Ranting about Babylon 5's "Sic Transit Vir" (spoilers)

[Yukaphile]

Then again, Vir is also optimistic and kind-hearted, so maybe he genuinely thinks his bride-to-be would change. I won't lie, I... would probably feel the same, because I'm very weak when it comes to matters of the heart and so on and so forth. But I'd also intellectually be feeling it's probably a wasted effort.

Anyway, once you finish with B5, TheStarWarsTrek, wanna help me with my eight-way crossover? You don't need to be a fan of any of the eight to understand it, since the fic will be structured in such a way to let the viewer know of key events that those in the story find out like the reader does. It's how The Rift Saga was written and got me into Halo, StarCraft, and DS9.

[TheStarWarsTrek]

I think the tonal dissonance you're feeling is actually deliberate rather than a mistake. This episode is one of the best for illustrating:

1. How utterly effed up Centauri society is.
2. How Vir is the odd man out of it.

The Centauri are engaged in full-on genocide with the rest of the galaxy more or less turning a blind eye to it while Vir is doing his best to save as many lives as possible. It also kind of calls out Ivanova who is more interested in going after what she sees as a specific criminal (Vir) when the entire institution of Centauri has normalized mass murder.

Even the romantic elements of the plot are useful for illustrating this because Vir, to move up in society, has to essentially accept the horrifying racism/persecution of Narn as normal.

I might agree if not for the fact that the music cues makes it seem like *the audience* is supposed to find it funny. I get that it's going for what TvTropes calls "Deliberate Values Dissonance", but I don't think that trope is usually bonded with comedy. In "A Storm of Swords" a slave master casually mentions that the evening's entertainment will include some child slaves being fed to a bear. This is to show how terrible the slaver society is to the reader (and Dany). So it would be weird as hell if the reader was then treated to a romantic subplot featuring the slave master. Most of the episode does a good job of showing how horrific things are considered normal in Centauri society. But then ending takes one of the people it's been building up as horrible, and has that character played for romance/laughs.

I mean to me it was also about being comedic, treating an enthusiastic genocidal streak as a quirky personality trait that stops a relationship always struck me as a joke (treating something monumental as more trivial). I guess it is in poor taste.

I would say doing this sort of thing (wrapping up a message in comedic clothing), can be an effective way to get past people's natural recalcitrance to hard truths. A colonial occupation and pacification campaign is going to entail lots of violence, a successful one (as opposed to one plagued by an endemic insurgency say) is going to involve lots of tyranny, arresting people without trial, sending them to camps, and extrajudicial killing them etc. To me it is not surprising those things happen, it is to be expected. I submit this story is trying to convey that message (just how much bloodshed the conquest of Narn by Centauri implies) with a comedic overlay as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. I would argue on the score of getting the message across it seems to have worked really, if it brings home how horrific the Centauri occupation must be.

Comedy is subjective, especially dark comedy or comedy that touches dark subject matters. And I'm a Discworld fan so I agree that messages wrapped in comedy can be effective. IMO this particular case feels more like tone whiplash than deliberate dark comedy. Vir's wife giving a little soliloquy is what drove home the horror of the occupation to me. The attempted comedy at the end, however, seemed to downplay or dismiss the horror. Heck the fate of the Narn prisoner isn't even seen. When Ivanova's ex turned out to be part of a hate group, they didn't get a sappy goodbye. A standard sitcom plot is " main character dates the girls/guy of the week, s/he turns out to have some weird quirk or something, they break up." Unless it's a really dark show like It's Always Sunny, I can't see any sitcom having an episode where the weird quirk is that they're a cannibal, the love interest leaves at the end to presumably hunt and eat some more people, and the main character still considers that they might have a chance together some day. Likewise, it's off when Vir pins for the girl who lovingly described how she's been killing the people he's been saving.

@Yukaphile I'm not a writer so I don't know what I could really add, but I'll check it out.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the nature of playing it for comedy is lampshading the medium to an extent. You can't actually treat the mass murder and subjugation of the Narn with all the horror and disgust that it would for actual sentient beings because it is a family science fiction program. Instead the humor is Kafka-esque with Abraham Linconius and other oddities because it requires the audience to make their own conclusion that this is a nightmare scenario while not also asking the audience to take a fictional genocide deadly serious.

Even so, I think the comedy of it all (Mel Brooksian "The Producers" really) works a great deal for lampshading the fact the rest of the galaxy is going on like nothing strange is happening at all. Vir is trapped in a situation where he's the only sane man and the idea he's saving people like Oscar Schindler is considered to be an eccentricity at best and scandalous behavior at worst. The galaxy doesn't care about the Narn and even the enemies oppressing them (The Centauri) find Vir's behavior more along the line of being fanatically vegan.

The absurdity is the point because only Ivanova and Vir are acting like this deadly serious issue is...deadly serious.

And yes, there is the poor taste joke that Vir's interest in his love interest is not entirely dimmed by her horrible actions because she's literally the first hot woman who has ever shown an interest in him.

The Centauri's second occupation has normalized evil in a massive way and part of B5's politics is following how easy that can be accomplished.

Similarly, we also get a reversal on the Narn. They used to be the aggressors in a lot of the early episodes but we now get a sense of just how they were driven to this and how their anger as a society dealing with oppression was driving them to try to get (essentially) petty revenge. Unfortunately, the Centauri felt humiliated by their own lost Empire and Lando made the deal first. If G'Kar had been a more evil person, had told Morden, "I want the Narn to be the most powerful race in the galaxy and to burn the Centauri race from the universe" then they might have been the ones doing the conquering.

