quaintcarnography:

“You haven’t changed Gaius. Not really. I have.”

Oh, god. This hurts.

You know, I hate s4 with a hatred that is rabid and undimmed, but the thing I hate most is that it didn’t give her a voice or a perspective in what happened to her, because so much happened to her. (And a great deal of it was shit, but even so—it would have been less objectionable shit had we been able to see it through her point of view.)

Because—think of what happens to her, and who she is throughout! It’s Caprica, who gets closest to God by being closest to human, whose missions are unilaterally about compromising her body and whose stakes are never less than the creation and destruction of whole worlds. Since we meet her after the mini, she does nothing but try to create hope and see the fruits of it destroyed; her arc’s a string of endurance, of loss after loss after loss. She destroyed the old world, and herself with it, and then she was given its name to wear as her own and went on to take responsibility for the craftsmanship of a new one. She believed she could head her people side by side with the man she loved leading his people, she set up a mission, a government, a bid for truce, a Cylon-human hope: this world betrayed her. She retreated back to her people, a world of pure machine and God on her terms, and this too betrayed her—D’anna and Gaius left her behind to pursue even purer machine-God clarity and denied her absolution in that. She threw herself into the center of the race that hated her and lived among them and tried to subsume her mourning with another man who was also in mourning and also seeking questions of life and death and meaning, tried to do penance among the human; this turned back on her again, as he turned out to be a Cylon. (Why didn’t we get to see him telling her? Because s4 is terrible.) But she takes that and holds onto it and decides to create a piece of a brave new Cylon world for herself, on her terms, within her body, the best weapon and location of every mission she’s ever pursued—and this betrays her most of all; Saul Tigh betrays her with carelessness and her body, her weapon when she’s unarmed, her home and her mission made flesh, betrays her almost to the point of death.

And she meets Gaius face-to-face—Gaius, who left her to seek the terms of her God that he never believed in, Gaius who’s spent s4 getting exactly the sum of everything he thought he wanted (women and worship, unconditionally—the caveat of s4, and of his arc in s4, is it’s totally awful, and he knows it: king of fools who knows he never earned his kingdom)—and asks him: what have you lost?

(And he meets her again having given it up, and she meets him in the seat of a borrowed sacrificial mission that belongs to neither of them, and they understand each other. He’s survival, she’s sacrifice, they’re the sum of the lost and destroyed worlds at their backs and they’re going to carry that into the next one.)

travllingbunny | likeastairmaster:

30 Days of Women: Day 15: Favourite female character growth arc | Caprica Six, Battlestar Galactica

The Sixes in general are incredibly interesting characters (Gina and Natalie are amazing, for one) but Caprica Six starts out as a villain and her place as the devil on Baltar’s shoulder is solidified by head!Six, the twisted version of her. And we get used to that.

And then comes the episode Downloaded, where we see she is beginning to find individuality, and she’s conflicted by her part in the downfall of the human race. She wants to coexist peacefully with humans and helps them when she has the chance. She’s incredibly complex, deeply devout and desperate for affection. She struggles with her place in the genocide of the cylons’ creators and she is just so, so interesting. The progression of her character is one of the best things on the show for me.

Yes, until they screwed it up and pushed her into the background in the second part of season 3 and season 4, and didn’t know what to do with her except give her a pointless pregnancy.

…which was some fucking bullshit, from idea to execution, but that makes exactly none of the above untrue. She’s not uncomplex or unconflicted if they take her off the screen, she doesn’t undestroy Caprica the planet or undoubt the aftermath or undiscover iconic individuality or unfeel. They derail what they could have done with her to such an extent that it’s like they asked someone “what’s the worst thing we could do with this arc?” and tried to top the answer, but her arc doesn’t go backwards. It takes a shitty breather and then it comes back. She still makes it to the end of the world structurally and mythically intact, alive and important and feeling and in a changed space that’s consistent with the way her arc has changed her.

