aria: ([aria] whee!)
valinor spider party ([personal profile] aria) wrote2010-05-20 02:34 pm

between the candle and the star

i. Link o' the day, courtesy of seeing it in the National Gallery and having a good laugh with my parents, Giovanni Emo, by Bellini. "He looks emo!" my mum said, and though I am sad that Signore Giovanni doesn't come with scenester bangs, it's still hilarious.

ii. Hair is cut! Car is mostly unpacked! Room is a complete mess, but I am studiously ignoring it and instead doing my best to mainline the rest of Babylon 5 before I abscond for WisCon. Here's what I'm discovering, to my horror: I think I want to do watchalong meta commentary. For the whole thing. I just love it so much, and am so thinky about it, that I want an excuse to watch it again. And I don't yet know if I have a ficcing urge, but I definitely have a fannish urge, which during the summer -- or possibly for a much more extended period, now that I'm done with school unless and until I want a graduate degree -- also manifests as a write-lots-of-meta urge. Ahhhh.

iii. Relatedly, the clearest sign I am getting dangerously fannish about something: a poll!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20


BABYLON 5!

View Answers

YAY!
16 (80.0%)

what?
4 (20.0%)

Who is your favourite character? (I was kind and gave you ticky boxes because choosing only one would be cruel.)

View Answers

Delenn
7 (41.2%)

G'Kar
11 (64.7%)

Geoffrey Sinclair
2 (11.8%)

John Sheridan
2 (11.8%)

Kosh
2 (11.8%)

Lennir
6 (35.3%)

Londo Mollari
10 (58.8%)

Lyta Alexander
1 (5.9%)

Michael Garibaldi
4 (23.5%)

Marcus Cole
3 (17.6%)

Na'Toth
1 (5.9%)

Susan Ivanova
12 (70.6%)

Stephen Franklin
1 (5.9%)

Talia Winters
0 (0.0%)

Vir Cotto
8 (47.1%)

Zack Allen
0 (0.0%)

someone you have not met from fifth season
2 (11.8%)

someone you forgot to mention who is the best side character ever (to be explained in comments)
1 (5.9%)


I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THIS SHOW. :D (Except not about s5. Except for the part where I ship Londo/G'Kar every waking moment now. WHAT.)
happydork: A graph-theoretic tree in the shape of a dog, with the caption "Tree (with bark)" (Default)

[personal profile] happydork 2010-05-20 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
SHOW! <3

[personal profile] moon_river 2010-05-20 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Except for the part where I ship Londo/G'Kar every waking moment now. WHAT

Who doesn't ship Londo/G'Kar, I thought the show shipped Londo/G'Kar <3

[personal profile] moon_river 2010-05-20 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
:D I ship it, but I don't think I could read it

[personal profile] moon_river 2010-05-20 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
And that's why I stay away! Lol
andeincascade: (Default)

[personal profile] andeincascade 2010-05-20 07:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I really adore Ta'Lon. What can I say? I have a soft spot for the Narn.
andeincascade: (Default)

[personal profile] andeincascade 2010-05-20 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
He is G'Kar's lieutenant, the one who Sheridan fights (when they are both trapped on that ship) but refuses to kill.

And this poll is hardly fair. I wanted to check pretty much everyone.
andeincascade: (Default)

[personal profile] andeincascade 2010-05-20 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah! I kinda feel that way about John and Delenn. I mean, they're OBVIOUS!
songofsongs: (I HEART WAFFLE YOU)

[personal profile] songofsongs 2010-05-20 08:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Have google imaged Londo. Cannot understand the appeal of the black peacock hair, but I will leave it to you. :D
songofsongs: (I HEART WAFFLE YOU)

[personal profile] songofsongs 2010-05-20 08:48 pm (UTC)(link)
...okay, am definitely more intrigued.

I swear, if I end up watching B5 my friend is gonna punch me in the face. She's been trying to get me to watch it since freshman year of high school and hasn't succeeded. Not that I'm dodging it- it's just there are ten billion other things to watch, some with more pressing deadlines than mid-nineties-era scifi.

And, who else is on that list, by the way? *interested!face*
songofsongs: (Red Converse <3)

[personal profile] songofsongs 2010-05-20 09:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmmmmmm. Well, I DO have a good deal of free time on my hands, for the most part. There's only so much of the day you can give over to LIFE BUILDING before you starting twitching and shooting fireballs out of your hands.

...I mean, what?

Your morality scale intrigues me, but I find a disturbing lack of Master on that list. Where would he land in comparison to this Londo? And as for list-crafting, DO IT. Only, make it a picspam.

Picspams make everything better.
cinco: Spock looking doubtful: "O RLY?" (doctorwho: tv whore)

[personal profile] cinco 2010-05-21 12:53 pm (UTC)(link)
I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH THIS SCALE. Oh Londo, how I love you.
songofsongs: (Hades)

[personal profile] songofsongs 2010-05-20 08:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I wanna see the haircut! PICS OR IT HAPPENED IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY.

Alsoalsoalso, I would like you to know that I was lurking at my local public library today (this will be the third time I've been there in as many days)(I MISSED BOOKS) and I happened to check out what movies and tv shows you could borrow, and lo and behold, all three seasons of Slings & Arrows were there! So I am now in possession of the first 6 episodes. I've finally caved into peer pressure!
songofsongs: (TW- Ianto Loves Dresses)

[personal profile] songofsongs 2010-05-20 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
DO IT.

