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woodsfae · 2 years ago

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Babylon 5 S01E08: And the Sky Full of Stars

(Great, now I’m gonna have Coldplay stuck in my head all night.)

First

ToC

It seems super easy to get illegal weapons onto this station. That’s a huge dagger. And they gonna stab Sinclair with it.

So according to Chekov’s Gun, Benson is 100% going to be a security risk in this episode.

Awwww Delenn is volunteering in the medbay so Dr Franklin will be able to better care for Minbari patients. She has a strong sense of civic duty that seems to really mean for the good of her people. And it’s good to hear that Dr Franklin categorically refused to allow his work to be used to harm people in the war.

Delenn is, of course, massively dodging the question of what she did in the war.

Ah, yes, Benson has already become a security risk. I have a feeling these assassins will kill him soon.

PTSD dreams aren’t fun, but at least they woke him up in time to realize comms are down! Sidenote - I like that their comm badges stick on their hands. It’s very unique!

Wow, ALL the comms are down. How on earth (heh) are there no other life forms on Babylon 5? Ah, not all is at it seems! This is going to be a psychological thriller!

SER-eh-bral is a hell of a way to pronounce “cerebral” (seh-REE-bral).

If they’re after Sinclair’s missing day, they have to have classified info, but there’s no way this is a sanctioned op, so they’re rogue black ops or ex ops?

Also, only 39? Sinclair’s a preemie gray.

Pain’s real for both of them, now Sinclair has a way of fighting back!

Yeah Benson, you need to feel guilty. Put two and two together. Edit: whoop, and they killed him. Pretty fuckin dumb of him to go to the sketchiest people on B5 to be like “tHeY tHiNk I hAvE sOmeThInG tO dO wItH tHiS,” yeah duh you have something to do with this. You’re too stupid to live bruh.

These two are freaky. They’ve got unhinged looks around the eyes. I wouldn’t want to meet either of them. They seem fanatical. So many of the guest actors in this are just phenomenal (see: Walter Koenig).

Yikes that’s a creepy machine! I hope Sinclair’s eyeballs don’t dry out.

Punch him in the dick, Sinclair. The pain’s real for both of you.

Oh, he’s racist.

“You just said you don’t rememBAH!” his accent is a great villain accent because it makes me wanna punch him in the dick myself.

“Then why did they surrenDAH.” omg, die. My ears are bleeding.

Someone whack that jeffangle and play a little tune.

Trippy!

Even drugged the fuck up Sinclair can figure out how to kick ass. That’s PTSD baybeee. He functions even better when he’s in a high adrenaline situation. Even if he’s mentally in the wrong time and place.

It’s going to be real dramatic when he runs into Satai Delenn of the Grey Council in a bit.

Delenn’s incredibly brave. Quite foolhardy, but brave.

“Commander Sinclair. There’s something in my head. It says maybe you’re still inside. Maybe we’re both still inside.”

I will not be surprised if I find out some of the writers for this show also wrote wildly successful horror/thrillers.

The Minbari are very serious about keeping that 24 hours forgotten. I’m intrigued by the implications. They clearly needed Sinclair for something, and that something was massively impactful for their war decisions. And they clearly value him for providing whatever it is they needed, since they wiped his memory and left him alive. But they also clearly don’t need him anymore, or he’s replaceable, since they’d rather have him die than have the knowledge of what happened. And I wonder who has the authority to boss Delenn around!

A few more pieces have fallen into place for Sinclair and for us. It’s well done of them to create real tension by having us know exactly as much as he does - namely, nothing.

Also, is Talia still a level 5 telepath? I’m excited to see more ramification of Jason Ironheart’s gift to her.

click right on through

#babylon 5 #woodsfae gif #grey council #jeffrey sinclair #woodsfae b5

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alexcat45 · 5 years ago

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Babylon 5 Rewatch Schedule

We will begin with The Gathering as single episode and then season one. I will do The Gathering and you may sign up to do something for any episode you wish. I think we will post one post discussion and for creative things: a fiction, picture, video, and/or recs to other works of any type that pertain to this episode. Have fun!

If you choose an episode, you may do what you wish. I usually do a recap, some screencaps and questions for thought and discussion BUT do whatever you wish! The idea is to engage your readers into interacting.

<a href="http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html"><b>The Lurker’s Guide to B5: Episode list</b></a> is a good source for information about each episode. If you do not have your own B5 set, it is available to rent at Netflix as discs, for streaming at Amazon Prime streaming. If you know other sources, please let us know here. You can also buy used sets at Amazon fairly cheap.