Fucking bullshit pregnancy time doesn’t unexplain everything that’s been given to us. It’s the worst possible way we could be given time to spend with her, but it doesn’t undo the characterization we’ve been given, and we get her back intact and dead-center. I’m angry she like categorically wasn’t present in s4, I am furious about what they did with her, but it didn’t fuck up her character long-game—see, the finale, in which she’s perfect and occupying the narrative/mythic space she is owed. That space belongs to her—the space that they did not utilize for a season, and that is probably the single worst thing about that whole mess of a season—and it never stopped being hers. We’ve seen character assassination on this show (poor, poor Boomer), we’ve seen characters jacking other characters’ mythic shit (we need to talk about s4)—this is not what that looks like.

They forgot her. It sucked. Then they remembered her. Keep up.

why would that be a promo you shot if tory foster is never going to talk to a six. 

or if headsix is never going to talk over her (probably naked) shoulder at least.

why would that be a thing you do!

honeyspider:

the path you walk is on fire

itsinthetrees:

hotelsongs replied to your post: 

wait okay you know how much i hate cylon superbaby arc but can we talk about how obsessed tory foster would have been with cylon superbaby?? (TORY FOSTER YOU GO DOWN AND VISIT CAPRICA IN HER CELL RIGHT NOW, NEITHER OF YOU HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO.)

R I G H T ?

TORY FOSTER WOULD BE ALL ABOUT ROBOT SUPERBABY LIAM TIGH

there is a bit of this on rekha sharma’s face in “deadlock” but not nearly enough

jane espenson problems

this whole goddamn arc problems

oh but what if this leg of the season had been about tory foster’s adventures in cylon perfectability, using her as the link between the god-loves-you-because-you’re-perfect rhetoric up in Cult Shit land and the physical creation apotheosis going on in caprica’s womb? so it was about her self-discovery as a cylon and being obsessed with being the best cylon while meanwhile baltar is saying that (cylon) god loves you unconditionally because everything you do is an act of perfection and caprica is theoretically ushering in a new generation of pure self-sustaining god-given cylon life? no costs either way? cylon apotheosis every damn where you look, just as tory is acclimating herself to this new way of life by trying to transform into the paragon of that way of life?

and then both sides undergo horrible dramatic collapse obviously because this is long-range untenable but tory could get caught in that collapse and her death (PREFERABLY NOT BY THE CHIEF, AIRLOCK THAT DUDE ALREADY) would be thematically coherent and so would EVERYTHING.

in lieu of being stupid and terrible.

could have had it all.

the hilarious thing about the way caprica six is written 

where by “hilarious” means “cheap as shit, fuck these fools” but which, in some ways, is interesting in spite of the cheap lazy badly-prioritized bullshittery of it all is that she’s the most important machine-woman in the robot universe and the show just doesn’t give a goshdarn fuck.

no, listen. i’m going to try to keep this as objective as possible (i know, what a beginning), because i talk a lot about caprica and maybe you’ve noticed that tends to get glutted with Feels; yet, it was pointed out to me yesterday, you know, she’s not around a whole lot! huh! where do all these feels come from, isabel, you nut! and i thought, upon hearing that, huh in-fucking-deed, because i can’t even gainsay that, she’s in the text a stupidly small amount, does that invalidate her universe-wide imprint? i mean, let’s talk about how this works. what do we even know about caprica? the answer is A HILARIOUS AND SIGNIFICANT LOT given that WE GET LESS THAN INSUFFICIENT TIME WITH HER, and—how does that even work?

saying that caprica is the literal most important machine woman in the robot universe isn’t feels, it’s text. it’s repeatedly text. by which i mean, “literal most important machine woman in the robot universe” is not in fact in any of the scripts because that is stupid internet dialect from yours truly; what is in the scripts, in the action of the overarching plot of the story, is this that follows:

