bsg rantage. because getting my life together? no thank you.
So I am editing my Roslin essay (FAVORITE CHARACTER FOREVER, I CANNOT EVEN DEAL, I LOVE HER SO MUCH, YOU GUYS) and I cannot stop thinking about that terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad abortion episode. I have thoughts on the edits of my thoughts which are really the redacted version of my real thoughts. I think too much. Because FINALE WHAT FINALE, it is my least favorite episode. It is the worst.
I hold this up against Black Market any day. Black Market was a terrible plot. But you know what? I felt like I was watching Lee make decisions that were in tune with who he was and what he was going through at the moment, ALL THE SNAPS FOR JAMIE BAMBER, and I especially think the premise of sex workers being marginalized even without criminalization was completely in step with Colonial society. The script and plot have to have been slapped together at the last minute, but it didn’t feel like it was a departure from the world and characters I knew. This was.
The first time I watched this episode, it meant so. fucking. much. to me when Bill asked her to consider outlawing abortion and she said “No. I have fought my entire career to protect a woman’s right to control her body. No.” This, from the woman who claimed never to have been interested in politics (though I will defend forever my opinion that the lady doth protest too much, especially in the wake of immediate trauma, rather than holding an actual aversion to policy and power); this, from the woman who could order the execution of civilians to protect more civilians; this, from the Secretary of Education, who would have had to go far out of her way indeed in order to actively protect the right to choose; this, from the woman who rolled her eyes and scoffed at philosophical counterarguments to assassination; this, from my favorite television character ever. In the time between that scene and the press conference, I felt so validated. I felt heard. I felt respected. Because that is what I believe. That is the very crux of reproductive justice - of the right to safe, legal, accessible abortion; of the intrinsic right to be free from rape; of the right to have women’s bodies and health and freedom recognized as worthwhile; of (appropriately enough for BSG) our very humanity.
And I am so used to being ignored at best and vilified as a matter of course by American mass media for holding this point of view. I expect it. I expect cringe-inducing abortion fake-outs because SHE CHOOSES HER CHOICE no matter how little sense it makes for the character at the time. I expect assassinated heroes to be slammed as baby-killers. I expect anti-choice propaganda about women being too flighty to understand what pregnancy is until they see an ultrasound. I expect hand-wringing about just how much guilt everyone who has an abortion must crack under for the rest of their lives. But here, for a brief shining moment, was my girl Laura Roslin defending the moral underpinnings of the right to choose.
I don’t see why the show had to go there. I think it would have been absolutely radical for abortion to be a non-issue in this society, or for the anti-choicers to be winger outliers like the gold standard people are in our world. But if the storyline was going to happen - because nothing says cheap manufactured drama like the womb police! - then honestly? I wish Roslin had done it to win the election. I’d have been okay with that. It would have made sense with the character. It would have done a much better job setting up the election theft, in fact. I’d be able to believe that she ensured the executive order wouldn’t be enforced, that it was just a meaningless piece of political theater to keep the Zarek fanatics at bay. She knows how to play that game, and she’d be torn up inside about doing so over something so crucial to her political and philosophical identity, and that would signify to us and to her that really, there was no line she wouldn’t cross in service of her imperative to save humanity, just situations where she didn’t have to consider it. She could both have stayed her relentlessly political self in public and protected her principles in private. It would have been a thing I didn’t agree with in a perfectly plausible story.
But doing so in the way she did, because of the precipitating events that happened, that is what infuriates me. Because it was a BAD FUCKING REASON. Shall we? The law can’t be enforced, because what, the fleet has so many doctors they can be locked up willy-nilly? The lack of life or health exceptions means that at least in the short term, they’ll lose more people than they’ll gain. Even if the exception were added, women will still self-induce which endangers their lives, their health, and therefore the fertility of what is already a diminshingly small population of women capable of bearing children. Because it’s wrong - though it is - doesn’t even enter into the reasons why she shouldn’t have done this, and Laura Roslin of all fucking people, with that rigorous commitment to thinking things through, would know all this. On a political/meta level, she up and ditched her feminist principles upon receiving a smug, irrational lecture from her gentleman associate. GTFO, Bill Adama. I hate you.
