Links to all fanfiction I've written in various fandoms. That I'm admitting to.

( Alias )


( Angel the Series )


( Babylon 5 )

( Battlestar Galactica )


( Breaking Bad )

( Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( Citizen Kane )

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( Crossovers )

It‘s Candyhearts reveal time: this year, I got assigned a recipient who didn‘t provide any pairings or prompts and just signed up on „any“. Which gave me the chance to write about something which kept intriguing me more and more during the years despite them sharing not that many scenes together (though otoh sharing a lot of narrative themes): the relationship between Delenn and London.

Till our shadows blend (5335 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Delenn & Londo Mollari, Delenn/John Sheridan, Delenn & Lennier (Babylon 5)
Characters: Delenn (Babylon 5), Londo Mollari, Lennier (Babylon 5)
Additional Tags: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Guilt, Complicated Relationships, Missing Scene, POV Female Character
Summary:

Five conversations Delenn has with Londo Mollari through the years, and the truths they reveal.

redfiona99 asked me: how would you feel about a Roman AU for Babylon 5? (I quite like the idea of circa fall of the Republic but ...

This got my imagination going, but not to the fall of the Republic; it went to either the Third Century Crisis or later the Attila the Hun era instead, or maybe Justinian. Either way, it's tricky whom to cast the Minbari as, since they are canonically the most powerful of the space faring "younger" races - as Londo says, even at the height of the Centauri Empire, they left the Minbari alone - but there has to be something more powerful standing in for the Shadows and Vorlons, while the Centauri need to be still powerful enough to re-conquer the Narn with Shadow aid.

Preliminarily, I'm going with....

Minbari: Persians (The Sassanian Empire, to be precise)

Humans: Arabs

Centauri: Romans (naturally, but depending on whether we're talking Third Century or Fifth Century or Sixth Centauri, the location of Centauri Prime can be Rome in the first case and Constantinople in the other two)

Narn: Goths

Shadows: Attila the Hun

Vorlons: ???? (If you want to be mean, you can say Christianity)

I could also see the Humans as Franks (equally an up and coming power). Howver: the Minbari really need to be the Persians no matter which century you set the story in in a Roman AU because the Persians (or Parthians) for a thousand years were the one Empire the Romans, even at the height of their power, were forced to see at least as equals. The Romans and the Persians never managed to conquer each other, and it's highly symbolic that after a thousand years (Delenn's favourite time span) of duking it out or being in cold war, you have first one and then the other near victorious and then the newly islamized Arabs steamroll over both in the 7th century. (Well nearly steamroll over both, they didn't get Constantinople, and the Byzantines managed to regroup after a century, reconquer big parts and hang on for some centuries more.) Which is why my AU couldn't be later than the sixth century. And if the Minbari are the Persians, you have the problem that the Franks are far, far away and have no direct conflict with them, whereas the various Arab kingdoms, usually client kingdoms of the Romans when the Empire was powerful and in its decline getting more and more independence, did have conflicts with the Persians.


Babylon 5 itself is a problem. I'm tempted to go with Alexandria as THE multicultural city of antiquity and keeping that distinction well after it had no more politicial power, but it's a bit tricky to justify why the Goths should send a representative there. Well, maybe Theoderich really wanted good doctors and illegal copies from the great Library?


Anyway, I could see Sinclair and Sheridan as being (nominally) Roman governors of Egypt in present time who used to fight for their Arab kingdom of origin against the Persians in the past. Londo is a Roman (either Roman Roman or Byzantine Roman) at the start of the story aware of the utter pointlessness of his Senator position and the decline of Roman power and wishing for the past who gets sold on the idea that allying with these new barbarians, the Huns, is just the ticket to get the Empire back to full strength, and of course finds out how horribly mistaken he is, but in fact he's following tried and true later Roman policy of trying to play one nomadic warrior nation against the other. (Later, when he tries to fix what he's done, he has overtones of Aetius "The Last Roman".) The Narn/Goths are first exposed to the Huns (hence them ending up in Northern Italy and Spain to begin with), which is why Goth!G'Kar is an early warner who doesn't get listened to.

