#Na'Toth/G'Kar

[tallysgreatestfan-art]

Realized I never actually drew them kissing, and had to change that

[tallysgreatestfan]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: G'Kar/Na'Toth (Babylon 5) Characters: Na'Toth (Babylon 5), G'Kar (Babylon 5) Additional Tags: Friends With Benefits, (can be read romantic too though), Casual Sex, past trauma, Background Hurt/Comfort, Background Angst, Post-Canon, Cunnilingus, Penetrative Sex, both of them are bi now because I say so Summary:

Na'Toth is marked by her long imprisonment, even if she tries not to let it stop her. But as G'Kar visits her, both of them can forget their exhausting past for a while.

[eusuchia]

at the formal event

[branmer]

narn fashion is so iconic

[greenscircus]

narn sketches

[delennier]

I just love how Delenn and Lennier, and also G'Kar and Na'Toth are of close to exactly the same height. Delenn and Lennier are both tiny. And G'Kar and Na'Toth are both tall.

[woodsfae]

Babylon 5 s02e02 Revelation

S02 Table of Contents • previous episode

Londo are you really going to call Kosh out for anything at all? However, your annoyance is a little bit fair with Delenn and G’Kar. Ohh nevermind, Kosh is there lurking in the corner.

Fuck yeah G’Kar. Loving this glimpse of more alien ships. What is this morphing mesh? Whose are they? Morden’s allies?

The year the great war came upon us all...so there’s going to be some major fighting soon? Unless this season portrays less than a year. Hmmm. I like Sheridan’s introduction to the show. And Harlan Ellison consulted on this? That’s so fucking cool.

Ehhh leave Garibaldi in the coma, imo. Tried and failed to contact his next of kin! Ok...that’s actually very sad. Yeah, use Laura’s cool device! It’s probably literally the safest option for any person with a medical issue. Laura certainly used it to great effect, and I’m sure the denizens of Down Below miss her very much. And I totally called the machine coming back!

“Hi big brother,” un-fucking-believable. As one of six kids I can confidently say that that affectionate hug should have been accompanied by a loving “Hey shitbag.” Just to keep the new commander of B5 from getting too big of a head.

If Londo had half a molecule of common sense he’d vaporize Morden on the spot. That’s a terrifying and very malevolent level of power he displayed with the 10,000 Narns dead, and there’s absolutely no guarantee he won’t turn it on the Centauri next!

Anna...a sibling? A spouse to one of them? Sheridan’s spouse, I’m guessing. Poor guy. Grief do be like that. Ah, yes, spouse. Go to therapy, Sheridan. Or maybe a grief support group.

Lennier is such a caring cocoon caregiver. A little creepy with that vocal overlay. But caring.

G’Kar: “Close the door.” Na’Toth: “Close” Door: closes

LMAO. Did she remove him from the voice authorization while he was gone?

Details on Morden’s allies?! And G’Quan was a real person that was deified?

This is so metal.

“After a thousand years, the darkness has come again.”

Laura’s machine worked! Now the Presidential Assassination Plot may commence. Inside Guy is gonna do more inside crimes!

That’s either some very convenient amnesia, or very subtle acting on Jerry Doyle’s part, because I could not tell if he saw or recognized Inside Guy at all.

G’Kar’s armor is so gorgeous.

Delenn is out!!! All that TLC really paid off, Lennier. Hair now? Or hair later?

I didn’t suspect the scales.

Nice exposition, Sheridan Siblings. It is very tragic and sad. Moral of the story: don’t be a workaholic lest a tragic accident befall your spouse.

A shell within the cocoon! I bet the makeup was a bitch and about ten hours to apply, though.

Londo _do not _report this to Morden. Augh, of course you are, you idiot. For fuck’s sake.

Ah, so Garibaldi really didn’t remember who shot him.

Talia seems to have her powers heightened by skin to skin contact. I wonder if that’s standard, or a her-thing.

