Essay Day is Heeeeeeereeee!!!!

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

wicked_sassyhas graciously allowed me to co-host with her today and bring you
ESSAY DAY:  PILOTS PROSE FOR A NEW WAVE OF FANGIRLS (and boys).

What awaits you:

Essays.  Haiku.  Malarkey.  The Shipper Nation Make-A-Wish Foundation.

For those of you who have prepared essays beforehand:
First off, gold star for you!!!  Way to prepare ahead.  Now….
     1.     Go forth and post your essay.  (In the comments is great, if it’s too long, just post a comment with a link to your LJ.)
     2.     As a reward for your planning-ahead-ness, you get to participate in the Shipper Nation Make-A-Wish Foundation, which means that you make a fannish wish (for fic, for icons or graphics, for vids, for icons, for meta for hijinks and tomfoolery, whatever)—and wicked_sassyand I will endeavor to make sure that wish is granted. (Which may entail us begging for favors and/or enduring periods of indentured servitude for the cause but do not fear—we shall make it happen!)

For the unprepared:
     1.     Yes, you still get punch and pie (This is a Bee!joint, yo.  Everyone gets punch and pie.)
     2.     Please please please—come and leave us a few words on why you ship pilots like whoa and what makes them near and dear to your heart.
     3.     If you do, you get to participate in the Make-A-Wish Program as described above.  Huzzah!!!  :D

For everyone:
Pilots Haiku-Off, right frakking now.
17 syllables.  Knock yourself out.  Bring me your crack, your angst, your banter, your sexin’, your green plastic friendship, your swoon, your UST.  Just bring it.

Comments

Some haiku to get us going...

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

A tag, a ring
Ashes for the rest.
Don’t care — this is all that matters.

Re: Some haiku to get us going...

[winegums.livejournal.com]

UNFFFFFFFFFF. This one just hit me SO HARD.

(never getting over my bbs. NEVER.)

Why Pilots Are My OTP aka Why Nicole Falls In Love With Made Up Characters Instead of Real People

[word-vomity.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: This is all Bee's doing. Anything stupid I say herein is her fault alone. Any flashes of brilliance, however, are all me. Any views expressed that read like the ramblings of a lunatic . . . are probably accurate reflections of my actual character. I reserve the right to completely contradict myself at any given moment as I'm only ever around 50% certain of anything I ever say.

*Ahem*

PILOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the thing about pilots, they reflect everything I want but will never have and likely, shouldn't ever have. They are both so many little pieces of me and as me, I want my separate parts to be together or the world feels even more askew than the world usually feels.

Individually, they are both complex and meaty characters in their own right, but when paired...GOOD GOD! They leap through the screen and electrify my insides like very few things do. They are damaged and scared and tender and cruel and NOTHING is halfway with them. Everything is right there; all the things that people are supposed to feel but never let themselves actually feel, all the ways we hurt each other and fix each other. They reach out of the screen to confirm the most basic of human desires for me, the knowledge that we are not alone; that all communication, no matter how flawed or frail is a glimpse of immortality. And maybe those briefest moments of connection are the only form of immortality that we can touch.

Mostly, they make me believe (in the most vague and intangible way possible) that real love is possible. Even when it doesn't look like most people think that it should. Cuz all the love I've had in my life has been messy and dysfunctional and angsty and raw and terrible and no one has ever understood it from the outside. And then I see pilots and think, “it's OK, these things don't always make sense but it doesn't mean they aren't real.”

And a good friend of mine named Buffy Summers once said, "I know it's nuts, but part of me believes that real love and passion have to go hand-in-hand with pain and fighting." And then she staked a vampire and said, "I wonder where I get that from?” And it always stuck with me. If you love something so deeply that it scares you, you'll often be brought to terrifying places because of that love and fear causes people to act rashly, thoughtlessly, defensively. And so, conflicts are inevitable.

My most recent ex (I swear, this is relevant) would not fight with me. Absolutely never. Not when we disagreed, not when I insulted his sexual prowess, not even when I broke up with him when I suspected him of cheating. He was unflappable despite his fervent declarations of love and loyalty, but he had no fire in him. And if you're not willing to fight for the things you claims to love, can you truly love them? Nope. And guess what? He was cheating.

