#but he Loves Delenn

[therighthandofvengeance]

I think I found my new favorite adjective for John J. Sheridan:

[themostpowerfulmagicofall]

Idk what time period this is but idc - I love drawing them

[stardustinthesky]

They’re going to be out here? Yes. While we’re in there? Yes.

[valentinsylve]

Fuck/Marry/Kill Babylon 5 characters -- go!

[ddagent]

64 🙂

AU: Murder Mystery (63-64)

John Sheridan is a world-renowned private detective. He shot to fame by allegedly solving a case with an orange wedge and an ice cube - although John will always say it was good, honest detective work. He has since left the detective game, happily retired (not so happily widowed).

An old contact and friend, Jeff Sinclair, asks John to accompany him to the funeral of Bran Ryder. John isn't exactly happy to be at a Minbari funeral, after the explosion at the Black Star during his early detective days. But John finds himself drawn to Ryder's widow, Delenn. He says it's for comfort but Delenn is the first woman he's been attracted to since the death of his own spouse.

But before the funeral can begin, tragedy strikes: Ryder's body is missing. Jeff recommends John's reluctant services and suddenly he's back on the case, with a beautiful (yet suspicious) widow and a scared fifteen-year-old girl. And then the bodies start showing up...

Let's play the idea game: headcanons, photo sets, drabbles, oh my!

[thegetdownrebooter]

Mmm I see what you mean, but it's just that I see cis girl Kendall as having a very different relationship with Logan from canon Kendall, where she doesn't really need saving from her dad so much because he doesn't give a shit about her compared to Roman and Shiv. So her motivation would be more the ache coming from that lack, and I don't think she'd be able to convince herself that she's fine without his love or approval like Connor.

That said, she would still try to be outwardly rebellious and independent and that's probably what a lot of her relationship with Stewy would involve, but it just wouldn't work out because she needs to feel valued by her family and he isn't willing enough to play those games and let them take over his life. And yeah, I think she'd be put off by Tom being a suckup, kinda hating him for the same reason she's with him. It's just a push and pull of conflicting interests and emotions.

intresting.... i agree her relationship with stewy would be doomed because he isn't willing to play those games and would want her to tell her old man who doesn't even like her that much to fuck off, but still i feel like she simply wouldn't be attracted to someone like tom?? like, in my gut i feel like cis girl ken would have doomed relationships with headstrong men who come from their own money and don't need logan's approval because it's something she isn't familiar with and probably finds appealing in them. The downside is that those guys will eventually try to convince her to leave her abusive father behind fr both for her own sake and because they want to start a life with her but that quickly is the the beginning of the end in those relationships because ken isn't able to do that.

The thing is i personally feel like she would be miserable in a peter/caroline and tomshiv situation like, she would simply send tom packing like with jennifer in canon after tom meets logan for the first time.

[emperorcartagia]

nw: sic transit vir :)

[branmer]

laughing hysterically to myself right now over the idea of kedrunn discovering a shop that does mug printing on babylon 5 and getting a mug with branmer's baby pics printed on it akjdlsak

[mylittleredgirl]

"atonement" is one of my very favorite b5 episodes, because it explains so much about delenn and her choices.

lennier is wrong when he suggests that her choice to marry a human stems from guilt, because she undeniably loves that man, but the fact that she was in a position to fall in love with sheridan is directly related to what happened in the past.

she instantly and fully believed that sinclair has a minbari soul at least partly because it allows her to end the war. she places herself on babylon five, then personally takes up the mantle of prophecy over the objections of the grey council to become (almost) human herself. she sacrifices her body and her identity because she has spent her life since the war trying to make up for her mistake.

the reveal adds so much to specific earlier episodes as well as her general story. her fully traumatized response at the beginning of "soul hunter" makes so much sense now.

and the lady of the lake scene from "a late delivery from avalon"...

delenn believes she is responsible for the war because, in a moment of grief and rage, she ordered revenge that turned into a holy war.

"king arthur" believes that he started the war because, under orders, he fired the first shot.

and she takes excalibur from him—the king's burden, the symbol of both the tragic misunderstanding and his personal guilt—so he can be healed and given back his life, reborn into a new purpose.

it's perfect that the scene is silent, and that it's delenn's only scene in the episode. i only wish that it could have happened after "atonement" in the chronology of the series, so that this act of symbolic forgiveness could have been framed as part of her silent deliverance as well.

