(no subject)
I have read a few pieces of meta BSG meta, and I love love love to read them. I usually stay away from meta-izing myself, because my thoughts are all over the place and generally end with my flailing my hands around and looking at the other person like, 'You know what I mean?' (This even happens in real life, I am bad at talking about things I love.) Today I started thinking about Sixes and Eights.
A while ago I read a brilliant piece by beccatoria wherein she talked about the difference she sees between Eights and Sixes. It is brilliant and ten times more insightful than anything I could ever write, let alone think of, so if you're interested you should check it out. Anyway, today I realized that to me, the biggest distinction between the Sixes and the Eights is best seen in Leonard Cohen's lyrics from
The Story of Isaac:
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
Sixes, for the most part, fall into the first stanza. The Eights, the second. beccatoria puts it this way:
It boils down to: Six is hardcore, but underneath the steel that lets her instigate an unwieldy Centurion uprising, there's a deep, enduring and desperate capacity and desire for love. Six loves the things she's killing and loves her enemies and wants them to love her. "Get it done, no matter what," is wrapped around, "love me, please."
Eight is softcore, but underneath the surface that lets her switch sides and hope blindly for a Lifetime Special ending against all evidence to the contrary, she's angry and bitter and, well, hateful. Eight commits to hating her enemies and convincing herself it doesn't matter if they hate her too. "Love me, please," is wrapped around, "Get it done, no matter what."
Which I think explains so much about the actions of the Sixes we see, and... Athena and Boomer, and why their really really strong reactions are completely the opposite of what the other model would do in that situation. Both Athena and Boomer react to their... "change of lifestyle," I guess you could say, by clinging to their newfound family- Boomer is willing to go against her model for the first time to become the perfect machine that Cavil is always on about; Athena is constantly all "KILL THEM WITH FIRE" or whatever else is handy to prove that she's really human, she's super human, SHE IS MORE HUMAN THAN HER BABY DADDY, DAMMIT. However, she would (and has, and probably will in the future) kill anything that stands between her and child. Which you can understand, to an extent, because maternal instinct is maternal instinct, be you human or Cylon. However, Athena seems to have lost her logic screw along with any glimmer of humanity when it comes to considering other people. If Natalie had been a human, would Athena have killed her in cold blood? It is possible, but doubtful, because Athena has decided to cast her lot with the humans, and assassinating one for no! good! reason! would've earned her a one way ticket to the brig for eternity. (Because it was just a Six, Bill was like, I HATE YOU ATHENA GET IN PRISON but only because his girlfriend was in danger. Once that passed, he was like oh whatevs it's not such a big deal, Cylons don't matter. [Hate.]) I could understand and relate to Athena more if she had been more torn- but the person more torn in that relationship was Helo, the patron saint of nice guys who just want everyone to get along. Boomer, on the other hand, kind of fails at picking a side and sticking to it, but for the duration of her selections, she is damn gung-ho about it, and by 'gung-ho' I mean, bitch is crazy. Every time she switches who she likes best, epic shit goes down, like! When she wants to kill Hera for crying in pain, because she is a freaking baby, because she has elected to hate humans. And that's weird too. She's torn too, but not in a way that makes her sympathetic to both, it just makes her oscillate between who she hates! the! most!!!!
Then you have the Sixes, who struggle so mightily between their place among the humans and their place among their own. Gina can carry out her duty to cripple the ship she was stationed on and end the lives of her colleagues, but can't find it in her to shoot the woman she has come to love. (Would Gina have let AHC live had the Cylons captured the ship? I think so. AHC might've made her regret that decision eventually, as Gina certainly came to regret flinching at shooting her, but I think Gina would've tried to save her.) Caprica makes no effort to stop the destruction of his race, but loves a man enough to tell him the truth and lay down her life for him- and later, on New Caprica, on the baseship, she still fails at taking a stand on either side. The Sixes want to have it both ways, to be loyal to their people and their God and still have a relationship with the humans. This sometimes works out, like with Caprica and her magical ending involving farms and sunsets and rainbows, and sometimes it doesn't, like with poor Gina and Natalie and the Six who killed Barolay.
I'm not saying that the Eights are wrong to have resolve, I just think they'd be better served if they weren't so deeply invested in things that they fail to take anything else into consideration. Clearly Athena was worried for Hera. It was also clear that Athena was completely frakking unhinged because Natalie was in no way a threat and shooting her was totally and completely unnecessary and also, can we talk about HOW MANY DAMN PROBLEMS COULD'VE BEEN AVOIDED IF HERA HAD ONLY BEEN DISCIPLINED EVERY NOW AND THEN/KEPT ON A LEASH?
So yeah. Anyway. (I warned you it wouldn't actually be anything groundbreaking/coherent. I apologize.)
I participated in bsg_remix this year, and the remix of my fic went up and it is TOTALLY AWESOME AND AMAZING. Seriously, I could not have asked for a more wonderful reworking. It's weird to talk about, because I don't want to be all MWAHAHA EVERYTHING GOOD HAD ITS GENESIS IN ME, but it's like it took all the good parts of what I wrote and made it so different and awesome but still part of what I wrote yet wholly independent and I am just over the moon about it. I have my suspicions about who wrote it, but I won't know for sure for a little while.
