In Defense of Psi Corps

The Tumblr for the "Behind the Gloves" Babylon 5 project on AO3.

[behind-the-gloves]

Outline mostly done for the first section.

I think there will be an introduction in front of this section, introducing the POV character, but I feel like that part will end up written last, or at least later on, as I build it.

I think I may have solved the biggest challenge for the first section, namely, "how did he find out the details of this phase of Johnston's crimes, when he was only fourteen or fifteen when it happened (and living a very sheltered life in school)?"

The simplest answer, I think, is that his parents were important people impacted by it, and in a position to know what was really going on, and he eventually found out from them.

[behind-the-gloves]

Writing again!

I'm finally writing the Johnston book. Everything about BtG is "the most challenging thing I've ever written" (if not "ever done, full stop"), but this is challenging in an entirely new way. I need to outline this. I've never had to outline anything in BtG before, other than on occasion to do a timeline, which is not a plot outline.

I could hold it all in my head.

This is way more complicated than that.

I don't think I'll have to get very far into the plot before everyone who's followed BtG will go OHHHHHH NOOOOOO...

[behind-the-gloves]

And more fixes.

The factual error about the babies has been fixed (it was small, but wrong).

Now I need to add a new chapter 2 to the 111 chapter work, haha. Maybe also a new chapter 3. Honestly I messed up having a key Walters character development scene told from Kevin's POV reading about it after the fact, and then put some other plot in Kevin's story into the same chapter (but out of narrative order).

We need to see Walters trying (and failing) in his role training Psi Corps special forces, and the section showing Kevin's reaction to the bombing of the Geneva school is out of place since the story about that is placed after this one.

I've never been entirely happy with this work. I won't ever be, since some pieces of canon are intrinsically broken, but at least I can avoid adding my own writing errors to it.

[behind-the-gloves]

More edits.

The repeated text issue has been fixed, and I got through the work and fixed at least one typo (and made other small changes) in almost every chapter. Missing letters, transposed letters, missing spaces, missing words, punctuation errors... I am pretty disappointed in myself for releasing something that was in that bad shape.

Substantively, there is only one more issue I found, and that is I am no longer so sure about the piece I added of the Underground kidnapping telepath children from telepath families. I made that incident up, and I think I'm going to tone it down to just that one time. It's canon they were taking children from testing lines at school (which means as young as five), and they did that fairly often, even it's rare for a child to manifest that young (though there is one such child in the Rentech scene). And that child may have been in the "half" she took and not the "half" that went to the Corps (supposedly - there is no reason to believe that anything worked out that way after her deal in the van with Heckman, or to know how many of the children met one fate or the other). The children in the van, however, including the five-year-old, do go with the Dexters.

I just don't think there would be MANY such kids there - only a few a most, and enough that "leave the baby with Valerie" would seem even slightly reasonable in the moment - because she's been one of the babysitters in the Styx.

I was working from this vague line in canon, in Jenny's diary (and Jenny is both brainwashed and high):

"In Psi Corps they make you marry people you don't want to, because they breed people like they breed dogs to get poodles and things. And out here, they steal babies, take them off, and raise them. But Fiona and Matthew had a baby, a real, fine beautiful free baby."

I thought she was saying the Underground steals babies, but now I think she was actually saying that the Corps "steals babies" (which makes as much sense as "the Corps breeds people like dogs to get poodles and things").

It's canon, however, that the Underground is snatching children out of testing lines all over the world. That comes not from a brainwashed thirteen-year-old on drugs, but from a senator. (They would say YEAH, BUT IT'S NOT FIONA!)

And the very first time we meet Fiona, she is kidnapping a boy. (JMS would say, NO NO, SHE'S RESCUING HIM! His family already rejected him and called him a demon, so it's OK, they no longer want him anyway.)

Ugh.

But at least now many of the typos have been fixed. Next I have to fix this piece, the broken scene in the beginning, and some terrible clunky text in certain chapters.

[behind-the-gloves]

Argh no I messed up.

So as I was going through the test fixing typos and other small issues, I realized I have a large chunk of repeated text.

I originally posted the work as three separate works, so I needed to repeat some things. Then I put the three works together into one work, and did a big "summarize all the things" chapter with material from other chapters (expanded on from another summary chapter in one of the three works this came from), and didn't realize I was now taking text from three prior chapters (or more?) and putting it together with new text into the summary chapter.

But that means a bunch of stuff was verbatim repeated, and now I need to fix that.

I don't think I can fix the "jumping around the timeline" problem - if you have several semi-independent (but later intersecting) timelines happening at the same time, as in "walk from the meeting about one plot into the meeting about the next plot," then each story needs to be told linearly and fleshed out on its own, even if that means we're jumping back and forth in the book.