Season 1

10/07/19 – The Gathering - <lj user="alexcat">

10/14/19 – Midnight on the Firing Line - <lj user="alexcat">

10/21/19 – Soul Hunter -

10/28/19 – Born to the Purple -

11/04/19 – Infection -

11/11/19 – The Parliament of Dreams –

11/18/19 – Mind War -

11/25/19 – The War Prayer -

12/02/19 – And the Sky Full of Stars

12/09/19 – Deathwalker

12/16/19 – Believers -

We will take 12/23/19 and 12/30/19 off for the holiday

1/06/20 – By Any Means Necessary -

1/13/20 – Signs and Portents

1/20/20 – TKO –

1/27/20 – Grail - <lj user=alexcat>

2/03/20 – Eyes

2/10/20 – Legacies -

2/17/20 – A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1 -

2/24/20 – A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2

3/02/20 – Babylon Squared

3/09/20 – The Quality of Mercy -

3/16/20 – Chrysalis -

3/23/20 – Discussion of Season 1 as a whole

#Babylon 5 Rewatch #b5 rewatch schedule #Babylon 5

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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Babylon 5 - Series Review

"Now get the hell out of our galaxy."

J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 was the last, best hope for a rival sci-fi television franchise to challenge the dominance of Star Trek. It failed. And let’s be glad it did. Last thing we needed was another bloated franchise knocking out a never ending cycle of naff spin-offs. Instead let’s be thankful for what remains to this day as one of the finest sci-fi series ever made. But it did take some time before it became that.

[Warning: This review contains spoilers]

Season One - Signs and Portents

Straczynski envisioned the series as an epic novel for television told in five volumes with each episode being an individual chapter. JMS wanted to tell a universe changing saga of heroes and villains, epic battles and the rise and fall of empires. Something akin to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, only in space with aliens instead of hobbits and on a limited television budget. Surprisingly, this didn’t turn out to be as impossible as it might have seemed.

The year was 2258. The name of the place was, duh, Babylon 5, a massive five-mile long space station built by humans after the devastating Earth/Minbari war -- a place where aliens could meet to talk out their differences. Straczynski presented us with a future that was a far cry from the optimistic utopia of Gene Roddenberry. Crime, poverty, corruption and prejudice still existed. The various races were constantly at each other’s throats. Many of the alien races felt genuinely extraterrestrial, not just a load of humanoids with bumpy foreheads and pointed ears, although the station did have its fair share of those.

B5 first aired in 1993 with the (not very good) feature length pilot ‘The Gathering’. A year later the first season began airing with ‘Midnight on the Firing Line’ on the now defunct PTEN network, the show’s home for its first four seasons. In truth the first season is not the series’ strongest. No doubt in an effort to not alienate a potential audience, the season is driven more by predominantly naff standalone episodes, than the show’s signature story arcs. These standalone tales were often just sub-Trek nonsense that did little to help B5 to stand out from its rivals. Nevertheless there was still some good to be found in amongst the crap. After all, as rubbish as ‘Mind War’ was, it still gave us Walter Koenig as that slippery Psi Cop Bester (still B5’s finest villain).

In the second half Straczynski gradually started to move away from alien of the week tripe like ‘TKO’, ‘Believers’ and ‘Infection’ and began to lay the foundations for the awesomeness that was to come in episodes like ‘And the Sky Full of Stars’, ‘Signs and Portents’ (the introduction of Mr Morden and the Shadows), the two-parter ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ and ‘Babylon Squared’ in which the crew investigate the sudden and mysterious reappearance of the missing Babylon 4 station. The big season finale ‘Chrysalis’ is a veritable congregation of ‘holy shit, did they just do that?’ moments as earth shattering cliff-hanger follows earth shattering cliff-hanger. Sinclair’s final lament “Nothing is the same anymore” couldn’t have been more appropriate.

At this early stage the characters were also something of a mixed bag to be sure. While G’Kar and Londo arrive practically fully formed (despite some rough early make-up effects) the rest of the cast all needed a little more work. Sinclair was too often stiff and po-faced while Ivanova had yet to develop something resembling a sense of humour. And I can’t be the only one who thought that Jerry Doyle looked like the product of a failed attempt to clone Bruce Willis?

The first season was certainly a patchy start for Babylon 5. Much of it hasn’t dated well. While they were groundbreaking and innovative at the time, much of the CGI effects now look rather primitive but still manage to stand up a lot better than most of the shows from the time (Space: Above and Beyond for example). The costumes and alien make up are all a little rough. And the dialogue constantly veers between clunky and cheesy. But the series potential was still there for all to see. By the second season the show would improve by leaps and bounds, culminating in some of the finest TV drama of the last 25 years.

Season Two - The Coming of Shadows

It was a year of change in season two of Babylon 5.

Due to illness, Michael O’Hare amicably agreed with creator J. Michael Straczynski to depart from the show. He was replaced by Bruce Boxleitner as the new station commander, Captain John J. Sheridan. The former Tron fitted in quite well on B5 and after a few episodes you’d easily be forgiven for thinking he’d been there the whole time.

The first episode ‘Point of Departure’ serves to introduce and establish Sheridan as the new station commander and show how he handles a crisis. It’s not until episode two ‘Revelations’ that JMS got around to resolving all the cliff-hangers from the previous season. Delenn came out of her cocoon with L'Oreal hair (because she’s worth it) and instantly caught Sheridan’s eye. Garibaldi woke from his coma to expose the man who shot him in the back. And G’Kar returned to the station with grave warnings about the darkness to come (that no one would listen to until it was too late).

