a little blast from the past

[rivendellrose]

Since I had to dig it up for a Tumblr post (which you can see here if you like), here's a link to Greg Aronowitz's blog post in which he tells the, er, fascinating story of how Delenn's makeup in the B5 pilot got to where we saw it (and from where), and how Mira Furlan made sure we got the Delenn we know and love.

http://barnyardfx.blogspot.com/2010/05/babylon-5-you-may-think-you-recognize.html



Choice quote:

"Mira suddenly shot up and said, "HIM!?! Did you say make HIM more human?” For the first time, Mira discovered that Delenn was supposed to be a man. I guess all of the descriptions in the script stated “frail alien” and “wise mystic”, but never really called out a sex. The gender change was something JMS was going to keep secret till the series needed the curve, but I guess it was kept TOO secret!"

PS: Why is the "preview" function on Dreamwidth totally broken? I hate not being able to check my HTML when I'm doing something other than just text and normal links...

Comments

[nenya_kanadka]

Hah, yeah. As much as I like the idea of a gender change, I have my doubts on how deftly or sensitively they would have treated that in 1994. And I completely understand her WTF???! reaction. You gotta tell people these things! (I heard that Mira had a conversation with Andreas Katsulas that ended up reconciling her to some of the remaining makeup, but still.)

And yeah, I'm usually all for "more alien!" and also blue makeup, but I love how it turned out. <3

[muccamukk]

I feel like "Jeff only falls in love with her when she's a woman" as planned would have been Unfortunate, especially.

[nenya_kanadka]

Oh. I hadn't thought of that angle. But yes. Yes it would have.

/me needs Moar Jeff/Delenn but also Moar Gay

[muccamukk]

John spending three scenes with his jaw on the floor after Delenn takes her hood off was obnoxious enough, but if he'd already known her as full Minbari, and if he'd already known her as full MALE (or agender) Minbari would not improved it.

[rivendellrose]

I kind of feel bad for Bruce Boxleitner with that whole thing. I mean, yes, it's super awkward how gobsmacked John is, but coming at it from the actor's POV he's had to hop over a season of character development and arrive at the same place in less than five minutes. It sucked, but... man, that must also have been something he knew would be a tough sell, so he had to really go for it.

(That said, how hard a sell is someone falling in love-at-first-sight with Mira? XD)

[muccamukk]

Yes. True. And they retconned it so that they sorta met in the war, which helped a bit, and part of the stunned could have come from holy fuck why is she human, but on the whole I didn't find him spending so much half his second episode mentally derailed by hot chick that great. I sort of got the she's hot because she's part human vibe, which I never cared for.

But the whole Delenn Must Be a Bridge plot was never my fave. Why? Other than being able to have babies with John, why did she have to be a bridge? It mostly pissed off the humans. I guess it gave her a certain amount of theological clout with the Minbari, but they didn't seem to like it either.

(And she was hotter before, she grumbled.)

(Though I guess Mira was happy not to have to wear the full head piece.)

[rivendellrose]

Yeeeeeah, there's... a lot about John Sheridan, and particularly his relationship with Delenn, that I don't particularly like. I've sort of accustomed myself to a fair bit of it, but I definitely don't regard them as the romance of the millennium as the show clearly intends us to do. That said, I am a little bit the odd one out in this group, as I understand it, in that I'm not super fond of Sinclair, either. Of the B5 Humans, I pretty much only really like Ivanova, Marcus, and Gray.

My fondness for the Delenn As A Bridge plot is entirely based on how much I can make it about Delenn's ability to twist the universe around to serve her purposes. I hated that whole angle until I realized that it could also be read as being about her finding this old prophecy, deciding that it was about her, and then going around moving heaven and earth to use it as her personal vehicle for washing away her guilt about that whole oopsy-daisy near-genocide almost-killed-Valen thing. No one likes it except Delenn, but by god she makes them like it, because that's how forceful her personality is, and how much she's capable of self-delusion. It's not even that she doesn't love John. She does. But I think a fair part of that is that she decided that he was the one to be the other vehicle for this prophecy and therefore that she loved him. Prior to the switcheroo, she was just as happy to go through with the whole thing with Sinclair, after all.

