Meme answers + Glee
Nov. 20th, 2009 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shah_of_blahFor rose_griffes : excerpt from Portraits
This was really frakking hard. Tigh’s nothing if not a complicated man, and I had never written him before. And here I was dealing with not just his relationship with Starbuck but also his relationship with Ellen. Both of which are pretty damn complicated as well.
For Saul Tigh, Starbuck has always shown up in his life whenever she damn well pleased, never mind any inconvenience to him. Her being dead now (really this time, or so they say) is hardly much of a hindrance.
This bit, at least, was easy. What can I say about it? The use of her call-sign is pretty damn deliberate here. That is the way he sees her, I believe.
On this particular day the strap for his eye-patch finally snaps its last synthetic thread and the damn thing falls to the ground, worthless now. He kicks at the patch, but its brief trajectory is wholly unsatisfying. He sits down on a rock, though it’s not an action so much as a surrender to gravity. They’ve been on Earth (the good one) for years, but the planet’s pull still feels heavy on his shoulders, his limbs, his feet.
I like the idea of the eye-patch being synthetic—a not terribly subtle allusion to the Cylons, you know? And it becomes simultaneously him as well as something that was done to him.
Maybe he’s just going senile, but he doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there when Ellen finds him. She asks him if he’s alright, ignores his grunted reply and kneels on the earth before him.
“You don’t have to cover it up,” she says. And, “Do you want it to be covered?”
This line was very clear to me; I can just imagine Ellen saying it, in her all “I’m so wise, Saul,” manner (which hides a psycho bitch!). And she’s wearing this mantle of understanding, but she has to ask anyway because she doesn’t (understand, that is).
She holds the patch in her cupped palms, as though it were an offering. She presses it to the rock just beside his fist and rises up on her knees so that her eyes are level with his. She gently traces the socket with her fingertips and then with her lips. It’s not the first time she’s done this.
Ellen’s trying to be so sensual and spiritual and all that, tracing his wound with her lips, and he’s just removed from it. “It’s not the first time she’s done this.” This segment is not in first person, but this is still Tigh’s POV, and that line is intentionally very blunt and very cold.
The anger is not unfamiliar. Ellen’s touch feels ghostly, or maybe he’s the ghost. Starbuck’s presence is not exactly a surprise, but it’s certainly not expected either.
It would be really frakking weird if he were expecting her in this moment. But again, it’s not a surprise because A) she’s always doing the surprising, and B) he’s so distant from Ellen in this moment that C) Starbuck is the only one he can feel a kinship towards.
Thrace has been dead and gone for years, but in this moment her memory is more real to him than anything else. He’s not sure where he is but his throat burns—from whiskey or screaming, he can’t tell. He thinks about Starbuck, about Kara, about dank cells and echoing launch tubes. About the way she’d been on New Caprica, just before those metal bastards took her. He thinks about when he saw her back on Galactica, after their frakking rescue when they returned to a ship full of people pretending it was all just some nightmare already fading away. He remembers that he’d seen prison bars in her eyes but that fight was still there just the same.
This is where things got really tricky, as I tried to embody all of what they shared—particularly with Occupation and Collaborators—and all of their common traits in one paragraph.
Starbuck is at his back but now Ellen kneels in front of him. Her eyes—both of them—are soft and far too merciful for his liking.
Too merciful. Ellen, who forgave him for killing her. Ellen, who couldn’t understand his view of the world and its dark justice.
“Saul,” she says. “It’s okay, Saul. I understand.”
Because she thinks it is okay and because she thinks she does understand.
Her hand vanishes from his sight but he can still feel the brush of her fingers against his skin. For a moment, all he can think is You’re wrong.
She’s wrong. I wavered for a while about what should go there, in the “all he can think” spot. I don’t remember everything that I considered, but I believe “You’re wrong” was the first and the last. It signifies the most, I feel, while saying the least, if you catch my drift. She’s wrong because it’s not okay, wrong because she can never understand. Wrong because she’s a Cylon, in a way that he may never be. Wrong because he can’t let go of the part of him that fought against the Cylons, and because she’s one of them who locked him up and took something he’ll never get back.
It’s enough to drive a person to drink.
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rdave1 : excerpt from Flight Status
And that's my commentary!