Delenn is a direct descendant of Aradashir I. i.e. a member of the Sassanid royal family, and a Zoroastrian, of course. She is on the track to becoming Queen of Queens but declines in favour of "pursueing her studies at Alexandria" while maintaining all sorts of important political connections to Persian generals and heads of influential families. This has long term consequences. (I could also see Delenn as Pulcheria, with Sheridan as Marcian, but then she's Roman, not Minbari.)
Pulcheria, but then she's not Minbari

Arab!Sheridan's breaking point when he declares independence: if it's the Third Century Crisis, can be at any point when the various Roman Emperors assassinate each other in dizzying speed. If it's the Fifth or Sixth Century, when it looks like the Huns could take over the entire Roman Empire, full stop. And then the Archbishop of Alexandria or Justinian himself wants him to kill all the heretics, at which point Arab!Sheridan breaks with the Church as well.

By the end of the story, the Huns are gone, but what was the Roman Empire has been irrevocably transformed, and many new kingdoms arisen. It is a new age, etc.


The other days

A day late, due to Darth Real Life. mssilverstar, I apologize. Well, first of all, this is highly subjective, and whenever I read other people's resplies to similar question, I'm reminded of that - what's aged for one person has remained fantastic for another, and vice versa. So, I make no claim to speak for anyone but myself. Also "has aged well" for me isn't the equivalent of "represents exactly the values I myself stick to today". And I'm drawing an arbitrary line at pre WWI media of all kinds. So, a selected but by no means exclusive number of media I find have aged well:

Media aimed at or marketed for primarily a young audience:

Book and film: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. As poetic and compelling to read and watch now as it was then. Morever, German kids lucked out in the film version because Christopher Lee dubs himself, speaking King Haggard in German as well as in the English original, which is why despite otherwise being usually a fiend for original versions I have a soft spot for the German dubbing. Christopher Lee speaking Haggard's lines in German = awesome.

Book: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Ende. Naturally, the original edition with the red and green letters and the illuminations at the start of each chapter. (There were some cheap editions around the late 90s, I think, in boring black print. Heresy!) I am fond of Michael Ende's work in general, but the Never-Ending Story, the book, is a particular favourite. (And the film was I think the first time I got really upset as a young reader because of the massive changes, including one that misses the entire point of the book. Not as upset as Michael Ende himself was, of course, but then if your wife while watching this has a stroke and dies, you won't be inclined to forgive the production team any time soon.) (At least poor Michael Ende himself didn't live to see Italian right wing extremists steal the name "Atreju" for their fascist enterprises. The man, a determined anti fascist and cosmopolitan, would have been horrified beyond belief. Given he invented the concept of the '"Nothing", which eats creatures of fantasy and transforms them into lies that poison our world, he might n ot have been completely surprised, though.)

TV Show: Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer, based on Michael Ende's novel, dramatised by the Augsburger Puppenkiste. I like the book, but I love the tv show, which I adored as a child and which is still adorable to me now. I find myself humming the Lummerland-Song even now. There's just something about those puppets playing out the story that live action cannot capture.


Media aimed at or market primarly for adults:

Film: The Kid, directed by Charlie Chaplin. Still my go to silent movie if I want to convince people who haven't seen one before of the greatness of the genre. It just works, even the surreal dream sequence, and I never get tired of it.

Book: Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge. Research has marched on (i.e. now it's doubtful whether it was Thutmose III who tried his best to erase Hatshepsut from history), but this novel from the 1970s is still my favourite take on Hatshepsut, and one of my all time favourite novels set in Ancient Egypt, full stop. And I cry like a baby each time when our heroine's rule is ended.

Film: Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean, script by Robert Bolt. Deserves all the accolades it ever got. Not just for the breathtaking cinematography but also for making its main character increasingly broken and neurotic and not a triumphant savior figure. Are there still things to complain about, from Omar Sharif being the only Arab actor playing a prominent Arab character onwards? Sure. But is the film stll gloriously shot ("moon shadows" included) and acted and scripted? You bet. (And Peter O'Toole should have gotten the damn Oscar.)

TV Show: Babylon 5. Since I did my most recent rewatch not that long ago, I can tell with some certainty. You can date the show, absolutely. (ISN is so a product of the 1990s, not just because of the CNN reference but because the entire human part of the galaxy seems to watch just the one news channel. Original Anna Sheridan's hairstyle is another case in point. And Ivanova/Talia never quite transgressing the line of deniability before she leaves, even though JMS went as far as he could in the day and age and we do get the unambigous "I loved Talia" later. And then there are the multiple "crazy lone bomber" plots, which at the time I did not realize must have been inspired by the Oklahoma bombing in the US.) But the overall show still holds up magnificently in its epic storytelling, with intersecting storylines and character developments. It really was, as promised, a "novel on television", and even decades later, I don't think I've seen something like the individual and the shared plotlines for Londo and G'Kar since. (BTW, I recently watched a retrospective on the show by a vidder on YouTube, which by and large I thought well done - though more human centric than I would have, but then that's my perspective on the show -, but what cracked me up was our narrator, when talking about the original pilot, The Gathering, saying: "The characters most different to their later selves in the show have to be the ambassadors. Londo is almost entirely comic relief, G'Kar is a villain, and Delenn is both ruthless and devious." Err. Ahem. Cough.) Anyway, it was the Third Age of Mankind, and I was there. The Name: Babylon 5.