*coughs* Anyway. That's my bizarre headcanon that I use to deal with the whole thing. XD

(And she totally was hotter before. ...But yeah, I can't blame Mira for wanting not to spend 3 hours in makeup every day.)

[muccamukk]

You should make your layout wider!

Yes. That's basically the plot I've come to with Delenn: That she felt it was a way to get what she wanted, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. And she sort of dragged everyone else along like the magnetic mines in Galexy Quest. Because the alternative is I need to make Minbari Jesus babies, and nopetopus on that.

I tend to swing to the human side of the show, less Sheridan, plus Delenn, which is also something of an oddity.

[rivendellrose]

I really should, shouldn't I? I'll have to look into how the heck do to that. Somehow despite 9 years working in web content, I've always relied on out-of-the-box layouts on LJ/DW. I like the stars on this one, but it's definitely a little claustrophobic.

Yes, exactly!

Nah, lots of people are primarily on the human side. I'm just one of those oddballs who always likes the aliens best.

[muccamukk]

I make Nenya design mine, so no idea there.

It seems like most of my friends are either Delenn/Lennier people who will accept Susan and Marcus, or Londo/G'Kar people who have a passing interest in Delenn and Bester.

At least I wasn't on tumblr for most of the Susan/Talia v. Susan/Marcus shipwar.

[rivendellrose]

Lucky! The Boy is a software engineer, but since he recently redesigned my professional website I don't think I can ask for a new DW layout as well. ;)

Well, I'm definitely the former, so I guess your theory holds! That and Delenn/Neroon, with occasional efforts toward Mayan/Delenn or Susan/Delenn. ...Basically "Minbari person."

...Okay. This is how blessedly clueless I am, off in my own little quiet corner of Tumblr: There was a B5 shipwar recently enough that it was on Tumblr?

Man, where is Fandom_Wank when I really need it?! If people are going to be stupid, I at least want to be able to point and laugh at them!

[muccamukk]

Maybe you can bribe Nenya with Delenn femslash. She likes that kind of project.

Plus there's the Marcus/Naroon people, but they keep to themselves, I think.

There were TWO! There was Susan ships (which sadly didn't include Susan/Delenn) which raged mightily and I only caught the edge of, and then there was The Londo Stens Against the World, which I think Nenya saw, but I mostly missed. I don't have the bandwidth for tumblr. Possibly more that I don't know about.

[rivendellrose]

Ooo, there's a thought! And it would give me a good excuse to actually write a few things I've been kicking around for a while, too. XD

I just don't understand shipwars. If people don't like the thing, they don't have to read it. There are ways to even block certain things on Tumblr so you don't have to see them, if it really upsets you that much! I mostly just block things I'm sick of hearing about, but... I mean, you actually have to follow someone (or go look at the tag, I suppose) to see their content, so... why is this an issue? o_O

Of course I understand on some level - it's an issue for the same reason that people are inherently upset that other people have different opinions about politics, religion, environmentalism, and how to make a cup of tea, but ffs, at least some of those others affect things like public policy and therefore those other people's opinions do somewhat impact the other side's lives. Not so much shipping.

[muccamukk]

Nenya says she would be delighted to redesign your DW. I'll let you two sort out what it's going to look like and what Delenn femslash pairing is preferred, lol.

iirc, the Susan ship war started with a Marcus fan filling the Susan tag (which I follow) with posts about how they couldn't imagine why Susan didn't boff Marcus because how could you turn that down? And the people who were big on Susan being queer went, FFS! the ONE bi character, who was in mourning for her girlfriend who'd just DIED! and you want her to hop on a dick!? and it sort of disintegrated from there. Then I blocked a bunch of key words.

The Londo ones were just weird.

Honestly, I mostly don't have time for ship wars. They're a pretty big energy sink.

