Essay Day is Heeeeeeereeee!!!!
Jan. 16th, 2012 09:46 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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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’,
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On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS
Date: 2012-01-17 01:05 am (UTC)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)
Date: 2012-01-17 01:08 am (UTC)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
(full version at my journal) (http://winegums.livejournal.com/14077.html)
Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-17 01:26 am (UTC)(but let me just say OMGILOVEITSOMUCHALREADY!!!)
Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-17 01:32 am (UTC)Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-17 02:14 am (UTC)I love every word of this. Like every effing word. It makes me remember why I love them so much. I'm honestly a bit teary right now.
And now I'm going to proceed to quote the whole thing back at you....
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?
OMG yes-- this totally makes me flail. THEIR NAMES!!! THEIR EFFING NAMES. GAH!
Sorry if I got fangirl all over you right there. O_o
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.
OMGYESYESYESYESYESYES.
This.
I love all of you, and it bears repeating - you really are the best.
You too x 1000000000000!!!!
Honestly, I wish I was more coherent and eloquent right now, but my heart is just filled with squee.
**ALL THE TACKLEGLOMPS**
Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-17 02:26 am (UTC)and I have to eta to say how much I love that you love my rambling. It's an honour, considering how much fangirl squee I have had over your writing **blushes**
(I added a few caps over at my lj but other than that, it is completely the same)
Oh, and a reason I forgot to note in the original comment, but which is self-evident: they are so, so pretty. Both of them. It is hard to rival them for prettiness, but flat-out impossible to outdo them for chemistry (this despite the fact that Jamie and Katee are individually pretty good at sparking chemistry with costars, as seen on BSG and other shows)
**TACKLEGLOMPS YOU RIGHT BACK**
Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-18 04:37 pm (UTC)(and psst-- your essay is still making me smile. :D)
Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-20 11:16 am (UTC)I just love this. and yes to pretty much of it. well, I sort of shipped before but not like this. and the calling it - you're not the only one.
The fact that - and this is not so trivial, perhaps - Lee and Kara are adults when we first meet them.
THIS. Totally THIS.
and I second pretty much everything that you said but the last point - it's made of win.
Re: On Pilotlove, How It Began, and the Ship to END ALL SHIPS (continued)
Date: 2012-01-20 02:49 pm (UTC)