A death of matter and life
Author’s note: It’s time for Stark! My absolute favourite character in Farscape is Stark, the banik slave with the ability to help people pass over to the other side. When we first meet him, Stark has been driven mad through exposure to the Aurora chair, and he doesn’t get any saner. But Paul Goddard’s performance makes him at times pathetic, at times triumphant, funny, compelling. I think he was ill-used towards the show’s end when he seemed to become little more than a comedic foil because Goddard was good at portraying dramatic meat of a character who was never comfortable in his own skin.
The story takes place after the TV episode “The Choice” in which Stark, who is still nursing his grief over the death of his lover, Zhaan, is bluntly disabused by Aeryn Sun, who is mourning the death of her lover Crichton, of any feelings of friendship between the two of them. Stark leaves the group, claiming that Zhaan is calling to him. My feeling at the time was that this was a cover-up as Stark had convinced himself he was in love with Aeryn, something backed up by his next appearance in the show “John Quixote”.
There were more than a couple of websites I used to make sure my terminology was in keeping with the show so take a bow, Scifi.com’s Farscape Translator, and the apparently crashed SuperNova science fiction wiki. Wikipedia was also useful in providing episode titles and synopses to remind me of lo, all those days ago.
Disclaimer: Farscape is owned by the Jim Henson Company and therefore not by me. This story is presented purely for entertainment value and is not intended to infringe on the owner’s rights.
The gardener half-danced, half-floated around the hothouse. Vestigial wings of wire and glass fixed in a clockwork housing whirred on its back, lifting its fluffy mass just off the ground in a chaotic manner; though somehow it managed to miss the tables covered in plant life.
Its Brownian motion made it difficult for Stark to keep up. Having only one eye made depth perception an issue at the best of times, but when you were following something that could change directions five times a second it became a hazard. He kept being stabbed by edges, and the pots holding the plants were rattling with unfortunate regularity.
(more…)
A hero dies but one death…
Author’s note: As noted earlier, this story apparently shares common elements with a story from Buffy the Vampire Slayer I haven’t seen. All I can say is, “La la la, I can’t hear you.” This story is set in the Superstu universe. As I explained in an earlier post, Superstu was named by someone else. It’s not rampant egotism, honest Guv! I just couldn’t think of a better name for the character (although from now on he’ll probably only ever be called Stuart Stewart, the man so good they named him twice). He became cemented in my head with that name. And let’s face it, there aren’t enough Stuarts in fiction. There’s Pierce Brosnan’s character in Mrs Doubtfire, the mouse from the film with Hugh Laurie, and the inept cop in My Name is Earl and the gay cop in Taggart. And that’s about it. (Oh and Stewie Griffin in Family Guy - save the best ’til last.)
In the Superstu universe, super heroes exist, but as I thought they would be in the real world. Imagine if you had powers: would you dress up in skintight lycra and stop runaway trains (and she blew)? Or would you become neurotic about what would happen if you didn’t keep a handle on those powers all the time? Would the British government allow super heroes to run around, or would they force you to have a licence to use your powers? As the psychic funnel effect goes, Marvel Comics has recently used the same idea of super heroes being held up by government bureaucracy, albeit to point up civil liberty issues post 9-11. Swines.
Anyway, below is the first story in a diptych, the second half of which will appear next week, same stu-time, same stu-channel. Written in September as my dad was about to go into hospital for a triple bypass operation, I was thinking a lot about death. And life. And that whole eros-thanatos thing. Reputedly the survivors of 9-11 became very frisky, it’s a common reaction to death I hear. My dad made it through the operation fine.
Super heroes tend to die a lot these days. You might remember that the death of Superman in the early nineties got national press coverage, and the recent death of Captain America was similarly slow news day fodder in the US. But these people don’t stay dead. And I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where death was seen as temporary.
Disclaimer: I should point out that I have no special understanding of the female mind, so if Wanda comes across as a man in drag, I’m really really sorry… Also, the characters and events in this story are purely fictional; any resemblance to people living or dead is purely in the eye of the beholder…
It was uncommonly warm for November. A confused wasp zzubed its way around the graveyard too confused to sting those commemorating loved ones and thinking back on what was lost.
Rob and Wanda were the only ones to go to their friend’s funeral.
It wasn’t that he was ill-liked or that his death had not been important. It was just that people had yet to forget the last time or even the time before, and they were damned if they were going to take a day off work just so that he could pop up a month or so later to reveal that it had been an alternate timeline doppelganger who had died. Hence the lack of flowers and cards. Hence how cheap the service had been, and the way the vicar had rolled his eyes as he spoke his lines.