Deep Thoughts: Family Edition

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone.  Hope your week's going well!  Thanks very much for your entertaining contributions to our drinking game! (though if anyone actually tries to play it, I suggest cheating and/or having a spare liver on hand).

So, yesterday I was looking through some of my old rough drafts of stories that were never finished, and I came across this line:

Lee knew from the beginning that Kara was the child his father had always wanted.

I'm curious as to whether you think that is true.  Lee and Kara obviously don't have a sibling relationship, in that 1) they didn't grow up together and 2) they are in love.  But it's very clear that Bill is a father to both of them, and that they are both aware of this.  Are Kara and Lee equally his children?  How do you think their relationships with Bill affect their relationship with each other?  Does the tangential "family" dynamic there strengthen their bond, interfere with it, or exist entirely separately?  Do you think they compete over Bill in any sense?  Do they understand each other better by knowing Bill?

Let's analyze the family triangle.  In my book, it's way more fun than romantic triangles.



Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)

Comments

[lizziec]

Lee knew from the beginning that Kara was the child his father had always wanted.

I'm curious as to whether you think that is true.

I don't think it is true in the sense I take it to mean. I think that the Bill/Kara relationship started from a place of mutual need, and found something in the father/daughter relationship that was missing for both of them previously. To some extent I think Bill's relationship with helped to cushion the blow of Zak's death for him. I don't think it would mitigate Zak's death, but I think it would offer Bill some comfort in knowing his son's fianceé and helping to look after her in her grief, while also having someone to share his own with. He was estranged from Carol Ann at this point so couldn't have shared his grief with her, and clearly something happened between him and Lee based on how they interacted in the mini - at the very least, even if there wasn't a confrontation between them as fanon seems to favour, there was a wedge between them because of the culpability Lee felt his father had in his Zak's death.

From Kara's point of view she also gets someone that will care for her now Zak is gone, who will understand her grief and even if it is unspoken (because Bill doesn't know about Kara's own culpability in Zak's death until part way through s1) a kindred spirit in feeling some degree of guilt over the death itself. In Bill she has someone who is willing to act as a father figure, who I think even needs to act as a father figure as a way of dealing with his grief, and someone who I think understands her temperament as a pilot in a way that others maybe don't.

So I think that Bill and Kara's father/daughter relationship at least starts from a point of mutual need and understanding in the aftermath of Zak's death.

I think that Lee and Kara are both equally his children though, even if they fill different parts of that brief. I think to some extent Kara is a Zak replacement for Bill, or at least a replacement for the man that Bill thought Zak was becoming (viper pilot with a love for flying), whereas Lee is always Lee and I get the feeling in the relationship that's established in Canon that they have always had problems communicating. I think Lee recognises the role that Kara fills for Bill when in s4 they have that discussion in the ready room when Lee asks Bill how he would feel if it were Zak that had reappeared in the fleet after being killed. That always struck me as an important question for Lee to ask of Bill, showing Lee's insight into the way that Bill saw Kara.

I'm not sure that Lee and Kara's relationship is much affected by their respective relationships with Bill past the miniseries. In the mini (in the brig scene) it is clearly established that the way that Kara views Bill is something of a wedge between them, especially as Lee at this point is still prissy, bitter, semi-teenager-in-outlook Lee, but after the ends of the world I think they move past that pretty quickly. I think Kara's admission of some culpability in Zak's death helps with that moving along process.

I'm not sure that they compete much over Bill, though if they do they are certainly "over" it by the end of s4. Perhaps in the earlier seasons they did a little, because I think Lee may envy a bit the way in which Bill and Kara understand one another in a way that I think it takes much longer for Bill and Lee too, though given that Lee and Bill have not communicated much in the previous two years (before the mini) I'm not entirely surprised that their relationship would take time to get to any real level of understanding.

This answer got away from me somewhat. I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't think the relationship between Bill & Kara and Bill & Lee actually has much bearing on the relationship between Lee & Kara, because I think their relationships with Bill come from different places.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

I think to some extent Kara is a Zak replacement for Bill, or at least a replacement for the man that Bill thought Zak was becoming (viper pilot with a love for flying), whereas Lee is always Lee

i find all the comment very interesting but this part more than the rest.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

at that point in the series i think that even Laura would have had a problem with letting Lee on that moon. but i do agree that at least for a while Lee was jealous on Kara/Bill relationship.

