I've been waiting for a good excuse to use this icon

[lodessa]

The time structure as it relates to suspense in the show really reminds me of Catch-22 almost in it's oddity and effectiveness. The jumps in time and premonitions and everything would seem to detract from the suspense of the show. We know almost from the start that Mollari will become emporor and that he and G'Kar will literally be at each other's throats in the end. That Vir will also be emperor is revealed fairly early on. Sinclair and Delenn's involvement in the movement of Babylon 4 is partly revealed in season 1. Of course the biggest example of this is when Sheridan becomes unstuck in time (although of course that's a Vonnegut reference and maybe Slaughterhouse 5 is actually a better comparison and far more similar than Heller's book). In a single episode in the middle of the show we see the end. We see Lando as emperor, Centauri Prime in ruins and him possessed by the shadows, we see G'Kar come to find Lando and the fact that it is the Shadows and not Lando who fights back, that Lando wishes for death. We see Vir alive to inherit the throne, but more importantly for this discussion we are told that not only do they win against the Shadows but that Delenn and Sheridan have a son... they survived. At this point you'd think the suspense would be killed... but it's not. In some ways it heightens our anticipation, we want to see how it happens. And besides, prophecy and glimpses can be deceiving. "If you go to Za'Ha'Dum you will die"... and it's true and yet Sheridan returns from the place... just like Buffy and the Master and so so many other "fated" tellings in fiction. So the suspense of the story becomes, not just what will happen but how will what we know is to be come about, and what exactly does it mean in the proper context. Babylon 5 gives away the future like candy, and yet does nothing to diminish out appetite to see it transpire at last.


Icon meme stolen from aphrodite_mine:

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Q&A

✥ How many icons do you have total?
96
✥ How many can you have?
113

✥ If you could buy space for more, would you?
No. Honestly I'd prefer to have about 50-75, 30(0r 43!) is too few though.

✥ Do your icons make a statement about you?
I like pretty things?

✥ What fandom is featured most in your icons?
At the moment, Doctor Who.

✥ The second most featured?
Buffy

✥ What ship is featured most in your icons?
Bones/Booth

✥ How do you categorize your icons?
Fandom-Character/Pairing-Description of some Kind (occasionally the second or third part gets left out)

✥ Are your icons mostly made by other users?
Yes, but certain fandoms are mostly made by me (firefly, veronica mars)

Comments

[aphrodite-mine.livejournal.com]

Omg, the "every boy" icon just made me break out in Teen Girl Club.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

When I saw that icon I just knew I HAD to have it. Teen Girl Squad forever! Also I don't think you've seen the show, but Jack seriously does have a crush on every boy (and every girl, and every alien of in determinant gender).

[hamsterwoman]

LOL, your icon! Ivanova has the best expressions!

Babylon 5 gives away the future like candy, and yet does nothing to diminish out appetite to see it transpire at last.

Well put! BTW, is there a literary term for that -- revealing what will happen though not how it will happen? I was just thinking of that the other day... Seems to go well beyond "foreshadowing".

So, how far have you watched now?

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

She really does.

I don't know about the literary term... I feel like there must be and will have to check in my Glossary of Literary Terms when I get home (yes I have one).

I've watched the first disc of Season 4. So Sheridan is back from Za'Ha'Dum, Garabaldi is acting weird, they got kid of Kosh 2.0, and G'Kar just got his eye ripped out.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Adumbrate (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/adumbration) seems to have some of the meaning we are looking for but not specifically for the future.

[hamsterwoman]

Adumbrate is a neat word! (though etymologically it would seem to be just a fancy way of saying "foreshadowing") -- the "disclosing partially" meaning seems to fit. Cool!

Season 4, yay! The second half of season 3 is probably my favorite (well, all of season 3 is). "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place" might be my favorite episode -- or at least the particular scene (you know which one, with the intercut choir) haunts me to this day. And "Falling Towards Apotheosis" is the best episode title ever. (In general, I was very fond of Emperor Cartagia.) I like Sheridan much less in his "Sheridan the White" incarnation. And season 4 was tough on me because of Garibaldi, who had always been my favorite non-alien, acting weird, as you say.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'll see if you can come up with something better when I have my books on hand.

