Half a dozen of the other
Happy birthday rubberneck!
And, a little early, happy birthday zandra_x!
* * * * *
I made three terrible mistakes in 24 hours between yesterday and today.
Mistake #1: Getting lunch at the office park cafeteria yesterday, because as it turns out, the food there is not only generally aesthetically vile, but was in this case also FULL OF FOOD POISONING.
Mistake #2: Waking up this morning feeling more or less better and, in an irrational moment of impatience to try out the new running shoes, going for a run. (Note: I am a fucking idiot.) But the dry heaves stopped eventually!
Mistake #3: Post-dry heaves, thinking today would be a swell day to shave my legs in the shower. The bleeding also stopped eventually, but I was kind of wondering there for a while.
Don't try this at home, kids. Not that any of you would be that dumb.
* * * * *
BSG 4.02 - "Six of One"
Because of the aforementioned 24 hours, and the fact that there was so much going on in this episode, I'm not going to even attempt a comprehensive review.
One of the long-running themes of the show has been not just that humans need to survive, but that they need to deserve to survive. So one of the things that struck me about this episode was how much it centered on choices people were making about what kind of people they wanted to be and what kind of future they wanted to have, and that that's true as much of the Cylons as the humans.
First there were Adama and Laura arguing over what to do about Kara. I found Kara's despair in this entire episode really upsetting, so I had a very negative reaction to Laura in that scene, but it turned out that I misheard some of what she said because the sound in the Galactica scenes in this episode was AWFUL and all of the human characters sounded like they were talking underwater. Rewatching with the volume cranked up to 11, I got a lot more of her underlying illness, and the way her need to believe in her own miraculous path had precluded, in her mind, the possibility of any other miracle. It's a coldly ruthless attitude, the attitude of someone whose vision of the future has contracted into what she can accomplish before she dies. She's lost her capacity for wonder, and for generosity; she doesn't want to take any chances; she has gone from religious radical to guardian of her own orthodoxy. It's a change Kara wasn't there to see, didn't understand. And though Laura's arguments are logically impeccable, safe, they mean that Adama, and Lee, and everyone else who loved Kara has to turn their back on her, make her disappear. (Part of what I found so upsetting about Kara's despair, and so moving about her conversation with Lee in her cell, is that everyone was treating her like she was still dead, and they had mourned and let go, up until that point; Lee was the first person to act like her reappearance wasn't inconvenient, that she wasn't easier to deal with as a memory. She pushed the issue--she wasn't going to give up, wasn't going to stay quiet, and welcoming her back and believing her went hand in hand.) In the end, Adama didn't just want to believe Kara; he also wanted to be the kind of person who could believe Kara, the kind of person who can take that kind of chance on someone he loves.
Then there were the Cylons, arguing over what to do about the Raiders, who, like Kara, believe they have received a signal. To Cavill, being a machine is a point of pride; there is an order to their existence, there are rules, and talking about the final five, breaking the rules, threatens that order, threatens to pull them off their current path. He's the guardian of Cylon orthodoxy; and because they are machines, because he sees the Raiders as tools, he sees the problem of their sentience, their belief, their willfulness, as a mechanical one: fix it by cutting something out, by reconfiguring the software. He doesn't want to take a chance on a new path; he is all about limitation, prescription. The Sixes and Sharons and Leobens, on the other hand, have made the choice to believe in the possibility of a new signal, a new way, a change. I'm not entirely sure what to think of the one Sharon's defection; as a sign of individuality, it's the sort of thing that once alarmed Cavill and D'Anna, so I'm not sure why he was excited about that kind of change, except as a convenient mechanism for getting his way in the immediate argument. But I do think it's significant that the reason she gave for siding against her model was that she didn't think they could take any chances, and also that the Six takes charge by giving the Centurions sentience, and therefore both makes a choice about what the Cylons as a species are going to become and gives the Centurions their own choice about their future path.
