DPP: Random Idea Day

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

What if 

...Gianne had been Kara's sister?
...Kara and Lee were together and she almost (or did) cheated on him with Zak?
...Kara had gotten shot in Sacrifice instead of Lee (not necessarily by him)?
...they'd been transported somewhere else when Kara put the arrow in the archer's bow?
...Lee had chosen Kara as his XO in/after Razor?
...Sam had realized he was a cylon on New Caprica?
...Dee had gotten pregnant?
...Kara and Lee had gotten trapped in the airlock instead of Chief and Cally?
...Lee or Kara discovered they were a cylon when they ran into another model of themself?
...Bill had died when Sharon shot him?
...Kara had started an actual relationship with Baltar after Colonial Day?
...Kara and Zak had actually eloped/gotten married?
...there had been a musical episode of BSG--(what would it have been about--who would have sang--what would they sing)?
...the show had learned they were going to get cancelled at the beginning of Season 2? or Season 3?

LOL. These are all incredibly angsty aren't they? Maybe you have some happier ones to suggest...


Pilots contemplate my list and Lee gets bummed out by all the angst.

Comments

[onlyariana.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that while I sort of enjoy the brothers thing I HATE the sisters thing. I know it is hypocritical or sexist or whatever but it is. I just seems like a slimy thing when guys do it but when women do it seems more ok. Probably because in story telling when women are willing to switch brothers it is because of "true love" and when a guy wants to switch siblings it's because he wants to fill the space on sex bingo for banging sisters.

To be fair to myself I don't just love the idea of swapping one man for his brother but there's been movies like Moonstruck and While You Were Sleeping and you can't argue with either Cher or Sandra Bullock. It just isn't allowed.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

LOL. Lee is so not your typical, uh, sex bingo filler, that it works for me I guess. I imagine it would still be just as fueled by their unexpected and incredibly deep emotional connection as in canon it is in my head!canon.

Plus if he's sorta bored or unhappy with Gianne anyway... and then he meets Kara who he shouldn't work with but actually has so much in common with deep down...

Although it's funny isn't it-- we seldom ever imply that Kara was bored with or unhappy with her relationship with Zak in any way. It's okay for her to love him but still want Lee.
Yet the reverse seems weird to us. We can never imagine that Lee loves or is happy with Gianne or Dee and just feels deeply for Kara too.

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

Lee is so not your typical, uh, sex bingo filler

I am so laughing over the thought of Lee playing space sex bingo.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I am not totally sure what "space sex bingo" would entail but now I'm totally thinking of that icon that someone used to have which was a rewrite of the "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" song by Sarah Silverman.

On the floor, against the door, on a towel by the rack... Hee.

[onlyariana.livejournal.com]

It's true. He's so concerned with being upright that he'd not sleeze like that. The dislike of the sister thing is just a knee jerk reaction. If someone wrote this I'd devour it.

Does canon ever explicitly say that Kara has no siblings? I'm thinking about birth order and personality. I'm not like a true believer in it but I think there's something to it. Lee is a textbook first born. What were you thinking if Gianne was Kara's sis. Who is older/younger?

I don't know how I feel about Lee being bored or unhappy with Gianne when he meets Kara. I think the reason Kara needs to be really in love with Zak is that Lee would dislike her if she wasn't. I feel like Kara would feel the same if the guy dating her sister didn't really care much about her. Though I think part of the reason why she needs to love Zak is that he died so if Gianne didn't die horribly (maybe not until the attacks?) that might not be so necessary.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it explicitly says she doesn't but we never see any referenced and I would think that would have to come up in Maelstrom.

I think Lee is weird because he works really well as an only child or younger child as well in my head. (The latter was my canon for ice pilots and it worked quite beautifully to have him in Zak's shadow I thought).

I was thinking Gianne would be older. And maybe even left home a lot earlier and Kara got stuck behind. I could probably rationalize her as a favored younger child (not from a cylon husband!) as well maybe for a fic.

I don't know...I think there's a lot of shades in a relationship and it makes more sense if there's some dissatisfaction or lack of fulfillment in it for someone to cheat. If they've already got one foot (emotionally) out of it anyway...I think then it becomes a lot more likely they'd consider other options.

[onlyariana.livejournal.com]

I can see that. So Gianne wouldn't have really been around while Kara was getting the bulk of her abuse. Kara would probably hide that from Gianne so she wouldn't feel like a burden on her.

Maybe Kara touches Lee in a deeper and more manly way than Gianne. ;-)

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Maybe Kara touches Lee in a deeper and more manly way than Gianne. ;-)

LOLOL! A+! I just bet she would! ;)

[winegums.livejournal.com]

We can never imagine that Lee loves or is happy with Gianne or Dee and just feels deeply for Kara too.

I think that's more because Gianne is such a nonentity, though - it's hard to imagine Lee being with her at all.

Zak might have had a grand total of two scenes, but at least he got to actually speak lines/do something that wasn't all mushy 'I want a baby!', lol.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Well, Dee then. We see her and Lee kissing and flirting in the beginning of Captain's Hand and The Woman King and seemingly quite happy on Groundbreaking Day in UB, yet most people seem to assume that he's unhappy in the relationship because he just wants to be with Kara.

