Freeform Unedited Kara Writing Meta
Well, I see we have another gen ficathon coming up so I thought that a little writing-about-Kara meta would not necessarily go amiss.
This meta is inspired by taragel, who said lovely things about the way I write Kara Thrace and her layers… and it got me thinking about why I’m so dedicated to writing Starbuck. I wrote a review on my blog a while ago titled “Lisbeth Salander is My Hero”… and I love Lisbeth, but the truth of the matter, my number one hero is Kara Thrace. She is an inspiration to me in so many ways (and one of the most joyous moments of my life was actually saying this to Katee Sackhoff and seeing her smile about it.)
I knew before I started watching BSG that I would like Kara, because let’s face it… I have a type. My favorite fictional characters are people like Faith from Buffy, Lisbeth, and, in the same vein though she expresses herself differently, Tara from Buffy. There is something I could see in all of them that hit me really hard. I can’t say I’ve faced trauma nearly as harsh as any of theirs, but I could connect to a kind of pain they all had.
I spent many years as a deeply unhappy person. My father has a lot of rage issues, and as a kid I ended up being the target of a lot of his frustration. My early friendships tended to be with people who were controlling and manipulative. At some point, in middle school, I rebelled against that and became the manipulator. I lost my few friends, and even the bullies pushed me to new levels. I had a disciplinary meeting after I showed a picture of a skull-and-crossbones to a girl who had teased me relentlessly for years.
I had no idea how to interact with people without controlling or being controlled, I felt broken and useless and waste of space.
No matter how many things I could do, no matter how many accomplishments I made, nothing could make up for the fact that inside, as a person, I wasn’t worth anything.
I think this is the thing that drew me so strongly to Kara Thrace. She is a frakking god as a pilot. Best shot in or out of the cockpit. Her skills are unparalleled and she knows it. She can get her shit done, she can do her job better than anyone. The fleet would suffer without her. She believes in herself. But at the same time she doesn’t. It’s almost a paradox, but her skills are physical. Connected to the body. It has nothing to do with her soul.
No matter how much bravado she puts on, there is a deeper unhappiness-a disbelief even that she could truly be loved. She can be a good friend, a good shot, a good lay, but she keeps up a wall that prevents anyone from seeing that small, scared little girl inside her that never really went away.
There are so few times in the series when we see her vulnerability: confessing to Adama about Zak, realizing Sharon is a cylon, her reaction to shooting Lee. More often, we see what I believe to be actions of an unhappy person-instigating fights, drinking to excess.
But Kara is never resigned to her pain. She fights it, constantly. She is not defeatist, she grew up in hell and she’ll be damned if she lets anything stop her now. She saves herself from that moon, escapes from the farm, well… we know Kara’s heroics. And more than her physical strength, most amazingly, despite negative feelings towards herself, she has not lost her ability to love others. She doesn’t shun others and keep herself brooding, she loves--the Adama men, Helo, Sam, hell she’s even got tough mama love for her nuggets--but perhaps doesn’t expect the same in return.
It’s that combination of confidence in her abilities, but not her own worth; the way she acts out, the way she stands up, the way she fights for others, and for herself. This is how I envision Kara Thrace when I write her. I believe Tara’s description of the way I portray Kara is “brave and broken, tough and tender”. I look at Kara and see more pain than I could ever imagine, but relate to and understand, and I watch her try to reconcile that part of her that believes in herself and the part of her that doesn’t, and I just want to do it justice when I write.
Obviously, I know that others view Kara differently, and was wondering what your thoughts were.