24 Oct 2014 02:30 pm
Farscape and Fray
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frayadjacentFarscape: I have just one episode left! Well, I think so anyway, I've been avoiding looking up lists of episode titles in case there are spoilers. I realize I've hardly posted about the show even though I've liked it a lot and I love love love Aeryn Sun. So here is an unsorted and unformatted selection of my thoughts.
I didn't give this show the attention it deserves and requires. I watched it over the course of something like 2 1/2 years -- I watched the first half dozen episodes of season 1, waited more than a year, watched up through the start of season 4 off and on over about six months, hated early season 4 and took at least six months to get through the first 12 episodes, and have watched the rest of season 4 this week. Furthermore, I often had one eye on Twitter or something else while I watched, which is not my normal way of watching tv AT ALL, but I developed the habit during some boring/bad S1 episodes and never fully shook it. So now I feel like there's a lot I missed, thematically, character-wise, and in terms of plot. I already feel like I need to rewatch.
I was thinking the other day about what it takes for me to fall in love with a show, and at what point in the show that happens. My favorite shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena, and Friday Night Lights. I fell in love with the last of these immediately, and the love uh, *almost* never faltered (coughmurdersubplotcough). Conversely, Xena was a show I enjoyed, but no more, until the final season, when I really fell hard for the Xena/Gabrielle pairing. Now I see the entire series through the lens of what the last season did in terms of their relationship (and what seasons 3 & 4 did for Gabrielle's character) and I love it all. Buffy was somewhere in between. I loved it a lot the first time I watched, but it wasn't until I started rewatching (and rewatching and rewatching) and discussing it that I got really into it.
I bring this up because I suspect that Farscape, like Xena and to some extent Buffy, will be a show that will impress me most when viewed as a whole. There has been a ton of narrative follow-through in these last few episodes. Like people told me when I started, shit *matters* on Farscape. I've been enjoying that a lot.
In terms of character, some of my favorite things include the radiant Aeryn Sun, as well as the way the show has depicted the impact of imprisonment and homesickness on the characters. I've mostly enjoyed their interpersonal dynamics. Relationships are fraught and tenuous, but for good reason. The plotlines with Crais, Scorpius, and Talyn have been interesting and I've liked them quite a bit.
However, I do wish the show was more of an ensemble, because I don't really connect to John Crichton the way I'm supposed to. I feel for his homesickness, I like his sense of humor and kindness. But I was also endlessly frustrated with everyone insisting that he was ignorant, that his ideas were bad and always went wrong, that he wasn't the hero we the audience were expecting him to be, when the narrative quite frankly kept making him pretty much exactly the hero we expect. The show put a lot of effort into telling us that John wasn't your usual sci-fi hero, but it did not succeed at showing it. Like even though he didn't earn or want it, he still spends most of the show as the most important single person in the known universe, and it just grates on me.
Also, I know this is pretty random, but remember in an early episode where there's a flashback to John's life on Earth, and a moment when he was about to propose to his girlfriend, but then she told him she was going to grad school or medical school or something instead of following him and building her career around his? And so he gets the super sads and is totally betrayed and doesn't propose and we're all supposed to feel bad for him? I cannot emphasize enough how much I fucking hated that, how close to home that shit is for me, and I think it's why I basically didn't like John for a long time thereafter. I know it's not a particularly strong argument, but the point is that so much of the show revolves around John, a character I've come to care about and like, but it took a damn long time due to some basic smart white guy tropes that the show fell into that I find particularly annoying. And I wish I'd seen more time spent on other characters, especially Aeryn (though she got a fair amount) and Chiana and D'Argo. Also I really, really liked Jool and her brattiness and ridiculous scream and super smartness. I'd have really loved more Jool.
Anyway this is not my final word on Farscape, I obviously, I know there's a lot to it that I've straight up missed and I'm looking forward to exploring it deeper through vids and some meta and rewatching certain episodes. I'm happy to take recommendations for fanworks including meta! And to know other people's thoughts.
I didn't give this show the attention it deserves and requires. I watched it over the course of something like 2 1/2 years -- I watched the first half dozen episodes of season 1, waited more than a year, watched up through the start of season 4 off and on over about six months, hated early season 4 and took at least six months to get through the first 12 episodes, and have watched the rest of season 4 this week. Furthermore, I often had one eye on Twitter or something else while I watched, which is not my normal way of watching tv AT ALL, but I developed the habit during some boring/bad S1 episodes and never fully shook it. So now I feel like there's a lot I missed, thematically, character-wise, and in terms of plot. I already feel like I need to rewatch.