Also, we are definitely both on the internet at the same time. WHY DON'T YOU HAVE SKYPE? Ianto's WTF face implores you.
lizbee: (B5: Delenn (shadow dancer))

[personal profile] lizbee 2010-05-20 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
DAMMIT, WHY DO ALL THE TALENTED AND INTERESTING PEOPLE WIND UP SHIPPING LONDO/G'KAR? I NEED MORE SCHMOOPY SHERIDAN/DELENN WITH APPROPRIATE PUNCTUATION, DAMMIT!
lizbee: (B5: Delenn (White Star))

[personal profile] lizbee 2010-05-20 09:54 pm (UTC)(link)
YAY! Fic with plots is good too! I JUST WANT STUFF I CAN READ INSTEAD OF ATTACK WITH AN EDITORIAL PEN!
lizbee: (B5: Delenn is about to break your finger)

[personal profile] lizbee 2010-05-20 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, not all of it. [personal profile] rivendellrose has a lot of good fic, and [personal profile] vjs2259 is quite good. But a lot of the really good Delenn and Minbari writers are Delenn/Lennier shippers, and they're proceeding from what I consider a slightly wrong reading of the characters.

Otherwise, a lot of it is just older fic, from the '90s, when (from my own recollections) standards were generally lower, and stories were generally linear and fairly straightforward. Maybe I'll make a recs post...
lizbee: A sketch of myself (B5: Delenn & Neroon)

[personal profile] lizbee 2010-05-20 10:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I ... had a brief moment of insanity at the beginning of the season when Lennier announces that he's leaving, and my first impulse was to yell at the screen, "No, ask them for a threesome!" but on the whole I can't imagine sustaining Delenn/Lennier as a ship in my own brain.

Well, when Delenn tells Sheridan that "three is sacred," his answer is that he's not ready for that, not an outright no. *evil grin* But I think Lennier's perception of Delenn and what she wants in a relationship is too far from her own reality, so the power imbalance between them is difficult to overcome.
lizbee: A sketch of myself (Default)

[personal profile] lizbee 2010-05-20 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I really want Delenn/G'Kar, and I don't think it's ever been written. *unbearable sadness*
gehayi: (Default)

[personal profile] gehayi 2010-05-21 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
I've never actually seen Babylon 5. I've heard of it, of course, but I've never seen it.
selenak: (LondoGkar)

[personal profile] selenak 2010-05-21 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
If you want watchalong meta, check out [community profile] b5_revisited; we're in early s4 now. Also, shipping Londo/G'Kar is the only sensible reaction. JMS did, too. He once pranked the actors by writing a fake script in which they had sex and used about every slash cliché in existence for them on the show itself.:)

cinco: Kermit flails and says "Yay! Oh my god." (muppets: YAY)

[personal profile] cinco 2010-05-21 12:56 pm (UTC)(link)
He once pranked the actors by writing a fake script in which they had sex and used about every slash cliché in existence for them on the show itself.:)

This is one of the best things I have ever heard! Thank you for bringing it into my life!!!1!
selenak: (Dust - Radak)

[personal profile] selenak 2010-05-22 05:29 am (UTC)(link)
I first heard it from the late Richard Biggs at a B5 convention during the s4/s5 hiatus. (All the actors got the fake script, to make the prank convincing, and rang each in something between excitement and panic.) The Londo/G'Kar scene as written by JMS was later reprinted in the official B5 magazine, long since defunct.

Regarding meta, in addition to the B5_Revisited community, there is some at Idol_Reflection; I, err, wrote the big Londo essay there, which does have spoilers for the entire show, this one. Which naturally contains a lot of G'Kar as well.
marina: (Default)

[personal profile] marina 2010-05-21 02:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I actually only caught S5 when it originally aired here when I was a kid, and I really liked it, and I WILL NOT SPOIL YOU but my favorite characters were def influenced by who gets to be awesome in S5, and then I found out there were like, 4 whole seasons before that! That were apparently considered much better? And Ivanova was played by some other chick? I am still not caught up on that conundrum.
marina: (Default)

[personal profile] marina 2010-05-21 03:11 pm (UTC)(link)
ARG! Sorry! It was so long ago that I forgot that wasn't actually Ivanova I was watching, since the fandom pretty much only talks about Ivanova being in charge.

It's true, Londo and G'Kar were awesome but not amazingly so and were not even my favorite storyline. I really loved Garibaldi though because EEEE alcoholism drama! It was pretty new and exciting to me at that point (especially considering I'd come off watching several seasons of Deep Space Nine which I finally got sick of, and I was like 12, and lo there was this B5 thing and OOH THEY HAVE FUNCTIONAL ALCOHOLICS!) Actually, in Israel the lines are usually drawn pretty clearly: either you watched DS9 as a kid, or you watched B5, since they were on at the same time more or less and/or because a kid could only handle one space show at a time? IDK. Most of my friends are DS9 folks. It also works for Batman - either you watched the (amazing, award winning, groundbreaking) Batman animated series, or you watched the X-Men animated series. In my experience it's also a pretty good guide to whether you're a DC or Marvel person as a grown up.

/ramble ramble

I tried watching the first season, watched an ep or two, realized this show was extremely dated but VERY WELL WRITTEN, realized if I watched it I would be YEARS AND YEARS behind the fandom, got depressed and stopped. LOL.
pen42: (Stalling...)

[personal profile] pen42 2010-05-22 09:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Erm, congrats on graduating, by the way, and sorry we didn't get to hang out before you left! I've been avoiding the Internet for so many reasons over the past two weeks or I probably would have said congratulations earlier. (Also on your tattoo, it looks lovely.)
pen42: (Default)

[personal profile] pen42 2010-05-24 10:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Oooh, are you going to that? Yay!

--To be fair, the "mad road trip" is also Buff's and sort of mine. Mostly Jenyae's and Buff's, but it was Jenyae's and my desire to go to Disneyland that kicked it off I think.