A while ago I read a brilliant piece by beccatoria wherein she talked about the difference she sees between Eights and Sixes. It is brilliant and ten times more insightful than anything I could ever write, let alone think of, so if you're interested you should check it out. Anyway, today I realized that to me, the biggest distinction between the Sixes and the Eights is best seen in Leonard Cohen's lyrics from
The Story of Isaac:
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
Sixes, for the most part, fall into the first stanza. The Eights, the second. beccatoria puts it this way:
It boils down to: Six is hardcore, but underneath the steel that lets her instigate an unwieldy Centurion uprising, there's a deep, enduring and desperate capacity and desire for love. Six loves the things she's killing and loves her enemies and wants them to love her. "Get it done, no matter what," is wrapped around, "love me, please."
Eight is softcore, but underneath the surface that lets her switch sides and hope blindly for a Lifetime Special ending against all evidence to the contrary, she's angry and bitter and, well, hateful. Eight commits to hating her enemies and convincing herself it doesn't matter if they hate her too. "Love me, please," is wrapped around, "Get it done, no matter what."
Which I think explains so much about the actions of the Sixes we see, and... Athena and Boomer, and why their really really strong reactions are completely the opposite of what the other model would do in that situation. Both Athena and Boomer react to their... "change of lifestyle," I guess you could say, by clinging to their newfound family- Boomer is willing to go against her model for the first time to become the perfect machine that Cavil is always on about; Athena is constantly all "KILL THEM WITH FIRE" or whatever else is handy to prove that she's really human, she's super human, SHE IS MORE HUMAN THAN HER BABY DADDY, DAMMIT. However, she would (and has, and probably will in the future) kill anything that stands between her and child. Which you can understand, to an extent, because maternal instinct is maternal instinct, be you human or Cylon. However, Athena seems to have lost her logic screw along with any glimmer of humanity when it comes to considering other people. If Natalie had been a human, would Athena have killed her in cold blood? It is possible, but doubtful, because Athena has decided to cast her lot with the humans, and assassinating one for no! good! reason! would've earned her a one way ticket to the brig for eternity. (Because it was just a Six, Bill was like, I HATE YOU ATHENA GET IN PRISON but only because his girlfriend was in danger. Once that passed, he was like oh whatevs it's not such a big deal, Cylons don't matter. [Hate.]) I could understand and relate to Athena more if she had been more torn- but the person more torn in that relationship was Helo, the patron saint of nice guys who just want everyone to get along. Boomer, on the other hand, kind of fails at picking a side and sticking to it, but for the duration of her selections, she is damn gung-ho about it, and by 'gung-ho' I mean, bitch is crazy. Every time she switches who she likes best, epic shit goes down, like! When she wants to kill Hera for crying in pain, because she is a freaking baby, because she has elected to hate humans. And that's weird too. She's torn too, but not in a way that makes her sympathetic to both, it just makes her oscillate between who she hates! the! most!!!!
Then you have the Sixes, who struggle so mightily between their place among the humans and their place among their own. Gina can carry out her duty to cripple the ship she was stationed on and end the lives of her colleagues, but can't find it in her to shoot the woman she has come to love. (Would Gina have let AHC live had the Cylons captured the ship? I think so. AHC might've made her regret that decision eventually, as Gina certainly came to regret flinching at shooting her, but I think Gina would've tried to save her.) Caprica makes no effort to stop the destruction of his race, but loves a man enough to tell him the truth and lay down her life for him- and later, on New Caprica, on the baseship, she still fails at taking a stand on either side. The Sixes want to have it both ways, to be loyal to their people and their God and still have a relationship with the humans. This sometimes works out, like with Caprica and her magical ending involving farms and sunsets and rainbows, and sometimes it doesn't, like with poor Gina and Natalie and the Six who killed Barolay.
I'm not saying that the Eights are wrong to have resolve, I just think they'd be better served if they weren't so deeply invested in things that they fail to take anything else into consideration. Clearly Athena was worried for Hera. It was also clear that Athena was completely frakking unhinged because Natalie was in no way a threat and shooting her was totally and completely unnecessary and also, can we talk about HOW MANY DAMN PROBLEMS COULD'VE BEEN AVOIDED IF HERA HAD ONLY BEEN DISCIPLINED EVERY NOW AND THEN/KEPT ON A LEASH?
So yeah. Anyway. (I warned you it wouldn't actually be anything groundbreaking/coherent. I apologize.)
I participated in bsg_remix this year, and the remix of my fic went up and it is TOTALLY AWESOME AND AMAZING. Seriously, I could not have asked for a more wonderful reworking. It's weird to talk about, because I don't want to be all MWAHAHA EVERYTHING GOOD HAD ITS GENESIS IN ME, but it's like it took all the good parts of what I wrote and made it so different and awesome but still part of what I wrote yet wholly independent and I am just over the moon about it. I have my suspicions about who wrote it, but I won't know for sure for a little while.