Aside that, it was a thoughtless decision on the part of the character, and because this is Laura frakkin Roslin we’re talking about, it was therefore an inconsistent decision on the part of the story. This is a decision that should have had terrible consequences for the people in the fleet and we did not see it. If she really did this to save humanity, then she will have to police this relentlessly. And, because she recognized the right to choose abortion as part of the principle of bodily integrity that she has decided is expendable, what stands between her and instituting human baby farms? Absolutely nothing. The Roslin who considers it an ethical imperative to pursue her decisions to their logical ends would do such a thing. Would have to do such a thing. And she didn’t. This episode thus retroactively ruins The Farm, which I had thought was actually one of the best explorations of how subtle reproductive coercion slides into blunt reproductive coercion and called it what it is: rape. But, you know, not really, if it’s just abused, poor, coded-as-WOC sluts who want abortions. That’s not a walkback of the stance taken in The Farm, it’s a total invalidation of it. I hate this episode. HAAAAAAAAAAATE. I love MM forever for speaking out about it.
Also, Bill Adama needs a beat-down more than any character in the history of television needs a beat-down. I really hate that guy with his dickish Man Pain, and his selfish abuse of his power, and his throwing hundreds of people into suicide missions and destroying the civilian government because someone made him scared he has a tiny peen. I think I’m really supposed to think he’s a hero for all that? I hate him the most. I hate Angel less just for having watched BSG and the story of Bill Adama’s Big Sodding Giant Viper. (Not that much less. Don’t get excited. Anyway, SELF-CENTERED BULLYING BAD DADDIES WITH MAN PAIN, it might as well be the same hate.)
I regret my R/A shippage so much, and I seriously cannot re-experience why I liked it so much.I know that I did, because I wrote it all down, but emotionally I don’t remember why. I take it all back, sweetie, YOU DESERVE BETTER. TOP FIVE NEW LAURA SHIPS BECAUSE OF HOW BILL IS THE WORST:
That last one is a thing I could have predicted even less than the way I love Lee Adama to tiny emo-boy pieces now. Which I do! Even though he is basically always wrong. (Other issues I have: the way everyone, including the show, feels the need to subsume Lee into Bill. Which is like, #2 on the list of Things That Make Lee Totally Unstable, and therefore should not ever be validated, and make me die inside when they consistently are.) (Obviously #1 is that FAULTY WIRING IS FAULTY. That boy ain’t never been right.) THERE WILL HAVE TO BE POSTAGE.
I hold this up against Black Market any day. Black Market was a terrible plot. But you know what? I felt like I was watching Lee make decisions that were in tune with who he was and what he was going through at the moment, ALL THE SNAPS FOR JAMIE BAMBER, and I especially think the premise of sex workers being marginalized even without criminalization was completely in step with Colonial society. The script and plot have to have been slapped together at the last minute, but it didn’t feel like it was a departure from the world and characters I knew. This was.
The first time I watched this episode, it meant so. fucking. much. to me when Bill asked her to consider outlawing abortion and she said “No. I have fought my entire career to protect a woman’s right to control her body. No.” This, from the woman who claimed never to have been interested in politics (though I will defend forever my opinion that the lady doth protest too much, especially in the wake of immediate trauma, rather than holding an actual aversion to policy and power); this, from the woman who could order the execution of civilians to protect more civilians; this, from the Secretary of Education, who would have had to go far out of her way indeed in order to actively protect the right to choose; this, from the woman who rolled her eyes and scoffed at philosophical counterarguments to assassination; this, from my favorite television character ever. In the time between that scene and the press conference, I felt so validated. I felt heard. I felt respected. Because that is what I believe. That is the very crux of reproductive justice - of the right to safe, legal, accessible abortion; of the intrinsic right to be free from rape; of the right to have women’s bodies and health and freedom recognized as worthwhile; of (appropriately enough for BSG) our very humanity.
And I am so used to being ignored at best and vilified as a matter of course by American mass media for holding this point of view. I expect it. I expect cringe-inducing abortion fake-outs because SHE CHOOSES HER CHOICE no matter how little sense it makes for the character at the time. I expect assassinated heroes to be slammed as baby-killers. I expect anti-choice propaganda about women being too flighty to understand what pregnancy is until they see an ultrasound. I expect hand-wringing about just how much guilt everyone who has an abortion must crack under for the rest of their lives. But here, for a brief shining moment, was my girl Laura Roslin defending the moral underpinnings of the right to choose.
I don’t see why the show had to go there. I think it would have been absolutely radical for abortion to be a non-issue in this society, or for the anti-choicers to be winger outliers like the gold standard people are in our world. But if the storyline was going to happen - because nothing says cheap manufactured drama like the womb police! - then honestly? I wish Roslin had done it to win the election. I’d have been okay with that. It would have made sense with the character. It would have done a much better job setting up the election theft, in fact. I’d be able to believe that she ensured the executive order wouldn’t be enforced, that it was just a meaningless piece of political theater to keep the Zarek fanatics at bay. She knows how to play that game, and she’d be torn up inside about doing so over something so crucial to her political and philosophical identity, and that would signify to us and to her that really, there was no line she wouldn’t cross in service of her imperative to save humanity, just situations where she didn’t have to consider it. She could both have stayed her relentlessly political self in public and protected her principles in private. It would have been a thing I didn’t agree with in a perfectly plausible story.