I was thinking the other day about what it takes for me to fall in love with a show, and at what point in the show that happens. My favorite shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena, and Friday Night Lights. I fell in love with the last of these immediately, and the love uh, *almost* never faltered (coughmurdersubplotcough). Conversely, Xena was a show I enjoyed, but no more, until the final season, when I really fell hard for the Xena/Gabrielle pairing. Now I see the entire series through the lens of what the last season did in terms of their relationship (and what seasons 3 & 4 did for Gabrielle's character) and I love it all. Buffy was somewhere in between. I loved it a lot the first time I watched, but it wasn't until I started rewatching (and rewatching and rewatching) and discussing it that I got really into it.
I bring this up because I suspect that Farscape, like Xena and to some extent Buffy, will be a show that will impress me most when viewed as a whole. There has been a ton of narrative follow-through in these last few episodes. Like people told me when I started, shit *matters* on Farscape. I've been enjoying that a lot.
In terms of character, some of my favorite things include the radiant Aeryn Sun, as well as the way the show has depicted the impact of imprisonment and homesickness on the characters. I've mostly enjoyed their interpersonal dynamics. Relationships are fraught and tenuous, but for good reason. The plotlines with Crais, Scorpius, and Talyn have been interesting and I've liked them quite a bit.
However, I do wish the show was more of an ensemble, because I don't really connect to John Crichton the way I'm supposed to. I feel for his homesickness, I like his sense of humor and kindness. But I was also endlessly frustrated with everyone insisting that he was ignorant, that his ideas were bad and always went wrong, that he wasn't the hero we the audience were expecting him to be, when the narrative quite frankly kept making him pretty much exactly the hero we expect. The show put a lot of effort into telling us that John wasn't your usual sci-fi hero, but it did not succeed at showing it. Like even though he didn't earn or want it, he still spends most of the show as the most important single person in the known universe, and it just grates on me.
Also, I know this is pretty random, but remember in an early episode where there's a flashback to John's life on Earth, and a moment when he was about to propose to his girlfriend, but then she told him she was going to grad school or medical school or something instead of following him and building her career around his? And so he gets the super sads and is totally betrayed and doesn't propose and we're all supposed to feel bad for him? I cannot emphasize enough how much I fucking hated that, how close to home that shit is for me, and I think it's why I basically didn't like John for a long time thereafter. I know it's not a particularly strong argument, but the point is that so much of the show revolves around John, a character I've come to care about and like, but it took a damn long time due to some basic smart white guy tropes that the show fell into that I find particularly annoying. And I wish I'd seen more time spent on other characters, especially Aeryn (though she got a fair amount) and Chiana and D'Argo. Also I really, really liked Jool and her brattiness and ridiculous scream and super smartness. I'd have really loved more Jool.
Anyway this is not my final word on Farscape, I obviously, I know there's a lot to it that I've straight up missed and I'm looking forward to exploring it deeper through vids and some meta and rewatching certain episodes. I'm happy to take recommendations for fanworks including meta! And to know other people's thoughts.
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I'm glad you enjoyed it. And yes, it definitely repays rewatching.
Furthermore, I often had one eye on Twitter or something else while I watched, which is not my normal way of watching tv AT ALL, but I developed the habit during some boring/bad S1 episodes and never fully shook it. So now I feel like there's a lot I missed, thematically, character-wise, and in terms of plot. I already feel like I need to rewatch.
There's probably some stuff you missed, yes. I tried, second time around, watching Farscape while cross-stitching - and kept wondering why I wasn't getting the same emotional arcs that I'd thought were there earlier. That's when I realised how very visual Farscape is. It's the one show I can't craft in front of, because so much of it is done without words.
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But at the same time, it's a science fiction show with an attractive white military hero at the center of it, and he has a romance plot with a woman who comes from a nonromantic society, which means necessarily not only is the show centered around him, but the show is centered around Aeryn changing her values to become more like his.
How do you write a television show with any level of success where the moral of the show is "the mainstream values of the viewers are different from the values of this show"? It would be really hard to have any commercial success, even at a cult level.
It actually kind of makes me wish that art-house independent film funded television projects, or public television funded cult sci-fi, or something like that. The idea of getting further away from the mainstream.
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1) Although John occupies the protagonist role, he's also occupying the woman's role. He wears his heart on his sleeve; the person he loves is stoic and takes care of him. He gets rescued by his lover. He is raped, repeatedly, both mentally and literally. He falls apart mentally and emotionally, but it's never manpain he's having -- when John cries, he cries for himself.
2) John doesn't wind up back on Earth. I can't stress enough how important this is; John rebuilds himself in the image of the Uncharted Territories. John is profoundly changed; still human, but ultimately his new and true home is out there where humans are disrespected if they're known at all. A typical white male hero converts all of those around him to appreciate HIS values and beliefs, his understanding of what is important. A typical show would have had the crew of Moya becoming honorary humans, and would have had John back on Earth for the rest of his life, perhaps affected by his experiences but fundamentally unchanged. In Farscape, John's transformation is complete. He becomes the other.
