DPP: Daybreak
Mar. 20th, 2012 07:40 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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no_takebacksToday, March 20th, marks exactly three years since the airdate of Daybreak, Part 2, which ended both BSG and pilots canon story by leaving Shipper Nation in absolute ruin, devastation and disappointment.
Many of us who are here today joined the fandom later and faced the awful truth (NO MORE PILOTS, KARA WENT POOF) in our own turn, but to all of you - and especially to those fangirls who were first on the firing line, three years ago, with no warning of what was about to happen - how did you get through it (whether it was with a fifth of whisky or a lot of fic, tell!)? And what do you feel about it now? Have your opinions changed at all? Have any of you found a way to live with it? Let out ALL YOUR FEELINGS in the comments below, and don't hold back!
(or alternatively, celebrate the most amazing fictional couple we've ever known, whose cheat of a non-ending can never take away from their epic, beautiful, life-changing love)
Sorry for the angsty topic, but this day demands it. And if anyone wants to contemplate BSG with no pilots, feel free to hop into yesterday's discussion! :(
Many of us who are here today joined the fandom later and faced the awful truth (NO MORE PILOTS, KARA WENT POOF) in our own turn, but to all of you - and especially to those fangirls who were first on the firing line, three years ago, with no warning of what was about to happen - how did you get through it (whether it was with a fifth of whisky or a lot of fic, tell!)? And what do you feel about it now? Have your opinions changed at all? Have any of you found a way to live with it? Let out ALL YOUR FEELINGS in the comments below, and don't hold back!
(or alternatively, celebrate the most amazing fictional couple we've ever known, whose cheat of a non-ending can never take away from their epic, beautiful, life-changing love)
Sorry for the angsty topic, but this day demands it. And if anyone wants to contemplate BSG with no pilots, feel free to hop into yesterday's discussion! :(
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2012-03-20 02:40 pm (UTC)A lot of drinking, my friend. LOTS. I think everyone kind of went through the stages of denial. First it was like-- wait, what just happened? And then there was kind of general shock and disbelief. And then came the rage. Lots and lots of rage.
As for working through it, I think having the community of like-minded people to discuss and commiserate with was key. (I don't think the term Shipper Nation came about until post-finale and really, there was an amazing amount of love and support and solidarity. Working through it in the early days was a total community effort.) And the fic. That was another, major way of getting past it. it still is.
As for how I feel about the finale, I still think it's an absolute pile of crap written the night before it was due and thrown together in a haphazard way and touting some kind of "If no one understands it, then it must be deep" high school logic. It really failed on just about every storytelling level imaginable, whether you give a damn about shipping or not.
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Date: 2012-03-20 05:27 pm (UTC)I'm just so incredibly grateful to you guys for sticking around, though I can completely see how peeps might have wanted to be away from this mess afterwards. Even though I can live with many things about Daybreak and be ok with them (even the table), I wouldn't have recovered my joy in this show or these two amazing fictional people without a big metaphorical hug from fandom - and even with all that, I couldn't eat or sleep properly for about a week afterwards and still can't discuss pilots with non-shipper friends at all.
(but I won't lie, it made a HUGE difference knowing that I was not alone in how much this made me hurt - suffering alone = suffering more, in my case).
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:18 pm (UTC)It's been three years since I saw the finale and I'm STILL angry. Glad to have the distance from it, though. Still: Thank god for all our fellow shippers (and all their fanwork!).
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:03 pm (UTC)I was a fan of La Femme Nikita, that ended nearly 10 years ago. I'm still angry about that one, too. I don't release my anger easily, apparently!
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:07 pm (UTC)SO MUCH TRUTH IN THIS. (and thank you for saying it)
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Date: 2012-03-20 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 03:47 pm (UTC)I think Kara's death actually took a while for me to even start to deal with. I remember the next day I woke up crying because Roslin was dead. I wasn't ready to face the fact that Kara was gone.
