DPP: We made it all up!

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

Well hey there folks! It would seem that I am in charge of driving the good ole DPP bus this week, I warn you I don't have a licence and this is my first time behind the wheel, so you might wanna buckle up, but rest assured, if there is a bomb on board, I am all over that.

So last week we had a thinky thoughts kind of week thanks to trappermcintyre with lots of good historical musings and psychoanalysis and whatnot. I thought this week we'd do something a bit lighter, partly because I am not cool enough to come up with thinky thoughts DPP ideas, and partly just because, well, I think everyone's a bit tired and in need of some Piloty respite.

So, without further ado, except for the part where I said without further ado, let's get on with the show.

Today's post is all about one of my favourite things about fandom. Unsupported Fic Tropes. You all know them, we all use them, they exist in every fandom the world over. I personally love them, there's something fun about realising that every person who ever writes fic for a certain fandom employs these ideas and interactions without ever having seen them on the television.

Don't know what I mean? Did you ever hear Kara call Lee Flyboy? Did you ever see Helo give Pilots a friendly shove towards each other? Did you ever really see our two beloveds compete in a viper? I mean, they flew and fought and taunted and stuff, but I never heard any of that "I can outfly you any day" kind of trash talk that is the delightful staple of so many Academy!Pilots fics.

So that's today, Unsupported Fandom Tropes day. What are your favourites? What are your least favourites? What are your thoughts on them in general? I'd love to hear.

And, as is obviously always the case when it comes to DPP, if you feel the need to express your love for UFT's through the application of spontaneous fiction, well loved reccomendations, picatures or gif-times or any other kind of thing that makes you happy, well that's what the comments are for. :)

Here's to hoping we have a fun week, if y'all think I'm lame, well, that's what the comments are for too ;)



...I wanted a picture to put up so my post wouldn't be super dull, and I just really like this one :)

Comments

[bouncy-nut.livejournal.com]

Merciful Zeus! That pic. *gulp*

"Have you seen his arms? Those are good arms to have."

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

Hee! It makes you a little bit happy doesn't it? And oh gods the Bamceps. They would be good arms to have :)

Where is that quote from?

[kag523.livejournal.com]

I feel like I don't understand the question (because I can't wrap my head around tropes) but I WILL comment on a few things that I notice showing up repeatedly....

Helo calls Kara 'Buck rather than Starbuck in MANY fics. I don't think this ever really happens in canon.

Kara winning all the time at every triad game ever. I get that she's good, but I think fanon made her more of a card shark than she was meant to be. (But go ahead and argue this one.)

Lee playing piano. *giggles* (C'mon... Becca, we need the icon.)

Kara and Lee buddyroos with Zak in the Academy. Now, I get that until that last episode, we never really KNOW what their history is, but that seems like a pretty common theme.

*shifty eyes*

I think I'm off topic, so I'm going to leave a gif instead.

Happy Monday everyone! K

(http://s931.photobucket.com/albums/ad159/kag523/Gifs/?action=view&current=KaraandLee1000landing.gif)

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

No, you're right on topic. :D

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

Kara winning all the time at every triad game ever.

The only way this works is if we're also supposed to believe that Kara is not just talented, kind of absurdly talented, and also extremely lucky. Even professional poker players lose. Kara is not a statistical anomaly, special destiny or no.

[rachelmack.livejournal.com]

I luff this gif. LELAND YOU ARE SUCH A HOT DORK.

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

No, you totally understood, in fact you hit the nail on the head :D

'Buck is a good one, I completely forgot about that :)

I'm not going to argue about Kara being a cardshark, however I think that the notion that she is so awesome of it is at least inspired by canon, because there is a tendency to see Kara as the best at EVERYTHING. She's the best pilot, the best shot - in or out of the cockpit, she's almost a pro Pyramid player and she can drink men twice her size under the table. It is statistically impossible for her to win eery card game, but I don't necessarily think that it's unsupported by canon. :D

Also, that gif is excellent!

Happy Monday to you!

[winegums.livejournal.com]

yeah, the 'Buck thing. That NEVER happened in canon, and sometimes it bugs me when I notice it in (otherwise excellent) fic.

