And at this point, he doesn't even know that Londo was instrumental in the escalation of the war and the attack on the Narn homeworld. But Londo has definitely become the fulcrum for all of his anger, resentment, and hate stemming from the war.
Yes! He doesn't even beat up on Vir in a personal way, he just goes through him to get to Londo, because Londo has become for him the face of Centauri Prime. Which could be considered a fairly ironic success as an ambassador in context, really.
it's bloody, brutal, violent, and uncomfortable for the viewer to watch. It's not just Londo attacked in his own mind; it's Londo huddling on the floor, covered in blood and crying as he begs his attacker to stop. It's the bruised, extremely unphotogenic aftermath.
And that's so physicalized for a mental assault. I agree that it is not actually a sexual interaction and that it doesn't push the overtones so far that it gets into the territory of needing to treat it like one—which would have significantly complicated the aftermath—but it does sound like a deliberate choice to contrast with the show's own established shorthand for even invasive telepathy. I do not remember, for example, anyone getting a Cronenbergian nosebleed after a particularly hard scan.
It is really interesting that the Centauri, alone among any of the younger species we've seen so far, *all* seem to have a little touch of telepathy. Centauri have regular psychics as well, we've seen a few, but they have a casual use and acceptance of precognition - which, if our speculation about Londo is right, might go along with other telepathic talents as well - that is really unique outside of the older races like the Vorlons.
As far as I can recollect, it is. And if the Minbari turned out seers on the regular, it would feel of a part with their generally spiritualized, enlightenment-oriented culture, the embodied universe talking to itself and so on, but they actually seem to have about an average incidence of telepaths and nothing resembling an oracular tradition beyond their scripture. The Centauri are so much more notoriously into realpolitik, it's fascinating for them to be the one species for whom it is just normal to know something about the future, whether through the death-dream or consultation of a prophetess or both. (Humans in the meantime appear to be taking a depressingly recognizable approach to the emergence of empirically verifiable psi, i.e. corporatizing-cum-militarizing it and doing their best to breed the TP equivalent of a Carolina Reaper.) Their telepathy overall seems much more socially integrated than in any of the other younger races that we see, which makes me curious about all sorts of aspects of Centauri culture that the show doesn't necessarily more than touch on, e.g. the thing where the imperial court uses permanently paired telepaths as ansibles when the emperor travels offworld, which absolutely no one else has, either, possibly because no one else has telepaths who can sustain a link across light-years, that's actually fucking nuts. Incidentally I am accepting your interpretation of the Dust assault, both because it seems internally credible and because it's great.
(And it just figures that if G'Kar was going to invade someone's mind, it would be the person who knows how he's going to die.)
At this point in the series, I do not think it is a spoiler to say that while great and often difficult moral complexity governs both of their storylines, quite a lot of their mutual universe is also dictated by black comedy and triple-distilled id.
The true irony is that he was sent to B5 because he was viewed as a useless joke, but he actually turned out to have a diplomatically useful talent for making new friends and bridging cross-species cultural gaps simply by being the person he naturally is, and if he wasn't quite so fueled by unhappiness, resentment, and yearning for a lost Centauri golden age, he could have been really good at it. But then he blew it all up on ambition. LONDO!!
Just imagine that I put "THIS!!!" and some upward-pointing arrows in about 64-point type here.
While Londo is desperately trying not to be a joke, to be feared if he can only have respect that way, the people who like(d) him, actually are aware of most of his flaws, if not the depths of his insecurity, and like him anyway.
Londo in the first season managed to pass out flat on a table in front of at least two people with whom he would form—until he detonated them—genuine friendships! He has that past as a pilot and a duellist which means he can never have been a total lightweight, but his admission earlier this season that Vir reminds him of his younger self rings true to me, because his cynicism is the self-defensive kind, the deflection of someone who doesn't want to admit they ever had the naïveté to be disappointed or disillusioned and yet as recently as his assignment to Babylon 5, he was still hoping to be taken seriously, still hurt to find out he wasn't. That stupid, heartbreaking line to Morden back at the start of his enmeshment with the Shadows: "There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors." It isn't hard at all to imagine him as wide-eyed as Vir. Whatever he would say about it, I don't think Londo actually lost his innocence until quite recently, and it was self-inflicted.
no subject
Yes! He doesn't even beat up on Vir in a personal way, he just goes through him to get to Londo, because Londo has become for him the face of Centauri Prime. Which could be considered a fairly ironic success as an ambassador in context, really.
it's bloody, brutal, violent, and uncomfortable for the viewer to watch. It's not just Londo attacked in his own mind; it's Londo huddling on the floor, covered in blood and crying as he begs his attacker to stop. It's the bruised, extremely unphotogenic aftermath.
