:: a toe in the water... ::

:: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 ::

Part Two, before I disappear to the land of cons.

Again, unbeta'd. Because Aeryn wanted her turn too.


Blue. Green.

Planet.

Clouds swirl in Aeryn's glass, hot against her cold hands. She drinks the raslak in one gulp. It burns all the way down.

Not a good idea to be getting drunk alone on a strange world, but then nothing she does is good anymore. She hasn't slept right since she murdered seventeen people for no frelling reason and if she doesn't do something about that soon she's going to go into narcoleptic shock and then what will happen? Movement is everything and a warrior cannot move when she's unconscious.

All she needs is a little raslak. A little raslak and a little rest. Six arns not cooped up on the same ship with him. Six arns not thinking about how she was used and wondering if she's been used like that before, or will be again. There are gaps in her memory, things that used to be there and now aren't, or never were, vacuum darkness between points of light. Ullam's heat delirium isn't the cause of that.

Aeryn straightens her back, signals the bartender for another drink. She feels like someone's been kneading her brain the way Chiana used to knead the batter for grolak, soft dough squeezing out between grey fingers. She needs a meditech, someone who will know what's wrong and how to fix it. Some days her body is so heavy, so slow, it feels like she never left Valldon. That she never went back to Moya, never tried and failed and had to run because she couldn't remember how to breathe every time she looked at him.

If she had stayed on Valldon, they would be together now. One way or another. She'd have either summoned up the courage to take that last step off the ledge, or she'd be lost inside herself, happily snuggling with her dead lover's ghost.

More, she's found, is a terrible thing to be without him.

The second glass empties as fast as the first and she's suddenly ravenous despite the bitter taste in her mouth. It's her body's hunger, not hers. Food is so hard to swallow she'd rather not even bother. It's becoming like love, like sleep. Needs that gnaw at her insides, things she used to know how live without.

"Not many of you around," says a voice to her left. She turns her head, just enough to see who's there.

Sebacean. Male. His black hair is elbow length, and though it's worn loose and his clothes resemble the local style, everything about him screams Peacekeeper to her well-trained eyes.

Aeryn leans closer to the bar, hiding the hand that slides across her thigh and grips her pistol tight.

"'You' being what?"

"Perhaps I should have said 'us.'" He gives her a smile that reminds her of someone she can't immediately place and signals the bartender for two more drinks.

"I don't drink with strangers," she says curtly. Dregon, that's who it is. That same frelling know-it-all grin.

"Ah, kitanwi. You're no stranger."

Aeryn freezes in the act of drawing her pistol. Her mind is still rushing to place his face, his voice, anything. Comes up with nothing. He's not familiar, but he's called her 'messenger,' and that can only mean he knows.

"I'm glad to see you still have this," he smiles, threading a hand into her loosened hair. The touch is oddly gentle but she senses that could change all too fast. "Nya khoho pamatanou-iy."

*And so the lost is found.* The ancient Sebacean welcome rolls effortlessly off his tongue. Microbes cannot translate the old dialect, and many of the renegade groups now use it as code. This one must have been living with them for a long time to speak it so well.

"Tanou ho-iy-a," she answers carefully. *To find is good.*

"Kitan u wei-o?"

She closes on the word 'kitan' -- message. Fits it to one of the few replies she knows.

"Hima le au." For the proper ears.

It's the right response. He smiles again, brushing her hair back behind her shoulder. "Finish your drink, and go to the market. Someone will come to take you where you need to go."

"You could not have been waiting for me here."

"No." The smile shadows, becomes harder to read. "We heard about Hokaithia."

She stays silent a moment, calculating risk.

"The others?" she finally asks.

His face tilts, one eyebrow rising. "Ht, kolo hei ma." Are you not the one who knows?

---

:: fialka 1:07 AM [+] ::

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Something that wants to be...big...when it grows up

Part One, unbeta'd. Just because.


The planet is gritty, just like any one of a dozen others. Crichton is standing in a baked clay road, U2 soundtrack running in his brain. Something he heard years ago. Many somethings, any number of songs. Things come back to him this way sometimes, titles appearing without warning in his mind, a riff of opening chords.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

Bad.

Bad, yeah. He suddenly remembers the first time he heard that, up all night with DK and Maxime. Bob Geldorf, looking half-dead, inserting his plea between the songs.

Give us your money. No beating round the bush.

No bush to beat around here. Just an empty street. A guy, blue like Zhaan, but nothing like a Delvian flower. Crichton doesn't recognise the weapon but it's big and most likely lethal. Oh yeah, and pointed at his head.

Same day, different dren, yadda yadda yadda.

