No need to apologize, this is so lovely, thank you! :D   

I was literally thinking just over the last week, like, ‘Wow, I remember tumblr user pattroughton from back in Doctor Who time in like 2010!  I see we are on the same fandom shores once again!’   It was honestly really kind of delightful to get the 'small internet’ feeling and see you around again!

I’ve only been actively doing art for Babylon 5 for just under two months-ish, since I made the spectacularly questionable decision of starting out January 1st, 2015 by finishing the series and having my heart shattered to dust by a man with vampire teeth and a fan on his head.   So there is not nearly the massive heap of art there was for 2/Jamie yet, but not for lack of trying, haha.  (How did I end up helping to baby another AU in less than two months is what I want to know.  My life is a fandom train wreck.)

 I think we’ve reached the point now where I can safely say that more is inevitable and my obsession with Londo and G'Kar should have a nice solid run of watercolor shenanigans much in the vein of my passions for my SWAN stuff, Troughton-Era Who and DS9/DD9.  I’m so happy to see you aboard my wacky watercolor train again!   I hope you like what comes out of this as much as you enjoyed Two and Jamie!  

I mention casually that I’m tentatively planning to do some kind of watercolor demo tomorrow on my livestream and a Londo head will most likely be involved, so you’ll get something out of me fairly soon!

Thank you again for the message~~~

I wasn’t imagining him in a position like an ambassador anyway.  My comments about his position being unequal to Londo’s were mostly just that he’s in a vague place of authority since he’s investigating things.  And Delenn owns a business, which again puts her up as somewhere ‘in charge.’   Londo is maybe vaguely in charge of Vir and that’s about it, so they’re not on the same importance tier as each other anymore.  Maybe internally they are - that they all need each other or something - but to an outsider, the owner of a business and a man doing some kind of freelance police work is going to be seen as ‘higher’ than a weirdo singing shit in a bar.  (And now I’m like, ‘Does Londo have some kind of loyal fanbase?  Is anyone particularly excited about him being there?  Does this universe flip him and Adira in the other direction and she’s some kind of noble that finds him charming, but he’s now beneath HER status???  god all the things why am i doing this to myself)

I want to think that part of G’Kar’s reasoning for being there is an early manifestation of the kind of need to existentially travel that we see in him at the end of the series.  Like, venturing out and settling things for people, righting what can be, looking for some kind of solution for his world which maybe still has border disputes and questionable shit going on with the Centauri if it isn’t outright warcrimes and slavery and such.   Or maybe it becomes that.  Maybe he starts out just as filled with the CAPSLOCK OF RAGE of a 14-year-old on the internet that he has in the first season of the series and his reasons for going out are less than virtuous.  Maybe he’s eager to prove that the Centauri have been doing horrible things to everyone, ever, always, and it’s only sitting around in the ambiguity of that bar for a long time and continued exposure to Londo and Delenn and literally everyone that starts changing his motivations.  

I keep thinking of Na’Toth in this, too.  She feels like such a wild card now because she doesn’t last long enough in the series to have weighed in on a lot of G’Kar’s really large decisions and changes.   We don’t know how she’d have reacted to him being Londo’s bodyguard, we don’t know what things she might have prevented G’Kar from doing, or what things she might have helped facilitate.  Since she’s in this White Star Bar thing and not going anywhere, she can now be an influence on G’Kar that he otherwise lacked during the course of his on-screen development and that goes All Over The Place.

what a spiral this is, fuck

Mmmmm, yes, I am down.  

I think this also kind of settles in comfortably with ‘Haha, yes, I’m Centauri nobility that no one fucking likes and no one else wants this job and that’s why a fucking loser like me is on this space station pretending to be important, look at my cape’ that we get on the screen, so I’m down.  

This also lets him sort of have other avenues for value, like, there are probably still people that owe him favors, even if he’s been disowned.  So this only adds to how many weird ass shady resources he has as the resident fountain of Random Useful Information About EveryNothing and EveryNoone.   

oh fuck, dude, i think he’s Garak

Will have to watch it with that, but this confirms even more that Lady Has A Type, evidently.  Wow, I did not see that coming.  G’Kar has been the Garak equivalent so often in my drawings just because he’s the lizard walking around with a half-lidded smile and silly clothes being deceptively full of rainbows and sunshine.  This is a surprise. 

But the varying types of substance abuse, intelligent use of social resources, and rampant bitterness are really sort of hard to ignore as parallels.  EITHER WAY, I dig this background as a thing for him.  Especially because it instantly sets Vir up as being the super loyal cinnamon roll too pure for this world character he is in canon because he’s stuck around even though he most likely did not have to.  I find it hard to imagine anyone had a real issue with Vir, he was just sort of attached to Londo and a bit soppy.  He’s not great at being Centauri, but he wasn’t a fucking disaster either.

Vir must get asked frequently what he’s doing.   Even if this is a decently paying gig for either of them, hanging out on or behind a piano in a weird ass bar full of shady shit happening left and right is not Sitting Comfortably As Nobility. 

god i can think of a million ways this can all go horribly sadly wrong and canon is already horrible and sad enough what AM I DOING

this is delicious, you are awful for feeding it to me, feel free to do so any time