Totally hear you on the girlfriend thing, though. (:
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Also your icon is giving me so many giggles right now. :D
ETA: I am digging up people's posts about Farscape and I noticed that in her recentish Farscape post,
"The Hero. Flawed, brilliant, well-meaning, oozing with integrity. Also tall and sexually self aware."
I read that and immediately thought, "that's my type too". Well, not in the same sense that Lum means it, and not so much the tall bit, but I realized that if John were anyone but a cis white guy, he'd probably be one of my favorite characters ever. Weird.
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I could show you some extremely erotic fic that would rock your world, Johntastically speaking, if you're interested. (:
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Scientist, Astronaut, and Nymphomaniac: The Nine Lives of John Crichton
http://archiveofourown.org/works/192420
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Oh, there's an angle I couldn't name. Yes, that makes a big difference. I'm one of the people who respond very differently to John Crichton than to other typical white male TV protagonists. Hmm, the only non-white male TV protagonist I can think of offhand is Benjamin Sisko, who has some similar attributes to John Crichton, including the increasing assimilation to what is around him and ultimately leaving the culture he came from behind (an ending that I'm not fond of, but I haven't seen Farscape's ending yet to compare).
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(John/Aeryn still doesn't entirely work for me as the center of the show, but I like it insofar as I like John, I like Aeryn, and they both seem happy at the end, so I am happy for them. I just wish it wasn't quite as much the point as it clearly is. I also cringe at how, sometimes, the implication is that John stays with Moya for Aeryn or that Aeryn stays with Moya for John. I like the idea that he stays across the universe because he has changed and that she stays with Moya because she has changed — and perhaps even they have changed each other! — but I loathe when characters leave behind their former lives solely to be with a lover. The romance trope of "you are the only important thing in my universe so I'm leaving everything behind for you" is the least romantic thing ever to me; I get enraged whenever it happens. I don't think that's what happens with either John or Aeryn, but the pairing rubs up against the trope enough that I get frustrated.)
What you say about recoiling hard with Crichton resonates for me because, first, it's happened for me for a bunch of characters in different shows, but also because it happened to me for Aeryn and to a lesser extent Crichton and D'Argo on Farscape. The first episode I ever saw Dream A Little Dream (followed by Thanks for Sharing -- worst first two episodes to watch ever) which skewed my perspective on the show for a long time afterwards. DaLD is one of two episodes (if I'm counting right) not from John's POV. It's from Zhaan's. (And the other non-John POV ep being the tour de force that is The Choice.) Because my first introductions to Aeryn, John, and D'Argo were Zhaan's hallucinations, I had a really messed up view of who they were for a long time, Aeryn in particular, because her hallucination is so judgmental. And yet in many ways I'm glad that I saw DaLD first because it also cemented many of the things that I love most about the show, which aren't quite as prominent in other episodes: it shows Chiana (and Rygel) being ruthless for her people and it shows Moya being very much a character in her own right. It also shows just how wacky and weird the show is, which, ultimately is what I love most about Farscape: it takes chances wholeheartedly and with no expectation of success. Which is good because those chances don't always succeed; there's a lot of failure. But it's always glorious, messy failure made with abandon and I love and respect and crave that in shows. And, of course, when Farscape succeeds, it succeeds gloriously, epically, magically.
Also, can I just say: MOYA. In many ways Chiana is my favorite Farscape character, but Moya gives her a run for her money and Moya's existence is probably the thing I love best on the show. Having a living ship, for starters, is something I love, but even beyond that, the fact that she was given character arcs of her own is <3<3<3 for me. Her story is one that is full of common tropes for female characters: forced pregnancy, her child being stolen, being cast as the mother figure to a group of wayward aliens, acting as support for a variety of male characters (Pilot, Crichton) … these are all storylines that are coded as being for women and they're common tropes female characters are forced to act out. But in this case they're also very unique because Moya isn't a character that one would immediately think of as a woman and certainly not a woman who is sexualized, as is often the case with these kinds of storylines. And I think that's fascinating; looking at Moya through the lens of stories about female characters is fascinating. There is a part of me that wants better storylines for Moya, kinder and with less gendered violence, but there is another part of me that marvels that Moya went through that and still has such capacity for love and forgiveness.
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I have a mix of feelings about Crichton as protagonist that are ultimately tied up in my mixed feelings about John/Aeryn as central to the premise of the show.
Heh, I have been thinking, more or less, that I have a mix of feelings about John/Aeryn as a pairing that are ultimately tied up in my mixed feelings about John as the main character. :) Although I also tend toward agnostic-to-antagonistic to romances as a central part of a show -- unless it's Xena. So both of those tendencies have been at work in my response to John and John/Aeryn.
For me, what works about Crichton is that for the most part I find him to be a genuinely likable guy, who I'd be cool hanging out with, which is untrue of many male protagonists, and, perhaps more importantly, he comes by his angst honestly: for the most part his angst is not based on what happens to the people in his life, it's based on what happens to him.
