#4x14 blood on the scales

[blue-mint-winter]

[4x14] The relief on Roslin’s face. She looks up and whispers his name. He’s alive when she thought she lost him forever.

When I think about it, before a staple of their dynamic was Adama’s faith in Roslin and finding the way to Earth. In the mutiny arc they swap places, Roslin becomes the one who puts all her faith in Adama, that he IS alive and that he WILL take back the ship. So when Zarek tells her Adama was executed, she snaps. She will AVENGE him. And in the end her actions on the baseship help Adama regain command from Gaeta and Zarek.

[sourstiless]

something that really bothers me about people in fandom (and honestly just in real life too because i see that’s hit all the fucking time) is how they’re always trying to compare trauma and play the “who has it worse” game with the characters. like one, stop comparing trauma it’s weird, but also two, stop trying to play the who has it worse game with different kinds of trauma ??

like we can sit here and argue about who has it worse in 4x14 of 9-1-1. eddie, the guy who got shot, or buck, the guy who’s eddie’s blood splattered all over. at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter because both of them were put in incredibly traumatizing situations. eddie has the trauma from being literally shot, being a target, and bleeding out on the street, not knowing if he’s going to live to get get back to his son no king after his son’s mother died. he had go through all that pain, but buck has the trauma of having his best friend’s blood splatter on his face, while feeling helpless as he bleeds out. and we know he feels guilty, and blames himself, thinking that it would have been better if it had been him. but these are two different kinds of trauma, it’s not something you can just weigh on a scale and hope to get an accurate measurement. it’s complex, and there’s so much nuance, depending on how each person handles and processes it, the person you’d expect to be least hurt might be more, or one just may be better at compartmentalizing than the other. it’s subjective to the individual.

like people are arguing over who had it worse when bianca died, percy or nico. and everyone’s trying to compare what they went through, but you can’t. because at the end of the day, the trauma nico has from losing a sibling and feeling betrayed by someone you trusted is going to be different from the survivor’s guilt and the trauma from the ultimate failure percy experiences. you can’t compare the two because they’re measured on completely different scales. trauma affects each individual differently, and something that might seem mundane to you can feel like drowning to someone else.

i don’t think we should be asking who’s the most and who’s the least traumatized because trauma is trauma. you experience something that changes who you are, something that changes the way your brain works and people expect you to stand in a line and rank you pain on a scale from 1-10, and then tell you that you’re overreacting or not reacting enough based on how they think you should feel. and it’s so weird, and really invalidating ??? anyway, that’s it. i just think people should stop being so insensitive about how they talk about trauma, real trauma and fictional trauma when analyzing characters in media. because a lot of the trauma fictional characters go through has probably happened in real life, in some shape or form. i think it’s strange.

[irmise]

Richonne : What a parent can do for love (9x14)

Many people draw a parallel between this episode and ‘The Grove’ (4x14) in which Carol killed Lizzie. So yes it was about the death of psycho kids by one of the main characters but for me this is the only comparison that this episode brings.

This episode reminds me more of ‘A’ (4x16), episode in which Rick kills Joe by biting his neck.

It wasn’t the same dramatic intensity because Michonne is dealing with children while Rick was facing adults, but in both cases it's supposed to show how far a parent could go for love, how far they had to go to protect their children.

Carl at the time and Judith in this episode were both in imminent danger of death. In both cases, their parents begged for their kids' safety, in both cases their parents were beaten and in both cases they were pushed to their physical and mental limits and only their parental instincts had save the situation.

Rick bit a man's neck like a Walker would have done, becoming what he dreaded to become. Michonne killed brainwashed kids as her humanity pushed her to find a way to save them, despite everything. They both exceeded the limits of what their morality could accept (even with ZA standards). They both seemed horrified by their own actions and both had to face their guilt. They had to live with what this world has forced them to do to protect their children.

We could even draw parallels to how Carl reacts after witnessing what his father did to save him, and how Judith looks at her blood-covered mother, hesitating to approach her, understanding with her kid eyes that something very serious just happened..

The way Michonne looks at Daryl when he finally arrives, understanding right away what she was forced to do, that bring us back to the talk between Rick and Daryl when Daryl tried to comfort Rick telling him that he was not really himself when he killed Joe : “It ain’t all of it but that’s me. That's why I'm here now. That's why Carl is. I want to keep him safe.”.