Inside Guy caught by the reflection! And tricked out of his quarters by the lure of a Butterfly Delenn - that’s fragging hilarious.

Police Brutality Garibaldi is back. sigh.

Lovely that the death penalty still exists. Even lovelier that Garibaldi wants to administer it himself. I do think that Inside Guy is going to escape, though.

Ah, so the current president is interested in the plot against the former president now! And both Inside Guy and all the relevant evidence is definitely vanishing en route to Current Pres. Who’s looking shadier and shadier by the second.

Thanks to the Narns I now know that you have to travel within hyperspace to coordinates before moving back into normal space. And thanks to Londo, no one will know that they saw evidence of the Evil Fae Folks.

Hair now! How handy that Lizzy came with info and a kick in the ass out of his grief so that he can be attracted to the newly conventionally-hot-by-human-standards Delenn.

Does this mean the original plan before Michael O’Hare needed to leave was for Sinclair/Delenn? Because I was picking up on those vibes. Hence all the frothing.

Garibaldi’s putting some pieces of this vast conspiracy together. It’s kind of funny that he’s putting the PsiCorps-related pieces together and not Ivanova, who has far more of a personal connection to PsiCorps and more of a personal reason to heavily scrutinize them. But perhaps she’ll put some pieces of her own together later that seem more personally relevant to Garibaldi’s past.

And Lizzy’s off, back to Earth! But is this the first shuttle back to Earth that Inside Guy is going to be on? If so, she is 100% a dead woman walking. I am sure that Inside Guy is going to “die” on the way by means of a catastrophic shuttle accident, or shuttle disappearance, or the ilk. 

Partner was excited to exercise his MFA in poetry and tell me this poem that G’Kar reads to Na’Toth is Yates, and super, super abridged. The whole thing is very worth reading. In a weird way, I think the way they cut it for G’Kar to read makes it less impactful for the B5-verse situation. But this poem, and the edited version presented in B5, definitely suits the heaviness of a rolling tide of dark change about to crash down uncontrollably.

Things fall apart the center cannot hold mere anarchy is loosed upon the world the blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned And what rough beast its hour come round at last slouches towards Bethlehem to be born -the B5 cut

OH. Inside Guy was transferred to an unidentified “earthforce” ship. I’m glad Lizzy lived, but yeah, Inside Guy and all the physical evidence is gone. The Pres is absolutely a shady motherfucker.

next episode

[rjalker]

deliberately creating supernovapronouns to scare fake lingistics nerds

anyways from now on so it's easier to tell, if a pronoun replaces contractions with the first pronoun in the set, it'll go in square brackets from now on to help differentiate it from the way "hers" is used in she/her/(hers)/herself.

su/[na]/uvu/lo/(kar)/zeda

Su replaces he and she

Na replaces contractions with su, where you'd otherwise say "she'd" or "he'd", rather than "su'd" you say just na.

Uvu replaces him and her.

Lo replaces his and her(posessive)

Kar replaces hers(whatever the hell you call this kind of posessive)

Zeda replaces himself and herself

EX:

"He is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as he gets a fence set up around his yard so the puppy can go outside without him having to walk it. His uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting him use, since he lost his. He's going to buy a bunch of toys, too, and train the puppy himself."

Becomes:

"Su is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as su gets a fence set up around lo yard so the puppy can go outside without uvu having to walk it. Lo uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting uvu use, since su lost kar. Na going to buy a bunch of toys, too, and train the puppy zeda."

enjoy.

[tallysgreatestfan-art]

Remember that Delenn and Lennier in their cultures traditional Pride clothes drawing? Yeah, I did that with another m/f ship I headcanon as queer just because I am queer and can do that.

My headcanon is that they are both bi, and G'Kar is also aro-spec in some way, though I haven't figured out my headcanon about to what aspect yet. Their clothing is heavily inspired by pre-colonial Nigerian, Angola, Mali and South African clothing, more details about what exactly under the cut.