Yeah, I didn't mention it here, but funnily enough John somewhat reminds me of my favorite cousin, who shares his sweetness and goofiness, and also kinda looks like him. And I very much agree about the angst. In fact as I watched the show I found I was most inclined to like John when he was suffering from homesickness or, you, know, physical and psychological torture. Which was a weird thing to realize, and as you and others have pointed out, the prominence of his own direct trauma as a source of angst is fairly unusual for white male characters.
I have little patience for manpain, as well, (uh, again, except when Xena is having it), but I was thinking about the end of "We're So Screwed", when John is deeply upset about having set off the nuclear bomb. That doesn't feel like manpain to me so much as basic empathy...it somehow seemed different to me. I'm curious what you think of that?
I like it insofar as I like John, I like Aeryn, and they both seem happy at the end, so I am happy for them.
Heh, that's pretty much where I'm at as well.
About my initial recoiling against John -- it's made me realize how long I can hold onto initial impressions. As well as how strongly I dislike Smart White Guy Scientists on television (lol, even though they make up 70% of my coworkers and I don't as a rule dislike them!).
I don't remember DaLD or Thanks for Sharing very well -- what about those made you dislike Aeryn? I'd also like to hear more Chiana love, if you're willing to share or point me toward other things you've written! I have to admit I haven't given her character as much thought as I'd like.
It also shows just how wacky and weird the show is, which, ultimately is what I love most about Farscape: it takes chances wholeheartedly and with no expectation of success. Which is good because those chances don't always succeed; there's a lot of failure. But it's always glorious, messy failure made with abandon and I love and respect and crave that in shows. And, of course, when Farscape succeeds, it succeeds gloriously, epically, magically.
Eeeee, yes, I totally agree with this. The combination of intense drama and intense goofiness is just wonderful. Also: I truly love all the piss/vomit/fart humor in Farscape. Like, I have a pretty low tolerance for gore and that is a dime a dozen in these kind of shows, but I have quite a high tolerance for snot and pee and the more mundane things that come out of our bodies. So it is oddly gratifying that I can just bask in something that grosses out other people. Also when it comes to body fluids I have the sense of humor of a 7 year-old, so that works too.
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I have little patience for manpain, as well, (uh, again, except when Xena is having it), but I was thinking about the end of "We're So Screwed", when John is deeply upset about having set off the nuclear bomb. That doesn't feel like manpain to me so much as basic empathy...it somehow seemed different to me. I'm curious what you think of that?
Yeah, for me — John cares about people, but his caring is never more important than the people themselves. If that makes sense? Which is the difference between manpain and empathy for me: when empathy starts to be about the person feeling it instead of the person the empathy is for then it’s no longer empathy and it’s manpain. Though I have to admit that I don’t remember much of “We’re So Screwed” — I mean, I remember the basics, I remember the nuclear weapon, but I don’t remember his reaction specifically. So I could be off on that one.
I don't remember DaLD or Thanks for Sharing very well -- what about those made you dislike Aeryn?
Well, I should be clear: I do really love Aeryn! It just took me a while to get to that place with her. She’s never going to be My Character in the way that Moya and Chiana are, but I do love her. The Choice is one of my favorite episodes because of Claudia Black being amazing.
But! First impressions: in DaLD she appears only as Zhaan’s hallucination and she’s very critical and mean to Zhaan, because she’s just a manifestation of Zhaan’s guilt at leaving them. So because of that, for a long time afterwards, I read her as more antagonistic towards the crew, and specifically towards Zhaan, than I think she really is. I really like Zhaan, though I don’t always love the choices that the writers made with her, so that was a hold-up for a while.
I also don’t really love the stoic warrior trope or the trappings of "strong female character" which is very much how I read her at first, largely because of the hallucination’s coldness and the millitaristic bent to her character. Aeryn’s much more than that, obviously, but both stoicism and warrior play a part in her character make up and that's not my thing, no matter if the character is male or female, so there was a bit of disinterest there. And, you know, there are reasons she shows up on a lot of people's "strong female character" lists; unfortunately many of the traits that put her on those lists tend to be the traits I'm least interested in. (D’Argo didn’t work for me in DaLD for many of the same reasons, sans "strong female character" obvs. He also seemed very stoic warrior. Though I ALSO thought that D’Argo/Zhaan was a thing based on DaLD and that confused me for a long time when it turned out to not be the case.)
Thanks for Sharing is the first full episode with the two Crichtons before the Talyn/Moya split so … that was just confusing as all hell. It make me really curious about the show, but in a very confused way! Aeryn was just so fed up with everything in that episode that, without knowing the context, she seemed like a really angry person, which fed into my thinking that she was nothing more than a fighter or a "strong female character" archetype. Going back and watching that episode she’s great and no kidding she’s fed up! But going in to the episode without the backstory or knowing the characters it was just a skewed, weird way to be introduced to everyone.
