I love this rant so much ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Lennier really truly does need a hug ;_;
One of the things I love about the potential for the worldbuilding (but it never seems to come out in canon, it's just - fan extrapolation I've seen bandied about, where in the show it just sort of goes unquestioned/justified) is that Minbar is b r u t a l to its people in ways Minbari aren't too happy with, either (and adjusting poorly in Minbari fashion, because they have such a stagnant and rigid society that there isn't any room for rebellion and maybe they don't have any capacity to know what it would look like, they just know they're mad and have no outlet). And you've got some people bitching about how the younger generation just isn't getting it and doesn't serve/be dutiful like they used to (lookin at you, S1 Draal, with your 'kids these days' speech 😂️) and others just take it all for granted because it worked for them. Delenn's one of those, I feel - what Lennier is to her is maybe an incredibly Minbari and natural-to-them thing, but it is unquestionably stifling him.
It's so funny that he talks about a pure love to Marcus because Marcus (as Neroon points out) winds up being a better Minbari than Lennier - Marcus' love for Susan doesn't get to the point where he gets Lennierish about it. (That said we never really know, Marcus doesn't survive past S4, so who knows what might've happened there...)
I wonder too sometimes what would have happened if Dukhat had survived and idk some other Grey Council satai had died (not Delenn) and Delenn could have been Dukhat's aide a lot longer, whether she would have been more like Lennier. Of course, since it didn't happen that way, Dukhat's death made Delenn able to stand on her own - brittle but strong, at the start, and then later much more legitimately strong. But I love those what if canon divergence thought experiments!!
Also, it strikes me as a very Minbari failure mode -- you can just see Lennier thinking, I don't have to do anything, I just don't have to press that button... and that's the same sort of reasoning, or whatever, as the Warrior Caste used when they were like "so we'll just uh drive out the Religious Caste into the freezing cold, that's not actually killing killing them." Or that Delenn uses all the time when she's like "well I'll just not tell John about [insert thing of the week here], it's not like that's doing anything wrong really..."
Oh, THIS! This right here. this is one of the most astute and insightful things I've ever read about the Minbari and I'm so glad you said it because you've nailed it. They're just - they're really Like That, aren't they, masters of the half-truth-isn't-a-lie wiggle room. Give them a law, they'll find ten loopholes. Lennier didn't have to attend some special martial arts class for the philosophically inclined, he just had to be Minbari.
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Date: 2022-12-01 10:20 pm (UTC)One of the things I love about the potential for the worldbuilding (but it never seems to come out in canon, it's just - fan extrapolation I've seen bandied about, where in the show it just sort of goes unquestioned/justified) is that Minbar is b r u t a l to its people in ways Minbari aren't too happy with, either (and adjusting poorly in Minbari fashion, because they have such a stagnant and rigid society that there isn't any room for rebellion and maybe they don't have any capacity to know what it would look like, they just know they're mad and have no outlet). And you've got some people bitching about how the younger generation just isn't getting it and doesn't serve/be dutiful like they used to (lookin at you, S1 Draal, with your 'kids these days' speech 😂️) and others just take it all for granted because it worked for them. Delenn's one of those, I feel - what Lennier is to her is maybe an incredibly Minbari and natural-to-them thing, but it is unquestionably stifling him.
It's so funny that he talks about a pure love to Marcus because Marcus (as Neroon points out) winds up being a better Minbari than Lennier - Marcus' love for Susan doesn't get to the point where he gets Lennierish about it. (That said we never really know, Marcus doesn't survive past S4, so who knows what might've happened there...)
I wonder too sometimes what would have happened if Dukhat had survived and idk some other Grey Council satai had died (not Delenn) and Delenn could have been Dukhat's aide a lot longer, whether she would have been more like Lennier. Of course, since it didn't happen that way, Dukhat's death made Delenn able to stand on her own - brittle but strong, at the start, and then later much more legitimately strong. But I love those what if canon divergence thought experiments!!
Also, it strikes me as a very Minbari failure mode -- you can just see Lennier thinking, I don't have to do anything, I just don't have to press that button... and that's the same sort of reasoning, or whatever, as the Warrior Caste used when they were like "so we'll just uh drive out the Religious Caste into the freezing cold, that's not actually killing killing them." Or that Delenn uses all the time when she's like "well I'll just not tell John about [insert thing of the week here], it's not like that's doing anything wrong really..."
Oh, THIS! This right here. this is one of the most astute and insightful things I've ever read about the Minbari and I'm so glad you said it because you've nailed it. They're just - they're really Like That, aren't they, masters of the half-truth-isn't-a-lie wiggle room. Give them a law, they'll find ten loopholes. Lennier didn't have to attend some special martial arts class for the philosophically inclined, he just had to be Minbari.