The Week in Reruns... (Sweeps Week comes to an end)

[kag523.livejournal.com]

 

It’s Saturday... and the last day of my No-Takebacks Sweeps Week daily postings.  Tomorrow, Naz will announce the winner of the Bigger / Better challenge and all trades (on the comm at least) will close.  You have all been amazing in sharing the creative spark that makes this fandom so great.  I’ve completely enjoyed coming up with challenges for the week.  Thank YOU for making it such an awesome experience.

Today’s last activity is a little more laid back, and it takes on the very thing we all came to fandom – in greater or lesser extents – to find. 

Closure

This could be for certain elements of character development, plotline and resolution.  Rather than listing the things that frustrated you in fandom, (see the book cover below), let’s focus on the fics or vids or other fandom-related items which provided some sense of closure for our ship as BSG came to a close.

 

For me, it’s actually a vid by wand3rlust, which made me sob the first time I saw it.  I teach film, so I tend to not ‘see’ things the same way as everyone else, but this one completely absorbed me and left me feeling absolutely raw at the end.  I cannot explain why, but the reversal provided an acceptance of the end of Kara Thrace better than almost any other fic I’ve read (or written) and I’m in awe of the skill it took her to make it.  You can find it HERE or on her LJ.

To end off our television focus I have a recut for the Office...

 

And I also have another vid to post today, but that one will come a little later.   My exporter program is fighting me tonight, so I’m giving up for now, and will post a little later (once I’ve had a few hours sleep.)

Again – thanks for bringing the enthusiasm to a fandom that is now two years post-finale.  You ROCK shippers!  K :>)

P.S.  The Manips I owed you from yesterday can be seen on yesterday's page.  Enjoy!

 

Comments

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I really love your vids, both the ones you made and the one you linked to. Wonderful.

I think my favorite season 4 vid is the Kara & Lee Tribute (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkQjv2ef7g) by torontogirl86. It doesn't change their story, it just reminds us all that what they shared is not lost.

Also, for closure, I listen to Jamie :) Lee and Kara were one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tLFfrnf0Qk)

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Loved the rec, Rachel. Especially the interview with Jamie. He summed it up beautifully - they were one. And I kind of agree with him. Lee had already found his peace. It still breaks my heart, though. And it always will. But, c'est la vie. (It was so adorable to see him speak French. :D )

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Those are lovely! :>)

[lizziec]

That clip of Jamie just had me in tears. He puts it so beautifully and when he talks about bereavement and when you realise that the person is still there within you it just shoved me over the edge (I was pretty close anyway b/c it's a year since my mother was diagnosed and died from cancer). So eloquent and sums up beautifully both his character's relationship with Kara (they were one) and the process you go through after a loved ones death.

Thank you for linking to it.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

This was my closure for Lee and Kara. The simplest version of it. I wrote it based on a prompt from amaliak. Talking Hands (http://jeneviverose.livejournal.com/19651.html).

There's also a beautiful set of fics out there by... Drat. I can't remember. Bee? Maybe someone can help me remember titles or authors (I need to favorite things more often). I think it was called "Circle" or had something to do with sand? Anyways, Kara crossed over and sat on the shore chatting with Zak until Lee walked out of the river to her. &heart

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Aw! Gorgeous! And I haven't read that other fic (Circle) so let me know if you recall the name.)

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

I re-read this one last night, actually, it's Full Circle (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/36504.html#cutid1) by workerbee73!

[anastashial.livejournal.com]

Quite a ways off topic, although in a way seeing things like this does help with closure. I'd never seen this vid before and stumbled on it following the lead above to re-view Jamie's interview.

The cast reacts to questions about Bear McCreary's music/concert: Music? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWWS-77tDHc&feature=related)

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I had never seen that before. I was laughing out loud! I love their fake interviews, they are so adorable. WHEEEEE <3

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that! I'd never seen it!

[wand3rlust.livejournal.com]

OMG Karin *hugs* thank you so much! I don't know if I've found closure yet, but there's some fics that have helped and of course making that vid helped too. I'll have to get a list together of some fics/vids this evening when I get back in but I wanted to stop in and say thank you and I'm so glad it's helped you. :)

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Loved your vid. I've already thanked Karin for recommending it. But I'd like to thank you, as well. Just adorable. You made fall in love with that song, too. :D

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

That video was breathtaking. Thank you so much!

