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May. 6th, 2004 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eye_of_a_catHe's not dead.
This isn't just denial. My favourite characters always die, to the point where my friends consider it a kind of spoiler warning - anyone I mention liking will die, get used to it. (I believe other people have this ability with goldfish or houseplants.) I've had a long time to get used to this, and if I really thought Lennier was dead, I'd be able to accept it with only minimal grumbling. I'm convinced he isn't, though.
Firstly, the toast to 'absent friends' in SiL, which everyone bar me seems to think means 'dead friends'. I know the others mentioned are canonically dead by this point, but 'absent' could just mean 'absent' in Lennier's case, which is what I assumed when I first saw SiL - Delenn just hadn't seen him since Objects at Rest.
Secondly, Morden's hints in Day of the Dead. It's Morden. I don't trust Morden.
Thirdly, the speculation for Crusade, in which both JMS and an abandoned script apparently imply Lennier dies during the Telepath War. It's not directly stated anywhere I can find, but it's implied pretty heavily. Well. Not only do I think this doesn't mean Lennier's dead by the time of Crusade, but I'm halfway convinced that it proves he's not.
I don't trust JMS either (a bit more than Morden, maybe), and I know that in the past he's been very, very secretive about future plot developments. (He's definitely lied about things on at least one occasion to distract people from guessing.) Even with Crusade being cancelled (and the Telepath War predates Crusade), it seems extremely unlike him to give away a plot point involving a character death so lightly. He's not given up working within the B5 universe, so why tell everyone about a plot point which hasn't happened yet? And if he did want to, for whatever reason, why not just say it outright rather than dance around it, all the time dropping hints which are much, much more obvious than all his normal ones? Something is suspicious here.
I think it suits JMS to have people assume Lennier's dead. Giving away future plot points doesn't usually suit JMS, but pointing people down a different route so they won't expect them does, and I think that's what he's doing here.
That's about 75% reasoning with reference to JMS's sneakiness in the past, and 25% clamping my hands over my ears while shouting very loudly "It's not true! It's not!" Which isn't a bad ratio, all things considered.
This isn't just denial. My favourite characters always die, to the point where my friends consider it a kind of spoiler warning - anyone I mention liking will die, get used to it. (I believe other people have this ability with goldfish or houseplants.) I've had a long time to get used to this, and if I really thought Lennier was dead, I'd be able to accept it with only minimal grumbling. I'm convinced he isn't, though.
Firstly, the toast to 'absent friends' in SiL, which everyone bar me seems to think means 'dead friends'. I know the others mentioned are canonically dead by this point, but 'absent' could just mean 'absent' in Lennier's case, which is what I assumed when I first saw SiL - Delenn just hadn't seen him since Objects at Rest.
Secondly, Morden's hints in Day of the Dead. It's Morden. I don't trust Morden.
Thirdly, the speculation for Crusade, in which both JMS and an abandoned script apparently imply Lennier dies during the Telepath War. It's not directly stated anywhere I can find, but it's implied pretty heavily. Well. Not only do I think this doesn't mean Lennier's dead by the time of Crusade, but I'm halfway convinced that it proves he's not.
I don't trust JMS either (a bit more than Morden, maybe), and I know that in the past he's been very, very secretive about future plot developments. (He's definitely lied about things on at least one occasion to distract people from guessing.) Even with Crusade being cancelled (and the Telepath War predates Crusade), it seems extremely unlike him to give away a plot point involving a character death so lightly. He's not given up working within the B5 universe, so why tell everyone about a plot point which hasn't happened yet? And if he did want to, for whatever reason, why not just say it outright rather than dance around it, all the time dropping hints which are much, much more obvious than all his normal ones? Something is suspicious here.
I think it suits JMS to have people assume Lennier's dead. Giving away future plot points doesn't usually suit JMS, but pointing people down a different route so they won't expect them does, and I think that's what he's doing here.
That's about 75% reasoning with reference to JMS's sneakiness in the past, and 25% clamping my hands over my ears while shouting very loudly "It's not true! It's not!" Which isn't a bad ratio, all things considered.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-07 01:16 pm (UTC)I will confess to describing Delenn and Lennier's relationship to people outside the fandom, and asking if they had any idea why the pairing wasn't written more often. They thought it was puzzling, too. I can only think it's a combination of Objects at Rest and the fandom being quite conservative when it comes to the big canon pairing (and anything else which might go against it).
So even if she didn't make it up, I think she made it sound worse than it was.
That's the only way I can imagine it making any sense. Not to mention the strangeness of the whole situation surrounding the diary - why would she have his quarters searched? What was she expecting to find? Even if she wasn't expecting Lennier to harm Sheridan in any way, she knew how he felt about her, and she hardly needed to go searching his possessions for any clues about why he might have a problem with her husband.
Another point about OaR, too. I wish I could remember this quote exactly, but it's when he calls her afterwards to say he's sorry and that he's going away - something very close to "I only wanted to tell you, one last time, I'm so sorry."
I suppose that could mean, "I wanted to say I'm sorry, and since I've already said 'sorry' once a few moments ago, this will be the last time when I say it again." But it doesn't really sound that way, especially since it's very close to the beginning of their conversation that he says it. "One last time" makes it sound as if he's said "I'm so sorry" to her a hundred times before the scene with Sheridan, and he needed to tell her again. Maybe he's just spent so much time thinking it that he can't now remember never actually saying it out loud, or maybe he has told her before, which would raise all sorts of questions about when and why. I don't know which one would be more terribly sad.
Maybe the diary actually says something like "I am starting to believe that Delenn loves me after all" and Delenn is so desperate not to acknowledge the truth of that, that she puts it all on him.
I could very much see that. Especially if the reason she won't acknowledge whatever feelings she has for Lennier is because it would, in some way, lessen her relationship with Sheridan. Far easier to interpret "Perhaps Delenn loves me" as a comment about Lennier rather than a comment about her.
Getting rid of Lennier wipes out part of Delenn's life, because there's no one around that she can share those parts of her life with now. It's terribly cruel to her, and I hate that we don't see how hard it is.
Yes. It must have been so painful for her to realise how much she'd be losing along with him, even if she had seriously thought about what he meant to her before. Lennier trying to kill her husband must have been bad enough, but it's clear that the thought of him leaving is far worse.
Of course, Sheridan saying 'Is it because of me?' when he finds out Lennier's going to join the Rangers means Lennier has to do something bad to Sheridan later on, otherwise the viewers might be tempted into not finding Sheridan entirely blameless...