Sabbath

Well, if this didn't get me to post, nothing will

2016-11-11T05:32:10Z

It's been so long since I've posted something here, that when I logged back in tonight, I was confronted by the confusion of the top four posts in my friends list being spam from a hijacker using my brother's account that he abandoned years ago and I never unfriended. Seemed somehow appropriate for the first post since the election.

I don't really know what to say about these turn of events. November 9 was spent kind of zombielike, a mostly wasted day, where I kept avoiding news because I didn't want to hear Donald or Hilary, because then I'd have to face that this really happened.

But I will say this:

Rudy Giuliani, you vacuous, glad-handing, opportunist, this is not about me being a sore loser or a spoiled crybaby. This is about the horror at us ushering in a president who has zero respect for others, who promotes the sorts of xenophobic, racist, and dehumanizing attitudes that insult leaders around the world, could start conflicts, and will likely initiate the beginning of the end of the United States as a dominant world power, whose benefits you take so for granted, you think that the US can survive a joke for a president for four years and not take an irrevocable hit to its credibility.

This is about unleashing a culture war front and center where the footsoldiers have been given implicit permission to be as violent, aggressive, and bullying to the most vulnerable in our society as Trump modeled at his rallies, in his speeches, and at debates. He treated our former Secretary of State and a candidate for president with a level of crass indignity that was stupefyingly unprecedented in recent political history. I and my friends are now more likely to become targets for intimidation, bullying, and outright violence, thanks to his campaign win. Congratulations, Donald Trump. We haven't seen an American presidential candidate willing to stoop so low and go so dark since the late 1800s.

So STFU, Rudy Giulani, and try to imagine living in Trump's America without your millions and your abundance of white, male privilege and then see what a "crybaby" you become.

I fear we have put a bunch of clowns in charge of the country at a time when we are on the precipice of a rapidly changing geopoltical world stage that we are still struggling to understand, are on the cusp of the dramatic effects of worldwide climate change, and are circling the drain of an oncoming worldwide economic crisis that we can't pretend forever is okay because we have an abundance of crappy low-paying jobs that work everyone to death and discourage people even in traditionally fiscally conservative nations to keep fewer and fewer or even no savings.

Nationally, if Trump lives up to his campaign promises, he will basically trap people in jobs they hate because they're afraid of losing a health insurance that will be free to not take people with existing conditions and to stop insuring you after you hit a certain dollar amount over your lifetime so that in your most expensive years, you will be abandoned by your insurance company. By his choosing of a Supreme Court justice, Trump could indirectly repeal Roe v Wade and Obergefell v Hodges, and possibly give even more power to corporations over our society. Your friends, relatives, coworkers, classmates could be forced to leave the country abruptly even though they have contributed immensely to this country, paid taxes, and have been the greatest ambassadors for our country's way of life.

If you were opposed to Hilary because you thought she might be flawed, two-faced, or even corrupt, I actually get where that comes from. I was never her biggest fan, especially when I was going by nothing but my gut feeling about having seen her. On camera, she has a tendency to come across as stiff and arrogant. She's been a bit of a hawk at times, and she may or may not have made money she shouldn't have through the Clinton Foundation. But if you look at her political and social record, the actual undeniable facts of her record, she has always been fighting for the powerless in our society, she has worked on many plans to make our everyday lives better - easier access to education, to health care, to equal pay. Stack that against a man who has never fought for any cause that didn't benefit himself directly and who we know for a fact plundered his own foundation, in a clearly illegal way, and who boasts of not having paid taxes for over a decade, who is constantly under audit and involved in lawsuits for not paying people he's hired or for dealing with his workers illegally.

All things considered, I'd take the imperfect vessel anyday who actually has goddamn experience talking to world leaders and negotiating with them.Why would I want the guy whose plan is to tax the wealthy even less than they are outrageously not taxed now? The gap in finances that Trump's strategy will present to the country's budget a financial burden that is either going to be shouldered by the middle and working class through taxation, or else by social insitutions and safety nets the middle class use the most: social security, education, and unemployment. And this is just a taster of what Trump might do.

Everytime I hear "President Trump" or try to say it, it just sounds unbelievably ridiculous. So go back to your tower, Donald. In my mind, "you're fired."

Drive-by Remix awesomeness recs

2013-05-02T12:11:12Z

So I shouldn't be posting before work, but....

Great fics this year so far in the bsg_remix! I have recs!

First, you should totally check out the fun and clever fic I got this year:
Self-Destructive
This is a remix of my fic Impulse Control, which was a cracky, porny BSG/Iron Man crossover ficlet for a long ago porn battle that I never expected anyone to ever look at again. The banter in this remix of it just utterly sparks to and it's a joy to read. The premise is that the Colonials found our modern-Earth in the Marvel universe, and Felix Gaeta has been assigned the job of Galactica liason to Tony Stark. And well, let's just say that initially, Felix is a little sick of dealing with manipulative, egotistical genius scientists, and he's got a thing or two to say about it (that is before they're eventually going to give in to the hot sex in my fic). Short, smart and very funny, while also a dead-on, slightly meta critique of the Tony Stark character.

Other great fics I've read so far:

Smoke and Mirrors
A beautiful and heartbreaking Boomer/Tyrol fic, tracking their relationship from the Mini through New Caprica, taking the premise that they had a brief affair on NC that ended disastrously. I won't spoil it, but there's a moment where Chief does something stupid because of an assumption about Boomer on NC, and it utterly killed me, it was so achy. Get the tissues out for this one, folks. Also, nice observations about the Cylons on NC here, especially the relationship between Gaius and Caprica made this fic an absolute winner for me.

How Sam Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Cylon
This is a great meditation on Sam's Cylonicity and how the Cylon in him was perhaps there all along. Sam's loneliness and quest to understand himself in this is utterly palpable.

Existence is Circular
This one is haunting, and not for the very faint of heart, check the warnings. But Gina is never a happy subject, is she? This fic takes a disturbing look at what if Gina had survived and been implanted with Caprica Six's memories and made to forget her own, in an attempt to keep her sane? Then put her on New Caprica in charge of torturing prisoners, and you've got a whole lot of ouch on all sides. This fic shows you both her perspective and the anonymous prisoners' perspectives and it's just an intense, good read.

Shanked
I never thought that I would become a fan of BDSM prison fic, (yeah, check the warnings) but the worldbuilding about the society inside the Astral Queen that you get to see in this fic is just amazing, utterly believable. I could have read a whole novel set in this world set up by the author. But also, the examination of Meier's character - a minor Tom Zarek flunky from second season - is just gripping. In this fic, he's both a manipulative son of a bitch, and a needy follower who yet somehow you end up rooting for. :) And also there's a love story hiding here in all the posturing both Maier and Zarek do, and it's sweet and achy to watch these two men refuse to admit how much they mean to each other emotionally.

And there are many others I'm looking forward to settling down with, so I probably will have a second recs post soon. Go read!

millari @ 2012-11-29T20:40:00

2012-11-30T01:40:02Z

Okay, so one minor thing that's awesome about being in a country that's not the United States?

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Mexico channel surfing and happen upon a documentary about the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp. The awesome part? It was originally made in French, because that's the dominant audio track. Yet, there are parts where they interviewed Americans and you can hear them speaking English underneath the dominant track.

So what did the educational channel here in Mexico think about all these layers upon layers of language going on when they decided to show this programme?

"Who cares?" that's what.

They did not worry about their audience being freaked out by yet another language being slapped onto this documentary. They just threw on some Spanish subtitles over the whole damn thing, implicitly saying, "We trust you to be intelligent enough to figure this out. Enjoy."

I like the respect of that.

Obvs., I have arrived in Mexico City. Am blind with exhaustion, but have not collapsed yet. Am about to take a shower (first in oh, 36 hours) and this may take care of that.

I still can't believe I managed to find a Quinceanera card in SPANISH in the CVS in Easthampton for my step-niece. I think I'm more proud of that achievement than of the presents I bought her, which were also not the easiest coup - YA books in Spanish, including The Hunger Games, which her mom swears she's never read or even talked about. I hope this doesn't mean that she's dead set against them or something.

Flist purge alert

2012-05-13T00:09:43Z

So I've decided that my friends list has gotten sort of out of control big, with some people who I don't ever communicate with anymore and don't communicate with me, plus communities that are defunct or that I don't read.

So I'm doing an flist purge, my first ever. And while I'm most likely keeping on anyone I've communicated with in the last few months, if you're at all concerned, drop me a line here.

Thanks!

me as of late

2011-12-31T23:33:07Z

It's been a lovely two weeks of vacation. Too lovely, perhaps. I go back to work Tuesday, and I so don't want to.

But I've been very lucky, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. In the last two weeks, I got to go to Mexico for a week to visit my dad and my stepmom. A few years ago, they built a house in San Miguel de Allende and I'd not been to see it yet. My dad usually comes home for Christmas, and he decided not to this year, so he suggested that I and my brother come down to visit for the holiday. He sweetened the deal by offering to pay for whatever part of the ticket we couldn't afford as a Christmas present. Turned out to be the best decision ever to say yes. I had such a relaxing time and it was warm (in the 70s during the day, in the 50s at night). The town of San Miguel is like a Renaissance city, all cobblestones and cathedrals and haciendas dating back to the 1500s, the legacy of Spanish conquest, of course, but still, pretty breathtaking to look at. It's definitely a tourist city for Mexicans. Every weekend, it gets a huge influx of especially young Mexicans, from places like Guadalajara and Mexico City, who travel in to bar hop, see bands and walk around the Plaza Jardín in the center. There's also a significant American ex-pat population here, artists, artisans, musicians, and people just wanting to be surrounded by all that.

In terms of socializing, it was a great time. Got to see lots of my dad and stepmom, who were really generous and gracious to us, and I got to spend a couple of days with my stepmom's daughter, her husband and their kids, who I hadn't seen since they were pre-pubescents. Now they're teenage girls, 15 and 16, and they act so much older and at the same time younger than I was expecting. Girls that age in the States seem to me like they'd be so jaded and mature before their years. It's not like they weren't obviously teens, hooked to their MP3 players and talking about celebrities and all that. But they were also very respectful to their parents and made efforts to socialize with me and my brother, even though we were obviously the adult "tios". (It totally blew my mind to realize that technically speaking, they are my nieces - I have nieces! Hadn't thought about it until this trip.)

I also got to see old family friends closer to my age, some of whom my brother and I had grown up with for a while, but hadn't seen since all our families moved apart from each other. And there were some whom I had never met at all. Basically, it was kismet that all of us happened to be in San Miguel at the same time, so they invited my brother and I out for drinks to catch up, and it was such a blast that all regrouped at one of their houses the day after Christmas for a "recalentada" - a traditional party you have the day after a big party like Christmas or a Quinceañera party (think a girl's "Sweet Sixteen" party, but done at age 15.), where the leftovers are reheated and you party a second time. For Christmas, everyone brings leftovers from their own Christmas Eve party and so it's like a potluck.I met more folks from the family satellite, and to my surprise, of the younger set (mind you, we're all like 30-40), literally 50 percent of us were gay, so I got to ask what's it like to be gay in Mexico? Does the macho culture make it scary, etc? I said I wanted to bring my girlfriend, but I was a little worried.

I had to screw up my courage to ask, because it was me coming out to all these people as gay for the first time when they hadn't heard even an inkling of it, (also, my dad and all his friends were at this party, did I mention that??) but having people there openly talking about their partners and there being even one couple there made it less of a thing, and it was cool. I got the scoop on the gay zone in Mexico City, and the attitudes towards gayness (it sounds like there's a weird combination of tolerance and stereotyping going on that's generally harmless, if clueless). But the main point this guy was telling me was that he felt totally safe, and it's been even cooler since Mexico City legalized gay marriage. One of the guys, Mauricio, told me I should totally bring trovia and even offered to show us around Mexico City (where he lives) if we came to Mexico. I felt so accepted and relaxed after that, because I felt like a part of my life that I was consciously avoiding talking about was out in the open.

I also wrote for Yuletide this year, and GUYS, I managed for my first Yuletide ever to finish almost a WEEK in advance! Seriously, you don't know how awesome that is. Every other year, I've been literally posting at like two minutes to midnight, completely stressing out. But I was determined to get my story done by the time I left for Mexico because I didn't know if I would have reliable internet access with my netbook over there. (And thank god I did, because my dad's assurance that he had internet did not apply to a wireless network...) I was so pleased and it gave me hope that maybe I'll keep doing Yuletide, because this year, I also learned to absolutely limit myself to fandoms that I knew for sure I could actually write. I know, it sounds obvious, but every Yuletide, I'd always end up caving for my last signup offer because I had run out of reasonable fandoms, and so I'd pick something that I was vaguely familiar with, that I'd seen or read years ago, and be like, "Well ... I guess I could write that if I absolutely had to. But I'll probably never get assigned that." And then of course, inevitably I would. Also, I think it paid off that I know more fandoms this year, thanks to a lot of watching of older t.v. shows I got introduced to this year.

Also exciting for Yuletide, was my story!!! I got a Black Books story, which was loads of fun. The Bernard voice was PERFECT. And Fran and Manny were hilarious as well, just in the way they are on the show. It totally made me want to read more BB fic and rewatch the show.