(Thanks for Sharing did help sell me on D’Argo though because there’s an exchange at the end where D’Argo is talking to Moya!Crichton after the split and he’s trying to cheer him up and it goes something like:
D’Argo: At least you have him out of your nose. [Referring to Talyn!Crichton]
John: Hair
D’Argo: Right, at least you have him out of your nose hair.
That exchange makes me laugh every time.)
But even once I got beyond my first impressions of Aeryn, there were things that distanced me from her. There’s the John/Aeryn focus, which I talk about above and the stoic warrior/"strong female character" … which I also just talked about … but then there's also the fact that she never really gets to have friendships with other women and she’s sort of presented as “one of the guys”. She’s never close with Zhaan, Chiana, Jool, etc, but she does have relationships with John, Crais, Pilot, even D’Argo. That makes me really sad. It’s also something that I tend to not relate to with female characters. When female characters hang out with men more than woman, particularly when other women are around and available to hang out with … it just doesn’t tend to work for me. Particularly when they eschew female companionship for romantic relationships with men I get annoyed. Again, I don’t think that’s entirely what’s going on with Aeryn & John/Aeryn but there’s just enough of it that I get frustrated. Whereas Chiana often got scenes with Jool and Sikozu, etc in addition to her romantic relationship with D’Argo and her friendship with John. Chiana still doesn’t get as much girl time with other women as I’d like, but she gets more than Aeryn and I really appreciated that. This is why, FYI, the Moya episodes of season three tend to make me happier than the Talyn episodes, even when the Talyn eps are probably objectively better. Aeryn is on a ship full of men! Crichton, Stark, Crais, Rygel, Talyn. Even though I like all of those characters, the lone women in a sea of men leaves me cold.
I think my love of Aeryn is also tempered by my love of Moya. This is probably me just holding a grudge and isn’t fair to Aeryn, but I have to admit to it being a factor. For one, Crais. I think Crais is an interesting character and I love watching him, but I HATE him. Hisssss. Even when he is “redeemed” I still think he’s a slimy evil motherfucker. Which is great to watch (less great when he’s woobified in fandom — tbh I think Crais gets the manpain that Crichton misses out on; D’Argo too), but Aeryn’s relationship with Crais and the way that she relates to him … it makes sense, it does, but … he murdered Moya’s first Pilot, he impregnated Moya against her will, and he stole her fucking baby. Hisssssss. Crais is EVIL and Aeryn’s forgiveness of him, while totally in character, gets a knee-jerk HELL NO from me. And then Aeryn’s relationship with Talyn, which is in part motherly, makes me really sad on Moya’s behalf. As does Aeryn’s relationship with Pilot. Basically: at times Aeryn was a stand-in to replace Moya because it’s easier to show relationships between human actors and puppets and CGI ships than it is between a puppet and a CGI ship or two CGI ships. But I’m just not as interested in Aeryn-as-stand-in for Moya; I’m interested in *Moya*. This was always something that was in the background for me — when people coo’ed over Aeryn’s relationship with Pilot or Talyn I never entirely understood the appeal; they were well-written relationships, but they never grabbed me. It was only when I made my Moya vid I realized just how much those relationships are developed as substitutes for Moya’s relationships with the same and that crystallized for me exactly why I didn’t connect with them as much as other people do. I’m too much a Moya girl to be into that and I don’t want Aeryn-as-substitute for anyone. I want Aeryn as Aeryn and Moya as Moya.
But despite these things Aeryn did win me over. First, because Claudia Black’s face <3<3<3. But also because Aeryn can be funny and sort of fed up with everything and I really like that. And I really like how competent she is and how kind she is — her kindness doesn’t come from Crichton, it’s hers and I appreciate that. Also she can be a snarky jerk sometimes and I appreciate that in characters/people, so long as there is a level of decency and kindness underneath. And she and John do make good partners in crime and I appreciate that as well — that more than the lovey-dovey stuff is what really makes their relationship tic for me. I love the Butch and Sundance part of their relationship, that level of trust and respect. And the few times Aeryn and Chiana do get to hang out: LOVE SO MUCH. WANT MORE. AERYN & CHIANA BFFSSSSSS, whyyyyyyy is this not the direction the show took. DDDDD: I want all the Aeryn & Chiana episodes.
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YES. I agree!
OMG I have no memory of the "nose hair" exchange, but I can just hear the characters saying it in my head and it is perfect. Hee hee!
It was only when I made my Moya vid I realized just how much those relationships are developed as substitutes for Moya’s relationships with the same and that crystallized for me exactly why I didn’t connect with them as much as other people do.
Wow, I definitely didn't realize that but now that you say it I can totally see it. Also: YOU MADE A MOYA VID????!!!!1!! OK I am off to snoop through your Farscape tag.
she never really gets to have friendships with other women and she’s sort of presented as “one of the guys”.
