I've been on LJ on a post with no name

[rose_griffes]

This would appear to be a TV post. It jumps all over the place, though.

ABC may not air the final episodes of Pushing Daisies?!?!
::mentally throws rotten fruit at ABC::

So I was watching more of Flight of the Conchords the other night.
1.07 'Drive By' has the fruit seller with prejudice against New Zealanders. It was reasonably amusing--I particularly liked the knife stuck into the door with the piece of kiwi fruit attached. The song "Albi the Racist Dragon" was just... weirdly funny, and I liked "Leggy Blonde." "Mutha Uckas"--annoying.

1.08 'Girlfriends.' Flipping racism to be against the two white guys in the previous episode worked for me as a source for comedy. Having the woman be the sexual predator rather than the man in this episode just made me uncomfortable. Apparently the sympathy button (for the character being taken advantage of) works rather too well for me, whether it's a woman or man. Though the song "Foux da Fa Fa" almost makes up for all of it because it's gloriously wonderful. "A Kiss Is Not a Contract" is pretty cool, too.

BSG stuff: I was commenting in prolix_allie's LJ about Leoben. Here's some of that (slightly modified to make sense)--and I'd love to read anyone else's thoughts about it.

I kind of resented the show for making it canon that all of the Twos are obsessed with Kara, because to me that takes away another piece of individuality*. At the same time, though, maybe they all learn from their collective experiences and that helped push them toward siding with the other 'rebel' cylons.

Referencing Kara's captivity with a Two on New Caprica, Alllie mentioned the idea that she couldn't imagine Leoben putting her into a breeding Farm--not because of it being immoral, but because "he seems attracted to her force of will even while he wishes it weren't quite so forceful."

What I wrote back: if Kara is Destiny Girl, then anything he does against her will runs the risk of changing that. Or maybe he really did evolve--he was presumably a willing participant in the 'love all the humans (to death)' experiment. I'm really glad the show didn't go there, though--the Farm was quite enough for me, thanks.

So what do you think? Does the fact that all the Twos are obsessed with Kara make them 'less' in some way than the cylons who have become more individualized? Do we need to redefine what it means to be a person (I'm deliberately not using the word human)? Where does free will fit in, if they all feel the same way? If they can't download, can they still share experiences like before, or will they now have to develop individually?

* also, it totally ruins this crackfic idea I had...

Hopefully some of that made sense. I don't think that made any sense. Too bad! I was cutting/pasting/typing as fast as my little fingers could work. And now: back to grading papers. I'm desperately behind.

Comments

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

um, yes, that was me. To expand a bit, the other models think the Twos are a bit bonkers because their priorities are askew to the rest of the collective - they're capable of collective action, but they have this wacky interest in thinking the Hybrids can prophesy. So, because nobody else takes them seriously, the Twos kind of have no one else but each other to understand. They're sort of their own collective within a collective. I suppose all of them are, in a sense, but the Twos seem to have their own agenda.

And in pursuit of that agenda they need to be able to share information. Each hybrid probably produces different gibberish, so I like the idea that they pool their knowledge to try to understand what she's saying. With the Eights it seems to be a matter of choice to access other individual's memories (and that may only be possible at download or special set-ups like Boomer's sleeper role, but I don't know). But with the Twos, as each one learns something connected to their interests, he puts it in the Twos' datastream, so they all know about it. So while I think yes, they all know and agree with the deal about Kara (though I'm less certain that New Caprica Leoben didn't go off the reservation in his zealousness), I'm less certain they share everything, and more that they update everyone with things that are important.

So - gods, am I even answering your question anymore? I've been interrupted like four times and I'm just blathering on - anyway, I agree that exposure to humans is loosening them all up (rather to Team Ugly Cylon's chagrin), including the Twos, and mortality is going to speed up that process because it takes away one of the main things that makes them very different culturally.

I think another thing to keep in mind about ALL the cylons is that until exposure to humans they were all living lives that were all but identical. It's not just humans - it was the changes of the infiltrators leaving the ships and going to the planets, it was some of them getting killed for the first time, it was having HEROES who became important by virtue of what one model did. So it's all very poetic that by choosing to destroy humanity, they sowed the seeds of their own death as well.

[rose-griffes.livejournal.com]

Well, now I've gotten to read 1) this comment version of Leoben meta and 2) the fic version in part four of 'Labyrinth Gates.' Excellent!

Though I'm mostly just sitting here nodding in agreement, without anything scintillating to say in return. Heh.