DPP: Mary Sue to the Rescue- Part I

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Today, 'Shipper Nation, we're gonna' get ourselves all up in canon and FIX things, by the gods! One of my favorite abused literary devices is the introduction of a non-canon character that an author uses to say and do all the things they wish the series did. I've been guilty of it myself in other fandoms. A character you've never heard of suddenly has direct access to/hangs out with the major characters and has "that conversation" that someone really needed to have with them to set them straight/make them see the love they've been denying, etc.

Today, let's set Kara straight (Lee will get his talking-to tomorrow). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to imagine yourself a Mary Sue onboard Galactica. Wikipedia defines the literary device "Mary Sue" as follows:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".

You are Lt. Busybody, callsign Matchmaker. You don't need to be a writer to know what to say to Kara. Hell, everyone can see she's ignoring her feelings for a certain CAG. Pretend you're friends with Kara- closer than she and Helo, maybe. What would you say to her if you two had some time alone? Of course, if you are a writer and want to make a whole scene out of this, I would never say no to Mary Sue comment!fic!

Comments

[anastashial.livejournal.com]

It's not totally impossible it would be a reserve officer, but somewhat. I think what a lot of people don't realize that there are officers on full time active duty who were commissioned into the reserves. In the USN generally it's mostly those who went to the Academy that are commissioned as regular, and I think maybe ROTC scholarship students. If you plan on staying for a while you usually do whats called augmenting which switches your status from reserve to regular. I did that around the four year point. In Lee's case we know he was also planning to get out, although we don't know if Bill did.

A US carrier has between 60 and 90 aircraft with four fighter squadrons and four with other aircraft. The CAG owns all of them and is usually equal in rank to the carrier's CO. My understanding was that the battlestar was much larger. So I'd agree the number of pilots they showed probably would have managed one squadron. There were several squadron plaques in the bulkheads in the ready room, so I would think they would have multiple squadrons. They would most likely have been briefed by their own CO, who would be junior to the CAG. So it would have made sense to me for there to be a number of Majors and Lt. Colonels (who we never saw at all) in the Air Wing who might not all have been out flying.

I've been re-watching PBS' special Carrier (http://www.hulu.com/carrier), which is a multi-episode documentary about life on a USN carrier.