Totally, this bummed me out too. I remember very clearly an early S4 episode, where Aeryn tells Chiana about the pregnancy/paternity thing, and at first I was like "oh yay, Aeryn and Chiana are hanging out!" and then I was like "oh nevermind this interaction is 100% about furthering a plot that I hate". D: D: D:
I loved Chaina and Jool's relationship in particular (which is a big reason why I was so bummed when Jool left).
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I've only made one Farscape vid, which is the Moya vid, which is here: http://ghost-lingering.dreamwidth.org/145940.html It's basically all my Moya feelings in vid form.
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I am very excited to watch your Moya vid. :D
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I'd also like to hear more Chiana love, if you're willing to share or point me toward other things you've written! I have to admit I haven't given her character as much thought as I'd like.
CHIANA. I don’t think that I’ve written anything about my love for her (though someday, SOMEDAY, I will make the Chiana/John totally canon non-otp vid that I’ve been thinking about for, oh, ten years or so) and actually many of the things that I love about her are probably things that turn other people off and also might be TMI & also include rambling, so … fair warning! This might serve as an anti-rec for the character, though I hope it doesn’t.
So, to understand my love of Chiana, I think you have to understand what sorts of characters I loved and didn’t love in high school (& earlier), which is when Farscape was airing and I was watching it. So, see above, re: Aeryn, I tend not to glomp on to characters who are fighters/warriors/etc and that tendency of mine was even more pronounced ten+ years ago when Farscape was airing. At the time, to me, it seemed like the “strong female character” thing got a lot of play in sci-fi/fantasy, at least the stuff that I was familiar with. A woman who could beat you up and who was physically powerful. But it usually left me cold and to some extent still does. It’s not that these aren’t great characters, but they’re not *my* characters, they aren’t the characters that I grabbed on to, the characters who changed me, the characters I wanted to be when I grew up, the characters of my heart.
I also didn’t tend to glomp on to female characters who were genius scientists or book smart like Willow, Scully, or Hermione because, even though I am smart and did well in school, I always felt as though I was in the shadow of my older brother who was much better at math and science than I was. (And listen: I was no slouch, but I didn’t realize that until I was basically done with high school because my baseline was someone who got a PhD in mathematics and who was always the smartest person in the room when I was growing up. My parents often said, totally seriously, that he was smarter than them and they’re no slouches either.) So I liked the scientist genius types more than the warrior characters, but they still weren’t *mine*. They were my second and third favorites, not my first.
There were exceptions — I loved Eowyn, despite the fact that she is a fighter/warrior, but that was less because she was a warrior and more because of her isolation and how she felt claustrophobic in the choices available to her. Susan Ivanova was also an exception, but that is largely because of her rejection of and hesitation to pursue romantic relationships, which (more on this in a second) was instantly fascinating to me. But most of the characters I loved when I was growing up were characters who were distinctly weird or off-kilter — Luna Lovegood, River, etc. That otherness was something that immediately connected with me. And characters who were uncertain of their place or who were forced into different roles immediately got me — Ezri Dax, worried about living up to Jadzia, Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle, who was forced into existing in this weird and incorrect role where she couldn’t be herself, but also at the same time found something liberating in that — they were hugely exciting and important to me.
Anyway, looking back, I’m convinced that a major the reason I liked these characters was because in many ways they helped me understand feeling different and wrong because of mental health issues and feeling different and wrong because of sexuality confusion, both of which were present in my life in high school, but which I was only aware of much, much later. To this day I can’t talk about my sexuality with talking about mental health; I can’t imagine a time when I can apply a label to myself and not have the caveat that depression and anxiety have permanently altered my ability to … have a sexuality? To know what my sexuality is? I’m not sure how to talk about it, because, even though I’m pretty well-versed on mental health lingo and sexuality lingo, I still don’t have the vocabulary to describe how my sexuality is intertwined with anxiety and depression and I’ve never quite seen other people describe their own experiences in a way that clicks for me. (Side note: mental health stuff is also a reason I like Crichton. He was one of my first examples of a character with mental health issues, who still got to be a hero.) The closest label I have for myself is ace (I hate the word asexual — that’s a whole different rant/discussion), and even that is … wrong, imprecise, missing context. We’ll come back to this in a second.
These lines have mellowed with age, but they’ll always be the undercurrents informing the characters I like/dislike. But back then they were much stronger and finding female characters who were obviously weird or had to hide something about themselves or who started out as being less confident and found their confidence as they went on resonated with me quite a bit. When those characters managed to save the day or be heroes despite that, that was … huge, to me. So in many ways Chiana fits into this perfectly: she’s a nonconformist, which is so dangerous to the Nebari that they want to brainwash her (and brainwashing and mental fuckery is something that hits me hard, to this day); she’s often lying or presenting half-truths about who she is; she’s not a warrior or fighter and uses other means to get by; she often helps save the day; she is incredibly vulnerable when it comes to letting people close to her; she has this child-like wonder at life and yet is often very jaded about the world. I also have to admit to liking characters who are thieves — blame my childhood crush on Robin Hood, the fox from the Disney movie — so that was a definite plus for liking Chiana.