Season two has the look and feel of a show more assured of its self, more confident in what it can accomplish. This was the year Babylon 5 stopped looking like just another Star Trek clone and became a small screen sci-fi epic to be reckoned with. There were still a number of rubbish standalone episodes such as ‘The Long Dark’ and ‘GROPOS’ to put up with, but they weren’t as bad as they had been in the first season. Besides, when you have episodes as good as the Hugo Award winning ‘The Coming of Shadows’, ‘In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum’ and ‘The Long Twilight Struggle’ what are a few duff ones here and there?

Walter Koenig returned as Bester in ‘A Race Through Dark Places’ and continued to make us forget he was ever Chekov. ‘And Now For a Word’ looked at life on the station from the perspective of a news program. Later in the season Lyta Alexander, not seen since the original pilot, would return in ‘Divided Loyalties’ to expose a sleeper agent on the station that had devastating consequences for Ivanova. And ‘Comes the Inquisitor’ sees the Vorlons test Delenn with the help of Jack the Ripper (no, seriously).

With the addition of Boxleitner the main cast was considerably stronger this season, albeit there were still a few redundant characters that needed to be gotten rid off such as Lt. Keffer, a hotshot fighter pilot character the network insisted that Straczynski add to the line up. But JMS was not one to let even an unwanted character go to waste and used Keffer’s fate to further along the Shadow War arc. The same could not be said for G’Kar’s aid, Na’Toth, who just sort’ve vanished after two episodes without anyone, her boss included, noticing.

It’s no small thing to say that Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik were the series' best actors and this season they took their performances to another level. For most of the first season Londo was nothing more than the comic relief, but this season Londo’s story went in a much darker direction as he grew closer and closer to Mr. Morden and his ‘associates’. Similarly as Londo fell further into darkness G’Kar began his long and painful journey towards redemption and spiritual enlightenment.

The season finale ‘The Fall of Night’ managed to end the season on a suitably downbeat note, but lacked the universe shacking impact of ‘Chrysalis’. While the future looked bleak for the characters the show’s future looked ever brighter. With the flaws and weakness of the first season overcome Babylon 5 would continue from this point to go from strength to strength.

Season Three - Point of No Return

In my humble little opinion season three of Babylon 5 is one of the greatest seasons of television in the entire history of the medium. This was the absolute peak of Straczynski’s small screen space opera. Admittedly, it’s not 100% perfect. It was at this point that Straczynski started writing every single episode himself (an impressive achievement to be sure) so inevitable dreck like ‘Grey 17 is Missing’ gets sandwiched in between all the great stuff. And we were pretty much spoilt for choice with great stuff this season. After two years worth of build up this was the season where things finally started to pay off.

The season started quietly enough with a group of mostly standalone tales of varying quality and significance. But by the time we got to ‘Messages from Earth’ the fan was well and truly hit and hit hard. The entire status quo of the series was suddenly turned upside down and there would be no going back. Straczynski didn’t so much as jettison the reset button as completely obliterate it. ‘Point of No Return’ saw the Earth Alliance become a fascist dictatorship under President Clark forcing the crew of Babylon 5 to break away into an independent state. This all lead to the epic ‘Severed Dreams’ (another Hugo winner) in which our heroes fought to defend the station from Clark’s forces. From now on Sheridan and company were cut off from home on their own (and got some nifty new uniforms to boot).

The season settled down for a bit after that until the Shadow war finally kicked off in full. ‘Interludes and Examinations’ sees Kosh make a devastating sacrifice on Sheridan’s behalf. The two-parter ‘War Without End’ saw the return of Sinclair and finally revealed the true story behind the disappearance of Babylon 4. After the big battles of ‘Shadow Dancing’ everything comes to a head in the season finale as Sheridan goes with his not-so-dead wife, Anna, back to Z’ha’dum. They should really use this episode in media studies classes as an example of how to write a truly great season finale. It’s simply a breathtaking 45 minutes of television that (again, IMHO) no one has yet to come close to equalling or surpassing.

With so many big events jostling for screen time JMS wisely doesn’t let the characterisation get lost in amongst the explosions. Sheridan and Delenn kept making gooey eyes at each other. Ranger Marcus Cole arrived on the station and wasted no time hitting on Ivanova. G’Kar finally found inner peace and a new purpose in life. Franklin struggled with drug addiction and resigned. And Londo’s decent into darkness continued despite his best efforts to escape his destiny.

Season three was the middle chapter of Babylon 5 and the point in which it got seriously worse for our heroes before it could eventually get any better. Creatively the show was riding on a high. From the acting to the special effects everything was at its absolute best. Sadly the show would never be this good again. Outside factors would eventually derail Straczynski’s carefully constructed five-year-plan. But season three still stands as a shinning beacon of everything that was, and still is, great about Babylon 5.

Season Four - No Surrender, No Retreat

So much for best laid plans, eh?

