bible talk. show bible, that is.
Jan. 20th, 2012 09:29 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
wicked-sassy.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no_takebacksHappy Friday everyone! Hope your week has gone well, that you're well-rested, and have had some nice things to eat. That always puts you ahead of the game.
Y'all have been wonderfully enthusiastic in your responses to this week's posts. So far, we've had:
Today I'd like us to think about the infamous show bible (link to pdf of show bible is here).
Below, I've copied and pasted what RDM said in his bible about Lee and Kara, how he envisioned their back stories and what he thought would play out for them in the show. Today's assorted DPP questions are:
*What differences do you see for Lee & Kara between the bible and canon?
*What would you have expected to see either in the bible, or in canon, that wasn't there? Or, a bit of a twist on the question: What would you have written into canon from the get-go?
*Does anything in the bible surprise you? If so, what is it, and why?
*What's your own personal head!canon? (We touched on this a little bit on Wednesday in what we don't know about Kara and Lee, and some folks mentioned some head!canon items--now's your chance to list them out! Post early, post often!) Can you recommend some fics that suit your personal head!canon?
Captain Lee Adama
Lee was born and raised on the colony of Caprica, in the same coastal city in which both his parents and grandparents were born. A headstrong scrappy boy, he was forever getting into fights at school with much bigger kids and usually coming away with the better of the encounter. His parents divorced when he was eight years old and he and his younger brother,
Zak, were raised by their mother. Their father visited when he could, but the military life often took him away for long months at a time and Lee and Zak grew up with only snapshot memories of their father. Nevertheless, both boys grew up worshipping the distant man who periodically showed up at the house in his blue uniform with a big smile and a toy bought in some exotic port.
Despite his mother's misgivings, Lee always wanted to be a pilot, to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Fleet. He studied hard in school, aced his entrance exams to the Academy and graduated number three in his class. He was immediately accepted into flight school and again quickly rose to the top of his class. His superiors marked him down early
as a young man on the rise, an officer destined for the top commands and eventually the Admiralty itself. It was about this time that Lee and his father began to have a falling out. The boy's hero worship had turned into the young man's resentments at being abandoned and neither he nor his father knew how to bridge the gap and so the visits became rare and the phone calls grew terse.
While Lee was at flight school, his younger brother Zak was just entering the Academy. Zak had a tougher time of it than Lee, constantly falling behind in his studies, always on report for some infraction of the rules, forever one step away from being bounced out.
Lee took top honors at flight school and soon was on his way into a Viper squadron and a plum assignment on the Atlantia- flagship of the fleet. Meanwhile, Zak barely graduated from the Academy and when he still wanted to go to flight school, Lee tried to dissuade him from even applying Lee loved his brother, would do anything for him, but it was obvious to Lee that Zak wasn't really cut out for the military life, much less the rigors of flight training. The only reason Zak even applied to the Academy was because he worshipped the ground their father walked on - as Lee himself once did. Lee tried to convince Zak to seek another job in the fleet, but Zak wouldn't hear of it; he wasn't going to be the only Adama without wings on his uniform.
Zak's application was turned down and that seemed to be the end of it, but then a phone call was placed to the flight commandant from Commander Adama and a place suddenly opened up for Zak. Lee was furious, couldn't believe his father would pull strings like this, but there was nothing he could do but hope for the best and continue to encourage Zak in his training. Then came yet another shock - Zak wrote Lee to tell him he was engaged to one of his instructors at flight school Lee made time to come visit and it was then that he met Kara Thrace for the first time. She was the polar opposite of Zak - where he was quiet, reserved, almost painfully sensitive, she was brash, loud, and had a thick hide. Lee liked her immediately. Maybe liked her too much. And he was pretty sure that she felt the same, but never seriously considered anything further. Lee wished them well and left to rejoin his squadron.
Two weeks later, Zak's plane went down while he was flying a routine solo mission and he was killed. Lee's resentments and grief boiled over at the funeral and he lashed out at his father, blaming him directly for his brother's death, saying in so many words that Adama had all but killed bis own son. Father and son never spoke again.
Lee spent the next two years focusing on his career, having no personal life and working to become the perfect fighter pilot.
He applied to, and was accepted to test pilot school, the highest honor for any pilot and a sure sign of his rise to the top. He was at test pilot school when the orders came in to report aboard Galactica for her decommissioning ceremony. Lee Adama has his father's strength of character and a virtually inviolable code of ethics. He can be stubborn and difficult, often drives his pilots too hard and himself even harder. He rarely gives anyone a break and never gives himself one. From his mother, he's inherited a secret love of cooking and food, which he indulges whenever he can, the rigid pilot finding an out to let his creative juices flow only in a kitchen filled with steaming pots and pans.
