Snowflake Challenge #4

[justanorthernlight]

Challenge #4

In your own space, add something to your fandom’s canon. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

For Babylon 5, I want an explanation of how/whether the telepathy gene can conceivably skip a generation and what happens to non-telepaths born to two members of the Psi Corps.

It must happen, because there are no canonical hints or implications that Ivanova's brother Ganya was also a telepath, and the Corps doesn't treat it as suspicious or impossible that Ivanova could be a mundane when her mother was a telepath. To borrow a term from Harry Potter, there must be some telepath equivalent of Squibs.

Are there support groups for kids whose entire families are members of the Psi Corps, who are perpetual outsiders with both the Corps and the world of the Mundanes? Do those kids get put straight into foster-care or are they raised in the Corps? Are they ever pressured into doing some kind of liaison job between the Corps and the rest of human civilization? Do they run away and form their own communes? 

(Also, and only semi-related, post season 5 Lise Hampton-Edgars-Garibaldi uses her billions of credits to sue her first husband for joint custody of their daughter and/or uses the media to draw attention to inequality in how Earth and Mars citizens get treated in the courts and effect some positive change other people who have been in her situation.)

Comments

[justanorthernlight]

I love the telepath subplots, but the season 5 arc was definitely a little... sloppy. I keep meaning to read the Psi Corps trilogy (picked them up at a used book store for ~$5 years ago) for more background, but something else always grabs my attention more!

A couple of years ago I started a fic about Lise's daughter (I think her name is mentioned as Deborah) finding her real birth certificate and figuring out the family secrets, then running away to go to college on Mars & agonizing over whether to reach out to Lise (there was a lot of angst over Lise being one of the richest people in the solar system and having a new family), but since I'm not so good at writing I got bogged down in how the Drakh plague would have affected her childhood and never made much progress advancing the plot...

I definitely find B5 always has new angles to enjoy every rewatch! It's been about 2 years for me, but I need to rewatch for a vid I'm planning anyways.

[vysila]

I don't remember the details. So the ex took the daughter and returned to Earth? The Drakh plague would definitely interfere with any travel after that.

[justanorthernlight]

Yes, in Season 4 Lise tells Garibaldi what happened: the ex left her for another woman and the courts allowed Lise to basically be erased from the daughter's life because the ex was from Earth and Lise is from Mars, and that they can legally pretend the step-mom is the daughter's bio-mom and Lise can't have any contact with her.

However, since the dynamic between Earth and Mars changes drastically after Season 4, I think it would be an interesting plot to explore a renewed legal battle on the subject. Then, of course the Drakh plague hits and nobody can leave Earth for however long it lasted...