Things to post in my livejournal before I go to bed...and a bit on Caprica and Lost

[shadowkat]

1. Did you know that a man was hit by a plane while jogging on the beach with his i-pod? It happened in Hilton Head. Private Plane built by the pilot, apparently not that well, and had engine trouble - so the pilot opted to land on the beach of all places. Which normally would not be an issue...except, well you know the visiting business man jogging on the beach plugged into his i-pod. There were other people walking about, but they skeddaled when they heard the planes approach. The man unfortunately could not hear it, because of his ear-phones. Good news? He never knew, died on impact, no pain. Plus no other injuries. Bad news? Left behind a family with three kids. (Hmmm. So if he was single with no family it wouldn't be a huge loss? Good to know. Being single and all. How expendable I truly am.) Anyhow...apparently the odds of getting killed while running on the beach listening to your i-pod are higher than winning the lottery - who knew? Moral? Running on the beach is healthy. But you might want to leave the i-pod at home, along with the cell-phone. These gadgets are truly hazardous to one's health.

2. I've been compulsively scanning the internets for spoilers on the Buffy Comics. And there aren't any, well not any that I don't already know. Highly frustrating. The TV show had spoilers. Stupid comics don't. Interestingly enough, I don't always do this. I don't hunt nor want spoilers for Lost, Caprica, and 99% of the tv shows on. It's only Buffy, BattleStar Galatica (to a degree) and whatever soap opera I'm addicted to at the moment.

3. Saw Caprica this morning. This show works for me whenever Daniel Graystone and Zoe are on-screen. I'm bored whenever Amanda and Clarice Willow are onscreen. And the meandering of Josef Adama in Virtual Reality Land or New Cap City is equally boring to me, although his scene with his brother Sam, who is rapidly becoming one my favorite characters, is quite wonderful. Tamara wandering about New Cap City on the other hand was intriguing and gripping. I also find Lacey's story gripping and whenever she's on screen it is cool. So this show is unevenly written.

The match of wills between Daniel and Zoe in last night's episode was remarkable. She knew that the gun he gave her to shoot the dog was filled with blanks - the robot that she's inside could sense it. But she admits to Lacey that if it had been filled with actual bullets - she would have turned it on her father and shot him. I can't say I'd blame her. What Daniel does to her is horrific. He basically tortures her in the hopes that she'll slip up and reveal that she is alive and well inside the robot. He is willing to break any rule to retrieve "his" daughter as if she belongs to him. It's a rather interesting character thematic - the idea of ownership.
Josef and Daniel share that in common - that both see these girls as their property, theirs.
And this is true of many parents - they have tendency to see their children as belonging to them as part of them, as a projection of themselves. You are smart because I'm smart. Your accomplishments are a reflection on me, etc. When in truth this is not so. Children are individuals, unique. While parents do have an affect on who they become, they are not the sole or only factor and they do not own their children.

Stolz plays Daniel in a way that is sympathetic. He is vulnerable. You do care about him and you can see him going a bit crazy with grief. It is in some respects an amazing performance.
He raises the bar quite high.

Zoe also is quite well played - her battle of wills, her desire to tell but fear to do so, her inability to trust him.

That dynamic is well-played and an ironic take on a similar one between Gaius Baltar and the manipulative Six.

The other scene that I found interesting was a relatively small one between Josef Adama and his brother Sam, where he asks Sam - what goes through his head when he kills someone. The conversation and the ensuing holo game that Josef plays to find his daughter are commentaries to our own society's rather desensitizing take on violence. The woman that Josef meets in the game tells him that what happens in the game feels real and is real within its confines. Josef keeps stating it's not though. When he leaves the game after being unable to kill someone - at least initially - he asks Sam that question. Sam states - I don't think about it. It's not real. The person I kill is not real to me. To me they are just a target. Not human. Just something in the way. Something that I have to remove. That's it. I don't think of them as a living thing. The speech he gives Josef Adama reminds me a great deal of the speech that Spike gives Angel in Damage, where he tells Angel that he never saw his victims, they weren't real to him. Just a target. Just food. Just the rush of violence. He says the same to Buffy in numerous episodes - happy meals with legs, or to Wood, just a slayer. He in his head, rationalized killing people by making them targets. Not people. They aren't real. He didn't care about them because they weren't real or people to him. It's a different type of evil than say...the serial killer who targets people because they are real and he gets off on taking them apart, corrupting them, turning them into himself. It's also if you think about it - a commentary on us. Violent video games where we just kill things. Violent tv shows and blockbuster movies - where people are killed but we feel nothing. Even the news and media. And what, Caprica asks, is it doing to our children - who are watching and playing increasingly violent video games, where there are no consquences for killing someone, no remorse - it is not real. It's just a game. What happens, ask Caprica's writers, when the line between reality and makebelieve becomes blurred? Josef Adama wonders this very thing as he pursues his dead daughter's avatar in the makebelieve world, killing all who get in his way.

