Farscape is awesome

[minxy]

Shunda was asking, the other day, about techniques for getting back into the fannish swing. As I was talking about recs lists and Arc of Truth posts and things, she asked how the Farscape viewing was going and I though, "Ye gads! It's been aaaaaages!"

I didn't even remember where I'd left off (turns out, right after Kansas of all episodes.) Reading back over the reactions and the comments, though, it's clear why: it was right before the family emergency started snowballing. It would have taken something that extreme to drag me away.

Anyway, I give you

Farscape, season 4. Terra Firma

Previouslies: John is addicted to 'forget Aeryn' drugs, wormholes in John's hands could create even more destruction, Grayza was scorned.

Trout or Bass? And the delegation from Earth is sporting the worst of toupee style.

Apparently Sikozu has contacted them (too smart, learns languages too fast.) There's been enough time to launch a shuttle? Oh, 42 days, wow. Snag with the wormhole travel, and John's more worried about causing trouble than the danger the Earth delegation presents. Scorpius is got some froonium powered signal so that there won't be a problem getting back.

I like that John's father's awe at Sikozu's English was what tipped the cards for John from 'impostors' to 'possible victims'.

Okay, so they're really on Earth, and the right time and place. Is John writing in English? I should go back and look.

Chiana must've had fourteen bazillion extra hours in make-up just to make it into the bikini. Fun moments with the cousin, great little reactions.

Aeryn and John's sister are so cute. At Christmas too, with Aeryn learning words, and the girlfriend who reminds me of Rachel Luttrell showing up.

I love John hugging a pillow. It looks so vulnerable and real. I wonder what the significance of him eating microwave popcorn when Grandma and Rigel were chugging the old school kernels.

Grayza's assassin is on board. John is calling his father by his first name. Aeryn and D'Argo had a nice moment about making sure the scientists don't break their ships.

And another incredible conversation/not-conversation between John and Aeryn over the prowler.

And a fascinating conversation with Jack, very normal Dad-Knows-Best voice.

The Moyans are getting a little wacky cooped up. John and his father are still at odds.

So I'm wondering what John is leading them towards. I would love it to be some kind of basic science, like twelve new elements or something, that is meant to give some sense of how out of their depth they are. Only that would really only convince the scientists, not the politicians; the scientists are already pretty convinced that they don't know everything.

Olivia is cool, with her down to Earth kind of caring.

And hey the Rachel Luttrell woman is being really fair and sweet to Aeryn, and I'm really glad that didn't disintegrate into a catfight.

Oh, hey Scorpy! I thought the froonium handwaving for Scorpius' absence was an excuse for why he wasn't there, it's nice to actually see him. The Scorpius and Sikozu dynamic remains really, really kinky.

Uh, oh. John's friends are dead and The assassin is there. And it's really bothering me that JOHN'S SISTER WENT DOWN. SHE IS AWESOME.

Oh shit, everyone is down. John and Aeryn are fighting together really well, but now *Aeryn's* down.

Oh, thank heaven for D'Argo. 'Merry frelling Christmas'? I've seen that on icons and things.

Oh good, everyone's okay.

And Aeryn's sorted out that John's reactions are drug influenced.

Olivia continues to be really awesome. Jack seems to be pretty fantastic too. Oh MAN, okay, Jack is GREAT. This is such a great real, relationship. All kinds of flaws and changes.

Oooh, that was neat. I hope that really was Earth and not an illusion or flashback this time. It would be neat to see that payed off. Did they let Earth keep the dead alien? Oh wait, the chandelier didn't kill the alien, D'Argo's ship blasted it into nothingness (that's convenient.)


Twice Shy.

Previouslies: Scorpius on board, Aeryn pregnant and it's coming between her and John, drugs.

Noranti is doing the negotiation? Okay. Oh, they have a woman to sell. And Chiana knows... oh. Chiana knows what this is about, will kill her before she fails to free her. Wow. I hope this Talika girl is only broken and hasn't glued herself back together in a twisted way.

And Aeryn doesn't want to talk, she's done catering to a drug addict apparently.

John is throwing around a lot of love words and confidence for a guy who has been drugging himself to the gills to avoid even thoughts of love.

And Chiana and Talika are having an escalating moment which is kind of extreme. Aeryn thinks so too, but she's still less rational when John is mentioned.

