Meme alert

[selenak]

From various people in my circle, with the caveat that I don't have that many romantic relationships I'm rooting either for or against, and thus will choose an ampersand variation in some fandoms:


How about we do that thing where you give me a show/movie/book/fandom and I'll tell you:

my favorite female character
my favorite male character
my favorite book/season/etc.
my favorite episode (if it's a TV show)
my favorite cast member
my favorite ship
a character I'd die for put a reasonable amount of effort into defending
a character I just can't sympathize with
a character I grew to love
my anti-OTP

Comments

[selenak]

my favorite female character: Laura Roslin.

my favorite male character: Gaius Baltar.

my favorite book/season/etc.: the problem with the later seasons is that they are extremely uneven, you get six great ones in a row and then filler filler filler and then a good finale. That s1 was shorter than the others benefited the overall quality, and of course the original miniseries was fab, so it's either one of those.

my favorite episode (if it's a TV show): Downloaded for our first good look at Caprica Six (as opposed to Head!Six) (and, as it turns out, the last good episode for Boomer), The Hub for the Roslin-Baltar scenes and Roslin almost killing him plus D'Anna making a great return (loved the way she just snapped Cavil's neck while still in the resurrection bath), and 33 for it being a terrific ensemble episode and indeed a great hook into the new show.

my favorite cast member: Lucy Lawless, but this predates BSG. :)

my favorite ship: as far as romantic relationships were concerned, to my surprise, by the time the show ended and I looked back, it turned out to have been Gaius/Six and the Tighs, Saul and Ellen, in their glorious millennium-spawning Edward Albee messed up ness. But my overall favourite relationship of BSG is the one between Roslin and Baltar, and I've written the meta to prove it.

a character I'd die for put a reasonable amount of effort into defending: depends on the context. For example: I can hold a great many things against Lee Adama, but that he defended Baltar in Crossroads certainly isn't one of them, nor is the fact he used Roslin's cancer return. I am always bewildered when fellow Roslin fans go "how could he?". Excuse me, but much as Adama Snr. earlier offers to let Baltar disappear at Madam President's convenience, this isn't how I want my remaining civilisation to be run. Lee actually doing his job instead of just letting this be a show trial made me like him more than I had in a long time.

a character I just can't sympathize with: post season 2 Bill Adama. I liked him once! I've written the fanfic to prove it! (Shore Leave.) But then I started to dislike him more and more, and by the time the show ended I absolutely loathed him. (The funny side effect was that when on the short lived spin-off Caprica young William, a perfectly innocent kid, showed up, I practically booed and hissed.

a character I grew to love: Ellen Tigh. Which I hadn't expected after her (hilarious) first appearance, but there were are. Definitely Ellen Tigh.

my anti-OTP: Kara/Lee. They were toxic for each other whenever they were more than buddies. I liked both of them separately, and their s1 friendship was fine, but then, nah. With Adama/Roslin, it turned from a relationship I had actually liked (I had loved their scenes in the miniseries, the first season, and the first few eps of s2 capped by "I forgive you"/"Thanks, Bill, but I didn't ask for your forgiveness" on Kobol) to one I positively resented. Partly because of my taking against Bill Adama post s2, but partly also because of the way later s4 reduced Roslin, screen time wise, to her scenes with Adama. (With some good exceptions! But still, if you compare early Roslin, who had scenes and relationships with Billy, the Quorum, Lee, Baltar, Zarek, to second half of s4 Roslin, it makes you want to weep, and not because of her cancer.)

[ffutures]

I just did this for Galactica before I read this, looks like we have a lot of the same opinions!

[selenak]

So we do, including the one on Adama/Roslin. ;)

[saturnofthemoon]

Sadly, you're on of the few people I know in fandom who agrees with me on Bill Adama. (Thank gods his spinoff prequel series never took off.) I'm also seriously in need of a BSG rewatch now that I'm no longer looking at Roslin through the fandom gaze of sweet spacemom and/or Cylon God. Laura Roslin is am amazing character but she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty to do what she felt needed to be done for the sake of the human race, plus she was never particularly maternal, even if she was a teacher.

[selenak]

And she's not always right, either in the moral or in the pragmatic sense - one thing that makes her human. She can make misteps, which doesn't take from her being a fantastic character but adds to it!

I think the Laura-is-the-Cylon-God thing mostly came from JennyO, and I was against that theory from the start, feeling that Roslin and Baltar were the two characters whom the narrative really needed to be human. Baltar because being revealed as Cylon would have given him a way to excuse his actions and reframe them in a positive light (as can be seen in the episode where he briefly thinks he is Cylon) on a Watsonian basis, and on a Doylist level, it would have felt like the show was saying "he's got all these flaws, but don't worry, it's not lilke he's human". And with Laura Roslin it was the other end of the scale - her living under a death sentence from the get go but (until they find the first Earth) continuing regardless, her growing into leadership and both her strengths and compromises as leader needed to be human.

As for "sweet spacemom", other than Billy, I don't think any of her relationships have maternal overtones. (Certainly not with Lee; that one starts out more like mentor-protegé with the occasional flirtatious undertone.) Including the one with Hera, who is of interest originally because of what she is and how the Cylons are fixated on her.