I'm guessing Marsters arc continues into next season, since the season final is next week and we've only seen Marsters for one episode. He's supposed to have a four episode arc.



4. While I was rather unimpressed by Lost this week...I did find a few bits worth noting.

Kate and Jin and Sawyer are clearly not completely on board with Team Smokey. Sawyer appears to playing Smokey and was not surprised when Not!Lock revealed himself to be Smokey. I'm guessing Sawyer knows quite a bit about who and what Smokey is - considering he was head of security at the Dharma Initiative for three years with Juliet, and they both knew the pylons kept Smokey out. Regarding Smokey - it was Smokey who manipulated Ben into killing everyone at the Dharma Initiative and into joining the Others. He appeared as Ben's mother and talked to him. It was not Richard Alpert who got him to do it - unless I remembered it wrong. Sawyer also did not lie to either Widmore or to Smokey - which is why he is the best liar Smokey had met. It may also explain why it is difficult for people to lie to Sawyer, he usually sees right through them.
He knew before anyone else did that Sayid Jarrah was a torturer who got off on it. And he
knew how to play him. He also knew right off the bat that Smokey wasn't Lock. Liars tend to know when others are lying. What makes Sawyer good is he doesn't really lie. He tells half-truths. And what people want to hear. He told Widmore that he'd bring Smokey to his doorstep. And he told Smokey that he told Widmore this and what Widmore was doing on the Hydra Island with the cages. He told both that he had no problem with them fighting one another, he just wanted off the island, along with everyone with him.

Another interesting tid-bit about Sawyer? He makes friends with other people. His friends with Jin, Hurley, Lock, and Miles. Jack doesn't. Not really. We see this in the islandverse and the sideways verse.

That's the only thing I thought was interesting in the Sideways verse - that Sawyer, after his confrontations with Charlotte and Miles, attempts to make amends with both. Charlott's reaction perplexed me - because she was clearly hunting that file on Sawyer and clearly knew that James Ford had it. She was thrilled when she found it. So why the uppity bit? Is she trying to convince him she was just fiddling about? What is she hiding and why do I get the feeling that they won't tell us? The fact that he tells Miles and informs him that he wants to kill Cooper for what he did - also intrigued me. That's the big difference between James Ford in islandverse and JAmes Ford in Sideways verse. In Sideways verse - he does trust people, he lets them in. Prior to Juliet - James Ford did not let anyone in. Not really. So they are being consistent in their depiction of the characters' lives being better in Sideways verse without manipulative Jacob and the island. Also, what the characters do in the sideways verse is organic to who they are in islandverse.

Ben is a teacher, who cares deeply for Alex - and struggles with a desire for control. He is manipulative in both worlds, but also in both - he cares deeply about those put in his care.
In Sideways - he helps them, he aides them, he chooses them over power. In Islandverse - he chooses power, and fails them miserably.

Locke - desperately wants to be someone, wants to believe in something, to find meaning, to find a purpose - if it is only being a teacher and being loved. In Sideways - he finds it.
In Islandverse - he can't.

Jack - desperately wanted his father's approval, to feel important, to feel sucessful outside of his father - he realizes in the Sideways verse that he always had it, and that it is not important, that it is not vital and it does not make him successful. He has a son and through his son - he realizes that his father's words which felt like darts meant to wound, were not deliberately so...he comes to an epithany of sorts. While in Islandverse - he's floundering, desperate, and suicidal, letting everyone down in the process - it's still about Daddy, with Jacob merely another representation, as is Smokey.

Kate - it's about bringing the mother and child together. She had a crazy mother who defended an abusive father. Kate wanted a relationship with her mother, and pursues it, with no luck.
So shifts to one with Claire's son, and when that falls through, shifts to finding Claire and reuniting Claire with Aaron. In Sideways verse - she succeeds. In Islandverse = she fails.

Sayid - wants to prove he is a good man and not the product of his actions, years spent as torturer in Iraq. That he is worthy of Nadia. In Islandverse he fails over and over again.
Each time when he is put to the test, he kills and tortures. In Sideways verse - he is equally forced to kill, but not quite for the same reasons. And he does not end up with Nadia, he stays away protecting her.