"You have currency! Don't lie to me!" the blue guy screams. Crichton has an odd thought, disconnected the way he used to talk with Harvey, leaning against a wall in some corridor in his head. The thought has something to do with the fact that this guy is too crazy to be reasoned with, that he's on these too-familiar-looking streets alone because that's how he wanted it, that it's distinctly possible this idiot is going to end his life in the next five microts. Following close on its heels, scampering like a puppy, is another thought -- that wouldn't be half bad.

"Why so difficult?" the guy screeches, spittle flying from his lips.

Crichton shrugs. Damn good question, and if he knew the answer half his problems might be solved. "I'm not being difficult. I don't have any currency. I don't have any credits."

"Well, what do you have?"

"A pulse pistol," Crichton answers, pulling it in one smooth motion and giving the blue guy a real good look down the inside of Winona's mouth.

Well, it would have been a good look if Winona had a barrel to look down. Damn, how the old images refuse to go away. Just more yotz to clutter up his brain.

Blue Dude gets the idea; some concepts don't need microbes to translate. "I don't have any currency," Crichton repeats patiently. "You wanna see which one of us can pull a trigger faster, go ahead. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

The guy throws his head back and gives a howl of despair. "Hey!" Crichton snaps, giving him a hard poke in the chest. "Shut the fuck up, okay? And get out of here."

The huge mouth claps shut and snap! Blue Dude's gone, just a trail down the road.

"Fuck," Crichton mutters again, rolling the word around in his mouth. Still tastes good, even mixed with dust.

He feels another presence now, back and to his left. Whoever is watching has been there for a while.

Crichton pops the cartridge out of Winona, tastes it, pops it back in. It's cover, that's all -- he knows the cartridge is full because he filled it this morning. Don't leave home without it. And a spare.

He turns slowly.

Aeryn. Leaning against a shadowed wall, weapon drawn but still pointed at the ground. Pocahontas with a ray gun.

He shrugs and she holsters the pistol. Waits. It's the waiting he hates, the hesitancy. She was never hesitant before. It was all yes I want, no I don't. Love me till it's agony and now it's time to go.

The sun is cool but bright, reflecting harshly off the white clay walls. Straw brick, wattle-and-daub, smoothed by hand, not machine. The city looks like a cross between a Greek village and a New Mexican pueblo, small windows way above head-height and wooden ladders leading from tier to tier. It's hard to believe there's a space port just beyond the market square.

He starts to walk and she falls into step beside him, head high, hair a pirate's banner in the breeze. He remembers that she used to have Zhaan cut it for her, then...after...Chiana. He wonders if there was no one she trusted where she was, not enough to let them near her with a sharp object.

"You're following me." He's given up asking questions out loud. It's all statements now.

She never misses a step, face sharp with concentration. Eyes narrow, scanning the horizon left to right, right to left. He's sure her eyes used to be rounder, less hooded, and the weight of all that hair makes her movements unusually stiff. He doesn't want to, but he misses her easy grace, her tough soldier swagger. He has the idea sometimes that he'd like to twist his hands in the dark masses and pull the information he needs out right of her head.

Where the fuck were you, Aeryn, and what did they make you do there?

She says, "D'Argo asked me to make sure you stayed out of tribble."

"Trouble," he snaps. "And stop doing that."

"Following you?"

"Trying to speak English. I don't--" He cuts himself off before he can finish the sentence. *I don't care if he liked to hear it. I'm not him.*

"Fine." She nods once, curt, eyes straight ahead. Soldier's been given an order. She doesn't like it, but she'll obey.

"I go this way," she says, after another block and a half of silence. "We have six arns docking time, I'll be back onboard in five."

A sharp turn to the left and she's striding down the narrow alley between two of the pueblos, heading for the city's main shopping district.

He lets her go. Not like he hasn't had enough practice there.

---

:: fialka 7:26 PM [+] ::

---

Pottering on...

For once, I get to do a scoop review. My kid dragged me to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Saturday, and it made a nice change to get out and see something on a big screen. It's been a pretty dull autumn for films, expecially films you could reasonably share with a 12-year-old girl.

After all the astounding fuss last year, imagine my surprise to find ourselves in a Saturday matinee with...about 20 others. That was it. Maybe everybody went to see Lilo and Stitch? (oh dear). Pottermania just isn't what it used to be, I guess. I have a pet theory about backlash against merchandising overkill, but I'll spare you here.

As for the film, it suffers from blockbusteritis, as did the first film last year. While this one benefitted, from my perspective, by a bit more distance from the books (as in, it's been awhile since I read them so I wasn't cataloguing everything left out, nor waiting for the quidditch match to appear), I could probably pull out last year's review and resubmit it.

