Girls and Boys

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Hey, all. Sorry this post is pretty late in the day - We had some connection issues at the house earlier :(

Today we're going to talk about Pilots and Gender.

Some time over a year ago was when I first became aware of this trend throughout different fandoms of genderbending characters, creating an AU in which one or more characters has always been the opposite sex. I recently got to thinking about the fact that this never took off in BSG fandom at all, but a good reason for that is that we simply don't need it. We have canon genderbend in Starbuck and Boomer being women, and we also have little to do with genderbend characters because the universe is impressively gender-neutral, and the way the characters would be treated by others or the behavioral expectation wouldn't affect much of a change on them.

On the topic of our beloved pilots, I think a lot of us are very attached to how they consistently subvert gender stereotypes. I love joking about Lee being a little bit of a princess and Kara wearing the pants in the relationship, but in my opinion it truly exists completely outside stereotyped relationship structures and is about them being equals. They both display a wide spectrum of unpredictable strengths and vulnerabilities, and it makes both of them great characters and is a big part of why the relationship always felt fresh.

So. I'm going to ask you to do something that might mentally be a little...uncomfortable, and ask yourself: What if Apollo was the woman and Starbuck was still a man?

Below the cut I have a couple casting choices for this switch, but as a general disclaimer, this was REALLY hard, especially with Starbuck. I'm a big believer in Katee's contribution being extremely important to the creation of Starbuck as Kara, and it's almost impossible to imagine her being played by any other woman, let alone...

Channing Tatum. Yeah, I can already imagine half of you are like "WTF? The Step Up guy?" Or you might recognize him from that awful movie Fighting or that other awful movie Dear John. Funny thing is, the only thing I've seen Tatum in is this little indie film called A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. He plays this bullying, belligerent teenager who seems to bring disaster everywhere, and yet he plays it with a lot of vulnerability and complexity.

I feel obligated to name Chris Pine as a runner-up. (Our Katee is actually a hugely popular choice for girl!Kirk in Star Trek fandom.)

I thought of Rhona Mitra for Apollo because she's done action hero type stuff (in addition to a stint of professionally cosplaying Lara Croft - rawr) but also played a clever paralegal in The Practice and Boston Legal.


1. Do you have any other casting suggestions?

2. Feel free to brainstorm about how different the show would have been if the genderswitch had been Apollo rather than Starbuck. Would Apollo challenge any stereotypes about women? Would Starbuck's complicated character challenge how we think about men in a way the original character didn't? How would some points of their relationship have felt a lot different (and perhaps less appealing) if they were switched?

Comments

[swamp-ariadne.livejournal.com]

jumping into the fray, i think that if the genders had been reversed the PLOT itself might have still come to the same point. Maybe it isn't Kara/Starbuck that cheats, maybe it will be Apollonia that would not be able to commit emotionally. It would sort of make sense - Apollonia would be the one who doesn't believe in divorce because it would be dishonorable or whatever. It would have been interesting to see Kara/Starbuck (will Starbuck retain his old name from the previous series? i guess he will) as an emotionally damaged/vulnerable man. Because of the gender politics of this generation the writers may write him more emo and less physically violent (he's probably still a drunk - but not at Saul Tigh level). this is a difficult bit of meta to process - but i think that both of them would still be BAMF.