Look, I'm not saying I'm watching this show through any sociological filters or anything

[very_improbable]

So I hadn't been really following BSG for a couple seasons, but I came back last week, just in time to see the show's strong non-evil black female character kill herself (and see TPTB explain it in an interview with multiple references to how her relationships went badly) and to discover that the one gay character--who had, I knew from the interwebs, had an actual gay relationship in the webisodes--had also become the only physically disabled one.

This week Gaeta gets a plot, and it involves him deciding to help subvert the fleet government, albeit in a sympathetic context--and his invisible gayness goes into full cloaking mode with the hostile fake proposition in Starbuck's direction, making him, at this moment in time, perhaps the first character in television history to canonically be gay on the internet but not on teevee.

(I'm not saying I don't like Gaeta's plotline, exactly? because seeing major characters being divided meaningfully on these big survival-type issues is compelling to me, always has been. Coming back to the show after a long absence, I'm seeing a lot of the stuff that appealed to me in the beginning. But since we've just discovered, I guess, that Zarek has his hands dirty in some kind of secret-Blagojevich way and isn't a True Revolutionary after all, that means Gaeta is signing up for catastrophic disillusionment and has probably sealed his own death warrant with that handshake.)


Meanwhile, back at the straight white guys, I don't really know what's going on with Baltar right now but as always I LOVE IT.

Comments

[thingswithwings.livejournal.com]

dude, 100% agree re: Gaeta - the heterosexual cloaking mode is crazy-making, and the way he's being built up to be a villain (a disabled gay villain of colour!) is kind of crazy-making. I feel a lot of sympathy for his choices and I think the show does too, but we've seen this plot before, military control vs civilian uprising, and I worry that Gaeta is going to be the fall guy for this plotline.

Also, I gotta say, when I was watching that scene in Adama's office, and it was all men, I had this moment of dissonance - like, where'd all the ladies go? Didn't this show used to have a bunch of ladies? But I guess they're all busy dying or being dead or being pregnant.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, you're right. It was all men. Men are in fact making all the decisions that affect the fleet, aside from the President's decision to die of cancer.

Are we now to assume that D'Anna really did just stay on the ruined Earth to starve alone? Do they consider the answer to that question important enough to mention it?

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

I had no idea Gaeta was supposed to be gay. But I love, love, love his storyline, amputation and all. The more complex story a character gets the better, is what I say. Also I love the actor, not just for BSG but because he was the voice of L on the dub of the fabulous anime Death Note.

If they have chosen to make him gay, I wish they'd show that on the broadcast episodes.

[swallowedbysky.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Gaeta's not meant to be gay but rather bi. We see the relationship with Hoshi in the webisodes, but we also see a past relationship with one of the Sharons.

I understand the argument that it's cheap or cheating, as it were, to use the webisodes to explore one aspect of a character but to then refuse to examine it on TV. That having been said (and I acknowledge that I'm sick and have been reading a variety of complaints about all of my fandoms lately that make me want to scream at people about context and so may be reacting with far more irritation than is strictly necessary), I think I'm more rritated by the fandom's insistence that a relationship with Hoshi means Gaeta's gay while ignoring the fact that he's not as I am by the show's decision to ignore the fact that he's not straight, either.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

I do think Gaeta's basically gay. The Sharon he had the affair with said to him, "I didn't seduce you. I'm a woman and a Cylon. Hope seduced you." That sounds to me like Gaeta doesn't normally go for women.