He's a young man with a lot of anger, a lot of resentments and a lot of frustrations who knows not what to do with them.
But he's also a fair and decent human being whose deeply felt sense of right and wrong have kept him afloat when so many around him have sunk. He's the kind of man few would call friend, but many would follow into the jaws of hell. He is his father's son.
Lieutenant Kara Thrace
Kara Thrace was born on the Picon colony, but she was raised all over the twelve colonies. The daughter of a career enlisted woman, her childhood was spent bouncing from one military outpost to another. Kara's father, Dreilide, was a frustrated musician, forever trying to write songs and make it into the big time and forever failing to make his mark. Her mother, Socrata, was a Sergeant Major in the Colonial Marines, attached to an artillery company and a decorated veteran of the Cylon War.
Kara was a tough and tough-minded child, more interested in sports than in the military, she dreamed of playing Pyramid in the big leagues someday. At every base, there was a Pyramid court and Kara was a born athlete, able to both slice and duck around opponents on her way to planting the slippery ball into the goal or to block and tackle the opposing players on
defense. Her mother had won the Star of Valor in the Cylon War and this honor entitled her daughter to a place at the Fleet Academy if she wanted it. At first, Kara wasn't interested and wanted to pursue a college scholarship, but her school records were spotty at best. Finally realizing that the Academy had one of the best Pyramid teams at the collegiate level,
Kara decided to enter the Academy, serve her three years required enlistment and then resign and pursue a professional Pyramid career.
Kara played Pyramid well at the Academy, and was being actively scouted by the major league teams when a vicious hit shattered her right knee during a playoff game in her sophomore year. Even after months of reconstructive surgeries and physical therapy, it was clear that the leg would never be the same. Kara would have to look for a different career.
Depressed, she applied to all the various post-graduate training schools, but doubted she'd be accepted to any of them with her academic record. But to her shock, she scored higher on the flight training entrance exam than anyone in the history of the program and she was accepted into the next class.
Kara was what the instructors called a true stick and rudder woman; someone who flew by instinct, not instruction. To her own surprise, Kara found herself in love with flying. She'd never thought that anything could equal the feeling she had on the Pyramid court, but flying actually surpassed it. She found a freedom in the air she'd never experienced before, a joy
and effortlessness that was new and welcome into her hardscrabble life. All thoughts of leaving the service after three years were gone. She would be a pilot for the rest of her life - that is, unless she was kicked out of the Fleet.
Kara hated taking orders. Hated military protocol. Hated the rules and regulations that were part and parcel of the military life. Her record at the Academy and then at flight school was littered with demerits, reprimands, and negative evaluations by her superiors. She drank too much, gambled too much, broke curfew almost daily, somehow always managed to be involved in any bar fight at the local watering holes and had a reputation for leaving a string of men with broken hearts and broken backs after sexual encounters that were more akin to a game of tackle Pyramid than lovemaking. Simply put, she was a disaster as a military officer. But no one could argue with her flying. While her academic and personal record kept her from graduating first in her class, she set new records on almost every hands-on flying test she encountered. Clearly, she was destined to fly Vipers and just as clearly she would be a handful for any squadron leader unfortunate to have her under their command.
Kara served her first tour aboard the battlestar Triton and while she was loved and admired by the other pilots, she was reviled by the ship's commander, who wanted her off the Triton as soon as possible. What to do with her became a problem, since no other ship would take her. Fortunately, a slot opened up as an instructor at flight school and Kara was
immediately shipped right back where she started.
It was there that Kara met Zak Adama and fell in love for the first time in her life. There'd never been a lack of men in her life, but she'd never seriously considered the possibility of a long-term relationship. Zak was different. Something about him touched and moved Kara, made her want to break all the rules of the heart she'd lived by all her life.
When she met Zak's brother Lee, she briefly thought she'd made a profound mistake. While Zak touched her maternal instincts, made her want to protect and nurture the shy, young pilot, his brother touched her in a deeper and more womanly way. Lee Adama's entire carriage and attitude was a challenge to Kara Thrace, and Kara Thrace had never walked away from a
challenge. But then the weekend passed, and Lee left to rejoin his squadron, and Kara firmly put aside the feelings as the momentary wandering of a rogue's heart.