As mentioned, this is just a selection, there are others, but these were the ones coming immediately to mind.

The other days

This year's contribution from yours truly was pretty obvious. It's the first time since my big B5 writing rush decades earlier that I've created a Londo and G'Kar centric story, though, and I found to my delight that my Londo muse hasn't gone away but turned out to be as chatty as ever. The sole problem after reading the prompts which asked for slice of life/and/or Londo and G'Kar teaming up against some sort of ghost (or other suitably spooky menace) was this: B5 has already done a canonical ghost story in Day of the Dead. Briefly considered siccing sci fi version of vampires on Londo, but again: canon got there first, sorta. I mean: the Drakh already do all the body horror, life draining and scheming in the shadows one could wish. (Err, fear.) Then I had a brainwave, from which the following story, set in later s4, emerged. Behold:

Repercutio (5196 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: G'Kar/Londo Mollari, G'Kar & Londo Mollari, Londo Mollari & Antono Refa, Vir Cotto & Londo Mollari
Characters: Londo Mollari, G'Kar (Babylon 5), Antono Refa, Lyta Alexander, Timov (Babylon 5)
Additional Tags: Trick or Treat: Trick, Episode: s04e15 No Surrender No Retreat (Babylon 5), Enemies to Friends, Character Study, Episode: s03e20 And the Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place, Episode: s03e06 Dust to Dust, Centauri
Summary:

Of all the ghosts to haunt him, Londo didn't expect Refa's. Or having to enlist G'Kar to get rid of him (again)...

Dear Trick or Treater,

we share at least one fandom, which is great, and I’m really grateful to you for writing a trick or treat for me. All the prompts are just suggestions; if you have very different ideas featuring the same central characters, go for them. Also, I enjoy a broad range from fluff to angst, so whatever suits you best works fine with me.



DNW:

- bashing of canon pairings or characters in general. By which I don't mean the characters have to like each and everyone - a great number of those I've nominated can be described as prickly jerks, among other things, and it would be entirely ic for them to say something negative about people they canonically can't stand - but there's a difference between that and the narrative giving me the impression to go along with said opinions.

- Alpha/Beta/Omega scenarios, watersports, infantilisation. Really not my thing, sorry.


Likes:

- flirting/seduction via wordplay and banter (if it works for you with the characters in question)

- for the darker push/pull dynamics: moments of tenderness and understanding in between the fighting/one upman shipping (without abandoning the anger)

- for the pairings, both romantic and non-romantic, that are gentler and harmonious by nature: making it clear each has their own life and agenda as well

- some humor amidst the angst (especially if the character in question displays it in canon)


The question of AUs: depends. "What if this key canon event did not happen?" can lead to great character and dynamics exploration, some of which made it into my specific prompts, but I do want to recognize the characters. Half of those I nominated are from historical canons, and the history is part of the fascination the canon has for me. ) However, if you feel inspired to, say, write Maria Theresa, space captain, and manage to do it in a way that gives me gripping analogues to the historical situations: be my guest!

How much or how little sex: I'm cool with anything you feel comfortable with, from detailed sex to the proverbial fade out after a kiss. Or no sex at all (case in point: several of the non-romantic relationships I nominated), as long as the story explores the emotional dynamics in an intense way.

( Babylon 5 )

( Matthew Shardlake Series )

( 18th Century RPF )


( The Last Kingdom )

( Josephus Trilogy - Lion Feuchtwanger )

Aka the animated movie which has now been released and is available in my part of the world via (paid for) streaming, for example on Amazon Prime. My unspoilery above cut verdict is that it's clearly a labour of love and a nice return to the B5 verse, but also due to its Sheridan-centric nature (which I knew from the trailer it would have) not something i'll be passionate about the way I am about episodes of the show focused on characters nearer to my heart. As to the other thing evident from the trailer, the fact this is a timetravel/multiverse type of story, this makes for some poignant scenes and two alt!verses which could be good set ups for fanfiction (one of them, I suspect, might also be the B5 remix JMS originally intended to do for the CW).