When he first conceived of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski had a definitive five year plan for the series. By the fourth season that plan was in serious danger of falling apart. The Prime Time Entertainment Network, the series’ home from day one, was not long for this world and as such the future of the series was uncertain. Fearing that his show would be cancelled before he could conclude the story, Straczynski went in to emergency damage control and started wrapping up the all major storylines far earlier than he’d initially planned. As a result season four is the most densely packed season of the show’s entire run, as barely a single episode is wasted in Straczynski’s mad rush to bring his story to what seemed at the time to be a premature end.

After nearly three years of planning and build up, the Shadow War, the very driving force of the entire series, was over in the space of just six episodes. The whole thing raced to an underwhelming conclusion that basically amounted to nothing more than Sheridan telling the Shadows and Vorlons off for being naughty and sending them to their rooms without any supper for the rest of eternity. Babylon 5 was the first notable sci-fi series to start using extensive story arcs (something that’s practically the norm nowadays) but it was also the first to bring its story arcs to a disappointing resolution (something else that's practically the norm nowadays).

With that major arc out of the way Straczynski got to work setting up the Drakh threat, built up the growing conflict between Sheridan and Garibaldi, dashed through a Minbari civil war in record speed before finally kicking off the war against President Clark’s fascist government in ‘No Surrender, No Retreat’. The conclusion of the Shadow arc might’ve been a letdown but the Earth civil war was Babylon 5 at its absolute best. Only problem was that it was over almost as quickly as it had started. Originally the plan was for the Earth conflict to be carried over into the fifth season with the fourth season ending with Garibaldi’s betrayal and Sheridan’s capture. But with the show’s future in doubt everything was wrapped up with ‘Endgame’ and ‘Raising Star’. Straczynski was all ready to end the series then and there, but when cable network TNT agreed at the last minute to finance a full fifth season the final episode 'Sleeping in Light' was pushed back a year and a new season finale was quickly shot on the cheap.

Despite it's ups and downs season four is still a strong season. Although there are no Hugo winners, there are still several standout episodes, most notably Sheridan’s brutal interrogation in 'Intersections in Real Time'. The acting was excellent across the board this season, but if there’s a single standout star without a doubt it’s Jerry Doyle. Straczynski sent Garibaldi to hell and back this season and Doyle rose to the challenge with gusto. Sadly this would be the final season for Susan Ivanova as a contract dispute would prevent Claudia Christian returning for the fifth season. With no time to shoot a proper goodbye scene her departure is clumsily handled in voiceover, a disappointing exit for one of science fiction's finest heroines.

Season Five - The Wheel of Fire

The last minute renewal for Babylon 5 was something of a mixed blessing. On one hand it meant that the show would continue and J. Michael Straczynski would now be able to complete his much talked about five-year-plan. But since Straczynski had wrapped up almost every single significant plot thread during the previous season he was now stumped about what to do next. Sure, he had a lot of great stuff with Londo planned, but that didn’t get going until towards the end of the season. So what the hell was he going to do until then?

Straczynski had twenty-one episodes to fill up and barely enough story material to cover a quarter of the season. Rather than relinquish some creative control by bringing in a load of new writers and some fresh ideas, Straczynski continued to write virtually every single episode himself even though it was clear by this point that he’d reached his burnout stage. Granted, the only time he did allow someone else to write an episode it resulted in Neil Gaiman’s dreary ‘Day of the Dead’ but that's still no excuse for not sharing your toys, Joe. Actually, in many ways the series came a full circle with season five as Babylon 5 went back to the sort standalone filler dreck everyone thought we’d seen the last of in season one. Worst offender being the abysmal Tom Stoppard homage ‘A View from the Galley’ which looks at an attack on the station from the perspective of two repair workers who sadly, unlike Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, don’t end up dead at the end.

The lack of decent episodes wasn't the show’s only problem this season, as its previously strong characterization seemed to have vanished entirely. They might’ve looked the same, they might’ve even sounded the same, but these were not the same characters we’d been following faithfully over the last four years. Despite now being President of the Interstellar Alliance (with all the power and influence of a UN Secretary-General) Sheridan still stomps around the station like he owns the place becoming the type of character you’d rather punch in the face than follow into the jaws of hell. Delenn, meanwhile, has been relegated to the prestigious role of ‘her indoors’. Elsewhere, Garibaldi roamed aimlessly around the station in a futile search for a decent plot line, while Londo and G’Kar spend most of the season working on perfecting their buddy comedy routine. And with Claudia Christian gone (but sure as hell not forgotten) Tracy Scoggins was brought in to replace Ivanova as Captain Elizabeth Lockley, the station’s new commander and Sheridan’s ex-wife (huh?). Try as she might, it is difficult to take Scoggins seriously as a tough military leader.