And finally there were the Galactica Cylons, who aren't being true to themselves, because they don't know who they are anymore. I don't think Anders or Tyrol would ever have asked a woman they knew to sleep with a slimeball for information before; I'm not entirely sure Tigh would have either. And I don't think Tori would have agreed. But they are scared, and unmoored, and everything is in question. They are also making choices about what kind of people they will be, and what they're willing to give up to get there.
This was, therefore, the fitting episode for launching Lee into his civilian career, his own destiny. I loved that he got a sendoff, the grudging approval of his father, some closure with Dee (who, now that she is no longer encumbered with the awful love geometry plotline, will hopefully go back to being awesome ASAP).
It was also, maybe, fitting, that in the episode where everyone was talking about signals and music and things they heard that were dictating their paths--the Raider and the Hybrid sensing the presence of some of the Final Five in the fleet, Kara hearing the path to Earth, Baltar talking about the music of faith, the Galactica Cylons having come together because of the music they all heard--that you could not hear a damn thing anybody was saying on the Galactica.
I was also struck by Tigh's crudeness, which seemed unusually misogynistic (usually he's more of an equal-opportunity misanthrope), and by the shudderingly awkward yuckiness of the sex scene between Tori and Baltar, but it turns out that Michael Angelli wrote this episode, so mystery solved.
* * * * *
I am reading The Left Hand of Darkness right now, and it is making me think a lot about troyswann's worldbuilding panel at bitchinparty and the examples she gave of how word choice and telling detail are so important for creating a full and immediate fictional world. And by coincidence, I saw a link today for a classic (but new to me) Samual R. Delany essay, About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words, that addresses the same subject:
Words in a narrative generate tones of voice, syntatic expectations, memories of other words and pictures. But rather than a fixed chronological relation, they sit in numerous inter- and over-weaving relations. The process as we move our eyes from word to word is corrective and revisionary rather than progressive. Each new word revises the complex picture we had a moment before.
Around the meaning of any word is a certain margin in which to correct the image of the object we arrive at (in the old grammatical terms, to modify).
And, a little early, happy birthday zandra_x!
* * * * *
I made three terrible mistakes in 24 hours between yesterday and today.
Mistake #1: Getting lunch at the office park cafeteria yesterday, because as it turns out, the food there is not only generally aesthetically vile, but was in this case also FULL OF FOOD POISONING.
Mistake #2: Waking up this morning feeling more or less better and, in an irrational moment of impatience to try out the new running shoes, going for a run. (Note: I am a fucking idiot.) But the dry heaves stopped eventually!
Mistake #3: Post-dry heaves, thinking today would be a swell day to shave my legs in the shower. The bleeding also stopped eventually, but I was kind of wondering there for a while.
Don't try this at home, kids. Not that any of you would be that dumb.
* * * * *
BSG 4.02 - "Six of One"
Because of the aforementioned 24 hours, and the fact that there was so much going on in this episode, I'm not going to even attempt a comprehensive review.
One of the long-running themes of the show has been not just that humans need to survive, but that they need to deserve to survive. So one of the things that struck me about this episode was how much it centered on choices people were making about what kind of people they wanted to be and what kind of future they wanted to have, and that that's true as much of the Cylons as the humans.
First there were Adama and Laura arguing over what to do about Kara. I found Kara's despair in this entire episode really upsetting, so I had a very negative reaction to Laura in that scene, but it turned out that I misheard some of what she said because the sound in the Galactica scenes in this episode was AWFUL and all of the human characters sounded like they were talking underwater. Rewatching with the volume cranked up to 11, I got a lot more of her underlying illness, and the way her need to believe in her own miraculous path had precluded, in her mind, the possibility of any other miracle. It's a coldly ruthless attitude, the attitude of someone whose vision of the future has contracted into what she can accomplish before she dies. She's lost her capacity for wonder, and for generosity; she doesn't want to take any chances; she has gone from religious radical to guardian of her own orthodoxy. It's a change Kara wasn't there to see, didn't understand. And though Laura's arguments are logically impeccable, safe, they mean that Adama, and Lee, and everyone else who loved Kara has to turn their back on her, make her disappear. (Part of what I found so upsetting about Kara's despair, and so moving about her conversation with Lee in her cell, is that everyone was treating her like she was still dead, and they had mourned and let go, up until that point; Lee was the first person to act like her reappearance wasn't inconvenient, that she wasn't easier to deal with as a memory. She pushed the issue--she wasn't going to give up, wasn't going to stay quiet, and welcoming her back and believing her went hand in hand.) In the end, Adama didn't just want to believe Kara; he also wanted to be the kind of person who could believe Kara, the kind of person who can take that kind of chance on someone he loves.
