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Don't you just love it if you make time during your vacation for a professional appointment, and the guy in question doesn't show up? But in enough about RL woes. On to fan life delights.
Having had unexpected time online at my hands, I discovered that life for the X-Men fan in me is good.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
c_elisa wrote a fascinating Five Things… for the time during which Xavier and Magneto were building Cerebro; penknife wrote a heartbreaking post-X2-vignette for poor Charles; and artaxastra wrote a breathtaking story about… how to sum this up? Well, movieverse fans like myself, who know little or next to nothing about comics canon (though inspired by andrastewhite, I got better and aquired at least God loves, Man kills) only found out white comments from other fans that in the comics, Mystique is Nightcrawler's mother. Which adds a fascinating layer to their scene in X2 which is great anyway (you know, the one where she replies to his question why she doesn't stay in disguise all the time - "because we shouldn't have to"). artaxastra in her story provides an explanation on how movieverse Mystique came to be movieverse Nightcrawler's mother, and moves effortlessly between times - Kurt and Charles post-X2, Kurt's childhood memories, Mystique who isn't yet Mystique and Erik shortly after they met, and each character is so vividly drawn that you kneel in virtual adoration here. You know, each time I think I'm in danger of coming close to OTP territory with Xavier and Magneto, something like this happens to remind me that I adore Mystique and her relationship with Magneto as well. I'm so glad of her increased role in X2, and the fanfic this resulted in.
Apparently some people over at Kansas doubted the suitability of darkfic for Farscape. Colour me stunned. Butsearose, astrogirl2 and andrastewhite said it all in their respective ljs, and so I shan't. andrastewhite's post, however, reminded me of something else I've been pondering for a while. There are ensemble shows which nonetheless have a definite pov character - in the case of Farscape, it's John Crichton, and when we get an episode like Incubator, which takes us into Scorpius' pov, or The Choice, which is mostly Aeryn's pov, with Crais, Stark and Rygel as the chorus to her Greek tragedy, it's a noticable break with the usual narrative. Similarily, Buffy and Angel are ensemble shows but there is no question around which characters they are centered. Yes, of course there are more than enough fans who watch primarily for Wesley/Spike/Xander/Giles/Whomever, but that doesn't change the way the main narrative is written.
On the other hand, you have ensemble shows without such a distinct central and/or pov character. For some reason, the two examples which come immediately to mind for me are both shows with space stations, not space ships as their prime location. (Though one could argue Firefly is/was a show without a central pov, but then we never got an entire season, and Mal might have become as dominant as Buffy, Angel, John Crichton, Picard etc.) Benjamin Sisko is the commander - later the captain - of Deep Space Nine, but by no means did he have a central position in the narrative comparable to Crichton/Kirk/Picard/Janeway. At most you could say that the show starts with a Federation pov, but even this is quickly dissolved as we get episodes and storylines from Bajoran/Ferengi/Cardassian/Trill/Odo (can't write "Founders" here)'s pov. Sisko is important, but he's not our window into the world presented. Arguably O'Brien, carrying on and enlarging his "Everyman" role from TNG, and Bashir (as the greenhorn and later as the voice of humanism in an increasingly brutal environment) are more likely to be pov characters for the viewers, but then again you have the Ferengi, who might not look human but are used by the writers to represent quite a lot of 20th-century human traits, and to comment on the Federation. Then there's Odo, carrying on the "outsider-as-audience-favourite" tradition in Trek otherwise represented by Spock, Data, and the Holodoc.
When you look at Babylon 5, it gets even harder to find out a pov through which the story is told. The most obvious symbol for this would be the opening narration, spoken by Londo in the pilot, Sinclair in the first season, Sheridan in the second, Ivanova in the third, every regular in the fourth, and pretty much everyone on the show in the fifth.hobsonphile a while ago wrote about the uncritical elevation of John Sheridan in The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, and she had a point, but even though Sheridan is clearly the closest thing to a conventional hero/leader the show offers (and in the first season Sinclair), we don't see the events of B5 unfold through his perspective, nor does he have the same narrative weight Kirk or Picard do. JMS once called the Londo and G'Kar arc the "heart" of the show and said that if he had to pick one character whose story B5 tells, even though it's not a one-character-kind of show, it would be Londo. And yet even Londo and G'Kar, crucial and important as they are, are not really given more screentime than, say, Garibaldi and Delenn, whose stories are equally told and developed in the space of five years.
It occurs to me that multi-character-povs, fascinating as they are, might have something to do with lesser popularity. I mean, I love DS9 best of all the Treks, and Babylon 5 remains the show I admire most in terms of writing ambition (yes, there are better-written shows, and no, it's by no means perfect, but I can't think of another show which went for a five-year-arc (or rather, several arcs) and managed to do just this, with a single writer being responsible for two seasons in their entirety, one season in its entirety save one single episode, and the majority of episodes in the first two seasons). But neither of them has ever been as popular in terms of ratings and wide audience success as shows with a clear pov character, or lacking that a clear central character. Easier on the audience?