I've never really seen anyone suggest the same about Kara -- that really she's some level of unhappy with Zak and Sam because they're not Lee. Instead it seems to be a sentiment of she'd be totally happy with them if Lee didn't exist, wasn't around.

I don't know. Feels different to me.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

I've always thought Lee would in fact be happy with Dee if there was no Kara (much like we assume Kara was with Zak), but I think the idea that their relationship was flawed since he wanted Kara sort of comes from the fact that we're never really shown any real basis for their relationship other than some mild mutual attraction.


Kara and Sam, on the other hand, fed directly into Kara's known Dead Guy Issues, and it was easy to see why she got hung up on him after thinking he was dead/dying. We never get to know Sam in his own right as a character as well as we knew Dee, but at least I can see where Kara/Sam came from.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

So Lee & Dee needed more angst maybe? Heh. Although they had some issues too what with his depression and Sacrifice. I do know there was a lot of moving around of the Lee/Dee scenes between various episodes and some amount cut as well and perhaps that also muddied the waters.

I actually think the development of their relationship started with their walks to the brig while Kara was gone and the plan to bust out Roslin. Dee was like the first sounding board/friendship he had that wasn't with someone he either reported to or supervised. If we'd gotten to see more of them colluding there, maybe our perspective of their relationship would have changed quite a bit. They would have been the opposite of Kara/Sam/Dead Guy Issues -- Lee/Dee/delusions of normalcy.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

Not angst, so much as more scenes of them together that made sense - it's like, one episode they're making eyes at each other over self-defence/Blackbird wiring, and the next she's overhearing confessions that he was suicidal, and then she's confronting him saying they've had a thing for weeks and she wants to date. Some of those brig walks/self-defence classes would have been a good fleshing-out of their relationship, really (especially with Dee's hero-worship of PapAdama and how that affects her relationship with Lee).

You basically summed it up in this: They would have been the opposite of Kara/Sam/Dead Guy Issues -- Lee/Dee/delusions of normalcy.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

It's sort of funny though isn't it, that you just listed four or five scenes that they actually got and yet Kara/Sam only got one episode and some crappy flashbacks and some implications in Downloaded and we all think that relationship makes sense. (Even though...it totally does not make sense to me that Kara would get so attached to a one night or even one-week stand. Dead Guy Issues, what Simon says in the hospital, I've heard all the rationales and still I just...TOO MUCH. TOO FORCED.)

Ahem, anyway. I guess the moral of the story is: give the writers more time and they'll fuck things up, so the less said/done about it the better. ;)

[winegums.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the number of scenes, I guess, it's the fact that we really don't get how they progressed, or get Lee's pov on his and Dee's relationship (until TAB). At least with Kara/Sam, we get a look at what's going on in her head, even if the One-Week-Stand premise (or however long she was with him on Caprica) seems ridiculous.

Basically, BSG writers sucked at developing pilots' alternate love interests and then tried to sell that as True Love. SO much bs.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I think they definitely tried to set up Kara/Sam as an epic relationship and I don't like it. LOL.

I never felt they did try that with Lee/Dee though. For better or worse, that relationship ALWAYS felt like an also-ran and I'm not even sure it was ever NOT supposed to feel that way.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

Re: K/S "epic" - in Season 2 they definitely blew it out of proportion, but I thought they stopped with it in S3 once he was actually with her and she and Lee were centre stage (rolling my eyes so hard at his "I know my wife!" bullshit, when he doesn't even know WHY she married him!).

(though maybe Goo Tub Time could be considered 'epic romance' too? lol)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

unexpected and incredibly deep emotional connection as in canon it is in my head!canon.

Just correcting you. ;P

Although it's funny isn't it-- we seldom ever imply that Kara was bored with or unhappy with her relationship with Zak in any way. It's okay for her to love him but still want Lee.

This is one of my problems with Zak. We are somehow supposed to accept that Kara, with all of her relationship problems, is happy and blissful with Zak. I don't know exactly WHY we are supposed to believe this except that we've heard nothing else in canon. I find it odd that she'd have been younger and MORE capable of a relationship with Zak. IDK. Don't like.

Yet the reverse seems weird to us. We can never imagine that Lee loves or is happy with Gianne or Dee and just feels deeply for Kara too.

Incidentally, I am in the camp that Lee was relatively happy with Dee - there weren't exactly fireworks to keep them fighting or anything to spark conflict (except Kara). He seemed fine settling. *harrumph*

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Well actually I specifically put as it is in my head because I don't think they portrayed that part of it well at all in Daybreak. The moment at the door is the only inkling I get that there is something deeply ROMANTIC happening and not just lust. They come close to it with their deep dark confessions again, but then it's subverted by the jokey "I dare you to fuck me on this table" set up. All wrong. ALL WRONG. That whole lead up should have been DEEP AND SERIOUS AND ROOOOOMANTIC.