Huh, Talika is telepathic? empathic? Able to look in a creature's eyes and see their soul? D'Argo and Rigel are going at it. Talika is reacting to each in individual ways. Noranti is the one to call a committee meeting on this? Scorpius is implementing.

Aeryn really has a lot of hair this season. WOW, IS THAT TALIKA? Geebus.

Aeryn looks like she's been hit but John looks like something's been implanted in his temple. Oops, the others are down.

Wow, Scorpius is *furious*, Noranti has a good amount of presence of mind.

Oh, everyone has just switched positions from their earlier over-emotion. Hey, see? Chiana agrees with me. And she's lost her sex drive, but the boys sure haven't, man. Heh. She's never sought out Pilot, has she?

Well, the Trader doesn't look so good. Makes me a little concerned that the growths on the side of his head are Talika-related.

Oh, the Scorpius is extreme in his reaction to Sikozu being down. Sexy, goodness. Sikozu is immune?

Talika is taking the Trader's ship? It's interesting that what Chiana calls their strongest traits are also their defense mechanisms. They're all stripped.

Huh, Norati is immune too? Talika's voice is getting more and more interesting.

Sikozu is injured and climbing the walls yet. John is depressed as hell and barely standing. And his plans do indeed suck, it's interesting that Sikozu is relying on John's ability to talk while she lifts the glowy green light bulbs.

Except he's maybe a little too far gone? Ooooooh, firefight! The muzzle down the throat trick.

Yadda, their okay. Conversation with Aeryn and oh. It's a Scorpius thing? It's, wow, he's there because Aeryn brought him on board.

Aw, they've finally come to the understanding that they cannot say what they mean, but they can say the opposite. It's sweet that they got on the same page. Oh, wow, apparently they're really on the same page finally YAY! YAYAYAYAY.

Damn, I'm such a shipper. When did this happen, I ask you?

Comments

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Yay, Farscape! Um, I don't have anything else to add to that. Just: yay, Farscape! :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Yay Farscape! \o/

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

I do love it when you watch Farscape. And yes indeedy, Merry Frelling Christmas.

Seriously, that line and the way Aeryn says it captures so much. They have a way of packing a lot into just a few simple words.

As for John and Aeryn, well yes. *bg*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Yes. *nods*

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[cofax7]

Ricky Manning wrote "Terra Firma"; you can tell because it makes sense emotionally. Whereas from my pov "Twice Shy" makes no sense at all. John's not so stupid as to believe Scorpius didn't know all along what he felt for Aeryn, right? I have issues with the tag at the end of TS, great big honking issues. I don't think they earned that resolution, and it makes me grind my teeth.

Ah, well. I love TF, and I wrote a tag for it, and the image of John walking away with his sunglasses on just really gets me. Which is another reason TS makes me crazy: John says in TF, "I have a job to do," and then... they're back just flailing around the galaxy, going nowhere in particular and doing nothing specific. What job, exactly, was that, Commander Crichton?

Argh. I shall stop being critical in your LJ. This is why I haven't rewatched Season 4, and it's been five years!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Actually, I can totally see that. As much as I love the tag and it was surprising and wonderful at the time, and CB and BB *played* it and earned it in the moment... it didn't hold up. By the time I was thinking about it this morning it was starting to stutter in my head.

I usually do a first viewing pretty non-critically, but I can see where this one might need some fic tags.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

See, I wasn't going to say it. Because, as a non-shippy sort, it hardly seems reasonably of me to go around raining on other people's shippy parade. :) But, yeah, that scene annoys the crap out of me, too. I think it really damaged the credibility of their relationship, to be honest... If anybody can come up with a fic tag that really makes it work, my hat's off to 'em.

[kernezelda]

I think John's lying to Aeryn. He doesn't trust her any more then with his heart than he did before, because she hasn't done anything to prove that he can. But he's going to let himself have the illusion of it, the physical connection and affection, because it's easier than fighting, and it gives Aeryn a reason to stop digging. She thinks he's opened to her, but we don't see him actually do so. Not until spoiler.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I could maybe buy that, but doesn't it make Aeryn seem awfully stupid if she believes it? And Aeryn Sun is many things, but she's not stupid.

