Banana Slug Weekend

I slothed through my weekend, feeling much justified in doing so both by the frenzy of my normal schedule and the fact that in addition to rain and unseasonable heat, Southern California added wind to the mix of fabiloso weather on Saturday. I hate wind. I have always hated wind, and no matter how much I loved Frances the badger, or how many times my mom would say it, the fact that the wind is "Just doing its job" does not make me like it, or not scrunch up my shoulders in that sort of fear/aggravation/unease posture.

And it bugs the crap out of my allergies.

So yesterday, I stayed in bed until about 3:30 watching BSG eps. 12 and 13 and decided to re-watch the miniseries. It's still boring, poorly paced and a little messy, but its a lot more interesting now that I already know the characters.

So, speaking of TV. BSG, ep. 4.

( Spoilers for Ep. 4 )

TV is meta-phorical

Okay, so I will someday finish the Farscape is The Odyssey essay, although that someday is not today. However, I've been thinking about something queenofthorns brought up last week. She mentioned that someone on her flist had said that BSG is like The Aeneid while FS is like The Odyssey.

I think that's actually a brilliant analogy - rivaling only my favorite analogy of all time offered by my friend J's therapist who asked, in reference to dating, "What's the first thing women do when trying on pants?"

Look at your ass. If your ass look good in the pants, you buy 'em. Even if they're a bad color, or too long, you buy 'em. So dating is like that. If he makes your ass look good, you buy him, even if he has other flaws:)

Okay, so returning to the TV is a resurrection of classical literature theme, The Aeneid is a story of leaving one life behind to find a new life in a new place. And the founding is prophesized. (We'll ignore for the moment, that the Aeneid was written because Augustus wanted his society to be on equally, if not superior footing with the Greeks and needed his official writers to come up with a way that they were better, which sent Virgil back to Troy and so on). Regardless, Aeneas flees the burning ruins of Troy - laid siege to by a superior and heartless enemy to gain back something that was rightfully theirs. In that case it was Helen, here it is the idea of a soul, the right to be God's children.

It is foretold that Aeneas will come to a place, find a sow and 40 piglets, and start a new civilization, which he does, although first devastating the queen of another society, but we'll ignore that for now.

So while Farscape is the unexpected journey and search for home, BSG is the founding of a new home, and new world, one prophecized and offered up as deserved, as promised.

Crichton, and really all of the characters, on this journey are at the mercy of the "gods", survive through a combination of dumb luck, quick wits, really fucked up circumstances and a drive to live, to survive against the wretched things thrown at them. And when they find home, much like Odysseus, it doesn't turn out to be what they expected. Change and adaptation, change or die, give in, get caught, get fucked, get out, get away. Their lives are about momentum, fear and boredom, rage and laughter and knowing every moment is potentially it, and trying to live like that's not true.

Odysseus ultimately can only rely on himself, and that's a place that John Crichton gets to, and has to fight his way back from, has to reclaim his own kingdom - in his case his mind, his sense of love, of family, of duty.

BSG is following the path of the Aeneid ( spoilers for ep.12 and other eps.,  )

I'm not sure one character can reasonably be identified as Aeneas. Lee is too, hmm, I don't want to say young, but he's growing up, and Starbuck is probably a closer figure, especially if one wants to look at Baltar as Dido, but her burden is herself, not her fate. Adama is too old, too much a leader but far too competent to be Anchises. I suppose the ship itself could be Aeneas, or Laura Roslin maybe, ( speculative almost spoiler )

But the journey, the search, the sacrifices and the mythical promises of a land where they can start over again, it's a great comparison, and maybe that's what I'm enjoying, the tie that links all of the shows I really care about - Farscape, The X-Files, Firefly and now BSG. It's a journey. The way that the day to day fits into that journey, the failures and failings and tiny triumphs, the way the journey changes as people change, as relationships change things, as distractions are shuttled aside in order to see the goal with clear eyes. The way that clear or not, the destination often shifts radically to the left.

More of the J/Chi

The first part is found here: You Can Lead a Man to Tequila,

The rest finishes here:

( Part II )

No more Classics, they'll break my brain.

Oy, in answering a comment by boofadil, I started thinking about how Apollo and Dionysus can be represented through Lee Adama and Gauius Baltar.

Bangs head on desk, orders Classical Education to hit the road.

It works though, even explains why I prefer Baltar over cutie-pie Apollo. Because Dionysus is risk, is wine women song and theater. He's the portal between life and death, and Apollo is judgment and prophecy, god of the sun and completely free of humor. Which is understandable. He's in charge of the frigging sun.

The two of them eventually will come to be represented by Jesus Christ, merged through iconography, but at one point, they are intertwined, confused and praised, long hair and power, almost feminine in their features and their poses.

Which also feeds into the whole one god thing going on with the Cylons.

Argh. Stopping now. Thank god I was too inhibited to voice this sort of thing when I ventured into Farscape fandom. But don't think it's not still there, that I can't lay all of the characters out as not just archetypes in literature, not just, Joseph Campbell does Star Wars archetypes, but primary, primordial this is why we have gods and goddesses type archetypes. But none of us want that, do we? Didn't think so!