the heart is a river pouring from itself
The Flash: The Trap
Overall, an excellent episode that started fast and did not let up. I'm completely okay with handwaving the dream machine and obviously Cisco remembers the original timeline (well, technically it's not the original timeline is it? the timeline where Nora Allen lives and Barry becomes the Flash in 2020 is the Original Timeline. The series up until Barry goes back while trying to stop the tsunami is Timeline 2, and this is now Timeline 3. Yes?) - Cisco remembers the tsunami timeline because of his latent DOPENESS, which I'm sure will be explored next season. (As an aside, I don't want Caitlin to become a bad guy - can Killer Frost be a hero instead?)
I really, really want us to get another timeline starting in the season finale, one where Barry saves his mom but in the process, Henry Allen dies. I figure one father figure has to go and he's the most expendable.
Poor Eddie. That guy just can't catch a break and he seems like such a sweetheart. I hope he doesn't go evil! And I hope he doesn't die, though I suppose he could be a reluctant helper once Iris dumps him for Barry. Though you'd think he'd recognize that Iris would be the kind of woman who'd like to hyphenate. And then he's kidnapped by his many-times great grandson (or nephew), and when he's like, "Finally center stage! It was about me all along!" Wells is like, "ha ha no."
At least Iris finally knows, again. Let's hope it doesn't get erased by time travel again, though. Barry blowing her off about her big story was bad enough. I hope she flays them all alive for lying to her so much. Though I'd hoped her story was something more than just "the particle accelerator explosion caused these metahumans to appear!" I'd have liked her to have investigated Mason Bridge's disappearance, because nothing about that story Eddie fed her makes any sense. Oh well, baby steps, I guess.
Otoh, Joe! I love you Joe, but ugh, you do not get to decide who Iris does or doesn't marry. Just like you don't get to decide what she does or doesn't know about Barry/The Flash. It was bad enough you kept her from becoming a cop! What the hell is wrong with you and your weirdly retrograde patriarchal stances on things? Though as much as I'm angry about what a weird boundary-ignoring sexist they make you, I also don't want you to die! The preview has me very concerned about this. see above! Henry Allen is way more expendable than Joe West. I am just saying!
I'm sure there are other things I should be thinking of - like, if Barry creates a vacuum to put out the fire, won't he suffocate all the people in the room? - but mostly, I'm like GRODD. GRODD IS COMING.
iZombie: Maternity Liv
The case didn't really work for me, or I missed a lot of it, because I never really knew what was happening during it (I admit to being distracted at the beginning of the episode by my phone), but all the stuff going on around it - Liv and Lowell getting to know each other, Lowell and Ravi as expats ("I didn’t realize that the 'bump it, blow it up' thing was over and that we're back to just tapping rats."), everything with Babbineaux, Major getting into more trouble (wow, what kind of dumbass breaks into a car like that? Okay, it let him find the brain, and learn about Meat Cute, but he has a roommate who works at the ME's office (he doesn't even have to ask Liv!) who can ask a cop to run the plates! And then he doesn't even wear gloves when he's poking around the car! Save me from dumbasses!), ZOMBIE RATS, and the LT discovering Liv is a zombie, and also pinning all the missing kids on the dead kidnappers. Whew. So even though the case was kind of a miss for me, I enjoyed the episode a lot.
So the ship name for Liv/Ravi is Ravioli, and I just learned that some people call Liv/Lowell, Liv Well. Okay, then.
***
Wednesday reading meme:
What I've just finished
The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan, which was interesting but so repetitive. I started skimming once I was on more familiar ground, because I feel like MacMillan repeated herself a lot.
World of Trouble (The Last Policeman #3) by Ben Winters, which brings this trilogy to a satisfying, if terribly sad, ending. I don't think it could have gone any other way really, though I did hate that Nico was already dead. I really did want Henry to get his rapprochement with her before the meteor hit.
What I'm reading now
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which is interesting - if lecturing - so far, though I already feel like it's starting at a disadvantage when it discounts 1. privilege/money/class, and 2. immigration, though at different times and for different reasons. I mean, there are obviously huge class issues involved any time you start to talk about food and food policy, and to just dismiss them outright at the start is not a great beginning. Like, I get it, you're targeting your book to middle aged white people/baby boomers, but wow. Maybe it gets better? I'm only about a third of the way in, I think.
What I'm reading next
As always, it is a mystery!
***
Today's poem:
What the Water Knows
What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive.
A rat's as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world.
Still, the heart is a river
pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed.
It opens on a bay
and turns back upon itself as the tide comes in,
it carries the cry of the loon and the salts
of the unutterably human.
A distant eagle enters the mouth of a river
salmon no longer run and his wide wings glide
upstream until he disappears
into the nothing from which he came. Only the thought remains.
Lacking the eagle's cunning or the wisdom of the sparrow,
where shall I turn, drowning in sorrow?
Who will know what the trees know, the spidery patience
of young maple or what the willows confess?
Let me be water. The heart pours out in waves.
Listen to what the water says.
Wind, be a friend.
There's nothing I couldn't forgive.