[kag523.livejournal.com]

*hugs* And thank YOU! :>D

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

First of all, Karin, thank you for an amazing week. I'm still planning to go back to see all the things I missed during the week. But you ROCKED BIG TIME.

Also, thanks a lot for the vid rec today. I had never seen this one before. And I simply adored it. It made me smile in the most bittersweet way, you know. And it made me appreciate that song in a way I had never done before. I think I'll just have it in repeat mode for a while. lol.

As for closure, well, that's a strange concept, really. I'm thinking about RL, here. How can you accept death and loss, especially when they seem so tragically unfair and premature? I think to find closure is not really to accept that, but to be able to move on without focusing on the pain, anger or bitterness of said loss. Life always goes on, but it's up to us to decide how to go about it, whether we will let life's mishaps and sorrows permanently bring us down and whether we will enjoy it to the best of our abilities despite everything.

As for fandom experience, I'll never be able to think of K/L journey without feeling sad for how it ended, without believing it was utterly unfair and without blaming writers and their messes. However, I never stopped finding beauty in it. Despite its tragedy and perhaps a little bit because of it. After all, some of the best love stories of all time ended up in tragedy, right? I don't focus on the unhappiness. I think the fandom itself is the source of closure becasue they help me to focus on the love and not on the loss, on what I loved about them and not on what I hated. This week is proof of that.

There are of course, some stories dealing with the end that touched me more than others, even if they were extremely. The first one that comes to mind is The Reality and Immortality of Things (http://users.livejournal.com/wisteria_/921546.html) by wisteria_

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful comment. You are so right - thank you for sharing those thoughts.

Also, I second your rec, that is an amazing story.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I don't want closure. :) Because then I'm done caring. And I always want to care.

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

I'm sad to see Sweeps Week come to a close, this has been so much fun. THANK YOU for all of your hard work!

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Aw... thank YOU for coming out! I've had a blast, though I'm now completely exhausted. (I'm finishing that last damned vid right NOW! LOL)

[amaliak.livejournal.com]

The closure came for me during mintenergy's Signal Fire (http://mintenergy.livejournal.com/8220.html). It was such a good way to look at the alternate universe that could be. It made me feel like...anything is possible.
There's also Bee's Once more...with a happy ending (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/tag/once%20more).

To be quite honest, I fully understood the reasons for the poof right from the beginning, but feeling mostly cheated since BEFORE that scene, the overall calm only came with time.

workerbee73's thinky thoughts posts really helped to work out the aggression, too. A LOT of aggression. I think that those posts on a daily basis were a lifesaver a year ago. Seriously.

Of course, there's the balm of fandom and jsut how awesome this one has been for so long now. Really, everyone here is now like family. And nothing makes me feel better than that.

I love you all.

cheers.
--Lex

[kag523.livejournal.com]

I love Signal Fire too... *sigh* It was one of the first fics that left me feeling like there really was a way it could have worked out. It was before I'd written anything, and I just adored it. Funny, in the year since then, I've written a number of different endings, watched many vids and somehow I'm finally now able to think of the field and most days I only see the potential... not the sadness.

It's a good place to be. :>)

[velvety2010.livejournal.com]

Did anyone mention Karin's own  After the End  (http://kag523.livejournal.com/893.html)? One of my favorites.

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Aw... Thank you so much for this! It was my first fic, and the first step for me in finding resolution. :>) I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

[daybreak777.livejournal.com]

I haven't made my closure things, yet. I felt like Tara, once I made those things, well, it would mean I'd let go of pilots. That it would mean I'd stop caring. And I knew deep inside that I'll never really stop loving pilots.

But I do need closure on what happened to pilots on that screen. I will be creating one thing for that in the future.

As for other peoples' works . . . elly427's Song of the Open Road (http://elly427.livejournal.com/177906.html) and wisteria's story linked above felt like closure fics to me. They were two K/L fic writers I found when I first found fandom and I could sense that these were their last Kara/Lee fics.