• she seduces gaius baltar, gains access to the defense mainframe, and destabilizes caprica (the planet)’s defense, thus allowing the cylons to invade, bomb, and exterminate the center of human civilization without much defense. caprica is treated as the geographical and cultural center of the former human world. it’s the most important planet, she is credited nearly singlehandedly with enabling its easy conquest. this is a prominent cylon victory. this is why they call her “caprica six”. (“like you’re the only one on the planet.” this is the planet they raze and rebuild for their own. this is the home of the constant “meanwhile”-ing through s1. this is the planet. and it’s credited to her.)
• framing that, the six model is the face of the war/genocide from moment one: when we learn “they look like us”, we learn first that they look likeher. this is not caprica-specific and should not be treated as such. however: she is the first six we meet with a character. we know her face going in. we watch her and look for the evil robot under the perfect skin, we wait for her to reveal herself. which brings us back to:
• she seduces gaius baltar, which is treated as a volatile mission because of its emotionality. the six who will become known as caprica six was not a sleeper agent. she lived among humans, constructed herself in their image, and knew what she was all along—all of this is essentially paraphrased out of “downloaded”, when she’s talking to boomer, who was a sleeper and whose emotional risks were thus coded in humanity. not so, hers; subsequently, she has no excuse when:
• she feels. love, then guilt. again, she has no claim on humanity, the way boomer does. she is pure, self-knowing, god-knowing, world-knowing cylon. and then:
• she doubts. (“genocide, murder, vengeance—they’re all sins in the eyes of god. that’s what you and i know. that’s what they don’t want to hear.”)
• she mobilizes that doubt into leverage. (“our voices count. more than hers. more than others’.”)
• why does this succeed? because she is iconic to the point of destructiveness. (“we’re celebrities in a culture based on unity.”) both she and boomer are war heroes, but while boomer’s act in the war is based on having come back out of assimilation, caprica’s act was knowing and her reaction is organically cylon. she feels, loves, dwells, and doubts outside of her programming, and that destroys the collective. the revolution that happens in s4 is seeded in this. and before that:
• she shapes the government on new caprica, arbitrating between cylons and humans in an effort to make peace. this is her project. “downloaded” is about making that her project. (the project fails, of course; we’ve two more seasons to go.)
• she is the outlier when the sixes vote on baltar’s survival on the baseship—meaning, she breaks from her line (again, seeding for a great deal of cylon conflict in s4).
• she is imprisoned, essentially voluntarily, on the battlestar, among the humans—survivors of her genocide—and coded as the carrier of the cylon future (a potential cylon/cylon child; see also, her place in the opera house, which are her dreams as well as laura’s and athena’s and which is eventually physically realized with her).
• she survives both the human-cylon war and the cylon civil war as one of four cylon models who make it to earth.

take that list. none of which are extrapolations, or inferences, or pieces of performance, or questions about her internal life, only facts that make up the history-in-progress we watch on the show. then separately, say we have the cylon metaplot, which, in rough broad strokes, is about destruction, then conquest, then civil war, and finally extermination (with the human-cylon power dynamic inverted). take that metaplot and we find caprica six, specifically caprica six, unique to her model and not acting on its behalf, in every step of it. if you talk about things that are important to the cylons, you talk about caprica six, and vice versa. she changes the world by volition (e.g. new caprica) and by the accident of her general existence (e.g. why she has the power to try to make new caprica a peace project). she’s an imprint on cylon society and it cracks around her. first significant individual mind among the collective (from an actual cylon never-been-human mindset), constantly and inevitably in the lead (the six model is a leading model).

you’d think that would transition to her place in the narrative. however, where do we get to spend time with caprica six, and what’s she doing when we find her?

• the mini
• downloaded
• fragments of the new caprica plot—none of which are about her status as cylon leader and armistice advocate, all of which are about her and gaius moping around each other* because they’ve grown too used to their idealized head!versions of each other.

*and i LIKE the moping—”stay.” is a perfect, clarion moment to me—but it’s the only time we get with her and meanwhile the new caprica plot is being commandeered by, like, chief the labor union warrior. really? this is how we elect to distribute arc time and character space? really?

