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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momijizukamori
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Date: 2014-10-25 10:59 pm (UTC)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!!!