[kernezelda]

I don't think so. She's still relatively new to emotional manipulation, despite her use of it in Promises and the attempts to waylay John by sitting in corridors and wearing makeup, new methods to gain entry. She's looking for what she has known from John before, talking as a sign of opening up and working things through, whereas John's now using talking as a shield against opening himself to her.

Aeryn is willing to think that the drugs have altered John's behavior and clouded his vision, when they haven't really, while John still sees her as possibly being manipulated by Scorpius, and a danger that he honestly can't fight.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that being drug-addled would appear to be the only reasonable explanation as to why Crichton would even pretend that "Shh, I'm acting like I don't care about you so Scorpius doesn't know!" makes the slightest, remotest, tiniest lick of sense to anybody who's known Scorpius for more than thirty seconds. If Aeryn accepts that explanation, she is being uncharacteristically dumb. And if she doesn't, that "Yay, everything is wonderful and shippy now!" note that the episode ends on is out of place and frankly kind of disturbing. Either way, it bugs me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I was starting to think that it might work as a 'oh, maybe we finally understand each other about something' smile with a kind of a 'resigned to the way things are' kiss. So a little more bittersweet than it actually appeared.

I could see Aeryn's frustration at John's inexplicable behavior, and I can see John's lingering HUGE ISSUES with Scorpius. Maybe it would be enough to at least start making sense to one another?

But ultimately Aeryn still lied about the pregnancy and John was hurt, John deliberately shunned Aeryn and failed to explain why when she was reaching out to him with all the tools she had. None of these things were resolved in the slightest, it's just that more issues were introduced into the conversation.

That's the way I'm working with it at the moment, anyway.

[kernezelda]

Well, of course it makes no sense. Anyone who's seen John and Aeryn interact knows that, including Scorpius, who may not understand, but is quite cognizant of the bonds among Moya's peculiarly effective crew. But, it shuts her up and stops her digging, because 1) John is right about Scorpius rigging the comms, and 2) he's giving Aeryn what she thinks she wants - a way in to John wherein she can regain the trust that he's denying her.

John isn't as she left him, and they've spent little time together since she came back from Talyn. He's not the man he was, and yet she seems to expect him to be, now that the chip is gone, Crais is gone, and Scorpius has no power. She makes no allowance for cumulative psychological trauma, not the least caused by her desertions and those of John's friends, and what he's had to do and become to survive. So, he lets Aeryn have his shell, he gets hers, and they share a false comfort until the end of spoiler, when we first see genuine emotion again.

It seemed to me that the end of the episode was supposed to be seen as disturbing, given the way the music turned ominous over the kiss, that we, the audience, were meant to see through the oh-so-joyful-reunion.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I think that a lot of my problem with this scene is that it's not clear to me that we're meant to see something else. It really does look like, as cofax7 says, a resolution that hasn't actually been earned. This is a lot of my problem with J/A in S4 as a whole, actually. I frequently get the feeling that I'm trying to be sold on it as something less irreparably dysfunctional than it (IMHO) clearly is by that point.

[kernezelda]

So dysfunctional, omg, and yet the writers seem to have no clue as to just how bad it is.

[sugargroupie.livejournal.com]

TF - I like Caroline, and I don't think that's a secret. It was quite refreshing that she was rarely bashed in the fandom. Or I should say, not in my corner of fandom. And I love this episode so much.

TS - It's funny you should mention that you're a shipper with the end tag of this episode in mind because I was the same way. And then it started to piss me off because of the inconsistencies, etc. So, fanfic was clearly the answer. *g*

And thanks for answering!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I really like that there was enough tension played in how Caroline and Aeryn interacted that there was the potential for... anything, really. And it was fun to notice Aeryn's vulnerability at the same time you were aware that she could break you with her pinky finger (which is where part of my glee that she kicks ass with the alien assassin plays in too.) I loved, though, that both those women were brutally honest with each other, and that they really revealed a lot in a simple conversation, but it was earned--they started with simple truths and built into something near confidences, which is really something.

I watched the extended scenes of the first meeting with the delegation from Earth and it made a lot more sense to me why people were seeing so much reaction from John about Aeryn, since they actually had a moment of breathing each other's air and standing too close as John gets paranoid. Most of the final cut you just have to take on faith that John and Aeryn are around each other enough that people see it, not just the 'does the cat talk' moment, cute as that was.

