What I wish I had time to write

[bop_radar]

So it turns out I *do* still want/need to talk about Battlestar Galactica. I'm actually desperately itching to write a serious meta post on the big-picture problems with the finale. I'm reading a lot of response posts and seeing so many good points being made and I'd really like to collate them together. I've also read a few responses from people that liked it and they are fascinating in a headtilt-y, huh! kind of way. I know my response was very personal: it could be summarised as disgust at the way RDM's Catholicism (lapsed or no, it clearly invades his subconscious) bled all over the series and brought everything back to the most simplistic literalism. That came on top of my already queasy feelings about the gender politics and racism (which the finale did nothing to appease). Then they ADDED colonialism to the list of objectionable politics! Was that necessary?! Really?! What happened to good old-fashioned scifi that respected each culture's right to evolve in its own way? Oh I suppose we're meant to handwave that because they became us. *eyeroll* I also found the ending incredibly reductive. OK, I got an answer about Head!Six but it turned out to be the most uninteresting answer of all... I would have been way happier with a clever ambiguous ending that allowed for different interpretations. :( And not just reductive but implausible. Are we REALLY supposed to believe that they will survive? And what was with the sudden universal technology hate? And does RDM know ANYthing about geology/evolution/history? o.O

And now I'm writing the post I don't have time to write... Sigh.

I also want to write a post to my fellow Kara/Lee shippers and Lee fans. I ran guys. I could see the writing on the wall and I fled to protect my heart. I braced myself emotionally for the finale and I watched the Kara/Lee scenes through fingers covering my eyes, and pressed 'play' on Sarah Connor Chronicles as fast as I could after it to block it out. But it still haunts me. Lee's face! *thud*

And yeah, WHY did they have that horrible cheating on Zak retcon and the WORST most heavy-handed metaphor of all time?

I am reading reaction posts that express so much of what I've felt re. the ship over this whole season. I feel so bad for all of you that walked into the pain of the finale because you kept hope alive for so long.

I've seen several people mentioning it feeling like a break-up. Well I agree. It does feel like that and I think it feels like that for good reason: we gave our hearts to this ship and that's a form of love. It creates the same euphoric feelings and it hurts bad when it all falls apart in our hands. I've always found romantic love a very destructive emotion and I guess I fooled myself into thinking fictional love was less so. Well... maybe it is a bit, but not enough to stop the pain from being real and horrible and enough to make you want to eat icecream, stay in your pjs, drink your pain away... whatever you do after break ups. Even the rage we feel at RDM and the shared anger is part of a similar sort of processing people do after break ups: what went wrong? how could this happen to us? what did we do to deserve it? etc.

And don't let people tell you you're stupid for feeling this way. It's human. Even if it IS 'just TV'. It is and it isn't... what you saw in these characters and this ship (or ANY ship or character you love this much) is something very personal and for a lot of us it/they had personal resonances within our own internal landscape. So to dismiss that pain is a mistake, I think. Though of course it in no way means we should be mean to those who liked the finale or got what they wanted from the show. :) Lucky sods! :p

I'd also like to write:
- my reaction post to TSCC 2.19 (eeeeee!!! So much to say! So much to process...)
- a post of unpopular vidding fandom opinions (which has been percolating for a long time)
- a squee post about Skins (which I recently mainlined and LOVE)
- a post about the problematic Dollhouse (1.6 didn't really do it for me, kids, though I saw how it was meant to)
- a post on how Kings is not really doing it for me either
and any number of other posts...

And that's not to mention the VIDDING I want to be doing.