Some events I've written fit so smoothly into canon I sort of don't understand how JMS didn't write them in the outline (like the ending of the Remy Ligeau arc, with the chopper) - JMS loves martyr telepaths dying in big fireballs - but other pieces I've had to jam in there because he didn't want that story to exist (like the bombing of the Geneva school, even though Fiona admits to having bombed Psi Corps and one of the severely wounded being a telepath child - and that would only happen if they bombed a school).

So I made the bombing of the school the missing motivation for the Corps to move on Monkey, and then found myself trying to make an outline with events JMS didn't want to have existed, so of course it's hard to fit them in. (Not like events fit right even when he MEANT for them to be there... that's another problem.)

In some ways it will be harder to work in the time period that's not fleshed out in canon (e.g. the beginning of the Johnston era), but in this respect, it will be easier - I don't have to make multiple timelines fit together (canon's broken timeline, and the pieces in my reconstructions and fixes).

[behind-the-gloves]

Still going back through old work.

How did so many typos escape me in this project?????

I'm still going through the giant mess that is my fix-it of the even more giant mess. I'm fixing typos and random other small issues, some of which I'm surprised slipped by me. Tense errors (from text generated by ChatGPT)? Double words, missing letters, unclear prose? Ugh.

One chapter needs to be split up and rewritten. There is a mess of rushed narrative for around a few weeks because of a broken timeline (which started with JMS' rushed and broken timeline, and got worse when I tried to fix the broken outline by fleshing out the missing pieces - and now everything's all there, but isn't easy to tell as a story without jumping backwards and forwards in time a bunch). Some things cannot be fixed (most notably Fiona's character), because JMS was very, VERY clear about baking in the problems. She cannot be both the super-competent mastermind of global chaos and violence, and "innocent of all evil deeds." What we end up seeing on the page in canon is the "whiny, immature, super-INCOMPETENT so-called 'leader' of the so-called 'Underground' that causes global chaos and violence - because she fails at everything while others do the real work, but takes the credit for it anyway." She's good at yelling at people and insulting them, and that's it.

A villain either has to change as a character over the course of the story, and/or has to face the consequences of his or her bad decisions. Neither happens here, because JMS doesn't think she made any bad decisions, and she's perfect.

I can fix a lot of things, but I can't fix that.

[behind-the-gloves]

Going back through old work.

I'm going back through my fix-it of Walters' backstory. I've made a lot of small line edits and fixed a typo. I pulled out some crap that should not have been there. And there's one chapter (Chapter 2) which needs to be reworked into multiple chapters, because I put a lot of different pieces in there and called it a day, rather than giving each plot point and development arc the time and space it needed.

Sometimes you just need some time off to be able to look back at something and fix it. I'm really proud of how some parts of BtG have turned out - but this one still needs some work.

[behind-the-gloves]

Oh no, it's "canon"?

One of my readers did some research - JMS wrote four of those six stories, and he posted on IRC and said they're canon. The other two are status unclear.

So it's apparently "this happened," "nah, this happened instead," and "this contradicts everything else but it happened anyway," and "this also contradicts everything else but it happened anyway" - and of course "characters I like (or otherwise want around) can't die, no matter what crazy ways I need to invent to keep them immortal/reincarnated."

This is all unsettling in ways it shouldn't be.

[sheridansunrise]

There are a lot of things I love about Babylon 5, but one of its greatest strengths is its ability to be heavy, gritty, harsh, tragic... and yet hopeful.

Things don't always work out or go as planned. Lives are lost or changed irrevocably. The characters deal with (or can't bear to deal with) both their personal demons and the worsening state of the universe.

At many times over the course of the show, the situation seems completely hopeless. The characters suffer in ways you aren't sure they can come back from. Those causing harm to the universe seem to be unstoppable.

But that doesn't stop the characters from trying.

Will this next plan do anything? Maybe not, but it's better than doing nothing.

Will this decision change their life forever? Absolutely, but change is inevitable, and at least this way they're doing what they believe is right.

Is having realisations and turning their life into something quite different difficult? Yes. But it's part of learning, and part of becoming exactly who they are meant to be.

They're not always going to get it right. They won't always win, and even when they do, it is likely to change them.

And then there are the characters who choose a different path entirely, maybe due to greed or fear or beliefs. But there is far less hope to be found there.

Because at the end of the day, even if the odds are stacked against you, the decisions you make are important. Choosing to be kind, or to do what you believe is right, even when it's difficult, is important.

And that's what makes Babylon 5 feel hopeful to me. Because even when things look desperate or impossible, there are still characters who will never give up. Whether that means standing up to dangerous groups or responding empathetically to difficult experiences that they can't relate to.

I think one of my favourite quotes sums up what I'm trying to say perfectly:

"My dad always told me that's the only way you deal with pain. You don't surrender, you don't fight it. You turn it into something positive."

