Subject: What's this? A Farscape badfic??
Author:
Posted on: 2022-05-10 05:14:18 UTC
There's a story here. (No, not the badfic; how I found the badfic.) I was poking around the Wayback Machine capture of an old archive called Brain-Insane to see if I could find the actual publication date of "Subjugation," because it's older than I thought and it was hosted there. I didn't find the original date, but I've added the information I did get to the wiki.
Along the way, I noticed that the site had fic for lots of fandoms besides Harry Potter, and I couldn't resist taking a look. There was a section for Farscape! It's one of my top favorite fandoms, and it's relatively obscure. The fic tends to be mediocre to good thanks to a mature, intelligent fanbase, for which I am grateful.
But I can't say I don't want to write a mission for it.
Now, it's important to note that Brain-Insane was a dedicated Mpreg site, and Farscape is a continuum where it wouldn't be too hard to pull it off. I mean, there's an alien species whose females look like human males. Regrettably played for laughs and a bit of "no homo," but still. A male-bodied person getting pregnant wouldn't have been out of place on the show. (Maybe if they hadn't been unjustly cancelled, grumblemutter...) There was every chance I could have found goodfic.
There was only one fic. It is not good.
"Julon Crion" gets off to a failtastic start with the character assassination of Aeryn Sun. I confess I do not understand exactly what her deal is, because the plot is so disjointed, but I guess she decided to betray Moya's crew, be a Peacekeeper again, and also frell Scorpius under the crew's noses? IDEK. John, instead of doing the in-character thing and assume that Scorpius is behind it and come up with a terrible plan to get the Aeryn he knows back, decides that he's just going to give up on everything and jump ship at the next space port. This is supposed to be between him and Pilot, but Chiana overhears, so of course everyone finds out. (The author gets points for remembering that Pilot exists, but loses most of them for forgetting he's intelligent and sassy and very done with everyone's BS at this point in the show.)
There's a lot of confusing scenes where I'm not entirely sure why anyone is doing anything, but long story short, Chiana begs John not to leave, he says he needs time to think about it, and they leave him alone on this commerce planet for three days. Chiana, D'Argo, and Rygel eventually kick Aeryn and Scorpius off the ship, but not Sikozu, even though they can't seem to make up their minds about whether she's working for Scorpius and if they want to trust her or not. I really have no idea, it's that hard to follow.
Meanwhile, John goes to a bar and orders a particular drink, which Chiana had told him is a signal to any watching Nebari that you're interested in hooking up with a Nebari. He is surprised when a Nebari man starts hitting on him. Apparently badfic!John isn't as genre-savvy as canon!John. So, yeah, the completely predictable sex happens. The sex is poorly written; John's consent is dubious (his second drink is an aphrodisiac drug; he wanted a buzz) and both men are described as being in actual pain, yet the fic treats this as perfectly fine. They shag for three. whole. days. And then it gets weird.
It's not weird that John ends up pregnant; we knew Mpreg was coming. I even give the fic props for leaning into the horror aspect of a cis man's body suddenly behaving strangely and him being terrified.
What's weird is that John isn't suffering because he's pregnant; he's suffering because he's getting turned into a Nebari. I don't know why this happens. The crew take him to a doctor who specializes in xenobiology, and there's some technobabble about a virus inserting alien DNA into his normal DNA, and it's already done its work by they time they get there... But, the thing is, no one in the Uncharted Territories has ever seen a Human before. They recognize the Nebari DNA that got in there... somehow... but not the Human DNA. They assume the Nebari DNA is correct, and finish the job of making John look like a Nebari. This would almost be a good plot twist if anyone had stopped for one moment to acknowledge that this doctor had no way of knowing the strange Human DNA wasn't foreign, but they don't. Sigh.
The fact that John is pregnant is tacked on as an afterthought. The fact that the baby isn't genetically related to him at all, but somehow a fusion of the rando Nebari guy from the bar and BY THE WAY a different Nebari guy from an episode two seasons ago who apparently had his way with John between scenes, is treated as some sort of fantastic medical miracle. John is described as "genetic glue" (and then he has to explain what "glue" is because apparently that concept is too complicated for the translator microbes). Glue between two species. Even though the child is pure Nebari. Or is she part alien? I don't know! The fic says both things!
I just... I. What. How. WHAT??
Also, everyone insists that Chiana is its mother, even though she had nothing to do with it and is on record as not liking kids. ("Frelling narls," I believe is a quote.) I don't even.
Pretty much everyone is noticeably OOC at this point, with both John and Chiana being weepy and useless and everyone else being inconsistent at best, idiotic at worse. The final nail in the coffin for me? Braca isn't loyal to Scorpius. Scorpius has him killed. Now, I don't know exactly what Scorpy is up to in this fic, but there's one thing I DO know, and that is Miklo Braca is always on Scorpius' side, because Scorpius is always on Braca's side—which is to say the side of protecting and preserving the institution of the Peacekeepers and their ideals. It may seem silly for THIS to be the deal-breaker for me, but I'm telling you, it's like asking me to believe 2 + 2 = 5. It doesn't, and it never will, and it's wrong. Wrong, you hear me!
Gah.
I don't know if I'll actually mission this. It's not a "live" fic, and I'm not sure how I feel about sporking something from a dead archive. I mean, on the one hand, it's at least 18 years old; I'm not going to damage the feelings of a beginning author! On the other hand, I dunno, just feels kinda underhanded somehow?
Plus, I'd have to pull some shenanigans to get it in front of my agents who are competent in the fandom, and while I enjoy making Nume and Jenni work together, it's not something I want to have too much of. I could set it back in 2004-2005 when Nume was still partnered with Cameo in Floaters, but I quit writing Cameo because I don't like her and I don't wanna, so that's out. There's Agent Neshomeh c. 2004-2005, too, but she was in the DMS, and there's no Sue here.
I dunno, but I had to talk about it. Maybe that will be enough. {= )
~Neshomeh