But doing so in the way she did, because of the precipitating events that happened, that is what infuriates me. Because it was a BAD FUCKING REASON. Shall we? The law can’t be enforced, because what, the fleet has so many doctors they can be locked up willy-nilly? The lack of life or health exceptions means that at least in the short term, they’ll lose more people than they’ll gain. Even if the exception were added, women will still self-induce which endangers their lives, their health, and therefore the fertility of what is already a diminshingly small population of women capable of bearing children. Because it’s wrong - though it is - doesn’t even enter into the reasons why she shouldn’t have done this, and Laura Roslin of all fucking people, with that rigorous commitment to thinking things through, would know all this. On a political/meta level, she up and ditched her feminist principles upon receiving a smug, irrational lecture from her gentleman associate. GTFO, Bill Adama. I hate you.
Aside that, it was a thoughtless decision on the part of the character, and because this is Laura frakkin Roslin we’re talking about, it was therefore an inconsistent decision on the part of the story. This is a decision that should have had terrible consequences for the people in the fleet and we did not see it. If she really did this to save humanity, then she will have to police this relentlessly. And, because she recognized the right to choose abortion as part of the principle of bodily integrity that she has decided is expendable, what stands between her and instituting human baby farms? Absolutely nothing. The Roslin who considers it an ethical imperative to pursue her decisions to their logical ends would do such a thing. Would have to do such a thing. And she didn’t. This episode thus retroactively ruins The Farm, which I had thought was actually one of the best explorations of how subtle reproductive coercion slides into blunt reproductive coercion and called it what it is: rape. But, you know, not really, if it’s just abused, poor, coded-as-WOC sluts who want abortions. That’s not a walkback of the stance taken in The Farm, it’s a total invalidation of it. I hate this episode. HAAAAAAAAAAATE. I love MM forever for speaking out about it.
Also, Bill Adama needs a beat-down more than any character in the history of television needs a beat-down. I really hate that guy with his dickish Man Pain, and his selfish abuse of his power, and his throwing hundreds of people into suicide missions and destroying the civilian government because someone made him scared he has a tiny peen. I think I’m really supposed to think he’s a hero for all that? I hate him the most. I hate Angel less just for having watched BSG and the story of Bill Adama’s Big Sodding Giant Viper. (Not that much less. Don’t get excited. Anyway, SELF-CENTERED BULLYING BAD DADDIES WITH MAN PAIN, it might as well be the same hate.)
I regret my R/A shippage so much, and I seriously cannot re-experience why I liked it so much.I know that I did, because I wrote it all down, but emotionally I don’t remember why. I take it all back, sweetie, YOU DESERVE BETTER. TOP FIVE NEW LAURA SHIPS BECAUSE OF HOW BILL IS THE WORST:
- Roslin/Baltar. I mean there is already the textual Baltar -> Roslin crush, but that’s not particularly helpful, because AFAIC everyone has a thing for Laura, because HOW COULD THEY NOT? But omg, the potential there.
- Roslin/Zarek. I WILL END YOU!!1!!11!! UST. Better even than the Gaeta/Baltar UST of the whole mutiny thing.
- Roslin/Cain. Because UNF.
- Laura/Ellen because I want them to ditch their respective losers and ride off into the sunset sniping at each other forever. I am not sure that has to be shippy, but I like the idea.
- I think all my disclaimers about FAVORITE PLATONIC RELATIONSHIP might be bullshit and I might secretly be a Laura/Lee shipper. Which is all weird and workplace-romance and Oedipal and age-inappropriate. But fascinating and also hot. (Mary McDonnell thinks so too, so I feel somewhat justified.) I think that might be a self-insert issue but I have no idea which way it goes. Lots like Laura, too much like Lee; nuts about MM, nuts about JB. ISSUES.
That last one is a thing I could have predicted even less than the way I love Lee Adama to tiny emo-boy pieces now. Which I do! Even though he is basically always wrong. (Other issues I have: the way everyone, including the show, feels the need to subsume Lee into Bill. Which is like, #2 on the list of Things That Make Lee Totally Unstable, and therefore should not ever be validated, and make me die inside when they consistently are.) (Obviously #1 is that FAULTY WIRING IS FAULTY. That boy ain’t never been right.) THERE WILL HAVE TO BE POSTAGE.