But one of the main reasons Chiana caught my eye was that she was all of that and still confident in her sexuality. Terrible things had happened to her, yes, and she weaponized her sexuality, yes, and she was unsure when it came to actual relationships, yes, but there was a kind of surety to her sexuality that really fascinated me/attracted me/made me envious. To this day female characters who are confident sexually and who pursue sex and even use sex to their own ends — Sarah Manning, Jesse Flores — fascinate me in a way that I find hard to articulate. How does that work? How do they know? How do they want? I loved watching Chiana because I wanted to figure out her sexuality; I wanted to mimic her sexuality; I wanted to be sexual. Looking back I’m sure there are many feminist critiques that you can make about Chiana’s sexuality: I don’t care. She modeled for me something that I still struggle to understand and she did it in a way where she owned it — it was hers and no one else’s.
But even beyond my weird growing pains, I liked her for other reasons: her physicality is so alien, her voice is captivating, the Nebari make-up is lovely. (Zhaan wins for best alien make-up I think, but Chiana gets second, in my book.) And I love her own idiosyncratic take on ethics; she will fight for herself and later for her crew, she will steal, lie, cheat, and fuck, but like Aeryn, she has her own well of kindness and love that is hers and hers alone. I also love her greedy understanding of Rygel and her friendships/antagonism with Jool and Sikozu. What little we see of Zhaan and Chiana I also really enjoy. I don’t love the plotline with Joffee and Chiana cheating on D’Argo with his son — nope, nope nope — but in general I like how Chiana and D’Argo both grow up with each other. I don’t buy their relationship as being healthy, particularly the first time around, but I do like how they try, for each other. I also find the Nebari really fascinating and terrifying and I’m half convinced they would have been the antagonists in the theoretical season 5. I would have loved that; I wanted more of that, particularly if we got backstory with Nerri, her brother, and the revolution. The revolutionary/non-conformist aspects of her and her past definitely hooked me.
I love her relationship with Crichton, their friendship, their sort of sibling rivalry, even that he lost his virginity to her. But even though he lost her virginity to her, I’m actually really glad that she’s not a real love interest and their relationship is mostly platonic. Part of why I don’t really like when romance plots take over the show or a character is because … see above confusion re: sexuality … there is a part of me that is unable to understand why. There are relationships that I love and ship and get invested in, but it’s almost always a function of … how do I put it? For me, liking certain romances is almost always that the text is selling a very specific kind of fantasy about a very specific kind of romantic relationship that taps in to my desire to be a “normal” person who understands the appeal of dating and sex and being in love. There will always be a part of me that wants to want that (or that believes that given the right circumstances maybe I can transform myself into a person who wants that) and sometimes there will be a rare show or book that taps into that desire. Farscape does not tap into it at all in the slightest. And so I am very happy that Chiana is mostly not a part of the John/Aeryn equation and that the D’Argo relationship doesn’t ruin things for me. I like her and Crichton’s back and forth friendship much much more than any kind of manufactured love triangle.
Anyway, I feel like this doesn’t sell Chiana very well: it’s all really personal, TMI, me me me. But please try to give her a chance! I think she’s worth it. She’s scrappy and there’s a lot of depth there.
Also when it comes to body fluids I have the sense of humor of a 7 year-old, so that works too
Rygel’s flammable urine!!!!!! HELIUM FARTS. Using vomit to pilot D’Argo’s ship!!!
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No, this is a *great* sell! It's always super interesting to me to learn about the specific reasons why we connect to the particular stories and characters that we do, how it's all wrapped up in our personal histories and has an element of "right place at the right time"-ness to it. And the things you like about Chiana are things I like about her too! I just hadn't exactly thought through them very thoroughly.
Regarding Chiana's sexuality -- I see three main aspects there and I view them all slightly differently. One is the way she weaponizes her sexuality. That is fine with me, at times it's interesting and well-done. There could probably be a feminist critique in the sense that it is mostly female characters that do this (in tv in general), but I'm not particularly bothered by it. (Actually there is a definite connection to Grayza saying, "if you had a powerful weapon, would you not use it" -- I was pretty annoyed by her character until that episode, and that moment was particularly helpful for me.) Then there is Chiana's sexual desire, how integral it is to who she is (I loved loved loved how Twice Shy emphasized this), and I really like that. Then there is the way she is sexually objectified by the cinematography, writing, and by male characters, and I don't particularly enjoy that. But it's good to keep them separate in my mind, and Chiana's strong sexual desire is a really awesome part of her character.
I also find the Nebari really fascinating and terrifying and I’m half convinced they would have been the antagonists in the theoretical season 5. I would have loved that; I wanted more of that, particularly if we got backstory with Nerri, her brother, and the revolution.