As many of you know, grinninfoole and I have been in the slow process of disentangling our lives, living . Holidays are of course some of the collateral changes. He didn't come with me to Mexico for Christmas (actually, we didn't spend last Christmas together either, since I was in Germany with trovia For New Year's Eve, all bets were off as well, and so he has elected to go to a special board games event at his store and I am going out with a lesbian meetup group to Diva's, the local gay club, for their New Year's Event. I'm terribly nervous about it, because it's the first time I'll be meeting these folks, and I've never been to Diva's except for goth night, and I still harbor these secret fears that I'll be rejected somehow, which I know logically is ridiculous, and I'm sure it'll be loads of fun (the two women who are meeting with me beforehand for dinner are already talking about how much fun we'll have playing pool and dancing), but STILL, yikes! New social group! I'm still a shy nerd at heart sometimes. D:

But I'm going. I'm going in a few minutes, actually. Wish me luck!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MY LOVELIES!!!!

P.S. Oh, and daybreak77, I haven't forgotten, I've just been busy entertaining usakeh, who has been visiting this weekend, so there hasn't really been a good time for a chat. But I'm going to try and connect with you tomorrow. :)

A note to my Yuletide author

2011-12-25T06:39:56Z

First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS (if you celebrate).

Secondly, just wanted to let you know that I am in Mexico having a grand time with my family. I will be traveling back on the 26th, arriving late at night, so in other words, I very well may not get to read your fic until the 27th or even the 28th. But I'm looking forward to it very much, and I really appreciate you writing it. I know I'm going to love it. Thank you mystery writer!

BSG Secret Hobbies Challenge Roundup Post

2011-01-11T04:52:46Z

Just over 200 comments, guys! WOW.

Thanks for making the BSG SECRET HOBBIES CHALLENGE a success beyond our wildest expectations. You guys gave the Colonials some of the most surprising and hilarious hobbies we never expected them to have - ballet dancer, fanfic writer, rock musician, paintballer, knitter, and even extremely freelance editor... ;)

We had a great time reading all the fascinating and creative drabbles, and were pleased to make the acquaintance of LJ'ers we had never heard of before. We had ten writers and twenty-four drabbles. Some of you of you contributed two or more drabbles! Two people wrote BSG fic for the very first time ever for this challenge! We're very honored.

Here's a roundup of what people wrote:

trovia and millari:
Tigh, Baltar

millari:
Adama
Baltar

trovia:
Hot Dog
Ellen
Leoben
Racetrack, Skulls

acsgrlie:
Lee

geekbynight:
Athena
Boomer, Mathias
Tamara Adama
Gaeta, Sweet!Eight

choc_n_roses:
Male Cylon (warning: character suicide)

puszysty:
Cottle
Dee

lls_mutant:
Narcho, Showboat, Hoshi
Zarek
Lee

ohcopernicus:
Dee

lorrainemarker:
Laura
Gaeta and Hoshi
Skulls
Zarek

nvgvup:
Adama

Thanks again for making it an extremely fun and successful challenge, everyone!

Your mods,
millari and trovia

BSG Secret Hobbies Challenge 2010

2010-12-26T16:32:25Z

Ever been convinced that in his spare time, Admiral Adama tends orchids? That when Starbuck wasn't painting the nebula on her apartment wall, she spent her time fly fishing? That Lee has a secret history as a break dancer?

Then you need to participate in millari and trovia's

BSG SECRET HOBBIES CHALLENGE

From bungee jumping to stamp collecting to needlework, everybody's got a hobby so why not your most beloved BSG 'verse characters too? Write us a 100-word drabble or make some art and reveal their secret hobbies to the world. These revelations can be surprising, funny, even poignant. There are no rules.

Well, actually, there are rules. But they're few and they're simple:

Drabbles should be 100 words or less

We have no problem with porn, if you can make it work, but it should be clear that kinks don't count as hobbies.

Art can be original or photoshopped art, or even creative photos involving action figures.

Crossovers are allowed if you can somehow get a crossover and a hobby across in 100 words. We say, go for it!

The Caprica 'verse is considered part of the BSG 'verse. You don't need to mention the BSG characters at all if you're using Caprica characters.

Post your contribution in a comment to this post. One comment for each contribution.

Put the main character and – if necessary – warnings in the subject line of the comment.

Crosspost as much as you like!

This challenge is open through January 6, 2011

If you're confused now, here are some examples:

Tigh, no warnings

The tiny scissors flew across the quarters and into the wall, with a satisfying air of violence.

Saul turned back to the bare, misshapen lump of miniature leaves, branches and dirt before him. What the hell? He'd taken out a Centurion with his bare hands once.

He should be able to trim a damn bonsai plant.

“Are you using a lawnmower on that thing or what?” Bill quipped as he walked in.

“Yeah, I don't give a frak what Cottle says about this being relaxing,” Saul growled. “I'm going back to the ambrosia.”

by millari

---

Baltar, no warnings

After New Caprica, Felix found the sketchbook amongst Baltar's notes. He just stared at it for a moment, hot fury boiling up.

On the opened page, one very enraged, very tiny Tigh was chasing a manically laughing Starbuck through the CIC. Air Rage, the caricature's caption said.

“Ah, you know,” Baltar had said, unusually bashful, when Felix had first found it. “You start doodling in first semester. Two doctorates later... well.”

He'd thought it was so cute.

Before he could help it, Felix grabbed the sketchbook and hurtled it into a corner.

Nothing about it had ever been cute.

by trovia

This challenge was inspired by the Geheime Hobbys Challenge 2008 by Die Rumtreiberinnen in the German Harry Potter and X-Men fandom.

Free medicine cabinet, anyone?

2010-10-24T17:34:26Z

Hi Folks,

This is really an offer for people on my flist who are within driving distance of me, because it has a mirror and glass shelves, I'm not sure it would ship well.

I am offering to anyone who wants it, totally free, an IKEA medicine cabinet made by Siljan.

It has never been used. We bought it from IKEA over a year ago, finally got around to putting it together recently, and discovered that it was actually just slightly too wide to fit in the bathroom. :( So our loss is your gain. If you're within driving distance and you want it, it's yours. You just need to screw it up onto your bathroom wall. I'll even drive it to you when we next get together if you need. I just would like it to go to somewhere useful instead of it getting thrown out.

Here are the specs on it. You may need to click on the link that says, "specifications".

Proud pimping post

2010-04-23T13:02:42Z

So in the off chance that anyone on my friends list hasn't heard about this yet, I wanted to take a moment to pimp the fic exchange I've gone and involved myself in this year. :)

Why yes, thank you for asking. It's the Bsg Fic Exchange! Please do go sign up if you want to write and have written awesome bsg fic about anyone, anywhere.

Somewhere out there, there is a person who wants to read that awesome fic you've been dying to write but thought no one else wanted to read.

Somewhere out there, there's a person who is totally up for writing that fic you thought you'd never see. Hell, I'll write it if it comes down to it. ;)

So you have no excuse. However, you do have only until May 1 to sign up.

...

So what are you still doing here? Go sign up! Shoo!

millari @ 2009-10-05T08:50:00

2009-10-05T12:52:32Z

OMG, Big Bang is killing me. I had to ask my beta for another week.

That is all.

Our dinner with AJ

2009-09-14T13:11:51Z

So here, finally, is the transcript of the get-together that happened on Sunday September 6, 2009 between the Squeers who went to Dragon Con and AJ. I apologize for keeping you all waiting so long, but I was way behind on work, and collecting the memories of several different people turned out to be a bit time consuming. :)

A few caveats:
This was not recorded in any way, but merely represents the collective memory of the nine of us who were there: prophetkristy, blue_crow, rap541, puszysty, batsojopo, nicole_anellfuschia, blaaksable, millari, and grinninfoole. So even quotations are possibly not exactly verbatim, but the few quotes I included were things I truly believed were extremely close to verbatim and didn't misrepresent at all the nature of what he said. That being said, I am only human and still could be wrong. :P

Also, this account of meeting AJ is in no real order. It’s more of a stream-of-consciousness rendition of what we all said to each other. It probably doesn't follow the real flow of the conversation everywhere, but is more a listing of things that were said.

AJ called up prophetkristy's phone at 8pm sharp, just like he said he would, and we told him we were at the Pacific Rim restaurant in downtown Atlanta. He arrived a few minutes later, looking casual and friendly, pulling up a seat and sitting down next in between fuschia and grinninfoole, and there was this little moment of “What do we do now that we’re all here?” But we soon fell into fairly easy conversation, all things considered.

At some point early on, he tried to order a beer, but the waitstaff was so busy and running around that none of us could get any of their attention, so AJ ended up going to the bar and getting a beer himself (which of course due to the logistics, he ended paying for himself, darn!) and bringing it back to the table.

grinninfoole complimented AJ on his “great sense of comic timing” at the panels, where he’d made a lot of jokes over the weekend. AJ self-deprecatingly responded, “More of a class clown.” He asked us all individually our names, our professions and where we were from. After that, we admittedly turned the conversation onto him a lot, asking him all sorts of questions.

We talked briefly about the Dragon Con experience for him. He said he enjoyed getting to be with the cast members again, and that he thought it was going to be “the last hurrah” for con appearances. He didn’t think we’d ever see that many BSG cast members together at one time again, since the show would be over and everybody would be on to the next thing. “It’s nice to be flavor of the month though, I guess,” he said.

He himself didn’t want to be this aging guy still going to cons because he didn’t have any other work, and that there wouldn’t be any work because being at the cons a lot reinforced his image as “Mr. Gaeta”. grinninfoole pointed out that people like George Takei (Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek) and others from Star Trek had had little choice but to do cons because there wasn’t a lot of work for Asian-Americans or African Americans in t.v. and film in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so the cons had helped those Star Trek people endure the lean years until their fan identification became a plus. AJ responded, “See, people like George Takei had to wait until the original fans grew up and got to be studio heads, and you get somebody who’s like, “I want George Takei on my show!” (referring to how George Takei ended up in a role on the t.v. show, Heroes).

AJ asked how the panels were at the con, specificially about the Nimoy and Shatner panels and whether or not they were good.

We also talked about Smallville briefly. “I have no idea what they’re going to do with my character,” he said, adding that the Smallville cast was a very tight one, that they’ve been working together so closely for nine years, they were like a family. He didn’t have much to say on the Smallville panel he was on, because he’s only been in a few episodes. He said the cast were very nice. prophetkristy told him that we’d wanted Dr. Emil’s sports car to be more like a tricked-out James Bond car and he laughed.

He called tin_o_biscuits at one point, at prophetkristy’s request. They spent a couple of minutes on the phone, with him teasing her about having the swine flu and such and generally telling her to get better and that he’d look into cons in Texas so she could see him.

We mentioned that he was going to be in the SyFy production of Riverworld and he downplayed it, saying it was “all Tamoh”, that Tamoh was the star of it and that he himself didn’t have a very big part. He said he played “an annoying American lawyer.” But he did it because it was one of SyFy's “backdoor pilots” and if it did well, it could turn into a show. He also said that his partner Meg Roe was in it, in a small part, although they didn’t get to film it together, since they were never on the set on the same day.

He did an awesome EJO impression, explaining how on about the second day of filming, EJO had gathered the CIC actors and said to them, “You ready for this? It’s gonna be five years. At least.” EJO had explained to them that the sets were so intricate and clearly had cost a lot of money, so EJO was convinced that they were going to be sticking around. AJ said that at the time, he wasn’t so sure he agreed.

He wants to do some theatre in the near future, including Bard on the Beach in 2010. Meg is directing Henry V and wants him for the lead role. He said that with Smallville, it might not be possible to get all the time off he’d need to do the play. Same thing with a play he wants to do in Montreal, a French play in translation for the first time into English, one that he said was very good, but none of us can remember the name of. He quipped that he needs to make a clone of himself, and prophetkristy offered jokingly that as a biologist, she could get right on that for him; she’d just need a DNA sample. millari asked if he felt it was possible to have a career in theatre in Vancouver, and he said, a career yes, but it was much harder to make a living.

He also mentioned that Meg is directing The Miracle Worker, at the Vancouver Playhouse, where they first met. grinninfoole mentioned that he and millari had actually attended a play there and we’d seen Meg in a play there in 2007 when they went on a vacation to Vancouver and praised the Vancouver Playhouse staff. AJ was surprised and asked which play and millari told him it was “The Wars”. He of course remembered it, and remarked that it was from a really good book that he recommended reading.

millari asked him if Battlestar bought him a house and he said yes, actually in April. The housing market in Vancouver is completely outrageously priced, so they jumped on a slight dip in prices and got their house, which he wants to emblazon somewhere with an image of the BSG logo, to mark it - “Casa Galactica”.

prophetkristy asked him if he could do any show or musical, what would it be. He said Papageno in The Magic Flute because it’s a great baritone part that suits him and also because it’s a beautiful piece of music. “Plus, it’s Mozart,” he said, like that was a no-brainer. He then also said he’d do any Sondheim and that he’d love to do a production of Singing in the Rain. This prompted millari to ask if he was a trained dancer, and he told us yes, in tap. nicole_anell suggested that he could have incorporated tap dancing into BSG, and he said that he didn’t get the singing at first, but after talking to Bear McCreary, he liked it. At first, though he wasn’t sure what to make of the script where he was singing, he thought it was maybe just Michael Angeli wanking, but he really liked it in the end.