[nenya_kanadka]

This is just to say that you absolutely CAN bribe me with Delenn femslash to futz with your journal! :D In fact it might be more like me bribing you to let me play with it. lol. And ANY Delenn fic of yours would be amazing. <3_<3

(I mean like I don't have any official training or anything but I can poke at a CSS thing to make it go? Should be able to at least widen the columns on this one. Though if you wanted any colour changed or a different starry background or a different shape to any of the boxes, etc etc, I can do most of that as well. :D)

//fires up my demo journal//

(it's a great way to procrastinate on things I need to do that don't have actual deadlines XD)

[rivendellrose]

Woo!! We will have to talk options. I've been twiddling for a while with Mayan/Delenn, and it occurs to me that Delenn/Kira could potentially be really interesting. I don't know exaaaactly where I'd go with it, but there are Possibilities.

Hey, that's better than me! I theoretically have experience with this stuff, but I got sort of perplexed and intimidated whenever I've tried to look at customizing journals in the past. Wider columns would definitely be nice. I'll have to think about what else I might want to do... I like the stars, but I don't totally love them, and the colors are maybe a little not quite right. Hmm. This is going to take some thought. XD I am open to recommendations!

What dimensions are best for a background image, btw? I'm looking now at repeating-pattern images, and wondering what I could put together that might work...

[nenya_kanadka]

Kira/Delenn, oooh. Tell me moar! Also Mayan/Delenn is relevant to my interests and I know you have been poking at that occasionally over the years. :D

I had a look at journal layouts today and I realized that I don't know how to, say, take this exact layout and change the widths etc, because I can't get at the code to change it. :P But there are a bunch of very similar ones (e.g. a sidebar on the left, simple boxes) at places like dreamwidthlayouts. So what I've done for both mine and Mucca's is to find one where I like the general shape and layout, and then play with the colours until I like them, and if some of the text is too small or too large or the icons are in a weird place (or are 50px square instead of 100px), adjust that. I could absolutely do that for you. :D If that makes any sense.

I think for background images, the file size is more important than the length/width (so long as the size works well with the layout you're doing, of course). Since it's going to load every time someone comes to your journal, you want it to be smallish (idk, 100kb? is Google's first suggestion) so it doesn't eat bandwidth.

[nenya_kanadka]

And this is my demo journal, where I can try out whatever. It's currently got something pretty up from bakesale, but anything can go there. :D

http://murreleting.dreamwidth.org/

[rivendellrose]

Okay - I've been obsessively playing with repeating background images the last few days, and I think I came up with something that I like. I also really like the overall look of the layout you've got on your sample journal, but maybe with a slightly shorter header area and do you think square icon tiles would look bad with that? I always like the circles on other people's styles, but I'm not if it would bother me with my icons or not. We could try with the round and see how it looks, if that's easier?

I have emailed the address I have on file for you, so if you don't see something from named Jen with the subject line "hello! and also journal stuffs :)" maybe PM me and we can exchange email addresses. Or I can figure out somewhere else to upload the background image to, whichever works.

[nenya_kanadka]

I got the email and the background image!

I just replied with my current mockup (different layout than the first one I showed you, but it's at murreleting again) and some thoughts. Let me know!

(If I go with this one that I'm playing with now/emailed you about, I do need to fix the little box for where people type their comments in. The layout designer didn't bother with that, but I think I can. Unless you prefer Dreamwidth-default comment pages? Anyway just a note to myself here!)

[rivendellrose]

And I have replied as well! ♥

The comment box looks okay to me? It's white with the dark pink background, everything seems to be working right... maybe I'm missing the detail you were talking about fixing, or maybe you already fixed it, not sure. It looks good, though! And your little BB8 icon with the flower crown is adorable!

[nenya_kanadka]

Yeah, I think maybe the comment box just didn't load right that one time. It seems fine now and I didn't do anything to it! So, heh.

Anyway, sent you the CSS. :D Should work!

