in which Jen reads... umm... 'fic.'

[rivendellrose]

Thoughts of the night, with thanks to ruuger for enabling me (thank you!):

1. There is no way to make cloning the woman for whom you've had an unrequited passion, putting yourself in stasis until she's an adult, having her memories up until the time that you 'died' implanted in the clone, and then marooning the two of you on a deserted planet and lying to her that it's an accident and that everything is normal and it is not, in fact, 332 years in the future not creepy. I'm sorry. That's just... just no. Freezer-burn of the brain is a horrible, tragic affliction.

2. Some words should never be written in any language. "Intimately touched by the Vorlons" is one such phrase. miss_arel: 'Show us on the doll where the Vorlons touched you, Sheridan...' Ack, my brain. I feel another nightmare coming on...

Fortunately, I'm getting really good at just reading things as fanfiction. Even when, technically, they're not...

Buffy Progress: "Killed by Death" and "I Can't See Anyone But You," or something to that effect.

Nano Progresss: Oh, right... that writing thing I'm supposed to be doing...

Comments

[zentariana.livejournal.com]

I don't watch those shows, but I must say - CREEPY. Was that fanfiction or really in a show? Cloning someone is usually creepy.
And wait, why would it be 332 years in the future..?

Hm. This is why I shouldn't read about any fandom not my own.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Long story. It was a short story written by the actual writer of a series. And yeah, very very creepy. The guy who did the cloning was put in stasis because he almost killed himself saving the woman he loved, and when they finally wake him up (300 years later) he decides it'd be a good idea to clone her. So that they can be together. Hence the marooning on the deserted planet. Hence my theory about his brain getting freezer-burned. *Pats poor Marcus on the head* I swear, he's never this crazy in the actual show....

Hehehe. Tends to be dangerous, yeah, especially when the person is being very vague. *g*

[beam-oflight.livejournal.com]

Ack poor Marcus and his addled brain.

You right, why would anybody put those things into words?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I don't know. But my brain may never be the same. ;)

Here... since I brought up bad thoughts, have something happy that I just found as a recompense. I feel the need to share the love. Random picture. No, really... very random. (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/4755/b5-bike.jpg)

[beam-oflight.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is amazing, and shiney and not the natural order of things ^-^

Now I can be happy for the rest of the day.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Thought you might like it. *g* It definitely brightened my evening.

[beam-oflight.livejournal.com]

It worked but then I forgot my work and got stressed out for the rest of the day :(

Are there any more like it?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

The latest post on universe_today has one similar pic for the 4th season (made into a possible header for the community), and I've got one more like that one with everybody flipping the bird at the camera, though the image quality on that one is kind of suck-tastic. I was actually trying to find a better version of one of those when I found this pic. I can send the latter to you, if you'd like to have it. oszras gave it to me, so I feel compelled to share the love. *g*

[beam-oflight.livejournal.com]

That would be great if it's not a problem, Thank you :)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

No trouble at all! It's on my home computer, so I won't be able to send til I get back this evening. If I haven't sent it to you by tomorrow evening feel free to remind me - I get kind of scatter-brained sometimes. :P

[beam-oflight.livejournal.com]

Me too and usually about the things that I really need to remember.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh yes. I am not much with the organizational skills, unfortunately. :P

[ruuger]

Freezer-burn of the brain is a horrible, tragic affliction.

Oh yes. Poor, poor Marcus...

(and for some reason it's always my favourite characters who end up doing creepy stalkery things)

Buffy Progress: "Killed by Death" and "I Can't See Anyone But You," or something to that effect.

Are you watching Buffy for the first time, or just re-watching?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Poor Marcus indeed. And you and me both on the favorite character thing... At least JMS seems to like Ivanova and Delenn. Otherwise, my favorites are poor Marcus, and Lennier. Bad track record, those two.

First time, though I've been pretty badly spoiled on a lot of stuff, and saw some later stuff out of order. Still very fun.