[amaliak.livejournal.com]

I was almost sure that Helo DID call Kara "Buck" in the Caprica arc, but I can't find it. Or maybe it was in the Demetrius arc? Crap, I don't remember. Though, I find it hilarious that when I tried to remember the exact phrase and dropped it into google, the first finding was one of my fics. Haha.

I need to brave watching the WHOLE series again, just looking for that.



cheers.
--Lex

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

Helo calls Kara 'Buck rather than Starbuck in MANY fics. I don't think this ever really happens in canon.

a lot of other things were (and are) very obvious to me as part of this but i never saw this. and is SO true.

btw, that gif is made of awesome.

[(Anonymous)]

I generally love the idea of the pool. I like most fics where the pilots are playing triad and gossiping about Kara and Lee and trying to figure out (unsuccessfully of course) what the hell is going on between those two. It's usually very funny and believable unless in its extreme form where the whole Galactica is obsessed about Apollo's and Starbucks's sex life.

I have noticed that many fics feature Papadama as someone who is very well aware of Kara and Lee's feelings for each other and is actually secretly hoping that they will get together (and give him many lovely grandchildren I suppose). I think this is very anti-canon and I really do not like it. In my opinion Adama has no clue what is going on between the pilots. If he ever heard any rumor about those two frakking he probably dismissed them as gossips, because after all he knows Kara and Lee so well and he knows that they are like a brother and sister to each other. If Adama ever found out about some of their "romantic" adventures he would probably feel shocked, betrayed and angry. On the show, the admiral seems to be quite possessive regarding Kara especially in front of his son. He often tries to prove to Lee that he knows Kara better than him, that he is closer to her and cares for he more.

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

I love the pool! There is some really awesome fic based around the pool :) Excellent made up trope!

Oh yeah, Bill is totally clueless when it comes to pilots, as evidenced by the incredibly cabalier manner in which he announces Kara's wedding to Lee, no one who had any kind of idea about their feelings at all would just, toss it out there like that.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

Well, canon has the pilots/officers running bets on when Hoshi and Gaeta will finally hook up so it's not such a huge stretch to assume that there might also once have been a pool on pilots - especially given how obvious they can sometimes be about their feelings to everyone except each other (e.g. KLG1 hangar-bay fight, Lee kissing Kara in front of a small crowd in Home 1, all the eyefrakking and getting in each other's faces).

[winegums.livejournal.com]

Re: DadAdama, I think that he remained clueless about pilots having feelings for each other for a long time - he saw them both as his children, and I doubt he realised how much Lee loved Kara (and in what way) until Kara's death. Also, Lee and Kara never went public with their relationship and were always more like siblings around him, so he just didn't get used to seeing them that way.

I mean, in Unfinished Business he clearly had NO IDEA just what the news of Kara's marriage did to Lee, and didn't figure out what the look on his son's face meant. I doubt he'd be angry with pilots if he knew they were in love, but as Commander/Admiral in S1 and S2, he'd probably not have been happy about the idea of them breaking regs etc (look at Razor, and what happens when Lee has to give Kara an order that he knows will lead to her death).

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I feel like most of what I've read has Aama sort of hesitantly approving of the relationship if he knows about it at all. I prefer clueless!Bill, honestly. I thought him being so oblivious to everything in UB was so awkward and funny. I do however think that after Kara died he may have started to realize that Lee was in love with her, but there's no solid reason he would have ever suspected Kara felt the same way.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

love the pool (as long as it makes sense of course). is the thing that people that spend a lot of time together - and far from their loved ones - do all the time. (oh, good faculty years).

and Bill Adama - never saw a more clueless parent. is like he's blind to that and all. i mean he reads everybody so well and then all of the sudden when comes to his own kids... no clue.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

Well in Captain's Hand Lee tells Kara she's the best pilot they got, and she says it's about time you admit that. So it's fair to say they are competitive, but it's all in good fun

[howlinchickhowl.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I fully admit that they're competitive, but I just meant that you don't specifically see them face off over flying, they bandy back and forth about who's better, but never in the kind of way where you think they actually spend time trying to best each other, it's more of an observation of skill kind of thing I think.

