“Babies” commentary by aycheb

[aycheb]

Title: Babies
Vidder: aycheb
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Link to vid: http://aycheb.livejournal.com/39020.html
Warnings: Waterfowl, space hoppers, unnecessary chest hair and Nomarski optics. Also spoilers for James Tiptree Jnr’s A Momentary Taste of Being and the ending of Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica

Commentary by: aycheb

Comments

[aycheb]

Thank you! I'm glad it was interesting - it did take a lot longer than I thought it was going to but it was fun to put together.

[aycheb]

Happy Birthday? The version of this vid I had in my head before I started actually making it did include some sea urchin fertilisation, it's kinda neat to have got that out there in commentary form. It was fun to make. A bit weird trying to find the equivalent of lyric matches to your own words but fun.

[beccatoria]

Wow - thanks - that was a great commentary. Really nice to hear you laying out your thesis. One of the things that originally completely grabbed me about this vid was the very start when you have the coupling ships and straight away I was like, "Ooooooh, I get it, that's...disturbed genius, there."

But I didn't pick up on everything, for instance, I didn't quite get the idea of vipers as sperm, though I'm about to go rewatch and with all this in mind and I'm sure it'll add to the experience.

It's interesting to hear your Maiden-Mother-Crone triptych. It works well; I'd always kind of thought of it in terms of the Cylon themselves with D'Anna in the crone role, Athena as the mother and Six defaulting to maiden which doesn't work quite so well (where are my grandchildren already indeed!) but I did kind of think that she was childless yet didn't want to always be and fit the warrior stereotype better than the other female cylons. Anyway. Thinky. And a truly great commentary. Thank you!

[aycheb]

Thank you!

I like D'Anna as crone and the way it's complicated by how she always seemed a little uncertain about her matriarch status and by the weird competitive relationship between her and Six. Six, all the Sixes, always seemed to know who she was in a way D'Anna didn't. So something like the old envying the conviction of youth, life circling back on itself except the cylon didn't circle, didn't age.

[cyborganize]

Awesome! Reproduction is perhaps THE central theme of BSG, and this is still one of my favorite BSG vids because you captured it so fabulously. I love knowing that you're a biologist. :) (Ha, I love Hera on Earth when you're talking about passing on only our DNA -- snarky.)

[aycheb]

Thank you:-) I'm so glad you mentioned the Hera thing, I was worried about deadpanning that too much to make the point.