[bouncy-nut.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of Lee's question to his dad in You Can't Go Home Again when he asks if he'd been lost on that rock rather than Kara, how long until his dad would have stopped looking for him and Bill said something along the lines of "if it was you, we'd never leave."

That little interaction I think demonstrates Lee's early jealous of the Kara/Papadama relationship as well as establishes Bill's pecking order. Lee first. Kara second. I remember being sorta annoyed by this when I first watched it that he said that because I felt it a bit disrespectful to Kara. I don't know why. Obviously, he should value his son's life over all others, but I guess I just have a problem with people ranking or quantifying their love for people in general.

[dannicawebb.livejournal.com]

i was about to post, but i was going to post exactly the same thing, so instead i'll say...thank you. <3

also in he that believeth in me (or six of one, i can't remember) when lee asks bill would it matter if it had been zak who stepped out of the plane, it always drives home for me the fact that kara isn't enough of a daughter to bill. (although the fact that he does let her look for earth mitigates that somewhat. but still. painful.)

[bouncy-nut.livejournal.com]

oh goody. I love when I have a brain sharing moment! It proves I'm not entirely nuts. Or maybe just that you are too. Either way, woo hoo! :)

Also, agree on the 'He That Believeth' scene. I always felt that Apollo scored a well placed dig on that one. She's supposed to be family and Bill certainly isn't acting that way. I love that Lee always trusted her even when she came back under that cloud of suspicion. Really speaks to his implicit trust in her.

Also, the term 'like a daughter' is in itself kind of insulting. Always just out of her reach to attain but still being held up to the standard. *sigh*

[rachelmack.livejournal.com]

See, I see Bill as loving Kara almost as much as Lee, there - but he has the safety of the fleet sitting heavy on his shoulders, and doesn't quite have the freedom to have blind faith like Lee does. He's got Lee on one shoulder (counselling doing the "right" thing) and Laura on the other (counselling the "smart" thing), and considering that since the end of the worlds, all people who come back from the dead have been cylons, it's quite rational to think that the cylons would try to use his love and grief for Kara against him and the fleet. They saw her viper explode; they know cylons took her genetic material back on the Farms. Lee (and Helo) were the only ones in the position who wanted to and could afford to take a blind leap of faith there, and just accept her story.

I also think he'd grieved deeply, and was terrified to accept her only to lose her again, especially as a cylon trick. I'm a bit of a Papadama apologist on this, because he really was in a tough situation.

[dannicawebb.livejournal.com]

i completely understand the fact that he was in a tough situation with the fleet and couldn't afford to believe in her because of that, but...like...that doesn't excuse the brig throttling scene, for me. it doesn't completely explain his reaction to her.

i don't know if i can forgive him for that brig throttling scene, or for torn, or for what he said in you can't go home again. to me, those three moments pretty much cinch the fact that he has a pecking order. i love that he gives her the benefit of the doubt and lets her look for earth, and i love the way he is towards her at the end of season 4.5, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he stopped treating her "like" a daughter whenever he felt like it beforehand.

and i have to echo what bouncy said... "Also, the term 'like a daughter' is in itself kind of insulting. Always just out of her reach to attain but still being held up to the standard. *sigh*"

[dannicawebb.livejournal.com]

and i should add, it's not that i don't like bill - i do love his character, for the most part, and i love exploring his relationship with kara. i just...have serious, serious issues w/a lot of the canon stuff that happens between the two of them.

[rachelmack.livejournal.com]

The brig-throttling scene, ironically, is what seals the fact that he loved her deeply (for me) - because in that moment, he's furious that the Cylons would use Kara against him. He's not throttling Kara, he's throttling the things that killed her, and the things that are trying to exploit her death.

(I don't know if you ever watched Buffy, but in the pilot, Giles has to tell Xander that he has to remember that when he confronts Jesse, he has to remember that he won't be looking at his friend - he's looking at the thing that killed him. It's like that, for me.)

And I think he was trying to kick her ass in Torn, in a tough-love way, because she was kind of acting like a dick. Understandably so, but still. ;) He's rough around the edges, and not perfect, but I don't condemn him for either.

