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

[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