And Rick's sentence now echoes what Michonne said when she was speaking alone : “I watched what you did to protect him how nothing else mattered except him and I need to be that now for them. And I know it's not what we planned, not what we wanted, but you weren't here. And neither was he. You didn't have to go through the -”

What matters is the safety of their children, regardless of their guilt, their shame, and the trauma with which they have to live.

That's why I think these two moments are perfect parallels even if on a scale of atrocity what did Jocelyn and these children against Michonne was a lot harder to watch.

Remember, after what Rick did we were entitled to one of the most beautiful Richonne scenes (imo): Rick approaching Michonne, terrified that what he did may have changed the way she sees him, she whose opinion has become so important to him, the only person who has never shown signs of doubt about him despite the fact that he lost the prison.

He asks her if she is okay and tells her that he’s okay (despite what you have just seen, I am always there I am always me). She tells him that she already knows it because as long as he is fine, she's fine too, implying that she knows that what he did was to protect them and that she will not judge him for that..

It was Michonne's words “Cause I'm okay too” who managed to reassure Rick, to remind him that in her eyes despite the fact that he had just bit a man to death, he wasn’t a monster quite the contrary he was just this father who has to protect his child.

But he was not there to reciprocate, he was not there to tell her that she did what she had to do, that it didn’t change who she was, that it did not change the way he saw her. She could not read in his eyes the compassion and admiration she gave him after the Claimers. She just kept this guilt buried in her because her man was not there to tell her that as long as she was okay, he was okay too. And that's the missing part in this episode (and one of the saddest part in this tragedy), the after : she had to face this traumatism alone, without him to allow her to lighten the weight of her guilt: “you weren't here [...]”.

[drsilverfish]

The Siren and The Gorgon (4x14 and 14x14)

Medieval image of a Mermaid-Siren.

Sculpture of Medusa by Bernini (1630, Rome)

This meta links to, and elaborates further on, an earlier post of mine about queer subtext in 14x14 Ouroboros, “The Kiss of the Queer Gorgon”. 

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/183323000224/the-kiss-of-the-queer-gorgon-in-14x14-ouroboros

Yockey has been playing with the Ouroboros form of Dabb’s narrative by having some of his episodes recall numerologically similar previous episodes in order to, additionally, illuminate them thematically. 14x10 Nihilism recalls 4x01 Lazarus Rising - Pamela Barnes appearing in Dean’s mind-bar wearing her Cas-referencing “To Hell and Back T-Shirt” and her silver winged-figure necklace, just as she first “introduced” Dean and Cas in 4x01.  Yockey does it again in 14x14 Ouroboros, this time, recalling 4x14 Sex and Violence, via certain correspondences between Nick the Siren and Noah the Gorgon, not least their similar sounding names, Nick/ Noah...

The Siren and the Gorgon in Ancient Greek mythology are both feminine supernatural beings. One lured sailors (men) to their deaths on the rocks with sweet and deadly singing and the other (specifically Medusa, although there were two other Gorgons) turned men to stone with her snake-haired gaze. 

I love both of them so much, because although we could understand them as representations of the monstrous feminine in a patriachal culture, I will always, always hold Guillermo del Toros’ beautiful quote (from his Shape of Water Golden Globes acceptance speech) to my heart:

“Since childhood I’ve been faithful to monsters — I have been saved and absolved by them. Because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection,”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/golden-globes-guillermo-del-toro-wins-best-director-shape-water-1072334 

There is a lot of academic writing on the subject of the “monstrous feminine”. Here is a relatively accessible popular article on the “monstrous feminine” in the horror genre, titled “Medusa’s Gaze: The Monstrous Feminine”:

http://nickelodeon.org/7197-2/ 

In Supernatural, in 4x14 we see that the Siren’s “true” form is indeed monstrous-feminine:

In 14x14 Ouroboros we get this shot of a lore text Treatise on Gorgons (not an actual book as far as I am aware, so one made specially by the props department):

It reads (excerpt) “Physical descriptions of Gorgons vary. Winged creatures in the form of young women, with scaly golden bodies and a horrifying visage wreathed with locks of hair made of living, coiling venemous snakes. Broad, round heads, round-faced and flat-nosed. Large staring eyes, flaring nostrils and wide mouths. Their tongues hanging loosley and their mouths possessing large overhanging teeth. Their wings are of gold, claws brazen, and with the tusks of bears. And in some instances, they have been witnessed with short coarse beards. In modern times, the gender of Gorgons has reported to be fluid.”