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

"The brig-throttling scene, ironically, is what seals the fact that he loved her deeply (for me) - because in that moment, he's furious that the Cylons would use Kara against him. He's not throttling Kara, he's throttling the things that killed her, and the things that are trying to exploit her death. "

I've never thought of it like that, but now that you say it it really makes sense. It just goes to show how, if you put something in a Buffy-context, I will instantly understand it better.

"And I think he was trying to kick her ass in Torn, in a tough-love way,"

I remember watching that scene and thinking that that's what it was supposed to be about, but it somehow didn't ring true to me. It felt more like he was angry at her for the fact that she wasn't more grateful to be back on the ship, like, he saved her life and risked the lives of others and they lost so much so that they could rescue everyone, rescue her, and she's just throwing it in his face like it meant nothing. But I don't know how much of that is just the way I read Bill.

[bouncy-nut.livejournal.com]

"It just goes to show how, if you put something in a Buffy-context, I will instantly understand it better."

So say we all.

[bouncy-nut.livejournal.com]

Quit destroying my arguments with logic! :)

[rachelmack.livejournal.com]

It's a bad habit of mine ;)

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big fan of Bill Adama or his parenting, so that might affect my thoughts on this matter just a tad...

I think that, in short, Adama's relationship with Kara demonstrates one of his greater failings as a parent (in my book)--that he picks and chooses when to call someone his own. With Kara, he says she's like a daughter to a him, but that "like" is a significant distinction because it means he chose her as a daughter and it means he can choose to not treat her as a daughter when she does something to upset him (case in point: Torn). Adama does the same thing to Lee (see Crossroads, Bastille Day, any of the million other times they argue) but he can't dismiss Lee as fully as he can Kara.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I agree for the most part. It's just I'm not sure he treats one better then the other. When they have disappointed him, he has turned his back on both of them at times, but he always takes them back.

Adama when things get tough goes into officer mood and isn't there for his children like he should. Won't win any parenting awards for sure.

I'm not sure about your last line, not sure "he can't dismiss Lee as fully as he can Kara." Maybe you are right, but I'm not so sure. It's just he has treated them both shabbily many times but has taken them back. Kara did point a gun to the face of the woman he loves, but ultimately forgave her for it, when he could have left her in the brig to rot.

It seems to me it's a cycle of him getting angry at one or the other pushing them away, but ultimately forgiving them (not that it's their fault, but his PoV). Like to go back to season 3 Torn & Xroads1, he turned his back on them both, but ultimately the family got back together.

[lizziec]

I have a big problem with Torn as an episode, so I find it difficult to treat a lot of the actions in it as my own canon (I tend to do this a lot [WARNING: LINK LEADS TO THE PIT ;)]). Tigh and Kara clearly have huge issues in this episode (rightly so, given preceeding events) and what I really needed from that episode was for someone (Lee or Bill) to sit down with them and talk and try to get to the root of the issue. Instead, despite what are clearly cries for help they just get chewed out. I can kind of understand Bill for wanting to check mutinous talk, but after NC someone really needed to find out why these people were hurting and try and help, instead of offering to airlock them. (Yes, I know Lee was still angry and upset over the whole Kara-marrying-Sam-after-a-night-of-passion-leaving-him-to-wake-up-alone thing, but still...)

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

"s and chooses when to call someone his own. With Kara, he says she's like a daughter to a him, but that "like" is a significant distinction because it means he chose her as a daughter and it means he can choose to not treat her as a daughter when she does something to upset him"

Yes. This.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Kara Thrace is the daughter that Adama always wanted. Like he said to Kat on her deathbed, he thought it would be nice to have a daughter.

In Kara he sees himself as a young pilot. Great pilot with a bit of a chip on her(his) shoulder.

However as Adama's daughter she also gets to feel the bad side of being Adama's daughter. Adama is not going to win any parenting awards. When things get bad with each of them, he falls back in soldier mode and handles them accordingly.

So many examples where Adama failed each of them as a parent. Lee was struggling mightily with the idea of assassinating Cain, and when he went to his father about why they are doing this. Adama says it has to be done and that's it. Doesn't show Lee any of his own doubts about it. Doesn't explain to him what Cain had done. Lee nearly dies cause of his lost of hope, which his dad could have helped but failed miserably. When Kara is struggling after coming back from NC instead of going to her with concern, he calls her a cancer, and no longer his daughter. Maybe it was tough love, it did ultimately work, but should have tried to talk to her first as the father first.