I like to think that before they were colonized, the Narn had a lot of own cultural and even ceremonial and religious roles for queer people, but the Centauri forced their gender and sexuality standards on them. By the time of the series it is slowly reclaimed though.

Couldn't found one on one Pride Clothing of pre-Colonial african countries since sadly that was not something the colonizers cared to preserve.

Nigeria:

Traditional Igbo marriage clothing. The Igbo had queer marriages before colonialisation (marriages between women), but the clothes depicted in the photo are not specifically for queer people.

Other Igbo fashion, this time women before during colonialism time.

Angola:

Queen Mzinga Mbande of Angola, who not just was a tactically brilliant ruler who defended her country from colonizers for a long time, but also had several female lovers.

Mbundu women, who are the same ethnicity as Queen Mbande

Mali:

The Dogon in Mali have several spirits and gods who have characteristics of several genders. The person in the picture is performing one of their ceremonies.

South Africa:

A Zulu and a Tswana man were the first gay South Africans to be wedded in 2013 in a traditional ceremony. The man in the photo is neither of them, however he does show the traditional Zulu wedding clothes.

(These are these two men, if you curious. Their names are Tshepo Modisane and Thoba Sithole:)

[tallysgreatestfan]

Remember that time when everybody was making these Drift Compatible Pacific Rim AUs? Good times

[robotshellyeah]

some thoughts about Deathwalker:

my favorite thing about babylon 5 has always been the conversations between the ambassadors and their aides. the show is not always a story from the perspective of the human characters - sometimes you get a window into how the aliens interact with each other when humans aren't around. I really liked the scene between Na'Toth and G'Kar about why she attacked Jha'dur. if it had been her explaining herself to a human like Sinclair or Garibaldi, the cultural practice underlying her desire for revenge would have been portrayed as "alien" and less legitimate. but instead she tells it to G'Kar, who understands her completely and tells her that her behavior was right (he says that she wouldn't be narn if she felt differently, and that he's proud of her!) and therefore we the audience are reassured that her motivations are not to be dismissed. it was refreshing to see G'Kar take her side and only tell her to wait because it was necessary for political maneuvering

the plotline with Talia was kind of upsetting - I don't think I appreciated when I watched the show for the first time in college how violating that experience would be, and Sinclair and Garibaldi were so nonchalant about it at the end. Talia was like "Kosh hired me under dubious circumstances, exposed me to terrifying stimuli, and recorded my thoughts without consent presumably with the intention of using them later to hurt me" and Sinclair and Garibaldi were like "lol yeah he's a wild one". I guess there's nothing they can do about it but still yikes

why was Garibaldi allowed to go through Jha'dur's stuff when she was unconscious, seems ethically questionable

my opinion of G'Kar is so heavily influenced by how he is in the later seasons, I forgot how slimy he is in season 1. I think he experiences the most character growth of any of the cast.

Lennier is the guy we all know who's way too into military history

[eusuchia]

minvember prompt 4: history

this is based off a joke post I made about my story BREAKWATER where G'Kar is the one that kills Cartagia and Narns collectively storm the palace to liberate themselves, and how the event is later commemorated in a big cringe kha'ri propaganda mural (and posters and theatrical reenactments, etc). I like the themes of G'Kar grappling with becoming an artifact of history in his own lifetime >:)

[unearthlytraveller]

Babylon 5 Rewatch: Chrysalis

30 years ago, fans of B5 had to wait three months for the first season finale. I'm not willing to do that.

I'm going to break here, because if there is any episode from season 1 that should not be spoiled, it's this one. And I'm going to spoil it below.

I remembered this as the best episode of the season. And, it is. It's not even close. Everything the season has been putting into place comes together, and the world falls apart. That moment when Garibaldi manages to give that warning from sickbay, and the crew rush to warn about the assassination attempt... only to find they are too late. It still gives me chills all these years and rewatches later.

