random confessions

[themonkeytwin]

Due to recently watching the end of BSG and the pressing need to resolve my understanding of the whole damn thing as a coherent story and rewatching it all because I clearly don't have enough tv-related angst in my life (my sit-and-wait policy with SPN's quite understandable recent wobbles being my only way to deal with it), I've been splashing

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[themonkeytwin]

HOORAY FOR JAYNE LOVE! (Funny story, I was delayed replying because a friend came over who's just started watching Firefly and so we just watched a Train Job to Shindig. Good times. :)) I don't really know why he's so hot, but he totally is. I sometimes wonder if it isn't because his intelligence (and he IS SO intelligent!) is completely ... sensual. You know? It's all physical - fighting and sexing and tracking and such; he interacts with the world almost entirely through his senses rather than his higher intellect. And in his strengths, he's VERY strong. And that's kind of very primally attractive. I don't know. And of course, Adam Baldwin is really good at layering it, too, somehow. Even though there really aren't that many layers!

Counter confession, since I've just been watching it: I don't really think the actress doing Inara is all that amazing. Everyone seems to just rave about her, and she leaves me kind of flat ... like she overthinks the character too much. Which is a pity, because I love the character herself, but it comes off kind of, I don't know, not as sophisticated and mature as she's supposed to be. You could say it's a thread of innocence in her, but it just doesn't work for me. *shrug* Then again, I actually find most of Whedon's female characters to be kind of condescending. Which, oh the irony, but that's how they come across to me.

Interesting observations about BSG. I haven't been in the fandom long at all, so I couldn't help you out with what the reactions were, although one thing that comes up fairly often (particularly in regards to Starbuck) is the concept that this was intended to be an attempt at a gender-equal society. It's assumed that women can and do fill the same jobs as men, and ie there's no shock at the idea of a man and a woman getting into a fistfight.

I can see it being a hot button, although (confession) most of those things tend to go over my head; I don't notice them as gender issues unless people are pointing them out. As far as I understood the intention of the showmakers, they were trying to explore many of the ethically questionable decisions and motivations that people are faced with when its a matter of life or death for the remnant of a species. And whether they can make those decisions and still be a people who are worth the price of surviving. In that instance, procreation becomes one of the most valuable assets the race possesses, and so it makes the issues surrounding it even more charged.

I didn't notice them implying that women = just empty vessels for teh babies, and they didn't (that I noticed) condone the actions of those exploiting the physically defining traits of women. They didn't always explicitly condemn them, either, but I mostly got the sense that the audience was supposed to gather that it was a horrific thing. (Also, I think they got a little confused over exactly who was carrying the Messiah Ball at any one time, but that's a sidenote. I don't think the raped cylon ever conceived, though, unless you're talking about the Tigh/Six pregnancy, which was iirc a seduction by Six of Tigh. ?)

So, that was my reading, but like I said, I don't pick up on a lot of that stuff. The general sense that I get from the fandom is an increasing irritation with the increasing spiritualistic nonsense that passed for storytelling as the series continued, but again, I wasn't around for the initial reactions.