Someone, maybe Rap, brought up the action figure of Gaeta that’s coming out and AJ was surprised to find out that his figure was packaged with Tigh. He initially took our joking about the action figure coming with a detachable leg as us being serious, and seemed to think that was kind of cool, until we corrected his misunderstanding. He said he and Hogan then would probably go get their set together.

Someone mentioned the guy at one of the panels who was talking a bit like he was about to blow us all up but turned out to want to give the cast cookies. AJ said the panel was definitely creeped out by the way the guy had worded his question, but he himself wasn’t so much so because he’d recognized the guy from when he came up to him earlier in the day at the Walk of Fame. He said the man had been accompanied by his wife, who seemed to be holding his stuff for him. The guy had given AJ portable flash drives with stuff on them.

millari asked him if he liked saying “So Say We All” at the panel earlier, and he said sure. He also loved during the mutiny getting to say “Galactica Actual” and being in control of the ship.
Richard Hatch’s mutiny arc got mentioned, and millari said that Hatch had seemed upset about having to play the mutiny as a villain. AJ disputed that Hatch was upset, but he did say that Hatch is a sensitive guy and that he maybe takes on the burden of his characters doing bad things.As for his own mutiny arc, AJ said again that he was satisfied with how the mutiny arc played out and mentioned how at the end of “Blood on the Scales” was not going to have the Baltar and Gaeta scene before the execution. We told him we really enjoyed that scene. millari told him that we’d gotten to see part of that scene with no context early on during the hiatus. He was surprised, and had clearly never known about the You Will Know the Truth promotions on the SyFy website. millari told him that when we all saw the “restaurants shaped like food” clip without any context, while we were all excited to see it, and excited that Gaeta seemed to be in charge of the ship, we were also a little afraid that he’d lost his mind. AJ seemed amused to hear that. He asked us if we’d known when we saw that scene on the show, did we know right away that Gaeta was going to die or not.

He always pushed to be in more scenes – everyone did, he said. It was never a question of needing to take scenes out for him, but put more in, asking the writers to tweak things a bit, so he talked to them a lot.

rap541 mentioned at one point that Felix Gaeta’s arc actually fit the prophecy of the Dying Leader. AJ was surprised and confused at first, saying he thought that was supposed to be Roslin, but then she pointed out that the Dying Leader was never supposed to see Earth, and he found it funny that Gaeta did fulfill the prophecy.

He said he liked the vibe of the smaller British con he’d been to (the Wolf G3 con in London) – smaller rooms, more intimate setting, only 200 people. It was pretty amazing, he said. Totally different vibe than this. prophetkristy mentioned that we’d seen reports and photos of him and Tamoh and Rehka doing the “Whose Line is it Anyway” skits at that con in London he was talking about. AJ looked a little sheepish, saying that it was their first con and they just thought they were in this intimate setting, and hadn’t really thought of the fact that of course there’d be people there videotaping it. He kind of shook his head and seemed generally embarrassed that said antics made it onto the Internet.

He seemed a bit intrigued by the con experience and those who go to them. Towards the end, he asked us about going to cons, what we got out of it. He wondered if we found it freeing to go to something like this, “to let your freak flag fly”. He also advised us to next time take a day to see Atlanta because he'd only seen the 10-block radius of the con himself.

At one point, someone at the table (can’t remember who) called him awesome for some reason (can’t remember), and he said, in a jokey way, “I AM awesome.” He made some joke about having his own con, a Gaeta con, and then said, pointing to us, “I guess this would be my con.”

He said he never got the birthday greeting the comm sent him, seemed actually a bit chagrined that we had done this thing to mark his birthday and he hadn’t acknowledged it. He said thanks for doing that and he was surprised he’d missed it. He asked if he could still find it if he went looking on gaeta_squee. Kristy promised to email him again with the link.

Eventually, after almost an hour of sitting with us, he said he had to go do a bunch of interviews with all these different media outlets – everything from newspapers to podcasts. Someone asked him if he was obligated to do these interviews for the con, or did he get paid and he said no. He was basically doing them to be gracious.

millari thanked him for doing this get-together with us and he turned a bit serious and said essentially, no, thank you guys for supporting us. He did seem genuinely grateful. At various points in the evening, though, he was also playfully teasing us. At one point, he made a joke something like, “So thanks guys, I’ll have to put this in my blog … if I *had* a blog.” Towards the end, he also asked us what we were going to do at the con after we parted ways with him. When grinninfoole told him he was going to play D&D, AJ grinned with that comic timing of his and went, “Nerd!”

Before he left, AJ agreed to let the waiter take a group portrait of us at dinner, which you’ve all seen already, and the night ended with him going around the table and shaking every one of our hands. What a classy gentleman, especially given how hard he’d clearly worked the whole weekend.

Dragon Con Report Part One

2009-09-10T18:46:31Z

More to come! Must sleep!

PreCon Stuff
Slept in a little the first day of the Con and missed the morning BSG panel with Mary because desperately needed to catch up on having had literally zero sleep the day before rushing to get here and take a 6 am flight. It was either that or get sick for the rest of the con. Something had to give, and that turned out to be Mary McDonnell. But I knew I’d see her tomorrow, so I wasn't too broke up about it.

Our hotel turned out to be astoundingly nice for 188/night: A two bedroom suite with ridiculous full kitchen and even a washer/dryer (I kid you not.) Totally over the top, but it was great because I could wash clothes and I could have the Squeers over no problem. Registration sucked so hard - 3 hours in line, WHUT? This was only made bearable by the presence of blue_crow and blaaksable, whom I’d met earlier in the day when we arrived since they were staying in the same hotel as us.

Terry Gilliam Stuff
grinninfoole and I headed saw the Terry Gilliam panel on Friday, which was supposed to last an hour, but because he was so nice, actually lasted for two hours and fifteen minutes. Gilliam was GF's idea; I never would have thought to go to the panel, but he deserves props for insisting on going, because Terry was so entertaining. He told us all about the making of his new film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and it was especially interesting to hear that this was Heath Ledger's last film, not Batman. Batman had been finished, but Ledger died in the middle of filming Parnassus. They ended up creating this conceit to change the character's face repeatedly and brought in Jude Law, Johnny Depp and I think Colin Farrell to play Heath Ledger's part at various points in the movie. It was interesting how Gilliam talked about how he considered himself a friend of Ledger's, and all the actors who were brought in to finish the role as Ledger's friend as well, how they were all determined that Heath Ledger's last role not end up "in the dustbin somewhere".

And he talked about what a generous guy Ledger was. It all sort of makes me convinced that Ledger's death was an accident. I couldn't imagine him offing himself deliberately after hearing all that, when he knew how many people he'd be leaving screwed behind him.

Gilliam also talked about the absurd constraints of the Hollywood movie industry, which is so risk averse, and doesn't understand how to make films that aren't either $22 million or else $100 million, and nothing in between. Also talked about "The Fisher King" which he said when he first saw the script, had a terrible ending, in that it was supposed to end like an action movie, with car chases and stuff. This was not the writer's fault, but the studio's who had gotten hold of the script and insisted on tinkering with it. So Gilliam went to the writer (forget his name) and asked him if he had original versions of the script. When he saw what the writer had originally intended, he found the movie he'd been attracted to in the first part of the script. So they brought all that stuff back and that's the Fisher King we got in the end.

When it came time for Q&A, the mics were echoing so bad, Gilliam couldn't understand people at all, so in a really endearing move, he went and crouched at the edge of the stage for each question and had each questioner come to speak to him face to face. He even gave out complimentary DVDs to some of them! He was absolutely lovely. He talked about the freedom of Python, about how his new movie feels like the best bits of everything he's ever learned in his career. (The clips *did* look AMAZING.)

He talked about how in "Brazil," he was obsessed with getting bigger and bigger ductwork to put in the movie. People would keep coming in with piping and he'd be like, "No, bigger." He said he's kind of fascinated by the idea of plumbing, actually, how we pump all this stuff into and out of our lives, and it's largely an invisible process. He also talked about how when he made "12 Monkeys", he got the Writers Guild of America to change its allowed vocabulary. Apparently, the WGA before then did not allow the language on credits, "Inspired by..." You could only say, "based on..." which he said was ridiculous because "12 Monkeys" wasn't based on anything, it was inspired by a French film, La Jetee. He finally insisted and got the WGA to incorporate the "insipired by" language into its allowed crediting vocabulary.

Meeting AJ #1
Around 3:30 pm, I went to the Walk of Fame to get AJ's autograph. I hadn't realized that the stars basically are paid to be on panels, and then pretty much any time they're not on panels, they're expected to be at the Walk of Fame, signing stuff. (They keep them really busy the whole weekend. Basically he gets a lunch and dinner break, from what I could tell, and they keep the actors on duty from about 10 am to 7 pm.) I had misunderstood and thought there were specifically scheduled times for him to do that, but in fact the times quoted in the D*Con catalog were the only times when he WOULDN'T be on the Walk of Fame because he was scheduled for a panel. So when I got there "early" and walked towards the signs I saw with the BSG names, I was thrown off by the glimpse I got of him through the crowd. I'd planned on having a half hour to compose myself into something not resembling a blithering fangirl! I actually walked off to a corner and tried to prepare my photo and myself emotionally, because I didn't want a repeat of when I met Aaron Douglas, and lost practically all capability of speech, much to my surprise.

AJ didn't have long lines like some of the other bigger stars, but he had people coming up to him pretty constantly. I only had to wait for two people in front of me, basically, which was just the right amount for me to figure out what I was going to say. He was very matter-of-fact and friendly. He recognized the photograph I'd brought for him to sign of Felix on the stand at Baltar's trial and called it was a pivotal moment for Felix. He signed it pretty generically, "all my best" I think, but it was neat that he signs it both with his real name and as "Felix Gaeta".

I asked him if he minded if I asked him a question about BSG and then asked him if he'd ever thought in the last scene he shared with Baltar about what Felix had been thinking Baltar was going to say to him, you know, in that moment when Felix cuts him off, and then says, "And no religion, please." It seemed like AJ hadn't worked out something specific in his mind, but he did say that basically, Felix hadn't wanted any "big confession" from Baltar, that Baltar was trying to do that. Felix was okay with where he'd ended up, he said, and he didn't want any religious counseling from Baltar. I then asked if he thought Felix was an atheist, and he thought for a moment, and then said, "Yes, definitely." That was Encounter One. :)

I was a bit nervous, but overall, I was articulate, (certainly waaay more articulate than I had been with Aaron Douglas at NY Comic Con), and he made it all very normal. I definitely walked away not feeling at all embarrassed, even though I wondered in the back of my mind whether or not when he saw the picture I gave him whether he was thinking immediately, "Ah...slasher." I really shouldn't have worried, as I'll mention further down.

Afterwards, fuschia happened to text me as I was decompressing outside the Walk of Fame, asking presciently:

fuschia: "Seen AJ yet?"
millari: OMG, your psychic! Just finished meeting him!
fuschia: Squee!! How was it??
millari: I did not make an overt fool of myself (phew!). I GOT HIS PERMISSION TO DO VIDEO FOR [irradiatedsoup] TOMORROW MORNING!
fuschia: OMG YES!! Did he smell nice? *g*
millari: I had no camera, so no excuse to get close enough and tell ;) Maybe tomorrow...
millari: Oh, and I got to shake his hand and make him laugh! *dies*
fuschia: Sweet!

The BSG panels I saw (all but two, I think) were really, really great. I'm sure they're probably already on YouTube, but I'll give you my highlights anyway. My highlights will be pretty heavy on the AJ fare, FYI:

PANEL REPORTS
The AJ Stuff:
AJ turns out to be a total self-described "class clown" and took every opportunity on the panels to crack everybody up. It's starting to get jumbled up in my head what he said at which panel, because I didn't take any notes, but he said that he was more than happy with the way his character arc played out. He felt the mutiny was a great story to do, and he loved getting to be in charge of the ship and thought it was totally awesome when he got to be in the CIC and give a few orders. He got a “very nice” call from Ron Moore informing him of the Mutiny arc, and did not find out “in the makeup trailer like some people...”

He also made some hilarious comments and played off the other actors on the panel sometimes. Like when the moderator (I think) asked everyone what was the biggest surprise of the series that they found out about their characters, AJ jumped in and quipped that he could summarize (pointing to Kate Vernon, Michael Trucco, himself and Michael Hogan), saying, "Cylon, Cylon, gay, Cylon ..."

When asked what was the favorite thing their character got to do he said gleefully. “I TOOK OVER THE FRAKKING SHIP!” When asked what his character didn’t do but should have, he agreed with Trucco on getting more sex, but also said “I should have let her (Mary) steal the election.”

