You guys were so fucking delightful on the stream, thank you!
“Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror. One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale: Don’t wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment.”
- Guillermo del Toro on how horror is inherently political as a genre, Time Magazine (x)
We had a really good time putting makeup on aliens tonight in my livestream~
I’m up and running! Find the livestream in my sidebar!
My friend has just told me she is coming home with something that will change lives immeasurably. I’m pretty sure were going to need to livestream that too. I’m getting shit ready now.
I”m gonna make up some food, wash some dishes, and then maybe it’s time to play on livestream?
This is one of the most … awkwardly gambolling episodes of television I have EVER watched. I have no idea what they were trying to do here….
This is a bit long, almost a review, mostly bec of writing about the Londo/G’Kar scene, but also because this episode is so damn bizarre and I’m trying to think of what to make of it narratively.
I really kind of enjoyed this episode, and I think it was because I really kind of felt the maintenance guy’s POV on things since all my jobs have all been kind of like theirs. “I don’t know what they’re up to up front, I just do my shit and go.”
I also really liked the framing and structure of it, because one of my Extreme Weaknesses is the ‘outsider perspective’ of my favorite relationships or characters. I love other people looking at them and saying, “Wow, so um, look at this shit.” I also love Mundane Bullshit. The most important stuff happening in this episode is the commentary on all these relationships and seeing what they look like to people who don’t spend hours up in their shit like the show’s viewers do, not whatever random thing is attacking the station. I LOVE that that is what takes center stage here, no matter who it’s about.
So one of the things I really kind of liked about the little quip about ‘married’ at the end of G’Kar and Londo’s scene was that it was one of those sorts of observations, but also that it was made at all and how it was made. I feel like if either Londo or G’Kar had been female, that comment would have been completely expected from 90s TV, but I was surprised to see it come with those two, and after that particular conversation. Usually, the ‘married couple’ joke gets made when two people fight bitterly — because thank you television for teaching me as a small child that marriage meant I was going to be forcibly stuck with someone who hated me for the rest of my life — and of all the times that Londo and G’Kar DO fight or bicker, or tease, or generally poke at each other… this wasn’t one of them.
I used to be an editor of academic papers. Ever since then, logic that sounds bullshit or way too convenient drives me up the wall. And the sudden appearance of never-before heard of SUPER FUCKING POWERFUL conquest aliens was way too convenient. If they had just said, “yep, they’re left over allies of the Shadows,” I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. And then at the end they just were like, “well I hope they don’t come back to our part of town, but fuck all those guys sideways who live elsewhere and will get destroyed cos we ain’t doing shit.”
I did like the little guy/ outside-in perspective except when it was a little too much: “hey audience, I don’t want to actually write this character interesting so I’m just going to tell you she is.” I want Lochley to be something, but the writer is going to have to invest in her first.
You make a good point about Londo and G’Kar living in the same sector, and being moved to same place. Ccome to think of it, all the Ambassadors would be kept together just to make things easier for security to guard them.
To tell you the truth, I kind of took Mack and Bo for married when Mack said, ‘how long you reckon they been married’ he kind of stressed the ‘they’ as like in comparison to ‘us.’ But then there was the whole thing with Delenn so idk, the 90s was weird, sometimes they would just put homosexual relationships into things and never be straightforward about it… and a really good marriage and a really good friendship are pretty much indistinguishable from the outside if the people aren’t into PDA.
I want to know everything about the Centauri. I’m as obsessed with them as I am with Cardassians. What is it with me and authoritarian, highly stratified societies?
‘Leftovers from the Shadows’ is a thing, if that helps you rationalize it. I think I retrofitted it, because I’d forgotten that this was not explained that way.
And, oh, I totally feel you about the Lochley thing. I think they had an unfortunate Ezri Dax kind of situation, with none of the benefits that Dax being a Trill had, so they had to both make Lochley someone similar to Ivanova to kind of fill in what I assume had already been written, but also try to make her new and not Ivanova with pretty much zero episodes set aside for shit like foundation character building. She does sort of do better eventually, but it takes her a while.
Mostly, I think I found this episode a relief from endless telepaths in addition to having some of my favorite trope-y shit, so I remember it fondly.
Oh, haha, I like the ‘they’ stress thing too, that’s great! Everyone should just be gay married in space. (The last three or four things I’ve shipped have all been tagged with that at some point. I think I have a type. Speaking of:)
I really prefer my romantic relationships to look like/be very close friends, whether I’m fangirling them or having them, so Yes. Ideal to me is like, ‘best friends who occasionally kiss offscreen.’ I ship so many things that people screech like harpies ‘NO THEY’RE JUST FRIENDS’ over, like they think I don’t know the difference or don’t value friends or something, when really it’s just that best friends is the epitome of what a romantic relationship looks like to me, and romantic relationships are usually written in a way I can’t relate to on TV, so I take these. Then there’s that bullshit like, ‘you’ve never had a real friend if you think all deep friendship is like romantic love’ and I want to punch those people in the teeth. (Fuck off, C. S. Lewis.) Because thanks, I can have both, I just see and prefer a lot of overlap. It’s like a square rectangle thing. I am not in romantic love with all my dear friends, but I am dear friends with anyone I’d be romantically in love with.
/sudden rage at nothing slash c.s. lewis
I almost read a discussion about why DS9 fandom seems drawn to the Cardassians and not the Bajorans, and why B5 fandom seems drawn to the Centauri and not the Narn, but the wording was so outragously hostile to the point of parody that I didn’t look. But I do wonder what it is that causes that draw. I don’t particularly care about the Bajorans, but I’m pretty interested in the Narn. One does not have dissertations about pouches without some interest.
