u/Dalakaar

Rule 3: if i have to explain this I will shout into a pillow until my voice is hoarse.

(I did enjoy Zephon, also my life has been incomplete without Xenonaut “stick“ gameplay.)

But i am impatient and my capacity to create terrible memes is not.

For B5 to support such a chaotic populace as the Lurkers the system had to be much more resilient than we are originally led to believe.

We see many instances of waste, smoking in an enclosed area, and trash produced by itinerants.

Thus.

My proposal.

Like EarthGov telling the station personnel they have to move to smaller quarters, the reality is that Sinclair/Sheridan let Ivanova believe she was getting away with murder for having a simple square of ground dedicated to coffee for her own morale purposes.

***

Okay really though, silly example aside. The system had to be way more robust given the stresses it takes than we’re given to believe in S1.

The station had an entire sector go missing. Brown sector looks like a tent-city. There’s no way a micromanaged ecosystem survives what we’ve seen as long as it does.

***

Conclusion: coffee for all! Viva lé revolution!

Let’s say you can commission any style and genre of PC/console game to be made, set in the B5 ’verse. (Canon or non-canon.)

What’s it look like?

What, uh… do you want?

Homeworld?

Mass Effect?

Master of Orion?

Dead Space?

Telltale?

Paradox-esque?

Call of Duty meets GROPOS?

…or Total War/Starship Troopers: Terran Command meets GROPOS?

Factorio but “oops only Zathras” while you manufacture The Great Machine?

Or that Starfury game that didn’t quite come to fruition, like say a heavily updated Freelancer. (Loved me some Starlancer/Freelancer and X-wing vs TIE Fighter back in the day.)

?

As giant energy squids that have evolved past the need for a corporeal body do they have… I‘unno, like, giant energy meatballs that also eschew a need for corporeal existence?

Or the Walkers of Sigma 957? Are their Zwedish zogballs lit with an inner fire?

Is Lorien in his natural form literally a giant blue energy Swedish meatball!?

Do you think the First Ones were able to take the recipe beyond the rim? Are there… Beyond rimballs?

Do you like how they look or is it not your fault they were designed that way?

Randomly curious if any of the novels, games, etc ever mention or make use of the ring technology Delenn uses in The Gathering?

***

As an aside I think it’s probably a good idea they got swept under the rug for the show as a whole. But I find them interesting regardless.

They feel a bit too “comic-booky“ for the tone, IMHO. Mind you the regeneration device hit that tone a bit too, so it’s not like the show didn’t delve there from time to time.

Seems like a blatant violation of their non-interference agreement for starters.

Abducting a random short-lived creature from a technologically underdeveloped world who went around killing his own kind?

Then there‘s the implication of the Vorlon having an inquisitor at all. Was Sebastian ever brought out to determine the worthiness of someone who was actually backed by the Shadows, for instance? (Or at least had dealings with them.)

If they could’ve killed him, would they? Or did they not know about him at all? Seems likely given he was on ice for extended stretches. But then again the guy wasn’t exactly a model of subtlety.

Also makes me wonder if the Shadows have their own version of a Sebastian for that matter.

Mostly just got to thinking what their take on him would be. Hell, for all I know the Shadows could find the whole idea laughable. “So they send this guy out to test their own using absurd opaque metrics and he kills or fails everyone he tests? We sure he’s not secretly working for us? He’s not on our payroll or anything, right?”