Farscape Love Post
May. 22nd, 2010 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bofoddityIn the blogging meme, ![[personal profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
merfilly asked me to post about Farscape. Expect shameless love.
My first Farscape episode was the S2 episode The Ugly Truth, which was both a very inconvenient and yet also convenient starting point for watching. It was inconvenient because I was missing a lot of character development and plot points and the season was close to ending, so there wasn't exactly much time to get hang of things before the next big plot point rolled on. However, the episode itself was set up as a mystery in which the gang was imprisoned and the characters had to give their versions of what had happened with Talyn (who was, like, a living ship! and the other ship was his mother! and the characters treated them like persons of their own omg!) to the aliens who imprisoned them for Talyn's attack on them, which was a great way to showcase how these characters operate and what their personalities are like, and also what kind of lives they tend to lead. I wasn't sure what was going on with these folks, but I wanted to keep on following them. So I kept watching, and while it took a while to figure out what was going on with whom it didn't take me long to get hooked.
How to sum up what makes Farscape so awesome? Calling it "unique as hell" seems like a "well duh" kind of description, but that's exactly what it is. It has your typical manly man male lead, except he's sensitive and emotional and starts out as the non-physical, non-violent guy in an universe that is harsh and gritty. It has your typical melting-requiring warrior woman female lead, except her growth and change are due to her own choices and effort instead of being a side effect of falling in love. Yet falling in love with each other is exactly what these two do. However, as completely epic and captivating their romance is it's always part of their individual stories instead of their story. John Crichton's story is a story about a guy who is thrust into an universe that is brutal and hostile and where he is completely out of his league, and he has to pay terrible prices for being able to adapt and survive; Aeryn Sun's story is about a woman who is torn away from the only life she's ever known and yet sets out to craft a new life out of nothing boldly and willingly, opening herself up to ideas and emotions she's been forbidden for her whole life. Neither of them wanted to flip their lives upside down, and while they both suffered for it and in John's case the change wasn't for the better, they both nevertheless dealt with it and moved on, and eventually they did that together. Their stories and their story are organic and natural and they come together beautifully.
The fact both of them have such strong individual stories reflect the entire show's nature. While there is amazing technology, fantastic alien races and lots of political intrigue around, Farscape is a show about individuals and how they live their lives in a world that is as random and rigid as the real world is, and it's not just the humanoid characters who are individuals; in Farscape living ships and their non-humanoid operators are also individuals worth their own stories. While some characters are more evil than others there are no clear lines between heroes and villains, and the protagonists are just as capable of awful acts as the antagonists are, and moral ambiguity is shown as the nasty thing with nasty consequences as it is. The characters are all flawed and they all fuck up and they all take lots of damage, John especially; he experiences horrible violence that he is in no way prepared to deal with and this violence is shown to change and damage him on fundamental levels, and the fact he becomes harder and grayer as a result isn't treated like uncomplicated badassery like it would be on any other show. Farscape doesn't pull its punches and as the result the punches really hurt.
Yet as willingly and skillfully Farscape deals with the harsh realities, it's also about the beauty and wonder of life. As gritty as it may be, the world of Farscape is a beautiful one, with warmth and compassion in it and between the characters. It's a world where you take chances and make connections with others, whether it's about becoming friends with a guy you thought you could never become friends with or allowing yourself to fall in love even though you've been taught that it's weak and beneath you. It's a world where you can redeem yourself. It's a world where you realize you can never go home again, but where you have also found a new one.
merfilly asked me to post about Farscape. Expect shameless love.My first Farscape episode was the S2 episode The Ugly Truth, which was both a very inconvenient and yet also convenient starting point for watching. It was inconvenient because I was missing a lot of character development and plot points and the season was close to ending, so there wasn't exactly much time to get hang of things before the next big plot point rolled on. However, the episode itself was set up as a mystery in which the gang was imprisoned and the characters had to give their versions of what had happened with Talyn (who was, like, a living ship! and the other ship was his mother! and the characters treated them like persons of their own omg!) to the aliens who imprisoned them for Talyn's attack on them, which was a great way to showcase how these characters operate and what their personalities are like, and also what kind of lives they tend to lead. I wasn't sure what was going on with these folks, but I wanted to keep on following them. So I kept watching, and while it took a while to figure out what was going on with whom it didn't take me long to get hooked.
How to sum up what makes Farscape so awesome? Calling it "unique as hell" seems like a "well duh" kind of description, but that's exactly what it is. It has your typical manly man male lead, except he's sensitive and emotional and starts out as the non-physical, non-violent guy in an universe that is harsh and gritty. It has your typical melting-requiring warrior woman female lead, except her growth and change are due to her own choices and effort instead of being a side effect of falling in love. Yet falling in love with each other is exactly what these two do. However, as completely epic and captivating their romance is it's always part of their individual stories instead of their story. John Crichton's story is a story about a guy who is thrust into an universe that is brutal and hostile and where he is completely out of his league, and he has to pay terrible prices for being able to adapt and survive; Aeryn Sun's story is about a woman who is torn away from the only life she's ever known and yet sets out to craft a new life out of nothing boldly and willingly, opening herself up to ideas and emotions she's been forbidden for her whole life. Neither of them wanted to flip their lives upside down, and while they both suffered for it and in John's case the change wasn't for the better, they both nevertheless dealt with it and moved on, and eventually they did that together. Their stories and their story are organic and natural and they come together beautifully.
The fact both of them have such strong individual stories reflect the entire show's nature. While there is amazing technology, fantastic alien races and lots of political intrigue around, Farscape is a show about individuals and how they live their lives in a world that is as random and rigid as the real world is, and it's not just the humanoid characters who are individuals; in Farscape living ships and their non-humanoid operators are also individuals worth their own stories. While some characters are more evil than others there are no clear lines between heroes and villains, and the protagonists are just as capable of awful acts as the antagonists are, and moral ambiguity is shown as the nasty thing with nasty consequences as it is. The characters are all flawed and they all fuck up and they all take lots of damage, John especially; he experiences horrible violence that he is in no way prepared to deal with and this violence is shown to change and damage him on fundamental levels, and the fact he becomes harder and grayer as a result isn't treated like uncomplicated badassery like it would be on any other show. Farscape doesn't pull its punches and as the result the punches really hurt.
Yet as willingly and skillfully Farscape deals with the harsh realities, it's also about the beauty and wonder of life. As gritty as it may be, the world of Farscape is a beautiful one, with warmth and compassion in it and between the characters. It's a world where you take chances and make connections with others, whether it's about becoming friends with a guy you thought you could never become friends with or allowing yourself to fall in love even though you've been taught that it's weak and beneath you. It's a world where you can redeem yourself. It's a world where you realize you can never go home again, but where you have also found a new one.