[conundrumoftime]

Fandom grandma tales: how I survived canon ruining two of the ships I liked.

(Written after a discussion with some of my TROP fan pals about how canon can break your heart re: shipping, and how fandom manages. There are spoilers here for the entire run of Babylon 5, and for one story JMS wrote after it. yes, that story. sorry.)

Babylon 5 was a sci-fi space opera show that ran from 1993 to 1998. It is sci-fi of the era of 22-episode seasons, of huge ensemble casts with characters who get their own B- and C-plots, with an effects and casting budget that doesn’t always match its ambition, and - something it was quite pioneering in, at the time - grand pre-planned story arcs. 

It’s the first fandom that I was involved with in internet spaces as it was running, or at least when its final season was (there’s Discourse and drama from earlier years that I missed). Its showrunner, J. Michael Straczynski - ‘JMS’ - was very active in (non-fanfic) fan community spaces, and you always knew exactly what he was thinking about things because he was part of the discussion around them. There was also fanfic, which he didn’t stop but didn’t go near on the grounds of legal liability for story ideas. 

Most of the fanfic in the early days as the show was airing was focused around two big ships, of which one was canon endgame (Delenn/Sheridan) and one was canon all-ends-in-despair (Marcus/Ivanova). I, as a teenager discovering a developing online fandom for the first time with all the overwhelm and excitement that causes (ask me anything about what reading fic was like before the days of tags/ratings/warnings!) got into Marcus/Ivanova and also into one of the minor ships, Delenn/Lennier.

Delenn/Lennier was never, ever going to happen in canon. This is obvious; it clashes with Delenn/Sheridan which was JMS’s baby darling OTP, the show’s big love story. Delenn is married for the later part of the show. Lennier is her diplomatic aide, is absolutely devoted to her, and they have a very intense mentor/student relationship, which it seems is kind of standard in their culture (when Delenn’s own mentor died she went briefly insane with grief and started a genocidal war over it) but is still Very Intense. He is canonically in love with her, but that’s as far as the explicit canon statements go.

However. HowEVER. Canon also gives us, for that relationship, some wonderful ship fuel. Lennier knows about every bad thing Delenn has done, including all the stuff she doesn’t/can’t tell her husband. He’s her link to her previous world and culture and stands by her even when they kick her out. She says at one point, “without him, I would stumble and fall and never get up again.” 

And then… we had Season 5, the final season.

Season 5, for various complicated production reasons, was operating a little outside of pre-planned story arcs and in this season the Delenn/Lennier stuff ramped up about three gears in one go. It was still very obviously never, ever going to be canon, and was almost certainly not intended by the creator (who wrote most of the episodes himself) to look like there was even anything there. At this point Delenn is married; any relationship with her aide would not only be going against the show’s OTP, but going against it in the sense where she’s cheating on her husband, and there is Just No Way JMS would have gone there. And yet! Season 5 gave us:

A scene where Lennier says he can’t stay, it’s too painful to be around her now she’s married, and she’s devastated and has the following conversation with her husband about it:

S: I got your message about Lennier. Is there anything I can do?

D [snapping]: Almost certainly not.

S: Is it because of me?

D: In part, I think so.

S: Yeah, I was afraid of that. Well, as we say back on Earth, three’s a crowd.

D: On Minbar, three is sacred.

S [slightly uncomfortable laugh]: Well, I don’t think I’m ready to handle that one, Delenn.

Delenn then calling Lennier back to the station to do some secret mission thing for her, which involves her sneaking out of her bed while her husband sleeps to meet Lennier in a darkened alley behind a bar, where she tenderly strokes his face and they have a whole conversation about whether her husband understands her or not.

A scene where Lennier comes back from his secret mission to meet both Delenn and Sheridan, Delenn goes to greet him with a hug, and Lennier does this very pointed step back and nod in the direction of her husband, and she pulls back and just sort of pats him on the arms instead. 

I MEAN.

But, the issue here is not what fans did about it but what canon did about it. Canon did the canon equivalent of dragging that ship outside and shooting it in the head. 

In the final few episodes of the entire series, Lennier tries to kill Sheridan, runs away in shame, and then someone finds his diary in which he’d been writing for ages about what a bad decision he thought Delenn had made and how her whole marriage was an awful idea. Even to this day, it’s fun/awful watching people go through a first-time watch when they get to season 5 and hit that. ‘Character assassination in the form of a diary’ was a whole thing for a while. It’s been 20+ years and the actor who played Lennier is stilll mad about it (not because of shippy stuff, but because he - correctly! - thinks Lennier absolutely would not have done that). 