I read something about forgiveness today. That forgiveness doesn't mean giving up being hurt and angry. That it means still feeling that way and being able to still feel compassion and kindness to the person you are angry with. I want that. The finale of pilots will never, ever make sense to me on screen. But I want to have compassion about it. They did their best for closure. As Lee once said, they have their story.

And I'll have mine. :-)

[kag523.livejournal.com]

Those are both lovely stories! And I love your comment regarding 'forgiveness'. :>)

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

So I may have gotten sucked into a youtube spiral of watching Katee interviews/Q&As all day and I came to the following conclusion about the Daybreaks: I'm okay with the poof. I wish it didn't happen, but I can see for the most part how/why it works. I'm okay with Lee and Kara meeting for the first time once she's engaged to Zak. But what the Daybreaks do (besides retcon a bunch of stuff confusingly) is take away BOTH any sort of future for the pilots AND any kind of past/backstory (Academy-era pilots, why must you be out of canon compliance?), effectively removing ALL hope. (Except, of course not removing hope, because we're shippers godsdammit.)

So. That is my closure, I guess? And also if anyone has any favorite Katee/Katee and Jamie interviews they'd like to link me to, that would be amazing!

[kag523.livejournal.com]

I love the idea that your closure is just an acceptance of what happened. It isn't that you have to LIKE the idea of poof. (And I've never said that, despite feeling like I've come to accept the ending.) But that you understand what was being done.

Sorry - no vids offhand, but I'll post them if I think of them! :>)

The journey or The good, the bad and the ugly but also The first, the last, my everything

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

I'm not afraid finding closure will mean I'll let go of pilots, like some have said. To me, closure means focusing on the journey rather than on the end, on the life rather than on the death/poof, on the possibilities rather than on the failures, on the love rather than the frustration. And since Karin asked us during the week for "evidence of Kara and Lee's soul-deep connection", I'm hereby presenting my case. Because that is my closure.

Exhibit A – The prayer
The worlds had just ended. Family, friends and acquaintances all gone. Kara prayed for the dead. But he was the only person in the all of the Twelve Colonies worth mentioning by name.



Exhibit B – The reunion
The worlds had just ended. He was lucky enough to have one surviving family member in midst of all the death and destruction. But she was the only person he absolutely had to seek out before he was able to move on.



Exhibit C - The confession
He was the only person she spontaneously confessed her worst sin to.



Exhibit D – The forgiveness
Lee does not forgive easily. For two years, he blamed his father for his brother’s death. For two years, he severed all contact with him. It took him only what… two minutes to forgive her?



Exhibit E – The jealousy
The green-eyed monster reared its ugly head and made the uptight, self-controled CAG lose his cool so completely, he resorted to slut shaming and punch throwing. Kara is the only person able to get him to react like that.



Exhibit F – The Apology
Though she didn’t really owed him anything, Kara apologized for her behavior. Lee is the only person able to make her feel like that.



Exhibit G – The out of the blue kiss
Kara is the only person who can make Lee forget where he is and who else is there around him.



Exhibit H – The second confession
Kara is the only person Lee confessed his worst moment of weakness to.



Exhibit I- The love declaration
They are the only person the other has ever truly declared to love. They even shouted it to the skies.



Exhibit J – The running away
He was the only person able to make the fearless Starbuck feel afraid and run.



Exhibit K – The lust
This one is self-explanatory.



Exhibit L - The fantasy
Again, the image says it all.



Exhibit M – The first and the last
He was the last person to see her before she died, the first to see her when she came back from the dead, the last person to see her before she vanished into thin air, the only person she came close to saying goodbye to. Just to mention a few moments. Chance? I don't think so.

The journey or The good, the bad and the ugly but also The first, the last, my everything - part 2

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Exhibit N – They always found their way back together
No matter what circumstances pulled them apart, or how they themselves hurt the other, they just couldn’t be apart.



Exhibit O – The trust
When bad came to worse, the only person they could completely rely on, unconditionally, was each other.




Exhibit P – The belief
Kara was the only person who could make Lee believe without reason, logic or proof.



Exhibit Q – The third (almost) confession
He was the first person Kara went to to talk about her worst, scariest secret.



Exhibit R – The acceptance
Kara was the only person who was able to make Lee not care. Because she is Kara and he is Lee and the rest of it is not worth a damn.



