This is suddenly clarifying for me why people watch reaction videos.
XD And I am pleased to provide it.
And G'Kar has known since he saw his own death in Londo's mind that granting this request will kill him. The twist of it being the Keeper waking and trying frantically to preserve its puppet, I don't know if either of them could guess. But he would recognize the dream when he reached it and he did what was not only necessary, but kind. They go down in one another's arms.
Yes!
I'm not entirely sure that Londo knew for certain that killing him would kill G'Kar; he may have believed he still had enough choice about it that there was at least a possibility it wouldn't end that way. The way he described the dream all the way back in early season one sounded like he thought it was either/or - one of them was going to kill the other, it could go either way. But G'Kar definitely knew that he was going to his death.
And the way that Londo quietly and calmly submits to G'Kar's hands around his throat is also pure id fuel. OTHER SHIPS CAN NEVER.
(I had wondered why I was so feral about them as a teen considering how little of the show beyond season two I had seen - I'm not sure if I saw "Dust to Dust" at all - but I definitely saw this episode, I remember just enough of it in snatches to know that, and that would probably have done it. Especially since even then my narrative kink for enemies-to-whatever was running strong, and this episode implies heavily enough that their enmity has softened into something much warmer by this point that even a teenager knowing nothing about where the show was going could hardly have failed to notice it.)
It is impossible for me not to hear a kind of callback to the elevator episode in the double-speaking of "I am as tired of my life as you are."
I also noticed that! (Way to continue to to obfuscate for the viewer just how close they are or aren't at this point in their lives. And it's a very Londo thing to say.)
Londo died on his feet doing something noble and brave—and maybe not even futile—after all.
He does. And making a much more active choice about it than I had realized he would be able to at this end of his life. And what really gets to me about it is that he didn't ask for death to escape the hell that his life has become; he asked for it because it was the only way to prevent the Keeper from having Delenn and Sheridan killed.
Knowing what little I knew about his fate, I guessed back in the Inquisitor episode that the Inquisitor's final judgment on Delenn was foreshadowing Londo's mode of death - as it was, but not at the time or in the way I would have guessed, and I didn't guess at all just how directly it was foreshadowing G'Kar's as well. I saved the quote because I was expecting to need it in season five, not season three.
"How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions. Not for glory. Not for fame. For one person. In the dark. Where no one will ever know ... or see. I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries, looking for you. Diogenes with his lamp, looking for an honest man willing to die for all the wrong reasons."
I guessed at the time this had to do with the circumstances under which Londo went to the Shadows, which it sort of does and - not being there or knowing how it happens yet - it still might in ways I don't know about yet. But it's very directly how he dies here. He dies to save Delenn and Sheridan, who will never know exactly how much letting them go cost him, or that he knew that it would be the end of him at the moment when he chose to do it.
And G'Kar dies for Londo. (And also to save Delenn and Sheridan, and in the ultimate twist that his younger self could never anticipate, to save the Centauri.) But mostly for Londo. And he knew he was going to the minute that he walked into that room.
In other ways that this show makes me open my eyes and stare at the wall at 3am, another thing I realized belatedly is that Sinclair also kind of does this for Garibaldi. Not nearly as directly as Londo and G'Kar do, but I was thinking about Sinclair's sacrifice vs. the Inquisitor's (slightly unreliable-narrator) description of what makes a Chosen One, considering that Sinclair is probably the most classic Chosen One in the narrative so far. And his sacrifice is much more of a typical heroic sacrifice for the greater good, not for glory exactly, but that is more or less what happens to him.
But it's also Sinclair taking great pains to keep Garibaldi out of it, knowing that Garibaldi would definitely go with him if he could, and that it would rip him out of his life and probably kill him if he does.
(And Kosh dies for Sheridan, too, with Sheridan having no idea that he's sending Kosh to his death, or even that Kosh cared enough to do something that huge. But Kosh knows it.)
no subject
XD And I am pleased to provide it.
And G'Kar has known since he saw his own death in Londo's mind that granting this request will kill him. The twist of it being the Keeper waking and trying frantically to preserve its puppet, I don't know if either of them could guess. But he would recognize the dream when he reached it and he did what was not only necessary, but kind. They go down in one another's arms.
Yes!
I'm not entirely sure that Londo knew for certain that killing him would kill G'Kar; he may have believed he still had enough choice about it that there was at least a possibility it wouldn't end that way. The way he described the dream all the way back in early season one sounded like he thought it was either/or - one of them was going to kill the other, it could go either way. But G'Kar definitely knew that he was going to his death.
And the way that Londo quietly and calmly submits to G'Kar's hands around his throat is also pure id fuel. OTHER SHIPS CAN NEVER.
(I had wondered why I was so feral about them as a teen considering how little of the show beyond season two I had seen - I'm not sure if I saw "Dust to Dust" at all - but I definitely saw this episode, I remember just enough of it in snatches to know that, and that would probably have done it. Especially since even then my narrative kink for enemies-to-whatever was running strong, and this episode implies heavily enough that their enmity has softened into something much warmer by this point that even a teenager knowing nothing about where the show was going could hardly have failed to notice it.)
It is impossible for me not to hear a kind of callback to the elevator episode in the double-speaking of "I am as tired of my life as you are."
I also noticed that! (Way to continue to to obfuscate for the viewer just how close they are or aren't at this point in their lives. And it's a very Londo thing to say.)
Londo died on his feet doing something noble and brave—and maybe not even futile—after all.
He does. And making a much more active choice about it than I had realized he would be able to at this end of his life. And what really gets to me about it is that he didn't ask for death to escape the hell that his life has become; he asked for it because it was the only way to prevent the Keeper from having Delenn and Sheridan killed.
Knowing what little I knew about his fate, I guessed back in the Inquisitor episode that the Inquisitor's final judgment on Delenn was foreshadowing Londo's mode of death - as it was, but not at the time or in the way I would have guessed, and I didn't guess at all just how directly it was foreshadowing G'Kar's as well. I saved the quote because I was expecting to need it in season five, not season three.
"How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions. Not for glory. Not for fame. For one person. In the dark. Where no one will ever know ... or see. I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries, looking for you. Diogenes with his lamp, looking for an honest man willing to die for all the wrong reasons."
I guessed at the time this had to do with the circumstances under which Londo went to the Shadows, which it sort of does and - not being there or knowing how it happens yet - it still might in ways I don't know about yet. But it's very directly how he dies here. He dies to save Delenn and Sheridan, who will never know exactly how much letting them go cost him, or that he knew that it would be the end of him at the moment when he chose to do it.
And G'Kar dies for Londo. (And also to save Delenn and Sheridan, and in the ultimate twist that his younger self could never anticipate, to save the Centauri.) But mostly for Londo. And he knew he was going to the minute that he walked into that room.
In other ways that this show makes me open my eyes and stare at the wall at 3am, another thing I realized belatedly is that Sinclair also kind of does this for Garibaldi. Not nearly as directly as Londo and G'Kar do, but I was thinking about Sinclair's sacrifice vs. the Inquisitor's (slightly unreliable-narrator) description of what makes a Chosen One, considering that Sinclair is probably the most classic Chosen One in the narrative so far. And his sacrifice is much more of a typical heroic sacrifice for the greater good, not for glory exactly, but that is more or less what happens to him.
But it's also Sinclair taking great pains to keep Garibaldi out of it, knowing that Garibaldi would definitely go with him if he could, and that it would rip him out of his life and probably kill him if he does.
(And Kosh dies for Sheridan, too, with Sheridan having no idea that he's sending Kosh to his death, or even that Kosh cared enough to do something that huge. But Kosh knows it.)