That scene... yeah it is pretty amazing. Emperor Cartagia is so amazingly well executed. Indeed, although I always was sort of ambivalent about Sheridan (or The Cowboy as I always refer to him when talking to my boyfriend). Also I still miss Talia and resent Lyta... although she is getting better. Still it's so good I just recommended it to a close friend who usually is the one to do the recommending.

[hamsterwoman]

Lyta has always annoyed me, not even for any specific reason that I could recall, but she just did. Because I started watching in late season 2 ("And Now for a Word" was the first ep I saw, which worked out really well, actually), I missed Talia on first pass (I think), and subsequently never particularly warmed up to her. Really, out of all the telepaths, only the masterfully creepy Bester was a character I particularly liked. (Something similar happened with Sheridan and Sinclair, I guess -- because I started watching when Sheridan was captain, I never really warmed up to Sinclair when I went back and watched the first 1.5 seasons, even though I now lots of people who watched the series from the beginning and prefer Sinclair to Sheridan. (The Cowboy is a good name for him. I'm actually quite fond of that aspect of him, because that makes him more human, but Sheridan the messiah rather gets on my nerves.)

B5 totally deserves being recommended to everyone, far and wide!

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Lyta just really lacks personality in my opinion.

Yeah I like Sinclair better myself, partly because I saw it from the start and in season 1 he isn't the messiah and it is different to see a real human person become the messiah as opposed to going back and seeing the messiah be human.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Lyta takes until . . . near mid season 4 to work for me. And the season 5 errr yeah (you are not there yet are you ^^)

I loved Talia, she just had so much more presence than Lyta . . . and this vulnerability that made me want to root for her and Lyta just comes off as very stiff, which I guess given she has one show where she removes one of my favorite characters and then comes back all creepy vorlon, maybe works for the character, but I never related to her as much (and I thought Tallman wasn't near the actress Thompson was).

Plus and the actress not left Ivanova/Talia woulda be more evident in the series, but after the actress left and given how they wrote out the characterft, JMS didn't feel Ivanova would jump in with anyone anytime soon.
Which is probably realistic but *sigh*

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Agreed on every point.

I mean we literally start the show with Talia's arrival. And then she vanishes into a puff of smoke halfway through the series? I hadn't realized it was actress issues, but that makes a lot more sense. She's beautiful and commanding and yes vulnerable and then we have Lyta who is somehow a little off and very off putting. In season 4 they are really working to make her a part of the show and more sympathetic... it's still hard though.

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

It was always his goal, too. If you read the JMS speaks sections of Lurker's Guide (which I did religiously through the original run), it was quite clear JMS was always trying to get people to focus on the journey by giving away the destination.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

It's so nice to have a show that the more you think about the better it seems as opposed to something that falls apart the more you look at it.


(Remember our list reasons we didn't trust Rob Thomas?)

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I remember.

To be honest, I never trusted Joss Whedon, either. Ron Moore came close, but that was only the first season.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

You can trust Joss to rip your heart out and step on it... that and great dialogue.

I started watching BSG while season 2 was airing so I knew fairly early on that it was going to go downhill and Ron D. Moore was not to be trusted.

[hamsterwoman]

If you read the JMS speaks sections of Lurker's Guide (which I did religiously through the original run),

Now that you mention it, I do recall something like that. (I'd read the Lurker's Guide religiously too, and every time I go to that site to check something I end up reading random bits for half an hour at least. It's almost as bad as Wikipedia...

[naufiel.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's so amazing for it's time. And if you find the quote page modeled after it in the resources section it's a horrid time sink.

[girlupnorth]

I might have mentioned it before, but this icon ^ is a thing of beauty.

*really likes your icons*

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It was my first Bones icon and it's still a favorite.

