Dysfunctional Shipping Awareness Month doesn't do linear.

[pocochina]

AKA, the "ship I am Doin Wronger than any other ship I Do Wrong, apparently": Kara/Lee. If you RightShip Kara/Lee, then, go on with your bad self and all, but fair warning that you're possibly going to hate this post? If, however, you love misery and dysfunction, JOIN ME, FRIEND.



I have this allergy to most of the tropes I thought Kara/Lee was invoking in those first couple of seasons? You know, the ones everyone else loves so much. Such as:

1. I hate when narratives use "I'm glad you're not dead" as some Meaningful Conversation ish. Fine, yes, it can be dragged into the realm of emotional significance with proper context. But it's such transparently manipulative writing, and anyway, OH MY GOD, THAT IS HOW YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE. EVEN IF YOU DON'T LOVE THEM. EVEN IF YOU DON'T EVEN LIKE THEM. NO FUCKING COOKIE.
2. I hate UST. You know what UST does to people? Makes them tense. Where "tense" is synonymous with "insufferable douchebags." You know what UST does to narratives? Turns them into cesspools of hyper-conventional suck. (Scientific fact!) And that's leaving aside the way it almost always scans to me as poorly-veiled regressive virginity fetishization, rather than sexual tension, resolved or otherwise. Again, like the above, it can in very rare circumstances be cautiously used to great effect, but it's almost always a sign of laziness which augments the rest of the overall suck where such laziness manifests.
3. I hate, hate, HATE "nobody for me but you" crap. I think it's bullshit, even in the BSG verse where everyone else really is dead. On the analytical, I think process of elimination is a hack way for a narrative to try to sell a romance. But honestly, even when it isn't, I find that level of need and isolation to be viscerally disturbing.

Which is, understandably, where I thought we were going in S1. So without all that stuff that would apparently make me crazy-go-nuts for a pairing if I were ever to learn how to Do Shipping Right, all that's left is the Frugly. Lee's jealousy: frugly! Kara shaming him over not being obsequious enough to his emotionally abusive dick of a father: frugly! Taking out their dangerous, wild tempers on each other: frugly! Girl who needs to be tamed/boy who needs to be rattled and berated into living his emotions out loud: so frakking frugly I don't even know how to talk about it. THEY ARE LIFE-RUINERS WHO RUIN PEOPLE'S LIVES, ESPECIALLY EACH OTHER'S AND ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY THEIR OWN. And I felt, up through the Pegasus arc, like I was just expected to Do Shipping Right with them, and not be as bothered as I was by all the Frugly? But bothered I was, my ducks. Bothered I was.

Up until this point in the show, there was also a big discrepancy in my reaction to the characters. Kara was a particular favorite of mine at the very beginning, behind only Roslin and maaaaaaaaybe Baltar, and Lee was...not. So I was all OH HONEY, NO and VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED to this relationship. Then Lee went off the rails and I was, in retrospect, doomed to love him forever, which probably had something to do with my change of heart. (I also do Character Love wrong, but that's a whole other thing.)

As per the ship, though, I think the turnaround moment for me was Scar. The best Kara/Lee scene, or THE BEST Kara/Lee scene? I don't even. And then she SHOT HIM and he was a BITCHY LITTLE TOOL about it. Life-ruiners! Ruinin' lives! VINDICATED!
And then S3 rolls around. Wherein Kara and Lee are life-ruiners who ruin people's lives, especially each other's and especially especially their own - and the narrative knows it, the characters know it, and holy frakking hell, they go for it anyway.

SOLD.

It's not just that they're a train wreck - although for a good long while there they are - but that's not gratuitous. The train wreck sets the story in motion and obliterates everything I was so afraid it was leaning on:

