DPP: Myths and Misconceptions

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

 

This is sort of a strange train of thought, but do you think there are a lot of misconceptions about who Kara and Lee are, generally speaking? The thought stems from two different things I saw on Twitter, one as part of the "Things Starbuck Wouldn't Say" meme that cropped up last week and the other from a fellow fan of the show. The first was that several of the tweets were things like "I'm sorry" or "I love you, Lee" ... both of which ARE ACTUALLY SAID IN THE SHOW! Heh. I mean I think there's a bit of a misconception that Kara will never apologize to people...and yet, she apologizes to Lee in KLG1 for something that she shouldn't even need to apologize for, honestly. She doesn't just say "sorry" she says "I'm really sorry". (And ironically, Lee...I don't think he ever once apologizes to Kara on the show for anything.)  Another one was that Kara wouldn't say "Let's talk about it." Also, not true. In the deleted/extended ready room scene from Taking a Break from All Your Worries, she says to Lee: "C'mon. TALK TO ME."  

Related to this, I think it's a huge misconception that Kara has trouble following orders. Yes, she gives Lee grief over shooting at the Olympic Carrier at first, but...she also fires immediately and when she gets the two worst orders ever: Adama telling her to execute Cain and Lee telling her to manually detonate bomb in Razor....she agrees to both, without hesitating.

Likewise, someone was saying on Twitter that they could never think of Lee as a killer...and yet he murdered Phelan in cold blood. Granted he had good reasons, but.... I mean he also is a soldier. He kills lots of people because it's his job. Related, the show itself insists that Lee is "too honorable to cheat" in EOJ/Rapture...and yet he cheated on Dee with Kara in UB and almost in Daybreak flashbacks, and clearly they're having hot makeouts in EOJ, which to me = cheating.

There's also, in fic often, the idea that Lee wants to talk about relationship issues and analyze things. And while sometimes in canon he does ask Kara to talk (Home, Scar), more often he refuses to talk about things, just bottles up or turns away.

Anyway, all of this just made me think about the other things that we assume about the characters and what they would/wouldn't do. About how sometimes you get ideas stuck in your head about the kind of person they must be, and you ignore later evidence that they've changed or can behave differently than you'd expect. I'm not sure what point any of this has, but....yeah...it's Sunday. It's rambly pilots meta. Have at it! 

Comments

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

One of the things I find really interesting about Kara and Lee that people seem to forget is how very forgiving Kara is. Yeah she gets angry and messed up over things but she doesn't really hold grudges, aside from her mother. She forgives LEOBEN. For a while at the end of the series he's one of her best friends. Lee is the one to hold massive (often unfounded) bitter grudges.

Sort of tied to this, Kara is in generally a lot more loyal to their friendship (if not their romance) than Lee is. She unquestioningly has his back, where Lee often stands back to see where things lie before making his move.

...This sounds like a condemnation of Lee, but it's not. I love the character a lot. He's just not Saint Lee.

And this one is a fic pet-peeve. I get why it happens, I get how it works, but it really drives me crazy when authors present "Starbuck" and "Kara" as essentially different characters. (It happens with Lee/Apollo, too, but it isn't nearly as prevalent.

And that is my two page essay of thinky thoughts for a rainy Sunday.

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

Kara is in generally a lot more loyal to their friendship (if not their romance) than Lee is. She unquestioningly has his back, where Lee often stands back to see where things lie before making his move.

Ooh, this is an interesting observation. I never really thought about this before.

Do you think it's because (again, against gender stereotype), Lee has a much harder time compartmentalizing things than Kara does? She can separate what's going on romantically between them from their friendship, and it's terribly obvious where that unnatural ability to contain relational pain, so completely, comes from. And she has all these venting mechanisms to deal with it, which is why she's so messy on the outside. Whereas Lee keeps EVERYTHING inside, contained in one seething mess that never sees the light of day except in extraordinary circumstances.