(also, I know I've mentioned how much I love the icon your using but I feel the need to say it again)

*mutual admiration*

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

I think I loved that about B5. It spoiled itself but it didn't. Often I'll skip to a book because wondering how the heck it will end actually distracts me from enjoying reading it.

So with B5 I get the ending and then the mystery is "WHA!!!!! How do they go from A to B and WHAAAA!!" which is then why you tune in epiisode to episode.
It was, I think brillant TV plotting because you need to give a reason to tune in each episode and that was it. yeah you wanna know how G'kar ends up Strangeling Londo? Watch!
And even better though . . it's never quite what you think.
I mean when they first revealed that deaths of G'Kar and Londo I sooooo did not expect it to be what it was. I took it at face value.

And I do think for me, especially with a TV show, that kinda pacing works better. In fact that was one of the issues I had with BSG. There are very few mysteries worth devoting 20+ hours of my life to, so I don't care enough about who the 5th cylon is to watch the show. If I ever really can't stand kowing, I can just google it end of season 4. In seconds. Mystery sloved, so I really got kinda board with it.

Versus knowing Sharon was a cylon in the first season, which made her arc interesting because I know (though I sitll wish it was more "strongly suspected" than flat out know) and I wanted to see what was going to happen to her 0.o. That held my attention.

Plus the answers usually aren't satisfying if the mystery builds itself up too long, which happens with TV shows because you have to wait. No way was there any mystery with a shocking enough reveal in B5 worth a whole 5 seasons build up and hype. Even Sinclair being Valen, which knocked my for a loop, would been kinda "that's it" at the end, or even guessable, as a lot of Harry Potter was given how much time we had to speculate EVERY possible little thing to near death.

Just like, I'm pretty sure, no matter *who* the 5th cylon is, it's gonna be anti-climatic because there's no way you meet up with the hype the fandom's built up. I think Dark Tower had kinda the same problem too. There was too much anticipation built up for the ending and King just can't live up to it because . . I mean you can't. It's not possible I don't think 0.o

Soo ummm yes, I think building a story around small mysteries and answers and how the character deal with those answer is what makes B5 work so well, and what really makes it such a good character piece too.

Also
Roslin/Zarek is so much the more fun than Roslin/Adama.
I'm just saying *L* *wink*

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Interesting you picked BSG as a comparison point because I was just decribing B5 as the anti BSG to a friend today... in that BSG had all this energy but fizzled and B5 is masterfully plotted and executed. It is everything that BSG is not.


Also I totally thought I was the only person to want to ship Roslin/Zarek... which I agree is totally fascinating.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

I think for me the show BSG is most like is Millennium in terms of having this first season that really feels like a whole other show from the third season but no happy organic way that it got there.

I think the difference really is Babylon 5 was modeled after a novel, where as most prime time doing arcs these days, including BSG, seem more modeled after Soap Operas or comics. Little arcs are good within themselves, but if you try and piece 'em together, make a bigger picture. So rather than doing single stand alone episode, it's like getting 8 stand alone episodes. Which works on some shows, like House, but not on BSG (at least for me), because I think BSG wants to have B5's arc, but didn't plot for it.


Also I totally thought I was the only person to want to ship Roslin/Zarek... which I agree is totally fascinating
Oh gosh and colly no you are not!
bondage_rz it's small but it's there. I'm not even into NBG as a show anymore and I'm still in this ship *blush* (you note the fanart? pimp pimp *L*)

. . in fact that is a small probably part of why I got so irritated at the third season. Roslin as President and Zarek as VP and Adama is ranking Admiral and . . I get the Dee-Kara-Sam-Lee mess? Oh whatever!

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

OMG I LOVE YOUR ICON!


because I think BSG wants to have B5's arc, but didn't plot for it

Indeed... that is exactly it. There is supposed to be A PLAN.

I am sort of having hopes that now that they are going to end the damn thing they can stop messing around with extremely inorganic relationship crap and roadblocks and actually go somewhere cool. I'll be watching it either way because the boyfriend has a higher tolerance for BSG's problematic crack than I do.