What *fandom* did, on the other hand, was Fixed The Problem.

Delenn/Lennier was not at all a big ship when the series was airing, and for a few years after. Then the fandom dynamics started to change. With less pressure on what canon was going to do, it felt like fandom had more space to play around with things it didn’t do. Fanfic got less interested in trying to fit within the overall story being told and started spinning off in all its own directions. And *this* ship started getting bigger and bigger. People did really interesting things with it, canon divergence went in all directions, everyone wrote a fix-it story of some variety, some authors did a great series of connected stories based on an idea that Minbari have three genders, the quality of the writing has been brilliant. And I think without that absolute whiplash feeling of what happened in canon, there would never have been this feeling of “well I’m not having THAT” which led to all this.

We did not need canon! Canon had done its thing. And canon had broken our hearts enough ways with many of the other stories it told (entirely on purpose) and we weren’t just going to sit back and let it ruin us forever.

By comparison, the other ship I was into was Marcus/Ivanova. This is entirely doomed. Susan Ivanova’s love life is just perpetually doomed. The first partner of hers we meet is an ex who’s interested in getting back together, but then it turns out he’s just using her to infiltrate the station for the fascist terrorist group he’s secretly joined. Then she falls for an archrival of hers, Talia, who works for Psi Corps, the organisation she loathes most of all things - but it’s okay because it turns out Talia is starting to question them too! Maybe these crazy kids can make it work! They have one night together and then OOPS turns out Talia was being secretly controlled by a sleeper personality implanted in her by Psi Corps the whole time. Ivanova’s love life is doomed. 

So for two seasons, she has this sort-of-flirty, sort-of-bickery, sort-of-friendship going with Marcus, who is on the surface of it very much “why not fall in love at first sight like a true romantic, YOLO!” but it turns out is actually deeply messed up himself and full of survivor’s guilt and pain and, you get the clear impression, would have died of shock if she’d actually called his bluff on the OTT flirting and said “yeah, let’s go for it”. And then he sacrifices himself to save her life. It is a very tragic ending, it is absolutely the way he would have wanted to go, she wakes up both furious and absolutely distraught, says that the last thing she heard was him saying “I love you”, says she wishes she’d at least slept with him once, and says that in a way all love is unrequited. PAIN. 

So, lots of fix-it fanfic, lots of ‘Marcus comes back to life’, lots of canon divergence AUs where he doesn’t die and they live happily ever after and both get over their huge levels of unresolved pain. Pretty standard for that kind of pairing. And as a pairing it doesn’t get in the way of any big canon pairings, it doesn’t imply anything icky like mentor/student power imbalances or adultery. And JMS clearly quite liked it. So that’s better, right?

NO. It was WORSE.

JMS wrote an Marcus/Ivanova story himself, published in one of the sci-fi magazines, to try to give them a happy ending. This happy ending involves Marcus, many many years in the future, waking up from the cryogenic suspension he’s in (it’s sci-fi, keep up, keep up). Ivanova is long dead, but he isn’t about to let this get in the way, so what he does is to *create a new Ivanova* by getting some kind of DNA + computerised memory/personality bank thing, finding a doctor who will clone her, putting himself back into animated sleep until the clone reaches the age Ivanova was when she died, then - THEN, I’M STILL GOING - takes her to a distant planet where, with her memories wiped and their spaceship having deliberately been crashed BY HIM so there’s no way back, they live out their lives in peace.

WHAT.

That pairing still does okay in fandom but it’s not really taken on a post-show world of headcanons and riffing on other people’s ideas and tropes in the way that Delenn/Lennier has (and we all just pretend that story never existed). 

So! This has been my experiences in the field of What We Do When The Show Has Thoughts On That Non-Endgame Ship We’re Into. Fandom manages. Fandom will see you through. And in the words of Susan Ivanova:

Babylon Five was the last of the Babylon stations; there would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, for if we don’t, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings - even for people like us.

[glacial-coyote]

I really need to yell for a hot minute about a specific scene from the Babylon 5 episode Messages From Earth because it is a masterclass in storytelling via themes and subtext.

Sheridan is confiding in Delenn how when he was younger he couldn't sleep before his big exam, because he needed the sound of rain. Delenn's first question is, "and did it begin to rain?"