Hmm. If I did one, and you know, I can't remember.

First of all, the book is half an inch thick. The film is three hours long. What are they going to do when they get to book four -- make it a full-day event?

I wouldn't have minded the length (cause you know, I'm never long ) if there had been three hours of actual content. But there's not. The first film suffered from this as well, a kind of cutesy "look at us filming the quidditch match!" "look at us creating Diagon Alley!" "Look at..."

You get the picture.

Once I've looked, I don't need to keep looking for fifteen minutes, which is about how long some of the action sequences seemed, and that was easily twice too long. Had the special effects occupied only the necessary amount of time, the film would already have been half an hour shorter. Admittedly, my annoyance at the special effects may have been exacerbated by the surfeit of overscoring, turning each Big Moment into something dropped on the audience's head with all the subtlety of a baby grand. It's a pet peeve, right up there with audience laugh-tracks. But when even the four-year-old sitting behind me (taking a break from playing Siskel and Ebert with his not-much-older sister) is assuring his mom they can be back from the bathroom before the quidditch match is finished, I think it's safe to say bigger is not better. Certainly longer is not more interesting. And leaves no time for character development.

Again, that's a complaint unchanged from last year. Unfortunately, both films also suffer from the fact that the child actors -- apart from Rupert Grint -- are quite unmagical. Daniel Radcliffe brings a nice gravity to Harry, a sense of self-containment and seriousness that is very much the core of the character. But that's an innate natural attribute, no more his doing than the fact that he's a good physical match. Both he and Emma Watson deliver adequate performances of the kind one normally expects from child actors -- surface level and over-enunciated -- but there's nothing special there. Watson especially suffers from the side-kick effect, but that is as much Rowling's doing as anyone else. Hermione, in this story, spends most of her time offscreen, in the hospital. If I were her parents, I'd be deeply concerned about that.

Rupert Grint, on the other hand, has a wonderful sense of comedic timing, and genuine glimmers of depth. They are, unfortunately, covered over by a tendency to mug -- which director Chris Colombus seems to have gone out of his way to encourage. Thus, what begins as a charming performance ends in vague annoyance. I hold out hope that new director, Alphonso Cuaron (of "Y Tu Mamá Tambièn"), will encourage all the children to stop and feel rather than merely declaim, to be a little less jolly hockeysticks and a little more real.

As for the adults, I enjoy seeing all those familiar faces and Kenneth Branaugh was far less annoying than I was expecting, but...they simply aren't there for long. Lost too is the intriguing backstory of the politics surrounding the generation of Potter and Malfoy Seniors, that is so necessary for the later tales. I worry about the next book, where it must take center stage or the underlying theme of the series -- Harry's search for who he is and where he belongs -- will be missed entirely.

But that will be then, this is now. All in all, it's a romp, and a reasonably enjoyable one, but nowhere near as charming and oddly complex as the books. Perhaps the answer lies in the intent -- Harry Potter: The Movies are children's films trying to impress adults into parting with hard-earned merchandising tie-in cash, whereas the books were simply good, scary stories that children handed back to their parents to share.

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:: fialka 6:11 PM [+] ::

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It ain't over till the fat lady sings...

...or at least, till the ratings for 422 come in. Until then, this show is far from dead.

We're in the dark middle, we're tired, winter's setting in and January is a long way away. People are wondering if their efforts are worth anything, if the production team have given up, if writing to SFC again and again is beating a dead horse. They're all valid questions. The answer will be long, but hopefully it will deal with a lot of points brought up on various threads and on various boards. Please, take a moment and read on.

Yes, DK is developing a new project -- he told us so in chat back in September. That project is meant to keep as much of the Farscape creative team together as possible. Good. If I can't have Farscape, I'll be there for their next endeavor. But I repeat, that doesn't mean that Farscape is dead.

First, it tends to take a couple of years between initial concept and getting a series into production. Second, and most important, everyone has assured us time and again, if a fifth season becomes possible, they *will* be there. I have talked to one of the show's producers myself and believe me, no one wants the show back more than they do. But emotionally they are only people, very hurt, very upset people who just lost something they loved very much. They need to pay the rent, yes, but they also need to step back, to grieve and let it go because from their end, all options have been exhausted. They can't do anything more.

But we still can.

Here is the thing that the doom-and-gloomers seem not to understand and please, feel free to pick up this post and quote me on the Dom boards, or indeed anywhere you like:

In this kind of campaign the power to effect change goes back and forth. When DK and Brian wound up with a cancellation letter in their hands, they did everything they could to find the money they needed. When that failed and they found themselves powerless, they took it to us. We had the power then, and we managed to bring them back to the table. The power was then back in their hands.