• s3: on the basestar with baltar and d’anna, shoved into the background because that plot becomes primarily about d’anna’s search for god interacting with gaius’s knack for false messianism
• s4: nowhere to be found in the cylon rebellion plot; instead, getting impregnated by saul tigh in the battlestar prison as he mentally photoshops his wife’s face over hers, then losing the baby because ‘he didn’t love her enough’
• and then the finale, which blithely, totally ignores the entirety of s4**

**which i’m okay with as a feeling person, but i’m not dense and i’m not amnesiac, so what good does the show’s selective memory do me when i still watched s4?

and i find it baffling. i find it baffling that we can speak in objective terms—about things which happened, textually, in the story, and are hugely significant to the people depicted in the story, to the shape of the war, to the history in the making—about her importance, which gets an entire episode’s worth of spotlight, but have so little to say about her place in the story. that the show has so little to say for her. that the show gives her so little to say. she’s integral to the worldbuilding, exists on the screen, and gets fuck-all to do on an episode-by-episode basis.

how does this work? no, genuine question, how does this work? how do we treat a character who is so embedded in the metatext and so absent onscreen?

maybe i’m meant to sit back passively and eat what the show tells me as it comes. caprica never had show space of her own and thus caprica is not important, thus it is okay when caprica is a vessel for other men’s toxic feelings, thus i should not expect her to have a voice, or agency, and when the actress playing her suggests that, wait, actually she wouldn’t lie back and passively be punched by some dude with feelings because she’s a damn war machine with more-than-human strength and ought to have something to physically say about the subordination of her body, maybe i should, like the writers, be SURPRISED and find this NOVEL. i mean, she’s only a piece of tech long-run and who gives a shit about a robot? (s4 asks me. s4 asks me a LOT. “i do,” i reply, “because i watched your show, assholes.”)

you tell me, kids. but the infrastructure of this entire world, the shape of its history (and thus the shape of things to come), thinks caprica’s important. and she’s treated like a tertiary. and i think the universe these showrunners allegedly created would have a fairly large bone to pick with that.

About on par with everything else in s4.

hariboo ответил(a) на ваш пост: Did you watch Razor/The Plan before moving on to Caprica? Any thoughts? also I love Polly Walker but not enough for Prison Wives. WHY ISN’T SHE IN ALL (the better) THINGS?

there isn’t anything good about the plan. all i can say about it: lots of tricia and the sixes. but i don’t love what they do with them in it. too much of the ones/father cavills.

why the fuck is a cavil

most transparent narrative device ever

“ahhhhhh shit now that our cylons are actual interesting and emotionally multifaceted, our war narrative doesn’t have a villain! how the hell are we going to finish this story??

…cavil did it.”

Hey, BSG, guess what? Fuck your angels, is what! 

Thus comes the slow decompartmentalization of that hot-ass mess of a finale, so let’s start with that last scene, which just ruined the shit out of an already pretty terrible text of an ep. That last scene, man. That last scene.

And I don’t even want to talk about the weird fearmongering moral, even, or the monotheism laid on thick. Those are big thoughts, big rants, and let me just placehold both with: that was some bullshit. No, I just want to talk about the fucking angels first.

• Okay, so, angels.
• Say you have angels: fine.
• Say your Cylon God has won the godly existence sweepstakes of the week, and has angels at his beck and call: fine.
• Say these things and look to the show as to what that means.
• “Angels take the shape of those we love.” Fine. Thus: invisible Gaius and Six. Thus: Gaius believes in God because he basically makes out with God every time he has a spare second. Fine, yes. Calling themangelsis pat as fuck, but what isn’t about the show’s broad-brush monotheism; my point is: that’s why invisible Gaius and Six.
• As in: they take the shape of those beloved to whom they’re speaking. As in: invisible Gaius and Six are invisible Gaius and Six because they’re imparting the mission to Caprica and Gaius.
• Gaius is mortal. So’s Caprica, I’d assume, since they shot all their tech into the sun (man, fuck this show’s Progress Is Evil! moral so goddamn hard).
• It’s 2009.
• They’re dead.
• They’ve been dead for millennia.
• Why are your “angels” still in their shapes?

And don’t say “so we recognize them as angels”. Ugh, this lazy fucking writing room, I am so done. YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE MYTHOS IS A FAILED PROJECT, PLEASE GO TO YOUR ROOM AND STAY THERE.

12colonies:

4.03 | The Ties That Bind

(via ahkna)

isabel. 20. machine woman problems. en passant
ASK & SUBMIT & INTRO & LJ

queens and huntsmen, physicality stanning, theater feelings, hilarious myopia, nonstop verbosity, delusions of grandeur. fictional moral compass not found.

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