I feel like my shipping frustrating in season 3 of BSG is very much like the frustration I always faced in Harry Potter fandom because I thought the grownups were a lot more interesting than the teenagers. Technically the polygon is made up of adults but they are the youth of the show and I just find the scarred adults so much more interesting.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

There is supposed to be A PLAN

YES! I don't mind if the cylons don't have one, though I do prefer a somewhat more organized antagonist, but the writers either should have one or be episodic rather than epic 0.o

I'm hoping between the Lost backlash and BSG's floundering this is noticed.
I think the choice to end BSG 4th season is one of the smartest choice as it forces them to be tight witht he writing.

Really I think a lot of TV would help if more shows would take B5's approach. It's a good one. It's engaging. But right now there's this sorta limbo beween episodic and telenovel that we're stuck in and I think generally that's hard to make work.

Oh and of course B5 was even more bookish because JMS wrote so many of the scripts hismelf . . including the entire 3rd season 0.o


I just find the scarred adults so much more interesting.

Oh lord yes. I was strongly reminded of a show Fushigi Yuugi that was huge in anime circles when I was in high school and I never liked it. I loved the supporting cast bu the 4 major characters I could not stand. And it's really hard to watch a show when the more major characters of an ensamble not only don't click with you but annoy the living beejesus outta you.

And be so much a BSG fan if the focus were on the older adults because their lives fascinate me.

And yeah, this is very much like the HP fandom. The heck with the kids! The parents generation and what they went through is so much more fascinating in it's twists and turns. I mean all the young kids pretty much did exactly as expected, but Regulus betrayed Voldemort, Peter betrayed James, Sirius nearly got Severus killed, and did something so that Remus acutally thought Sirius might be a traitor (and vice versa!), Serverus loved Lily so served the Dark Lord as Dumbledore's spy, James and Lily married even though from all we've seen they were not close, Lily fell out with Severus . . . SO MUCH MORE FUN!

Oh speaking of the interesting adults, this drives me nuts.
Zarek was the legal president third seaosn rigth?
So he gave up the position he legally had in favor of Roslin, who was not even legally part of the government system . . because Adama was going to through arefuse tos upport him if not outright oppse him if he did not, right?

So the Vice President, legally president due to the President's absence, gave up the postion to another person because the military commander made him . . .

So that's a military coup isn't it? A bloodless one granted but it still is one. No one ever seems ot notice that.

See the odler BSG characters are so much more interesting! I woulda much rather seen all that play out than just that piddly seen in Collaborators *head desk*

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

But right now there's this sorta limbo beween episodic and telenovel that we're stuck in and I think generally that's hard to make work.

I think fear and uncertainty in the industry make it really hard for people to get out of this. They never know how long they've got. But I think that the advent of DVD releases is changing the genre... at least people are trying not to be episodic because they see the potential now. Hopefully, people will learn from the few who succeed to plan for the whole, but in such a way that sections can also stand on their own.

I remember my best friend watching Fuushugi Yugi when we were in high school. It always seemed a little over the top to me.

Yes, and HP parents generation stuff tries in so well with the BSG stuff because THEY SURVIVED THE LAST WAR.

I feel like Zarek's decision was slightly more complicated than just Adama made him. After all, obviously he has not had a problem doing things that caused him trouble with the government and military in the past. If he really believed that stepping down was the wrong thing to do he wouldn't have done it. He would have made a scene. But I think he's come to admire and respect Roslin and also to understand his own flaws a little. I think the decision was prompted by military necessity, but was in a lot of ways also about his growth. He felt guilty about his involvement with Baltar and I think the whole experience taught him not only things about himself but things about power. The whole part where he wants to deal with the secret trials and keep Roslin's hands clean to me seems like him saying that to get where he is he's had to sully himself past a certain point and he sees Roslin as not being that way still... which I don't know if is true, but informs his actions.

Obviously our perspective on things from the show's framing and own own fondness for Roslin skews the way we see things as well, though.

I was sorely disappointed not to see things play out more with him as Vice-President this season.