1. Torn: best Kara/Lee moment, or BEST Kara/Lee moment? Lee is all "you're not dead SO GO FUCK YOURSELF" and it's the worst thing ever because Kara's so miserable and Lee's hurting badly enough to lash out like that and I COULD WATCH IT FOREVER.
2. Unfinished Business presses all my buttons in so many awesome ways. How does the show get out of the corner UST paints it into? By saying They Did It Already! BAZINGA! What happens after the happily-ever-after moment of shouting it to the stars? SOUL-CRUSHING ANGST, is what. om. om nom nom nom nom. Ever true to my loathing of Unmitigated Shitty Tripe, they never once scanned as sexy to me before the dance - after it, they climbed into that raptor and lit the air on fire. BSG is post-apocalyptic. It's about the tragedy and drama of picking up the pieces after the conventional story has been told. So of course at least one of its central romances should pick up after the Big Event. Moore, you magnificent fucking troll.
3. And naturally, because I DO IT SO WRONG, I love the hell out of the cheating. There were problems with how the quad was handled in context of the overall narrative, by which I mean they should have all shut up and left me more Laura time, but from a Kara/Lee perspective, I can't argue with it in the least. Lee and Kara aren't each other's one and only, and they don't have to be. That dependence they formed on each other after the first apocalypse might've kept them afloat, but it didn't stop the second one from crashing down on their heads. They have other partners, to whom they're well-suited. Kara doesn't want a monogamous relationship, and why should she, SHE'S KARA FUCKING THRACE and she don't need that crap. Lee, I am fairly certain, is incapable of trusting someone enough to have the conventional relationship he thinks he wants to have - and that's okay too, because loving and being loved isn't about EARNING it by stomping down your goddamn childhood trauma every living second of every goddamn day. No, Kara and Lee aren't each other's One And Only. If anything, they shouldn't be left alone together for too long, which is what Laura and Longshot are around for.

All of which lays the foundation for the thing my Doin It Wrong little heart loves best about them: that the outcome of their romantic relationship is not the one dominant make-or-break aspect of either of their lives. These are two stories that involve love which is in part romantic; it is not An Epic Romance. Kara has her Special Destiny, Lee has his political ambition. And this is not ever something the characters or the narrative postulate as an impediment to the relationship. Their own individual flaws are standing in their way, sure; their history, both the parts of it they chose and the parts of it they didnt; even the sick co-dependence itself is standing in their way. But their individual struggles for personal growth? That's never the thing that's holding them back. That Six of One brig scene Does It So Right. In the hypothetical conventional romance I thought I was getting with them, it would have been relationship or identity for one or both of them, because if it doesn't consume you, dear, it isn't really love. And instead it was such a celebration of both relationship and identity, for both characters. LIFE-RUINERS NO MORE.

So clearly this is where I even Do Wrongshipping Wrong, and come over all sappy. I love them 'cause they're a train wreck, and because the force of it brings down all of the annoying narrative conventions that made me so adverse to the ship in the first place. By the end, I felt like the very genuine, supportive partnership that they had become was completely earned. I didn't think it was resting on process of elimination, or fate, or that they were Rules girls and didn't Do It before they should, or that they were Good People who earned a happy ending, or whatever easy out which would have been such a snoozefest if it was applicable to them. They're the worst possible thing to happen to each other, and they still come out the other end of it. I quite simply believed it.

And now I just wrote a whole thing about a popular canon age-appropriate het ship where nobody involved is a serial killer. I FEEL CHEAP.

[whole meme below]
Day 1: The ship you don't want to be endgame.
Day 2: The ship you love because it really never will happen.
Day 3: "They are the worst possible thing to happen to each other" ship.
Day 4: The ship that would ruin/assassinate the characters if it happened.
Day 5: The ship where your favourite scene is the most dysfunctional one.
Day 6: The ship where the rest of its fandom is DOING IT WRONG.
Day 7: The ship where the writers are DOING IT WRONG.
Day 8: The ship you want to break up so you can stan the hell out of them.
Day 9: The ship you want to see being a trainwreck tragedy because they're too alike.
Day 10: The ship you want to see being a trainwreck tragedy because they're too different.
Day 11: The ship you love for its creepiness.
Day 12: The ship you love for the power difference.
Day 13: The ship you love for the way they hurt each other.
Day 14: The ship you love for the angst, banishing all joy and sunlight.
Day 15: The couple that are at their moral worst when around each other.
Day 16: Most creatively homicidal ship.
Day 17: The ship that looked like a fairytale but isn't or never was.
Day 18: The ship with the most transference issues.
Day 19: The starcrossed ship where the obvious reason they're starcrossed is the least interesting aspect to you.
Day 20: The couple you only ship in an "in another lifetime" sort of way.
Day 21: A couple you ship for the wrong reasons that fits none of these criteria.
Day 22: A couple you ship for the wrong reasons that fits too many of these criteria.
Day 23: A ship you wanted to include but couldn't find the space for.
Day 24: Anything you want.
Day 25: Fanfic and meta that say what you want, but so much more eloquently.
Day 26: Fanvids and fanmixes that say what you want, but so much more eloquently.
Day 27: Picspams, GIFS, and other fandom things that say what you want, so eloquently you feel redundant.
Day 28: The "exception that proves the rule of the rest of the meme" ship.