Part 2

[word-vomity.livejournal.com]

Which is why, even though it hurts to watch, I love that pilots fight for/with/against one another. It's proof that their feelings run deeply. Even when the world doesn't notice, understand, or care; how the rest of the world views their relationship is irrelevant to the fact that they are very much connected to one another. More-so than many of the married couples around them. That strikes me particularly hard because I very much despise the idea that for a relationship to be sanctioned as legitimate by those around it, it must be cemented by marriage. Eww! It just rubs me wrong. Love should exist where it exists regardless of its social status. I hate the belief that spouses are more than fiances who are more than boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. It's insulting. And as someone who's never much felt that drive towards marriage that everyone else seems to feel, this resonates for me. Pilots don't need all that external junk to love each other. Hell, half the time they don't even need words. They are so in synch that looks and touches speak for them more than any dialogue ever could. More often than not, what they don't say to one another matter much more than what they do. I love that. It feels so real. So honest. If I'm being truthful, frakked up people just make more sense to me and always have. I feel a kinship with them like we're eternally bound together in some cosmic joke that somehow never stops being funny. Plus, broken people are just so much more interesting to be around. Truly, I speak from experience. People who've got their lives together are are mostly real yawners in my experience. Give me the rejects of humanity! They got the stories I wanna hear. They got the ideas in want in on and the cajones to make questionable decisions based on those questionable ideas.

So, do I love them because they hurt me? Def. Am I a masochist for this frakked up love/hate amalgamation which is pilots? Yup. Do they call to me as a fellow member of their misanthropic, damaged tribe? Totes. Should this worry me? Probably. Am I just making up questions at this point because my brain stopped paying attention to this little essay about 3 paragraphs ago and I've now forgotten my point? … umm, I'd prefer not to answer that question madame prosecutor.

But honestly, if it was just all hurt with these two I would certainly not still carry my fannish torch, but it's not. Because when they eventually both stop pushing for even a moment, we get the most glorious glimpses into how beautiful they can be with one another and it sends away all the pain ever. And maybe who needs a lifetime of alright when you can have moments of bliss like that?

In the end, theirs was a journey worth traveling and it touched the deep places in my cold, cold heart in unexpected and wonderful ways that no other pairing ever has. Plus, they are so, so insanely hot that it is just not even fair. Talk about fishing with dynamite! Yes, I am this shallow.

Yeah, it's late and my brain is getting cracky so let me just leave you with this little gem to gnaw on. Like Rhianna once said, “We found love in a hopeless place.” Our pilots did that and it is amazing. And that, my peeps, makes my own hopeless place a little less hopeless. And that means that my life is better for having known them be they fictional characters or not.

So cheers to pilot!love in all it's terrible and transcendent forms. Pilots foreva yo!

Re: Why Pilots Are My OTP aka Why Nicole Falls In Love With Made Up Characters Instead of Real Peopl

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that I love how you manage to casualy toss me under the bus in the disclaimer? Bwahahahahahaha!

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

I'm very sorry to say that I didn't manage to finish in time. I hope to be able to finish my project in the next 24 hours. I hope that this is an acceptable compromise. If i don't manage to finish, I'll come back and leave a comment instead of my essay.

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

No worries!

It's entirely up to you. If you want to wait and finish and post later, that's fine, but feel free to bring what you have as well. Either way, I hope you'll come and play in the comments! :D

Ode to a too-small towel.

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

Handtowels do exist
On battleships in space
(and fangirls rejoice)

Re: Ode to a too-small towel.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

That we do, a lot.

[wicked-sassy.livejournal.com]

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

Is this working? I can't see it on my computer for some reason....

cracky haikus here we go!

[wicked-sassy.livejournal.com]

blameless kara smirks
vipers exhilarate, strut
apollo panting

Re: cracky haikus here we go!

[wicked-sassy.livejournal.com]

small blue bits away
dust specks gather in her eyes
on lee's toes gone now

Haiku----angsty AND Sam,,,,,,not my usual combo

[kballgetlost.livejournal.com]

Lee, the name at her lips
Bit back while she came
In Sam's unknowing arms

Fangilznboys

[innibis.livejournal.com]

Quivering with lust,
Pouring over minutiae,
Pedge to OTP.

Re: Fangilznboys

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

This is why I love you.

[useyourlove.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, guys. Mine is almost 4000 words of insanity and me going off on wild tangents, getting over-excited, and occasionally bringing all this back to the vague literary analysis that I was attempting.