Sawyer - wants to find the man who destroyed his family. In Islandverse - he does, he kills him and has to live with it, is devasted by the act - and manipulated into it by Locke and by association Ben. In Sideways verse - he can't find Cooper, and is looking, while it eats away at him but has not turned him into Sawyer/Cooper. His love of others, need to help and protect others wins out in the end, as it does in Islandverse, but more so here.

All of this makes me wonder what I'm supposed to be thinking of Jacob, who feels more and more like a manipulative bastard. I'm hoping this is true. I'm hoping that the story isn't a simple one a la The Stand, with the good guys fighting the bad guys. But I'm skeptical.

Next week's episode gives me some hope...since we get to see Alpert's back story and perhaps some insight on Jacob. Alpert clearly doesn't like Jacob much. The only two things of interest in Jack's game of chicken with Alpert and the dynamite two weeks ago - was that a)Alpert had given up and sees Jacob as a manipulative bastard, just as Jack does. And b) no one touched by Jacob can die on the island. Note John Locke died off the island, so this was not a problem.
People can die off island if touched by Jacob, but not on. Which is what the boy meant when he told SMokey - you can't kill him - he can't kill Sawyer. It also may explain why Sayid came back from the dead. And Juliet was killed (not touched by Jacob.) Personally, I'd rather have Juliet...Sayid's story got stale a year ago. I love Sayid, but they just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Plus we got too many male characters - I vote we ax a few of them to even up the tally. Also, as a side note - where are Rose and Bernard? Not dead, I hope.
I liked those characters.



Okay bedtime.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

And agreed. Those scenes with Daniel, really made me want her to blow him away. I even started rooting for his nemesis - Virgis (I think that's his name?)

Very well put. And I like your thoughts on Sam vis-a-vis Spike - ties nicely into a piece of Spike meta I may never get finished, about where that supposed vestigial soul and morality comes from pre-s7.

Oooh, you are doing a Spike meta? Cool. And on a topic that fascinates me as well. One of the many reasons that I'm still hooked on that character.

Sam in Caprica reminds me a lot of Spike. He's in some respects one of the more layered characters in the series...

When you compare Sam/Josef (Spike) to Daniel (Angel/Angelus), it's hard to really say who is the most twisted. Valid arguments could be posed for both. I know I've argued it both ways, at least in my head and at times online. But, personally, I prefer Josef/Sam and Spike to the Daniel/Angel ...because it's easier to argue with a man who sees you as just a target (get him to choose another one or make him see you aren't), then one who sees you as his creation and a product of his ego or the bolstering of his ego.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Oooh, you are doing a Spike meta? Cool.

I may never finish it, and it isn't exactly revolutionary, I think, but the gist of it is this: Spike's sense of morality isn't grounded in ethics but rather in esthetics. He acts according to what is narratively and romantically (in the literary rather than the emotional sense) correct. And therefore, as you say, the victims aren't important - his own actions, the artistic process is far more interesting. (The victims aren't part of his audience anyway.) Exactly because art, at least in the late 19th century and onwards, can tackle questions of morality without being moral in and of itself (William is roughly contemporary with Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, heh), a vampire based on those ideals may retain a secondary sense of meta-morality. Or something.

When you compare Sam/Josef (Spike) to Daniel (Angel/Angelus), it's hard to really say who is the most twisted.

Yup. I just finished watching Rome (where pretty much everyone is contemptible, but interesting and believable) and the way they pit Marc Antony and Octavian against not only each other but against what we know of what's going to happen - on the one hand, the passionate, chaotic, murderous lover, and on the other the cold, calculating schemer... it's hard to know exactly what to make of it, but it's definitely a similar dynamic. The dreamer vs the realist, the mass murderer vs the serial killer, the honorable vs the pragmatic, etc.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Okay, now you've made me want to check out Rome. But I have to watch the Wire and a lot of other things first.

My current obsession appears to be anti-hero television shows, with complicated moral themes.

I may never finish it, and it isn't exactly revolutionary, I think, but the gist of it is this: Spike's sense of morality isn't grounded in ethics but rather in esthetics. He acts according to what is narratively and romantically (in the literary rather than the emotional sense) correct. And therefore, as you say, the victims aren't important - his own actions, the artistic process is far more interesting. (The victims aren't part of his audience anyway.) Exactly because art, at least in the late 19th century and onwards, can tackle questions of morality without being moral in and of itself (William is roughly contemporary with Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, heh), a vampire based on those ideals may retain a secondary sense of meta-morality. Or something.