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

Freezer-burn of the brain is a horrible, tragic affliction.

Hee! Yes, exactly. It's also the justification I'm going with for why JMS would write that in the first place, because what. the. hell...

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. When he mentioned that story in an interview, I was kind of like "but... but... wait, this is a good thing how?"

Between Marcus and Lennier, I'm starting to think JMS has some kind of plot vendetta against the idea of unrequited love as a romantic ideal. He reeeeeeally wants to play up the dark side of both of those, it seems...

[lokapala.livejournal.com]

"I Only Have Eyes For You" . One of the best episodes in S2, imo, at least. But I guess that yo be really impressed by it one have to sympathize with Buffy (and Angel, as well, but primarily, with Buffy).

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I guess I must've crossed that line, then - I was impressed. It's nice to see her growing up a little. Beside that, it was just a fascinating episode, of course. Very well handled.

[theladyfeylene.livejournal.com]

Nano Progresss: Oh, right... that writing thing I'm supposed to be doing...

You took the words right out of my mouth.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I managed a little over a thousand last night... still obscenely behind, though. Argh. Hopefully I'll make up the lost time later this month.

[wakwaha.livejournal.com]

Yeah... that story is really messed up. I heard about it some time after I finished watching the series, but I didn't know exactly what happened, so I scoured ebay for a copy of the magazine it was originally printed in. I had a feeling that it was going to be kind of squicky from what I had heard, but I just had to read it and find out for myself.

I hate to say it, but it kind of reminds me of bad fanfic. You know, where the author jumps through all sorts of hoops to get things to turn out the way he wants, but then, after having achieved the desired result, doesn't spend any time actually thinking about the way the situation would really affect the characters.

You know that if there's an afterlife, Ivanova's yanking her hair out in rage. ;) And the clone of Ivanova on the planet isn't stupid; there's no way she wouldn't think something funny was going on. I bet she gets the truth out of him in two weeks, at most. Also, no matter how much you love someone, I can't imagine that being the only two people on a planet for the rest of your lives is really psychologically healthy. Probably the isolation would drive you nuts. I think the marooned-on-a-planet-alone thing probably sounds good to people if you don't think about it too much...

It's too bad, really, because I so wanted this Ivanova/Marcus story to go well. And yes, "intimately touched by the Vorlons" is hilariously creepy. :D

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean - I was thrilled when I heard that a story had been written to bring them back together. Until I found out how.

To be honest, all of those stories reminded me of bad fanfic, to varying degrees of bad. Some of them were the sort where, if I'd run across it in an archive, I'd think "wow, this person has talent," but I still wouldn't exactly call them anything approaching professional. Or even the quality of the better fic writers I've read for this or other series. I get that with published novels sometimes, though, so maybe my standards are too high. This is what comes of being a literature major and avid reader, I guess. :P

You know that if there's an afterlife, Ivanova's yanking her hair out in rage. ;) Oh hell yes. And I pity poor Marcus when clone!Ivanova figures out what's going on - if she's got Ivanova's mind and memories, she will figure it out, and she is going to be royally pissed, and likely to make his life a complete hell for doing such an asinine thing. I really can't see her easily forgiving him for this... or, to be honest, forgiving him at all. To be honest, I think she'd probably either stalk off alone and kill herself, or spend the rest of her days trying to get off the planet and ignoring him. I mean... "I made you a resurrected, out-of-place clone and marooned you here in the middle of nowhere with no one else and nothing to do for the rest of your life because I love you"? Would totally not fly with someone like Ivanova. She'd be miserable in a situation like that. I could see her at some point demanding that he fix his own damned mistake and kill her. Which of course he couldn't do. There is just no way to make this situation work well, I don't think. Not and stay true to the characters.