Now that the Shadows were gone and President Clark had been overthrown there were no more enemies to fight and our heroes were all getting ready to live happily ever after. As a result virtually nothing happened for the majority of the season. The only significant event in the first half was a limp rebellion by Gap model telepaths lead by Byron, a walking personality black hole. The only upside to this arc was more focus on Patricia Tallman's underused Lyta Alexander and the always welcome return of Bester, who even gets his own episode this season, the disappointingly bland ‘The Corp Is Mother, The Corp is Father’. Once all the dull telepath malarkey is done with the season finally starts to pick up some much needed steam as the Interstellar Alliance goes to war with the Centauri. But even this conflict fails to provide the same kind of high drama and epic battles the show used to give us. Only the tragic conclusion of Londo’s story in ‘The Fall of Centauri Prime’ makes any kind of emotional impact.

The remaining episodes are all used for some last minute wrap up and a shed load of teary goodbye scenes to rival anything Peter Jackson could come up with. After everyone has gone their separate way Straczynski closes the book with ‘Sleeping in Light’ an elegant and beautiful epilogue to the series and one of the best series finales of all time. Although it did manage to end on a high note (notably with an episode left over from the previous year) overall season five is a disappointing dud.

Despite this less than grand farewell, Babylon 5 still remains one of the greatest sci-fi series ever produced. Admittedly it was something of a flawed masterpiece thanks to the occasional wooden acting, clunky dialogue, dodgy standalone episodes, cheap sets and a tendency to get lost up its own mythology. But with this show Straczynski created something truly unique, an epic science fiction novel for television with a definitive beginning, middle and end. Yeah, the beginning was a bit uneven and the end part didn’t work out as planned, but that middle section, boy, was that good.

Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011.

#Babylon 5 #B5 #John Sheridan #Delenn #Susan Ivanova #Michael Garibaldi #Londo Mollari #G'Kar #Babylon 5 Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

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margridarnauds · 6 years ago

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6, 7, 10, 21, 23

THANKS AVERY

6. Answered here

7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.

Let’s have the SALT. (Mandatory disclaimer that my own personal feelings towards the SHIP does not inherently extend to the shippers, that I ship many dynamics that some people would call “abusive” given the ongoing debate over what “enemies to lovers” means, and that some dynamics here are things that I might have shipped under other circumstances, but things just...didn’t work out that way.)

Cats - I hated Plato/Victoria before I even knew that it was POSSIBLE to hate a ship that much. I always went with the Plato = Macavity theory to get that little skeavy dudebro off my girl. (Also, I’ll be honest, the whole “mating dance” thing is...such a fucking weird sequence anyway. Like, my ship preferences aside, ALW WHY DID YOU HAVE TO HAVE A SCENE WHERE THE CATS FUCK?)

Pirates of the Caribbean - Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth.

Harry Potter - Ron/Hermione. I never saw it, tbh, and they seemed to be pretty bad for one another, even in the books. The films just took it up several notches.

OUAT - Captain motherfucking Swan. I hated that smug, greasy little motherfucker so much. So much.

Star Trek Ds9: Jadzia/Worf. THERE. I SAID IT. Both sides brought out the absolute worst in each other, leading to an absolute trashfire of a ship that obliterated all in its wake. AND THEN WE HAD TO DEAL WITH THE FALLOUT OF THAT. EVEN AFTER THE SHIP WAS *DEAD*. Don’t mind me, don’t mind me. I’m cool, I’m cool.

Carmilla - Tbh...Laferry. Never my thing. I know that her character development’s a BIG part of Perry’s arc and I fully embrace character growth, but it just. Left a bad taste in my mouth. And the way shippers used to treat Laflashdrive shippers back in the day. As if shipping a nonbinary character and a flashdrive somehow makes it hetero. (#LetLafBeaRobotfucker2k19).

Les Miserables - You know what? While I’m on the Salt Train...

Enjolras/Grantaire. Now, there are plenty of ships that are probably more deeply annoying to me, but none are as prevalent as this one. And I might like them a lot more if they WEREN’T so prevalent. But as it is, it’s like a black HOLE that’s devoured the fandom, so that you’d think the entire fucking novel/musical is about these two. And. Maybe I shouldn’t talk given what I ship, but it isn’t even like they’re THEM at this point, they’re just two generic white guys in an “uwu” relationship. And I’m not speaking for EVERY single thing given that I have neither the time, concentration, or will to read every. Single. Thing. Made about these two, but it’s something I’ve noticed, though I’m not saying that I haven’t enjoyed SOME things made about them and the whole “You believe in nothing.” “I believe in you” is...good content.

It’s like...you’re walking in the woods (there’s no one around and your phone is dead) and you see a brightly colored pink tree. At first, it’s great. A pink tree! You’ve never seen one of those before. You wander further into the woods, and there’s another! And another! And soon enough, you’re surrounded by pink trees, in a technicolored horror realm. Where’s the sky? Where did you come in at? You think you remember seeing the sun once, but NO, it’s another fucking pink tree blocking your way. There is no God, there is no ground, there is only a technicolored nightmare blocking your every move, drowning you in visions of Barbie-esque horror.