Other non-spoilery thoughts about the film:

Voice acting: since so many of our crew are no longer with us, I absolutely understand and support JMS using the characters with other actors voicing them when the alternative would have been to lose the characters as well. IMO, the most successful voice acting is by the actor speaking G'Kar. The actress for Delenn tries (Mira Furlan's accent included) but doesn't really do it for me. Garibaldi's voice actor is okay, Sinclair's and Stephen Franklin's are good. No Vir in the story, alas. No Zack (with lines, we do see him in ensemble scenes), either.

Animation style: takes some getting used to but evoked some nostalgic fuzziness in me by reminding me of the late 80s and 90s animation, which I suspect was probably intentional. The biggest benefit is of course that you can show the characters at different points in their lives without the inevitable drawback of rl human aging.

Music: Here's it's a thumbs down for me because the three composers while doing a passable job just didn't manage an equivalent to Christopher Franke's epic scores, and not having those (aside from a few quick musical allusions to the B5 theme(s) made me aware of how much the music contributed to the "feel" of B5.

Script: It's pure JMS, meaning there are touching and poignant scenes that feel just right (see above) and those who (imo) overdo it, corny jokes, actually witty lines, philosophical thoughts that land and those which don't, but never, ever, the sense of this being anything but something the writer is deeply passionate about and put his all into. I'd rather have an imperfect passion project than something that feels like an AI wrote it to continue a cash machine (looking at you, Secret Invasion).

( Now, onto spoilers! )

I'm currently watching season 2 of Carnival Row - for non-watchers, a fantasy series set in a vaguely Victorian/Edwardian AU with fairies and other mythological beings as refugees/minorities in fantasy!America (or Fantasy!Britain), and incidentally, I do love how the wings of the fairies really feel like an expressive part of their bodies -, and in s2, it turns out that Fantasy!Russia is in the throws of revolution. Where apparantly they went directly from the October Revolution to the Stalinist purges. (Where you can become an Unperson who has never existed overnight.) Guys, thought I, even George Orwell gave it more time in Animal Farm.

(Just as not to give a false impression, the series doesn't glorify fantasy capitaliism, either, not least because the faries, being refugees, get exploited as cheap labor.)

Anyway, this reminded me again that the Anglosphere seems to divide between bad revolutions (the Russian one, and also in most cases of fictionalisation, both in straightforward historical fiction and in fantasy or sci fi analogues, the French Revolution) and good revolutions (aka the American once, and also in the majority of cases the English Civil War one). Except that in sci fi or fantasy analogues, the later is usually not called a revolution, it's called a rebellion. Prominently in Star Wars, but not just there. Whenever someone uses the term "comrade" or "citizen", and it's a narrative product of the Anglosphere, you can bet this revolution will not turn out to be a good one, but it will be called a revolution.

Now I seem to recall that even old Adams and old Jefferson in their letters to each other post reconciliation referred to the event they participated in as "our revolution" - at least they're quoted this way in John Adams -, so it's not like there has always been an abhorrence to the term among native English speakers. (Being not one but a German, I have somewhat different associations with the two terms anyway. "Rebellion" to me implies it didn't succeed in the end, whereas a "Revolution" did succeed.) And of course I noticed that the latest Star Wars tales, most prominently Andor, do make an effort to complicate the Rebellion and show it as something consisting of different factions and starting in different ways from different causes. But it's baked in the premise that you don't have to consider whether or not compromise with the Empire is possible because the Empire is evil, and of course there won't be executions because this is Star Wars (and now it's Disney, too). I still suspect that by and large, English language sci fi and fantasy will continue to signal that Good Revolutions happen against Evil Empires which are uniformly exploitative, that at no point terms like Citizen or Comrade will be used by the good revolutionaries, and that we won't get to see the good revolutionaries as the people in power having to govern thereafter except possibly in a quick epilogue. Notable and glorious exception: The Expanse, tv version (since I haven't read the books), ( which has a spoilery and unusual way of doing things )i.


On another note, two fanfic links in different fandoms:

Babylon 5: Signa Ex Diris: which is a brief yet great AU take featuring a female Londo and Cartagia, and how Londo's fate would have played out then. andraste comes to an amazingly ic and logical solution.

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: So Wide A Sea: Galadriel at two very different and yet related points of her long life.

lightofdaye wanted a compare and contrast of Ezri Dax (DS9) and Elizabeth Lochley (B5).

