Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[scatterbraineileen]

Babylon Berlin, episode 9, 2x01

This scene is so cute especially if you only keep your eyes on Gereon. 😂😃🤣😁

Thanks for the suggestion @wellntruly!!! 😁

[wellntruly]

scatterbraineileen’s inspired edits somehow making this even funnier

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[*Charli XCX’s ‘Boys’ playing in the corner on an AM radio*]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 9 [S2, Ep 1]

Hey Netflix..

uncalled for.

Interestingly though, they’ve finally split this series into two seasons! There’s a drop down menu! They still call these ones Episode 9, Episode 10, etc, but that’s fair a lot of shows just keep counting up over season breaks.

Anyway, WHERE WERE WE IN BERLIN. Ah yes, we’d wrapped up the kom-porn-at plot, and then in a fog of absinthe Gereon had been kidnapped into an eerie, aborted hypnosis session at the hands of the mysterious Dr. Schmidt, and bolted off into the night weighed down by panic, guilt, and slowly drying concrete (we’ll return to that).

Incidentally, I think it’s time for me to share out this excellently disquieting nugget from the good Dr. Rivers in Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, in which he is explaining to a traumatized WWI soldier why he does not want to hypnotize him as the patient is asking: “Basically, people who’ve dealt with a horrible experience by splitting it off from the rest of their consciousness sometimes have a general tendency to deal with any kind of unpleasantness that way, and if they have, the tendency is likely to be reinforced by hypnosis. In other words you might be removing one particular symptom—loss of memory—and making the underlying condition worse.” [The Third Man introductory narrator voice] Haha wonderful!

Notizen 9

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[standuptragicomedy]

Okay so leaning way the fuck into the “clockwork knight” metaphor…I just thought about a sci-fi AU where Gereon is a prototype of a police/military robot.

(And maybe no one at the police department knows he’s a robot, the whole point was to see how seamlessly this bot could blend into the department and work alongside humans…)

[secifosseluce]

robot gereon with a Metropolis aesthetic? 

android angst with a touch of Weimar steampunk? 

i’m in. his attacks may be caused by a bug, or – even better/worse – by his model inevitably deteriorating. he knows he’s just an outdated version, that he’s long surpassed his expiration date, now it’s just about how long will it take everyone else to figure it out 

[standuptragicomedy]

Yes!! And maybe Anno was supposed to be the newer model, the shiny one where the panic-attack bug is fixed. A robot cannot allow a human to come to harm…but there’s nothing against abandoning your fellow robot.

(Anyway, if Gereon’s the only one who comes home his dad will HAVE to upgrade him, right?)

And that’s why he does so many dangerous reckless things, he knows this body cannot die and if he breaks something it’s a simple matter of finding a good mechanic.

He rusts a little after nearly drowning, but internally where no one notices it. He just moves a little slower, more cautiously. It’s fine. It’s livable.

[secifosseluce]

oh my god. And that’s why he rebels and remains in Berlin – he’s metaphorically and physically cutting his ties with the one person who’s always been in charge of upgrading him, aka turning him closer to Anno.

Now he’s accepting his decay, which mirror Berlin’s own…I love it

[standuptragicomedy]

Oh. The panic attacks aren’t a bug in his code - they’re a loose wire sparking around in his brain, a connection knocked loose by an explosion and never properly repaired.
(Imagine Gereon peeling back his “skin” and tugging uselessly at the wires inside his head trying to find the broken one, or whichever one he can pull to just make it stop.)

And yes, exactly - he stays in Berlin because he doesn’t want to be upgraded, because if you keep replacing/upgrading parts of him, how long will it be before he loses himself?
He wants to be human, or as close as he can, and that means accepting his own mortality and inevitable decay.

[wellntruly]

You guys finally got me with your Metropolis AU when you ended up recreating the psychogenic vs. organic origin debates as Bug vs. Loose Wire, because time is a fuuucking circle 😂

Challenge level: Gereon initially thinks it’s [physical] a loose wire because that’s the prevailing theory at the time for the cause of Robotic Shell Shock, but when he’s finally brought in by Dr. Schmidt (absolutely intended to represent the Oppenheim school in the show) he’s exposed to the [psychological] Bug Theory of Android Disease, and every student of mental health history in the audience goes ecstatic

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[honeyfleshed]

“It was the year he began to wonder about the noise that colors make. Roses came roaring across the garden at him. He lay on his bed at night listening to the silver light of stars crashing against the window screen.”

