DPP: For those who couldn't make the rewatch...

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

...or just can't contain their squee to a single post (and an afterparty).

Today's DPP is all about Eye of Jupiter (with maybe a bit of bonus Rapture as well).  I decided a few days ago that one of my ideas for the DPP was lame, so I started looking around for a replacement post...and then I remembered, of course, that this is a rewatch comm.  And obviously yes we have the rewatches, but we used to have other episode-themed posts as well.  So, for this week anyway, we have an all you can post EoJ rewatch day!

A little motivation:



Obviously, this is a noteworthy episode in the story of our pilots, but it's also a fairly controversial one.  How did you feel the first time you saw it, when Lee walked into Kara's Raptor and then we got pretty much the hottest scene in all of BSG?  Were you surprised?  Were you angry that they were cheating?  Sad that Lee wouldn't cheat (oops) and Kara wouldn't divorce? 

I remember being absolutely thrilled, and I loved the way they did the reveal.  Later, it gave me hope throughout much of season four that one day we would just turn a corner and see them randomly outmaking and it would be like "Oh hi, didn't you know we've been sleeping together all this time?"  Of course, it didn't exactly happen that way.  But at least EoJ gave us the possibility.

As for them having an affair...well that's kind of a complicated question for me, since while I don't think it was right I also can't quite fault either of them for it.  Which makes me feel like something of a hypocrite, as I normally cannot forgive anyone who cheats on their partner, no way no how. So why do I continue to love them and sympathize with them?  Maybe because I was already attached to the idea of them as a pair before their significant others showed up.  Maybe because I can forgive Kara anything.  Maybe it's because I know it meant something to them and wasn't just meaningless frakking around.  Or maybe it's because I'm so drawn to the idea of them as characters who are so incredibly screwed up that they marry the wrong people...characters who are so lost that the only moment they have together is one that's stolen and fleeting.

Or maybe it's just because I'm a crazy fangirl.  Thoughts?

Now, this doesn't have to be all somber reflection.  Bring the pics.  The gifs.  The squee.  The random thoughts you have about this episode.  The recs!

Of course, I have a fic rec to start us off. 

The Chandrasekhar Limit by vnilla : This fic does not directly deal with the events of EoJ, but is all about that twisted and all-too-fleeting period between Unfinished Business and Maelstrom.  And it's beautiful.

Go ahead and rec your favorite fics about EoJ/Rapture, or the events surrounding it.  Have you written an infidelicious fic yourself?  Don't be afraid to do a little self-promotion!

P.S. Congratulations on the overwhelming participation in the friending meme!  My inbox is still recovering (I was afraid that turning off notifications would jinx it and nobody would join in...).  Well done, shippers.  Well done.  Although I'm a little disappointed that nobody guessed my name.

Bonus: I had intended to do a line on the friending meme about favorite pairing(s) other than K/L (because such a thing does exist).  Somehow, this got lost, so if you want to answer it you can do that now.

Comments

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

An interesting question. I actually think few things are unforgivable, and with fictional characters it's certainly easier to get over their hurtful behavior than it is in real life :)

I'm not Dee and I'm not Sam, I'm just an outsider who loves Kara and Lee and who feels disappointed, rather than personally betrayed, when they do things that hurt other people and thereby go against their own better natures. As an audience member, I can only say that I don't enjoy watching this storyline, and that I find it depressing rather than compelling. When I start having that reaction to a show, I have to take an emotional step back and say, 'I love these characters and I hope they will soon get back to a point where I can enjoy watching them again.'

Kara and Lee got back to that point fairly quickly for me. I think it takes a lot for me to permanently lose sympathy with a character. I can accept that characters I love sometimes do unjustifiable things, I just don't want to watch them doing them continually, because it gets me down.

Does it help to understand the emotional mindset behind the character's actions, even when I can't agree with their decisions? Yes. For instance, I actually enjoy the New Caprica arc, because it's emotionally honest and because the forgiveness between Kara and Lee is so beautiful when it finally comes.

No comparable emotional pay-off shows up to save the infidelity story. That being said, Kara and Lee's two instances of cheating - in Daybreak Part 2 and Eye of Jupiter - both make me sad, but I have more of an emotional problem with the Daybreak flashback table thing than with the EoJ make-out (and I will say that Lee seems to me the guiltier party in both instances, in action if not in intention -- Kara tends to be the advocate/instigator of cheating, but Lee is usually in more long-standing relationships with the people they choose to betray). To me the table flashback seems out of character in addition to being unpleasant, while the EoJ makeout does not seem out of character. By the middle of third season it was believable for Kara and Lee's love to have reached such a pitch that it might overwhelm the compassion and respect they owed to other important people in their lives who had the misfortune to be standing in their way. I don't find that romantic, but I do find it believable. Whereas it made little emotional sense to me that they would have the same reaction within the first few hours of their acquaintance.

In EoJ, Kara and Lee were in love with each other but married to other people. There is no good way to handle that situation, and that's why they should never have put themselves into it in the first place. But given that situation, there were better and worse ways to handle it. I think that Lee's proposal (admit their feelings and ask their spouses for divorce) would have been a better way to handle it than the sneaking around they were actually doing. But they could also have handled the situation worse than they did -- if Lee had been totally willing to lie to Dee and conduct a long-standing affair with Kara while stringing his wife along, I would have lost sympathy with his character. And Kara, even though she advocated cheating, wasn't using Sam in quite that dishonest a way, though I think it's fair to say that she was stringing him along. The fact that he let her get away with it doesn't make it okay. But clearly there were good elements in Kara and Sam's relationship as well as bad ones, and the blame for its exploitative elements cannot be placed entirely on either side, since both chose to accept the dalliance pattern rather than to make either a firm commitment or a clean break. But Sam was constantly asking Kara for a 'real marriage,' and he wanted her cheating to stop. She knew that was what he wanted but ignored his feelings.

To sum up, I can't agree with what Kara and Lee were doing, but I feel like I understand their feelings. And soon enough they moved on to other storylines in which I could root for them again.

C'est la vie in television :)