B5, and rambling.
Jul. 22nd, 2004 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eye_of_a_catI hereby renounce anything I might ever have said about Angel not being as good as it used to be. I don't know what season we're on, and I don't know what the episode was called, but they were trying to bring back Angelus so they could defeat that magma-demon thing and then they didn't and then everything all worked out happy and "Isn't it great to be a team, everyone!" - and then, the ending. Um. Wow.
Anyway. A 2am conversation about Spike, Angel, Hannibal Lecter and Heathcliff, and why the obsession with making the bad guys not-so-bad these days (which is a post for another day, but an interesting one) turned into a grumble about Wuthering Heights being seen as 'just a love story'. (As in - if you cut out half the book in your film adaptation so that Heathcliff is Not So Bad After All, Really, then it's boring.) And then sitting around all day waiting for some furniture to arrive, and couldn't get any work done, and was Thinking. (Plus, it's occured to me that the two other Delenn/Lennier shippers in the fandom (numbers are growing! yay!) have interesting Lennier posts, and I don't. Can't promise this one will be as interesting or anything, and it turned out to be more about Delenn than Lennier, but here it is anyway.)
So:
Delenn has always thought, and believed, and been told, that she's intended for a great purpose. I think she really did see Valen appear to her when she was a child (although the 'Delenn Is Important' message would have got across by itself anyway - parents lose child, desperately search, find child perfectly happy in a Temple. Trying to remind us of something, JMS?), and it doesn't matter whether that was a Vorlon reinforcing her sense of being special or a frightened child seeing what she wanted to see - she saw Valen. As an adult, when she's chosen by Dukhat to be his aide and successor (are those the same thing to Minbari, btw?), even something as terrible as a genocidal war doesn't challenge her conviction of her own importance. It's a holy war because she gets to say what's holy, and then when it isn't a holy war any more, she makes herself into the fulfilment of prophecy to atone for her role in it.
Neroon, who seems to have known her a long time, thinks this is an incredibly arrogant thing to do. And, well, he's got a point, whether or not she's right. I think it's significant that she gets Neroon to help her end the Minbari civil war, where the fact that she's right becomes more important than the fact that she thinks she is. (And I can't make Delenn/Neroon fic work, but will write anyone who can into my will.) To Delenn, her actions can make up for anything bad she's thought or done in the past, if those actions confirm that she's what she's always believed she is.
Part of her prophecy says that she'll marry Sheridan. Or it does if you interpret it the way she does, at any rate - whatever it actually does say, I doubt it's going to mention Sheridan by name. (And why doesn't she use that prophecy as a reason for marrying him in Atonement?) But Lennier says she's 'destined for another', so obviously it gives some vague idea of who she's supposed to marry, and she decides that means Sheridan. By 'decides', I mean that she both makes it mean Sheridan because she wants it to, and genuinely believes it already does. She doesn't separate herself from her prophecies.
She loves Sheridan because of who he is and what he could represent for her, not despite it. She certainly doesn't fall in love with him unintentionally - she's planning that relationship in S2, she really is. I never bought the Romeo and Juliet they-fell-in-love-despite-everything angle on their relationship. Romeo and Juliet was puppy love anyway - it's not a great story because their love is so twuw, it's a great story because the circumstances around them turned that puppy love into something people were killing and dying for. J/D isn't puppy love, but it isn't any less a result of its circumstances.
She loves Sheridan because he's human, and because he's Starkiller. He represents both the opposing army and the victims of the war she started, so if he can forgive her then (to her) she's forgiven. But he doesn't know what she's done, so she's trying to create forgiveness from his actions because she sees that as more important than his thoughts and words. And if he forgives her, then she never needs to tell him what it is he's forgiving her for.
Which is the only possible way I can understand Lennier writing in his diary that her marriage to Sheridan is a mistake. It's not the marriage itself he has a problem with (well, it is, but not in the sense of thinking she's wrong to do it). It's this idea that she can manufacture forgiveness by getting Sheridan to accept her in the most fundamental way possible: sex, marriage, and having his children. And it's the idea that this way she can avoid ever facing her past (and whatever part of her allowed her to do the things she's done), because she doesn't have to be Minbari around Sheridan. That's neither real forgiveness nor real acceptance, and if she thinks it is, then she is mistaken.