Or...I forgot about that bit in Captain's Hand...:$

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I think Kara questioning Lee's orders is a total fanon myth. I don't think she ever disobeys an order from him in canon. (And there's a story in there that I'm going to get back to telling some day... ;)

What else? That Kara is Lee's wingman. I don't believe they have permanent wingmen like Goose and Maverick in Top Gun or anything. He does offer to fly her wing very significantly in Maelstrom and occasionally someone will order "So-and-so, you're on me..." or "Form up on my six" but there's no real canon basis to think she always flies Lee's wing. She's a squadron leader. Plus there's not even any canon basis to the idea that they can pull off magical in-synch flying stunts together. But it is fun.. ;)

[winegums.livejournal.com]

Kara flew Lee's wing in 33, but CAPs were always rotated so I doubt they'd have been flying together every single time they went out. They seem to do a bit of teaming-up in other ships though, with her first outing for the Blackbird. And there's also that amazing Viper-Raider formation flying in YCGHA, though that wasn't really by CAP design.

Also, she does disobey an order from him in the miniseries, when his bird lost power and she refused to let him go down even when they were the last two left out there (which resulted in the amazing Viper-ramming scene). That and her early S3 antics with breaking formation, landing her bird on bingo fuel and nearly getting herself killed - but it's clearly implied that that's not Starbuck's usual form. So I'd say the basis is slim but it at least exists, unlike say Helo playing Cupid etc.

[(Anonymous)]

It is funny that Helo is such a Kara/Lee shipper in the fics while in the canon he kicks for the Kara/Sam and Lee/Dee teams.

From some of the scenes in UB and UBEX we can assume that Helo is at least aware of the tension between those two. The canon shows him as someone close to Kara, someone who can understand her and is a good friend of her. He of all people on Galactica would probably know that there's more to them than just friends or CAG/hotshot pilot. I think Helo is smart enough to never get between Starbuck and Apollo. He probably knows from personal experience that asking Kara about her feelings for Lee would earn him a trip to sickbay.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

There was someone who accurately pointed out to me that Helo never really saw any Kara/Lee romance and maybe only got the gist of things through Athena, who seemed to have some inside information. Helo saw Kara with Sam on Caprica and he seemed aware of her desires for Sam in Scar. :/

Regardless of all of that, I would say that he'd probably support whatever she wanted to make her happy. And even though I have used him from time to time (he really is convenient), I generally find Helo as the matchmaker a bit of an overdone trope.

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

As much as I love Academy stories, they're completely fanon. We have no indication that Lee and Kara would have been there at the same time, although it's more interesting than sad Lee's-the-third-wheel shore leaves to explain the obvious friendship between Lee and Kara.

Is it fanon that Kara broke his sim records? I feel like it is.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

I love them too, and they're total fanon - though you could partly blame that on the fact that canon dealt with their first meeting so late in the series (right in the finale), leaving miles of room for Academy-based speculation.

Also, Lee mentions going to War College and Kara mentions the Fleet Academy - for all we know, he and Kara didn't even attend the same place for their training, though I'm not 100% sure how military education in the Colonies was structured.

[(Anonymous)]

The "Arrow of Apollo jokes" is a great fandom invention that they really should have used in the show.

One question. The fics often mention that Lee was stationed on Atlantia under Nagala during the time of the decommissioning ceremony. Is Lee's assignment prior to the cylon invasion ever mentioned in canon? I don't remember.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

BSGWiki does mention Atlantia, but in reference to other characters, Tyrol and Adama, in particular. I've used Atlantia for Lee in at least one, maybe two fics, mostly because I remember it. ;) Here is what bsgwiki says.

Atlantia is selected by Admiral Nagala as his flagship during the Fall of the Twelve Colonies following the destruction of Picon Fleet Headquarters.

Atlantia is soon reported destroyed over Virgon, a victim of the backdoors created by the Cylons using the compromised Command Navigation Program. As a result of her destruction, Commander William Adama assumes command of the Colonial Fleet and proceeds to Ragnar Anchorage (TRS: Miniseries).