Asked by a fan if he had pets, he quipped that he had none but might get a turtle for lawn maintenance (I’ve been told this is a reference to Snapper lawnmowers.). Another question about practical jokes on the set led to him claiming (I think jokingly) that he had worn a thong one day in a scene with Kandyse (to throw her off, I presume), but she claimed not to remember it. I'm not entirely sure AJ was actually serious. :) He was also very sweet to Kandyse when on one of her answers, she went off on this sort of tangent about how she knew what it was like to be in love with somebody that didn’t love her and loved someone else. It seemed to be getting her choked up, and I noticed that AJ gave her kind of a little quick comforting arm rub.

And remember how I was embarrassed that he might spot me as a slasher with the picture I brought to sign? I really needn't have worried. Throughout the weekend, he was more than willing to talk about Baltar/Gaeta UST and strongly implied that they probably had sex on New Caprica(!), calling Felix "the Smithers to (Baltar's) Burns" and saying that he'd been playing Felix as in love with Baltar from almost the beginning, that the writers only finally caught up with him at the end of the series. At the panel on Sunday, the moderator asked him if he thought had things gone differently on New Caprica, could Felix's mancrush on Baltar gone differently/farther. Chuckling, he said Felix would never have wanted to be one of Baltar's "hot and cold running interns", but also noted that Baltar was a man of such voracious appetites, so interested in every aspect of sensual pleasure, that all sorts of stuff must have happened on Colonial One, wild parties and such. The moderator made him laugh again when he quipped, "So, what happens on New Caprica, stays on New Caprica?" and AJ agreed, saying, "Who knows what happened on that airplane?"

Mary McDonnell then jumped in, totally deadpan disapproving, "On my airplane?"

He also responded more seriously to a question from an audience member about the reveal in the webisodes that Felix was gay. He repeated some things I'd heard before about worrying at first that the reveal would come across as "token" (I think he meant because it was so late in the game and in the webisodes, not the main show), but that in the end, he was pleased with how matter-of-fact the reveal about his gayness and the relationship between him and Hoshi had been. When the moderator asked him, "Felix Gaeta: Traitor or Hero?", he responded emphatically, definitely, hero, although a tragic one, which made all us Squeers in the audience together roar with approval, but other people in the audience too, I was glad to see. He also acknowledged that Gaeta was a terrible judge of character.

People also applauded AJ when I asked my question, basically whether there was anything cut from the series that he wished had stayed in . Of course, I meant scenes, but one of the female cast members (Mary, I think? I was a little nervous up there and don't remember) quipped before AJ could answer, "His leg!" That got a big laugh for a moment. AJ said he was going to give me "a sort of reverse answer to your question" and told the story about how he and James Callis fought for that last scene between them in "Blood on the Scales", that previously there was just going to be the shot of Adama/Roslin's reunion, I think, and then just him getting shot. He was really glad that scene made it in and felt like all the scenes he'd wanted in, "made it in" and he was pretty happy with how his story ended up.

At one of the panels AJ attended, everyone up there was asked what they would do with their character if they had a chance to meet them. People had a bit of hard time coming up with something, since as Hogan said, it was a tough question. But AJ did say that if he got to meet early Felix, he'd tell him to loosen up a bit. Later in the show, he said, he didn't even know. "I'd walk the other way," he said.

Not-AJ People
Kate Vernon's first panel on Friday had her pretty spacey, I'm not sure why. I think she was very tired. She sometimes forgot points she was making, lost track of questions, but it was all very endearing, not at all annoying. And at one point, her daughter called on her cell phone while she was on the panel, and she was like, "I'm sorry. I have to take this. My daughter is getting on a plane right now." She then had an adorable phone call with her, telling her that she was talking to about 2,000 people right now and putting the phone on speaker and up to her microphone. She had her daughter say hello and then told the audience to say hi to her daughter. We all shouted "Hi" at her and then Kate talked to her some more. generally fussing in a motherly way over her daughter by phone and telling her she loved her. She then hung up, saying that we had just made her daughter's day.

She also piped up when Hogan was asked whether or not Adama and Tigh have a bromance going on and he didn't want to touch the question. She totally agreed that they had a bromance, saying that a big part of what made Ellen the way she was was that she craved attention. (She said she's not at all like Ellen in that she doesn't walk into a room and all eyes gravitate to her.) She felt that Ellen could never find a way to get in between Adama and Tigh's connection. Yet in another panel, she also said that she felt like while Tigh and Ellen couldn't seem to live with each other or without each other, they had this 2,000 year old romance that was undeniable, that they were meant to be together. She also said she would have liked Ellen to share a drink with Roslin, but laughed and said she wasn't sure Roslin reciprocated that desire.

Kate's answer to the what would you do if you could meet your character question was interesting. She said she'd like to find out if Ellen was a friend to women, because she doesn't know, but suspects that she isn't. She also said that she would like to take Ellen out to a yoga class and generally take her away from all the things that make her so dysfunctional, to see how Ellen would do in a different environment.

Her and Hogan were really adorable, very huggy, very teasing at times about the crazy ride that their two characters have been on throughout the show. She gave him a hard time about having killed her and then come back to find out that he had impregnated “a Six of all people!”. Hogan defended Tigh’s actions with Caprica Six at some point by saying that it took him a while to understand why he was visiting this Six in the brig, but eventually he realized that she was the only one he had access to who he felt could explain to him what he was. I must admit I don’t remember as much about what Hogan said, but I imagine it’ll be out on YouTube soon anyway.

Mary got some pretty damn intelligent questions at the panels I saw her at, including one about how the show might have used books as a symbol for A/R’s relationship. She seemed really entranced by the question, thanked the asker and then definitely agreed that books were a good symbol for their relationship. She then made a lovely double entendre about how Adama had read to her *really slowly* and she’d LIKED it. :D She also got a really interesting, slightly creepy question about what Mary thought might have happened to Laura in the Cylon detention cells of New Caprica. She said she thought that Gaius Baltar had protected her from much of anything happening to her because he had this weird love-hate, competitive/protective thing with Roslin. She thought he liked using his power to protect her, so she thought that Roslin didn’t get any of the treatment that say (pointing to Hogan down the panel) that *this guy* did. But she was very lonely and isolated, she said, had a lot of time to think, I believe she said too. She also had a lot of fun with the Adama/Tigh bromance questions that came up at the panels, affirming Kate’s opinion that they were totally a bromance. She was so funny. She totally won my heart and put it in a box with pretty bows on it this Con.

Trucco and Carro were fun when they did get to talk, but didn’t get nearly as many opportunities. Trucco talked about how Kara and Sam had this amazing “connective tissue” between them that really kept them together despite all their ups and downs, and for him his last line, “See you on the other side” really summed up their relationship as far as he was concerned. Also, his favorite line he ever got to say was, “Lighten up. It’s only the end of the world.” When Kandyse joked that she’d been secretly hoping the Quadrangle of Doom would lead to her character and Anders having tit-for-tat sex. :D When AJ (I think) quipped, “It’s not too late...” Trucco and McClure did a big mock sloppy makeout kiss.

Carro told a hllarious and heartbreaking story about how one day she was in LAX and called her roommate and her roommate was super excited because she’d opened Carro’s script for “The Passage” and was like, You’re ALL OVER THIS SCRIPT! And Carro was in the middle of LAX on her cell phone all excited, until she starts hearing all this crazy stuff in the script - about her past, that she was a drug dealer, that she had a secret past, etc. Suddenly she got a bad feeling about it and asked, “Could you please just check the last page of the script to see if I’m alive or not?” And her roommate doesn’t watch BSG and knows nothing, so obliviously says to her in excitement, “Oh my god! They put you on the Memorial Wall...” And so basically she found out Kat was dying while hyperventilating in LAX. Her favorite line was “My cup runneth dry” to Starbuck in “Scar”. She brought up that arc a few times over the weekend, gloating for effect about how she got to beat Starbuck at being Top Gun. She also said her character should have put Enzo out the airlock.

Oh, and on a creepy note, Aaron Douglas crashed a panel on Saturday and basically proceded to tell this really misogynist tale of how he convinced the writers to let Chief kill Tory with his bare hands, that the fans would love it. Half the audience cheered at the idea. I was not amused. As was not (apparently) Mary McDonnell, so rumor has it on the interwebs.

Besides all that panel stuff, there were awesome up close and personal encounters at the Con that were totally memorable. More on that next post, as I must go to sleep. Also trying to finish up writeup of our dinner with AJ. Sorry it’s taking a long time, but I pinky swear to be done today!

BSG drabbles

2009-06-12T17:20:49Z

So daybreak777 has told me this is what is called WIP Amnesty. I don't know I'd really call it that, because these drabbly bits don't really feel to me like they were ever truly going to be works, and they just mostly sat on my hard drive after a burst of energy, never really "in progress." But I've been feeling ill, in bed, and I'm a little bored and restless and blergh. So I've decided to do something I almost never do - post a few drabbles of things I doubt I'll ever do anything more with. They are random, unbeta'd, written a long time ago, maybe slightly OOC, and in some cases, pretty much trail off in the middle. With all those caveats, I hereby present:

The drabbles:

Season 4.0 Felix/Sharon/Helo. R. 467 words. On the Demetrius. Felix finds out his navigating skills were not the only reason Helo asked Adama to assign him to Starbuck's mission.
“Whose idea was it to suggest me for this mission, anyway?” Felix asked, eyeing them both suspiciously.

Helo looked away sheepishly, but Sharon (He’d never think of her as Athena. He just never would be able to do it, not when she looked like the woman he’d spent two years pining after until the Attacks changed everything.) looked at him steadily, unembarrassed.

“We both did,” she said, her tone patient, her eyes assessing him. Out of a sense of duty, Felix had buried his feelings for Sharon a long time ago, when everybody knew she was frakking the Chief. He’d thought they were totally gone when she'd returned from nuked Caprica with Helo and she wasn't even the one he'd been attracted to anymore. He hadn't realized how much need for her he still carried with him until this moment. I shouldn't be attracted this easily to Helo's wife, he thought.

So he tried retreating into outrage, a move that felt clear and comfortable and morally correct, unlike the confusing desire that was rising within him, far too strongly, far too quickly.

“Are you telling me you convinced the Old Man to assign me to a floating garbage scow with Starbuck?” He didn’t so much say the name as spit it out. “Just so you two could get me into your rack?”

But Sharon was walking towards him with a smile on her lips that Felix was already pre-disposed to find intoxicating. He knew he should be angry, but should seemed like a word he had left behind so very long ago at this point. Back on New Caprica, really.

Before he knew it, her mouth was pressing onto his, her tongue pushing his lips apart, and her hands had wrapped around the back of his head. She was hurtling the two of them backward in tandem. Felix only found out where when he felt his back hit the sheets of their rack. All the while, her tongue never stopped probing, licking, tickling the roof of his mouth. Felix felt his dick growing hard way too fast, felt his muscles going rubbery as Sharon pressed his body ruthlessly into the mattress. His eyes opened wide with astonishment as he felt her fingers yanking with expert precision at his belt buckle and undoing the button to his khakis. Her long hair curtained his face, and through a sliver gap between the long, brown strands, Felix got a gauzy glimpse of nothing but Helo’s taut, naked midriff moving towards him, filling up the gap completely, like a moon eclipsing the sun.

“Ohhh.” He managed to pull his mouth away long enough to catch a few gasping breaths. Sharon finally noticed his erection and turned her attention downward to his crotch, taking him into her mouth in one shocking, overwhelming sensation that quickly had Felix whimpering like an animal. He opened half-lidded eyes just enough to see Helo perched over him, stroking his own dick in his hand, eyes sparkling with approval. Felix smiled weakly back at him. Really, he couldn't believe this was happening.

It felt like the first bit of luck Felix had seen in a very, very long time.

Pre-Mini Gaius Baltar/OFC. NC-17. 643 words. Teen!Gaius losing his virginity on Aerelon.

No one could accuse him of doing things halfway, Gaius figured.

He was a sixteen-year-old farm boy who’d just experienced his first real kiss. If he didn’t frak things up in the next ten minutes or so, he was pretty sure he would also lose his virginity soon, and to a woman so beautiful it made Gaius’ heart feel like it had stopped in amazed gratitude. Her platinum blonde, wavy ringlets tickled his face. Every once in a while, whenever he managed to say something clever enough, she treated him to that throaty, lustful laugh that he craved with almost more desire than for her body. Almost. Her body was gorgeous, and she was slowly revealing it to him, bit by bit, discarding each piece of clothing as if on whim.

No, no one could accuse Gaius of doing things halfway. Not when this gorgeous woman was thirteen years older than him and also his religion teacher at school. And for some reason – one that Gaius didn’t care enough to ask her about in case she changed her mind about the whole virginity thing – she seemed hell bent on sending him to Hades an atheist.

None of this worried him as much as it should have though, for he was quickly becoming high out of his mind on chokeweed.

“Gaius,” her voice filtered through his hazy consciousness and bounced around in his head. She sounded like an angel calling to him across a cavern. Slowly, he lifted his head to find her through all the echoing noise.

“Stay with me, Gaius.” It was an order, but her tone was gentle, patient, and full of amusement at a private joke. “Surely your singularly brilliant mind can handle that, can’t it?”