~Sam Hamill
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/745318.html.
people have commented there.
Overall, an excellent episode that started fast and did not let up. I'm completely okay with handwaving the dream machine and obviously Cisco remembers the original timeline (well, technically it's not the original timeline is it? the timeline where Nora Allen lives and Barry becomes the Flash in 2020 is the Original Timeline. The series up until Barry goes back while trying to stop the tsunami is Timeline 2, and this is now Timeline 3. Yes?) - Cisco remembers the tsunami timeline because of his latent DOPENESS, which I'm sure will be explored next season. (As an aside, I don't want Caitlin to become a bad guy - can Killer Frost be a hero instead?)
I really, really want us to get another timeline starting in the season finale, one where Barry saves his mom but in the process, Henry Allen dies. I figure one father figure has to go and he's the most expendable.
Poor Eddie. That guy just can't catch a break and he seems like such a sweetheart. I hope he doesn't go evil! And I hope he doesn't die, though I suppose he could be a reluctant helper once Iris dumps him for Barry. Though you'd think he'd recognize that Iris would be the kind of woman who'd like to hyphenate. And then he's kidnapped by his many-times great grandson (or nephew), and when he's like, "Finally center stage! It was about me all along!" Wells is like, "ha ha no."
At least Iris finally knows, again. Let's hope it doesn't get erased by time travel again, though. Barry blowing her off about her big story was bad enough. I hope she flays them all alive for lying to her so much. Though I'd hoped her story was something more than just "the particle accelerator explosion caused these metahumans to appear!" I'd have liked her to have investigated Mason Bridge's disappearance, because nothing about that story Eddie fed her makes any sense. Oh well, baby steps, I guess.
Otoh, Joe! I love you Joe, but ugh, you do not get to decide who Iris does or doesn't marry. Just like you don't get to decide what she does or doesn't know about Barry/The Flash. It was bad enough you kept her from becoming a cop! What the hell is wrong with you and your weirdly retrograde patriarchal stances on things? Though as much as I'm angry about what a weird boundary-ignoring sexist they make you, I also don't want you to die! The preview has me very concerned about this. see above! Henry Allen is way more expendable than Joe West. I am just saying!
I'm sure there are other things I should be thinking of - like, if Barry creates a vacuum to put out the fire, won't he suffocate all the people in the room? - but mostly, I'm like GRODD. GRODD IS COMING.
iZombie: Maternity Liv
The case didn't really work for me, or I missed a lot of it, because I never really knew what was happening during it (I admit to being distracted at the beginning of the episode by my phone), but all the stuff going on around it - Liv and Lowell getting to know each other, Lowell and Ravi as expats ("I didn’t realize that the 'bump it, blow it up' thing was over and that we're back to just tapping rats."), everything with Babbineaux, Major getting into more trouble (wow, what kind of dumbass breaks into a car like that? Okay, it let him find the brain, and learn about Meat Cute, but he has a roommate who works at the ME's office (he doesn't even have to ask Liv!) who can ask a cop to run the plates! And then he doesn't even wear gloves when he's poking around the car! Save me from dumbasses!), ZOMBIE RATS, and the LT discovering Liv is a zombie, and also pinning all the missing kids on the dead kidnappers. Whew. So even though the case was kind of a miss for me, I enjoyed the episode a lot.
So the ship name for Liv/Ravi is Ravioli, and I just learned that some people call Liv/Lowell, Liv Well. Okay, then.
***
Wednesday reading meme:
What I've just finished
The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan, which was interesting but so repetitive. I started skimming once I was on more familiar ground, because I feel like MacMillan repeated herself a lot.
World of Trouble (The Last Policeman #3) by Ben Winters, which brings this trilogy to a satisfying, if terribly sad, ending. I don't think it could have gone any other way really, though I did hate that Nico was already dead. I really did want Henry to get his rapprochement with her before the meteor hit.
What I'm reading now
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which is interesting - if lecturing - so far, though I already feel like it's starting at a disadvantage when it discounts 1. privilege/money/class, and 2. immigration, though at different times and for different reasons. I mean, there are obviously huge class issues involved any time you start to talk about food and food policy, and to just dismiss them outright at the start is not a great beginning. Like, I get it, you're targeting your book to middle aged white people/baby boomers, but wow. Maybe it gets better? I'm only about a third of the way in, I think.
What I'm reading next
As always, it is a mystery!
***
Today's poem:
What the Water Knows
What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive.
A rat's as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world.
Still, the heart is a river
pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed.
It opens on a bay
and turns back upon itself as the tide comes in,
it carries the cry of the loon and the salts
of the unutterably human.
A distant eagle enters the mouth of a river
salmon no longer run and his wide wings glide
upstream until he disappears
into the nothing from which he came. Only the thought remains.
Lacking the eagle's cunning or the wisdom of the sparrow,
where shall I turn, drowning in sorrow?
Who will know what the trees know, the spidery patience
of young maple or what the willows confess?
Let me be water. The heart pours out in waves.
Listen to what the water says.
Wind, be a friend.
There's nothing I couldn't forgive.
~Sam Hamill
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/745318.html.
people have commented there.