[lizziec]

In Kara he sees himself as a young pilot. Great pilot with a bit of a chip on her(his) shoulder.

This is part of what I was trying to say, but you put it much more succinctly. Thanks :)

Lee was struggling mightily with the idea of assassinating Cain, and when he went to his father about why they are doing this. Adama says it has to be done and that's it.

You see this exact same thing after the Olympic Carrier incident as well. The soldier in Bill finds it difficult to interact with the thinker in Lee. For Bill these things are part of war, and if you're a pilot you just have to deal with it. For Lee who is established as struggling with even being in the military it's much more complicated.

When Kara is struggling after coming back from NC...Maybe it was tough love, it did ultimately work, but should have tried to talk to her first as the father first.

This sums up perfectly how I feel about Torn.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I think the picture says a lot about their relationship and it's actually one that I really like. Bill is facing away from both of them, seemingly in his own world, but slightly oriented towards Lee. Lee is openly looking at his father while Kara, slightly more behind Adama is boldly looking at the camera. I think their body language makes a statement about where each of them lies in the triangle.

Lee seems more openly approval-seeking, while Kara seems to seek approval without necessarily admitting it. She rarely refers to Bill as a father figure (even though he does seem it), while Lee makes sarcastic comments about his father's disapproval of him. Bill seems reticent to give his approval or devotion to either one of them. By S4, Bill was falling apart and I think he had so much anger that it spilled out onto everyone. The scene with Bill throttling Kara in the brig just kills me. AWFUL stuff. Bill was harder on Lee in the early days and harder on Kara later.

I've got to run, but I am excited to read what everyone has to say.

[rachelmack.livejournal.com]

To me, Bill and Kara's relationship was like that of daughter-in-law-on-steroids - his son loved her, and was going to officially make her family, and that would have been enough; but their loss of Zak - and their respective need for family - bonded them tighter than they would have if Zak had survived. Bill clearly appreciated Kara for her spirit and Karaness, and I like to think they would have gotten along swimmingly either way (Bill likes a fighter), but considering one son was dead, and the other not speaking to him (and she having no family to speak of at all), it was easy for him to mentally adopt her - not quite a daughter, but the closest thing to it - it helped him cope, to fill the gaping hole of his loss, a silver lining in the tragedy of Zak's premature death.

But he still had Lee. Kara was family, with a good dose of emotional transference, but Lee was his son, and had been for his entire life.

So I don't think that Kara "was the child Bill had always wanted" (though I could see Lee thinking it, in one of his more petulant and/or self-pitying moods); but she was "the daughter he'd never had," and I think that's an important distinction.

As for how the "family" dynamic contributed to PILOT!LOVE - at first, a hindrance, because of all the residual feelings of guilt, and pseudo-betrayal, were so fresh; but y'know, by the events of season 3 or so, so much had happened that the trauma of Zak's death - as horrible as it was - kind of pales in comparison to the destruction of Earth, the occupation of New Caprica by Cylons, Kara being held by Leoben, and then her "death." As time went on, they dealt with and bonded over so many things outside of sharing Zak, that that barrier had to disintegrate - the past was past, and couldn't be changed. As soon as they accepted that relationships and emotions are always messy and complicated - that they could both love Zak and each other, and it didn't necessarily mean betrayal - they could use that "family" bond to link them and build upon the future.

(At least in my BSG. RDM clearly thought differently. Stupid RDM.)

[rachelmack.livejournal.com]

(LOL, "destruction of Earth". Destruction of the 12 worlds, clearly.)

[bouncy-nut.livejournal.com]

The thing that bothers me about Bill's treatment of both of them is that I do believe that the deep and sincere love for both of them as his actual family is there, (however I think his love for each is very different and unique) but that he almost always hides it under the guise of their military superior.

He's always trying so hard to protect the fleet and make them stronger that he forgets that they are still his children in need of more than just military guidance. Although, to be fair, under more normal not end-of-humanity type circumstances, perhaps he wouldn't have felt the need to always be the Commander. I guess that's pretty valid considering the environment in which all this went down. But still, Kara & Lee are both very strong, but they often need some human comfort or advice and he'd be the perfect candidate. But he's so stuck in the role of Commander that he's almost always completely oblivious to what's actually going on inside either of them. Like, his never even being aware of their relationship. Or at least never commenting on it. He seems more stuck on the idea of each of them, rather than the reality of their evolving and changing characters.