In Lines of Communication, she tells Sheridan "It pleases me that you care for what I have become. But never forget who I was, what I am, and what I can do." But he doesn't truly know who she was, and he doesn't know what she can do. So, really, he doesn't know who she is. What he knows is what she wants him to know. And in Comes the Inquisitor, both Lennier and Sheridan try to help her avoid the Vorlon "Who are you?" question, which means much more to her than the Shadows' (she's never really had any trouble in knowing or getting what she wants, except re: Lennier) - if she's the fulfilment of prophecy, but she's the one creating that prophecy anyway, then who is she?
Sheridan answers it for her by believing she's the person she wants him to think she is - not in CtI, but in the rest of canon. (Or maybe in CtI too, come to think of it - what does he see of her there? That she's willing to be tortured for a cause she believes in, and to give up her life to save his.) The closest Sheridan ever comes to finding out who she is is in Z'ha'dum, when he accuses her of lying about Anna and then leaves, and she effectively tries to kill herself. And she says afterwards that the only thing which might be as terrible as him not returning was "if you came back and could not forgive me." It isn't just him returning that makes her so happy, but returning, excusing what she did by saying that wasn't really Anna and besides "You did what you thought was right" (which even she admits isn't an excuse), and telling her "Could I love that much and not forgive?" Which is what she needs to hear. "I don't know what you did, and I'm willing to say that any parts that I do know about weren't really your fault, but I just love you so much that I'll forgive you anyway."
Lennier knows her better than Sheridan does, I think (he certainly knows who she was and what she can do better than Sheridan does, anyway), but he answers the Vorlon question for her as well - by believing in her and loving her. In the same way that she needs Sheridan to love her rather than just accept her, she needs Lennier's love too, and she needs to know that he's still going to love her and stay with her no matter what she's done. When he leaves in Objects at Rest and she says "I can't imagine my life without you", I think that's the literal truth. Although she gives him the opportunity to leave her in All Alone in the Night, then tells him he doesn't have to follow her in Atonement, that's only after she knows he'll stay with her anyway. And then, later on in Atonement, during the Dreaming: "I won't leave you." "No matter what?" "No matter what."
Delenn wants to answer the "Who are you?" question either with the version of herself that she's created (literally created, with the transformation) which she wants Sheridan to accept, or with the idea of herself as the creation of prophecy. But there, I don't think Lennier answers the question for her in the way she wants, because he doesn't quite give her that second answer. In Chrysalis, he really doesn't want her to undergo the transformation (I'm not entirely sure why, though - at the time, does he know she'll become half-human? Does he just think it might be dangerous?), and when she says "Who are we to stand in the way of prophecy?", he asks "But what if you're wrong?" He doesn't just see her as the fulfilment of prophecy (although it must be a huge thing for Lennier, especially Season 1 Lennier, to question her like that). He actually can answer the "Who are you?" question with the truth, rather than what she wants the truth to be.
Which I think is why she loves him, and why she needs him, and also why she isn't too good at admitting either (she sort of tells him she needs him, but without ever telling him why, and only when he's about to leave her). And I think she does love him. She's constantly touching him or holding his hand, even as early as S2, and by S5 she's stroking his face in a way that's difficult to see as platonic. She heard Sheridan's "I can't imagine my life without you as a part of it" the way he intended it, as an "I love you" without really saying the words, but it's Lennier that she repeats that to. Her greatest concern when Lennier tries to kill Sheridan is that it means Lennier will leave her. And when she puts her hand on his face and tells him that Ivanova was wrong about all love being unrequited, I can't see it any other way than what it seems to be.
If you were new to the series and saw Delenn and Lennier in Meditations on the Abyss or Darkness Ascending, and you knew that one of them was supposed to be unrequitedly in love with the other, I don't think you'd guess Lennier. In Meditations, he not only refuses to stay with her when she asks him to, but he sounds something like annoyed with her. Which he'd have every right to be if he was - what she's doing to him isn't fair, not by a long way. I'm not sure he is, though. Maybe at some level he's angry with her, but can only understand that as being angry with himself for wanting more here than what she's prepared to give. And he knows she can't give it, because admitting that her relationship with Sheridan is in any way less than perfect (as a result of her own actions) or that she might love someone she isn't destined to love would mean answering the "Who are you?" question with something other than prophecy, which she can't do.
