OMG SPOILERS!

[trinityvixen]

I agree with one of the comments on this posting about the latest BSG gay romance: if the friggin Sci-Fi Channel does a godsdamn PRESS RELEASE saying "ZOMG Xxxxx is A GAY!" how the hell can you really say that mentioning it somewhere else is a spoiler?

Of course, I link to my own announcement of that news from some weeks ago, and I realize I did give a spoiler warning, so clearly there is some expectation that even news that is announced and given out to the media is still somewhat sensitive. But really, people: if you're at all plugged in and you're at all behind in a series, you just sort of have to get used to being spoiled. Most magazines will warn you (UNLIKE FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) for anything major. The fact that the Sci-Fi Channel isn't bothering to hide this means this gay romance will probably be as significant to the story as the last one. (Read: not at all.)

It's not like they announced who the last Cylon was. (HA HA HA, IT IS GOING TO SUCK WHEN THEY DO, THOUGH AND I KNOW IT AND I DON'T CARE, A-HA HA...sigh)

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The big deal is that the fans made a cogent point about the show's premise that Battlestar Galactica is a world that is post-gender. As in, sexism does not exist. Now, the show has failed to make that entirely true, but has come as close as a show produced by people living in a sexist world like ours can. The point fans raised was that if BSG is truly over the whole sexism and gender-based inequality, the society ought to find homosexual relationships to be no big deal. But, until recently, there hadn't been any such relationships.

So the show tried to respond to that by shoe-horning in some, which ENTIRELY MISSES THE POINT. Equality is not about tokenism. It's about showing that other things exist to no more (often considerably less) trauma/drama/et al. than the norm. BSG has had so many heterosexual relationships that have literally driven the plot of the show--Helo and Athena, Starbuck and whoever she's fucking on the day, Adama and Roslin--that true equality would suggest also happens, sometimes (1 in 10! That's all we ask!) with homosexual relationships. Even if the relationships were just background, that would have been fine because lots of relationships are. (Later on, some people who get married do so and it's no big deal. Marriage, like shit, happens.)

But the show runners clearly want to prove to fans that they've listened and are thus making a big deal out of this gay romance. (There is another which does have something to do with events that we know about, but it's really as superfluous as this one. In fact, it kinda ruined one character for me--not because he/she was gay, but because it changed that character's motivation at a key point.)

The fact that the media falls all over itself to make a big deal out of gay characters (and actors) Does. Not. Help. Because in our real world, that drives home the idea that homosexuality is other! other! other! just as surely as homophobia. It's just plain stupid to people who go, "They're gay. Good for them. So, how about that local sports team?" (You know, mature people.)

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

I think maybe my "they" was unclear in that comment - it was early, I wasn't coherent - in that I meant both "they" the showrunners and "they" the media; wouldn't it be more ... interesting? true? honest? to just have the character's sexuality appear as part of a relevant storyline? I realize I'm stating the obvious, but still. I hate it when all the press about a show is OMG REVELATION! Fie.

Also, hard for me to say much more intelligently, still on 2.5, trying to understand why 2.0 was all Earth Awaits! and now no one's said a frakking word about it since Cain showed up. Did they just not mention that whole finding Kobol and the map to Earth in the ship's logs? How was that topic never broached with her? I love this show to tiny bits, but for character, setting, dialogue ... sometimes the plot falls down and hurts itself. (I'm still not over that stupid, stupid episode when they were boarded by the Centurions which Apollo saw crash into the ship. Even not knowing what they were, he would have been on top of that when he was back on Galactica. Bad, bad, bad plotting.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I realize I'm stating the obvious, but still. I hate it when all the press about a show is OMG REVELATION! Fie.

No, that's totally what I meant. They're treating it as a big deal, in part because ZOMG HOMOSEXX but also as "SEE, WE LISTENED" anal expulsionism. Bah humbug to that.

Also, hard for me to say much more intelligently, still on 2.5, trying to understand why 2.0 was all Earth Awaits! and now no one's said a frakking word about it since Cain showed up.

I can't really say much without knowing exactly where you are in season 2, but I guess with the way Cain showed up, it wasn't really relevant to bring up Earth because that Was Not Her Mission. Cain is a fascinating study, but she's not big into the mysticism even more so than Adama. He probably left off with the Earth bullshit as a result.

As for Kobol, I'm still confused why it was never made more of a big deal. It was clearly a leafy green place, why didn't they want to just stay there? Because it's a holy place? Yeah, something tells me 50,000 final survivors care SO MUCH about that.

As for Lee Adama? He's a fucktard. Next?

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

As of tonight, I've just finished "Sacrifice," and the show is killing me with its failplotting. How I want to go back in time and read blog posts while they're happening!

(I take your point about Cain, but I still feel like she would have at least asked why there was mention of Kobol and Earth in the Galactica logs. And now that I'm several eps past her mini-arc, I'm totally confused as to what the overall plot is: No return to Caprica! No hunt for Earth! Just a lot of pulled-out-of-thin-air annoying fakeplots that don't even make sense! Including the remaking of Lee into a fuckwit. I'm pretty sure he wasn't one before.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, "Sacrifice." Well, at least you're past "Black Market," which is the worst episode of the series...um, until season three, but who's counting? And you're onto "Downloaded" next, I believe, which is surpassingly excellent.

(The random character assassination stuff is them filling time. I think it's sort of like how LOST was made of fail in season three because no one would let them know when they'd be done with the show, and they didn't want to get to revelations they planned out too soon. But that might be giving BSG too much credit.)

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

"Black Market" was mind-bogglingly terrible (I posted incoherently about it here (http://habiliments.livejournal.com/292885.html)), and given what you'd mentioned about the show thinking it's post-gender, I immediately wanted there to be working boys to match Shevon's cliched role, and maybe some women working in the damn black market as well. (Not to mention more female viper pilots who are 100,000 times less annoying than Kat.) (And not that everything has to match up perfectly but it does seem like ... like while no one's performance is judged on gender, the jobs they do oftentimes — though not always — are still reflecting our world's gender divisions.)

Um, what was I talking about? Right. "Sacrifice," aka "Kill Billy." There's one more episode on this disc and I REALLY hope it's better than the previous three.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If I'm right and it's "Downloaded," then, yes, it's way better. It's a damn shame about Billy because he would have been awesome down the road. Because the last thing Roslin needed to lose was the one guy who constantly reminded her that her renegade shit was Not Cool.

(The show can only go so far in correcting gendered stereotypes because a lot of them are unconscious at this point. Almost all of them are due to a basic assumption of weakness when it comes to the "feminine." Women are hookers, not men. Especially not men. 'Cause why would men ever...women don't want sex, so they wouldn't hire men, and men wouldn't hire men because...ICKY!!!!

So, yeah, no. The fact of prostitution doesn't surprise me. The state of it on BSG was lamentable.)