Terra Nova - Skye/Lucas. WHY GOD WHY? Look, we KNOW I have terrible taste in ships, some of which have...questionable dynamics. BUT EVEN I CAN’T GET INTO THIS ONE. There’s no...mutual spark between the two of them, just Lucas creeping on Skye and Skye trying to get away. Also, since I’m here...Skye is estimate to have been born in ‘32-33, making her approximately 16-17 by the time the plot kicks into gear. Let’s be very generous and bump her into 17-18. Lucas? 2124, making him...oh, 25. Not the WORST age gap I’ve ever seen in my lifetime...but....questionable. Very questionable. And I know the series wants to have us believe that people grow up faster (see: The fact they actually think Maddy’s old enough to GET MARRIED. TO A SOLDIER. WHO IS REALISTICALLY IN DANGER OF MAKING HER A WIDOW,) but NO. Like, at my CURRENT AGE, with less than four years separating me from that age gap, I can’t see it. That is still at least 7 years of experience in the “real world” that she doesn’t have. He still saw someone with THAT MUCH of an age gap with him and WANTED something, whether or not she wanted it or not, and tried to PURSUE that something while calling her “sister”. Like, I can’t stop anyone from shipping it and I have a firm “ship and let ship” mentality, but....EW. EWEWEWEWEWEWEWEWeWEEWEWEW.

B5 - I’m in the same boat as you as far as...on one hand. Byron/Lyta makes me want to vomit, but also...our Teep OC does owe her existence to her weird, hetero white goth uncle.

Star Wars: Han/Leia. Because, as we all know, cornering a woman before you kiss her is the love story of the generation. Han would have been better with Luke and Leia with Holdo.

The Pirate Queen - Tiernan/Gráinne. I. Hate. This. Ship.

His Dark Materials - Torn between Ruta Skadi/Asriel and Lyra/Will. Tbh, leaning towards the latter because while the former is AWFUL and signifies the quite frankly terrible writing decisions that distinguish the second and third books, at least it didn’t involve a badass, feral girl child becoming a dainty, submissive 50s housewife in the body of a 12 year old. “Oh, Will, I’ll do whatever you say, I promise. I won’t use my awesome powers unless you say I can, you’re so fantastic, Will.” Gag me. Also...they’re twelve. This doesn’t HAVE to be an epic, tragic romance, and the fact that their “kiss” (WHAT THE FUCK PULLMAN, WHAT THE FUCK, I’M NOT A PURITAN BUT WHAT THE FUCK) is the key to saving the universe? Really? Basically, they should have been friends.

1789 - Danton/Solène. (I KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT I WOULD SAY, BUT NO. MY HATRED FOR THIS ONE MANAGES TO OUTSHINE IT.) “But Rachel,” you might say, “You’ve been very, very open about preferring anything to Ronan/Olympe” and that’s TRUE. But the Toho version managed to push my hatred of this one with The Scene, AKA “Go back to the kitchen, Solène and let the menfolk take care of this.” The French version didn’t even really have it as A Thing, he was just a customer. And the amount of time Danton spends with Solène is always directly proportional to the amount of spinal surgery she’s going to have. Now, I can’t exactly BLAME the two Japanese productions for doing what they did, because they have to appeal to a Japanese audience in the way they see fit. It’s an ADAPTATION of 1789, not a tour of it. But that doesn’t mean I have to LIKE it. And. Like. You know there’s no way THAT one’s going to end in a way that’s good for Solène. Either (1) he’ll set her aside for his family or (2) If they SOMEHOW stay together...the Reign of Terror’s looming.

Also: Danton/Charlotte. No. No. Just. No. There are so many reasons why. But no.

Ace Attorney - Maya/Nick. WHY SWEET MOTHER OF HETERONORMATIVITY WHY?

10. Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

We’ve both discussed a lot about how...DIFFICULT it can be to write fic for something. There are a lot of things I love dearly but just don’t have it in me to write fic for. Ace Attorney is an obvious one, Mozart l’Opera Rock, Elisabeth (though I’m trying to work on that one), Les Miserables, Star Wars, Star Trek, B5....a ton more that I could mention but it would honestly take too much time. Words hard, reading still hard but slightly easier.

21. What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?

The first thing I ever wrote, when I was five years old, was (very heteronormative) fanfiction for The Stinky Cheese Man, where he finds The Stinky Cheese Woman, which now, of course, I recognize as my own attempt to write myself into a narrative from which I’d been excluded. Or something. I think my mom still has it buried someplace, lurking...

Also, @theocraindora at some point managed to get me to write at least one full Carmilla AU during the second season, when we both must have been about 17-18-ish, if my math’s not too dubious, and that was the first thing I ever actually finished for a long time, even though it didn’t ever meet my personal standards for publishing and is likely to stay buried. For awhile, at least.