Lennier told Marcus that he loved her as part of the rebirth ceremony, where everyone has to tell something that they've never told before. They also have to give up something of great value. We don't see Lennier do that, but he must, and the obvious idea that he's giving up all hope of Delenn loving him (or choosing to be with him) doesn't sound quite right to me. That would mean, after all, that up until this point in canon he's still had that hope, despite knowing that her prophecy has destined her for someone else. And although he doesn't see her as just a combination of her prophecies, and does question her in Chrysalis, I think it would be very unlike him to discard a prophecy just because it meant he wouldn't end up with Delenn. Maybe he's giving up his freedom to interpret her prophecies a different way than she does, although that doesn't seem quite right either. And he's already given up his self, in a pretty fundamental way, in All Alone in the Night. Hm.
But Lennier has always known who he is. He's who Delenn needs. He's at his most confident and his happiest when either of them is admitting that (like the "Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?" "Not really, but it will give us something to discuss on the journey" scene in All Alone in the Night). He's at his least sure of himself when he doubts it, and in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari he says that he's leaving because "you don't need me any more". And he says "You have Sheridan now, and he is now your other half". But she still does need him, because Sheridan can't be to her what Lennier is, just as Lennier can't be what Sheridan is.
In Rumors, Bargains and Lies, he tells the other Religious caste Minbari that "In her world, we are better than we are. We care more than we do." Lennier is very much included in the 'we' there, and that's why he needs her as much as he does. I think that's got a lot to do with the only thing he ever says about his past (which is significant in itself, given that every other character gets to talk about their life before B5 at some point or other, and Lennier ducks Londo's question by saying 'There is nothing more' and then talking about his studies instead): "I lost family on the Black Star." Humans in general, and Sheridan in particular, killed his family and took away the woman he loves. I think that would result in some pretty murderous thoughts. By working so hard to create peace with humans, and by supporting Delenn's relationship with Sheridan, he's trying to do what she does - make up for his flawed past and his flawed self through his present actions. But unlike Delenn, he knows that you can't create forgiveness by having people who don't know how bad you are accept you, and it doesn't work for him the way it works for her. Which results, pretty inevitably, in S5 Lennier.
The first time I saw S5, I spent a lot of time being mad at Sheridan. He knew how much Lennier meant to Delenn - or if he didn't, he should have damn well been paying attention - and he still came out with that "Three's a crowd" line? Grr. But now, although he's still not exactly my favourite character, I don't blame him so much for that. He's in a difficult situation, too, especially if he does know how much Lennier means to Delenn, and even more especially if he thinks she loves him. To Sheridan, being in love with two people is something to fight - he talks about having to fight off the part of him that was still in love with Anna every time he looks at Delenn. Delenn, on the other hand, doesn't do that, and won't even try to deal with what Lennier means to her. Although Sheridan really does want her to be happy, I can't entirely blame him for also wanting Lennier out of the way.
I wonder, though, what happens after Lennier leaves. In Season 5, Sheridan starts to realise that Lennier being gone doesn't mean Lennier not being in the picture (and, really, it doesn't even mean Lennier being gone - he comes back when Delenn wants him to, and he comes back when she asks, and she does both). And he's quite good about it, telling Lennier in that incredibly awkward moment early in Objects at Rest that him being here means a lot to Delenn. After OaR, though... well. The fact that Delenn obviously doesn't think less of Lennier for what he did, and still desperately wants him back, must be difficult for the person he's just tried to kill. And Sheridan says that he thinks he would forgive Lennier, even though he shouldn't.
There is, maybe maybe maybe, the tiniest glimpse of a possibility of a happy ending there (yes, I know they toast him as dead and/or gone in SiL, but that's twenty years in the future and we don't know what's happened since. And JMS has said himself that if it airs, it's canon, and that he has been known to lie when asked about arc developments that he didn't want to give away. So take that, Crusade speculation). In forgiving Lennier, Sheridan would have to admit that he does sometimes forgive when he shouldn't, and that "You did what you thought was right at the time" is not a justification. In dealing with what Delenn feels for Lennier, he'd have to deal with what he felt (and presumably still feels) for Anna. Maybe it's not a happy ending we'll see in canon, but still, the possibility is there. And for both Sheridan and Delenn, Lennier needs to come back to make it happen. So maybe three is sacred after all.
