chronos.
He doesn't say that Mick's dead already, he says he isn't Mick.
And that scares him the worst.
... or, there's other readings. but wrestling consistency out of all this...
It can't be the Oculus manipulating them *if* Druce was right about free will at the Vanishing Point. But then if Druce was right about that them how was the Oculus showing Rip a vision of the Vanishing Point? It's outside time, okay, but that ought to mean it's invisible too.
So they have to be wrong about several things.
... also the writers need to be more consistent with the laws of time because they're key to character motivation.
But. The beat I'd forgotten: Len nearly left them all behind, until Gideon came up with a plan.
He got closer to abandoning Mick again than fit with the stuff I wanted to think about.
And then he ran back in after him, saved him by knocking him out again
(next time you'll burn)
and died.
... I still do not like that bit.
I mean, it's all very well choosing heroism, but what does it pay?
Doing the right thing ought to lead to the right outcomes.
Mick and Len went from the fight in Chronos' cell to back in synch taking on Savage to... boom.
And even right after the incident Ray is characterising it as Len dying for all of them, to save all of them. Well meaning, but not accurate. Though Ray was too unconscious to know that for sure. Mick was going to die for Ray, Len died for Mick.
... also, the two minutes Ray thought it would take? Passed several times.
... I think it works if the two minutes restart every time someone lets go of the handle?
The whole thing pisses me off still because it could have been solved with duct tape.
Duct tape and a booby trap, because Druce arrived before boom.
Or, just using what was there, the cold gun. Even if it needed to freeze something in place, even if they could only wedge hands in there to freeze, since it needed held down with some force in an opening quite wide...
... well, everyone has thought of this. Duct tape, ice, frozen body parts, they all end with everyone alive if not well.
If the Time Masters don't get there in time to remove it.
... comic book physics left some of those guys a whole lot less dead than seems logical. They shouldn't have been alive to get there.
... of course only dramatic timing made them not pull the trigger on the Legends before the ship got them. Sometimes you just have to assume the pause is a point of view thing, a heightened emotional moment rather than a physical reality. Or it'll drive you nuts.
Fanfic puts so much more of the feelings in that canon can feel quite cold in comparison.
... even the entire thing with Ray and Kendra seemed more like a series of emotional misunderstandings. And the Len/Sara? All in a single episode, building up to that kiss. Unless we're meant to read those conversations they had about his feelings about Mick as in some way romantic.
Also, Carter is a dick who in no way deserves her. He doesn't fall for Kendra, he wants to reinstall his priestess. Savage is worse, but they have too much in common like that. But then Kendra wants to reinstall Carter on 2166 Cythian, which is pretty damn creepy when you think about it too. Oh no, you had a life without me, quick hit rewind to when we were dating...
Rip and his feelings about duty and being a Time Mater and leaving Jonah Hex got a lot of mileage. The Hex bit being more interesting without het goggles, of course. But the whole thing with his faith in the Time Masters cause being broken so thoroughly just... it makes that epic and tragic, and with so much more mileage in it.
The Oculus explosion, the supernova at the Vanishing Point, it destroyed a lot, and I'd remembered it like it destroyed the Time Masters. But then Savage could phone one up immediately after. So some are alive. Just without that particular means of control.
... Snart bought them how much? Free will for all of time? But then what counts as 'before', and what 'after', and has anything we've ever seen been free willed?
Somewhere between huge philosophical dilemma and grumpy frustration. You can't get any mileage by evaluating anyone through this lens. ... heh, lens. Um, I mean, it's a very neat time loop they set up, but it flowed naturally out of everyone's motives and emotions and heightened state of drama due to emotion. Adding the Oculus just... doesn't help.
All it could mean is 'time wants to happen' was always a misinterpretation of Time Master intervention, and the laws of temporal physics are no such thing.
... which would be a pretty grand epitaph.
I still mostly want to go write fixits. Except everyone has already, and canon... did what it did, and I can go watch that.
But not at one in the morning.
:(
... I would not have believed I'd be actually upset at the death of Captain Cold, not when I first watched the Flash.
And yet here I am having spent like a year obsessing on it.
So... the thing with not rewatching the upsetting bits is the balance can wander off.
Like: We know Len knocked his own hand off and then saved Mick from the rest of the team. But he couldn't have known that was what he was doing. Sequence of knowledge incorrect. Chronos told him he was going to kill Lisa, Len knocked his own hand off, he found Chronos in danger, and he saved him. But he only knew about the threats Chronos was making, not the danger Mick was in. Chronos knew where to threaten him so he got scared so bad he maimed himself.