You know what all this means? It means I have no time for such activities. I have two days or so in which to respond to comments and then I will be away from the 'net for the next couple of weeks. So all my love in the meantime and I kind of hope you will still be interested in some/any of those proposed posts when I get back. :)

See you on the other side! :p

Comments

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

am quite shocked that RDM apparantly saw the whole relationship as them inappropriately having the hots for each other and otherwise mostly one-sided affection on Lee’s side, not to mention all this `they just weren’t meant for each other´ business, which is so cheap and simplistic storytelling and robs them of all complexity
I'm shocked too. But evidently he DOES think that. I'm shocked because I feel like that was the most reductive reading of the relationship possible. And I don't think it was that to begin with (or didn't need to be) and he actually had to retcon it to make it even more like that. And yet for 3 seasons it was a central narrative thread, ok sometimes hideously handled, but it definitely seemed like the writers were going somewhere with it... somewhere other than 'all this was not meant to be'. Did he just get fed up of them? It feels a bit like he did. Katee and Jamie had such chemistry in these roles, it seems a TRAGEDY to waste that on making that a cheap, nasty, they-alway-jump-each-other-at-inappropriate-times relationship and nothing more. Sigh.

s a Lee fan it’s still hard to get over the fact that his love was never fully reciprocated
Honestly? I don't think I'll ever get over it. I love Lee so deeply from inside his viewpoint that to have him not have the person he loves most in the world love him back is devastating. I know I'm not rational about it, but I've never had a character I feel this connected to in a TV show before and I can't not feel that pain. Also, it's not just Kara. It's EVERYONE. He got left with NOONE. In the vid I made of him, at the end, everyone turns away from him and he embraces his future anyway... and that's exactly what happened on the show AND IT BREAKS MY GODDAMN HEART.

Oops. Sorry! Got a little ranty... can you tell my emotions are still running high on this one?

they should have stayed consistent with the muted way they treated K/L in the finale
I know right?! The finale wasn't even INTERNALLY consistent! If you're going to go muted on Kara/Lee, then DO SO FULLY AND PROPERLY and don't dig up some old angst! It really did not add anything and sat really awkwardly in a way that makes me wonder if they'd had this footage ages just hadn't found a spot for it before and flung it in before the end because they had some time to kill. *bitter*

the preachy nature of the episode was insulting to the audience’s intelligence
I've found BSG insulting to my intelligence for a good season and a bit, but this took even that to a new level of awful.

[chani86.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I don't think I'll ever get over it.

I know it really is devastating, but I starting to cope with it by interpreting the story my way. So Kara in her human form actually died in Maelstrom and she did want to leave her husband and asked Lee tob e with her before that, but she did it in her clumsy self.sabotaging way and Lee didn’t trust her and left her hanging, then they had their last converstaion under the viper and she died.
Lee was completely lost, but he got his chance to let her know how much he did trust her and love her in her angelic form (that was kind of disconnected from old Kara, but he had to take what was on offer what he got), now he’s let go of his guilt and regrets (and I can’t feel sorry for Adama leaving, because he is probably the worst father in history and that never changed so I’m just glad that Lee doesn’t have to nurse him in his old days). Maybe the only positive thing we can get from the nihilistic ending for K/L is the fact that Lee seems to have made his peace with that relationship and ready to move on. I feel like that's what Jamie's expressions gave us in his last scene.

Maybe that helps a little, I know it’s mainly fanwanking on my part and in reality Ron just lost interest and changed his mind about K/L halfway through (or rather 3 quarters through the story). But why should I listen to what RDM has to say about this, real artists don’t tell people how to interprete their work. This out of nowhere, pseudo-arty „they’re forever stuck on the table“ „never meant to be“ business just came to him, it's his reading, it doesn’t change what came before. Also it‘ s just ridiculous, that he suddenly wants to show us (and change) who these people are through flashbacks, we’ve seen 3-4 seasons of them coping with the most difficult circumstances, we already know these characters.
If RDM is so into table-metaphors I’ll just take the image of UB of Sam lying passed out under the table while Lee and Kara are sneaking off to shack up, and say they’re forever stuck in that moment ;)

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

I like your take, I like your take! Especially because Maelstrom was far more effective an episode for me--I sobbed like a baby when Kara died because at the time I was a completely unspoiled naive thing who didn't realise she would get resurrected! And it was all so beautifully tragic... I'd much rather they had ended there.