– Anne Carson, from Autobiography of Red

[wellntruly]

…“Most of those he interviewed for the science project had to admit they did not hear the cries of the roses being burned alive in the noonday sun. Like horses, Geryon would say helpfully, like horses in war.”

“I’m sorry,” I state with tremendous feeling, suddenly recalling the rest of this quote & existence of Autobiography of Red, the Anne Carson mythic verse novella about the only other character named Gery/eon I’ve ever known, a fragile-souled monster boy with red wings who grew up under the hand of his abusive older brother. “I am terribly sorry?” I say again, confrontationally!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

akahypotheticals replied to your post: Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 8

idk if anyone else mentioned this and I’m just late, but I’m in the middle of a second rewatch as well and the second (shinier, nicer) gun Gereon pulled was actually Edgar’s - the latter had it under his jacket (at his waist I think?) and was going to pull it when he saw the safe was open before Gereon disarmed him at gunpoint. so later on, when Gereon’s shooting up the place two-handed like he’s in Hard Boiled, that’s Edgar’s gun he’s using. :’D lollll the aggravation.

WOW thank you for this *extra spoonful of hilarity* that I had not considered, oh that’s very good

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

rainbowrites asked:

I'm trying to watch Babylon Berlin but I keep getting INCREDIBLY TENSE. This is because it's set in GERMANY shortly before WWII. As someone very immersed in the Jewish world I'm a LITTLE ON EDGE there. Do they do or say anything about Jews or anti-semitism? The internet says they haven't really, but the novels they're based on apparently really do so I'm confused. I figured I'd go to the source. Help. It's interesting (and gosh so aesthetic) but I can't get fully immersed while I worry about it

Okay my friend what I’m gonna do is just speak on what to expect from the historical timeline we’re looking at, because that’s basic info I feel I can provide, but mostly kick it over to @standuptragicomedy (if you’re willing!) for the emotional read on what the show has directly depicted in this realm, as Ari is a Jewish fan of the show and so someone you should be listening to much more than me on this!

Over in my history lane, what I can tell you is that the first two seasons of Babylon Berlin take place in 1929, and that Hitler will come to power in 1933. But in 1929, the Social Democratic Party is still in (tenuous) control, and while there are definitely people around just kinda waiting to become Nazis, few are really calling themselves by that name yet. That movement is still pretty fringy at this point, though not unheard-of. Perhaps as an analogy, consider a show set in American in 2012—four years before Trump, Obama is still in office, this would not be “a white nationalists show”, but if you’re upholding your historical responsibility you’ll reflect the cultural currents and contexts of that time that are going to lead to a rise in white nationalism and a few years down the line result in the election of a political leader who represents that ideology. This is the line between not downplaying or skirting this worryingly hateful presence but also not unduly prioritizing it that Babylon Berlin is walking, and for me at least, with my non-Jewish perspective, I’ve actually thought before that the way the show has balanced this has been really well done.

But Ari, if you wanted to chime in with your take I’m sure that would be appreciated!  –  Edit: Ari’s thoughts, thank you!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

scatterbraineileen replied to your post: Weimar Period Wish List for Babylon Berlin Season…

Berthold Brecht. But we already had his Dreigroschenoper in Season 2.

Hey. I could handle more Brecht.

(famous last words etc.)

sallyboles replied to your post: Weimar Period Wish List for Babylon Berlin Season…

isherwood YESS

Yeeessssss!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Weimar Period Wish List for Babylon Berlin Season 3

- the Jewish quarter
- the all-night steam baths
- someone mentions Fritz Lang (good odds, great odds)
- someone mentions Buster Keaton and then there’s a shot of Volker Bruch with his mouth in a line (Biggest Dream Ask)
- extras of color -> characters of color
- I need more cafés, man, bohemian cafés! Katelbach encamped in one, full of people reading all the Berlin newspapers…
- something happens in the Tiergarten—you are Germans go into Nature already
- Notgeld hero prop
- Lotte Among The Dadaists
- a full ass cabaret club also please
- and Christopher Isherwood is there
- did I mention the steam baths. they were open all night.

Thank u & I’ll check in when I think of more

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin | Episodes 5-8, Second Pass