Anyway. A 2am conversation about Spike, Angel, Hannibal Lecter and Heathcliff, and why the obsession with making the bad guys not-so-bad these days (which is a post for another day, but an interesting one) turned into a grumble about Wuthering Heights being seen as 'just a love story'. (As in - if you cut out half the book in your film adaptation so that Heathcliff is Not So Bad After All, Really, then it's boring.) And then sitting around all day waiting for some furniture to arrive, and couldn't get any work done, and was Thinking. (Plus, it's occured to me that the two other Delenn/Lennier shippers in the fandom (numbers are growing! yay!) have interesting Lennier posts, and I don't. Can't promise this one will be as interesting or anything, and it turned out to be more about Delenn than Lennier, but here it is anyway.)
So:
Delenn has always thought, and believed, and been told, that she's intended for a great purpose. I think she really did see Valen appear to her when she was a child (although the 'Delenn Is Important' message would have got across by itself anyway - parents lose child, desperately search, find child perfectly happy in a Temple. Trying to remind us of something, JMS?), and it doesn't matter whether that was a Vorlon reinforcing her sense of being special or a frightened child seeing what she wanted to see - she saw Valen. As an adult, when she's chosen by Dukhat to be his aide and successor (are those the same thing to Minbari, btw?), even something as terrible as a genocidal war doesn't challenge her conviction of her own importance. It's a holy war because she gets to say what's holy, and then when it isn't a holy war any more, she makes herself into the fulfilment of prophecy to atone for her role in it.
Neroon, who seems to have known her a long time, thinks this is an incredibly arrogant thing to do. And, well, he's got a point, whether or not she's right. I think it's significant that she gets Neroon to help her end the Minbari civil war, where the fact that she's right becomes more important than the fact that she thinks she is. (And I can't make Delenn/Neroon fic work, but will write anyone who can into my will.) To Delenn, her actions can make up for anything bad she's thought or done in the past, if those actions confirm that she's what she's always believed she is.
Part of her prophecy says that she'll marry Sheridan. Or it does if you interpret it the way she does, at any rate - whatever it actually does say, I doubt it's going to mention Sheridan by name. (And why doesn't she use that prophecy as a reason for marrying him in Atonement?) But Lennier says she's 'destined for another', so obviously it gives some vague idea of who she's supposed to marry, and she decides that means Sheridan. By 'decides', I mean that she both makes it mean Sheridan because she wants it to, and genuinely believes it already does. She doesn't separate herself from her prophecies.
She loves Sheridan because of who he is and what he could represent for her, not despite it. She certainly doesn't fall in love with him unintentionally - she's planning that relationship in S2, she really is. I never bought the Romeo and Juliet they-fell-in-love-despite-everything angle on their relationship. Romeo and Juliet was puppy love anyway - it's not a great story because their love is so twuw, it's a great story because the circumstances around them turned that puppy love into something people were killing and dying for. J/D isn't puppy love, but it isn't any less a result of its circumstances.
She loves Sheridan because he's human, and because he's Starkiller. He represents both the opposing army and the victims of the war she started, so if he can forgive her then (to her) she's forgiven. But he doesn't know what she's done, so she's trying to create forgiveness from his actions because she sees that as more important than his thoughts and words. And if he forgives her, then she never needs to tell him what it is he's forgiving her for.
Which is the only possible way I can understand Lennier writing in his diary that her marriage to Sheridan is a mistake. It's not the marriage itself he has a problem with (well, it is, but not in the sense of thinking she's wrong to do it). It's this idea that she can manufacture forgiveness by getting Sheridan to accept her in the most fundamental way possible: sex, marriage, and having his children. And it's the idea that this way she can avoid ever facing her past (and whatever part of her allowed her to do the things she's done), because she doesn't have to be Minbari around Sheridan. That's neither real forgiveness nor real acceptance, and if she thinks it is, then she is mistaken.
In Lines of Communication, she tells Sheridan "It pleases me that you care for what I have become. But never forget who I was, what I am, and what I can do." But he doesn't truly know who she was, and he doesn't know what she can do. So, really, he doesn't know who she is. What he knows is what she wants him to know. And in Comes the Inquisitor, both Lennier and Sheridan try to help her avoid the Vorlon "Who are you?" question, which means much more to her than the Shadows' (she's never really had any trouble in knowing or getting what she wants, except re: Lennier) - if she's the fulfilment of prophecy, but she's the one creating that prophecy anyway, then who is she?