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

Since I talked about PLP’s tragic backstory, time for something happier. Paradise Lost, which I’m actually pretty damn happy with because it was my first time working with something that’s not a historical piece, and it was honestly a treat working with Mira’s voice. I think that Mira really “clicked” for me as a character here. Like, “Yes, this is why she’s like this, this makes sense.” There are some times where you can really feel a character’s voice when you’re writing and you can get things out, and this was one of those very rare times for me. Not saying that it’s going to happen NEXT time, but this time, it was rather relaxing.

It was honestly one of the smoother writing experiences I had? Like, it only took me about a day or so, from when we exchanged PMs to publishing it, which is pretty impressive, all things considered. I’m still not tossing out doing anything more with this world in the future, tbh. That and Goosefic were probably two of the easiest to just...get out. (WHICH. 92 HITS. GOOSEFIC HAS 92 HITS. THAT IS INSANE FOR A ONE-SHOT IN A SMALL FANDOM. HOLY SHIT.)

(From your other ask!)

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

I’ve been WRITING fanfiction since I could hold a pencil and make scribbles. When I was younger, I could write that kind of thing easily, the shame came later.

Finding out that fanfiction EXISTED...was probably when I was about 9-10 and found Balto x Harry Potter crossover fanfiction. Which. In hindsight. Was pretty horrible, but my young self was CAPTIVATED because Balto and Harry Potter? In the same universe? IT WAS LIKE MAGIC.

Astonishingly, I did not read M rated stuff until I was at least 15-16-ish. I kept myself remarkably sheltered and only looked into it when I became curious. And got over my weird hyper-religious phase.

When I was about 12-13, I started to toy with writing myself, writing my own OC crossovers for Phantom Manor (the gother, European version of Haunted Mansion that was my special interest for. Ages). Carmilla when I was 17-18 was one of the first things I wrote a full, complete Thing for, even if I never published anything for it. And from there, I’d try to write things for both The Pirate Queen and Dracula, though both projects proved to be too ambitious and I ended up cutting them off, tragically, but they gave me the confidence I needed to get into 1789, which I DID publish something for finally, on the day I was taking my GRE because. Well. I had something else I feared more than a flame.

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

I don’t know if this is one thing or five separate things in a trenchcoat, but here you go.

I love how we can explore things that could never be explored in canon, for one reason or another; I love that we have an experience that we can filter according to what WE want, including trigger warnings, which is honestly a godsend to me. We talk a lot about the transformative nature of fanfic, and it IS, but also, the level of empowerment that comes with being able to take back a narrative that says “hey, you’re not supposed to be in this narrative” or “You’ll like what we put out and you’ll stick with it” or “Well, if you don’t like it, create your own” and say “Okay, I will.” And, obviously the comments are lovely, having that kind of instant encouragement, and in the small fandoms in particular, it’s VITAL, but I also don’t feel like they’re inherently mandatory or that readers should feel FORCED. But I do love that, no matter what, something you write can connect with someone from the other side of the world. Like, people can argue all they want about fanfic being valid or not, but MOST people who want to be professional writers never get that. And when you stop and think about how we’ve been changing the narrative for as long as we’ve had oral stories, that this is how storytelling was ORIGINALLY done...that’s very humbling.

#janetcarter

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jenniferstolzer · 6 years ago

Photo

Jen’s B5 rewatch masterpost the first:

Season 1 Part 2 , part 3

Follow the links to read my “Things I liked/Things I liked less” lists and general thoughts on each episode!

Pilot: The Gathering

Season 1 01 Midnight on the Firing Line 02 Soul Hunter 03 Born to the Purple

04 Infection 05 Parliament of Dreams 06 Mind War 07 The War Prayer

08 And the Sky Full of Stars 09 Deathwalker

#babylon 5 #art #episode summary #babylon 5 rewatch #jenstoart

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boredkids · 6 years ago

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A Tribute to Chuck Person’s Eccojams

By E. Schoop

The age of pop detritus has been upon us for quite some time. Not so embedded in the virtual age, but rather, the analog era of which preceded this revolution was full of bargain-bin pop. And so, the cultural zeitgeist overflowed with works briefly shining and flaming out like the proverbial comet, falling into obscurity. For the critical eye, it has been trained and tested to disfavor kitschy novelties, “corniness” being an operative phrase to describe this phenomenon. Beneath the sewers of disregarded music lay a dormant beast of melody and sensation. Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, set a path that has become a full-blown movement. If one is to take influence as the sole arbiter of taste, then Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 is surely the most important avant-garde album of the decade.

Simplicity is key, but simple does not mean easy. Slowing down music and warping it to great effect had been a concept since the days of DJ Screw had Houston mesmerized with chopped and screwed and Lopatin realized the possibilities of a genre that was reductive ad infinitum, curation by rearrangement and a keen ear for the rhythmic structure of a song. Previously, he’d flirted with these ideas through his sunsetcorp Youtube channel, allowing for a less structured aesthetic to appear, floating bits and pieces of his new ideas into the public. The earliest snapshot on the Internet Wayback Machine has “nobody here” at 51,000+ views, which, while numerous, show the lack of virality Lopatin was yet to cultivate. Even so, comments like “The sole reason Youtube should exist” and “They should play this at Chris De Burgh’s funeral” were indicative of the allure that “eccojams” held in the populace’s imagination.