Pilots and the Widening (Double-)Gyre, in Which No One Can Get Dana to Shut Up and Stop Rambling (http://useyourlove.livejournal.com/644756.html)

The sad thing is, I could still expand this in so many places if I had full control of my brain. I WROTE TOO MUUUUCH.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

My mind is broken right now, but I opened the link in a tab and will be there until my mind is well again and I can read/comment properly.

Short abstract of an unfinished article.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

As the subject line of this comments says this will be a Short abstract of an unfinished article.

First I should say that I was probably under the influence of a lot of beer and holiday related fic reading in the moment that I accepted to write this. And that as you all know I had a short panic attack when I realized that this is actually happening. BUT, today during work hours, while waiting for a review on an article I had what I consider to be a very strange, possibly successful idea - this will not be an essay - because the last time that I wrote one of those I was in high-school and the years were still starting with 19... THIS WILL BE AN ARTICLE. Unfinished, but still an scientific article, written under the IEEE official template. I'll post here the short version of the abstract and the first draft of the first paragraph (with the proposed titles of the rest of the paragraphs) and I'll let you all decide if I should finish it or not. In other words I'll wait your acceptance for this article.

(http://s1121.photobucket.com/albums/l512/Ana-Maria_Dumitrescu/?action=view&current=Untitled-1.jpg)

Re: Short abstract of an unfinished article.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

OMG THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST THING EVER. :D:D:D:D AMAAAAAZING!

(http://s784.photobucket.com/albums/yy126/scifishipper/BSG/BSG%20GIFS/?action=view&current=slowclap2.gif)

Why I love Pilots!

[requialexa.livejournal.com]

So this is me being almost prepared! Please to be remembering I worked 3 12 hour nights (except for the one that turned out to be 8) over the weekend and slept very little because of all the fic I had to read. I have to work again tonight, so I'm rushing to post this because it is SRSBZNESS!!!
---
I tried multiple times to start this series but never really made it past the opening sequence with the Six and her Kiss of Death. And then one time I watched and couldn't really stop.

It feels like I can't remember a time without BSG in my life. I felt that way about Doctor Who, as well, so I hope it's a good sign. I can be so completely fickle that I'm reluctant to come out in any fandom because I'm liable to disappear at any given moment. It is with some measure of trepidation that I even begin to admit to myself and others just how much I love Pilots.

I know when I first watched, I was struck most by Starbuck and her gender-bending awesomeness. She was everything I strived to be in my early youth, but she was a lot more fearless (and older lol) that I was. I don't even understand now why I first felt the chemistry between Bill and Kara, and not the chemistry between Lee & Kara (I mean, I still seethe chemistry between Bill and Kara but I don't know I why I was so struck with them I couldn't see the Pilot love). Maybe it was the Contrarian in me (quite likely, as my first name is, IRL, Mary) that pushed me away from the obvious, canonical couple, to the rare pair.

It was Acts of Contrition that sold me on the whole show. I was sobbing through most of the episode (there's actually 2 parts there, right? I love them so much I didn't even stop to memorize episode numbers and names!), and fully vested in the interests of the characters. I no longer had an agenda of my own for these characters. I loved them as they were and I wanted them to be happy with what they had...and Pilots had each other. God, the drama, the interplay between Lee & Bill & Kara and the memories of Zak just killed me...and then Starbuck was down on the face of the planet and Laura was so mean (but right!) about leaving her behind and I was so .

Re: Why I love Pilots! (con't)

[requialexa.livejournal.com]

And now for other reasons, but with less essay...

I identify with both characters. I have been both at one time or another, or wish I was one or the other at any given moment.

I love that canon clearly shows them being so into each other so that I don't have to make mountains out of molehills.

I fell for Dawson's Creek back in the Day because it was Wish Fulfillment. The couple that wouldn't get together, DID. And then the next pairing that COULD not happen, DID! So when I got to BSG, I was done with wish fulfillment and wanted to go back to UST again.

Doctor Who gave me a whole lot of UST but also a whole lot of guessing and filling in the blanks. A whole lot of "How *does* the Doctor love Rose?" and a whole lot of sticking my head in the sand and seeing things only with shippy goggles on. And I was fine with that. But then BSG came along and I couldn't deny the chemistry between Lee & Kara for long, and the writers belssedly gave me more than snippets...they saw the chemistry, too, it wasn't just me being shippy. (I know, I know they did that on purpose, but I don't wanna be critical, I wanna enjoy the rush!)