Probing fingers accompanied the question, sliding under the scratchy canvas of his shirt to his bare chest, trailing up the sides of his torso, faintly brushing against his nipples, but they quickly hardened under even just the hint of her touch. Gaius heard a swift rasping sound in his head and realized that he’d just gasped in pathetically obvious arousal.

He needed a quip to impress her, but words stayed stuck in his throat, silenced by the drug and his growing terror of saying anything that would end the electricity coursing through his body.
This was nothing like kissing Sherry Bennett on the playground. This was nothing like his furtive nocturnal explorations under the sheets while his brothers slept a few feet away.

“You’re all right, Gaius,” she crooned somewhere in the back of his consciousness, as if her voice lived inside his head now. “You know I wouldn’t let anything hurt you, don’t you? Just do what I say and I promise I’ll make it wonderful. Do you believe me?”

Honestly, he didn’t know if he did. He didn’t know anything right now. He was feeling so muzzy-headed. But he nodded mutely as her fingers moved under his shoulders and he felt his shirt coming off.

Please don’t stop, he begged inwardly. Then, when he heard her laughter – the sound of wind chimes tinkling in a breeze – he froze, terrified he’d said those words aloud.

The fingers traced down his sides, and Gaius shuddered with delight at the sensation. and crept onto the waistband of his pants, moments later, undoing his fly.

“Do what I say and everything will be fine, all right?” she reminded him.

“I…” He realized that this was his last chance to stop this, that he should probably stop this, because if they were ever caught, he would be in so much trouble.

Her hand was stroking his cock steadily now, her toothy smile determined and full of desire. Gaius felt himself growing hard and thick between her fingers.

Frak it, he decided as he took another hit off the chokeweed rapidly turning to ash in the tray. I’ll figure it out later.

Season 1 Baltar/Gaeta/Starbuck. PG-13. 818 words. The beginnings of a strip Triad PWP that never happened.

Even ridiculously drunk, he could still count cards without even thinking about it.

But nobody knew this about Felix Gaeta, because he hardly ever won at Triad. He often didn’t even play. He was always too busy paying more attention to the real reason he played Triad in the rec room – the banter.

He loved watching the pilots tease each other, and he didn’t even mind when they teased him. He understood that teasing meant people liked you enough to pay attention to you, keep track of your foibles. It meant you were part of the group.

But that was not why he was watching right now. All the pilots were gone, that is except Starbuck, who was locked in a battle of gambling wills with the last man standing in the Triad game since Skulls had folded his last hand twenty minutes earlier with a resigned grimace.

Starbuck was locked in this battle of wills with the man who was possibly Felix’s favorite person in the world these days – Gaius Baltar.

Drunk as he was, Felix didn’t even care that much that Doctor Baltar was paying much more attention to Kara Thrace than him. It made Felix smile to see the man in his element, happily trashed on ambrosia and in full seduction mode.

It was about to end, though. The cards Felix had seen already since the deck was last shuffled told him that Starbuck was bluffing. She couldn’t possibly have a decent hand. He suspected that the Doctor might know as well, for despite his exaggerated drunken gestures and his less than crisp tones, Felix could see he was moving in for the kill.

He called the bet with slurring triumph in his voice, theatrically fanning his cards down onto the table so Starbuck couldn’t miss her defeat.

“Full colors,” she muttered in dismay. Doctor Baltar grinned at her lingering chagrin and shook his head as he gathered the pool of cubits towards himself like a pirate surrounded by his loot.

“Such a shame, Thrace,” he taunted. “And I was so enjoying playing with you. But what can I do? The cards want to go my way tonight, and you, my dear, are out of cubits.”

Starbuck rolled her eyes. But Felix could tell she was frustrated.

“You know,” Felix interrupted, knowing he’d probably really regret saying this tomorrow, “there is one way you could keep the game going.”

His face went hot with embarrassment at the way the two of them snapped their heads back and suddenly all their attention was on him for a moment, as if they’d just remembered he was there.

“How’s that, Felix?” Baltar looked into his eyes with a mischievous grin that was unnerving. But the ambrosia shots had emboldened him.

“There’s always strip Triad,” he said baldly, willing himself to keep the man’s gaze.

Kara chortled, taking a puff of her cigar and damping it out on the ashtray. “Oh sure, so you can watch?” She let her voice curl into a throaty suggestion as she mock whispered, “But really, Gaeta, which one of us are you hoping to see naked?”

Baltar’s face broke out into a confident, thoroughly drunken grin as his arm came out and he lazily brushed the scruff of Felix’s neck. Felix visibly startled at the touch, and his eyes widened at the soft pleasure he heard in Doctor Baltar’s chuckle.

“Nothing wrong with a little strip Triad,” the man declared, a forgotten hand still lingering on Felix’s neck. Felix saw Starbuck’s eyebrows raise at the familiarity of it. Felix was as surprised as she probably was, but he was really drunk, and so he covered it over with a self-satisfied, uninhibited grin. He let his tongue drag slightly over his lower lip, in a way the compartmentalized part of his brain knew went straight past dirty and right into obscene. His insides fluttered as he saw her notice and nod appreciatively.

“You serious?” she pressed Baltar.

“I’m completely serious,” Baltar replied, voice still slurring, but there was an edge of excitement there.

“Fine,” she agreed, “but only if Felix plays too.”

Baltar’s forefinger raised itself up and started making tiny, absent circles on the back of Felix’s neck. “I agree,” he said expansively, cocking his head endearingly. "Felix?” he beckoned.

When did he suddenly become Felix to them, he wondered.

“Come on, Felix,” Baltar prompted, his half-closed brown eyes no longer capable of subtle nuances under the ambrosia’s influence, but he looked happy. He reminded Felix of a cat lying in the sun. “What do you say?”

He would give almost anything to keep that expression focused on him. Felix closed his eyes with pleasure, relishing the soft contact of Baltar’s fingers, which had moved upward and were now digging slightly into his hair.

“I’d like that, Gaius,” he said, the name a barely audible experiment.

Baltar just chuckled softly again.

Pre-Mini Felix Gaeta, OMC, OFC. G. 875 words. A Felix childhood drabble:
“Felix Gaeta, get your nose out of whatever book you're reading and get down here! You’re going to make us late for Temple!”

Jerome Gaeta tried futilely to make his disapproving frown radiate all the way from the bottom of the stairs into his son’s bedroom.

“I should have taken that lock off his door ages ago,” he complained to his wife, only a few feet away in one of the oversized living room chairs, where she’d been since six or seven this morning. “Why is your son always with his head in the clouds? And on today, of all days!”

Felicia Gaeta’s head remained in furrowed concentration over an open folder overflowing with all different sizes of papers, most of which had even smaller notes to herself tacked onto them. “My son?” A chuckle crept into her voice as she twisted one of her long dark curls in between her fingers. “His head isn’t in the clouds, Jerome; it’s in a book.”

“Same thing,” he muttered. “All I know is once he gets his head in a book, he can’t get it out again. He’s going to make us late. Again.”

Her green eyes finally left her papers and twinkled up at her husband. “He’s just excited about books, Jerome. That’s a good thing. Don’t you want your child to be intelligent?”

“He already is intelligent, Felicia,” he said gruffly. “And that’s not the problem. Of course I approve of him studying and doing well in school, and being well-read. That’s not the problem. When it comes to books, though, he’s got no off-switch. He’s disorganized. He’s scatterbrained…”

“He’s ten years old,” she cut him off, stared at him with arched eyebrows, then dropped her head back down into her work, the pen in her fingers beginning its dance of scratches and swirls, spinning out mathematical calculations along the margins her husband couldn’t even hope to understand.

“He’s eleven,” he corrected her. “Or have you forgotten what day today is?”

She didn’t answer. He had lost her already.

“Felix!” he yelled in frustration up the stairs. “If you make us late for your audience with the Oracle today, I’m canceling your birthday party. You hear me? And I’ll take your presents back to the store.”

The ceiling above them exploded with the sudden scurrying and thumping of barely-eleven-year-old feet. A moment after the lock clicked, Felix’s bespectacled face poked out from behind the bedroom door, quickly followed by the rest of his body in ungainly aftermath. His tie was askew, his shirt unevenly tucked into his trousers. The military surplus satchel Jerome had bought him not long ago to help him organize was sprawled across his body like a lopsided sash.

Jerome sighed.

“You’re a mess, son,” he admonished. “We’ve talked about this. Do you know what kind of disrespect it shows to the Oracle to show up in her Temple looking this way? Especially on your Prophecy Day? It disrespects the Gods.”

Felix looked down at his clothes, apparently for the first time, his expression turning crestfallen.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to.” He made as if to move back into the room. “I can fix it. Just give me a minute.”

“No! Don’t you dare go back into that room!” Jerome thundered, then immediately softened at the startled expression in his son’s eyes. “No, son,” he said more gently. “Just come down here. I’ll help you.”

He straightened his son's tie, folded down his starched collar. “Go to the bathroom and get a comb. Your hair's a rat’s nest,” he told him.

Felix leapt into action and almost ran into the living room doorframe in the process.

“Slowly,” Jerome warned him, a touch of exhaustion in his voice as his son disappeared around the corner.

He shook his head. “We’ve already gotten three notes from his teachers this term.”

“His teachers are well-meaning, but they’re sheep,” Felicia’s voice sauntered back into the conversation. “He thinks circles around his math teacher already, and all they want to do is make sure he does his homework neatly. The minute he turns twelve, we’re enrolling him in Mt. Olympus Academy, where his intelligence won’t be going to waste.”

“They’re trying to instill discipline into him,” Jerome countered. “It won’t matter that he’s the world’s biggest genius if he can’t apply himself and accomplish a task because he’s too scatterbrained.”

Felix shuffled back into the room with the dreaded comb.

“What you reading, Mom?” he asked, wincing as his father pulled his matted curls free.

“Notes I’ve been taking for that Colonial military project,” she said casually.

“What kinda notes?” he pressed, his voice full of curiosity.

“I’m trying to construct a program that will create randomized trajectories for the Viper Mark VII series.”

“Why do you want them to be randomized?”

“Why do you think?” She suddenly became the college math professor she was. “Why might Vipers need to be able to broadcast randomized trajectories?”

He thought about this for a long moment. “For DRADIS decoys?” he asked.

“Yes! Very good, Felix!" She turned to her husband affectionately. "Jerome, I do believe we have a genius on our hands." Her husband smiled back at her.

She opened her arms wide towards her son. "Come over here, genius, and give your mom a hug."

Felix grinned and broke free from the comb, running impulsively into his mother with wide arms, sending her papers flying. She squealed with dismay, but quickly gave in to the mess and hugged him back.

"Mind your feet," was her only concession. "Don't step on your Mom's notes, all right?"

"Okay." He shuffled his feet cooperatively. "It's my birthday today," he reminded, his tone turning serious.

"What, you think I've forgotten?" Felicia held her son's face in her hands. "So what do you want this year?" she asked.

"Can I use the computer in your office?" he asked immediately. He'd been clearly waiting for an opening.

"Hmm..." she said coyly. "For what?"

"I want to try to jump again."

Felicia pursed her lips for exaggerated effect. "You want to jump? What, you want a trampoline for your birthday?"

"Mom!"

She could hold back her laughter for no more than a few seconds. Her hands let go of his face and pulled a tiny portable hard drive out of her pocket. "I don't suppose you mean this copy I made of the FTL plotting software from my office computer yesterday?" she teased, holding the item aloft in front of him. Excited, Felix swiped at it unsuccessfully.

"Wait for it, kiddo," she said in mock warning, then gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. "Happy Birthday, genius." She pressed the hard drive into his small hands.

"Cool!" He hurtled out of her embrace, his feet clearly intent on running back upstairs to try out the program; but his father's eyes stopped him without a word.

Jerome watched with surprise and a growing pride as his son carefully put the tiny drive into his own pocket and turned to his mom with regret in his voice.

"Thanks, Mom. I'll try it later."

He looked down at his tie, which had gone askew again when he'd ran to hug his mother, and did his best to straighten it. It wasn't as neat as Jerome would have made it, and his hair was still matted, but Jerome was more than happy to let that go in exchange for the surprising show of impulse control he'd just witnessed.

"I'm ready, Dad," he said, waving his primer on the Scrolls of Pythia at Jerome. "Can you quiz me in the car?"

"You got it, Son." All of a sudden, Jerome felt like it was his birthday instead.

there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this...

2009-05-29T06:13:44Z

But it certainly looks annoying on the surface. News on the BSG Entire Series Box Set release from After Elton.

Attack of the Trivia Part 2

2009-05-13T04:57:20Z

Hey Folks,

Got any more trivia questions for me? (with answers, please). The friend greatly appreciated the last batch and would welcome some more to help pass the time in the hospital.

I'm looking for trivia about the following fandoms:

Dollhouse (except the last three eps)
The West Wing
Death Note or Full Metal Alchemist (go easy on her, it's been a while)
Law and Order, SVU
Doctor Who/Torchwood
BSG (Season 1-3 only)
Heroes (Season 1-2)

It's like a meme, but isn't! Thanks for any help you can provide. :)

Oh, and for no apparent reason, verging on GIP-hood, meet my new favorite icon, courtesy of iconsbycurtana

Help Flisters! Trivia Needed.