In my mind, I set it up like a scene out of Angel, in which a character comes back but turns out they never really came back... Is it still a spoiler a decade later? Anyways, turns out, this character had come back to set things straight with the last of her life... of course, it was a WAY more well done scene. But I sort of projected that onto Kara which made me feel a bit better about it. In fact, that whole Buffyverse concept of the Powers that Be, and the balance of good versus evil played into the end of my Buffy/BSG crossover in which I made Faith into a Pegasus viper pilot.
In the last year or so, my attitude has been "frak it, I do what I want" with my attitude towards canon, which means much less tears over no more Kara. Season 4 was silly anyways. I like my version of the story, which ends with them ending up in the Firefly universe. :)
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 06:04 pm (UTC)Have you read mine? I can't remember if you have or not.
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:12 pm (UTC)And I don't think I have read the Firefly crossover, there is no way I'd forget two of my favourite tv shows colliding :). I have read Did I Fall Asleep though, and gushed about it all over the place (though surprisingly, not at the actual comments - I promise to fix that situation as soon as I have a nice chunk of time to re-read it properly and love it all over again).
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:17 pm (UTC)Scars that Words have Carved (http://tulipfic.livejournal.com/tag/%21story%3A%20scars%20that%20words%20have%20carved) - this is the Faith the Cylon Slayer one. :) Faith's a pilot on Pegasus who gets shipped over to Galactica for being a pain in Fisk's ass. Needless to say, she and Kara spark in a dangerous sort of way.
These both deal with my issues with the finale in different ways. OotB is a fixit on the themes of Season 4 and the Serenity movie. STWHC uses the idea of Champions for the Powers and the First in the BSGverse.
/shameless self promotion
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 04:35 pm (UTC)I was a fan all the way since the mini series. It was ugly in fandom. Lots of anger. I would say even those of else that steeled ourselves for the worst were angered by this.
For me personally it was that much worse, I wasn't just a huge fan of their ship, I was a fan of each them individually from the beginning When you can make a good argument that either one of your favorite characters had the worst ending of any characters on the show, it just doesn't get worse then that.
You deal with it by letting out the anger and hurt of being strung along, then you need to take a step back for awhile and clear your head. You move away from fandom and do other things for awhile. It may be a few days, a few weeks, a few months, hell even a year or more, but when you come back, if you were a person who likes fan fiction you can find solace in some well written stories that try their hand at wrapping up the story in a more satisfying way. Or maybe in your mind you come up with your own ending that you can live with.
I think it was all about coming to terms with the ending in your own way and your own time. If you couldn't come to terms with the ending, then your took solace in the friendships you formed along the way.
I don't know if an ending of a TV show could be considered a traumatic event, but the ending of BSG probably came as close it can for alot of its fans.
While this is not my favorite subject to talk about, perhaps it's good I came here today as a long time fan who lived through this. Perhaps shed a little insight on what it was like then.
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Date: 2012-03-20 04:52 pm (UTC)I don't know if an ending of a TV show could be considered a traumatic event, but the ending of BSG probably came as close it can for a lot of its fans.
This is so true. I've heard of people having rage over the finale of LOST, but nothing on tv or film can ever devastate me the way BSG did, ever again.
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Date: 2012-03-20 05:05 pm (UTC)I made my peace with it long ago.
Some people I know had problems with the Lost finale. I actually liked it. It was all about the characters and they answered some of the bigger questions. That's all I wanted so I was happy. Maybe after BSG I had lower expectations so they were met? Who knows. lol
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 06:13 pm (UTC)I dealt with it initially by commiserating with the shippers on the Skiffy shipper thread. Then eventually I just let go. I wasn't going to let it get to me. What finally wrapped things up for me was the excellent fanfic "Signal fire". That is my personal canon and I am sticking to it.
http://mintenergy.livejournal.com/8220.html
I still read things from fandom occasionally and keep up with the friends I've made, but I have moved on. All things pass.
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:24 pm (UTC)It's only been a year for me, but I still can't let it go, and don't know if I ever will. Sometimes I wish I could get to that place, but I love this fandom too much - it's my favourite of all the ones I've ever been in, especially considering what canon threw at us.