No poof, no pigeon, no retcon can outweigh all that.
I rest my case.

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

I love this idea – in fact, this is pretty much exactly what I came seeking this way for. A way to process this stuff, and to see what others who loved them had written to get closure on the poof and so on. Because otherwise I was going to have to write my own, and I just don't have the wherewithal for that right now. I think Song of the Open Road has done that for me, treading close enough to the path I would take that I don't have to forge my way anymore.

However, somewhere I read someone talking about Jeffrey Foucault and how some of his songs are quite pilot-y, and so I checked some of his stuff out. This was what I was going to post in the Katee appreciation post, but it's far more appropriate here.

His song "Secretariat" is, while not a song that embodies closure, nonetheless one that somehow speaks it to me. I'm not sure why, exactly, but in some ways I can see it being something Lee might (eventually) sing on Earth in memory of Kara.

(You know, in their crappy mud-hut indie café where no one knows who he is and he can celebrate and lament her and then melt away at the end of his set being the mysterious, half-broken and sardonic guy and all the indie coffee-addict settler chicks totally want to hit that. And if they had a racehorse called Secretariat. /sad cracky songfic in my head)


Lyrics:
I need a woman with a heart like Secretariat
To outrun my lonesome ways
I'm going to take this extra rib I've got
I'm going to bury it down in the dust
She does not raise

I need a woman with eyes like Rodin
To see the body caught within the stone
I'm going to take this bronze star heart
I've got I'm going to melt it down
Wait for love to cast the metal into bone

Because I'm the blue eyed son of hurricane
I'll twirl you so sweetly so around
But be careful you know Atlanta
Never looked the same
After she burned to the ground
After she burned down

I need a woman with a heel like Achilles
So I know there's always one way I can win
Love is patient, love is kind, but let's be honest
Love is a catalogue of deadly sins

I need a woman with a chin like Joe Frazier
To stand inside when I am swinging at the wind
Let's you and me take the gloves off darlin
I'll tell you exactly where I've been

Because I'm the blue eyed son of hurricane
I'll twirl you so sweetly so around
But be careful you know Atlanta
Never looked the same
After she burned to the ground
After she burned down

I need a woman with hands like John Henry
Hard enough to break the rocks down into sand
And when we died we'd lay down side by side
With our hammers in our hands


The other one that has a similar effect on me, although with more oblique lyrics, is his song "Shadows Tumble", which does however have this little refrain:

The shadows tumble bluely
I love you only, love you truly
With your face all full of stars
And your heart held out like a tin cup
To catch the rain

... Which is just so very evocative of Starbuck-through-Lee's-eyes to me.

So those tend to give me peace about it all. I can't really explain why. But that's where it lives.

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

Oh, and those two songs are downloadable from the music tab on his website which lj refuses to let me link to, "Secretariat" from the Miles From the Lightning album and "Shadows Tumble" from the Outtakes & Live Cuts.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have closure, but sometimes I feel some peace about it. I waver from despair about the rejection of their relationship by the writers after TAB all the way to joy at their incredibly love affair. I'm still inspired every single day to think about, write about, and create things for pilots. I guess closure would mean the end of that?

I'd say, though, that I've achieved some healing from a few fics, particularly, Smutstrav by Bee and Tara, After the End by Karin and my recent re-mix and its sequel (currently under construction). Ya'll will have to wait to find out which re-mix is mine. :)

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

...and my recent re-mix and its sequel (currently under construction).

Yay! I can't wait. :D

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

So, as noted above (http://community.livejournal.com/no_takebacks/167237.html?thread=9026373#t9026373), I began a little fic to help the finale grieving process, since I figured no matter how much peace Lee might have had in that moment, if I needed to grieve, he must too. I probably won't continue it for a while, if at all, but here's how I pictured the grieving process beginning for him. Because I don't care what anybody says, that boy got some serious processing to do.


He saw her everywhere.

This vibrant, verdant, virgin planet was full of her. And it wasn’t fair.

He explored. Climbed mountains. Kept going further, always following the next horizon, trying to find somewhere that was free of her. A place where the breeze wasn’t her hair brushing over his knuckles, where rustling leaves weren’t her dancing eyes daring him to do everything, where sunshine wasn’t her blinding smile and roaring water wasn’t the body blow of her vicious fury.

