BSG: The Unforgiven Ones, Part 2: Forsaken

[grey_sw]

Back to Part I: The Genocide Prayer

II: ForsakenWhen John got home from school the next day, his parents were waiting for him, standing in the swirling dust outside the house. His father's arm was around his mother, and that was strange enough to make John nervous, even before they spoke

Comments

[puszysty]

Ouch. Kid's parents are not nice people. I can see that becoming a bonding point for cavil though

[korenap]

Really like this.

BSG had the viewers focusing so much on the people fighting to survive, bonding together in that fight, that it all but ignored how humanity does not always respond with nobility and dignity. That they shut down, shut out and become selfish. People can use disaster as a way out and away from the strictures create a society and abandon conscience. That unlike the characters we followed, most of the peple of the fleet were lost souls without anything from their lives to hold on to, and who would use the opportunity to abandon any part of their life they didn't want. To have the human underside shown through the eyes of a child is wrenching.

[grey_sw]

Thank you!

BSG hinted at this kind of thing, but was never quite able to successfully show it (Black Market is a good example of an episode which tried and failed, as was Dirty Hands.) As you mention, BSG was always a little too triumphal and overtly-political to make the Fleet's seedy underbelly convincing; those episodes always felt a little like a Caprican after-school special. :P

I wanted to avoid that with this story, so I'm glad you found it convincing. :)

[grey_sw]

And yeah, the parents are awful, but I don't know that I can blame anyone for acting any way at all in that particular moment.

Yeah. They had problems to deal with, too... including, y'know, the end of the world and all. I don't doubt that many parents left their children during the exodus, and vice versa.

[millari]

I love this. Despite what you say about minor characters being a difficult sell, I found this character fascinating, especially with all the little worldbuilding stuff going on in the background of his story. So just to be clear - did the word you made up, taranad, mean "bastard"? So what, his parents weren't married? Or they had John when they weren't married yet

[grey_sw]

So just to be clear - did the word you made up, taranad, mean "bastard"? So what, his parents weren't married? Or they had John when they weren't married yet?

Yep, I made it up, that's what it means, and John's parents weren't married when they had him. That was a pretty big deal back when religion ran English society, for instance, so it seemed like an obvious way to connect their world to ours without othering it too much.

Man, you make Saggitaron seem like such an awful place! ;) No wonder Zarek turned out to be such a rigid guy - his stances on things are so extreme, like they're the flipside of religious fundamentalism.Yeah. To be fair, I have a feeling that the city is not nearly as bad as the country, at least with regards to religion. I like to think of Zarek as a city-based student agitator type, so maybe religion wasn't as much of a motivator for him... but the city is also the place where the Capricans-living-off-the-fat-of-our-land equation would've been more obvious (with ships full of food taking off over the heads of