This is exactly what the Minbari religious caste ethos is based around. A few episodes earlier in Confessions and Lamentations Delenn is comforting a Markab child with one of her own childhood stories. She explains after being separated from her parents in the city that her response was to sit in an old temple and wait, because she believed they will find her. And they do. Because for the Minbari, as they say, faith manages. Their love and trust for one another and the goodness in the universe is what drives them.

But as Sheridan explains, for him it didn't rain. There was no divine intervention. Instead, his father goes out to the garden and sprays water onto the roof to simulate rain. His love and dedication to change fate itself for his son is the human ethos. Overcoming the odds for love, to take control of your own destiny.

In this one scene reflecting on a childhood memory, and with Sheridan once again in a stressful situation that brought it out of him, we see both his vulnerability and a reflection of the Minbari vs human ethos towards meaning and value. We learn so much about who they are as people and their different cultures, through stories and actions.

Sheridan confides, and Delenn makes the computer simulate rain noises. He reaches out for help from a loved one, and she shows him a kindness in his own language.

And none of this is said explicitly.

[therighthandofvengeance]

nobody is the president of their wives’ fanclub quite like John J. Sheridan

[gretchensinister]

Babylon 5 rewatch, S1 E20: Babylon Squared

I'm STOKED for this, I remember loving the Babylon 4 stuff

Sinclair and Garibaldi being morning-people trolls to Ivanova (fucking around with perception of time--thematic???)

Oh he ded

Ooh, such pretty spaceship controls in the Minbari ship

B4!!! I like how Garibaldi can say so casually that it vanished without a trace because that is FUCKING WEIRD

Yes, command staff, this DOESN'T just happen. I mean, it's only the first season, I think they should be freaking out a little bit more about this.

I wonder if their different colored uniforms are for their different squadrons, or ranks (or what the costume department had)

This episode is reminding me that the command staff is like...not that different in age from me, now.

Okay enough of those thoughts it's time for the Grey Council

It's TIME FOR RESPONSIBILITY.

I do remember the line "prophecy will take care of itself"

I know Delenn will get out of this adroitly, after the soul hunter and the body snatching and the unauthorized trip to Epsilon 3...she has a brand of bonkers that can only thrive on Babylon 5

Okay, the guns don't make marks on inanimate objects, which is good when you want your station to not get holes in it, but how do they actually work?

Delenn: Well what if I just say no?

ZATHRAS hi Zathras

If Babylon 4 was the largest Babylon station then I guess they scaled down a little bit for B5 after B4 just disappeared

I remember this...I think...that person in the space suit isn't who we're meant to think it is at first?

Of course you got whammied, man

Yes, Delenn, how are you going to continue to study humans? 👀

"Either way, is bad for Zathras." Yes, I remember this also

Man, this B4 Commander is CHEWING the scenery

Sinclair: Shit, destiny again?

Oh no it was who I thought it was in the space suit. I mean, I couldn't have guessed when I first watched it, but it's who I remembered.

TRILUMINARY

Every species on Babylon 5 is living in a slightly different genre

[stardustinthesky]

The Sleepwatching Ritual (Vit’wa Fal) │ Night 3

It matters to me a great deal that we finish this, John.

[woodsfae]

B5 s04e03 The Summoning previous episode - table of contents

OK. I saw a spoiler saying that Lyta blew up a planet with her mind. And now every episode I'm like "IS SHE GOING TO BLOW UP A PLANET NOW" and she hasn't done it. This episode title isn't exactly planet-explosion material to me. And also, planet-exploding sounds like season finale type of shit to me. But I'm getting very impatient for the planetary explosions.

Love Susan's new mission, but am worried that she's going to get picked off out there alone, like G'Kar. 

And she taught herself Minbari uh. To a degree. lol!! Assigned translator politely, but firmly. 

"Tell the crew: anyone who laughs answers to me personally."

I am personally impressed that Delenn and Marcus both contained themselves. 

Wow, G'Kar is not having a good time. Ooof. fuckin. Too tragic! Give G'Kar a few wins to balance out the entire lifetime of extreme shit. 

Delenn voiceover after the credits. They are leaning hard on recapping every character's whereabouts at the beginning of each episode. I am assuming they didn't want the audience to be too lost if they missed an episode or two as it aired? 