In his infrequent returns to the settlement, he barely spoke. Helo and Athena welcomed him into their simple home, and with gentle understanding left him to his silence. Hera, always a quiet child, would perch beside him and demand nothing, offerings of solace in the occasional serious touch while she drew or played.

Bringing down game on his wanderings came as easily, as naturally, to him as mastering any other skillset ever laid before him. The spear balanced in his hand so sweetly and flew so straight he could have been born doing this. Apollo, ever the paragon – now pulling double duty to cover the hunting front that by rights belonged to his ... other half. So he brought in extra meat to the little settlement, and received supplies in return. Those who didn’t know him – really know him, not just his name – eyed his shaggy hair and growing beard, his durable military clothes worn and patched, his flinty blue look, and kept respectful distance. Even those he traded with barely got more than a grunt out of him, and it didn’t take long for them to accept that here was a man who was forgetting human speech and society and was happiest that way.

Except they were wrong. As every breath and beat of his heart cradled her in this new world, a world she’d never really even been on, so every thought in his mind furled to answer. He fought it for months; walking, climbing, hunting, running himself to exhaustion, trying to push her out of his head no more successfully than he could excise her from the air around him, trying to get his brain to stop frakking talking to her.

He didn’t know when it first happened – and that should scare him – but the first time he actually noticed it spilling over from his brain to his mouth was on a mountaintop. The sunlight was singing around him the way her viper used to and the wind smelled like her laughter, wild and free and hard, and he opened his chest and breathed her in and spoke aloud and realized he was finally crazy.

A heartbeat later, he realized he didn’t give a flying frak, and so repeated himself, louder.

“I hate you.”

Words living in him as long as he’d known her, an acid worm chewing coils through his guts with self-loathing in its wake. Every glance – every single glance – she’d ever given him was a shy invitation and a brash provocation, for him alone, pushing him, pulling him, a wall to keep him out while begging him to be the one to break through and take her. Claim her. And every single time he’d reached for her, it had been wrong. A denial of everything he wanted to be, succumbing to everything he secretly knew he was. Or it was her shoving him away, searing and slicing them both. She’d never given him anything she hadn’t turned around and ripped away again.

And still he’d reached.

The confession bubbled up on a tide of anger, and it felt good to finally say it. More than good. It felt great. It felt right. It felt like fetters falling to his feet.

Throwing his arms wide, he tipped his head back and let the sun bathe his closed eyes with all her warmth he’d destroyed himself yearning for, then turned to look at the whole vibrant vista around him, stretching to the ends of the earth.

“MY NAME IS LEE ADAMA AND I HATE KARA THRACE!”

[themonkeytwin.livejournal.com]

His hands dropped, brushing against the rocks beside him, the rubbly stones heaped in corners, and he seized one, feeling its weight and shape nestle in his hand as perfectly as her shoulder ever had. In a sudden kinetic uncoil, he flung it as far as he could, the arc in the glittering air and the smash far down on the mountainside as satisfying as anything possibly could be.

“I HATE KARA THRACE!”

He threw another, listening to the rattle as it bounced.

“LEE ADAMA HATES KARA THRACE!”

Throw. Throw. “I HATE KARA THRACE!... I HATE KARA THRACE!”

The whole world rang with it. He breathed it deep, body trembling with the echoes. Hands raised to his mouth, he drew on everything he had. “MY NAME IS LEE ADAMA AND I HATE KARA THRACE!”

“You can keep going forever, Lee. I’m not going to say it too.”

He spun, and saw what he knew he would see: nothing. Nothing but land and sky that screamed of Kara Thrace and never, ever her, even while her voice lingered on in his ears. Her voice, wry defiance and honey on his name and all, her frakking voice.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something snide about hearing things now that he was really crazy, but everything holding him up inside was suddenly spun glass and he shattered to the ground. Hot tears coursed over jagged breaths, broken loose for the very first time since he set foot on this planet.



... Aaand, then things happen and he slowly works through things and ANGST and pilots and whatnot. Anyway. Maybe one day, when I feel I could actually do it justice. :)