Updates

[lettered]

»Made a lot of headway on my fic. FEELS GOOD.

»Thank you to everyone who told me their Tumblr name or who friended me on Tumblr. It feels awesome, except a whole bunch of people friended me and I don't know who they are. WHO ARE YOU? WHO WHO?

»Still appalled by Outlander. However, am interested in the tv show, because Ron D Moore.

»I keep waiting to hear something awful about Moore, or see something awful he's done. I mean the big names that you know--Moffat, JJ Abrams--I just kind of picture them sitting in a room saying, "Okay, but how can we start with something cool and then fuck it up even more?" Even Joss Whedon, whom I really respect a lot, has made some serious mistakes that just make me wince super hard and say, "Ooh, buddy, I know you mean well, but really can you watch where you step?" I haven't seen Moore doing this, but . . . he has to, right? I mean I don't like anyone anymore; that's just how I am now--broken inside.

»Played Apples to Apples as Data. Was very eager to define for Lwaxana Troi and B'elanna and sometimes Jim Kirk all the 20th and 21th references. Had some trouble since the only teenager he knows is Wesley Crusher (he chose "High School Bathrooms" for the category "Neat").

Comments

[catpella]

I was thinking this comment. IMHO, Moore did the same thing JJ Abrams did with Star Trek: "I like the idea of this property, but I don't actually like the original, so let me completely miss the point of the first series and make what I think should have had happen instead."

[lizbee]

I liked BSG initially, but once it got into the torture, and killing off a vast chunk of its female cast, I just nopetopused right out of there.

[lettered]

I guess I didn't notice vast chunks of the female cast getting killed. I mean, a lot of people died, but I didn't feel it was disproportionate, as is the case on some shows. I'm looking at a list of characters who die, and it seems about even to me--which isn't saying much, since that can be said of plenty of shows that had disproportionate numbers to begin with. However, I feel like for me BSG was one of the few shows that started out with a lot of strong female characters, which made me happy.

[lettered]

You know, you're totally right about this.

I shouldn't have said that what I disliked about JJ Abrams was that he took something cool and fucked it up. Really what I hate about it was that he took something that was about philosophy, ethics, optimism and good intentions and made it into straight up action fare. And the reason that I like Moore is he took straight up action fare and made it into something that was about philosophy, ethics, and moral questioning. That said, I'm not a fan of the original series of BSG, so maybe if I watched more of it I'd feel differently.

[catpella]

I mean, I will preface this with I _am_ a fan of the original, so I will cop to my biases and admit that I'm not going to be any kind of fairly objective.

Coming from my POV, I don't like when a series that is about something is changed into being something entirely different. So while I respect that there's value to fans of the new BSG in how Moore complicated and changed it, I still feel like changing it into something that's antithesis of the original is problematic. The original BSG made a clear moral stance and chose what themes it engaged with, and Moore disregarded all of those in favor of his vision. Just like how I feel Abrams did the same thing with regards to Trek's vision.

I will concede to not entirely hating Moore's run on Trek. I think that's because since he was a subordinate writer, and Trek was continuing on from the original Trek. So Moore wasn't able to radically change the direction of the universe, just add some shades of darkness here, complicate a situation there. Hypothetically, if Moore had been given the new Trek movies as his sole property, and had done a nuBSG darker take on Trek, I'd have been furious at him about that too.

In other words, I tend to find "radically changing the tones and themes of a property" to be a problematic choice when done by not-the-original-writer, regardless of how anyone feels about whether the change are for the "better" or "worse". Does that explicate a little better? I don't want to come across as hating on Moore just because he broke the thing I like.

[lettered]

Oh, no, I understand your view completely and think it's completely valid. I just feel differently. And I'll admit to being hypocritical, since before you put it this way I would have said that I do think it's uncool to tear apart the spirit of the original, and I guess I do think it's uncool that Moore did that, but I'm so happy with the result I find it hard to care. Which again, hypocritical.

Hypothetically, if Moore had been given the new Trek movies as his sole property, and had done a nuBSG darker take on Trek, I'd have been furious at him about that too.

This is really thought-provoking. Because I do feel like DS9 really started to twist what Star Trek was all about. In some ways, I loved it, because I felt like it really took apart the underpinning's of Roddenberry's improbable vision and talked about what it really meant. But when we got into the stuff about Section 31 I just wanted to throw things and shout, "THIS IS NOT WHAT STAR TREK IS ABOUT. STAR TREK IS ABOUT THE IDEA THAT A SOCIETY CAN EXIST WITHOUT SECTION 31'S AND THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT. STUPID." So yeah, idk, Moore really getting to be in charge of reimagining Star Trek the way that Abrams was might have pissed me off.

OTOH the questions with which Moore seems to concern himself are questions that are so important to me I might have been able to get over it, whereas with Abrams I don't think that's ever going to happen. So I wonder whether I could still state my stance as "messing with the spirit of the original may be uncool but I won't really care if you do it to address things that are deeply important to me."

But I totally understand not feeling that way and I think you bring up great points.

[catpella]

I love a lot of what DS9 discussed, but Section 31 really hurt a lot of what I love and believe in about the franchise, and it always made me feel really icky.

I am deeply suspicious of Abrams getting Star Wars, because on the one hand he admitted he likes the franchise better, and on the other hand, then I would be 3 of 3 with childhood franchises chewed on by newcomers.

And this has been a great discussion to have :)