Sheridan answers it for her by believing she's the person she wants him to think she is - not in CtI, but in the rest of canon. (Or maybe in CtI too, come to think of it - what does he see of her there? That she's willing to be tortured for a cause she believes in, and to give up her life to save his.) The closest Sheridan ever comes to finding out who she is is in Z'ha'dum, when he accuses her of lying about Anna and then leaves, and she effectively tries to kill herself. And she says afterwards that the only thing which might be as terrible as him not returning was "if you came back and could not forgive me." It isn't just him returning that makes her so happy, but returning, excusing what she did by saying that wasn't really Anna and besides "You did what you thought was right" (which even she admits isn't an excuse), and telling her "Could I love that much and not forgive?" Which is what she needs to hear. "I don't know what you did, and I'm willing to say that any parts that I do know about weren't really your fault, but I just love you so much that I'll forgive you anyway."
Lennier knows her better than Sheridan does, I think (he certainly knows who she was and what she can do better than Sheridan does, anyway), but he answers the Vorlon question for her as well - by believing in her and loving her. In the same way that she needs Sheridan to love her rather than just accept her, she needs Lennier's love too, and she needs to know that he's still going to love her and stay with her no matter what she's done. When he leaves in Objects at Rest and she says "I can't imagine my life without you", I think that's the literal truth. Although she gives him the opportunity to leave her in All Alone in the Night, then tells him he doesn't have to follow her in Atonement, that's only after she knows he'll stay with her anyway. And then, later on in Atonement, during the Dreaming: "I won't leave you." "No matter what?" "No matter what."
Delenn wants to answer the "Who are you?" question either with the version of herself that she's created (literally created, with the transformation) which she wants Sheridan to accept, or with the idea of herself as the creation of prophecy. But there, I don't think Lennier answers the question for her in the way she wants, because he doesn't quite give her that second answer. In Chrysalis, he really doesn't want her to undergo the transformation (I'm not entirely sure why, though - at the time, does he know she'll become half-human? Does he just think it might be dangerous?), and when she says "Who are we to stand in the way of prophecy?", he asks "But what if you're wrong?" He doesn't just see her as the fulfilment of prophecy (although it must be a huge thing for Lennier, especially Season 1 Lennier, to question her like that). He actually can answer the "Who are you?" question with the truth, rather than what she wants the truth to be.
Which I think is why she loves him, and why she needs him, and also why she isn't too good at admitting either (she sort of tells him she needs him, but without ever telling him why, and only when he's about to leave her). And I think she does love him. She's constantly touching him or holding his hand, even as early as S2, and by S5 she's stroking his face in a way that's difficult to see as platonic. She heard Sheridan's "I can't imagine my life without you as a part of it" the way he intended it, as an "I love you" without really saying the words, but it's Lennier that she repeats that to. Her greatest concern when Lennier tries to kill Sheridan is that it means Lennier will leave her. And when she puts her hand on his face and tells him that Ivanova was wrong about all love being unrequited, I can't see it any other way than what it seems to be.
If you were new to the series and saw Delenn and Lennier in Meditations on the Abyss or Darkness Ascending, and you knew that one of them was supposed to be unrequitedly in love with the other, I don't think you'd guess Lennier. In Meditations, he not only refuses to stay with her when she asks him to, but he sounds something like annoyed with her. Which he'd have every right to be if he was - what she's doing to him isn't fair, not by a long way. I'm not sure he is, though. Maybe at some level he's angry with her, but can only understand that as being angry with himself for wanting more here than what she's prepared to give. And he knows she can't give it, because admitting that her relationship with Sheridan is in any way less than perfect (as a result of her own actions) or that she might love someone she isn't destined to love would mean answering the "Who are you?" question with something other than prophecy, which she can't do.
Lennier told Marcus that he loved her as part of the rebirth ceremony, where everyone has to tell something that they've never told before. They also have to give up something of great value. We don't see Lennier do that, but he must, and the obvious idea that he's giving up all hope of Delenn loving him (or choosing to be with him) doesn't sound quite right to me. That would mean, after all, that up until this point in canon he's still had that hope, despite knowing that her prophecy has destined her for someone else. And although he doesn't see her as just a combination of her prophecies, and does question her in Chrysalis, I think it would be very unlike him to discard a prophecy just because it meant he wouldn't end up with Delenn. Maybe he's giving up his freedom to interpret her prophecies a different way than she does, although that doesn't seem quite right either. And he's already given up his self, in a pretty fundamental way, in All Alone in the Night. Hm.