In other news, Glee has come to Perú. And cable has come to my house, so I caught the second episode (first episode? first real episode?). I had some Thoughts on it but don't really care to write them up, as I'm sure they occurred to you too (namely, it's far too soon for all these romantic developments, and really I would rather Finn and Rachel didn't become an item anyway). I did enjoy it, even as I wondered if some things might be lost in translation.
I also enjoyed the fact that, at the start of every ad break, they had a message from the stars...the main guy, whatever his name is, Teacher, his was the best.
"Hola, Latin America!" he said in the most gringo voice ever. Ironic too, since he's supposed to be a Spanish teacher.
rose_griffes : excerpt from PortraitsThis was really frakking hard. Tigh’s nothing if not a complicated man, and I had never written him before. And here I was dealing with not just his relationship with Starbuck but also his relationship with Ellen. Both of which are pretty damn complicated as well.
For Saul Tigh, Starbuck has always shown up in his life whenever she damn well pleased, never mind any inconvenience to him. Her being dead now (really this time, or so they say) is hardly much of a hindrance.
This bit, at least, was easy. What can I say about it? The use of her call-sign is pretty damn deliberate here. That is the way he sees her, I believe.
On this particular day the strap for his eye-patch finally snaps its last synthetic thread and the damn thing falls to the ground, worthless now. He kicks at the patch, but its brief trajectory is wholly unsatisfying. He sits down on a rock, though it’s not an action so much as a surrender to gravity. They’ve been on Earth (the good one) for years, but the planet’s pull still feels heavy on his shoulders, his limbs, his feet.
I like the idea of the eye-patch being synthetic—a not terribly subtle allusion to the Cylons, you know? And it becomes simultaneously him as well as something that was done to him.
Maybe he’s just going senile, but he doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there when Ellen finds him. She asks him if he’s alright, ignores his grunted reply and kneels on the earth before him.
“You don’t have to cover it up,” she says. And, “Do you want it to be covered?”
This line was very clear to me; I can just imagine Ellen saying it, in her all “I’m so wise, Saul,” manner (which hides a psycho bitch!). And she’s wearing this mantle of understanding, but she has to ask anyway because she doesn’t (understand, that is).
She holds the patch in her cupped palms, as though it were an offering. She presses it to the rock just beside his fist and rises up on her knees so that her eyes are level with his. She gently traces the socket with her fingertips and then with her lips. It’s not the first time she’s done this.
Ellen’s trying to be so sensual and spiritual and all that, tracing his wound with her lips, and he’s just removed from it. “It’s not the first time she’s done this.” This segment is not in first person, but this is still Tigh’s POV, and that line is intentionally very blunt and very cold.
The anger is not unfamiliar. Ellen’s touch feels ghostly, or maybe he’s the ghost. Starbuck’s presence is not exactly a surprise, but it’s certainly not expected either.
It would be really frakking weird if he were expecting her in this moment. But again, it’s not a surprise because A) she’s always doing the surprising, and B) he’s so distant from Ellen in this moment that C) Starbuck is the only one he can feel a kinship towards.
Thrace has been dead and gone for years, but in this moment her memory is more real to him than anything else. He’s not sure where he is but his throat burns—from whiskey or screaming, he can’t tell. He thinks about Starbuck, about Kara, about dank cells and echoing launch tubes. About the way she’d been on New Caprica, just before those metal bastards took her. He thinks about when he saw her back on Galactica, after their frakking rescue when they returned to a ship full of people pretending it was all just some nightmare already fading away. He remembers that he’d seen prison bars in her eyes but that fight was still there just the same.
This is where things got really tricky, as I tried to embody all of what they shared—particularly with Occupation and Collaborators—and all of their common traits in one paragraph.
Starbuck is at his back but now Ellen kneels in front of him. Her eyes—both of them—are soft and far too merciful for his liking.
Too merciful. Ellen, who forgave him for killing her. Ellen, who couldn’t understand his view of the world and its dark justice.
“Saul,” she says. “It’s okay, Saul. I understand.”
Because she thinks it is okay and because she thinks she does understand.
Her hand vanishes from his sight but he can still feel the brush of her fingers against his skin. For a moment, all he can think is You’re wrong.