Let's start with the obvious: what Ezri Dax and Elizabeth Lochley primarily share is that both characters were last minute replacements for show regulars in their respective show's final season, who came into existence because things with an actress playing a series regular did not work out for various reasons. As both characters had been very popular - Ivanova even more so than Jadzia Dax (which reminds me, I do wonder what would have happened if Nana Visitor had been the one to leave! Because DS9 without Kira is unthinkable...). This alone ensured a considerable part of fandom would resent the new characters, irrespectively from how well or badly they were written and acted.

Now, it's interesting that both shows used almost diametrically opposite narrative techniques to deal with this inheret drawback. DS9 went out of its way to establish Ezri as not simply being a Jadzia clone and devoted considerable screen time to her. She was given a different job (counselor to Jadzia's science officer, which reminds me, I don't think we ever found out who replaced Jadzia as science officer?). We got to know her pre-Symbiont family, the Tigans, and their background in an episode that was all about them. Where the last episode that had been Jadzia-centric without also being Worf-centric had been several seasons ago, Ezri in addition to the episode exploring her birth family got another Whodunit episode focused on her as the detective, this one co-starring former host Joran as Hannibal Lecter (it was very much the age of Silence of the Lambs) and an episode in which she had to counsel and prove herself to the show's most popular recurring guest star, Garak. There was a continous, unchanging relationship - the friendship with Sisko - and one relationship that turned out to be quite different from the one Jadzia had, with Worf, but had its commonalities and differences explored in great screen time detail. (And then there was the last minute romance with Bashir, which got so little screen time to develop that it never felt like the writers were either interested in it or believed in it.)

Meanwhile, JMS went almost the opposite way with Elizabeth Lochley. Technically, she got Sheridan's old job, not Ivanova's, but it was evidently the job Ivanova would have had if Claudia Christian had not left the show. There was no Lochley-centric episode to introduce or explore her the way there had been when Sheridan had taken over as station commander in s2; instead, she got introduced through the telepath story arc on a professional basis and through the confrontations with Garibaldi on the subject of her loyalties on a personal one, until the one episode not written by JMS but Neil Gaiman, Day of the Dead, which did more to flesh out Lochley's character and background than anything that had come before (as JMS himself freely admitted in the preface to the published script). The one relationship with a regular she was established to have had before her introduction to the show, with Sheridan, got as little screen time as possible; it's almost till thet last but one episode that the two of them share a scene and conversation which isn't about the plot of the week and feels a bit personal. Where Ivanova had been given key parts in the show's political arcs (both in the Shadow War and the Earth Civil War) as well as two popular romantic relationships (with Talia and then with Marcus, Lochley during season 5 had no screen time devoted to her personal life (this changes in Crusade, but we're talkingn about B5 here), and while she had a role to play in the telepath mini arc that dominated the first half of the season, she had no part in the Drakh/Fall of Centauri Prime arc dominating the second half. Her main scenes in the second half of the season involve Garibaldi's storyline and are a great pay-off to the hostility between them established early in the season, but they're still mainly about Garibaldi, not Lochley. In short, I'd say s5 goes out of its way to signal to the audience that Lochley isn't taking anything away from beloved regulars; she's the unexpected houseguest who keeps to herself most of the time, not the one insisting on sharing every conversation and choosing what's on the menu for dinner.

There are pros and cons to either approach. For example, my guess as to why JMS went out of his way not to give Lochley and Sheridan any one on one scenes together that aren't about station business is that he wanted to avoid even the whiff of a suspicion he was setting up a love triangle here between Sheridan, Lochley and Delenn, which in a season where there's already an emotional triangle between Sheridan, Delenn and Lennier, fair enough. (Not to mention that Sheridan/Delenn was the most popular relationship on the show, and Lochley really didn't need any shippery resentment directed her way.) Still, that meant, and my most recent B5 rewatch underlined this for me, that the Sheridan & Ivanova friendship, which had been one of the most endearing platonic m & f relationships on the show and brought out the best in either party, had not only disappeared along with Ivanova, but that Sheridan now shared personal screentime only with Delenn, what with Garibaldi having his Bester-caused off the wagon arc and Franklin also not given to hanging out with Sheridan, while Londo and G'Kar were busy with the unfolding tragedy on Centauri Prime, so the effort to not let Lochley intrude might have actually backfired and robbed Sheridan of something of his human warmth. Equally: given that one of the key ways in which DS9 made Ezri different form Jadzia was that Ezri had ended up with the Dax symbiont accidentally, had not been prepared for it and had not originally wanted the symbiont life, it made narrative sense to let the audience see Ezri Tigan's family and have her interact with them to explore whether and how Ezri Dax was different from Ezri Tigan. I have my problems with that episode, but not with the basic premise. Just as, to look at another Ezri episode, the idea of Ezri facing the challenge of playing Counselor to Garak, of all the people, is a good one - can't ask for a bigger challenge - but the execution...