Then Zak failed a key flight test. A test Kara was administering. Zak was on the bubble as far as flight school was concerned and failing this test was a sure ticket out. It was Kara's duty to fail him But she couldn't do it, couldn't destroy Zak's dream of becoming a pilot like his father. She passed him and made a promise to herself that she would teach Zak everything he needed to know and make sure he became a great pilot.
It wasn't enough. The board of inquiry determined that Zak Adama's plane had crashed due to "pilot error." Kara was devastated, bereft, ready to resign her commission right after Zak's funeral. But that day, Zak's father sought out Kara and asked the woman who was almost his daughter-in-law to stand with the family at the gravesite. She stood next to Commander Adama in the bright sunshine of the Caprican morning and felt his arm go around her when tears began to stream down her cheeks and a bond was formed between them. Adama asked her to join him as a pilot aboard the Galactica and Kara readily agreed. She spent the next two years aboard Galactica, for the most part managing to stay out of the brig and concentrating on just flying Adama kept an eye on her and the two of them became more like father and daughter than pilot and commander.
Kara thinks with her nerve endings. She not only wears her heart on her sleeve, she'll throw it at you if you're not paying attention. A rule-breaker by nature and a hell-raiser by preference, she nevertheless not only respects, but reveres the traditions and customs of the military service. Few things are guaranteed to bring a tear to her eye more than hearing the Colonial anthem and watching the flag go up the halyard.
She's proud of her uniform, proud of her place in the long tradition of pilots who've gone before, and is politically conservative to the point of being almost reactionary. She's also loyal to a fault, and fiercely protective of her friends and family. If you're in a foxhole, Kara Thrace is the one you want next to you.
Y'all have been wonderfully enthusiastic in your responses to this week's posts. So far, we've had:
- Monday:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
workerbee73 brought us Pilots Are Love: The Essay & Cracky Haiku version - Tuesday: we cast votes and opinions about BSG canon fashion & style
- Wednesday: we shared thoughts on what we don't know about Kara & Lee
- Yesterday: we had a grand frakkin' snark fest with pics, fic recs, vids, and more.
Today I'd like us to think about the infamous show bible (link to pdf of show bible is here).
Below, I've copied and pasted what RDM said in his bible about Lee and Kara, how he envisioned their back stories and what he thought would play out for them in the show. Today's assorted DPP questions are:
*What differences do you see for Lee & Kara between the bible and canon?
*What would you have expected to see either in the bible, or in canon, that wasn't there? Or, a bit of a twist on the question: What would you have written into canon from the get-go?
*Does anything in the bible surprise you? If so, what is it, and why?
*What's your own personal head!canon? (We touched on this a little bit on Wednesday in what we don't know about Kara and Lee, and some folks mentioned some head!canon items--now's your chance to list them out! Post early, post often!) Can you recommend some fics that suit your personal head!canon?
Captain Lee Adama
Lee was born and raised on the colony of Caprica, in the same coastal city in which both his parents and grandparents were born. A headstrong scrappy boy, he was forever getting into fights at school with much bigger kids and usually coming away with the better of the encounter. His parents divorced when he was eight years old and he and his younger brother,
Zak, were raised by their mother. Their father visited when he could, but the military life often took him away for long months at a time and Lee and Zak grew up with only snapshot memories of their father. Nevertheless, both boys grew up worshipping the distant man who periodically showed up at the house in his blue uniform with a big smile and a toy bought in some exotic port.
Despite his mother's misgivings, Lee always wanted to be a pilot, to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Fleet. He studied hard in school, aced his entrance exams to the Academy and graduated number three in his class. He was immediately accepted into flight school and again quickly rose to the top of his class. His superiors marked him down early
as a young man on the rise, an officer destined for the top commands and eventually the Admiralty itself. It was about this time that Lee and his father began to have a falling out. The boy's hero worship had turned into the young man's resentments at being abandoned and neither he nor his father knew how to bridge the gap and so the visits became rare and the phone calls grew terse.
While Lee was at flight school, his younger brother Zak was just entering the Academy. Zak had a tougher time of it than Lee, constantly falling behind in his studies, always on report for some infraction of the rules, forever one step away from being bounced out.