Having had unexpected time online at my hands, I discovered that life for the X-Men fan in me is good.
c_elisa wrote a fascinating Five Things… for the time during which Xavier and Magneto were building Cerebro; penknife wrote a heartbreaking post-X2-vignette for poor Charles; and artaxastra wrote a breathtaking story about… how to sum this up? Well, movieverse fans like myself, who know little or next to nothing about comics canon (though inspired by andrastewhite, I got better and aquired at least God loves, Man kills) only found out white comments from other fans that in the comics, Mystique is Nightcrawler's mother. Which adds a fascinating layer to their scene in X2 which is great anyway (you know, the one where she replies to his question why she doesn't stay in disguise all the time - "because we shouldn't have to"). artaxastra in her story provides an explanation on how movieverse Mystique came to be movieverse Nightcrawler's mother, and moves effortlessly between times - Kurt and Charles post-X2, Kurt's childhood memories, Mystique who isn't yet Mystique and Erik shortly after they met, and each character is so vividly drawn that you kneel in virtual adoration here. You know, each time I think I'm in danger of coming close to OTP territory with Xavier and Magneto, something like this happens to remind me that I adore Mystique and her relationship with Magneto as well. I'm so glad of her increased role in X2, and the fanfic this resulted in. Apparently some people over at Kansas doubted the suitability of darkfic for Farscape. Colour me stunned. But
searose, astrogirl2 and andrastewhite said it all in their respective ljs, and so I shan't. andrastewhite's post, however, reminded me of something else I've been pondering for a while. There are ensemble shows which nonetheless have a definite pov character - in the case of Farscape, it's John Crichton, and when we get an episode like Incubator, which takes us into Scorpius' pov, or The Choice, which is mostly Aeryn's pov, with Crais, Stark and Rygel as the chorus to her Greek tragedy, it's a noticable break with the usual narrative. Similarily, Buffy and Angel are ensemble shows but there is no question around which characters they are centered. Yes, of course there are more than enough fans who watch primarily for Wesley/Spike/Xander/Giles/Whomever, but that doesn't change the way the main narrative is written. On the other hand, you have ensemble shows without such a distinct central and/or pov character. For some reason, the two examples which come immediately to mind for me are both shows with space stations, not space ships as their prime location. (Though one could argue Firefly is/was a show without a central pov, but then we never got an entire season, and Mal might have become as dominant as Buffy, Angel, John Crichton, Picard etc.) Benjamin Sisko is the commander - later the captain - of Deep Space Nine, but by no means did he have a central position in the narrative comparable to Crichton/Kirk/Picard/Janeway. At most you could say that the show starts with a Federation pov, but even this is quickly dissolved as we get episodes and storylines from Bajoran/Ferengi/Cardassian/Trill/Odo (can't write "Founders" here)'s pov. Sisko is important, but he's not our window into the world presented. Arguably O'Brien, carrying on and enlarging his "Everyman" role from TNG, and Bashir (as the greenhorn and later as the voice of humanism in an increasingly brutal environment) are more likely to be pov characters for the viewers, but then again you have the Ferengi, who might not look human but are used by the writers to represent quite a lot of 20th-century human traits, and to comment on the Federation. Then there's Odo, carrying on the "outsider-as-audience-favourite" tradition in Trek otherwise represented by Spock, Data, and the Holodoc.
When you look at Babylon 5, it gets even harder to find out a pov through which the story is told. The most obvious symbol for this would be the opening narration, spoken by Londo in the pilot, Sinclair in the first season, Sheridan in the second, Ivanova in the third, every regular in the fourth, and pretty much everyone on the show in the fifth.
hobsonphile a while ago wrote about the uncritical elevation of John Sheridan in The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, and she had a point, but even though Sheridan is clearly the closest thing to a conventional hero/leader the show offers (and in the first season Sinclair), we don't see the events of B5 unfold through his perspective, nor does he have the same narrative weight Kirk or Picard do. JMS once called the Londo and G'Kar arc the "heart" of the show and said that if he had to pick one character whose story B5 tells, even though it's not a one-character-kind of show, it would be Londo. And yet even Londo and G'Kar, crucial and important as they are, are not really given more screentime than, say, Garibaldi and Delenn, whose stories are equally told and developed in the space of five years. It occurs to me that multi-character-povs, fascinating as they are, might have something to do with lesser popularity. I mean, I love DS9 best of all the Treks, and Babylon 5 remains the show I admire most in terms of writing ambition (yes, there are better-written shows, and no, it's by no means perfect, but I can't think of another show which went for a five-year-arc (or rather, several arcs) and managed to do just this, with a single writer being responsible for two seasons in their entirety, one season in its entirety save one single episode, and the majority of episodes in the first two seasons). But neither of them has ever been as popular in terms of ratings and wide audience success as shows with a clear pov character, or lacking that a clear central character. Easier on the audience?