When Kara yelled out Lee's name while having secks with Baltar, I nearly fell off the couch. I couldn't believe the writers acknowledged their chemistry that blatantly that early in the series! It blew me away. And then....

I love Pilots because they punch each other. I've always picked on boys because they weren't allowed to hit girls. So I could push and push and push. I always thought in this day & age of equality, that not hitting people because of their gender was really stupid. I mean, Just Don't Hit People would be a much better policy, imho, but we're human. I don't see how hitting little girls (equals) leads to wife-beating, iykwim?There's so much more damage and psychological stuff going on there besides defending oneself that I know they're not related. So I love that Pilots punch each other. I would love to be able to take a punch the way Starbuck does. And To dish one out like she does.

I love the complexity of their gender bendedness. I love that they aren't just reverse archetypes. They Are just people. Frakked up people, but people nonetheless.

And what really drove me to come out and introduce myself and to ignore my responsibilties to ship Pilots is the Shipper Nation. The fic is amazingly literate! Doctor Who fanfic with ruin you if you're not careful because there are decades worth of fic and most of it written by people who are college-educated. Yes there are lemons and badfic but there is a plethora of excellent fic. A bottomless font of fic, if you will. But BSG is right up there. BSG writers are adults for the most part, who know how to use spell-check and who can formulate sentences when inspired. And the Pilots writers are even better :D I've said if before and I'll say it again: Pilots writers are so delightful! Y'all can laugh at your tropes and assumptions all while being the single most supportive group of fans I've ever seen (not that I've seen a lot, but still). The fun here and on all the comms is unforgettable and intoxicating! Yes, Shipper Nation has it all over the other folk.

I love the fic and I'm still not hardly half way through with it. And then I go and reread it. And again, because the last time I read that one, I hadn't finished the series yet. I got spoiled to some stuff just because it was in the fic and I didn't heed the warnings. I have memories of stuff happening that I would swear was canon, that turn out to be from fic! Pilots are pretty and infinite. You can put them anywhere and they'll stick! In the right hands (and there are a lot of those around, see above), they are true to themselves even when they're sociopaths, or spies or reincarnated.

And finally, my most personal and silly reason (and certainly not most important reason) to be a pilots fangirl? Because of all the ships in all the world, they have the coolest nickname! Maybe I'm biased or naiive, but "Pilots!" totally pwns all the other names of all the other ships, even the ones that blend names. Don't even get me started on the wordplay inherent in "shipping" "Pilots!"

On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS

[winegums.livejournal.com]

(full version at my lj) (http://winegums.livejournal.com/14077.html)

So unprepared here, but let me start this by saying: before pilots, I never really got shipping, and couldn't get how other people could possibly be into it. If I liked a couple onscreen and the show chose to split them up, I'd feel bad about it for the rest of the episode and then wait for new love interests, whom I'd be equally into, as long as they weren't completely lame.

Pilots changed all that. When I first watched BSG, I went in cold - not exactly the most ideal shipping condition. My first reaction to being presented with pilots individually - the testy young woman yelling at a pack of tourists "make a hole!" and later trolling her XO, the young man with daddy issues who didn't rally want to be there at all - was a mixture of intrigue and irritation, and eventual surprise when I saw that the cranky young jock had gone down to the brig to see the resident hotshot (followed by, to my eternal shame, a very blasé "huh, so these two are going to hook up, eh? I call it now.").

I ended up eating those words. By the time Miniseries Part 2 rolled around, Lee Adama and Kara Thrace - as individuals - had a fangirl in me, and Kara's devasted face when Chief told her about Lee's supposed death was giving me wibbles, but it wasn't until The I'm-Not-Dead Reunion of Beauty that internal alarms started going off, alerting me to the fact that I'd basically fallen HARD for a couple who were (given what this show was like) going to be put through unprecedented levels of PAIN.



The cause for this? You see, standard protocol for I'm-Not-Dead Reunions, or relationships in general, on tv is basically this: some things are admitted in words, some kissing is done, and if people are not up for outmaking then at the very least there will be hugging. What really sent me over the edge into full-on shipper territory was the fact that this didn't happen. It wasn't the forbidden lovers having celebratory PDA in the corridors of Galactica who now had a death grip on my rapidly melting heart: it was the forbidden lovers who were resolutely refusing to so much as hug, who couldn't even admit just how glad they were to see each other but whose eyes said everything that they couldn't own up to and who made a handshake - a handshake! - look so intimate that I'd have felt like less of a voyeur if they'd actually been outmaking.


