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

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

While I totally believe she enjoyed and was fairly casual about sex (and that mostly it's our own real life societal impulses to look down on that as a trait in women which make us find it distasteful)...if she was engaged or even just in a very serious relationship with Zak, I do have a hard time believing she would dare--literally dare--his older brother (whom she'd known for all of four-five hours tops probably?) to fuck her on the dining room table while he was in the next room. (And Lee? It's even less believable.)

However, it's mostly the execution of it, because it was played for a sporting, casual kind of thing even though the idea behind it was that they were so instantly besotted with each other that they forgot everything else around them. So if the producers had had the balls to go there and make it a really flat-out romantic, I can't keep my hands off you sort of thing, which I think they were going towards with all the confessions--however misguided--about deepest fears and all that close-talking, smiling, flirting in the flashback scene BEFORE she's patting the table and saying "RIGHT NOW. JUST DO ME. I DARE YOU."...well, then for me, it would've been a different story. It's the change in gears because the producers loved the idea (as they say in their podcast) that this was a challenge between jocks or some such nonsense that doesn't work for me at all.

[eridani8.livejournal.com]

Actually, I completely agree with you on that front- I forgot to put that little qualifier in- sorry.

Yeah, I found the whole almost-frak on the table in DB2 pretty ridiculous, if only because Zak was still in the room! I probably would have bought K&L getting busy while Zak was alive if there had been some kind of undeniable attraction reasoning developed, but to show it as such a casual matter seems to fly in the face of logic, let alone character traits. I find it hard to believe that, even really drunk, they'd be prepared to blatantly do it on a table with Zak present (even if he was passed out). The most basic drunken cost-benefit analysis should tell any sane adult that that's likely to end badly. It's just stupidity!

And if RDM&Co wanted it as a challenge between jocks, they didn't do a very good job of setting up a competitive, one-up-manship atmosphere. You're absolutely right about the confessions and fears being totally out of step with the subsequent challenge.