OMG I COMPLETELY FORGOT about that plotline. It was so good! Now I'm going to wish forever that Season 4 had been about that. Or that we'd have gotten a season 5 about that, as you said.
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Okay so first - just to check, when you say you have one episode left do you mean the final episode of series 4 or the mini series that follows? I would recommend the mini series because it finished the story after the cancellation but it was made a while later and, well, I'm glad it exists but I think it has some flaws. Some brilliant, perfect moments, but...also some clunky ones. (Huh, like season four in general I guess?)
But I'm SO GLAD you like it. I know what you mean about shows where the ultimate payoff is what makes them overall worth it. That wasn't the case for me with Farscape, but then, it was one of my first serious fandoms when I was 16 and was just so awed by the beautiful puppet world they'd created. I grew up as SUCH a huge Henson fan it was like Christmas. Like my childhood came back but hilarious and twisted and gross and funny and dark.
I do suspect that if you watch it with more focused attention (though I empathise with not doing so; I can be terrible about that these days) you'll pick up more. There is a lot of nonvisual stuff in there. I think John and Aeryn particularly convey a lot through body language and what they don't always say or do.
Thinking about my experience watching it is interesting because it basically spanned my, well, growing up I suppose. Both in human and fannish terms. We're talking 16 - 22, and discussions about the show certainly helped with my education on fan culture stuff, feminism, media representation, etc.
I do remember some fairly interesting meta about why there was really not that much slash in the fandom, comparatively speaking, considering how, well, kinky it was. Like I'm not saying it was nonexistent, but even John/Scorpy was...not really a thing? I have never been much of a guyslasher so I don't think I'm qualified to offer an informed opinion but I wish I could find some of the meta from that time. I know that some people argued that the gender dynamics of John/Aeryn replicated the slash dynamics much more closely than many straight couples of the era. But...as I said, I'm not sure how accurate others would think that is.
For myself, I think the reason I loved John (because Aeryn was my favourite, but I do love John) had a lot to do with the excellent reasons given by
On the other hand, his emotional arc? Wow. It's this classic, recognisable, "I must learn to kill to survive. I must become hard and dangerous." And even though I want to say "but it shows the cost!" it is romanticised. I think the difference, though, is the way it's romanticised. The way it's rendered dramatically fascinating.
The simplest way to explain it, I guess, is that he gets a more traditionally feminine exploration of these issues. Or at least one that at times actively undermines the masculinity you might expect from it. Like in the second season when he starts acting more and more "crazy cool" and out of control and then there's this sudden revelation that he is actually losing it, he is actually suffering from hallucinations and he's terrified. Like the way the third season ended with a white wedding fantasy from his perspective. The way every time he runs around screaming about pop culture references, there's this powerful undercurrent that he is doing this as a desperate coping mechanism so he doesn't fall apart and start crying, not because he's having such a great time thumbing his nose at authority.
Which is an undercurrent that feels far less false because we do see him crying. For himself. Because he's scared and lost. Not angry tears because ~someone took his property~, you know?
It means that when you get to that part at the end, that speech about the nuclear bomb in a field of flowers? The destruction and spectacle and surreal contradiction? It gives it space for Ben Browder to offer a performance that genuinely doesn't come across as manpain. It comes across as reflective and sorrowful.
Plus, of course, the fact that he leaves Earth. And that it doesn't take him going home to realise that's what he'll be doing. When he finally gets back he's already decided he's not staying.
Gah, sorry, I went on a bit of a John tangent. tl;dr I think that even though they gave John a tradition Man Becomes Violent arc, they were more honest, or at least less aggressively masculine, about showing the emotional cost.
(Finally I feel sort of like a dork recommending my own fanworks, so I won't, but I mostly wanted to warn you off the first Farscape vid I made because it was actually my first vid ever and it sort of shows... I mean it IS still on my website if you're deathly curious but yeahhhh. The other two are better, I think!)
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When I posted this I had finished "We're So Screwed" and so I had one episode in S4 left, but now I've watched that. I do plan to watch The Peacekeeper Wars, hopefully sooner rather than later.
I like your point about distinguishing between John's "humans are chumps" stuff and his emotional arc. For a not small part of the early seasons I was distracted by the former (and also by Twitter, oops) and so didn't give enough attention to the latter. But what you're saying makes lots of sense!! The space I seem to be in is intellectually agreeing with people who love John but not really feeling it emotionally. But when I make the Aeryn vid that I super want to make I wonder if my mind -- or, uh, heart? -- will change.
I feel sort of like a dork recommending my own fanworks, so I won't
DUDE you are such a dork because: (1) you are like one of my favorite vidders! Of course you should rec your stuff, far and wide! and (2) you are one of my favorite vidders! I already downloaded your Farscape vids and once I have seen TPKW I will watch them all. EVEN THE ONE YOU WANT TO WARN ME OFF OF. *Cackles with glee*
BTW that is a really, really great icon.