Lee took top honors at flight school and soon was on his way into a Viper squadron and a plum assignment on the Atlantia- flagship of the fleet. Meanwhile, Zak barely graduated from the Academy and when he still wanted to go to flight school, Lee tried to dissuade him from even applying Lee loved his brother, would do anything for him, but it was obvious to Lee that Zak wasn't really cut out for the military life, much less the rigors of flight training. The only reason Zak even applied to the Academy was because he worshipped the ground their father walked on - as Lee himself once did. Lee tried to convince Zak to seek another job in the fleet, but Zak wouldn't hear of it; he wasn't going to be the only Adama without wings on his uniform.
Zak's application was turned down and that seemed to be the end of it, but then a phone call was placed to the flight commandant from Commander Adama and a place suddenly opened up for Zak. Lee was furious, couldn't believe his father would pull strings like this, but there was nothing he could do but hope for the best and continue to encourage Zak in his training. Then came yet another shock - Zak wrote Lee to tell him he was engaged to one of his instructors at flight school Lee made time to come visit and it was then that he met Kara Thrace for the first time. She was the polar opposite of Zak - where he was quiet, reserved, almost painfully sensitive, she was brash, loud, and had a thick hide. Lee liked her immediately. Maybe liked her too much. And he was pretty sure that she felt the same, but never seriously considered anything further. Lee wished them well and left to rejoin his squadron.
Two weeks later, Zak's plane went down while he was flying a routine solo mission and he was killed. Lee's resentments and grief boiled over at the funeral and he lashed out at his father, blaming him directly for his brother's death, saying in so many words that Adama had all but killed bis own son. Father and son never spoke again.
Lee spent the next two years focusing on his career, having no personal life and working to become the perfect fighter pilot.
He applied to, and was accepted to test pilot school, the highest honor for any pilot and a sure sign of his rise to the top. He was at test pilot school when the orders came in to report aboard Galactica for her decommissioning ceremony. Lee Adama has his father's strength of character and a virtually inviolable code of ethics. He can be stubborn and difficult, often drives his pilots too hard and himself even harder. He rarely gives anyone a break and never gives himself one. From his mother, he's inherited a secret love of cooking and food, which he indulges whenever he can, the rigid pilot finding an out to let his creative juices flow only in a kitchen filled with steaming pots and pans.
He's a young man with a lot of anger, a lot of resentments and a lot of frustrations who knows not what to do with them.
But he's also a fair and decent human being whose deeply felt sense of right and wrong have kept him afloat when so many around him have sunk. He's the kind of man few would call friend, but many would follow into the jaws of hell. He is his father's son.
Lieutenant Kara Thrace
Kara Thrace was born on the Picon colony, but she was raised all over the twelve colonies. The daughter of a career enlisted woman, her childhood was spent bouncing from one military outpost to another. Kara's father, Dreilide, was a frustrated musician, forever trying to write songs and make it into the big time and forever failing to make his mark. Her mother, Socrata, was a Sergeant Major in the Colonial Marines, attached to an artillery company and a decorated veteran of the Cylon War.
Kara was a tough and tough-minded child, more interested in sports than in the military, she dreamed of playing Pyramid in the big leagues someday. At every base, there was a Pyramid court and Kara was a born athlete, able to both slice and duck around opponents on her way to planting the slippery ball into the goal or to block and tackle the opposing players on
defense. Her mother had won the Star of Valor in the Cylon War and this honor entitled her daughter to a place at the Fleet Academy if she wanted it. At first, Kara wasn't interested and wanted to pursue a college scholarship, but her school records were spotty at best. Finally realizing that the Academy had one of the best Pyramid teams at the collegiate level,
Kara decided to enter the Academy, serve her three years required enlistment and then resign and pursue a professional Pyramid career.
Kara played Pyramid well at the Academy, and was being actively scouted by the major league teams when a vicious hit shattered her right knee during a playoff game in her sophomore year. Even after months of reconstructive surgeries and physical therapy, it was clear that the leg would never be the same. Kara would have to look for a different career.
Depressed, she applied to all the various post-graduate training schools, but doubted she'd be accepted to any of them with her academic record. But to her shock, she scored higher on the flight training entrance exam than anyone in the history of the program and she was accepted into the next class.
Kara was what the instructors called a true stick and rudder woman; someone who flew by instinct, not instruction. To her own surprise, Kara found herself in love with flying. She'd never thought that anything could equal the feeling she had on the Pyramid court, but flying actually surpassed it. She found a freedom in the air she'd never experienced before, a joy
and effortlessness that was new and welcome into her hardscrabble life. All thoughts of leaving the service after three years were gone. She would be a pilot for the rest of her life - that is, unless she was kicked out of the Fleet.