The only solution I've ever seen for them is for Marcus to be revived sometime reasonably soon after "SiL." The difference between thirty-six or so and fifty-some really isn't that much, especially in the future, and with Minbari technology in the offing. And it's not a perfect ending, because they'd still both be them, and that alone causes enough problems to be getting by with. *g* But then, I'm a hopeless romantic who plugs her ears at the slightest mention of the Telepath war and still flatly insists that one day a few years after "SiL," Delenn just sort of walked out into her garden and found Lennier there, waiting for her. The four of them can be all angsty and screwed up together. ♥

[calesabre.livejournal.com]

#2 is hilarious. :)

Re: #1: JMS is an evil man. I can't believe he truly loves his characters the way a good author should. Even without the creepy aspects...what on earth makes him think that Marcus would be happy with a clone? A clone is NOT Susan Ivanova, no matter how many memories she may have. Marcus may have been a romantic, but he was also a realist with bitter losses in his past. If he isn't going to be satisfied with her memory after she dies in a way fitting for a warrior, no way is he going to be satisfied with a clone. Now, if Susan's body were somehow preserved (like his) & she could somehow be revived, that might be another story...but even so, I can't see that he'd allow the woman he loves to suffer anything like waking up 300 years after all those you love (except one) are dead. He is NOT selfish. That is one thing that is proved again & again in the show, right up until the end.

And here's something else: JMS was not kind to Ivanova. He forced her to suffer for the rest of her life because of a disagreement he & Claudia Christian had. I don't want to get into that whole argument & who was right or wrong, but I do know that Claudia still loves B5, & would be willing to come back any time she's asked...like for Lost Tales...& JMS knew that even when filming season 5. He could have easily left out those things in the last episode that indicate that Ivanova never had a chance to revive Marcus & was haunted by his death for the rest of her life. That level of grief & guilt...does not indicate to me that JMS cared about Ivanova in the end...

I know, I'm being silly--but these characters are so very real to me I feel they exist beyond the confines of show or actors. I feel as those JMS was petty & allowed his personal grudge to interfere with the lives of my two favorite characters.

I don't think he's a very nice man. Or at least, not nice to his "children."

One last word. JMS said that the reason Marcus couldn't survive too was that this would cheat the viewers (presumably even if he were brought back) because there wouldn't have been a sacrifice of the level needed to counterweight Susan's death. But isn't the story in which Marcus makes a clone & they live "happily ever after" even more of a cheat, even by these very guidelines?

Sigh. Give me fanfic. I don't trust JMS with his own characters anymore.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

The rest of the night, I would occasionally hear those words in my mind and sort of... shiver and giggle at the same time.

I'm right there with you on thinking that the whole thing is very unlike Marcus. To be honest, I'd sooner imagine him committing suicide than creating a clone of Ivanova... hence my freezer-burn theory. That was not 'our' Marcus. That was a very sad, twisted man who serves as good evidence that people shouldn't be kept in freezers, however high-tech, for three-hundred plus years. :P

I'm of two minds on the thing with Ivanova (and the rest of the characters in general). On the one hand, there's an element of "kill your darlings" in this - a saying that's bandied around among writers, usually meaning "don't just keep something because you like it," but it also applies to being mean to your characters. A writer has to be mean, or nothing will ever happen in his or her stories. But the corollary to that, I think, is that you have to be mean to your characters in a way that still allows your audience to feel... hmm. Fulfilled? Not like you're a demon-god who just takes pleasure out of making people miserable? There has to be hope, and moments of joy/fulfillment/success enough to make the audience, if not the character, feel like the suffering was worthwhile. B5 being the sort of show where Bad Things Happen to Good People, that latter is probably the best we can expect. And I think we're meant to think that what we were given was enough. The Shadows and Vorlons left, we saw that humanity would some day ascend to their level (I'm not sure how we were meant to care about that, but it seemed that we were...), the Alliance and the Rangers survived, and Sheridan and Delenn were remembered as heroes. I get the impression that we're meant to think this means success, if of a slightly bitter sort. Not everybody succeeds, not everybody is happy, but the idea seems to be that we're supposed to take this as an overall 'win'.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of little bits to this that make me more than a little angry. For one thing, let's take a look at the three major female characters on the show. At the end, we're left with a bored, lonely Ivanova who's apparently still miserable over what happened with Marcus (which, granted, I don't blame her for... but after 20 years one would think she'd achieve a measure of peace, perhaps? Or, you know... work on getting him revived? Or find someone else? Or something? But no, all we have is her becoming the head of the rangers... who are apparently an organization that emphatically does not believe in leadership rising through the ranks, as we've yet to see an Anlashok'na who was actually a Ranger. Odd, that. Anyway. We also see Delenn, a hundred years post-Alliance, apparently living in exile and emerging only to appear on a latter day equivalent of Larry King Live purely for the purpose of an exceedingly short defense of her 80-years-dead husband.