2009-05-10T14:07:31Z

I'm trying to entertain a friend stuck in the hospital. I want to help her pass the time with some trivia questions. Can you help me out?

I need trivia questions (with answers please, I'm not that good) from:

Doctor Who (Nine and Ten only)
Torchwood (all seasons)
House (any season but the current one)
Law and Order SVU (particularly questions about Olivia)

Thanks for any assistance you can provide. :)

Come on, get happy!

2009-04-13T16:21:07Z

I am slightly grumpy.

It's a Monday, I am sitting in bed with an icepack on my throbbing leg, watching my hopes of not getting into work at a stupid hour kind of fading, and it's a beautiful day out, but I won't get to enjoy it.

Yes, yes, woe is me. I know. So I am going to try and post here for a minute and focus on some things that are making me happy instead:

My brother-in-law recently got a kitten, who is absolutely adorable. We went to visit him and my parents-in-law yesterday out in the Boston area. You know, for Easter Sunday. The kitten rides on one's shoulder, is curious about everything, and has few preconceived notions, other than a total fearlessness about the world and an optimism that every stranger out there is just a friend he hasn't made yet.

I finished a new fic last night, for the first time in a quite a long time. I had given up hope that it would ever get finished, because it was kind of dark and it was difficult to write the characterizations, and I realized that I was actually a little afraid of writing a scene I knew wanted to happen but wasn't sure I could pull off. But it is done, thanks to a lot of handholding and insights from daybreak777

gaeta_squee

daybreak777

On a slightly-related note, I have joined the comm, ficfinishing, with the goal of finishing a Hoshi fic that is close to done but is giving me trouble. So far, I am pleased with its results. One of the writing exercises the comm suggested is part of what helped me finish the fic I mentioned above. It seems like a very organized comm so far, and I am optimistic that it's going to help me bang out some of the fics I've had waiting around for a long time. At the rate these fics are going, I've been starting to think that I might never finish them before the interest in the BSG fandom dies out! danniisupernova, you may be happy to know that while I had to start with a smaller fic to be in accordance with the comm's rules, "From a Balance Beam" is going to be the fic I tackle in Round 13.

I have been reading my good friend falafel_musings's story, Secrets and Whispers. This is the link to part 1, but you could read pretty much at any point and it would work as a standalone. If you like Baltar/Gaeta, it's a wonderful ride through their entire arc. It's full of everything a B/G shipper wants - humor, heartbreak, angst. Warning: You'll be spoiled if you haven't seen through "Blood on the Scales" and no matter what, you better bring your tissues.

I have started to work on the garden in my backyard. The lily/daffodils bed is mulched and happily bearing beautiful yellow and white flowers I can see from my bed through the deck window, so this makes me very happy. The vegetable plots still need a lot of work, but I've gotten one ready for planting spinach and lettuce, so that pleases me. Unfortunately, the leg pain is kind of interfering with that, but I'm determined to not let that get to me this week, as much as I can. I am trying to believe in the power of icepacks, ibuprofen and my chiropractor. Maybe a little accupuncture too, if I can get all the way over to Amherst.

I am going to DragonCon this year! grinninfoole and I talked about it in the car on the way home from Easter dinner and he has committed to taking time off that week in order to be able to make the trip. My job sometime today is to reserve DC passes and see if I can still reserve a hotel room in one of the ridiculously expensive host hotels, in the hopes that we can share the room with some friends if our friend in Atlanta can't put us up instead. Is there anyone who's interested in possibly sharing the cost of an insanely expensive hotel suite among possibly up to four or five people?

Ok, off to do something productive! Feeling slightly less grumpy!

Long delayed BSG rant ahead - SPOILERS FOR LAST WEEK

2009-02-13T20:36:36Z

So my absolute favorite t.v. character ever Felix Gaeta died last week at the culmination of an amazing two-episode arc of Battlstar Galactica. I was expecting Felix's death to come this season, but I was not expecting Felix to not die a hero. At the very least, I was expecting him to die in some quiet, goodly way.

I am not happy that Felix died in essentially a villain role that will make a lot of BSG fans who never bothered to pay attention to the nuances of his character despise him and say 'good riddance'. I am not happy that he gave his life so that Adama and Roslin could be even more of a diumvirate (sic). I am not happy that Adama and Roslin will probably remember Felix Gaeta as evil without nuance, and will completely forget and discount the self-sacrificing devotion he showed them for the last seven years. As much as I have liked her over the years as a character, I am not happy that in the continuity of the BSG 'verse, Kara Thrace especially - who treated him so terribly ever since the Circle and has never shown any remorse about it - will survive Felix and live on to besmirch his name as a traitor, a coward and whatever other horribly un-PC name she can think to call him.

However, I am happy that the writers *did* seem to take lemons and make beautiful lemonade with the story arc they'd decided for whatever reason had to happen. Upon seeing "A Disquiet Follows My Soul," I was afraid they were about to turn my character's genuine misgivings about the Cylon alliance into a whiny, naysaying rant that would be discounted by the other heroic characters as bitchy sour grapes. But "The Oath" and "Blood on the Scales" did a lot of things that I loved.

I got to see Felix Gaeta being the clever, competent leader I always knew he could be if anyone had ever given him the chance to try it. Not only that, but Bill frakking Adama - who has never given Felix the kind of slack or credit he's always given his favorites - got to see Felix lead the Galactica almost flawlessly, even as Adama's allies were doing their best to take him down. I am also happy that Felix's well-meaning heart shone through in everything he did, even when he was desperately trying to tamp down his heart so he could make terrible decisions he knew he had to make in order for his mutiny to succeed. And I couldn't be anything but happy with how the writers resolved Felix's relationship with Gaius Baltar. Throughout "Blood on the Scales", to the very end at his execution, Felix retained his dignity, if not always his ideals.

Of course, if you know me, you know that I have to devote an independent paragraph to the subject of Gaius and Felix's last meeting. After Gaius spectacularly misjudging Felix's motives in their phone call during "The Oath", it was such a relief to see the loquacious, self-centered Gaius Baltar actually sitting and listening to this man who throughout this show, has almost never been allowed to speak his mind on anything more personal than the best way to jump the Galactica. If you think about it, except for in "The Final Cut" Felix has always had to take the floor by force for anyone to know his personal feelings on anything, and the person he has consistently wanted most to hear him has been Gaius Baltar. It is not surprising that once again, Felix had to resort to force to be heard, and it is not at all surprising that ultimately, he asked Gaius to be the one to listen. What was surprising was that Gaius finally grew up enough to give Felix that. It's all my shippery heart has ever really wanted for these two in canon, even if I did have to get it at the very last minute and in a tear-my-heart-out kind of way. I'm not happy that Felix is dead, but if I couldn't have him alive, it is actually a great comfort to have seen him die with a sense of peace at finally getting to be heard and understood and validated for the good person he tried so hard to be to the very end. If he had died right after that moment with Zarek and the corpses of the Quorum around them, hating the person he'd become, I would have had to go around smashing things. But he didn't. He got cigarettes with Gaius Baltar. But more than that, he got an equal footing with this man, for the first time ever. He got remorse and true friendship from Gaius, the kind that steps up and witnesses something as horrible as your own execution for you, because you are cared about that much. I think Felix and I were equally satisfied with that.

Ok, that being said, there is still a part of me that is angry that he's dead and that other people who deserved death just as much if not more are still alive. I have moments where I'm quite torn because I get astoundingly angry that Felix Gaeta - who saved all their asses countless times, who looked out for other people, who was loyal and generous and believed in the goodness of people to his own detriment - is dead, and Gaius Baltar - who has spent almost the entire series unwilling to admit *even to himself* that he has the blood of billions of people on his hands and thinking primarily of himself - is not.

So even though I've been incredibly busy with work and with going to New York Comic Con last weekend and therefore have had no time to process my grief over losing my beloved character with you all, I have been thinking about it all week. I've been keeping a piece of scrap paper around with a running list of things I really want to see happen regarding Felix Gaeta before the series run ends.

I know I won't get a lot of them, maybe not even any of them. But I feel a need to make this list anyway:

1. I want someone to mention his name.
I don't expect that Adama or Roslin are ever going to speak of Felix again with any sense of remorse or even understanding. But if Felix is never mentioned again, by anyone, especially Baltar, I'll be kind of annoyed. Just because you decided to make him a villain, don't disappear him, BSG! falafel_musings wrote a story here that I haven't had a chance to comment to yet (partly because it broke me up so much, I couldn't imagine trying to be analytical about it just yet) in which Baltar mentions that Felix Gaeta was a good man who saved the Fleet time and time again, and yet now, the history books will only remember him as a traitor. I hadn't thought of that until I read that line, and once I did, the idea totally gutted me. So I want someone to remember Felix Gaeta in the aftermath of his death, and even if they don't agree with the choices he made, I want people to acknowledge how important he was to the CIC, or what a well-meaning soul he was.

Someone showing some remorse that they never really paid attention to Felix when he needed it and maybe if they had, things would have been different would also get you bonus points, BSG, but I won't hold my breath. Hell, even showing someone hanging on to his dog tags would be nice.

2. I want a moment of discomfort at moving on. Someone is going to have to take Felix's job now that he's dead. I strongly suspect that it'll be Hoshi. Now, even though in the regular episodes, Louis was not Felix's lover, he was calling him "Felix" in "Blood on the Scales", which suggests a certain amount of intimacy, if only friendship-based. So Louis should feel Felix's loss in some way, even if he's conflicted about his friend having turned traitor. So if Adama tells Louis to become the new DRADIS guy, or even the new navigator, I want to see at least a moment of Louis having some weirdness about that. It's okay if it's just a look, like he did when he took over Dee's post. But I want some acknowledgement that taking over Felix's job is strange, and by no means a walk in the park.

3. There needs to be some disruption, even minor, in the normal CIC proceedings because of Felix's absence. I want his loss felt by Adama. Begrudgingly is even okay, but I want Felix's death to have an impact on them.

4. I want some evidence that Gaius is thinking about Felix between now and the end of the series. Of course, we haven't really got that for Dee, not even from her frakking husband, so I probably shouldn't hold my breath. If I don't get it, I'll probably just go back and read falafel_musings's story again. :/

5. I want to see someone put Felix's picture on the Memorial Wall. Yes, I know they all think of him as a traitor now, but for seven years, he did nothing but selflessly give of himself to the Fleet and to his military brethren. And I suspect that he consistently worried that he wasn't giving enough. Extra super bonus points, RDM, if we see Baltar sifting through a box of Felix's personal effects, but again, I won't be holding my breath.

I'm torn between whether I want the person who puts up Felix's picture to be Adama or Baltar. I want Adama to do it because I want to see that it cost him something of his soul to kill one of his CIC kids. I don't want to see more bilious anger at Felix from Adama, because damnit, he not only ignored Felix and the Fleet's genuinely convincing concerns about the Cylon alliance, he shut Felix down from speaking on the matter at all, and forced Felix into this desperation move. He is on some level, very culpable in this mutiny happening. But on the other hand, I'm still so angry at Adama right now for not extending the kind of forgiveness to Felix that he has to so many other mutineers, killers and other serious insubordinates (Hell, this is the man who voted to acquit Gaius Baltar, for Gods' sakes!). I feel like it might really enrage me to see Adama even touching Felix's photo right now.

Really, I feel that Baltar has slightly better odds of telling Felix's story in a dignified way at this point, assuming that Baltar's emotional growth arc doesn't backslide between now and the end of the series. If Gaius were to in some way make sure that Felix got a proper mourning among the Fleet that he loved so much he was willing to die to protect it, it would only be a tiny sliver of justice for Felix, but it would be something. Felix was always grateful when he got even something.

6. I want to discover one more thing about Felix that we never knew. It can be something incredibly minor, but I just want one more bittersweet dose of Felix Gaeta before I agree to say good bye to him completely.

7. I want a Felix flashback or a reboot when they reach the end of the series. I have already forgiven him his mistakes, but I feel like a flashback or a reboot would be an opportunity for Felix to be redeemed in the eyes of the characters. I'm not even sure how, but I'm clinging to this idea anyway.

8. I want to see evidence that Galactica is not going to be a happy family again now. Felix and Zarek didn't force everyone on ship to mutiny; the people were ripe for it. If nothing else good comes out of Felix's mutiny, it should be that somebody other than Lee Adama realize that there were real problems in how the Fleet was operating, and that people were not ready for a Cylon Alliance to be forced down their throats just because the Admiral said so.This all should not be instantly solved by executing Gaeta and Zarek. This was the lesson of Lee's speech at Baltar's trial - we can't purge everything that's wrong with us by pouring it all onto one man and then executing him.

9. I want them all to die at the end of the series. They can't go back to being the family they were. Earth is a wasteland. The ship is tearing itself apart, both figuratively and literally. There is no government left, save Laura Roslin and Lee Adama, and even together, they do not make anything but an inherently autocratic government with the military in lockstep (unless the military decides to stop going along and initiates an overt takeover, which is no better). They don't have time to put back together the Quorum, and frankly, the show has almost never portrayed the Quorum as anything other than spoiled, unrealistic, fickle children who don't understand the harsh realities that Fleet Mom and Dad do.

