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BSG Thinky Post (aka An Ode To Racetrack)
So I haven't done this all season, and I totally blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
beccatoria because I stayed at her house for three days and BSG was literally all we talked about (okay, so there was also some Star Wars, but still!), and now I am all thinky and such.
Anyway given the events of The Oath and what I found to be surprising, I have some thoughts about Racetrack.
Let me begin by saying that I fully acknowledge that my take on Racetrack has been quite coloured by fandom. It began withinlovewithnight and her Racetrack/Apollo, Racetrack/Helo fics, and continued on because at first, I liked her a hell of a lot more than I liked Kat (who I later came to adore, but in a totally separate way). I would also like to add that for budgetary reasons, I understand that the show cannot have a revolving door of pilots, and that with both Boomer/Athena and Helo out of commission for most of season one and two (for whatever reasons), Racetrack was almost always one of the people in the non-expendable Raptor.
So it makes sense that Racetrack always comes through. She finds water, she nukes the Basestar, she mutinees successfully, she finds Lee, she gets a message to Tigh, she survives New Caprica (and apparently well, as ranking Raptor pilot), she survives the Algae Jumps, she finds Felix...and then she mutinees again.
And, dammit, I was surprised. This is MY RACETRACK, the pilot you have given me to love. She has never whined like Kat and Seelix, she has never gone apeshit like Kara and Lee, she has never gone off the Reservation like Helo and Athena...but she has also never seemed to hold it against those that did. She acknowledges that things are shitty, and she just keeps going. Which is, of course, exactly what Dee did right until she shot herself in the head.
Is this Racetrack's suicide? The way that Roslin's non-interest and sheer annoyingness was hers? Is this how Racetrack gives up? In a hail of bullets?
I can't help but wonder where Cally would have stood. Except I know, of course, and that makes it even worse. She loves the Old Man, but she hates the Cylons mores. And maybe that's what it all comes down to.
In semi-related news, I hope Gaius leaks Gaeta's secret (which I am still pissed about, so you know, as I could not legally find out what the secret was!), and Gage shoots him in the head right before Athena breaks his neck.
beccatoria because I stayed at her house for three days and BSG was literally all we talked about (okay, so there was also some Star Wars, but still!), and now I am all thinky and such.Anyway given the events of The Oath and what I found to be surprising, I have some thoughts about Racetrack.
Let me begin by saying that I fully acknowledge that my take on Racetrack has been quite coloured by fandom. It began with
inlovewithnight and her Racetrack/Apollo, Racetrack/Helo fics, and continued on because at first, I liked her a hell of a lot more than I liked Kat (who I later came to adore, but in a totally separate way). I would also like to add that for budgetary reasons, I understand that the show cannot have a revolving door of pilots, and that with both Boomer/Athena and Helo out of commission for most of season one and two (for whatever reasons), Racetrack was almost always one of the people in the non-expendable Raptor.So it makes sense that Racetrack always comes through. She finds water, she nukes the Basestar, she mutinees successfully, she finds Lee, she gets a message to Tigh, she survives New Caprica (and apparently well, as ranking Raptor pilot), she survives the Algae Jumps, she finds Felix...and then she mutinees again.
And, dammit, I was surprised. This is MY RACETRACK, the pilot you have given me to love. She has never whined like Kat and Seelix, she has never gone apeshit like Kara and Lee, she has never gone off the Reservation like Helo and Athena...but she has also never seemed to hold it against those that did. She acknowledges that things are shitty, and she just keeps going. Which is, of course, exactly what Dee did right until she shot herself in the head.
Is this Racetrack's suicide? The way that Roslin's non-interest and sheer annoyingness was hers? Is this how Racetrack gives up? In a hail of bullets?
I can't help but wonder where Cally would have stood. Except I know, of course, and that makes it even worse. She loves the Old Man, but she hates the Cylons mores. And maybe that's what it all comes down to.
In semi-related news, I hope Gaius leaks Gaeta's secret (which I am still pissed about, so you know, as I could not legally find out what the secret was!), and Gage shoots him in the head right before Athena breaks his neck.
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It's a really good point about Racetrack actually, that metatextually she may well have been the person to go through all this stuff for budgetary reasons, but that the net effect is that she's been there since season one and we love her now.
And that's also why choosing to have her mutiny was so effective.
I honestly hadn't thought of this as her de-facto suicide before. I have to think about it now - it's interesting. I don't think it's quite as clear cut as Roslin giving up or Dee shooting herself in the head or Adama trying to piss off Tigh. Because I don't think that Racetrack got into this with the intention of dying. I can't explain that with any actual onscreen evidence, but my reading of her minimal screentime was that while she was uncomfortable with what was going on, she was consciously going along with it and not just in a detached "I'll be dead soon," kind of way.
But the idea that she's doing this because there's nothing else to do, that it's the literal end of the road so consequences like the fleet's safety, or her own life, just don't matter because...this is it? That I find fascinating.
And really, might that be the same as defacto suicide? If you choose something so horrific just because it's active for once, not passive, but this something is something that'll kill you, literally or metaphorically...I mean, yeah.
There are probably a lot of people for whom this mutiny is a way of reclaiming control and asserting their identities.
But maybe for some - like fanon Racetrack - it's a way of destroying what's come before because you just can't be that person anymore. So either you die in a hail of bullets, or you're the one pouring the hail of bullets into your friends which will destroy you anyway?
*brain explodes*
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No dead Maggies allowed. :/
It doesn't help that my own personal Racetrack has always been awesome, and generally accepts Athena. She's come a long way from calling Athena "that Cylon whore" after all.
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Indeed! But I WORRY.
It doesn't help that my own personal Racetrack has always been awesome, and generally accepts Athena. She's come a long way from calling Athena "that Cylon whore" after all.
Exactly! Which is why I find it hard to buy her as a mutineer. Maybe Gaeta didn't tell her everything and when she finds out about Helo she'll flip? Or maybe she's a spy? I DON'T KNOW.