Through the aptly-named Curatorial Club, Lopatin released a mixtape under his Games alias, further creating a world only distinguished by 80s R&B samples and remnants of an HBO afterlife. Spend The Night With might be a supplement to the ethos Lopatin was defining himself by in this era, but it stood as a little beside to the plunderphonics he would come to create in both Eccojams and his next Oneohtrix release, Replica. There seemed to be an effortlessness insofar as grafting samples for songs, with the likes of Janet Jackson, Toto, and Fleetwood Mac all being used as maestros with which Lopatin could craft his singular vision.

“A1” is a sublime way to begin the album. Before all the “Africa” memes, before the Toto-Weezer bizarro crossover, Lopatin predicted the future with this slice of heaven, a cosmic entity that forces the listener into bliss, whether consciously or unconsciously. It’s a perfect primer for the Chuck Person galaxy, assaulting the senses in a barrage of track splitting and cutting that would make John Oswald blush. The signature technique of pulling a single phrase from a song is unveiled here, wherein Toto frontman Joseph Williams sings “Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you”, it’s chopped into a beautiful repetition that buoys the entire song to euphoria. Chuck Person draws an incredible conclusion from the pop tradition of ephemera -- only a few seconds matter.

sunsetcorp again rears its prescient head with “A2”, adapted from “angel” off of Memory Vague. Hauntological pop was nothing new at the time, with Ariel Pink and Leyland Kirby dabbling in the genre, but Lopatin took it to a whole new level with the track. “Angel please don’t go” provides a goosebumps-inducing refrain, Christine McVie’s vocals warped and looped like a psilocybin nightmare. The use of vocals is incredible, affecting mind and body and transporting the listener into different worlds and states of being. Lopatin’s re-appropriation tactics came to define the concept of vaporwave itself, as choral focus of pop magnified at-large. Never before was the human voice so acutely presented, its power in the abstract realized by the curious power of Ableton.

The three-piece of “A1”, “A2”, and “A3” may be one of the most potent 3-track sequences on any album. “A3” is the most widely-known song off Eccojams, and for good reason. It’s a massive piece, a song that could fill stadiums given its euphoric propensity. Fantastical images abound, bringing JoJo’s “Be real, it doesn’t matter anyway / You know it’s a little too late” from pristine into dazed iconography, a collusion of sounds and senses. What’s even more fascinating is that Lopatin then turns around and samples “Castles in the Sky” by Belgian trance project Ian Van Dahl, finding an ornate balance between the polished pop of JoJo and the kineticism of Eurodance in an ambient interlude.

There are more sunsetcorp deep cuts on here repurposed as a cohesive unit, such as “demerol” as “A4” and “nobody here” as “B4”, but the true stars are the previously unreleased jams that Lopatin cooked up in his laboratory. In his Reddit AMA he alluded to “cryogenically unfreezing” them, and it’s an apt metaphor for such otherworldly music. “A6” features Janet Jackson trapped in the A&R purgatory of pop, glamorizing the dissonance until Lopatin cranks up the chopping, until Janet is no more. “A8” is absolutely fascinating, and listening back to Marvin Gaye’s “My Love Is Waiting”, it’s wondrous that the sensual elegance of Gaye could become such a deformed product, a tangled mess of misshapen R&B that is utterly majestic at the same time.

The second half is much more akin to noise, finding a home in cacophony rather than keep relying on the scrambling of hits. While there are straightforward samples like “Me Against The World” by Tupac on “B5” or “These Dreams” by Heart on “B6”, Lopatin opts to go for a manic approach in his quest boil pop down to its essence. In an interview with Simon Reynolds, he explains this process saying “Noise can be sculpted down to become pop; pop can be sculpted down into noise.” Eccojams plays with these assertions constantly, erasing any sort of dichotomy present beforehand. “B1” is a sensory overload, with all the energy of a panicked anxiety attack, until its outro calms the mind and body. After, “B2” packs radio static together and unravels it, syncopation drowning out any coherent thoughts. It’s as if Lopatin cut and pastes memory until nothing familiar is left.

Vaporwave’s influence has been abundant through modern culture, from the hyperreal facets of music videos by Drake and Tame Impala to our endless obsession with 80s and 90s culture being rebranded and sold to us, there isn’t an online soul who can say they haven’t stumbled across some form of this phenomenon. Yet beneath all the memes and bastardization lies a cultural statement of hybridity and ephemera, and Chuck Person stands in-between all of this. It’s more philosophically meaningful and spiritually fulfilling than any other release in the microgenre, artistically brilliant and packed to the brim with matchless ideas undeterred by the limits of audio software and the human brain. Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol.1 is the emotions we’ve never felt and memories we don’t have, sealed deep into the shared consciousness of us all. And to think, Lopatin intended all this as a joke.

#chuck person #eccojams #vaporwave #daniel lopatin #oneohtrix point never

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