I do wish Angel!Kara hadn't a) been such an ass on the Demetrius, b) had absusive sex with her husband, c) sapped on about him when he got shot so much, or d) been so flooby and existential-angsty when it was all so POINTLESS. But! I see that we are supposed to believe that despite all that Lee found peace of a sort. I just... I dunno, it was so badly told and such a long bow to pull... I could buy it if Lee had known all along that Kara wasn't going to be with them for long and if he found his zen by realising that was ok. But it was such a slapped-on-the-end realisation...

You can see I'm struggling with the execution still.

But why should I listen to what RDM has to say about this, real artists don’t tell people how to interpret their work.
That's absolutely true and I hate the way he thinks he has the right to tell us how to interpret his art and yet takes such a completely random approach to it and leaves it with massive plotholes.

This out of nowhere, pseudo-arty „they’re forever stuck on the table“ „never meant to be“ business just came to him, it's his reading, it doesn’t change what came before.
You know... I think there was a time when I could have bought that view on them. That time was before UB and the rest of Season 3. If the Zak flashbacks had been canonical earlier in the series, then around Scar I would have said that view was possible. But EVEN THEN I would have said it was the least interesting way for the writer to approach them because it leaves them trapped like that and allows for no emotional growth. And both Kara and Lee desperately needed emotional growth in relationship terms--with each other or with their spouses, but with SOMEONE. And Lee's spouse dumped him and then shot herself, and Kara's got dumped and then got shot... leaving Kara/Lee the only real place where that could happen. But you know what it comes down to? And this is what I realised ages ago and why I was sure we wouldn't get a satisfying Kara/Lee end... RDM is incapable of writing these characters having a functional successful relationship or even seriously beginning one. He's unable and unwilling. He evidently doesn't think it's 'edgy' enough. And yet we had to endure no end of boring bedside-reading Adama/Roslin sap. *yawn* It fascinates me that he could create one of my favourite all-time ships and then... do nothing with it.

I’ll just take the image of UB of Sam lying passed out under the table while Lee and Kara are sneaking off to shack up, and say they’re forever stuck in that moment ;)
Hahaha, yeah...! I'll take that moment too! Or the moment when Kara came back with the arrow, all lit up in light and Lee just scooped her up in his arms. :) Except that didn't have a table, did it? Damn.

[chani86.livejournal.com]

I don't think they had made their mind up about Kara until fairly late that's why she's so inconsistent and difficult to connect with in in season 4, and then at some point they decided to exploit the Trucco angst.
But if I tried to ignore the storytellers on a meta-narrative level, I'd say that Kara was feeling off, fundamentally different and wrong in her body, coupled with not knowing what happened with her, she was a total emotional and mental mess and just tried to feel like she used to, hence her strange and horrible behaviour. When Sam got shot, she focused on her guilt and her (simpler form of) love for him, so maybe that was her chance to make up the mistakes she made over and over in life (but yes it was overdone and kinda boring).
I think Lee might have known or had a feeling she was different or in a different state of being, he did see die after all. If you recall his behaviour towards her and their interactions, that actually fits quite well, he was supportive, relished his time with her, but he never acted like he expected them to have a future together. It's still sad but I think K/L as a possible ship effectively ended in Maelstrom. (this is just an attempt to make sense of it, which is a difficult task).

Oh yay they totally overcame RDM's table metaphor in UB but he probably forgot that. And yes I'm afraid all metaphors have to include tables and/or birds otherwise it's not arty enough ;)

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

I think Lee might have known or had a feeling she was different or in a different state of being, he did see die after all. If you recall his behaviour towards her and their interactions, that actually fits quite well, he was supportive, relished his time with her, but he never acted like he expected them to have a future together.
Yeah, I think it does fit quite well. They bloody well don't make it easy though. ;)