fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2936 ]

[ SECRET POST #2936 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2936 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 066 secrets from Secret Submission Post #420.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - text secret ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Babylon 5 fandom (more a specific person): I love Londo too. You don't get some kind of special award for being some 16 year old kid attracted to an older, overweight, not conventionally attractive dude. Half of tumblr is attracted to weird looking old white dudes and is convinced their attraction makes them special.

Legend of Korra fandom: Stop saying you are "Wuko trash." Half the fandom ships them. It's not a crack ship.

I think I'm getting too old for Tumblr, tbh. I'm really feeling the "these people are are like 15 years younger than me" vibe now.

I don't know if the '-insert ship here- trash' thing is widespread or not, but I've seen a lot of it in Hobbit fandom ("omg, I'm such bagginshield trash, someone stop me") and don't get it. Maybe I'm getting old too, idk.

Oh, yes, to the Babylon 5 one.

I feel like I'm the only person whose favorite character isn't Londo. He's an interesting character, if a rather selfish person, but I like others better. And sometimes it seems if you aren't squeeing over him (and justifying everything he does), you don't fit into the fandom.

I've never understood the urge to justify Londo. He's one of my top tier favourites, but the joy of him is the grand operatic tragedy that is watching him go spectacularly off the rails, and then the horrible, bitter triumphs he claws back afterwards. Londo is sort of the epitome of an up-and-down character. You get the sick, swooping horror when you know for a fact he's going to do the terrible thing, you know exactly why he's going to do the terrible thing, and you know it's all going to go so horribly, deservedly wrong. And then you get him trying to fix it, you get the guilt and the horror and the excitement, the thrill of his more impressive gambits, and then the grim, bitter triumph at the end.

He's not there to be justified. He's there to run you the gamut of intense emotion from comedy to tragedy to utter horror to grim triumph. Things like the look of horrified realisation on his face during the orbital bombing of Narn are incredible. Trying to retroactively justify him strips him of ... almost everything that makes him as good a character as he is.

Exactly. His whole arc is him being a selfish douche who longs for old glory days that were actually kind of bad and who gets way in over his head and figures all this out too late to save his people (or the Narn).

Things like the look of horrified realisation on his face during the orbital bombing of Narn are incredible.

Yep. He's horrified and yet he trudges forth. I said in one of my posts "He held and holds some horrible opinions, no doubt. He always had some disdain for Narns, G'Kar especially. What he wanted from Morden was a return the glory days, when the Centauri were the rulers of a glorious empire. A glorious empire built with blood and bones on the backs of the dead. He knows what a return to the glory days means. But, until he had the blood of thousands of dead Narns on his conscience, I don't believe he'd really internalized what it really meant. And, once he's been responsible for so much death it becomes easier to become responsible for more. What's one more raindrop when you're already soaked?"

I love that's he never really "makes up" for his actions. They are absolutely not justified in any way and his wrongness begets more mistakes than fixes. His sacrifice of silence and chains could have been avoided if only, if only... but he was so mired with a sense of the inevitable. He could see nothing but his people, whom he'd help destroy, and his duty to them-- and his death dream.

His story is certainly a gamut of emotions, for sure.

But, until he had the blood of thousands of dead Narns on his conscience, I don't believe he'd really internalized what it really meant.

Even then, I don't think it would have affected him quite so badly if he hadn't known G'Kar first. If he hadn't struggled with G'Kar face to face, hadn't seen G'Kar's genuine and honest hopes for peace with the Centauri Emperor (that goddamn moment was so horrible and so good), hadn't seen G'Kar's visceral and very personal sense of betrayal and rage and helpless fury at what happened afterwards, I think those thousands of Narn might still have been only a number to him. But he did know G'Kar first, and he did personally betray G'Kar first, and he had to see and listen and acknowledge G'Kar's pain afterwards, Vir's horror and guilt, the disapproval of the other station personnel who'd been his friends.

And the worst of it was, yes, he knew even as he did it. From the moment he sees G'Kar's hope and realises that he'd already destroyed it beyond any hope of repair, he just keeps walking into darkness knowing full fucking well that that's what he's doing. He keeps trying to save things out of the wreckage later, to salvage something from what he's ruined, but there's that horrible sense of inevitability to it all, especially when he's Centauri and they're raised from birth to know their own deaths and walk towards them anyway.

It's one of the best and worst things about his arc: he's so incredibly understandable and even likable as a person, and he does such utterly horrific, utterly irreversible things.

I've never understood the urge to justify Londo.

Because too many people think you're either a Good Person or a Bad Person, and they've had it beaten into them by Tumblr that if you like a Bad Person, that makes you also a Bad Person. Therefore we must figure out a way that Londo is a Good Person.

He's neither. He's just a fucked-up guy in a fucked-up situation who managed to drink his way down to a crappy-ass job that unfortunately turns out to be very, very important, and he rises to that occasion slightly too late.

I can't say I see much justifying, really. Either it's weird squeeing over AU and domestic scenarios or just plain old squeeing. Though, I'm not sure what you are qualifying as justifying. I did write some a few half-ass meta posts on him and his actions, but reading over some of them, I can't say I was trying to justify any of his actions. They were more character studies, if anything.

Oh, I did see one post that said Delenn is just as bad as Londo but no one criticizes her because she's a woman and everyone hates Londo because he's fat and also a man.

I... I didn't even touch that one. I try not to get into arguments on Tumblr. There is a simple reason why people criticize Delenn less. We don't really see her rise and fall like we do Londo's.

Wuko isn't even a "trashy" ship. I mean, it's vanilla as hell.

Oh man, Londo fangirls. I love him, but yeah I tend to avoid the fandom.

I always thought [ship] trash just meant that you loved something too much and it was kind of tacky how much you loved it.

Not the way I've been seeing it. That definition makes sense too though.

Me too. It's like, it's 3 in the morning and you have ten tabs of fanfic open and at one point you just have to go, "LOL look at me, I'm trash." I don't know if the term ever had anything to do with the popularity of a ship, it's always been used by fans of juggernaut pairings in my experience (those have the most crazed, "trashy" fandoms, obvsly).

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