Then there were the Cylons, arguing over what to do about the Raiders, who, like Kara, believe they have received a signal. To Cavill, being a machine is a point of pride; there is an order to their existence, there are rules, and talking about the final five, breaking the rules, threatens that order, threatens to pull them off their current path. He's the guardian of Cylon orthodoxy; and because they are machines, because he sees the Raiders as tools, he sees the problem of their sentience, their belief, their willfulness, as a mechanical one: fix it by cutting something out, by reconfiguring the software. He doesn't want to take a chance on a new path; he is all about limitation, prescription. The Sixes and Sharons and Leobens, on the other hand, have made the choice to believe in the possibility of a new signal, a new way, a change. I'm not entirely sure what to think of the one Sharon's defection; as a sign of individuality, it's the sort of thing that once alarmed Cavill and D'Anna, so I'm not sure why he was excited about that kind of change, except as a convenient mechanism for getting his way in the immediate argument. But I do think it's significant that the reason she gave for siding against her model was that she didn't think they could take any chances, and also that the Six takes charge by giving the Centurions sentience, and therefore both makes a choice about what the Cylons as a species are going to become and gives the Centurions their own choice about their future path.
And finally there were the Galactica Cylons, who aren't being true to themselves, because they don't know who they are anymore. I don't think Anders or Tyrol would ever have asked a woman they knew to sleep with a slimeball for information before; I'm not entirely sure Tigh would have either. And I don't think Tori would have agreed. But they are scared, and unmoored, and everything is in question. They are also making choices about what kind of people they will be, and what they're willing to give up to get there.
This was, therefore, the fitting episode for launching Lee into his civilian career, his own destiny. I loved that he got a sendoff, the grudging approval of his father, some closure with Dee (who, now that she is no longer encumbered with the awful love geometry plotline, will hopefully go back to being awesome ASAP).
It was also, maybe, fitting, that in the episode where everyone was talking about signals and music and things they heard that were dictating their paths--the Raider and the Hybrid sensing the presence of some of the Final Five in the fleet, Kara hearing the path to Earth, Baltar talking about the music of faith, the Galactica Cylons having come together because of the music they all heard--that you could not hear a damn thing anybody was saying on the Galactica.
I was also struck by Tigh's crudeness, which seemed unusually misogynistic (usually he's more of an equal-opportunity misanthrope), and by the shudderingly awkward yuckiness of the sex scene between Tori and Baltar, but it turns out that Michael Angelli wrote this episode, so mystery solved.
* * * * *
I am reading The Left Hand of Darkness right now, and it is making me think a lot about troyswann's worldbuilding panel at bitchinparty and the examples she gave of how word choice and telling detail are so important for creating a full and immediate fictional world. And by coincidence, I saw a link today for a classic (but new to me) Samual R. Delany essay, About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words, that addresses the same subject:
Words in a narrative generate tones of voice, syntatic expectations, memories of other words and pictures. But rather than a fixed chronological relation, they sit in numerous inter- and over-weaving relations. The process as we move our eyes from word to word is corrective and revisionary rather than progressive. Each new word revises the complex picture we had a moment before.
Around the meaning of any word is a certain margin in which to correct the image of the object we arrive at (in the old grammatical terms, to modify).