[behind-the-gloves]

I'm finding it curious and interesting how much of this resonates with me, too, even though I'm telling the story from a very different perspective. That's... interesting.

This, especially resonates:

At many times over the course of the show [or actually, over the much larger arc than just the show itself], the situation seems completely hopeless. The characters suffer in ways you aren't sure they can come back from. Those causing harm to the universe seem to be unstoppable.

But that doesn't stop the characters from trying.

Will this next plan do anything? Maybe not, but it's better than doing nothing.

In the perspective I'm working with, even when the outcome really is hopeless, just surviving is its own kind of victory. Fighting back against all odds, cheating death, surviving, and telling the story.

[behind-the-gloves]

Late night why not.

So we've got Vacit living to 150 on a planet with telepathic apes and Vorlons. Did you know Chuck Norris didn't really die - he reincarnates in the ancient past and helps train the Rangers? Then some Black Ships from Warhammer 40K show up looking for telepaths, and they try to "collect" everyone in the Corps because the Emperor of Mankind has to eat the souls of thousands of telepaths every day in order to stay alive, and that makes telepaths kinda expensive. The Vorlons aren't happy about this. But plot twist - then the Borg show up to assimilate everyone.

[behind-the-gloves]

"I thought you knew about..."

"I thought you knew about [B5-related thing]" that I have never in my life ever heard of - especially something REALLY wacky - has now happened so many times over the past couple decades I feel like it's become a meme in my life.

How have I not heard of all the things by now???

The latest one:

"I thought you knew about that officially licensed B5 story where Vacit didn't die in 2203 but instead lived to the 2260s, and he's hanging out on a Vorlon planet taking care of a race of telepathic primates when Lyta shows up (in the middle of the Telepath War), and then a bunch of Psi Cops show up (in the middle of the Telepath War) to investigate wtf he's doing, so he kidnaps them to 'continue the Vorlons' work'?"

I can't stop laughing!

I can't tell the official stuff from the parody or fanfic anymore. "Bester eats marmite" was a joke. This is OFFICIAL? "Marcus comes back from the dead several hundred years later, clones Ivanova, and maroons her on a planet with him" is OFFICIAL? (Not canon, obviously, but APPROVED?)

[behind-the-gloves]

House project completed

This phase of the project in my house is now completed, so hopefully I can resume my writing soon!

[behind-the-gloves]

Another short project update

The house-related project is still going on, and taking longer than planned, as such things do. I give it another two weeks before I will have time to write again, with more interruptions planned for February because of other long-standing commitments.

I didn't expect this much of a delay, but here we are. Sorry.

[behind-the-gloves]

Short project update

Hi everyone! Happy New Year!

The project has been delayed due to an unexpected and very time-consuming house-related project that needed to be done. I feel bad for the delay but there's nothing I can do given the urgency of this home maintenance work.

I hope soon also to have my new Model F104 beam spring keyboard built so I can write on the KEYBOARD OF MY DREAMS!

That's it for now, see you all soon!

[behind-the-gloves]

Writer's block

In the scene on Mars, which comes out of nowhere in canon, Brett acts like he recently discovered everything - not just the events involving the Shadows. but also events going back fifty years.

He acts like he just discovered that most of the people he grew up with were dead, and he just discovered that most of the prior generation of Corps leadership had been murdered, including Bey (and Natasha Alexander).

Except it's not possible that he "just found out" all these people were dead. He actually "just found out" some stuff about the Shadows, and more details about the past.

Bester just found out (from Brett) that everyone else was dead, because he canonically doesn't give a crap about any of them and never cared to check if they were alive or dead.

I think the scene is supposed to be like, "Bester, you have NO IDEA what's been going on these past five decades, DO YOU?" more than Brett himself having just figured it all out through digging around.

What befell the older generations had to be widely known (or at least suspected) all along - but kept within certain circles, because to even appear to be disloyal to the director would result in certain death.

That doesn't mean people didn't know anything, though.

I've been thinking of this section as "how Brett discovered everything," and it didn't work because it doesn't make sense.

It's Bester who knows nothing and cares to know nothing (at this point). Brett's been slightly clued in all along, and gets more clued in when he gets to admin.

[behind-the-gloves]

The bureaucracy post

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

More will be added in upcoming chapters.

Rated G.

[behind-the-gloves]

Bureaucracy

I need to sit down and write out the massive bureacratic org chart of the Corps in the late Vacit/early Johnston era.

I haven't needed to do this up till now because when I wrote about such things, it was either at a distance or within MetaPol, and Bester didn't interact with admin much outside of what was necessary for his work as a Psi Cop.

But for this book, it's really, REALLY necessary to get all this clear.

Oh wow, is this going to be wild.