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:31 pm (UTC)I don't know if I would have gotten over this as quickly as I did if I didn't have the fandom friends to commiserate with. It really helped. Getting over it takes time, but for most people, I think life has a way of taking over.
But I don't think I'll ever enjoy a show as much as I did BSG. That ending was a huge breach of trust on a lot of levels and I don't think I'll ever completely trust a show again.
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:22 pm (UTC)Amen to this. And I think that's a common feeling amongst those who watched in real time. The investment level was so high and the emotions were so deep and then.... splat. As a result, I won't let myself get too involved in a show any more. Lesson learned. :/
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:33 pm (UTC)Sadly, it's not confined to real-time watchers - this seems to be a very common feeling among all the people who watch it unspoiled, even now. I do think it's worse to wait YEARS for them to get a resolution and then be cheated out of one, tho.
To this day the only thing that has ever consoled me while I watch is - oddly - the look on Kara's face when she tells Lee she has to go. Girl looks on the verge of tears, but it makes me feel a tiny bit better than she wants to stay, even if I am cut up for her.
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:44 pm (UTC)That and their story never ends. And the next time around will be better. :)
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:47 pm (UTC)*sigh* oh, pilots. Your words (as usual) say so little but your faces say SO MUCH.
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Date: 2012-03-20 10:09 pm (UTC)They were shell-shocked. It went on for months. Everything was about making peace with the finale. They invented Zombie Laura Roslin and a lot of jokes about archaeological digs turning up the arrow of Apollo and... I don't know.
Now, that's me. My bf and I watched an episode every night for several months last spring and summer. I'd had parts of the ending spoiled for me. And it was still pretty traumatizing; my boyfriend won't even talk about it. I told him that today was the anniversary of the original finale and he was like, "I thought we agreed never to speak of that again."
I'm here 'cause I'm still getting over it. It's like a crowbar to the face punctuated with soft little kisses. Textbook abuse.
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Date: 2012-03-20 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 06:33 pm (UTC)As for Kara and Lee specifically, well, we've got fic. In my own canon head for the finale and despite how atheist I am, I like to believe that when Lee finally does die, Kara's waiting for him on the other side and they get their peace together in the end. Part of me doesn't think Lee would last long on Earth, though. I think he'd try to fill his life with helping the people of wherever he ends up settling, but I don't see him ever finding someone new to replace Kara, and to a lesser extent, Dee. Eventually, it's too much for him, and I think he'd end up taking his life to try to see if he could find Kara a little sooner.
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Date: 2012-03-20 06:46 pm (UTC)My rage over the poof is mostly for Kara, to be honest - I hate, hate, HATE the message that she was basically secondary to her "task" all along and didn't even have the right to exist when she finished it, because she's been dead all along (and so she had to die to get to carry out the task in the first place? Which means that there's no way our girl can live at all?) and I really resented the way she got turned into some mystical figurehead in the end.
And then, of course, there are is the Epilogue of Dancing Robots. Which just makes me want to start laughing hysterically because it is so much crack, and not even in the good way.
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:03 pm (UTC)REACTIONs & META
Spoiler Post (http://taragel.livejournal.com/45038.html)
Pigeon Shit (http://taragel.livejournal.com/45165.html)
Still Raging Against the Dying Light (http://taragel.livejournal.com/45642.html)
One Week Later (http://taragel.livejournal.com/46291.html)
META CRACK FIXIT FIC
Kara Thrace's Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Special Destiny (http://taragel.livejournal.com/46956.html) -- A meta crack!fic remix of Kara's ending.
