Text 9372, 71 rader
Skriven 2006-10-13 13:39:56 av Joseph DeMartino
Ärende: ATTN:  JMS's - Delenn's vision of Valen
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From: "Joseph DeMartino" <jdemarti@bellsouth.net>

Joe:

Just to give you an idea of how desperately everyone needs new "B5"
material, a discussion started recently on the ISN Forums about a story
Delenn tells in "Confessions and Lamentations" - an episode that
originally aired over 12 years ago and which most of us have seen at
least that many times.  <g>

The story:   As a child Delenn visits a strange city with her  parents,
and becomes lost. She takes shelter in a temple and falls asleep there.
When she wakes up she sees a figure she takes to be Valen, who assures
her that he would never allow one of his little ones to come to harm. A
few minutes later her parents arrive to take her home.

The ISN discussion seems to have reached a consensus on the following
points:

First:  The main significance of the event is not what actually
happened, but the meaning Delenn took from it. She believes she had a
vision she took to be of Valen, and that shaped her devotion to him,
her religious calling, her sense of herself as special and her belief
that she had a role in prophecy. I would go further and add that it
also influence her feelings for Sinclair, whom she believed was Valen
at least partially reincarnated.   Since the main import was how Delenn
herself interpreted the event, what she actually saw or didn't see is
almost immaterial.

(After we had hashed this out to our own satisfaction, somebody found
an old post of yours which said pretty much the same thing.  Rather
than be embarrassed for not finding it earlier, we have decided to pat
ourselves on the back for our cleverness in figuring it out
independently. <g>)

Second:  That said, there are basically four possibilities as to what
she did see:

1) The vision was a dream welling up from her own subconscious.

2) The vision was a dream into which someone, somehow, insinuated him
or herself for reasons unknown

3) The vision wasn't a dream, Delenn actually saw some contemporary
Minbari

4) The vision wasn't a dream and, in some unexplained manner, she
actually saw Valen in the flesh.

There are some justifications for the above reasoning and also a couple
of other possibilities that I will not go into because they could be
construed as story ideas.  Here are the actual questions:

Do you think you'll ever tell us more about this incident in the course
of "The Lost Tales" or elsewhere?

If not, would you care to comment on the above possibilities, and
perhaps let us know if any of them are correct or go into more detail
about who/what Delenn did or didn't see?   Now that the question's
been raised again it is really starting to bug some of us.  And yes, we
*do* have way too much time on our hands. <g>

Regards,   

Joe
(No.  The Other One.)



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