I was unsure how I was going to feel about this episode. Part of the reason for that is because I last watched this in 2010 or 2011. Back then, the idea of a return to fascism seemed laughable. Today... it does not. And I can't deny that real-world context changes things. It's hard to enjoy the sci-fi drama when it doesn't feel all that speculative. But there's a line Sinclair says that struck me.

"Just that I've had this feeling lately that we're standing at a crossroads, and I don't like where we're going. But there's still time to choose another path. You can be part of that process"

The first sentence I remembered from before. The second two... I did not. And as small as it seems, it actually made me feel more hopeful to hear it.

Another thing that struck me on this watch was Londo. Signs and Portents was his first step down the path to darkness; this is his second. And yet, he is genuinely shocked by the consequences of his actions; and we end with him keeping vigil with Ivanova. It won't last, of course, but it's a reminder that he's not an intrinsically or purely evil character; there is much good in him. That's why we like him, and why he is tragic despite all he will do.

G'Kar gets to really show the range of his character. He starts in strutting villain mode, and the scene were his latest sexual partners leave his quarters is one of the funnier moments of a generally dark episode. But as the episode progresses, we see his other side. He seems far less keen in his government's aggression when talking in his chambers; he immediately understands the implications of the attack on Quadrant 37; and in the shuttle scene, it is Na'Toth who speaks of retaliation while G'Kar offers Ivanova condolences and is more reflective.

Garibaldi has come under criticism in recent episodes for his actions, and justifiably so. So it's interesting that we start this episode with Petrov, who Garibaldi was apparently willing to help get a second chance. We also get to see both his investigative chops, figuring out the assassination plot... but also his blind spots. Or as Walker Smith said back in TKO,

"One of these days, Garibaldi, you're going to learn to watch your back."

Delenn starts a change that is in both the biggest and smallest of the ambassadors. I, of course, know what will come out of the titular chrysalis. And yet while the physical changes will be dramatic, Delenn as a person arguably changes the least among the main cast. A little something I've always found amusingly ironic.

Sinclair has a pretty rough time of it. He makes a pretty awful proposal, fails to save the president, fails to meet with Delenn and get the answers he wants... He gets the last line of the season, though, and it's a great one.

"Nothing's the same any more."

This is the season finale, and so we say goodbye to a lot of things. The last time that Mira Furlan will wear that specific make up as Delenn, for one. But we also say goodbye to Caitlin Brown's Na'Toth, Michael O'Hare's Sinclair, and Julia Nickson's Catherine Sakai. Some of these actors will make guest appearances, but even now I feel somewhat sad about these departures.

Caitlin Brown's decision not to return is understandable based on what I've read; that she only came on as a favour when the actress who played Ko'Dath developed an allergic reaction to the makeup, and would never normally be stuck in such a low-profile role. Still, I enjoy season one where her and Andreas Katsulas give such great presence to the Narn. I don't think they ever fully replaced her.

Michael O'Hare's departure is bigger, since he was the star of the show. And, of course, there was that scene in Babylon Squared. It's amazing that JMS made such a big deal about how B5 was planned in advance, and yet was able to handle this and still make a show with such compelling foreshadowing. Sure, there are places were things don't quite line up that the obsessive fan can see, but they're easy to overlook. As for O'Hare himself, I hope he acheived some respite from the mental illness that forced his departure before his tragic early death.

Least important to the show was the character of Cathering Sakai; Nickson only had three appearances this season, the last of which before Chrysalis was 16 episodes ago. I mostly just want to mention that, if you want to know her character's fate, read To Dream in the City of Sorrows. It's a good book; not great, not really able to stand by itself aside from the show, but certainly better than most of the tie-in novels.

With season 1 over, will I continue to season 2? Not immediately. The real-world connections will only get stronger, and I'm not ready for that right now. Later? Maybe; we'll see.

