Be careful what you wish for...

[im_ridiculous]

That awkward moment when, after ten months of persuasion, you finally manage to convince your best mate (and someone you know has fangirling tendencies, and who you have every reason to suspect will be a pilots shipper) to watch Battlestar Galactica

Comments

[anuna_81]

WHUT? Lee is freakin' awesome, and probably the only person who had the guts to say "we were wrong to do that stuff" on Baltar's trial. After which everyone CONDEMNED HIM SO HARD. But you know what folks, a wrong isn't any less wrong just because it suits you.

Roslyn? Ugh, no. I kind of see why people go bananas over her but I don't like her one bit. Give me Lee/Kara any day.

[im_ridiculous]

I. KNOW!!!! He is SO interesting, he's all with the morally conflicted, and the compulsion to do The Right Thing, and he's got all this latent rage just simmering under the surface under control most of the time and THE TRIAL! Yes, you people don't want to hear this, but bad fucking luck. I just... I love him so much.

As for Adama and Laura... Ugh. I really liked her in season 1, and a bit of season 2, but I seriously disliked her by the end too!! And I guess I was kinda happy for her and Adama, but in a detached, 'yeah whatevs' kinda way, y'know? I was just a bit bored by them, really.

I guess on the upside, she also said, 'But that Sam is a bit pointless too isn't he? Like, he's a bit pathetic.' So, y'know, at least we can share our hatred of Sam I guess, but....

OH LE SIGH!!!

[kdbleu]

Roslyn? Ugh, no. I kind of see why people go bananas over her but I don't like her one bit.

Secretly, I want to ask those who really love Laura why cuz I never got it. At all. *blushes*

[themonkeytwin]

Heh, do you want to ask me? No judging, no proselytizing, promise. ;) I explain a little bit in my comment below, if it helps.

[kdbleu]

I would love to hear your reasons. Thank you.

[themonkeytwin]

Okay - I'll do my best :) It's so long ago that there may be gaps that don't make the most sense anymore, especially because some of it was more a visceral reaction, that kind of faded away.

So ... okay, I think what first drew me to her (and remember, here, that I started watching with 33, so I was thrown right into the middle of it all) was that she was the main character whose pre- and post-cataclysm experience was the most disparate. Like, by orders of magnitude. I mean, the torque on her character was immense. Nearly all the other characters at that point were military, so trained with some level of anticipation for this kind of situation, if not its scale - and the only other person who inherited comparable weight of authority had fought through the first cylon war and had had years of command, so had experience and structure to draw on

[kdbleu]

Totally helps. Thank you!!! For one your Avengers review is one of my faves. I really loved the movie, for many of the reasons you disliked it actually, but you were frequently spot on in your observations it just happened that what didn't work for you didn't bother me or worked for me despite that fact that I could see the obvious flaws. (I'm not even sure if that makes sense but it's entirely true.)

and even though she was completely out of her depth and terrified, somehow kept from freezing or panicking.

This was exactly why I wanted to like Laura. It's the part of her that I most identify with. But, and I'd thought about it like this before, I think it was the fact that her life was so radically different before and after the Fall that made her difficult for me from the start. Everyone else seemed so real and almost small that her radical transformation stood out for me, making her not someone I could identify with.

In fact, in some ways, it would have been much more interesting if they'd let her die the first time around

[themonkeytwin]

Oh man, my Avengers review. Man, I still haven't quite made my peace with that movie, although I'm trying to, out of self-preservation if nothing else. (I was considering posting on it again, if only to get the secondary-dvd-watch processing rant out of my head, but it doesn't seem fair to keep banging on about it in public.) But thanks for saying you liked it! That's amusing that our reactions were so different to the same things. Maybe it's got something to do with our different reactions to Laura, too?

Everyone else seemed so real and almost small that her radical transformation stood out for me, making her not someone I could identify with.That's fair enough. Me, I love those characters/stories. I mean, for Laura, you're absolutely right - which is part of what put her in a position of such isolation and pressure, what wrought such massive changes in her. To me, at least, she was just as real and small as anyone else, which was what made it fascinating to see what circumstances so extreme will do to "ordinary" people. I mean, I

[kdbleu]

I don't actually feel confident that I know these characters, not to the point of saying "I know s/he would never do that" or whatever, because of the way the story and characters and relationships were handled.

This a million times over. I find that what people think of characters and what the characters would or wouldn't do says more about the person watching, interpreting that character than almost anything else. There's a Roslin fan on my f-list who has really issues with Laura's ban on abortion as being completely out of character, which is one of the Laura decision that I find odd but not out of character. I continually want to tell this friend that the problem is she wouldn’t ban abortion so she can't imagine Laura doing it. And while it kind o drives me crazy, I totally understand because we don’t have full enough pictures of these characters to really know. (I, personally, have some similar issue with choices Kara makes but I can't think of one so hot button-y so I'm sticking with Laura and abortion.)

adrift in its own

[themonkeytwin]

I find that what people think of characters and what the characters would or wouldn't do says more about the person watching

Oh, completely. Not that this doesn't happen to a degree in fandom anyhow, and in a lot of cases that comes down to sophistication and basic self-awareness in the viewer. But in BSG's case, they really weren't doing any of us any favours.

