Jive Talkin'

I can't stop crying. I don't know if it was that crying video I found on Videogum the other day or that I'm just a total girl or my stupid emotions are being forced out of me whether I want them to or not (not. Go AWAY emotions. Leave me here in my robot-from-the-future bliss). It was one thing to cry over Laura Roslin dying on BSG (shut up shut up, I don't care) but the Dog Trust advert and the new Children's Centres DVD that was launched at work today has also made me tear up recently. I've not been like, bawling, but I have been tearing. I think it's because the BSG finale has been on my mind so much (shut up shut up, I don't care).

Because, seriously, the BSG finale sucked ASS amirite? (I'm aware that's the nerdherdiest thing I've ever written). Here's the thing, don't spend four years telling a story of progression, of people (and cylons) becoming human (my favourite kind of story), of the journeys that have to be undertaken, of the sacrifices that have to be made, and then have it all tied up in a neat little package at the end. That's insulting. BSG has never been about neat packages and shiny surfaces. It's been dirt and sweat and blood and tears. That's why we like it, I mean, space battles ftw for sure but there's only so much excitement to be gleaned from guns and explosions. It's a lot of excitement to be fair but it is, ultimately, finite.

What made me love it was the psychology, the theology, the angels, the no-right-or-wrong. It was messy and painful. It was life. They made the last hour not about life and about tying up loose ends. Loose ends never get tied up in life, they shouldn't have been on this show. But ok, fine, it needed an ending and they gave it one. What hurts is that they gave it the worst ending of all because what the survivors learned from everything they'd been through was to start again with a clean slate. Christ. On. A. Battlestar. That is not the lesson we set out to learn on our hero's journey. Ooh, this hasn't gone very well, can I just cash in my chips and start over? No, no, and no again. You cannot do that. That is not how it works. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. The crucial this is that it doesn't need to, but the only way you can stop it is from accepting the past and learning from your mistakes. That means moving forwards, not backwards. Creating a future, not looking misty eyed at the past. It was basically the equivalent of The Daily Mail being put in charge of England. They're obsessed with recreating this mythical time when children obeyed their parents, the streets were safe to walk at night, there was no crime, no immigration, no drugs, no prostitution. You don't need me to tell you that this is bullshit. That what the Daily Mail yearn for NEVER EXISTED. Life is messy now and has always been messy. It will continue to be messy but it does get better. Because the future is A-L-W-A-Y-S better. But only because we continue to strive to make it better, to explore, to learn from the past. Rosa Parks making a stand, sparking a movement. Harvey Milk standing up for himself and all those like him. Intelligence, bravery, curiosity. It gets better only because we want it to get better. It doesn't get better because we pretend the bad stuff didn't happen. We've all had that feeling that I wish none of this had gone down, I wish I could just forget about it all, it's too painful but the only way we grow is to reach the other side of that. It's not about forgetting, it's not about clean slates, it's about accepting and changing.

It just feels like the writers lost their nerve. I could have come up with all that stuff. What I want from my art is something different, something I hadn't thought of, a new perspective from which to view the world. They gave me something glib, something that didn't feel talked out to all it's logical conclusions. It all seemed first, rather than final, draft. Like the Opera House vision. All of that amounted to some people walking down a corridor? That's ridonk. I've always defended the writers right to not have everything mapped out exactly from start to finish because that's what it is to write. That's the process. Added to which I think it's more creative to write yourself into a situation that seems impossible to get out of and then use your imagination and your intelligence and your bravery and your curiosity to make something even more beautiful out of it than you'd originally conceived. That's what BSG gave me time after time, except for this one time when they didn't make the brave choices. They made the easy choices.

And why set up all this Greek mythology? The zodiac, the Gods, the names of ancient heroes if it wasn't going to mean anything later? WHY BSG WHY? It bothers me is all. Not a lot though. I'm totally not a nerd. How about that sporting team that plays sports huh? Pretty sporty and shit right? (I am so right).