I can't see this show heading anywhere now besides a devolving end that at best, can culminate in sublime transcendence in an afterlife or alternate dimension where at long last, our weary travelers get to rest and maybe even be reunited with those that they've lost along the way, with old scores and estrangements settled and peace finally earned. I could take a lot of comfort in the thought that Felix's mutiny helped accelerate the journey to that satisfying end. Alternately, if they're not going to give me something like that, then maybe I just want them all to die so that I don't have to watch other undeserving characters live to triumph at the end of their journey while Felix, who so rarely ever gave a thought to himself, languishes in ignoble death, never to be spoke of again.

I know it's a long-delayed reaction and you guys are probably kind of beyond this point now, but thanks for listening.

"The Oath" review

2009-02-01T05:41:39Z

I wrote a BSG review for this week's ep. Spoilers under the cut, obvs.

In an episode where many are forced to ask themselves who they really are and which promises they will keep, none have more interesting reactions to this test than Bill Adama and Felix Gaeta.

One really striking thing about the set up of this mutiny is how blind and complacent Adama has been about the loyalty of his crew, despite the fact that he's been seeing chaos reign on his ship for the last two episodes. Everything he has been using to give them hope in the face of horrific circumstances for the last four years has been demolished, and somehow, it doesn't occur to him that another rousing speech alone about finding a new home isn't going to cut it. Not when he's asking them to embrace as allies the robots that killed their family and friends and nearly extinguished their species - without explanation, mind you.

This mutiny should not be quite as big as a surprise as it is for Adama. But he is still asking the question What is this? What is this? even after it's completely obvious what Gaeta is doing.

What makes this mutiny so difficult to watch is that neither side is completely right. Gaeta is correct that Adama is not the same leader you were in the Miniseries, or even Season 4. He once elicited unwavering loyalty from his crew, and especially his faux children, none more so than Felix Gaeta. But now, Adama's gone from calling Cylons things to forcing his people to make an alliance with Cylons with little or no explanation, and absolutely no debate. To people with a more limited view like Gaeta, it must seem like the Admiral's broken his oath and that as Gaeta said last week, the world is frakked, turned upside down because the leaders are leading the people straight into the hands of their enemies. From their limited point of view, it seems like the right thing to do to take the dangerously compromised leader out of commission. Yet, we the viewers, who have more information about the Cylons, understand that Adama's probably right about the alliance. Galactia won't make it unless they take advantage of superior Cylon technology. As Roslin says in her speech, they’re running out of resources and time to find a habitable planet.

How much better a leader is Gaeta? Well, in some ways, he's quite competent. He's a smart, perceptive tactician, managing for the most part to hold off various wild cards that threaten to blow his cover as he sets the mutiny in place. Once he takes command, he multitasks well, managing to keep his wavering minons in line and quickly noticing the smallest of off details, which tips him off quickly to the fact that Adama and Tigh have overcome the guards escorting them to the brig and that the Raptor leaving Galactica is in fact an escape plan.It's a window into what kind of leader Gaeta could have been if he'd ever been given more of a chance to demonstrate it, instead of being stuck in the thankless job of DRADIS monkey for the last seven years.

However, it's also clear that Gaeta lacks Adama's gravitas, and so far, he seems to be lacking a plan beyond take over the ship. Also, Gaeta has to do a lot of the thinking himself: When Roslin manages to use Baltar's secret wireless equipment (which he uses for his religious broadcasts) to try and convince the Fleet to reconsider their coup, Gaeta has to leave Adama's post in the CIC to handle the machinery to cut off Roslin's broadcast because no one else knows how. Furthermore, for all his really smart tactics, Gaeta is still blind in his own way. He does show some signs of self-awareness; for example, he responds to Zarek's congratulations and adulations by saying, We can fine-tune our rationalizations later. However, there is an inherent blindness in the fact that he has chosen to team with Zarek in the first place, whom Gaeta knows from news accounts and experience in the CIC over the years is capable of murder. He probably also knows at least a bit about the corrupt side of Zarek we learned about last week, given that Gaeta worked with him for a year on New Caprica.

What's also interesting (in a train wreck sort of way) about this arc of Gaeta's is that we also get to see him killing off parts of himself as he proceeds with his mutiny. In the throes of his blindness, Gaeta ends up going up against various doppelgangers of himself. Among the senior staff he has sent to the brig is Lieutenant Hoshi, who is not only his boyfriend, but as we saw in the webisodes, has many of the qualities that Gaeta once had earlier in the series - detail oriented devotion to his work, kindness, earnestness, strong loyalty. It's as if Gaeta is putting away that side of himself. Another doppelganger we see suffer under Gaeta's mutiny is Deck Chief Peter Laird, who Gaeta watches be killed by Zarek for merely trying to do his job conscientiously. Laird, who hasn't been seen since Sine Qua Non, is a bit of a Gaeta in that he's a gentle man who once stood up to an unconscionable order given by another admiral out of control (Helena Cain). So it's telling that Gaeta's mutiny kills Laird suddenly, mercilessly and for cold, logistical reasons. Gaeta is not ready for Zarek to kill Laird with a wrench, but he doesn't stop what he's doing upon seeing this warning flag.

Which makes me think that while Gaeta is overall doing a credible job at accomplishing this mutiny, he is in the process of killing off the last vestiges of his more earnest, innocent self to do it. Tellingly, when one of the ghosts from his more innocent past resurfaces via a phone call from Baltar trying to talk him down from rebellion, Gaeta can't quite yet stop himself from taking the call, but ultimately rejects Baltar's assessment of him as a good man who wants to do the right thing. Gaeta still may see himself as a good man, but no longer the kind described by Baltar, the kind of good man who was foolish enough to believe that following the rules would be rewarded in the end with a happy ending on Earth instead of an irradiated dirtpile and an alliance with humanity's killers, who was foolish enough to serve in Baltar's corrupt administration and believe that a Cylon would help him release political prisoners, not single them out for death. So it is no surprise that the episode ends with Gaeta giving the command to fire upon the escaping Raptor, without even knowing for sure who is in it (Baltar and Roslin, as it turns out, but for all he knows, it's Tigh and Adama). It's a cold, practical move in serve of Gaeta's cause that all previous incarnations of Felix Gaeta could never have managed.

The Gaeta-Adama conflict is a fascinating one to watch, and I don't see how this ends up without Gaeta being executed in ignominy. This makes me sad, because he's always been one of my favorite characters, and his motivations and mistakes are intriguing to me. I wish they weren't setting him up in such stark relief as the villain to Adama and Roslin's heroics. Because ultimately, it's his mutiny that is pushing Adama and Roslin out of their complacency and it may be pushing them to become better leaders again. But I don't think anyone on the show will be thanking Felix Gaeta for that.

In other plot threads, it was great to see Chief Tyrol being Chiefy again, being a leader, herding Baltar's acolytes into action much like he used to herd his deck crew. Live or die, he and Tigh will be staying on that ship, faithful to Adama, despite their Cylonhood. That's the kind of crucial information about the Cylons that people like Gaeta can't possibly be privy to (only we the viewers can, really). It's a shame, because it probably would have convinced them that the Cylon alliance could work, and none of this mutiny might have happened. The capture of all the Cylons into the brig is intriguing, and for Sharon, frightening, but I guess we'll see more about that next week.

The Baltar-Roslin scenes seemed forced and random to me. So they're both frauds? Huh. We the viewers have enough inside information to know that that is only partially true at best. They may have used religion for their own ends at times, but they also were hesitant true believers. I don't need them to be believers in God anymore if they don't want to be, but I'm a little annoyed at the retcon going on here that no, actually, they were both opportunists cynically playing the religious card. That takes back a whole season for Baltar and almost the whole series for Roslin.

Incidentally, I understand that Baltar gets to go to the basestar because it was his and Chiefy's Raptor to begin with, but really, what is Baltar going to accomplish with his dangling plot arcs on the basestar? Who is there for him to talk to there? Leoben? Random Eights? I don't see the point so far, especially when there's an Opera House prophecy looming over him, Roslin, Caprica, Athena and Hera that needs to get resolved sooner and sooner with each passing week. The scene between them in the hangar deck probably should have been a deleted scene. It served no purpose that I could see except to establish that Baltar and Roslin are having an uneasy detente. But we kind of already knew they can manage that in a pinch.

It was fun to see Starbuck and Lee back together again as buddy cops. But I must say I am still a bit disturbed still by Starbuck. She is both back to her former self and not. Her friends and loved ones are in a civil war and she's all gleeful to be shooting Skulls and urging Adama to be ruthless and shoot a Marine in the back? (Did anyone else notice how creepy the music was when she tried to shoot the Marine?)Even Lee seems taken aback by her attitude. Her behavior with Hot Dog, someone she has had a not-very-visible but definitely big-sister type of relationship with all series, seemed strangely off as well. Is this because she's not really Kara? Is the rest of the series going to treat her like she is? Will her lack of Kara-ness just be dropped now that we've left Earth?

Next week looks like it's going to be even more explosive than this week was. While I do find all the running around with this mutiny plot exciting, I do wonder how they're going to find the time to start resolving all the dangling questions of the series. Will this mutiny even connect up in any way to that aspect of the series? Oh, show, you take me on such highs and lows...">

Webisode 9 Transcript

2009-01-07T19:49:53Z

Here you go, for anyone who's interested.

EXT. GAETA’S RAPTOR FLYING AIMLESSLY IN OPEN SPACE

INT. INSIDE GAETA’S RAPTOR.

(Gaeta and Eight are the only people left alive in the Raptor. They are both sitting at the back of the Raptor on the floor near each other.)

Eight: I’d tell you that they’d run off or they were at the infirmary. Some of them I’d say I’d seen them eating with their families. (mimicking her own way of saying these things) Didn’t you see them? Oh I’m sure you’ll see them tomorrow

(Momentary flashback to Eight and Gaeta in Gaeta’s tent on New Caprica, probably Gaeta remembering her saying it.)

Eight: Didn’t you see them? I’m sure you’ll see them tomorrow.

Gaeta: No, I remember. I saw them. I know I saw them. They can’t be. I saw Jenkins. I saw Pembroke. (Camera takes shot of the Raptor floor. We see the scalpel there that Eight used to hook up to the Raptor computer.) (said in a whisper) I saw them. (Looks back up at Eight.)

Eight: I saved a few. So you could make yourself not know about the rest.

Gaeta: (Sits on floor. Starts talking quickly, almost babbling.) I saw. I saw Heather Redmon and her baby. They were playing together. I know I saw them. (Puts palm to forehead, closing eyes.)

Eight: (Looking tired and speaking slowly and emphatically) Felix, I’m a woman and a Cylon. I didn’t seduce you. Hope seduced you. And the more you ate of it the less you saw. You ate yourself blind.

Gaeta: (with tears forming) Why- Why didn’t you just kill us when you knew we were lost?

Eight (with eyes closed, looking away): I’m not a monster. I didn’t want to do what I did. I did it when the probabilities dictated it. (Shot of Gaeta crying, reaching for the scalpel and putting it behind his back, keeping his gaze on the Eight.) You kill when you’re in a war. (Her voice gets stronger and more strident as she speaks) You kill when you have to. You kill the ones your enemy values. It’s basic. You should know that.

Gaeta: I trusted you. How could I have guessed. (Shakes head and closes eyes, with full-fledged tears running down his face. Reaches up blood-stained hand to wipe his eyes.)

Eight: Baltar did.

(Gaeta slowly takes his hand down, gazing at her in shock.)

Eight: (sarcastically) Oh, what he didn’t tell you? Or did you block that out too?

(Gaeta leans forward in disbelief, then his gaze turns away into reminiscence.)

FLASHBACK. INT. GALACTICA BRIG

(This is an actual flashback to the Season 3 Episode “Taking a Break From All Your Worries” Baltar and Gaeta are in the brig, where Gaeta has been interrogating him for Roslin and Adama and Baltar is confronting Gaeta about his role in the Resistance on New Caprica.)

Baltar: What did you tell them? What, that you stayed behind on new Caprica to the grisly end. So you could what? So you could uh, feed information to the Resistance? Who do you think allowed you do to that?

Gaeta: (huffs) That’s a lie

Baltar: No, it’s not a lie. You think I’m blind? You see, I literally had a gun pointed to my head. But nobody forced you to play both sides.”

FLASHBACK TO PRESENT. INT. GAETA’S RAPTOR

(Gaeta looks at her in shocked realization. Eight gets up and moves closer to Gaeta.)

Eight: There’s not much difference between my brain and yours, Felix. We can choose to not make the connection. You can see someone kill in front of you, twice, and still hang on to your ignorance. Instead of calling it a flaw, you call it hope, or faith or love. Gaeta shakes his head repeatedly as she speaks and we begin to hear Baltar’s disembodied voice.

Baltar (unseen, as if heard in Gaeta’s head): So I’m asking you Mr. Gaeta.