But Lennier has always known who he is. He's who Delenn needs. He's at his most confident and his happiest when either of them is admitting that (like the "Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?" "Not really, but it will give us something to discuss on the journey" scene in All Alone in the Night). He's at his least sure of himself when he doubts it, and in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari he says that he's leaving because "you don't need me any more". And he says "You have Sheridan now, and he is now your other half". But she still does need him, because Sheridan can't be to her what Lennier is, just as Lennier can't be what Sheridan is.
In Rumors, Bargains and Lies, he tells the other Religious caste Minbari that "In her world, we are better than we are. We care more than we do." Lennier is very much included in the 'we' there, and that's why he needs her as much as he does. I think that's got a lot to do with the only thing he ever says about his past (which is significant in itself, given that every other character gets to talk about their life before B5 at some point or other, and Lennier ducks Londo's question by saying 'There is nothing more' and then talking about his studies instead): "I lost family on the Black Star." Humans in general, and Sheridan in particular, killed his family and took away the woman he loves. I think that would result in some pretty murderous thoughts. By working so hard to create peace with humans, and by supporting Delenn's relationship with Sheridan, he's trying to do what she does - make up for his flawed past and his flawed self through his present actions. But unlike Delenn, he knows that you can't create forgiveness by having people who don't know how bad you are accept you, and it doesn't work for him the way it works for her. Which results, pretty inevitably, in S5 Lennier.
The first time I saw S5, I spent a lot of time being mad at Sheridan. He knew how much Lennier meant to Delenn - or if he didn't, he should have damn well been paying attention - and he still came out with that "Three's a crowd" line? Grr. But now, although he's still not exactly my favourite character, I don't blame him so much for that. He's in a difficult situation, too, especially if he does know how much Lennier means to Delenn, and even more especially if he thinks she loves him. To Sheridan, being in love with two people is something to fight - he talks about having to fight off the part of him that was still in love with Anna every time he looks at Delenn. Delenn, on the other hand, doesn't do that, and won't even try to deal with what Lennier means to her. Although Sheridan really does want her to be happy, I can't entirely blame him for also wanting Lennier out of the way.
I wonder, though, what happens after Lennier leaves. In Season 5, Sheridan starts to realise that Lennier being gone doesn't mean Lennier not being in the picture (and, really, it doesn't even mean Lennier being gone - he comes back when Delenn wants him to, and he comes back when she asks, and she does both). And he's quite good about it, telling Lennier in that incredibly awkward moment early in Objects at Rest that him being here means a lot to Delenn. After OaR, though... well. The fact that Delenn obviously doesn't think less of Lennier for what he did, and still desperately wants him back, must be difficult for the person he's just tried to kill. And Sheridan says that he thinks he would forgive Lennier, even though he shouldn't.
There is, maybe maybe maybe, the tiniest glimpse of a possibility of a happy ending there (yes, I know they toast him as dead and/or gone in SiL, but that's twenty years in the future and we don't know what's happened since. And JMS has said himself that if it airs, it's canon, and that he has been known to lie when asked about arc developments that he didn't want to give away. So take that, Crusade speculation). In forgiving Lennier, Sheridan would have to admit that he does sometimes forgive when he shouldn't, and that "You did what you thought was right at the time" is not a justification. In dealing with what Delenn feels for Lennier, he'd have to deal with what he felt (and presumably still feels) for Anna. Maybe it's not a happy ending we'll see in canon, but still, the possibility is there. And for both Sheridan and Delenn, Lennier needs to come back to make it happen. So maybe three is sacred after all.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-22 02:53 pm (UTC)Season four - Awakening. I really enjoyed the end of season four too, although...oh crap, I can't say anything else or I'll spoil you. Oh well. ;)
I love the ending though, when Angel says Buffy's name. As if Cordelia could give him a moments pure happiness, yeah right! See, it really was never about the sex.
Okay, I'm done now. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-22 03:01 pm (UTC)The whole Angel/Cordelia thing is the part I don't like too much about Angel right now (although I'm still very much catching up) - it's where most of my 'it's all a soap opera!' grumbling came from ;) But I really did fall for the ending of this episode. "Oh, okay, he's fixed things with Connor and Wesley apologised and Gunn and Wesley are friends and everything's working together, and now him and Cordelia get to live happily ever after and - wait, what happened? wtf??'
A few quick thoughts
Date: 2004-07-22 05:11 pm (UTC)If you were new to the series and saw Delenn and Lennier in Meditations on the Abyss or Darkness Ascending, and you knew that one of them was supposed to be unrequitedly in love with the other, I don't think you'd guess Lennier.
