talking meme day 1
Dec. 1st, 2018 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseAll right, let's do this. muccamukk asked to hear about my favourite one-episode guest character on Babylon 5, and, after some serious thought, I've decided that has to be Shaal Mayan... for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the one episode she was in.
Shaal (which is a title, not a name) Mayan in the actual episode is a famous Minbari poet who is a close old friend of Delenn's. Mayan visits B5 as part of a performance tour, refuses a security escort because she can't imagine why anyone would want to hurt her, and then, after her performance and a visit with Mayan, she's stabbed and branded by xenophobic Human zealots. She's later briefly mentioned as having returned to the station in "Eyes," but is never seen again.
Which is a damned pity, because she's the one female Minbari other than Delenn who even gets a name, I'm pretty sure. Other than Mayan, Delenn seems to have a host of male friends and male former teachers and male acolytes and male enemy/allies, and, just, men. She's friends with Susan and... allied, at least, with Lyta, for a while, but otherwise Delenn is largely surrounded by men, particularly when she's in her home territory. And it really stood out to me that Mayan never reappeared or is even mentioned again during the arc where Delenn is cast out of the Grey Council, or during the civil war, or when she ends the civil war by trying to get herself killed. Her only allies (and her only opponents, too) during those arcs are men, and when she marries Sheridan after all of that goes through, Delenn appears to feel that the B5 crew are her only friends.
I hate that, because I find the Minbari aspect of Delenn fascinating, and also because it pains me to think of her not having any female friends in her life apart from Susan. So I started to think, what explanation could there be for Mayan not being a part of Delenn's life during all these momentous changes? And over the course of thinking about that and writing various pre- and post-series fics,gaslightgallows and I wound up with a shared-headcanon version of Mayan who is intense and dramatic but occasionally given to moments of blinding self-insight where she knows that she's taking things too far; a woman who loves too passionately for her own good and is intensely possessive and jealous of her relationship with Delenn, while never pursuing the fact that there's a strong chance she's been in love with Delenn since they were children because she knows, better than anyone else ever could, that they would be bad for each other. I love her ear for drama and I love her self-knowledge and her honesty, the way she gets caught up in her own romantic visions and then, when she's challenged, smiles and admits that yes, she's taken them too far. She's messy and petty and often very, very wrong about things, and she makes the same mistakes over and over and only learns from them very slowly, but she's also brilliant and giving and a person who would do anything, anything, for the people she loves.
She's also a disorganized writer prone to bouts of agonizing writer's block, a performer who feeds on the energy of crowds who regard her as a living treasure, and a teensy bit self-destructive. she had to be a big personality in order to stand up to sharing scenes (and so much history) with Delenn, after all.
The seeds of all of that are there in the original episode, I think (and in her absence from later episodes, which I attribute to her actually being a great deal more wounded by the fact that Humans attacked her than she admits, and deeply hurt by what she views as Delenn's betrayal in making herself half-Human (and, worse, in marrying a Human). But the truth is, like so many things with B5, the Mayan that I love exists more in my head (and on fanfic-paper) than she does on screen. I know decades upon decades of her life intimately, and she's perhaps the character I feel I've put the most of myself (or at least the most embarrassing, private aspects of myself) into, out of all the fandom characters I've written over the years. Writing Mayan feels both like embracing a dream version of myself and also letting loose some of my own worst tendencies onto the page, and then having the catharsis of seeing them forgiven and accepted.
Which is a hell of a lot to get out of a character who was only in a single episode.
muccamukk asked to hear about my favourite one-episode guest character on Babylon 5, and, after some serious thought, I've decided that has to be Shaal Mayan... for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the one episode she was in. Shaal (which is a title, not a name) Mayan in the actual episode is a famous Minbari poet who is a close old friend of Delenn's. Mayan visits B5 as part of a performance tour, refuses a security escort because she can't imagine why anyone would want to hurt her, and then, after her performance and a visit with Mayan, she's stabbed and branded by xenophobic Human zealots. She's later briefly mentioned as having returned to the station in "Eyes," but is never seen again.
Which is a damned pity, because she's the one female Minbari other than Delenn who even gets a name, I'm pretty sure. Other than Mayan, Delenn seems to have a host of male friends and male former teachers and male acolytes and male enemy/allies, and, just, men. She's friends with Susan and... allied, at least, with Lyta, for a while, but otherwise Delenn is largely surrounded by men, particularly when she's in her home territory. And it really stood out to me that Mayan never reappeared or is even mentioned again during the arc where Delenn is cast out of the Grey Council, or during the civil war, or when she ends the civil war by trying to get herself killed. Her only allies (and her only opponents, too) during those arcs are men, and when she marries Sheridan after all of that goes through, Delenn appears to feel that the B5 crew are her only friends.