Negotiations failed. What I think people forget when they're spitting at DK for turning down that 13/9 deal, is that there is a long gap between Farscape going into production and the first ep of the season going to air. In order to get SFC to continue financing the last nine eps, the ratings had to go up significantly on the first 13 and stay there. However, if SFC had to decide whether or not to shut down production before they started building sets, costumes, etc for 514, they would only have time to look at the numbers for the first few aired eps.

To my understanding, what that basically boiled down to was, if Farscape didn't hit a 2.0 or close on 501, thwack, the lights would go out on shooting midseason. That is a *huge* gamble and I can see why DK refused to play dice with his universe. You can't do good work with that kind of threat hanging over your head. And in terms of hearing the end, we'd be even worse off than we are now.

In terms of getting the show back for a full season though, we are much better off than we would have been under that deal. It still comes down to the same thing: NUMBERS. Any way you look at it, we need a 2.0. Not just once. Twice in a row. Three or four times over the last 11, with not a lot of falloff from there and the whole ball game changes. And we have half a season, created under the best of circumstances, with which to do that. It's a long shot, yeah, but I still have hope, because WE STILL HAVE THAT CHANCE. Other campaigns have succeeded with their shows off the air and nothing to shoot for. We have what are promised to be the best eleven eps ever, and a target to hit.

I spoke to our source from SFC last night and she has confirmed that the 2.0 is not arbitrary, and DK didn't pull it from a hat. To reiterate what many already know -- the entire thing fell apart not because SFC suddenly decided it hated Farscape, but because the people above Bonnie Hammer felt Farscape could not make enough from advertising at its present ratings to justify the expense of another year. At 2.0 the advertising rates go up to a level that makes the show viable to finance. That's why it's been set as the bar.

If Farscape hits that bar with the second half of the season, there is a reason for the parties to come back to the table. Yes, it's true -- as things stand *right now*, it's over with SFC. They offered what they thought the show was worth based on the ratings from the first half of this season, and Henson could not come up with the difference. They offered a sword-of-Damocles compromise, and it was (rightly, in my opinion) turned down. Stick a fork in them, they're done.

However, my source assures me that if Farscape hits that 2.0 the horse which is presently dead *will* blink again. She also knows DK quite well, and -- this is important -- her feeling is that he would see this as our victory, the fans, and between that and the long cooling-down period, he would be willing to talk to SFC again if they were willing to talk to him.

Whether a 2.0 is enough to bring the parties back to the table, and what happens then, is out of our hands. All we can do is give the production team the power to negotiate again by giving them something to negotiate with. If SFC is still not interested, then we've given Henson more attractive numbers to take to another network. It's a win/win situation.

So that's where we stand. The production team can't do anything more without those numbers. They gave it everything they had, it's our turn now. We have the power again. If we can spread the word far enough to get half a million more people to tune in on January 10th, we'll have done our job and done it well. After that, it will be up to the production team, to the show they made, to keep them there.

Meanwhile, we keep writing to other networks so they see the dedicated audience they could have. We write to sponsors, because they're the money, because one sponsor calling to say, "I'd like to advertise on this show another year," is worth ten thousand letters from fans.

And we write to SFC, not because it will change their minds right now, but because that pile of mail will be the thing both sides can point to later, the way to save face and back down by saying 'we're doing this for the fans.' And if that doesn't happen, well hell, at least we didn't just sit mute while they took something we love out back and shot it in the head.

I'm here because I need to know I did all I can to stop that. And I think if we all operate from that perspective -- from the long-haul that says we cover every base we can cover, we try everything we can try and we do not even think about giving up until the numbers for 422 come in -- we will win. That's the gamble *I'm* willing to make, my time and energy for the chance to see this story end.

So take heart. Farscape is not dead, nor is this campaign, not while there's still eleven eps yet to show. We are quieter than September, but things are being planned -- you can see that all over these boards. Offer a hand. Write those letters, spread the word -- that's where the battle is right now. Getting new viewers, getting the advertisers to make those calls. Putting everything into place so that when the show comes back in January we will be ready to roar.

And if we lose -- as perhaps we might -- we will at least know we gave it all we had. That we championed our show as long and loud and publicly as it deserved. That we did not meekly accept the passive role of mindless consumer that the networks would like us to have. Things are changing, the internet is a force the television audience can use to make itself heard, and we have already done that in a way that no other fandom has.

We are the mouse that roared, the little fandom that could, and bloody hell, win or lose, I'm proud to be a part of that. To be a part of this community that has fought so long and hard and well.

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:: fialka 6:17 PM [+] ::

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