She’s wrong. I wavered for a while about what should go there, in the “all he can think” spot. I don’t remember everything that I considered, but I believe “You’re wrong” was the first and the last. It signifies the most, I feel, while saying the least, if you catch my drift. She’s wrong because it’s not okay, wrong because she can never understand. Wrong because she’s a Cylon, in a way that he may never be. Wrong because he can’t let go of the part of him that fought against the Cylons, and because she’s one of them who locked him up and took something he’ll never get back.
It’s enough to drive a person to drink.
For
rdave1 : excerpt from Flight Status“Tell me why.”
She hesitates, clearly unsure what he’s asking, and he takes pleasure in that.
Pilots are experts in the art of talking about things that they’re not talking about; I really wanted to convey that here. In this pre-UB setting, Lee needs to ask her why, why she told him she loved him and why she left him. But as much as he needs the answers, he can’t ask that question. Not in so many words, anyway.
“Why what, sir?” she says in a voice so quiet, so timid, he’s not sure she really said it.
He’s not going to let her off the hook so easily. “I think you know.”
She bites her lip, then says, “I made a mistake. Sir.”
The sir is almost an afterthought because this is Lee that she’s talking to, and because she’s only sort of talking to her CAG.
The look in her eyes is starting to make him feel sick, and he suddenly feels a desperate need for this conversation to be over. He clears his throat and gathers his tenuous control. “Your mistake nearly cost me two Vipers.”
Fortunately for Kara, Lee lets her off the hook just this once (sort of). Doesn’t know when to pull his punches and when to follow through perhaps?
She blinks, just once but slowly. Takes a breath. “I wasn’t thinking – lost perspective. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I got careless and I got sloppy. I didn’t mean to...” She trails off, and he wonders if it’s because she doesn’t know what she was going to say, or because what she was going to say was a lie.
Heh, you know I wrote this like two years ago. Don’t entirely remember my process...although I do remember that I wrote it mostly in one sitting, one night at my grandma’s house.
“Do you want to die?”
She stares at him, her lips tight and her eyes dark.
There’s this peculiar thing about the accident in Torn. Mainly, if Kat’s such a great pilot why couldn’t she get the frak out of the way? But, then there’s also the fact that the collision was apparently written in later. Either way, I think the root of the issue is this: recklessness, verging on suicidal. Or just a slightly insane disregard for life.
“I can’t let you out in one of my birds if you’re not going to try your hardest to bring it back again in one piece. So tell me – do you want to die?”
“No,” she says, “that’s your specialty.”
Another special pilot skill: knowing just where to stick the knife. But I like the idea that even in this moment of strife, of almost hating each other, Kara regrets this—regrets throwing in his face something that he told her in confidence.
There’s a moment after the words emerge from her mouth and they’re both silent. She looks startled, perhaps a little regretful, and he is once again marveling at her ability to stun him into silence. Then he clears his throat, her eyes harden again, and the moment has slipped by.
They are also very good at, yes, letting moments slip by. A series of missed opportunities.
He doesn’t say anything and she just looks at him and finally he finds his voice and says the only words he can think to say: “Dismissed, Captain. You’ve got CAP at 0800.”
She smiles once, briefly, before turning to go. She pauses with the hatch open and turns back to him. “Lee?”
She says his name, and it’s the only time either of them does. I must have done that on purpose.
“Yeah, Starbuck?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and he’s just glad he didn’t slip and say her name.
“I’m really sorry.”
I don’t really have to explain what that’s in reference to, now do I? And just like the first time, it’s double-talk, talking about personal and professional, ahem, indiscretions all at once.
He blinks and breathes deeply and looks down at his desk. “Dismissed,” he grits out in a not too strangled voice. He stares, unseeing, at his paperwork until he hears the hatch close.
And just like that first time, Lee can’t handle her apology...
Later he thinks about why he put her back on flight duty and he decides it’s because of that look in her eyes. He’s disgusted with himself for caving, and he has to blame her, has to hate her, or else he’d have no choice but to hate himself. And that was always her specialty.
There’s a lot of fic in which Lee doesn’t know much about Kara’s life before Zak, but I like to think that even if he doesn’t know her reasons he understands this about her.