Great way to put it. And it'd be a fun experiment to try sometime with a newbie.
But Lennier has always known who he is. He's who Delenn needs.
See, that (as you know from my fic) I can't agree with. He goes off in OaR saying he needs to find out who and what he is, because he's defined himself only in relation to Delenn. But I think he doesn't know who and what he is partly because Minbar doesn't know who and what it is.
And for both Sheridan and Delenn, Lennier needs to come back to make it happen. So maybe three is sacred after all.
And I hope it will go this way in your epic. It's really a challenge to write D/L in a way that respects J/D, and even more so to write it with all three of them together. You're very optimistic about Sheridan's abilities to accept Lennier, so it might be possible.
Re: A few quick thoughts
Date: 2004-07-22 05:31 pm (UTC)I know *grins*. I think it's got more to do with how the characters understand that question, and Minbari have a very specific framework that they'll understand it in - which, I think, would be more about service and self-sacrifice (was 'Who do you serve' a Crusade question?). So early Lennier could answer "Who are you?" by referring to Delenn, and could absolutely know that was the answer, even if it wasn't the right answer. Which is why he has to find out who he is in OaR when he can't use that framework for understanding the question any more. If that makes any sense...
I also think that with devotion and self-sacrifice to that degree, it's like Minbari have a whole cultural precedent of not answering that question by reducing their own identity as much as possible. Which would fit with Lennier's 'There is nothing more', too, if that's what he was trying to do - use the rebirth ceremony in S1 as a way to put aside anything he's ever done and been except his studies, and tried to be nothing other than Delenn's. *starts finding this unbelievably icky* *puts it down to possibly play with another day*
You're very optimistic about Sheridan's abilities to accept Lennier, so it might be possible.
I feel really guilty over characters I dislike, and try to make them my idea of better. Probably not a good thing, that. But I'd love to pull off a Sheridan/Delenn/Lennier ending to that fic, or any other fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-23 08:09 pm (UTC)Ah---! Good one. And nice to hear. One of my friends shocked me the other day by calling Lennier a "scumbag" for, of all things, exploiting Delenn's dependence on him, and described Delenn and Sheridan's relationship as this sort of torrid perfect love that no one could interfere with (or maybe Neroon could, he wasn't sure). I'm sort of just coming out of confused shock now...
As for what Lennier gives for the Rebirth ceremony, ritual complications like that are what I'm trying to work with in the story that's barely, barely, not really coming along. I'm curious as to not only what (the fourth time around) Lennier would give, but what Delenn would say, and that's the premise.
I like Delenn much better after puzzling over your entry. Gramercy.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-25 12:04 pm (UTC)Ah, so Lennier has to be a scumbag, otherwise the all-powerful OTP would look a little less all-powerful. As in the eight thousand "Arwen is a bitchskank whore for getting in the way of Aragorn/Mary-Sue or Aragorn/Legolas!" fics, I assume ;) I think JMS and Delenn are guilty of doing that to a certain degree as well. Bah, diary, and "I knew he had certain feelings for me, but I had no idea!"
(I'm curious, though - how did your friend see Lennier as exploiting Delenn's dependence on him?)
I'm curious as to not only what (the fourth time around) Lennier would give, but what Delenn would say, and that's the premise.
My abandoned Delenn/Neroon fic had a rebirth ceremony as well, and I got stuck on what Delenn would say. I hope you can work it out better than I could, because I really want to read your fic.
She's an awkward character to write, though, isn't she? Anything she hasn't already told anyone would presumably be something she didn't want to tell anyone about, and in that case she'd just act as though whatever it was never existed. But maybe in the case of a rebirth ceremony, when she's expected and required to say something in the context of a ritual that means a lot to her, she'd be able to?
I like Delenn much better after puzzling over your entry. Gramercy.
You're welcome. I like her a lot more than I used to, although I also see her as far less justified in her actions (and far more guilty with regards to Lennier) - it's strange how those two went together.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-15 04:14 pm (UTC)According to him (paraphrased for better coherency):
Lennier makes all his emotional bonding moves when Delenn's in distress. He creates a relationship which is inherently strongest during crisis situations by vowing to never leave Delenn's side no matter what. This means that Lennier is seen as strongest---refusing to leave, protecting her---when Delenn is at her weakest, and further, is at his closest to her when others are most far away, abandoning her.