Fic: Infinite Regress (The Origin Stories Remix) [BSG, for bsg_remix]

[pellucid]

Title: Infinite Regress (The Origin Stories Remix)
Author: pellucid
Summary: She was a prophet, and prophets are always special.
Characters: Pythia, Athena (the Lord of Kobol)
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Beta Thanks: gabolange, as always!
Author Notes: 1600 words. A remix of Twilight of the Idols by nnaylime, written for bsg_remix (2009). Originally posted here; I'm

Comments

[pellucid]

Thank you! I'm so glad this struck a chord with you.

The idea of the Lords of Kobol as Cylon (or...something Other--I like the way you put that!) has been a small pet theory of mine since Sharon's "Athena, whoever or whatever she really was" back in "Home, part 2." And as I mentioned above to grav_ity, I always thought (well, up until I cast aside all my expectations) that Kobol would have to be the thematic centre of the mytharc--that everything would come back to what happened there, to the prophecies and the opera house and all that. Not in a "now you have all the answers" way, but in a way that respected the thematic centrality that that part of the story appeared to have for so long. I was, of course, tremendously disappointed, though ultimately, given how bad the storytelling was in the end, I think I'm glad they just stayed away from the Lords of Kobol, because I would hate for them to have been screwed up. Now, at least, I can still play with them this way!

for all I love what BSG does to the boundaries of human and machine, I wish it had done the same to the boundaries of mortal and divine

This, I think, is the corollary to playing with the human/machine divide, isn't it? It's a matter of creators and creation and what is the definition of a god. Is a creator a god? What if the creator is mortal but the creation is not? Does the god have to be able to control fates and destiny, or is his/her own fate already written by time? The show was poised to ask these questions, but ultimately it dropped that ball in such a disappointing way. Perhaps unsurprisingly, for all that BSG seems to be the more "spiritual" or "theological" of the two, I think TSCC does a better job of recognizing that when you're talking about the boundaries between humans and machines, you're also talking about the boundaries between the human and the divine, and that the whole thing is pretty messy and unknowable.

Oh, BSG! How it broke my heart in the end!

[beccatoria]

You make a really interesting point there. BSG definitely discussed the Cylon/Human relationship as parent/child with the divine as something quite different and competing between the two. While TSCC uses religion specifically to discuss the creation of a living machine, with the parent/child divisions being quite firmly separated along lines of species (Sarah and John Connor, Weaver and John Henry).

Along one line, that makes sense since (again until the very weird ending) BSG was more specifically trying to forge a biological and familiar connection between human and machine; to describe us as solely their creator-gods might have been interesting in terms of theology but equally could cause the worry that we then wouldn't see the lines between us blurring so impossibly. However, the more I think about it, the more a shame I think this is because it completely could have been about that. The Opera House again - life/death, human/cylon. But also creator/created=god/human? D'Anna looks on her creators there, certainly. And it is construed as, itself, a message from (a) god. Certainly even if no god exists, the spectre of a supernatural messenger is present there.

Doing something like you do here - tying human gods to the cylon the humans in turn created has a marvelous resonance with all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. By virtue of my strangely cosmicist approach to free will, the issues of a god negating free will never bothered me in quite the same way as others (I tend to fall in line with Athena in this fic; if I am destined to make my choices then it's only MORE important for me to own them and claim them), but the idea of straightjacketing god's free will. Oh. Now there's something that I was remiss in not commenting on more fully in my initial piece of feedback. The prophetic invective; I love it. Pythia here creates Athena's fate despite being mortal to Athena's divinity.

Oh, BSG! How it broke my heart in the end!

You already know I feel the same way. *hugs* I think you put it fantastically in a comment above - it's the evocative messiness I grieve most. I would have been happier with an ending that failed to answer a single question, if it had posed just one more question as amazing as the Opera House, you know? While I was always curious about the mythology of the show, what I loved most about it was its rich texture, and its remarkable consistancy despite - it seems - never having had any concrete answers as a foundation.

Slightly off-topic, but you may find this review of the BSG finale interesting:

http://ideas.4brad.com/battlestar/battlestars-daybreak-worst-ending-history-screen-science-fiction

I find it interesting not because I agree with everything he says, but because it's interesting to see someone with a very different take on the show choke on most of the same issues I choked on but...from a really different perspective? Either way, I found it well-written and interesting, although it did make me kind of...ragey once again at the way it failed in such a spectacular fashion.

Essentially the author's thesis is that the finale meant BSG stopped being science fiction (hard, soft, sociological or otherwise) and started being religious fiction.

But, to wrench this back to the fic in question, I just read it again, and, still awesome. Something about the entrance of Athena in the beginning, that this goddes is real is fantastic. As is the deeply creepy undertone of Pythia's understanding of Athena's creation and her ability only to write about it in metaphor. Again, that's a fantastic way of evoking much within the wider mythology of the show, without saying a lot. I immediately begin to imagine Cylonic things, but equally, the language you used, could mean something more traditionally divine, or, which is perhaps the point, something I cannot ever understand which is WHY I fall down into either making her a Cylon or imagining the slightly-more-adult equivalent of Zeus with a giant, cavernous skull.

<3