I hate that, because I find the Minbari aspect of Delenn fascinating, and also because it pains me to think of her not having any female friends in her life apart from Susan. So I started to think, what explanation could there be for Mayan not being a part of Delenn's life during all these momentous changes? And over the course of thinking about that and writing various pre- and post-series fics,
gaslightgallows and I wound up with a shared-headcanon version of Mayan who is intense and dramatic but occasionally given to moments of blinding self-insight where she knows that she's taking things too far; a woman who loves too passionately for her own good and is intensely possessive and jealous of her relationship with Delenn, while never pursuing the fact that there's a strong chance she's been in love with Delenn since they were children because she knows, better than anyone else ever could, that they would be bad for each other. I love her ear for drama and I love her self-knowledge and her honesty, the way she gets caught up in her own romantic visions and then, when she's challenged, smiles and admits that yes, she's taken them too far. She's messy and petty and often very, very wrong about things, and she makes the same mistakes over and over and only learns from them very slowly, but she's also brilliant and giving and a person who would do anything, anything, for the people she loves. She's also a disorganized writer prone to bouts of agonizing writer's block, a performer who feeds on the energy of crowds who regard her as a living treasure, and a teensy bit self-destructive. she had to be a big personality in order to stand up to sharing scenes (and so much history) with Delenn, after all.
The seeds of all of that are there in the original episode, I think (and in her absence from later episodes, which I attribute to her actually being a great deal more wounded by the fact that Humans attacked her than she admits, and deeply hurt by what she views as Delenn's betrayal in making herself half-Human (and, worse, in marrying a Human). But the truth is, like so many things with B5, the Mayan that I love exists more in my head (and on fanfic-paper) than she does on screen. I know decades upon decades of her life intimately, and she's perhaps the character I feel I've put the most of myself (or at least the most embarrassing, private aspects of myself) into, out of all the fandom characters I've written over the years. Writing Mayan feels both like embracing a dream version of myself and also letting loose some of my own worst tendencies onto the page, and then having the catharsis of seeing them forgiven and accepted.
Which is a hell of a lot to get out of a character who was only in a single episode.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 05:30 am (UTC)If nothing else, I would have loved more about the worker caste woman who stabbed somebody (I think it was Zach?) in the butt with a needle. She had potential, just by that action alone.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 06:37 pm (UTC)That's such an interesting take on Mayan (and way more thought than I'd put into it).
I've think I'd put her as mostly living in her own artsy bubble, and when she collides with Delenn they stick together like glue for a time, and then Mayan bounces away again, and does her own concerns. She sees, and is treated, as though her art as is important as Delenn's political career, and is usually off doing that.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 05:35 am (UTC)(I sort of want to apologize for how much headcanon this brought out, just because holy wow did I go overboard. But I didn't have that much to say about Harriman Gray other than what I already said on the Discord server, so this seemed like the way to go! Also, I talk too much about almost everything. XD)
My version was largely concocted as a reason for her to be a major character in pre- and post-series fics featuring Delenn, so it specifically favors them reuniting again and again over the decades -- I can definitely see how your way would make sense, too. And a big YES to her art being just as important as Delenn's political career -- I think the Minbari would argue it's even more so.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 05:12 am (UTC)...Because we don't talk about how the one time he 'tried' to write female friendship on B5 it devolved instantly into "HAIR AND PERIODS HA HA, THIS IS WHAT WOMEN TALK ABOUT, RIGHT?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-04 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 04:16 am (UTC)And then...well. Not so much. :P
So I am always thrilled when people have feelings about Mayan, heck, even remember that she exists. ❤ Though I don't think I've really tried to write her.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 04:42 am (UTC)And that's the Delenn that Mayan knows, damn it. Part of my rebellion with making her and Lennier and Neroon the center of Delenn's mental world, I think, is really just that I hate how minimized she is around John -- he doesn't understand her, and she wants to be just the good part of herself around him, and she can be because she's hidden so many things from him. Which, I can see why that appeals to her because she gets to pretend that none of that happened, but it's not true, and the real Delenn is so much more interesting than the perfect little priestess she pretends to be around him. :P
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 01:08 pm (UTC)