quick linkspam

[such_heights]

+ vid rec: obsessive24's Wicked Game (BSG), which is about Dee, omg, I remember why I loved her so much all over again. And it also made me all ragey at 4.5 all over again!

Sometimes I forget about how ALL THE WOMEN ARE DEAD, then I remember and get angry again. Just, wtf, BSG was so obsessed with women and death - it became the foremost thing in Roslin and Kara's character arcs, and Tory and Cally and Dee and Kat and Boomer and Maya and all the other women who died. this page, complete with pictures, is so, so telling - look at the race and gender make-up of the ones who survived versus the ones that didn't.

But hey, at least some of the Cylon women survived! Except that they all died at least once, too, and the whole way the show coded female cylon downloading vs. male was really weird too. You can kill the robot chicks again and again so they can go writhe around naked in some goo, because they're disposable, and they can die for their men - Caprica saves Baltar by sacrificing herself, Helo shoots Athena so she can download onto the baseship to get Hera, Ellen lets Saul poison her. But when the male cylons die it makes them more threatening, because you can kill Leoben over and over but you'll still be his prisoner, and Cavil will still haul people off to prisons, and all that stuff really hacked me off.

Oh, BSG, in the end you were just like everyone else - only the straight white dudes are tough enough to survive! With the exceptions of Adama, Hoshi, Seelix and Baltar's cult. Um.

/rant

+ Relatedly, this post on queer subtext hit me -right here-. Because yes. We have so, so little positive representation in both mainstream and genre TV, and it makes such a difference. All I want are characters who are like me and alive and get to be happy, and -- well, that's not been the case for a while. I am thus both cautiously optimistic and VERY NERVOUS about Skins S4. *clings to Naomi & Emily* I am also looking forward to the new BBC drama, Lip Service, which is about 20-something lesbians in Glasgow. *crosses fingers* (And AfterEllen's article on it made me laugh - oh, The L Word. I loved you, and am still fond of your early seasons, but really.

+ blog carnival: Disability Blog Carnival #63: Relationships (February 2010 edition) is being hosted by avendya at disability, with submissions due by February 20th. \o/

Comments

[kel_reiley]

ooh! there's a skins s4??? Naomi & Emily were my FAVE characters (are they still in it?)

[such_heights]

Yes indeed! It starts in a couple of weeks and I assume it'll follow the gang through their last year of school.

[kel_reiley]

WHOO! i am excited
also, waiting for next series of 'shameless'

[liseuse]

I know you know this, but omg I am both so scared and so excited for the new series of Skins. I just want two women to be a couple, and for it not to be a big deal. I don't want one of them to die. Or decide they're straight. They can come to the conclusion they're bi, or queer. But enough with the 'you just need to have sex with the right man' thing. I expected Torchwood to break my queer heart. But I want to believe better of Skins.

(Oh, The L Word. I'm watching season five at the moment, and I kind of love it for how unrealistic it is. It's just so cracktastic! Someone I know asked me if that was what it was like being queer. I laughed and laughed and laughed.)

[lefaym]

Thanks for the link about queer subtext. That's something that's frustrated me greatly with both Merlin and, more recently, Being Human -- the shows are willing to give their audience a nod and a wink with a bit of intentional homoeroticism, but in the end, it's treated as a joke, because they're not actually gay, and there's no hope of the shows ever actually exploring a same-sex relationship in-depth (and if they did, it would most likely just be yet another "death and bereavement" storyline anyway).

[verasteine]

I come from a very wobbly position at the whole queer subtext issue, but YES. Yes, that, exactly, particularly having switched from Torchwood, which is yay, canon slash, to Merlin, which is not yay, not canon slash. And I find it hard to watch it, hear actors and producers rave about the subtext, and then have these little niggly scenes that they keep putting in with Arthur/Gwen, that I don't want because I have a very pesky relationship with the characters whereby I can't decide who I want to shag and who I want to be (to put it blunty.) And Merlin has a seriously debatable relationship with female characters, and that rubs me the wrong way, too, and argh! I feel a bit bad about this, because I suspect part of the reason I'd personally like gay heroes on tv is that it forces writers to stop writing characters like the audience can be divided into two groups, the ones that want to shag the hero, and the ones that want to be the hero. Gay heroes turn that on its head, and it means that I, as a woman, am not constantly torn between gender and sexuality lines. But it also means I'm appropriating something much more important, well said by the person you linked to -- that it's something people will have to think about, face up to -- for my own personal ends.

Argh. I barfed all over your journal. Sorry about that. I fear there may be a thoughts post on this in the future :(.

[copracat]

this page, complete with pictures, is so, so telling - look at the race and gender make-up of the ones who survived versus the ones that didn't.


Jesus.

[gorgeousnerd]

Wow. Just...wow. I've learned a lot about feminism and subtext and the like recently, so I didn't think about the highly dubious female themes in BSG until you pointed it out, and I never saw queer subtext in that way before. It's amazing how much a little knowledge can change a person's world. (Also, lol L Word, that show was so ridiculously bad. I can't wait to give Lip Service a try!)