But is that worse given what happened to the Centauri?

[Yukaphile]

Ironic you use words like "evil" here given your own past words. Do you consider Londo evil? I don't. He flat-out looks upon what happens with horror and disgust, but feels committed. I think that's very true to real life and the people who demonize others as "monsters" without actually knowing what is in their heart.

[Beastro]

He flat-out looks upon what happens with horror and disgust, but feels committed.

And that does not preclude him being evil or a monster, IMO we are all monsters just different variants and our capacity for evil makes it neither and either/or matter. It is not an either or category. To make an analogy through my headache, we are all loaded guns. That some fire off at others in that way doesn't suddenly make them guns and us not.

This then gets into the "Sins of Omission and Commission" territory of Christianity and which is worse. Lando falls into commission and then into omission as he keeps along with it. What helps with his character, compared to Refa and others, is that he eventually stops committing the sins of Omission and starts acting to stop things even if it's far too late and he's ultimately motivated out of a desire to save his country before it really falls off the deep end.

I'd also argue that use of monster, as something more as a being of evil rather than a being of the unknown. The thing that hits with people that strike you as monstrous isn't so much what you know about them, but God knows what else is in them you have no idea about. People can be trite with "don't be afraid of the unknown", but we institutionally do because of what may be lurking within it.

It's for that reason that betrayal can be such a catastrophe to people. They not only question the betrayer, but everything else they felt certain of right down themselves in that it was their own judgement in trusting that person that allowed that betrayal to be a betrayal in the first place.

[CharlesPhipps]

Ironic you use words like "evil" here given your own past words. Do you consider Londo evil? I don't. He flat-out looks upon what happens with horror and disgust, but feels committed. I think that's very true to real life and the people who demonize others as "monsters" without actually knowing what is in their heart.

Absolutely Londo is evil. Londo chose to use the shadows to engage in conquest of another world, enslavement, and mass killings. Just how much horror do you have to participate to be evil in your eyes? Mind you, that doesn't mean Londo is without a conscience or that he doesn't come to bitterly regret the horrible things he's done.

Some evil comes from commitment to evil, others come from weakness.

Hell, Londo would say he's done unforgivable things.

And that does not preclude him being evil or a monster, IMO we are all monsters just different variants and our capacity for evil makes it neither and either/or matter. It is not an either or category. To make an analogy through my headache, we are all loaded guns. That some fire off at others in that way doesn't suddenly make them guns and us not.

I'd argue monster is a poor choice of words because it removes responsibility for one's act. That he's just a rampaging beast or irredeemably wicked. The thing that makes Londo such a great villain (and he is for a good chunk of the show) is that he is a tragic villain like King Lear or MacBeth. His flaws that made him evil were very human ones and his dark side is a function of the greater whole that made many good qualities be eclipsed.

But yes, Londo tries to make amends...too little, perhaps, too late.

And he pays for his crimes immensely.

[Beastro]

Hell, Londo would say he's done irredeemable awful things.

An interest facet of him is that he keeps going with "easy" choices. He accepts the Shadows help assuming on some level they will not expect much from him and his people. Later he only takes a hard stance against them when it's clear the cost to his people if he doesn't, which was about to become the destruction of their homeworld at the very least.

But later once he had his chance at redemption, he undermined it by accepting the Drakh deal. Yes, had he refused his people would have suffered more and greatly so, but by going along with it ultimately screws them more in the long run.

That gets into the "wishy-washy" nature of Lando, where there's at least an honest commitment to their own outlook in the other Centauri villains. In his case he's pushing for things he knows are beyond him. In the end, as much as he would have bitterly resented it, it would have been better for him to have remained a ignominious figure in his people's government that amounted to nothing rather than left his big mark on the world.

I'd argue monster is a poor choice of words because it removes responsibility for one's act. That he's just a rampaging beast or irredeemably wicked.

There's a point in there, which to mate to my previous one, is not so much we are monsters, but we are full of monsters.

An example that always leaps to my mind is Edmund Kemper the serial killer. He ultimately killed because of his hatred of his mother, but once he finally killed her, he realized he no longer had "that" in him to keep doing it and turned himself in.

Read up on him and it's safe to say, yes, he is a monster, but with that said, the man clearly knew what he was doing, or at least knew enough of what motivated him to give into it, but once the source of that drive was gone he has clearly acted responsible for his actions in a way that is strangely commendable. Since his conviction he's refused parole; with that said he's someone by his own admission learned enough of mental health to say to doctors the things he new they wanted to hear to get him discharged after he murdered his grandparents as a teen.

[Yukaphile]

I'd actually contest that, Beastro. You're not a monster by having feelings, even twisted feelings, unless you ACT on them. You could argue Londo is a shade of that because he acts on them for stupid reasons, which I could understand. But I REFUSE to be put in the same camp as other people who ACT on these sadistic impulses. That's the irony here. If I, a twisted freak, can resist, why can't they?

Nice to see you think in very base good vs. bad terms, CharlesPhipps. Explains so much about you.

[CharlesPhipps]

I'd actually contest that, Beastro. You're not a monster by having feelings, even twisted feelings, unless you ACT on them. You could argue Londo is a shade of that because he acts on them for stupid reasons, which I could understand. But I REFUSE to be put in the same camp as other people who ACT on these sadistic impulses. That's the irony here. If I, a twisted freak, can resist, why can't they?

Nice to see you think in very base good vs. bad terms, CharlesPhipps. Explains so much about you.

Those who believe good and evil are the same do not understand either.

[Yukaphile]

And you've said some pretty awful stuff on that front. So I don't buy it.