She hesitates, clearly unsure what he’s asking, and he takes pleasure in that.
Pilots are experts in the art of talking about things that they’re not talking about; I really wanted to convey that here. In this pre-UB setting, Lee needs to ask her why, why she told him she loved him and why she left him. But as much as he needs the answers, he can’t ask that question. Not in so many words, anyway.
“Why what, sir?” she says in a voice so quiet, so timid, he’s not sure she really said it.
He’s not going to let her off the hook so easily. “I think you know.”
She bites her lip, then says, “I made a mistake. Sir.”
The sir is almost an afterthought because this is Lee that she’s talking to, and because she’s only sort of talking to her CAG.
The look in her eyes is starting to make him feel sick, and he suddenly feels a desperate need for this conversation to be over. He clears his throat and gathers his tenuous control. “Your mistake nearly cost me two Vipers.”
Fortunately for Kara, Lee lets her off the hook just this once (sort of). Doesn’t know when to pull his punches and when to follow through perhaps?
She blinks, just once but slowly. Takes a breath. “I wasn’t thinking – lost perspective. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I got careless and I got sloppy. I didn’t mean to...” She trails off, and he wonders if it’s because she doesn’t know what she was going to say, or because what she was going to say was a lie.
Heh, you know I wrote this like two years ago. Don’t entirely remember my process...although I do remember that I wrote it mostly in one sitting, one night at my grandma’s house.
“Do you want to die?”
She stares at him, her lips tight and her eyes dark.
There’s this peculiar thing about the accident in Torn. Mainly, if Kat’s such a great pilot why couldn’t she get the frak out of the way? But, then there’s also the fact that the collision was apparently written in later. Either way, I think the root of the issue is this: recklessness, verging on suicidal. Or just a slightly insane disregard for life.
“I can’t let you out in one of my birds if you’re not going to try your hardest to bring it back again in one piece. So tell me – do you want to die?”
“No,” she says, “that’s your specialty.”
Another special pilot skill: knowing just where to stick the knife. But I like the idea that even in this moment of strife, of almost hating each other, Kara regrets this—regrets throwing in his face something that he told her in confidence.
There’s a moment after the words emerge from her mouth and they’re both silent. She looks startled, perhaps a little regretful, and he is once again marveling at her ability to stun him into silence. Then he clears his throat, her eyes harden again, and the moment has slipped by.
They are also very good at, yes, letting moments slip by. A series of missed opportunities.
He doesn’t say anything and she just looks at him and finally he finds his voice and says the only words he can think to say: “Dismissed, Captain. You’ve got CAP at 0800.”
She smiles once, briefly, before turning to go. She pauses with the hatch open and turns back to him. “Lee?”
She says his name, and it’s the only time either of them does. I must have done that on purpose.
“Yeah, Starbuck?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and he’s just glad he didn’t slip and say her name.
“I’m really sorry.”
I don’t really have to explain what that’s in reference to, now do I? And just like the first time, it’s double-talk, talking about personal and professional, ahem, indiscretions all at once.
He blinks and breathes deeply and looks down at his desk. “Dismissed,” he grits out in a not too strangled voice. He stares, unseeing, at his paperwork until he hears the hatch close.
And just like that first time, Lee can’t handle her apology...
Later he thinks about why he put her back on flight duty and he decides it’s because of that look in her eyes. He’s disgusted with himself for caving, and he has to blame her, has to hate her, or else he’d have no choice but to hate himself. And that was always her specialty.
There’s a lot of fic in which Lee doesn’t know much about Kara’s life before Zak, but I like to think that even if he doesn’t know her reasons he understands this about her.
And that's my commentary!
In other news, Glee has come to Perú. And cable has come to my house, so I caught the second episode (first episode? first real episode?). I had some Thoughts on it but don't really care to write them up, as I'm sure they occurred to you too (namely, it's far too soon for all these romantic developments, and really I would rather Finn and Rachel didn't become an item anyway). I did enjoy it, even as I wondered if some things might be lost in translation.
I also enjoyed the fact that, at the start of every ad break, they had a message from the stars...the main guy, whatever his name is, Teacher, his was the best.
"Hola, Latin America!" he said in the most gringo voice ever. Ironic too, since he's supposed to be a Spanish teacher.
