my collected wit and wisdom, or something!
I realized last night that while I've mostly stuck to my designation of Tumblr as being for bookmarking and sassy tagging of graphics while journaling is for thoughts. But sometimes those posts turn into short but substantive discussions, and I'd rather have them here.
one about why I hate the concept and the other about the Dove campaign
"It’s the ( Read more... )
one about why I hate the concept and the other about the Dove campaign
"It’s the ( Read more... )
The question about whether Connor can be Angel's shanshu is interesting, and I think another thornier question is whether it's fair that Connor is the life that Angel won for Darla in "The Trial" -- I mean, that is, like, it is seven kinds of problematic but something about it is also neat. I think a lot of this is because of the difficulty I have in knowing when to treat characters as representations of people and when to treat them as symbols -- as a *symbol* I think this is kind of beautiful, because Connor is then the product of the two-step process of Angel working to save Darla's life and soul (!) and failing and then Angel trying to screw Darla to lose his soul and become a killer again (!) and failing, and Connor the ends up kind of being both the mechanism for Darla's redemption such as it is -- "the one good thing we ever did together, the only good thing" and the moment where indeed Darla's soul has been saved by being in Connor which, again, works as a symbol for me since in "The Trial" Darla absolutely *did* want to keep her soul at the end of the episode before Dru took it away; and Connor's screwed-up-ness is both a representation of Angel's darkness and something that pushes Angel to further dark/evil places, selling his soul and his friends' brains/souls out to W&H. However, once you step away from baby-as-symbol into baby-as-baby, and move from a kind of generic symbol of the product of choices to the specific issues involving motherhood, fatherhood and childhood and it gets murky and tough because okay Connor is now a receptacle for *two* redemption stories that are not his own (and eventually Wesley, Holtz, Jasmine get added to the mix of People Whose Moral Status Apparently Hangs On How Connor Turns Out Kind Of, to an extent), and Darla the whore is redeemed through motherhood after an impossible conception and so on. So, like, I think that the story is all these things at once, and Connor as Angel's shanshu is similarly kind of both awesome and terrible depending on how one shifts the interpretive lens. Note: I'm not exactly advocating any positions here, because the terrible might outweigh the good stuff, but I also kind of like the good stuff, and I think I'm really not the person qualified to make these value judgments okay leave me alone
how about my job is just to have thoughts and someone else can evaluate them in a way that does not ever reflect badly on me and I can get paid one million dollars a thought by someone and buy trains I assume they're expensive so I'll have to think often
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I've never thought of it that way, but that's a perfect encapsulation of Gaius. Which I think makes sense, given his personality in context of what we end up finding out about his upbringing? Kara learned survival meant going on the offensive, Lee built those big stone walls around himself, and Gaius learned that he should never, ever fight back. I think he would have ended up being readily gentle and nonconfrontational, because some people just seem to be inclined that way and I think he's one of them. But as it stands, his reaction to any and all interpersonal conflict is just to let things go and accept a huge level of mistreatment as a given. (Like how D'Anna brutally tortures him in one episode, and then in the next one they're literally in bed together and he seems fine with it?)
Laura sometimes *hates* Baltar and Zarek I think
She really does. Particularly Baltar, I think, because she just can't understand him. If he showed any anger, any motivation, any tendency toward cruelty or treacherousness, I think she'd at least be able to deal with him. But he messes with her ability to trust her instincts, and I think she resents him a lot for it.
Lee hates Lee, Bill hates everyone who's not Bill, etc.
*squawks* I've been flooded with more ridiculousness than usual about my prickly little prince, but AH, YUP. Because, at some point, Lee took all Bill's contempt for everyone else and decided it was about him, and it all went downhill from there.
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Ha, right. And the D'Anna thing makes me think, too -- that makes sense with the man-ho stuff as well, because, to some degree, he actually genuinely has no brakes on certain interpersonal things in part because he has no defenses to other people, maybe? Like, he cheats effortlessly on Caprica [Six] on Caprica [the planet] and some of that is because he's not actually all that monogamous, but some of it is probably that even if he *wanted* to say no to a star-struck woman (or even teenager, most likely) he...wouldn't because the moment it would take some kind of spine or backbone to refuse he would absolutely *not* refuse; and since it's part of his performance to be hitting on every woman around he can't stop *that* either, because it'd require...something difficult like conviction in order to fight his own inertia when his own performance is also a survival mechanism. And how -- I mean, if he wasn't famous Helo wouldn't have given up his seat, though maybe he would have stolen that old lady's ticket, or maybe Athena would have chased *him* around Caprica [the planet] for weeks.
*squawks* I've been flooded with more ridiculousness than usual about my prickly little prince, but AH, YUP. Because, at some point, Lee took all Bill's contempt for everyone else and decided it was about him, and it all went downhill from there.
"Man, I can't believe I was trying to make him take that test and made him go to a strip club and then throw up over himself. I mean I signaled the military to ask dad to take routine proficiency tests, with my eyes."
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Oh, completely. I feel like it all adds up to a boundaries thing? If Gaius acknowledges that he gets to say no to anyone at all, then a whole lifetime of violations catches up to him and OH MY GOD he cannot deal with that. But if he keeps on this trajectory where he's okay with everything, it lets him repress. I didn't watch the miniseries first, and so I don't know how much what came later colored my interpretations, but looking back at that first scene when the bombs hit and Caprica's first impulse is to try to convince him that HE TOTALLY WANTED TO BE EXPLOITED. And that just in retrospect strikes me as...very telling. It's as personal a violation as Sharon's Stockholming of Helo, except the result is that instead of being a father he's implicated in genocide. I can...feel if not quite describe how that would support what we see from him throughout the series.
"Man, I can't believe I was trying to make him take that test and made him go to a strip club and then throw up over himself. I mean I signaled the military to ask dad to take routine proficiency tests, with my eyes."
GODS LEE YOU RUIN EVERYTHING, lol.
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whether it's fair that Connor is the life that Angel won for Darla in "The Trial"
I've seen that theory too and I've actually never been particularly bothered by it? I think it's because it was an intentionally selfless thing Angel did there, and so the idea of a life going to another person makes sense. Angel knew it wasn't about Angel, and The Universe knew it wasn't about Angel, and so it makes sense that The Universe would produce a life that wasn't about Angel. Whereas the Shanshu theory....kind of sucks another person into being All About Angel, which doesn't sit great with me.
And I think it works really well because you can equally incorporate Darla into that analysis? Because she made the selfless gesture of trying to get them to stop the trial, because she would rather Angel live than herself. And so it makes sense that both of them would have a part in creating Connor's life.
Or I guess that could even imply the trial technically worked? Darla becoming able to create life before dying, regardless of whether she's human or vampire, could be construed as being as much alive as any other biologically reproducing organism.
But yeah, all of that can work for me. I don't so much mind that these people's lives influence each other's so strongly; I like that a lot. But there's this proprietary vibe I get from "Connor is Angel's [possessive apostrophe] Shanshu" that I don't love.
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