Is it just me, or do these fabulous, strong, independent women seem, in the end, to have been reduced to having nothing on their minds but their men? I'm sorry - I don't buy that for an instant. I was happy to see that Ivanova still thought about Marcus, and missed him, but... umm... life? As for Delenn what the hell about that other guy who loved her?, I just can't believe for a minute that she'd let her world become so small as all that. It's a laudable move on her part, but I find it kind of disgusting that that's all we see of her at that point.

(And don't even get me going on "petty" writerly actions by JMS. I'm still more than half convinced that Lennier's bad end is nothing more than JMS thumbing his nose at Bill for the whole love thing, and for being angry about the attempt to kill Sheridan.)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Argh. I didn't mean living in exile for Delenn, I meant... drat it. Word escaping me. Hiding? Hermitage? Something like that.

(Cloister is the closest I can think of. I got a sense of the sci-fi equivalent of a dowager queen being shuffled off into a convent because she's no longer useful. And that image just makes me more and more angry the more I think about it...)

[fondued-jicama.livejournal.com]

Even without the creepy aspects...what on earth makes him think that Marcus would be happy with a clone? A clone is NOT Susan Ivanova, no matter how many memories she may have. Marcus may have been a romantic, but he was also a realist with bitter losses in his past.

YES. He makes Marcus look entirely cheap. I'd rather read four hundred pages of Marcus illogically and uncanonically falling in love with Bester than... this; a half-hearted attempt at prose which only mocks the story in the end.

The idea that Marcus would do this to Susan is completely opposite to any thought that he actually loved her. So I either have to accept that Marcus was petty and immature, a puppy at her door... or forget about JMS and rewrite the story the way it was meant to be. XD

(If I could only figure out precisely how it was meant to be.)

In all seriousness, I think JMS must have contracted a disease from close contact with George Lucas. Signs of this illness include warping characters out of any sign of recognition, goofy dialogue, and plots that might veritably make more sense to the viewers if they stood on their heads...

[fondued-jicama.livejournal.com]

I know! I hated what JMS did to Marcus in that story. To me, it ruined an image of a man who was supposed to be so much greater...and a character I haven't been able to let go of for four years.

And Susan, too! I hate it that he basically screwed her entire life over. =(

It has led me to endless searches for fanfic to make up for it. Some of them have been fairly good, too... but the amazing one with the satisfying ending just hasn't appeared yet.

I've had the idea to write something which follows the canon up to a point, but I can't write chapter stuff. It involves a Deux ex machina Soul Hunter stealing Susan's soul, so Marcus can retrieve it into a cloned body in the future. *Laughs* I need to get a life.

Anyway, just sharing some thoughts. =)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It was a horrible thing to do to poor Marcus, and I basically am still angry at him for it. And, as you said, also angry on behalf of Susan, who really does not need more angst and bad things in her life. I wonder sometimes if JMS isn't secretly acting out some kind of personal masochism vendetta against her.

Chapter fic is hard - I always get distracted partway through. Or, really, partway through anything very long. :P I totally know the feeling, though... I've spent the last few months trying to resurrect a random character from another fandom so that she can have a happy ending. Once you get an idea like that in mind, it's hard to drop it!