And that's so physicalized for a mental assault. I agree that it is not actually a sexual interaction and that it doesn't push the overtones so far that it gets into the territory of needing to treat it like one—which would have significantly complicated the aftermath—but it does sound like a deliberate choice to contrast with the show's own established shorthand for even invasive telepathy. I do not remember, for example, anyone getting a Cronenbergian nosebleed after a particularly hard scan.
It is really interesting that the Centauri, alone among any of the younger species we've seen so far, *all* seem to have a little touch of telepathy. Centauri have regular psychics as well, we've seen a few, but they have a casual use and acceptance of precognition - which, if our speculation about Londo is right, might go along with other telepathic talents as well - that is really unique outside of the older races like the Vorlons.
As far as I can recollect, it is. And if the Minbari turned out seers on the regular, it would feel of a part with their generally spiritualized, enlightenment-oriented culture, the embodied universe talking to itself and so on, but they actually seem to have about an average incidence of telepaths and nothing resembling an oracular tradition beyond their scripture. The Centauri are so much more notoriously into realpolitik, it's fascinating for them to be the one species for whom it is just normal to know something about the future, whether through the death-dream or consultation of a prophetess or both. (Humans in the meantime appear to be taking a depressingly recognizable approach to the emergence of empirically verifiable psi, i.e. corporatizing-cum-militarizing it and doing their best to breed the TP equivalent of a Carolina Reaper.) Their telepathy overall seems much more socially integrated than in any of the other younger races that we see, which makes me curious about all sorts of aspects of Centauri culture that the show doesn't necessarily more than touch on, e.g. the thing where the imperial court uses permanently paired telepaths as ansibles when the emperor travels offworld, which absolutely no one else has, either, possibly because no one else has telepaths who can sustain a link across light-years, that's actually fucking nuts. Incidentally I am accepting your interpretation of the Dust assault, both because it seems internally credible and because it's great.
(And it just figures that if G'Kar was going to invade someone's mind, it would be the person who knows how he's going to die.)
At this point in the series, I do not think it is a spoiler to say that while great and often difficult moral complexity governs both of their storylines, quite a lot of their mutual universe is also dictated by black comedy and triple-distilled id.
The true irony is that he was sent to B5 because he was viewed as a useless joke, but he actually turned out to have a diplomatically useful talent for making new friends and bridging cross-species cultural gaps simply by being the person he naturally is, and if he wasn't quite so fueled by unhappiness, resentment, and yearning for a lost Centauri golden age, he could have been really good at it. But then he blew it all up on ambition. LONDO!!
Just imagine that I put "THIS!!!" and some upward-pointing arrows in about 64-point type here.
While Londo is desperately trying not to be a joke, to be feared if he can only have respect that way, the people who like(d) him, actually are aware of most of his flaws, if not the depths of his insecurity, and like him anyway.
Londo in the first season managed to pass out flat on a table in front of at least two people with whom he would form—until he detonated them—genuine friendships! He has that past as a pilot and a duellist which means he can never have been a total lightweight, but his admission earlier this season that Vir reminds him of his younger self rings true to me, because his cynicism is the self-defensive kind, the deflection of someone who doesn't want to admit they ever had the naïveté to be disappointed or disillusioned and yet as recently as his assignment to Babylon 5, he was still hoping to be taken seriously, still hurt to find out he wasn't. That stupid, heartbreaking line to Morden back at the start of his enmeshment with the Shadows: "There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors." It isn't hard at all to imagine him as wide-eyed as Vir. Whatever he would say about it, I don't think Londo actually lost his innocence until quite recently, and it was self-inflicted.