And yeah that BB8 icon is ridiculously cute. :D Forget who made it but I think I have it on this account too. SO CUTE

[rivendellrose]

Ugh, yes, that would been Very Unfortunate Indeed. Very good point.

[rivendellrose]

Yeah, it would most likely have been handled in a way that was not sensitive or good. And poor Mira - she was used to being famous and respected at home, and all of a sudden she comes here and people aren't telling her anything.

Awww. Why am I not at all surprised that Andreas was part of talking her around? He sounds like he was such a wise man.

[gaslightgallows]

My favorite part of this entire story (apart from Mira Furlan's general badassery) is re-re-rediscovering that the part of the Minbari assassin, who really got the ball rolling on the whole "plot" thing, was played by the put-upon makeup artist. XD

[rivendellrose]

Someday I suppose I'll have to watch the pilot so I can fully appreciate that detail... someday.

What really stuck out to me from that angle was that they were intending at one point to have that poor bastard play Delenn? Um... wow, would that most likely have been a disaster. I mean, who knows, maybe he's an acting genius who just never got his big break, but... one somehow slightly doubts that he would have been anywhere close to Mira's level.

I can't help but regard that as yet another moment where the universe quietly redirected B5 from being a complete disaster...

[gaslightgallows]

Ohgod, no, never watch the pilot. ...At least not until I'm there to witness your pain and suffering. ;)

Even the dude admitted that having him play the Minbari ambassador was a terrible idea after the concept of the ambassador changed from what was basically Kosh to an actual humanoid, so yes, this was in fact the universe stepping in to prevent cinematic horror.

[muccamukk]

Hush, the pilot has Sinclair in it and is therefore amazing.

... okay, just look up the Battle of the Line speech on youtube.

I liked Laurel though, and it's really not THAT bad. It's better than the shakier season one and five eps.

[rivendellrose]

Let's be real: there are Clorox commercials that are better than the shakier episodes of season one and season five. :P

[muccamukk]

That's fair. Though I still don't think the pilot is THAT bad, and it's certainly interesting to see what changed and what stayed between it and season one.

[rivendellrose]

It really is. I've read the original series bible and stuff and wow was that different. Mind-bogglingly so.

As I said before, perhaps someday on the pilot. The Boy does not have my fondness for constantly revisiting old TV, so it would probably be a time when he's out of town or something and I can revel in my ridiculous nostalgia on my own. ;)

[muccamukk]

The original outline to the network pitch to the bible to the pilot to season one to season two is a very interesting progression in storytelling. And as much as the show is famous for having been meticulously planned years in advance, it always makes me laugh. We managed to escape some pretty dire plots on the way through all that (and picked up a few more).

Live blogging it while the boy is out of town is clearly the solution.

[rivendellrose]

Yeah, considering I can no longer drink enough to make bad TV bearable, it might just be better all around to avoid it. Clearly I should've just watched it years ago, like that weekend a friend of mine got me drunk and made me watch a bunch of Sixth Doctor serials. XD

He was blessedly self-aware about his limitations, yes. Which, good on him. ♥

[nenya_kanadka]

Why have you not made it up to Victoria to attend Beer Trek nights with me and Mucca and her ex yet, I ask you??

(It's not just Trek, it's all kinds of hilaribad and occasionally great or classic episodes, of various teevee, mostly SFF. And pizza features as strongly as the booze. Though I'm lactose-intolerant these days and me & Mucca don't get into town that often. Still. Epic. :D)

[rivendellrose]

Ahhh, that does sound like a lot of fun! I haven't been to Victoria since I was a kid, and it would be great to see you both again! My alcohol tolerance is all shot to hell, but I'm very good at nursing a beer for hours, now, and it's always fun to hang out with friends and watch bad TV!

[nenya_kanadka]

:D!

We make it down to Seattle every year or two, and should grab you for coffee next time. :D

[lizbee]

Oh, SHOW, you dodged so many bullets.

[rivendellrose]

So very many bullets. And some, like, giant freaking cruise missiles.