I mean, the minute Lee tries to become his own man and stop running around for scraps of praise from his stoic and untouchable father, Bill turns his back on him? and accuses him of having no integrity?

When Starbuck comes back from the dead, his very first reaction rather than joy or hope is "I don't believe in miracles"?

C'mon! I almost feel like his physical proximity paired with his emotional distance helped to solidify Kara and Lee's emotional reliance on each other.

Or maybe not . . . :)

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

he forgets that they are still his children in need of more than just military guidance

This reminds me of the end of Black Market, when Adama says something to Lee about "You should have told me about the girl" and Lee just looks at him, like they've never had a conversation about someone Lee's dated (I use the word 'dated' loosely!) before in his life. Even Kara said in the mini that they only discussed Zak a couple times a year. After all that, it doesn't really surprise me that Adama doesn't try to talk to her in Torn, though I agree that he should have. But to think about it from his side, he's never really spent enough time with Lee to know how to talk to him. At least they eventually make some progress.

[lizziec]

like they've never had a conversation about someone Lee's dated (I use the word 'dated' loosely!) before in his life

I'm kind of inclined to think that this is exactly the problem. From what's established in ADitL, Bill was very much an absent parent and he and Lee clearly had issues even before Zak's death. Also, Bill, as he's established in the series, never seems like the kind of person who would be approachable over such things. He certainly seems clueless of how his son feels on NC about Kara (seen in his interactions with him the morning after in UB).

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

Well, I think he gets a bit of a pass there for being TOTALLY stoned. Which may be my favorite color on Bill Adama :)

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

That is one of my all time favourite quotes. Gotta love the Russians. *sigh*

I agree with a lot of what people have already said, but I wanted to try and post my thoughts in a more complete way before I start digging in with everyone else.

My first thought is this: I don't rate the premise that they don't have a sibling relationship because they didn't grow up together and because they aren't in love.

I've been thinking a lot recently about family, about the idea of the Physical family (your flesh and blood) in comparison to the family that you create for yourself, the family that you choose to love as opposed to the family that you are born to love, the family that lives at the heart of pretty much all my favourite shows and movies and books and other works of fiction, the family that holds you up when you're falling down not because they have to, but because they can't not.

And the thing I love about this kind of family, the thing that makes it so special and worthy and strong, is that there are no rules as to how you love the people you choose to love. Your brothers and sisters can be your friends and lovers and parents and children, anyone can be anything to anyone else and it doesn't make anything else they are to you mean anything less.

So, I think in a lot of ways their relationship is familial, at the same time as being romantic and sexual and emotional and mental. That complexity and lack of traditional definition is one of the reasons I love pilots so incredibly much. They are a family, in every way that you can be without being physically related to someone, a family, ill-formed and odd-shaped and whole.

When it comes to the admiral, I think that he doesn't really understand the choice of loving. I think that he thinks of love like praise, like a promotion, like a pat on the head, as something that should be earned, and appreciated, and held on to through good behaviour. I don't think his strength of feeling is any less than it should be, and I know that he loves them both, but I think to a certain extent his mechanism is broken (if you've watched Caprica and met Joe Adama, it's not hard to see why) and because of that the people who love him will always be a little bit broken around him as well.

"Do you think they understand each other better by knowing Bill?"

I actually think it's kind of the opposite. I think they both have a love for him that to a certain extent pits them against each other, because the fact of him represents different things to them, and their different needs for him to be a certain thing means that they come down on opposite sides of him, and that blinds them to each other's opinions.

So that's where i come down on this, let's go see what everyone thinks :)

Anslysis is fun :)

[lizziec]

I think that he thinks of love like praise, like a promotion, like a pat on the head, as something that should be earned, and appreciated, and held on to through good behaviour.

I can totally see this. I think it explains to some point why the relationship between him and Lee has grown and matured by the very end, because when Lee makes the decision to leave the military and become his own man I think he stops looking for the approval, perhaps accepting that as he's no longer in the military he just won't get it (this is certainly true after the initial awkwardness imo). I think towards the end of s4.5 - especially where Lee supports Bill while he's breaking down - they come to accept and support one another more than at any other time. From Bill's side I think it's because he sees in Lee at this point a number of the qualities that he has come to love about Roslin.

That sounds squickier than I intended...