All of this, btw, still didn't stop me from liking both characters. I thought making Lochley someone who'd been on the other side of the war was an interesting premise, as was her different relationship with Bester. She had great chemistry with Garibaldi, and both their initial hostility and the way she ended up helping him really worked for me. Day of the Dead, and the reveal of Zoe, the story of Lochley's youth and how it still haunted her was great. And I took the additional tidbits we were given about Lochley - for example, that she speeks a little Centauri - and used them in fanfic. And I loved all three of her Crusade episodes. Meanwhile, Ezri's scenes in the opening s7 three parter are just what the doctor had ordered to get me and Sisko out of post-Jadzia gloom, Nicole de Boer had a knack for projecting likeability, and the story with Worf worked on a "exes who don't get together again because they realize they're (literally) different people now, but people who know each other still really well and thus can be each other's confidants" for me. If there's ever a Star Trek: Sisko show the way there was Star Trek: Picard, I do want to meet Ezri again and find out who she has become in the intervening decades. Especially without the writerly pressure of having to present her in a last season situation.

In conclusion: not having written a multi season tv show set on a space station with a big ensemble and multiple storylines, I'm not sure what I'd have done when faced with the need to replace a popular character with only one more season to go, whether I'd taken the Ezri Dax or the Elizabeth Lochley solution, and whether all those things I as a watcher concluded should have been done differently would have occured to me as a stressed out writer. But these are my thoughts on a character comparison.

The other days

In a first for me, I just got served a complaint from the A03 that "The Archive Warnings are designed to inform users that they may encounter the following types of content: underage sex, rape/non-consensual sex, graphic violence, and major character death. We have determined that this work contains content that warrants the "Major Character Death" Archive Warning. If you prefer not to specify the nature of your work, you may use "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" instead. This warning indicates that you have chosen to opt out of the Archive Warnings system for a particular work, and lets users know to "read at their own risk".

The story in question was a decades old one, Five Things which never happened between Garak and Bashir (Star Trek: DS9), one of my better "Five things...", if I may say so myself. But thinking about it, they're correct, major character death happens in, gulp, not just one of these AUs. Now I'm not writing this to complain - "creator chose not to use archive warning" is an absolutely valid alternative (which I've now taken, because I don't want to warn for major character death in a "Five Things" story, not as a general refusal, just for this type of format) - but because the event reminded me how much fannish culture changed in this regard since I started writing fanfiction. I mean, when I started, there were what in retrospect were ridiculously apologetic warnings - for slash, for example, and yes, I did use them, too, back in the day for the very first slash stories I wrote - but otoh for a bunch of AUs which is what "Five things..." collections of stories were/are, which by definition explore things which never happened in canon, and which each are different from each other, well, it was common more than not that at least one of those things which didn't happen would include death. If I, as a reader, started someone's "Five things..." tale, I would not have been surprised in the slightest to see one of the main characters kick the bucket. (Unless they did in canon, then of course "how x survived" would be the given thing to explore.) Whereas today, evidently one does not expect this - at least not at the AO3 - if either the "Major Character Death" or the "Creator chooses not to use archive warning" are not employed. Okay. Noted.

Moving on to my other beloved space station, andraste has remastered and uploaded her wonderful Babylon 5 vid Brothers in Arms. (With the "Creator chooses not to use archive warnings" tag, because Andraste is smarter than me.) I love it as much as ever, and so will you, if you haven't seen it yet. (If you have, go rewatch! It's gorgeous.)


Brothers In Arms (148 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: John Sheridan, Delenn (Babylon 5), Susan Ivanova, Michael Garibaldi, Stephen Franklin, Jeffrey Sinclair, Londo Mollari, G'Kar (Babylon 5), Lennier (Babylon 5), Vir Cotto, Talia Winters, Lyta Alexander
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Embedded Video, Download Available
Summary:

"It's written in the starlight, and every line in your palm." A Babylon 5 fanvid.