FLASHBACK. INT. GALACTICA BRIG

(Continuation of “Taking A Break From All Your Worries” scene in the brig we just saw before)

Baltar: Who is the real traitor in this room?

Gaeta (scoffs): I’m not a traitor.

Baltar: No, of course because there are some things worse than being a traitor, aren’t there, Felix? (Looks up at the ceiling where there is a hidden camera being watched by Roslin, Adama and Tigh that Baltar has just discovered is up there. Baltar addresses the camera.) If your friends only knew the truth. (Moves closer towards Gaeta who is still sitting at the table.)

Baltar (in a whisper): Don’t worry. (Baltar grabs Gaeta’s head by the hair and pulls him close to whisper in Gaeta’s ear). We’ll let it be our little secret [not totally sure of the “our little secret line”, as it is very muffled, but “secret” is definitely correct]. I know what your Eight did.

Gaeta: (Flinging Baltar off him.) Get off of me!

(Scene morphs immediately back to the Raptor, as if the flashback in the brig and the locale on the Raptor are the same for Felix. We see Gaeta get up from his seated position, much like he did in the brig scene, then we flash back for a few seconds to Gaeta in the brig picking up a pen on the brig table and pulling his arm back in position to stab Baltar with it. Then, very rapid fire, we flash back and forth a few times between the stabbing of Baltar and the present, where Gaeta appears to stab Eight with the scalpel, intertwining the past scene and the present scene as if to suggest a reliving of the experience of stabbing Baltar. Resolves in the present, with Gaeta and Eight struggling for dominance, their bodies and faces extremely close as they do so.) Webisode cuts away without resolving the attack on Eight.)

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Read this story! (Yuletide must-read rec!)

2009-01-02T07:26:34Z

So I participated in Yuletide this year. Like last year, it was very stressful, and yet I felt like it stretched me to write in a fandom with which I didn't feel totally intimate. And at the end, my reward was an awesome story to read that someone slaved over for me!

Which I'm now reccing, because I think it's awfully good, especially if you have a thing about robots finding out what it means to be sentient, to be an individual. I totally loved this fic, which was written for the Wall.E fandom. It's a fic from EVE's point of view, and I'm just totally in love with it, and I think there are folks on my flist who would really like it.(nicole_anell I'm so looking at you.)

You should go read it. And comment, of course. Right now. In fact, what are you still doing here? Go! Shoo!

Feel free to come back and tell me what you thought of it too.

"Face of the Enemy" Webisode 4 Transcript

2008-12-22T22:14:57Z

Here it is, as promised.

INT. RAPTOR

Lt. Felix Gaeta, a casually dressed unnamed Eight (referred from now on simply as “Eight”), Lt. J. “Shark” Finnegan, Ensign “Easy” Esrin, Specialist Brooks

Pilot!Eight Cylon has just died from electrocution while trying to repair the Raptor’s malfunctioning carbon dioxide scrubbers.

Brooks: I was just doing that! I was doing the same thing!

Eight: Look at her pliers.

Gaeta: (examines them) The insulating grip has been stripped off. Who did this? (Looks around at the others. No one replies.)

Shark: (grabbing the pliers from Gaeta and examining them): Old as frak. Grip wore off.

Eight: Or someone didn’t like the idea of a machine breathing their air.

Brooks: Fine. Look, those are mine. I was the one who was supposed to get killed.

Eight: Unless you were the one who did it. I mean, what you didn’t notice bare metal?

Brooks: What are you saying?

Shark: Guys, we're using up air.

Brooks: Are you accusing me? Because…

(Everyone freaking out, talking at once, nothing intelligible.)

Gaeta (shouting): Shut the frak up! (Turns to Eight.) It was an accident! (pause, turns back to rest of crew) What are we gonna do with her?

Eight: Jettison her.

(Everyone looks shocked.)

Eight: We have to. We can pull the air into our tanks and open the door.

Shark: No. We’d lose air.

Eight: Only a little. She’s gonna start giving off methane and hydrogen soon.

Esrin: That's heartless.

Gaeta: No, no, she’s right. We gotta get rid of the body. Then we can figure out what to do next. (Thinks a moment, makes a decision.) Flight suits. (He and Eight begin pulling out flight suits and helmets and handing them to people.)

Eight: (whispering to Gaeta) I have an idea how to get us home. I need your help.

Gaeta: (whispering) What? What do you mean?

Eight: (whispering)I’ll tell you when they’re asleep. Trust me, okay?

INT. GAETA’S TENT. NEW CAPRICA (FLASHBACK)

Gaeta, Unknown Eight

We see a closeup shot of Gaeta writing down names and apparent i.d. numbers on that previously-seen piece of lined paper. Eight is watching him do it. Looks up at her.

Gaeta: This list? So many of these people I haven’t seen in a long time. (Shakes his head worriedly) They may already be...Gods. (puts hand to forehead in distress)

Eight: The Ones. They keep good records. If somebody’s locked up, I can find them. I can get them out.

(Gaeta doesn’t answer or meet her gaze.)

Eight: We can do this.

(Gaeta looks at her dubiously and sighs, then goes back to writing. She puts her hand on his hand in a comforting gesture.)

Eight: Really.

(Gaeta looks up at her with a mixture of hope and doubt.)

INT. RACETRACK'S RAPTOR

Lt. Hoshi, Lt. Margaret “Racetrack” Edmondson

We see exterior shot of Raptor taking off from Galactica launch bay, close up view of Hoshi and Racetrack inside the Raptor..

Racetrack: (to Hoshi) Buckle in, L-T. Let’s go hunting.

(Raptor takes off into open space.)

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Webisode 3 transcript

2008-12-22T07:53:05Z

So it turns out that there are people in various non-English speaking countries who found my transcript of Webisode 1 useful for helping them understand the dialogue. Who knew my compulsion would have a useful outlet? So for those folks, here's the transcript for Webisode 3. Two can be found here at wyrdwritere's journal. I will be posting transcripts for the remaining webisodes, hopefully closer to the day they are broadcast (had some RL interferences this week).

Anyway, here is, very late, Webisode 3:

INT. RAPTOR
Shark, Esrin (Raptor pilot and ECO), Brooks (a deck hand), Gaeta, an Eight Cylon dressed as a pilot, an Eight Cylon dressed in fashionable casual wear.

Shark: We’re at 68 percent of ship normal O2.
Esrin: Sixty-eight? At that level, you’re talking memory loss, irrational behavior, depression, dizziness.
Shark: Better dizzy than dead

Brooks: Well, ain't you so frakkin' lucky you got a mechanic on board? I’ll have a look at these scrubbers. (Goes digging into a toolbox, uses a couple of different tools to try and work on the ship’s wiring, including a pair of pliers.) All right, let's see what we've got.

Gaeta: (approaching the casually dressed Eight model who spoke to him in the previous webisode.) You’re her.

(Eight gives him a small, tight smile, but says nothing.)

INT. TENT, NEW CAPRICA
Gaeta, Unidentifed Eight Model

We flash back to a scene on New Caprica in what is presumably Gaeta’s tent. It is 15 months ago, during the Occupation. Gaeta and what seems to be the same Eight are standing in the tent and Gaeta is examining a piece of paper. He hands it reluctantly to her and she walks out, with him looking pensive and worried.

INT. RAPTOR

Same cast as previous Raptor scene

Brooks: (making frustrated noises) Godsdamnit! Come on. There’s a loose connection here, I just can’t get its side.

Pilot Eight: Let me do it.

Brooks: Nah

Pilot Eight: Let me do it.

Brooks: Right. Be my guest. (Hands over the pliers he’s been using to Pilot Eight)

Esrin: You shouldn’t even be in there. You’re gonna make it worse.

Brooks: (to Pilot Eight) Right. You see it?

Pilot Eight: Yeah (fiddles inside the wiring where Brooks has been working using the pliers he’d handed her) Got it!

(Sparks fly everywhere, causing everyone to flinch back and avert their eyes. Pilot Eight gets jolted back from the wiring and collapses onto the floor. When the sparks stop, everyone looks to see Pilot Eight lying on the ground, not moving, pliers still in her hand.)

Gaeta (feeling Pilot Eight’s neck for a pulse): No pulse. She’s dead.

Brooks: My Gods! I was just doing that! I was doing that same thing!

Casual Eight: Look at her pliers.

Gaeta (bends down and grabs the pliers out of Pilot Eight’s hand, examines it.) The insulated grip has been stripped off. (Looks at the others on the Raptor) Who did this?

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webisodes transcript - don't ask

2008-12-12T21:37:46Z

So a couple of folks on gaeta_squee and my flist were bummed they couldn't see the BSG webisodes that started today because they live in Canada or Europe, and my brain kind of went crazy and so now you have this:

INT. CIC

Gaeta, Tigh, with Hoshi and other CIC staff in the background.

Gaeta: …Uh, a couple of hours, I think.

Tigh: That’s not enough.

Gaeta: I naturally don’t need a lot of sleep, Sir

Tigh: I can’t have you in the CIC like this. You’re on the verge of seeing ghosts on the DRADIS screen.

Gaeta: I’m fine sir, I swear.

Tigh: It’s a gift son, it’s not a punishment. Go over the Zephyr. Get drunk. Sleep for a week. Recover. (pause) The shuttle leaves twice a day. Better hurry.

INT. GALACTICA HALLWAY

Gaeta struggling with crutches towards hangar bay. Hoshi approaches from off camera, around a corner behind Gaeta.

Hoshi: Felix…

Gaeta: (turns around in surprise, speaks softly) Hi.

Hoshi: (hands Felix a packet of morpha) I owe Ishay a big favor.

Gaeta: (looks at the packet. Sees from the label that it’s morpha)

Hoshi: Morpha’s a tough get.

Gaeta: (opens the packet slightly and see three vials of morpha inside, is clearly gratified) Thank you. (then more vehemently grateful). Thank you. If I didn’t…

Hoshi: (interrupts) Go. Feel better. I’ll be waiting. I gotta get back to the CIC (places hand on Gaeta’s neck affectionately and Gaeta leans in and gives him a quick, shy kiss. Hoshi rushes back off to the CIC and Gaeta watches him go before turning back to the hangar deck hatch and opening it.)

INT. HANGAR DECK

We see a number of random people with luggage, presumably lining up for boarding. Gaeta struggles across the hangar deck with his ill-fitting prosthetic leg and a crutch. Stops next to Brooks, in a hangar deck crew uniform.

Gaeta: Oh hey Brooks. What, you going to the ‘Z’ too?

Brooks: Yeah, but no fun for me. Maintenance detail.

Gaeta: (sympathetically) Ah, well

(Gaeta turns, distracted by something across the hangar deck. Brooks turns and sees what he’s looking at - two unspecified Eights walking across the hangar deck towards them – one dressed in a Cylon pilot’s uniform and one dressed in fashionable casual wear.)

Brooks: (sarcastically) Oh great, skinjobs.

Gaeta continues to look back at the Eights after Brooks has turned back towards the Raptor. When he turns his attention back, his expression looks negative.

Brooks: What?

(Gaeta doesn’t reply. They all stand near each other briefly, waiting for the Raptor to accept passengers. The casual Eight seems to be fixating on Gaeta, who ignores her and begins to move forward to board the Raptor and trips slightly, almost falling off his crutches. The Eight dressed in fashionable casual wear jumps immediately to catch Gaeta and help him. Gaeta flashes her an ambiguous look that seems negative or dismayed and then continues to board the Raptor. The Eight makes sure he navigates the steps successfully before boarding the Raptor herself.)

INT. Raptor.

(Shark, a Raptor pilot, along with an unknown female ECO sit at the front of the craft. In the back, along with Gaeta and the two Eights, there are a few other anonymous passengers. They all look cramped and uncomfortable. The pilot!Eight settles in and closes her eyes, as if to take a nap. The casual!Eight continues to stare strangely at Gaeta frequently. Gaeta seems to be either oblivious to her or deliberately ignoring her.)

Shark: Welcome aboard the Zephyr shuttle, Ladies and Gents. We’ll be arriving at our destination in 15 minutes.

ECO: There’s no in-flight service today, so please refrain from drinking unless you’re willing to share with your flight crew.

(Cut to view of the Raptor in space, flying in amongst the other ships of the Fleet.)

Shark (over intercom): Zephyr approach, Raptor 718 inbound at our marker.

Zephyr Communications: Raptor 718, Zephyr approach. DRADIS contact 1600. Turn heading 427, karam 225. Halt at inner marker for sequencing.

Shark: Copy all, 427 karam 225, halt at the inner marker. ETA 15 minutes

Hoshi (on Galactica, broadcasting to Fleet): Galactica. Inbound Cylon hostiles. All ships, emergency jump. I say again, emergency jump.

Shark (inside Raptor): Prepare to jump

Brooks: Can’t we just get to Zephyr? It’s right there.

ECO: Calculations complete. Jumping in 3, 2, 1.

Shark: Jump

(The entire Fleet jumps away, including the Raptor. The Raptor than jumps into a new part of space, but there is no contact on DRADIS, and no visual of any other ships.)

Gaeta (gets up with discomfort and moves towards the front of the Raptor): Where’s the Fleet?

Hope someone finds this useful.

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