Laura's ban on abortion as being completely out of character, which is one of the Laura decision that I find odd but not out of character.

With all due caution to the hot-buttonness of this topic, I'll say that this is actually one of the least surprising of her decisions to me. And because it IS such a faught subject, people seem to be especially unable to separate this decision from the issues surrounding it in OUR world. But in context of the setting and events of the show, one of her lines right from the beginning always sticks in my head - the one where they're looking at the numbers of the fleet, and she just says that they need to start having babies. So when she

[kdbleu]

I could not agree with you more re: the abortion issue. I actually chose it as my example because there's so little gray area for so many people. But I too was unsurprised by her decision and found not only the decision but the conflict over it very in character. And the sort of moment for Laura that I found interesting, but it was also an example of the story telling that I really enjoyed form BSG, the big picture shown through a small, personal moment.

I meant more that, absent any other indicator other than coming back from the dead, she was still more on the "human" side of the equation than the cylon, in those particular relationships.

Oh, that makes sense. And I actually like the cylon/human relationship between Kara and Leoben quite a bit. I never saw that the same way in the relationship between Kara and Sam for a bunch of reasons that all kind of boil down to the muddling of cylon/human by the end and the fact that TPTB missed me when they picked the Final Five, well the four revealed at the end of S3.

[im_ridiculous]

Astute as always, my dear :)

All of those positive Laura things are why I liked her in the first season. I thought she was interesting, responded in interesting and often admirable (or at least tough-as-nails) ways to the situation she found herself in, and she was a great foil for Adama - really interesting 'civilian v military in a time of war and exodus' stuff. All good.

But then, almost against my will out of loyalty to mini/season 1 Laura..... I don't know, I just started to find her preachy and annoying and sanctimonious and... well... I just... got bored with and irritated by Mary McDonnell's performance (*ducks inevitable volley of rotten fruit*). I feel like the longer the show went on, the more the character regressed - she became MORE immature, became MORE selfish - and I was so annoyed with her by the end that I just... ugh. I was never anti Adama/Roslin, I just.... could never get that invested, I guess. I think I found their non-romantic relationship to/with each other (and civil/military leaders) more interesting than

[themonkeytwin]

I just started to find her preachy and annoying and sanctimonious

Oh, hell yes. Again, I can see someone in her position clinging to a higher power/s for some kind of guidance and stability, and it was all understandable, but it definitely began to wear. But at the same time, I feel like all of that could have remained really compelling in the hands of writers who actually knew how to handle it, and its place in the broader story. But then - and speaking as a person of faith, myself - the way religious belief and faith is usually depicted in popular media is terrible. (Often matched only by how badly religious people attempt to portray themselves in popular media.) As a culture, I don't know that we have the framework to communicate the working of real faith without resorting to shallow, warped stereotype. Not that this is the only thing that Hollywood et al portray without any real idea of what they're talking about, so, yeah.

I just... got bored with and irritated by Mary McDonnell's performanceHaha! *hands you fruit cocktail

[im_ridiculous]

But at the same time, I feel like all of that could have remained really compelling in the hands of writers who actually knew how to handle it, and its place in the broader story.Dude. Totes fo shiz. As a person of reasonably low-key faith, by faith nonetheless, MYself, I thought it was really interesting that they were trying to incorporate that element into the story, because in an epic story about humanity and survival and trauma etc etc etc I don't think you can actually legitimately leave that out... but then they just drove it off a cliff along with everything else. So

[themonkeytwin]

I thought it was really interesting that they were trying to incorporate that element into the story

Oh yeah, me too. It started out really interesting that they were attempting it at least. And then....

just really small completely inconsequential acting choices which probably meant nothing at all to everyone else but which just really, reeeeeeeally grated on my nerves!

... Fair enough. :D Although, and not to excuse it, but perhaps that's what she envisioned a dying'o'cancer spiritually-sensitive person would be like in a marathon of high-pressure? I don't know. Like crossing Xena with Helen Burns from Jane Eyre?

Stupid bad storytelling choices are stupid and bad.
Also? I second those gifs, and I'm with Colin. *fistbump*

At the end of the day, we basically just have us on the left, BSG/RDM on the right:

[im_ridiculous]

Like crossing Xena with Helen Burns from Jane Eyre?
.....err... Actually, this could be it because... i don't like Jane Eyre either... Geez, I'm just unpopoular opinion girl today, aren't I... eesh.

we basically just have us on the left, BSG/RDM on the right
omg that giff says it all. Says. It. All. ... ALL.