Maybe I'm just trying to make a case for his loyalty, because I've always seen him that way (not that I think he's St Lee, either). To me, he just doesn't have ANY coping mechanism for the pain that comes his way except to absorb and bottle, and so he can't get past the romantic pain with Kara when the friendship would need him to. And why he takes longer to assess the situation; he can't blow off the consequences at all, compared to Kara who can, to SOME extent at least. And who is vastly more comfortable with relational fallout than Lee is. I don't know, I'm kind of thinking out loud here. Is it making sense?

it really drives me crazy when authors present "Starbuck" and "Kara" as essentially different characters.

ITA. It's a poor grasp of the complexities of her character. Grrr.

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

I feel like I phrased this poorly, because Lee certainly isn't DISLOYAL. It's more that Kara's loyalty is blind. For most people. Once she's on your side, she's pretty much going to stay there, brief frustrations and disappointments aside.

I definitely think Kara's relationship to Lee has a lot to do with compartmentalization. And stubbornness. She wants an involvement in his life, whether or not it's deserved. She's willing to take what she can get, where Lee is a bit more discerning. (He thinks) he'd rather not have Kara than have a married-girlfriend/best friend.

I also suspect that a big component of this dynamic is Kara's forgiveness thing. Not that all of her issues are (well deserved) mommy-issues, but, I think because NO ONE is ever going to manage to hurt and betray Kara quite the way her mother did, she doesn't really need to hold grudges. On the other hand, Lee's method of self-protection seems to be more a tally of "hurts" vs. "helps" and sometimes the scale for Kara leans in the "hurt" direction.

Ugh. Such great characters. I feel like this conversation could go on for years!

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

NO ONE is ever going to manage to hurt and betray Kara quite the way her mother did, she doesn't really need to hold grudges.

So true! I agree that with the people she loves, Kara is forgiving because she is so conditioned to blame herself if things go wrong (as opposed to being content to blame others she is not too close with for their shortcomings--a la Tigh being a superior asshole, etc.). I think that's all the internalized abuse from Momma Socrata.

Lee does seem more of a score keeper too. Hmm.

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you were saying Lee was DISloyal, but I guess I was trying to puzzle through the nature and the expression of their loyalty. I see what you mean by saying Kara is more loyal to the friendship side, but you could also argue that Lee's loyalty to the friendship is expressed in the way he always eventually overcomes her romantic betrayals; it takes him longer and is less visible, but that just makes his loyalty in that area less obvious, rather than less. To tell the truth, I don't know how to categorize and quantify all this. It's just thoughts. As you say,

I feel like this conversation could go on for years!

:)

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

I think this a little unfair to Lee; in "Scar" after a bitter personal rejection he totally has Kara's back (it's one of my favorite scenes) so IMO this idea that lee constantly bears bitter grudges is also exaggerated. I think we're also forgetting how much he DIDN'T bear a grudge against Kara for Zak's death as well; he certainly bore grudges against his father but IMO that was the result of a lifetime's worth of Issues with his dad.

Yeah he's really bitter about Kara after New Caprica and it's hard for him to open himself up to her again. I personally loved that the show went there and paradoxically I was convinced only by Kara's actions there that she loved Lee but I can't blame him for being reluctant to lay his feelings on the line again after that. I would NEVER forgive someone who did that to me, ever.

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

I certainly didn't mean to be unfair to Lee, or to imply that he turns everything into a grudge. In fact, grudge may be entirely the wrong word to use.

It's more that my read on Lee is that he may well forgive slights (perceived or otherwise), but he does remember them and that he makes an accounting of sorts about people's trustworthiness from this.

Honestly, it's the smarter and more logical approach, but it isn't the fanon characterization of Pushover Saint Lee that sometimes crops up in fic.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

Yeah he's really bitter about Kara after New Caprica and it's hard for him to open himself up to her again. I personally loved that the show went there and paradoxically I was convinced only by Kara's actions there that she loved Lee but I can't blame him for being reluctant to lay his feelings on the line again after that. I would NEVER forgive someone who did that to me, ever.

i like this line of thinking because i'm there with you on the never forgiving somebody for something like that. i was actually surprised that he went passed that and open up to her in that way. i think that maybe without the whole fight with Sam in EoJ/Rapture he would have acted a lot different after what he saw as a new rejection.