And then it turned out Mick was still in there. Which he also didn't know at the time. Season one had a whole thing about who could be saved and who turned out to have a hero within, and tada, it was killer, klepto, and pyro, all three. One hundred percent heroism save rate.
But Len very nearly didn't get that far. He was all for running and not even trying to save the team. At least out loud. He didn't pull the trigger, which we know he can do quite casually, so he cared about some of them enough to hesitate. But why want to run? When Mick was in prison, he went to such lengths for him.
Well aside from the drama of inconsistent character moments...
Chronos.
He doesn't say that Mick's dead already, he says he isn't Mick.
And that scares him the worst.
... or, there's other readings. but wrestling consistency out of all this...
It can't be the Oculus manipulating them *if* Druce was right about free will at the Vanishing Point. But then if Druce was right about that them how was the Oculus showing Rip a vision of the Vanishing Point? It's outside time, okay, but that ought to mean it's invisible too.
So they have to be wrong about several things.
... also the writers need to be more consistent with the laws of time because they're key to character motivation.
But. The beat I'd forgotten: Len nearly left them all behind, until Gideon came up with a plan.
He got closer to abandoning Mick again than fit with the stuff I wanted to think about.
And then he ran back in after him, saved him by knocking him out again
(next time you'll burn)
and died.
... I still do not like that bit.
I mean, it's all very well choosing heroism, but what does it pay?
Doing the right thing ought to lead to the right outcomes.
Mick and Len went from the fight in Chronos' cell to back in synch taking on Savage to... boom.
And even right after the incident Ray is characterising it as Len dying for all of them, to save all of them. Well meaning, but not accurate. Though Ray was too unconscious to know that for sure. Mick was going to die for Ray, Len died for Mick.
... also, the two minutes Ray thought it would take? Passed several times.
... I think it works if the two minutes restart every time someone lets go of the handle?
The whole thing pisses me off still because it could have been solved with duct tape.
Duct tape and a booby trap, because Druce arrived before boom.
Or, just using what was there, the cold gun. Even if it needed to freeze something in place, even if they could only wedge hands in there to freeze, since it needed held down with some force in an opening quite wide...
... well, everyone has thought of this. Duct tape, ice, frozen body parts, they all end with everyone alive if not well.
If the Time Masters don't get there in time to remove it.
... comic book physics left some of those guys a whole lot less dead than seems logical. They shouldn't have been alive to get there.
... of course only dramatic timing made them not pull the trigger on the Legends before the ship got them. Sometimes you just have to assume the pause is a point of view thing, a heightened emotional moment rather than a physical reality. Or it'll drive you nuts.
Fanfic puts so much more of the feelings in that canon can feel quite cold in comparison.
... even the entire thing with Ray and Kendra seemed more like a series of emotional misunderstandings. And the Len/Sara? All in a single episode, building up to that kiss. Unless we're meant to read those conversations they had about his feelings about Mick as in some way romantic.
Also, Carter is a dick who in no way deserves her. He doesn't fall for Kendra, he wants to reinstall his priestess. Savage is worse, but they have too much in common like that. But then Kendra wants to reinstall Carter on 2166 Cythian, which is pretty damn creepy when you think about it too. Oh no, you had a life without me, quick hit rewind to when we were dating...
Rip and his feelings about duty and being a Time Mater and leaving Jonah Hex got a lot of mileage. The Hex bit being more interesting without het goggles, of course. But the whole thing with his faith in the Time Masters cause being broken so thoroughly just... it makes that epic and tragic, and with so much more mileage in it.
The Oculus explosion, the supernova at the Vanishing Point, it destroyed a lot, and I'd remembered it like it destroyed the Time Masters. But then Savage could phone one up immediately after. So some are alive. Just without that particular means of control.
... Snart bought them how much? Free will for all of time? But then what counts as 'before', and what 'after', and has anything we've ever seen been free willed?
Somewhere between huge philosophical dilemma and grumpy frustration. You can't get any mileage by evaluating anyone through this lens. ... heh, lens. Um, I mean, it's a very neat time loop they set up, but it flowed naturally out of everyone's motives and emotions and heightened state of drama due to emotion. Adding the Oculus just... doesn't help.
All it could mean is 'time wants to happen' was always a misinterpretation of Time Master intervention, and the laws of temporal physics are no such thing.
... which would be a pretty grand epitaph.
I still mostly want to go write fixits. Except everyone has already, and canon... did what it did, and I can go watch that.
But not at one in the morning.