It was on Atlantia that William Adama made his 1,000th Viper landing (TRS: "Act of Contrition") and received the promotion to Major (TRS: "Hero"). At one point in his career, Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol served aboard Atlantia before being assigned to Galactica (TRS: "Resistance").

[nazkey.livejournal.com]

*waves* Hi everyone!

Fun topic!

Okay, so in addition to the ones everyone's mentioned, one of my personal LEAST favorite tropes in fanon is that Kara is a total slut. There's no evidence in canon that she's sleeping around (other than one comment by Hot Dog when he's clearly pissed at her and what Sam tells Lee on the algae planet which always sounded like it was coming from a place of jealousy/anger IMO). I think Kara would be way more discriminating in her partners than the random marine or knuckle dragger. *shrugs*

My favorite "fun" tropes are actually most of the ones mentioned: I love Helo as matchmaker, really get a kick out of it when Papadama is not a clueless git and love the idea of the pool. But then again, I like mah ship all happy and whatnot ;-)

[amaliak.livejournal.com]

(lolz, had to use that one. because i'm such a troll.)

I agree with all.

[amaliak.livejournal.com]

You know, quite some time ago, there was a discussion between leiascully and myself about Canon vs Fanon for pilots.

We can thank Jamie Bamber for saying that Lee is happiest in the kitchen (his own personal canon).

Also, Lee & Kara in the CAG's office? Does the CAG have an office? I don't think we ever see/hear of one. Nor about supply closets (Galactica doesn't seem to have them?).

You know, some time ago, latteaddict posts a MASSIVE Pilots!Canon vs Fanon post (w/ photos!). But I think it's f-locked. (http://latteaddict.livejournal.com/172988.html)

Something that she brought up was that fanon seems to prefer to talk about Lee being a great dad while Kara wouldn't be so much (or it would take her time to be so), whereas canon has showed us the opposite is likely to be true.

I'm also going to quote her verbatim because I think it's so true:
Despite Kara’s cowboy ways she’s a secret commitment-addict. Her choices reveal she craves structure and safety. Noteworthy commitments are religion, the military, Zak & Sam. She loves to push HARD against the boundaries of those commitments but she seems to love that there are eventual limits to reel her back in. Lee never really entered this category, I think every time she was with him it felt like stepping off a cliff. Plus Lee was just as likely to reject her as want her so there was no structure or safety there.

Thanks for asking about this!
cheers.
--Lex

[nazkey.livejournal.com]

There was a discussion between who and yourself bb? Fix your coding!

Ah .. the awesome Latte and her total awesomeness. *bookmarks meta for late night reading*

Did you say Lee in the kitchen?

(http://s853.photobucket.com/albums/ab92/nazkey/?action=view&current=StarSup_108.jpg)

(http://s853.photobucket.com/albums/ab92/nazkey/?action=view&current=StarSup_097.jpg)

(http://s853.photobucket.com/albums/ab92/nazkey/?action=view&current=StarSup_088.jpg)

(http://s853.photobucket.com/albums/ab92/nazkey/?action=view&current=STARSUP5.jpg)

[acsgrlie.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this counts but I've seen a lot of fics use the "We need to start making babies" trope.

Hotdog is also usually the one who is the Outsider POV when it comes to pilots. The one who sees them sneak a hookup in a supply closet or a kiss in the rack. But in canon, he'd probably be the last one to suspect or know something was between them.

[givsgr8face.livejournal.com]

I'm a relative newbee too, I speak up every now and then, but (as a reader) I've noticed pretty much everything stated in the above. I actually like what I've just come to accept as the "Helo Trope." I know that Katee and Tahmoh have mentioned during Con questioning that they just created this backstory friendship for their characters, so I don't mind the different interpretations of their character's friendship in fanon. Plus, I like that there is someone other than Adama in Kara's corner. Even in the show he's always had her back almost unconditionally. He's always there.

And... I mean... really, that pic makes me want to do some seriously bad things to that body... just sayin...