let's say we take this town

[lostinapapercup]

Just some thoughts.

- Those of you who are BSG fans or have at least seen the show in its entirety, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Athena and Boomer. Brief or rambling!

- My holiday offer is still open to anyone and everyone reading these words through January 1st

Comments

[in_the_blue]

The easy thing to comment on first: I never like to feel I'm missing out on something. I'm pretty compulsive about refreshing pages and the like, always have my favorite sites up in tabs in my browser. But over Thanksgiving I put away Tumblr and since I've looked at it maybe once or twice a day and I'm finding that I really don't miss it, not at all. For what it's worth, we might be a minority of two with the animated gif photosets. I keep waiting for the mania over them to die down and it's not going away. Even the mania from Texts from Last Night died down, at least marginally, but... yeah. I don't know if I'll delete my Tumblr account or just keep it there for posterity, but I'm pretty glad I'm less tied to it than before. Then again, how tied to it can I be? It's just pretty pictures of pretty people, and I have those all on my hard drive anyway, and it's not worth it to me to get disheartened when things I've worked on go unnoticed. Life's too short to make myself feel inadequate. Other people can (and always will) do that just fine.

I've been thinking about Boomer and Athena off and on for most of the day. What I keep circling back to is the realization that I really wanted Athena to learn more from Boomer and I also really wanted Boomer to learn more than she ever did from Athena. I know Boomer had the worst of shitty circumstances. Planted as a sleeper agent, memories modified, and without so much as the luxury of having been one of the precious Final Five. That has to wreak havoc with a person (or technically with a Cylon, but there's not a whole lot of difference ultimately). Out of anyone in the entire Cylon nation, she probably had the best reason(s) for a complete and utter mental breakdown. The circumstances of the show definitely hardened her in a lot of ways and also brought up the whole question of nature vs. nurture, even for Cylons. When push comes to shove, I don't know that Boomer ever really learned a whole lot. She has an epiphany at the end right before she dies, but it's almost a case of too little, too late.

I always feel for Boomer, though, because she tries so hard... at least until she doesn't any more and goes over to the Official Dark Side where it's okay to threaten small children and betray your sister(s) and all that stuff. To me, a lot of that rings as plot device mechanisms and it's not just because I really hate how devious Boomer gets as the show goes on. That in and of itself is pretty fascinating. But yeah, she gets screwed over and doesn't do a thing to help herself although as one of the heroes of Caprica, she could well have done so. I miss feeling empathy for her like I do at the start of the show.

Athena starts with a lie, that she's the same Sharon Helo knew on Galactica, and takes advantage of the situation. I always find it interesting that she does it in such an eager and childlike way (her "we had sex!" reminds me of a kid showing an A on a test to her parents). She does grow and mature and by and large, I like Athena as a character. Her heartbreak over losing Hera is tangible and so beautifully played, and that's where (to me) the key difference comes about between Athena and Boomer. Yes, Athena's resentful and hurt and angry and vengeful over it, but she doesn't go all evil the way Boomer did. The parallels between the two Sharons are fascinating and a whole other topic of discussion. I always want to actually believe in Athena and to a degree I do: I believe she grows to love Helo, I believe she loves her daughter just as any mother would, and I believe her reasons for acting hurt are plausible in just about every case. She has the added layer of being ostracized by her sister Cylons as trying to be "one of them" and that can't be easy. Ultimately I think some of the decisions Athena makes are every bit as flawed as the ones Boomer makes, but most of those bad decisions come earlier in her story arc. That gives more opportunity for a redemptive arc, where Boomer pretty much goes from bad to worse. It's an interesting conundrum.

All that spewed out (and those thoughts are really kind of random and disjointed), I really admire Grace Park for being able to play both of them so well.

[lostinapapercup]

About tumblr: all I can say is yeah. I also keep certain sites up in tabs and compulsively check while I'm at my computer, but in the weeks before the wedding I gave up on catching up every time I sat back down it after more than an hour or two of being away. And since the animated gifs started dominating my dash I can't say I've missed catching up that much.

Well, that and I'm one of the very few people not especially interested in Doctor Who or Supernatural, but you know that feeling too.

I still prefer livejournal to tumblr. I feel like tumblr's given me more of an opportunity to connect with people with similar interests recently, which I've appreciated, but I have to use the word "connect" loosely because it's only in a very fleeting and superficial way. If it had features that were more... I don't know, conversation-friendly? Then it could stand a chance at really winning me over.

Actually, tumblr was part of the reason I wanted to see if I could hear some opinions about the various Sharons. I like that the flaws of the eights as a line are pretty consistent throughout the show (that I can recall). I guess I don't feel sure I understand what reasons there are to vehemently dislike Athena. Yeah, the whole posing as the original Sharon thing is a big deal that I wouldn't mean to take for granted -- just as I wouldn't mean to ever take the original destruction of the colonies for granted -- but I do think it's obvious Athena grows to love Helo, loves her child, and wants to be more than just another eight in the production line. I know she struggles -- at times very justifiably so -- but I think the only reasons I can see for her to be disliked are the way she kept Cavil's identity to herself on Caprica (and that was spite that was maybe justified on a meta level but not on an IC level) and her decision to just shoot Natalie (and the fact that she seemed to suffer no consequences for it). The latter in particular makes me scratch my head, I admit, and I don't necessarily think the opera house dreams and Hera's eerie drawings were enough to explain her actions there even though I do firmly believe all the characters suffer understandably from extreme emotional wear and tear throughout season four.

With Boomer, on the other hand, I get why people don't like her. Manipulating Chief, beating Athena, taking advantage of Helo, and running off with Hera: she did it all in one episode! But up until then I still find her sympathetic. And I do believe everything she says to Chief is based in truth, but that makes it crueler rather than kinder in this case. On the first viewing I didn't pay enough attention to Boomer's storyline to appreciate it, but I think it's pretty heartbreakingly tragic. Especially because, as you said, she has her turning point at the end but she never has a chance to move beyond it. We'll never know how much she really learned.

I like what you said about Athena reporting in to the others about having sex with Helo. That's exactly what it's like: she's a kid telling the teacher she's done her homework. But all the Cylons are like that, particularly at that point in canon. (I always like the six's jealousy about what Athena is getting to experience.) In fact, thinking about it in those terms is the only way I can rationalize Cavil's sudden suicide, and even then I still have some trouble with that.

The Cylon men never get much of a chance to show their range like the women do, but I definitely appreciate Tricia and Grace more with every rewatch.