Kara hated taking orders. Hated military protocol. Hated the rules and regulations that were part and parcel of the military life. Her record at the Academy and then at flight school was littered with demerits, reprimands, and negative evaluations by her superiors. She drank too much, gambled too much, broke curfew almost daily, somehow always managed to be involved in any bar fight at the local watering holes and had a reputation for leaving a string of men with broken hearts and broken backs after sexual encounters that were more akin to a game of tackle Pyramid than lovemaking. Simply put, she was a disaster as a military officer. But no one could argue with her flying. While her academic and personal record kept her from graduating first in her class, she set new records on almost every hands-on flying test she encountered. Clearly, she was destined to fly Vipers and just as clearly she would be a handful for any squadron leader unfortunate to have her under their command.
Kara served her first tour aboard the battlestar Triton and while she was loved and admired by the other pilots, she was reviled by the ship's commander, who wanted her off the Triton as soon as possible. What to do with her became a problem, since no other ship would take her. Fortunately, a slot opened up as an instructor at flight school and Kara was
immediately shipped right back where she started.
It was there that Kara met Zak Adama and fell in love for the first time in her life. There'd never been a lack of men in her life, but she'd never seriously considered the possibility of a long-term relationship. Zak was different. Something about him touched and moved Kara, made her want to break all the rules of the heart she'd lived by all her life.
When she met Zak's brother Lee, she briefly thought she'd made a profound mistake. While Zak touched her maternal instincts, made her want to protect and nurture the shy, young pilot, his brother touched her in a deeper and more womanly way. Lee Adama's entire carriage and attitude was a challenge to Kara Thrace, and Kara Thrace had never walked away from a
challenge. But then the weekend passed, and Lee left to rejoin his squadron, and Kara firmly put aside the feelings as the momentary wandering of a rogue's heart.
Then Zak failed a key flight test. A test Kara was administering. Zak was on the bubble as far as flight school was concerned and failing this test was a sure ticket out. It was Kara's duty to fail him But she couldn't do it, couldn't destroy Zak's dream of becoming a pilot like his father. She passed him and made a promise to herself that she would teach Zak everything he needed to know and make sure he became a great pilot.
It wasn't enough. The board of inquiry determined that Zak Adama's plane had crashed due to "pilot error." Kara was devastated, bereft, ready to resign her commission right after Zak's funeral. But that day, Zak's father sought out Kara and asked the woman who was almost his daughter-in-law to stand with the family at the gravesite. She stood next to Commander Adama in the bright sunshine of the Caprican morning and felt his arm go around her when tears began to stream down her cheeks and a bond was formed between them. Adama asked her to join him as a pilot aboard the Galactica and Kara readily agreed. She spent the next two years aboard Galactica, for the most part managing to stay out of the brig and concentrating on just flying Adama kept an eye on her and the two of them became more like father and daughter than pilot and commander.
Kara thinks with her nerve endings. She not only wears her heart on her sleeve, she'll throw it at you if you're not paying attention. A rule-breaker by nature and a hell-raiser by preference, she nevertheless not only respects, but reveres the traditions and customs of the military service. Few things are guaranteed to bring a tear to her eye more than hearing the Colonial anthem and watching the flag go up the halyard.
She's proud of her uniform, proud of her place in the long tradition of pilots who've gone before, and is politically conservative to the point of being almost reactionary. She's also loyal to a fault, and fiercely protective of her friends and family. If you're in a foxhole, Kara Thrace is the one you want next to you.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Crack Fic has eaten my brain
Date: 2012-01-20 09:29 pm (UTC)At one of our weekly matches when I was 18 I told him that politics was more like a game of pyramid – even the players that are working for the same goal will still try to take the glory for themselves and don't mind spilling blood to do so.
My father was never any good at contact sports.
Prince Samuel ~ In My Father's House
Re: Crack Fic has eaten my brain
Date: 2012-01-20 09:33 pm (UTC)Re: Crack Fic has eaten my brain
Date: 2012-01-20 09:53 pm (UTC)Lee'ama, the blue eyed desert maiden warrior who she loves.
Prince Samuel, the man she marries for political reasons, then stashes on the other side of the palace and never talks to.
Really, it writes its self.
Re: Crack Fic has eaten my brain
Date: 2012-01-21 03:28 pm (UTC)Re: Crack Fic has eaten my brain
Date: 2012-01-21 04:30 pm (UTC)Re: Crack Fic has eaten my brain
Date: 2012-01-21 02:30 pm (UTC)omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg
!!!!!