(don't get me wrong, I was mentally yelling at them : "JUST KISS!!!" the entire time. But some perverse part of me would actually not have fallen for them as hard as I did if they'd satisfied my craving then and there.)

By the end of the minseries, following Kara's confession and the retina-detaching Viper rescue that was a metaphorical frak, I was fully initiated into pilotshipping. And the show, when I began watching that, bore that out fully - the joking, the banter, the way they could incinerate a room by just looking at each other, the fact that they were equals in their relationship, even the arguments, the body language that basically said everything their dialogue refrained from, the fact that they actually got punchy with each other(!!!!!), all with heaping doses of PAIN to make anyone who loved them both want to curl up in a ball or yell at the writers. Pilotlove is like no other fictional love I've ever encountered, simply because pilots are like no other fictional couple I'd ever encountered, before or since. Where other couples spell things out and get talky about their relationships, pilots dodge it at every available chance, even as their body language gives them away. Where other characters who are half of a couple are portrayed as Good Guys, pilots are frakked-up and they know it. Where other characters spend time meaninglessly squabbling and then being "friends" as nothing more than a prelude to a romantic relationship, pilots have conflicts that are never trivial and their friendship is as real and important to them as their non-platonic feelings for each other - unlike most opposite-sex friendships on tv, this is not window-dressing for a romance.

Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)

[winegums.livejournal.com]

With pilots, it simply boils down to this: words are unnecessary (and when they do use words, they don't take the conventional form) and they are connected in every way. And after pilots, every other couple on tv just looks insipid in comparison.

When I first fell in love with pilots and went online to check out the fandom, I landed smack in the middle of shipwars where I felt like one of a very, very tiny minority of pilotshippers, where everyone seemed to be screaming at the tops of their Internet lungs about how horrible and wrong they were together, and how "soap opera" of a sci-fi show to dare to deal with character development. Bewildered and wondering whether everyone was even watching the same show as I was, I fled and suffered in silence for YEARS until I finally screwed up the courage to finish watching the last season, and discovered this corner of fandom with people as devastated by what was done to them as I was, and to whom pilots were every bit as beloved. And because canon gave us so much pain and refused to really do pilots justice, I don't really want to catalogue the hurt: I'd much rather celebrate reasons to love them than reopen old wounds. So here goes, with my Top Five Trivial Reasons Why Pilots Are The Best Ship Ever (because if we really had to get specific about the Major Reasons, that would be pretty much every episode and scene they're ever in together, and some when they're apart too):


1. Their names - even their names! - sound cool when you say them together. Just say it: Lee Adama and Kara Thrace. Don't they sound like they should be the badass subjects of an epic romance that defies every rule in the romance handbook?

2. Back on the subject of names again, I LOVE that our ship is known as simply "pilots". It's almost like pilotshipper code, and so much cooler than run-of-the-mill portmanteau ship names.

3. The word "eyefrak". It's not explicitly pilot-specific, but it might as well be, because let's face it, it's not really an eyefrak if the people at either end are not Lee Adama and Kara Thrace.

4. The fact that - and this is not so trivial, perhaps - Lee and Kara are adults when we first meet them. Maybe I should put it better - I've watched way too many romantic relationships on tv between teenagers, and between people who might as well be teenagers, and it gets old really fast. Pilots are adults, sure, but young adults, and I love that we get to see them basically acting like big kids as well as dealing with the grown-up stuff too.

5. (and this is kind of extraneous because it's not canon) THE FANDOM IS THE BEST. BSG fandom at large, but pilotshippers in particular, are such a talented bunch that I'm frequently in awe of just how talented y'all are. In fifteen years of fandom involvement and fic-reading, BSG fic is easily the best I've ever read - this is the only fandom whose fic has ever caused me to stop reading actual books (!!!) and I really believe that it's because it takes superior taste to love the show and pilots in the first place (my pet theory is that it is because we're all well past our teenage years, i.e. the time of life when most badfic is written).
And I'm so, so grateful for the fact that comms like no_takebacks exist as a haven of pilotlove and to occasionally inspire people into having a go at giving our pilots a slightly happier time than canon did. I love all of you, and it bears repeating - you really are the best.


(full version at my journal) (http://winegums.livejournal.com/14077.html)

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