Commentary -- Part 1 (http://taragel.livejournal.com/62488.html#cutid1) and Part 2 (http://taragel.livejournal.com/62888.html#cutid1)
REAL FIX IT FIC
All the Right Moves (aka the Smutstravaganza!) written with
Chapter 1: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/48355.html)
Chapter 2: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/19203.html#cutid1)
Chapter 3: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/48706.html)
Chapter 4: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/20024.html#cutid1)
Chapter 5A: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/50971.html#cutid1)
Chapter 5B: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/51373.html#cutid1)
Chapter 6: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/21229.html#cutid1)
Chapter 7: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/53522.html#cutid1)
Chapter 8: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/54033.html#cutid1)
Chapter 9A: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/22883.html#cutid1)
Chapter 9B: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/23194.html#cutid1)
Chapter 10A: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/55582.html#cutid1)
Chapter 10B: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/56360.html#cutid1)
Chapter 11: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/25676.html#cutid1)
Epilogue: (http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/28871.html#cutid1)
Epilogue: (http://taragel.livejournal.com/65089.html#cutid1) & (http://taragel.livejournal.com/65477.html#cutid1)
Extras: Interview (http://csm37.livejournal.com/599.html), The Making of ATRM (http://taragel.livejournal.com/52609.html#cutid1), Child's Play (http://taragel.livejournal.com/71030.html#cutid3), Frak Democracy (http://taragel.livejournal.com/80000.html#cutid1)
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:16 pm (UTC)I'm just glad I have people like y'all to share them with, and also for the many, many post-finale fixit fics and AUs, without which I'd never be able to think of pilots again without whimpering/full-on ugly crying. (and thank you so much for keeping this comm going even years later, you have no idea what a huge difference it makes to discover a haven full of people who share your feelings on the subject, when most fandoms are usually 'lol, that shit is over now')
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:20 pm (UTC)Oh me too, bb. That's why I wanted us to have daily posts. I missed people talking about them. And everyone was slipping away, but I wasn't ready for it to be over. :)
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:28 pm (UTC)And this is my first experience of full-on shipper participation, I could not have asked for a better couple to start it with (even though they broke my heart in the end, I regret nothing) or a lovelier community to share that love (seriously, the awesomeness of this fandom is worthy of the awesomeness that is pilots, and that is truth).
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:19 pm (UTC)So much fun. Finale!rage aside, it was kind of an epic time in fandom. So much tomfoolery and crazy-ridiculous energy. :)
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:21 am (UTC)I had absolutely convinced myself that our pilots were going to get a happy ending. After everything that they'd been through, surely they *deserved* to finally be able to be together once all of the obstacles were gone. So I was completely blindsided.
Thankfully I was off having a fangirl weekend with
Shipper Nation came through with lots of great fic to help in the days and weeks following the finale and slowly I came to where I've been since then - a healthy state of denial. That scene in the field never happened. Pilots are epic and transcend any scenario you put them in (even if they don't fly there!). Which maybe explains why I like AU fic so much :)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:57 am (UTC)I watched the show faithfully from the mini-series, through EVERY hellatus only to be slapped in the face at the end. Gosh, can't hear the bitterness here can ya? I read tons of fanfic after the ending only to find that the fixit fics just weren't doing it for me.
I have since put all of my DVD's on a high shelf in the closet and haven't touched BSG fanfic in years. I hope one day I'll be able to watch them again with some feeling of peace.
The one plus that did come out of all of this is that I found some of the best friends I could ever hope for. And for that, BSG will always hold a special place in my heart.
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Date: 2012-03-21 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 03:19 pm (UTC)Not only was it the end of a show that we loved, it was the end of everything we had wished and hoped for, for these two characters.
I remember reading once after the ending that as much as we hated RDM right then for what he had done to these characters, we needed to appreciate the fact that he had given them to us in the first place. I'm still working on that little piece of wisdom. :)
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Date: 2012-03-21 03:30 pm (UTC)I know - I just was not ready to let them go, but to leave them to a fate like this.. and without fandom, I would be so bitter too. As it is, I'll never be able to let two fictional people get under my skin that way, ever again - it never happened before pilots, and it'll never happen after them because they simply ruined me for anyone else.
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Date: 2012-03-21 04:03 pm (UTC)Shipping is not for the faint of heart. It is for those hopeless romantics who have an endless supply of rose colored glasses.
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Date: 2012-03-21 04:11 pm (UTC)(they ATE MY BRAIN and left me a hollow shell of myself, but I don't regret my love for a second, despite the pain)