Zack Allen is feeling authoritative! Telling Delenn what must be done. An unfortunately for my dislike of him, he is right, and they ought to go look for G'Kar. 

Londo got a haircut, looks like. That crest is definitely shorter. I find Londo and his storyline to be sad and tired. 

Torturers are unionized on Centauri, lovely. 

And this is an excessively awful fate for anyone, let alone one of my long-term faves like G'Kar. 

Vir: Emperor Cartagia needs to be stopped, but I don't know about regicide. Cartagia: Tried to chop G'Kar's hands off, lol. Vir: Londo, you have my murder blessing.

Zack Allen vs a rogue faction of PsiCorps? A Shadows-collaborating wing? 

not-Kosh has robbed Lyta of all but one of her belongings! Did he even let her keep a change of clothes? Everyone's got such unique problems. Lyta's is that she's being terrorized by a god having a meltdown over realizing mortality is a thing that applies to themself.

introducing the one, the only, psipuppet!Garibaldi. He has had repeated interest in PsiCorps and has investigated them, has contacts in them. I wonder if that's going to help him resist or anything.

Dang Lyta. I don't remember seeing the gills before. not-Kosh is a dick. 

Partner: "Dark Garibaldi! Dark Kotch!"

His memory of B5 is imperfect. 

fuck off, Londo. 

G'Kar won't oblige their oppressors...and he doesn't let a single hitch hit his voice when speaking with Londo, either. Speaks volumes. 

"I hope she appreciates it," & "Me too, *glances at Susan*" is toooo funny. 

There is no end to the drama Cartagia is into. 

The torture is gratuitous. The way G'Kar's story and later writing is handled is definitely my most major gripe. I don't find it to be well done for a lot of reasons I might write an essay about one of these days.

I'm afraid I don't have any theories about who was able to override B5's security. Sheridan? And reveal his escape in a dramatic flashback later? 

lol, yes. And to disprove Delenn's naysayers so immediately and firmly. 

Protester: "Captain we thought you were dead." Sheridan: "I was. I'm better now." 

Sheridan's plotline on the other hand really tickles my fancy. His legend is fucking wild, and now he's bartered for his life with the eldest of the elder gods, and returned from the dead and promised Delenn he'd do it again. 

Lorien is there! On B5! lmfao. I guess when you've hung out with two gods, fought and killed other gods, it ain't no thing to have the elder god hanging out. 

Oh fuck, the Vorlons destroyed an entire planet and it's 4 million inhabitants in order to remove the Shadows and their influence. That is an extreme position and escalation. It kinda just makes sense to me that this is an ideological struggle between the Vorlons and Shadows. That's a lot of lower order races caught in a really big vice. 

And the League knows much less about Vorlons and their weaknesses than the Shadows and theirs. 

epic! It is continually impressive how much this sci-fi feels like high fantasy, and how correct and exciting it is for the main characters to create their own great deeds that rival the gods and all their powers. 

Also....I cannot believe I was excited about planets blowing up at the beginning of the episode. I didn't mean blow up planets like that!"

and another!

[queer-geordie-nerd]

Okay, so @tossacointoyourhotmess and I have come up with an insane B5 theory - Lennier is Delenn and Branmer’s secret love child.

Hear me out - in Legacies, Sinclair asks Delenn how she knew Branmer and she replies “a long, close friendship,” but she says it in such a way and with a look that implies it was possibly very much more than that. So, they had a whirlwind romance when they were young, she got pregnant and placed the child in temple when he was born in order for her to become an acolyte to the Grey Council. Lennier did say he was raised in temple and before coming to B5, that was the only life he had ever known.

When she becomes ambassador, and when Lennier is old enough and has completed his temple training, she requests for him to become her aide so she can take him under her wing and mentor him the way Dukhat mentored her. Throughout the show, she shows a great deal of affection for him - she clearly loves him, in a not at all romantic, protective, mothering sort of way. Lennier being the naive young man he is, develops an odd, lopsided hero worship relationship with her and he convinces himself he’s in love with her.

At some point, after Delenn has married John and Lennier has left for Ranger training to run away from his jealousy, he discovers the truth - and then when he discovers Delenn is again pregnant, that’s when he finally snaps and not long after that, he tries to kill her husband. Not only has he discovered the woman he is in love with is actually his mother, but that she is carrying a child she very much intends to keep, and his jealousy becomes twofold - why is this child good enough when he wasn’t?