Finally, I've been adding my CCG cards, and let's do that one more time. What choice could there be, but this one:

[gretchensinister]

Babylon 5 rewatch, S1 E9: Deathwalker

Please Kosh when is the "hour of scampering." Can u send me a teams invite.

I don't think I remember this episode, I really don't know why it was ON SIGHT with Na'Toth vs. the person she called Deathwalker

All right, so multiple species know about Deathwalker, but Sinclair and Garibaldi don't associate this person on B5 with that name.

Looks like Talia figured out when the hour of scampering was

"Understanding is a three-edged sword." -> Child me pondering deeply

I missed weird hat guy's name but I doubt he's human

She was carrying around her old uniform from her war crimes

G'Kar has MANY people he has to kill on sight???

Everyone is trying to get Deathwalker...and not to arrest her it seems

So she was with a group of Minbari called Windswords...and the hole in Sinclair's mind gets brought up again.

When is the hour of longing, Kosh???

Lennier...baby nerd monk vibes...

Well this immortality serum is really just a way for her to toy with people isn't it.

Good point Garibaldi! And he's right to be suspicious, I think I do remember what's going on with that serum.

Those are such intense contacts in her costume, I'm continually impressed by the alien face makeup in this show.

Kosh what are you doing and why

Interesting, that exchange about the Minbari keeping the secret of Deathwalker, because if I remember correctly the concept that Minbari don't lie comes up in several other circumstances

Love seeing all the different-shaped ships, bad circumstance tho

Sooooo shady Kosh

That was the thing! One immortal requires one murder. I remember this now

Kosh you have been shady this episode but thank you for being a deus ex machina for this horrible project paperclip situation

The Vorlons are wary of telepaths oh BOY that is hardly the whole story about Vorlons and telepaths

[ooksaidthelibrarian]

Babylon 5 Rewatch S1E5:  The Parliament of Dreams

man I love the Drazi so much

dude, Garibaldi is testing everyone's faith

I am so sorry but the B5 romantic music to me is always like *air raid sirens* this will be a problem

I really like Catherine, mind you, it's not about her, but so many stories featuring that music end so badly :D

please tell me this is a real pig's head

(read more because this got long)

it's certainly live crayfish he has there (I hopes someone gave them a good home after, they are such neat little guys)

jeez this episode has so much going on

Andreas Katsulas has a great singing voice

I bet the 'you stay put' was ad libbed LOL

NA'TOTH

iirc the actress of Ko D'ath was allergic to the makeup so they ended up having to change out G'Kar's attachés but it works out extremely for this plot

'Catherine's on board' 'Ah.' ...that Ah had a looooot of words

that whole scene at the Cenauri banquet is so quotable

Garibaldi IS cute in an annoying sort of way

'but in purple, I am stunning!'

I really appreciate it that Sinclair and Catherine get to be adults about their reelationship

it's awkward af but also extremely relatable

'I let you and your pants get to your business' LOL

speaking of pants, Catherine's outfit is hot

G'Kar's pyjamas are iconic - I bet Khan Noonian Singh would love those

the iridescence of G'Kar's costume is so pretty

LENNIER :D :D

I once quoted the 'you will be forever walking into things' line in a fic and so far only one person picked up on it :D

Andreas Katsulas always toes the line of ridiculously over the top with G'Kar and it works extremely well - G'Kar just is a dramatic dude

this episode is a really great showcase for the chemistry the cast has with each other

G'Kar switching out his lil religious tomato out with Ivanova's in the background

the way Katsulas uses the panties as a prop to gesture with is so good :D

THE GLASSES OMG

Na'Toth is such a good liar :D

'You will know pain. You will know fear. And then you will die. Have a pleasant flight!'

otoh of course humans are again the only ones where the culture isn't a monolith but otoh I do absolutely love that scene of Sinclair showing all of the different believes of Earth