TS is already starting to niggle at me a bit... I can see where fanfic would be the answer. Do you have any recommendations? I loved that payoff, but it was a surprise. What we really need is for the individual episodes to be longer, I feel.

also, since I seem to be answering here and not where you originally asked the question (lo, I am lame) yes, this is Crichton, not Mitchell. There's something to the weight in his expression that bouncy!puppy!Mitchell rarely has.

[sugargroupie.livejournal.com]

I loved, though, that both those women were brutally honest with each other, and that they really revealed a lot in a simple conversation, but it was earned--they started with simple truths and built into something near confidences, which is really something.

This. On the surface it was a very simple scene, but then there were layers to that conversation. Aeryn had no need to play games in that situation; it's not her way, she only knows how to be straightforward about what she wants, and I really liked that Caroline met her halfway on that. She was also very honest and realistic about her relationship with John. *sigh* Yeah, I've written fic about Caroline, that's how much I dig her.

I'll gather some recs for you that deal specifically with TS. I'm pretty sure you'll get loads more as you finish the rest of the season. I've also written quite a bit of meta that I could link you to that, I believe, goes into a theory I have about John and Aeryn season four.

[dustandroses.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to say about Farscape, having never seen an episode, but I have been working on getting back into the Fannish swing of things myself for the last week or so. I've been MIA for a very, very long time, now.

Since I haven't touched my friend's list for probably six months now, I started there - picking up some stories to read along the way. But I was hesitant as to where to go next. I think re-watching some episodes sounds like a good next step. Too bad I only have Season One of SG-1; however - it's a really good place to start, to get my SG-1 mojo working again.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I put together this long assed list of recs from the early seasons of Stargate and that was so much fun. If you end up rewatching season 1, you may want to check it out.

Elsewise, email me, as I just *happen* to have spare copies of S1-7 or 8. Free to a good home.

[dustandroses.livejournal.com]

Oh...Early season Stargate recs. Yum. I'm there. And I'm emailing you as soon as I finish this comment. *g*

[dustandroses.livejournal.com]

Hey Minxy - the email I sent you just bounced back to me...so I guess I can't use your livejournal addy to email you. I got a note yesterday that my email had been delayed, but at the time they expected it to go through eventually. I guess not. Don't know what's up with that. Are you having any problems with your email account? My address is dustandroses @ hotmail.com - minus the spaces, of course. Do you mind emailing me first? Sorry for the problem.

[fbf.livejournal.com]

I have been waiting for you to get through and an all possible spoilers before I linked this. My entry for an Aeryn fic-a-thon from almost four years ago. It deals with what Aeryn did on her summer vacation. You can find it here (http://fbf.livejournal.com/104655.html). My only warning is that it's in TV script format.

And one more rec, it's one of my favorites Posing with a Plastic Smile (http://www.shriftweb.org/leviathan/archive/5/posingwith.html). John during Terra Firma, in all his messed up glory trying to sleep. and then my companion fic from Jack's POV The Man behind the Curtain (http://fbf.livejournal.com/38090.html#cutid1).

*does a little twirling dance for your farscape watching*

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Ooh, if we're reccing TF fic, can I put a plug in for "Normal" (http://www.allabouthmpf.com/normal.htm)? No, it's not mine. But it's so worth reading. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Oh yes! Let's rec fic! *bounces*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Eeee! Fic recs! You've really been waiting for me to see these? That's really flattering.

Will let you know how the reading goes...

[50mm.livejournal.com]

TF is one of my top 5 or so episodes. I love love love Olivia and her and John's relationship, and also how awesome she is with Aeryn. When my sister first starting watching FS, right off she asked me if John ever gets to go home. I didn't say, but the answer is both yes and no. It breaks my heart.

I try not to think too much about the TS tag; I figure John's in denial, not fooling anyone.

Actor meta for TF: I was sitting in a hotel room in Brussels in 2005, watching TV while getting ready to head out for a day of touristing, and Australia's Next Top Model was on. The women who was the host/Tyra Banks role looked so familiar but I couldn't place her. Finally later on in the day, I realized it was the actress who played Caroline, except she had an Australian accent, so I didn't recognize the voice.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

She really is a very interesting presence, and we only see her for a couple of scenes. Impressive that she makes that much of an impact.