While I've certainly read the Victorian effeminate theory...this appears to be a new twist on it. And both Wilde and Twain are good examples. Twain made fun of romantics like Henry James, just as Spike would, yet Spike in a way was originally the Henry James sort or whoever it was that wrote Ivanhoe. Can't remember. Not being a huge fan of the Victorian Romantics...I find Wilde and Twain hugely entertaining.

I think what is interesting about Spike/William - is he started out as a Victorian Romantic and became over time quite Wildian.
And his morality sans soul changed as well, but unlike Liam - 1700s, and Darla, 1500s, his morality is bit more evolved...it's less in some respects black and white, which makes sense, because the Victorian Age was a type of Cultural Renaissance with a more elastic morality that was far less dependent on the Church or religious dictates.

Could be a rather interesting and cool meta. Also quite ambitious.

One thing about writing meta online - that I recently discovered, the readers seem to care more about how we present it than how it is written. So if you attach cool pictures and vids? You'll be adored.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

While I've certainly read the Victorian effeminate theory...this appears to be a new twist on it. And both Wilde and Twain are good examples. Twain made fun of romantics like Henry James, just as Spike would, yet Spike in a way was originally the Henry James sort or whoever it was that wrote Ivanhoe.

Sir Walter Scott. And exactly; Spike isn't a romantic character, he's a deconstruction of one - except Spike the character isn't aware of it, at least not up to a point. There's a reason he's styled himself a punk rocker, the perfect combination of romanticism and cynicism.

And his morality sans soul changed as well, but unlike Liam - 1700s, and Darla, 1500s, his morality is bit more evolved...it's less in some respects black and white, which makes sense, because the Victorian Age was a type of Cultural Renaissance with a more elastic morality that was far less dependent on the Church or religious dictates.

Again, exactly. Angelus is Villain, but at the same time a product of Enlightenment; he's evil and knows it, but he's also rational and static up to the point where there's a revolution that turns everything upside down. (He's not Wilde, he's Shelley - Mary, that is. MS's The Last Man is set hundreds of years in her future, yet everything looks like early-18th century England since progress hadn't been invented yet.) In contrast, Spike sees himself as Tragic Hero, and at the same time a product of the industrial revolution; he's bad, but he's good at being bad, and he can evolve - and he knows (or he's from a time that knows) that there's nothing moral in evolution, just gradual change. (See, I've got all these thoughts on it all a-jumble and I need to do some reading before I start putting it together.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Spike isn't a romantic character, he's a deconstruction of one - except Spike the character isn't aware of it, at least not up to a point. There's a reason he's styled himself a punk rocker, the perfect combination of romanticism and cynicism.

Have you ever seen the Gary Oldman film "Sid and Nancy"? I'm guessing that's what they were going for. And it is similar, except Spike resembles Billy Idol by way of Sid Vicious, more than Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.

But you are correct...he has deconstructured himself or created a counter version to the Victorian Romantic. The degree to which the change was motivated by Angelus and Darla, remains to be seen. It's also in some ways the opposite of what Giles did, Giles started out punk rocker Sid Vicious and became Jonathan Starker or Van Heiseling straight out of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which much like Mary Shelley was Victorian Romanticism at its height. While William was definitely Jonathan Starker and became well Sid Vicious or Keifer Sutherland's character in The Lost Boys.

Whedon's Buffy feels at times like a commentary on Near Dark/Lost Boys vs. Bram Stoker Dracula/Mary Shelley.

Again, exactly. Angelus is Villain, but at the same time a product of Enlightenment; he's evil and knows it, but he's also rational and static up to the point where there's a revolution that turns everything upside down. (He's not Wilde, he's Shelley - Mary, that is. MS's The Last Man is set hundreds of years in her future, yet everything looks like early-18th century England since progress hadn't been invented yet.)

Exactly. What I haven't seen a lot of people do is contrast the historical period's effect on each character, because each is a man formed by their time period. William's actually easier in some respects - because the Victorian Age is more recent and there's more written. Angel - is pre-Victorian, his idea of breaking the rules is quite different. Note - he respects the significance of the Annoited One, is rather obsessed with prophecy, and big on the Master. Spike could care less. Part of that is due to the time period they came from. Angel's time period was far more authoritarian in tone, while the Victorian Age, particularly the latter portion ...was the start of the industrial revolution - it was about "rebellion" and "acquisiton of territory" as opposed to conquering/or invasion.

Sounds like a very interesting meta. But difficult, because the internet is filled with history experts. ;-) (As I discovered much to my chagrin. Get a fact wrong and...well..;-) )