Daily Pilots Post

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Wow, you guys are brilliant and the conversation this week has been awesome. It's been great hosting this week of DPP and I'm looking forward to my next turn in August.

To close out this DPP week, it's a Free-For-All! What do you want to say to K/L shippers? To the pilots themselves? To the world at large?

I would like to say thank you to this amazing community who welcomed me in and I hope we keep going strong. After all, there's a million and one things we haven't written yet!

Comments

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Wow!! This is a champion analysis, thank you so much!

I really enjoyed your thoughts, here, especially on the question of Lee's forgiveness of his father. I agree that a lot of the issues that Zak's death raised were about Lee's own resentments -- he felt that his father had pressured him into the military, and that he'd done the same to Zak. I don't think he was wrong about that, actually. The question is whether Zak felt the same reluctance and discomfort as Lee did about the situation, or whether he was choosing this career as something he wanted for himself. It's hard to say -- Zak seemed aware of his own limitations and was more willing to admit to them than anyone else around him. He told Kara he didn't want special treatment from his father or from her (does that mean he suspected that she'd gone easy on him in his flight test? She had to lie and reassure him that he'd passed on his own merits). And in one of the deleted scenes from Daybreak, he tells Kara that Lee is the real soldier in the family, and that "next to him, I'm a kid playing dress-up."

Zak strikes me as the kind of person who didn't have a lot of personal ambition, someone who was pretty comfortable with himself and basically fine with settling into a mediocre career that would make his father happy and give him a chance to be close to the woman he loved. I don't think he really had to be pressured into trying out as a pilot, I think he wanted to make his Dad proud and that once he found Kara he thought his life was definitely taking the right direction. But then again, Kara does say about his flight test that she passed him because "he wanted it so much, and I didn't want to be the one that crushed him." I'm not sure she was really right about that, from what little I've seen of Zak. I think if he'd failed to get his wings he probably would have looked for another role in the service -- I think the wings themselves weren't that important to him; what really mattered was pleasing the people he loved. But then again, one would expect Kara to have figured that out about him, so maybe I'm just way off in my estimation of his character from his two minutes of screen time :)

In any case, I think Lee always thought that his Dad didn't know either of his sons very well, and that the only things he valued in his children were the things that reminded him of himself. Look at that bitter little line in Daybreak: "Dad believes in himself. His code, his rules, his way of life, and if you're not with him in that tiny little bubble then you might as well not exist." Of course both Zak and Lee wound up trying to get into that bubble. Lee succeeded very well and resented it, Zak was no good at it but didn't seem to mind.

All this is just to say that I think Adama *was* a big reason that Zak was in that plane, trying to do dangerous work he wasn't suited for. But Zak was an adult and responsible for his own choices, and Lee was projecting a lot of his own feelings onto his brother in hindsight. (In fact, I don't know whether Lee ever raised any objections to Zak's life choices before the accident? In fanon, he always seems to be aware of Zak's poor skills and to be apprehensive, but is there really any reason to think that he was? Maybe he missed the potential dangers just as much as his father did? And to be fair to them, unqualified pilots are not supposed to make it far enough to be put in the position of flying on their own, that's what Basic Flight is for.)

Anyway, sorry this got to be such a rambling assortment of speculation. I've got to run off on a few errands, but thanks again for your stimulating comments!

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

"I think Lee always thought that his Dad didn't know either of his sons very well, and that the only things he valued in his children were the things that reminded him of himself.

I think so, too.

Look at that bitter little line in Daybreak: "Dad believes in himself. His code, his rules, his way of life, and if you're not with him in that tiny little bubble then you might as well not exist."

I don't remember who said this. Was it Zac or Lee?
Anyway, I guess it is not very far from target.