It does seem unlikely that everything would be blissful with Zak. I don't like it either. The writers' choice to portray a happier bubbly Kara seemingly unmarred by her mother's abuse was the wrong one I think.

Well that's what I mean. SETTLING. No one really thinks of Kara/Sam as settling I don't think. (Well, except for diehards like us. ;)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I see Kara/Sam as settling, per se, but more what she said to Sam on the Demetrius, "It was easy." I don't know if that was settling or not, but is certainly true. The idea that K/S love was fated and that she chose to be with him out of love and devotion doesn't play right. I do think he was easy and she could get away with whatever she wanted to and never be answerable to anyone for it. That's pretty easy.

Anyway, I digress. That table scene is ridiculous and its ridiculousness ties in so well with the stupid and nonromantic ending in the field. I have no idea where RDM got the idea that they were just two jocks and that their whole relationship was competition and ill-fated and ill-timed. They lost track of all of their human characters at the end. Kara being bubbly was just so wrong - as if the war was the reason she was a mess. I don't understand it to this day. :/

[winegums.livejournal.com]

I don't think the war was the reason she was a mess, because she kind of was one in the miniseries even before she knew the war had begun.

I think what made her a real mess was Zak's death, and the blame she assigned herself for her role in it - the war just compounded the messiness (and I can actually buy Kara being bubbly, especially in the loved-up early stages of a relationship when the occasion is a happy one, look at her with Sam at the start of the UB flashbacks - sure she and Lee were eyefrakking each other to insanity, but she was still with Sam).

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I get what you are saying about Zak, and yes, we are supposed to believe that she was frakked up by that event (my war comment was facetious, although that was not clear in the writing). I simply don't buy it. I won't ever feel comfortable with that carefree Kara we saw in Daybreak - without even a hint of her deeper pain. If Kara had anything, it was pain, and those flashbacks show none of it. They are a caricature of her former self - not a real portrayal.

What made her a real mess was her mother and I think we should have seen that, or some hint of that, in the flashbacks. The whole point of the discussion above was about Zak and the fairy-tale relationship they seemed to be portraying in the flashbacks (and early in the show). Sometimes I think the writers just picked and chose certain character traits from their characters and then used those, ignoring the rest. They used Zak as a plot device and not a real character and that was also part of my above complaint.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

I think the mandala on the wall behind her when she pulled the door open for him, and her reference to having a destiny/the future being already written was about as close as she was ever going to come to her own pain that night, really. I can buy that, for one night, she could forget about her mother/not hint at the mess that that was, and I suppose I'll always see it that way.

I do agree that Zak was a plot device and not actually much of a character, though. We really can't do anything with him besides project/speculate. *sigh*

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

What made her a real mess was her mother and I think we should have seen that, or some hint of that, in the flashbacks.

I totally agree with you. What I believe is at the heart of the problem is that we tend to forget that although the writers had a general overview of what each character was all about when they started the show, a huge part of the storylines were created as they progressed. Unlike a movie, where we see the whole creators' view at once, in a tv series, they can change their minds and retell the stories as many times as they want to. So, I don't think, back in season 1 they had yet come up with the concept of just how frakked up Kara was due to her mother or the exact nature of the damage Socrata inflicted on her. That's why ,back then, they were able to portray her in such a way that led us to believe Zak's death was the main catalyst to her issues. As the show went on, though, as we got more glimpses into her family background (and as the writers came up with such background), our understanding of who Kara was as a character had to change as she became clearly more scarred (both because of her past and the present events in her life). Those changes didn't have to necessarily make the earlier episodes feel out of character (she seemed so tender, so carefree, so painfree, even happy in those flashbacks with Zak, after all), but they could(I guess) make us look back on those flashbacks with new eyes. Those moments weren't as much a portray of what her life (and her relationship) with Zak had really been as snapshots of that life. Snapshots of the best moments of that life, idealized forever since he was dead and the dead can never prove you wrong. Snapshots she used more to torture herself and to reinforce the lessons learned from mommy dearest than to give herself comfort or happiness.

I have always had a problem with the dominant view that Zak and Kara had been such a big deal or so happy and perfect together. I base my conclusions on the way I came to understand Kara as the show progressed, so to me, she had always been damaged and everything that happened just kept adding to that original damage. I guess that's part of the reason why the flashbacks in UB seem a little off - it's one thing to decide to portray her as that carefree and light early in the show, when the writers and us didn't know better, it's quite another to do so in the end, after we have come to accept, understand, love and ache for the dark parts of her psyche.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I agree with every word. Thank you for stating it so thoroughly. I think the writers added a lot of depth and pain to Kara's backstory that they seemed to forget about when they wrote/directed the Daybreak flashbacks. In my mind, Kara is only five or six years out of her mother's grips (and not even really) and I would expect her to be MORE frakked up instead of less. Everything about Kara and Lee in Daybreak just pings wrong for me. And even if we take her portrayal at face value, it is so horrifying that her pre-attack and post-attack snapshots show a woman who was "happy" and then suffered and died only to be reborn and be rewarded by poofing. What a nihilistic view of humanity. Ugh. But that is another tale.