So, SPN gender-queers both the Siren and the Gorgon we meet. Because, in going after Dean, the Siren famously appeared in the form of Nick Munroe, who we see here looking at his true!form reflection, although to other male vics, it had appeared in female form:

Noah the Gorgon also appears in male form (although the episode tells us via the lore book he too, like the Siren, may be somewhat “gender-fluid”). 

Yockey also uses Noah to comment on the earlier, less self-aware and more misogynistic, treatment of the monstrous feminine in Supernatural by making Noah a feminist:

VIC: “You’re just preying on helpless men?”

NOAH: “”Helpless men? That’s rich! No, I do eat ladies too, but women have become so cautious lately, must be all that finally waking up from centuries of misogynistic oppression. Good for them.”

(If you look at the Script for Sex and Violence, in old school SPN form, both “bitch” and “slut” are used about the strippers in the story, in the final confrontation between Dean, Sam and the Siren. I love Yockey.)

Whilst the Siren and the Gorgon are traditionally associated with the “monstrous feminine”, in SPN they are also mobilised in another narrative tradition, that of the “monstrous queer”.  

“Since the earliest days of the moving image, the figure of the monster has been implemented as a way in which to mobilise ideological tensions and socio-cultural anxieties connected to particular time periods and historical moments. Within the horror genre (the monster’s native milieu), these ideological messages are mainly constructed and transmitted through the performance of the abject body and its sexually transgressive desires, both of which have been critically understood by some as an allegorical conduit for queerness – that is, non-heterosexual or non-normative desire (Benshoff 1997).”

from  “There Is Some Thing Within Us All”: Queer Desire and Monstrous Bodies in Penny Dreadful by Jordan Phillips:

http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2017/06/14/phillips/ 

In other words, there is a long history of the monstrous being queer-coded in the gothic and horror genres SPN is contiguous with, both by queer people themselves, seeking affinity with the monstrous because of their outcast status (e.g. in closeted Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1897) and by homophobes, or simply unthinking creators, who have used queerness as a shorthand for monstrosity because social norms have seen it as monstrous (e.g. in Hitchcock’s Rope, 1948).

Yockey makes Noah the Gorgon a more sympathetic figure than Nick the Siren, because we are given some of his interior loneliness:

NOAH: “Honestly, it’s not like I enjoy eating people. It’s a lonely way to live, and there’s only so many ways you can cook human. But sometimes fate is cruel and boring.”

This is is Yockey’s way of indicating which “side” of the mobilisation of the “monstrous queer” he is on (i.e. the queer creator sympathetic side). 

In terms of queer seduction,  I think there was a lot of argument, back in the day, about what exactly Nick the Siren was offering Dean - something erotic? The perfect brother-companion?

Here is Dean being seduced by Nick the Siren (talking about classic rock music with him, and indeed, Nick specifically mentions Zeppelin <3 <3 <3)

As Wincest subtext was a much more regular part of the show back then, there’s really no need to choose between them.  All three readings are available - erotic, perfect brother companion, and erotic brother-companion.

The text of Sex and Violence does make it quite clear, however, that the Siren operates by sexual seduction. The victims, as Sam discovers talking to Cara, all had very high levels of Oxytocin (the “love hormone”) in their blood. Sam says, of the victims:

SAM: “It’s almost like they were under some kind of love spell.�� 

DEAN: “Sure seems that way.” 

Later, this is added to in another conversation between the brothers:

DEAN: “So whatever floats the guy's boat, that's what they look like?”

SAM: “Yeah. You see, Sirens can read minds. They see what you want most and then they can kinda, like, cloak themselves. You know, like an illusion.”

The sexual element of that is emphaised by the Siren itself, in disguise as FBI agent Nick Munroe, who says of the previous vics:

NICK: “They were all banging strippers from the same club.” 

The Siren was, in fact, disguising itself as female strippers for all the vics except Dean, for whom it chose a male FBI agent form. 

In Sex and Violence, Sam and Cara are paired whilst Nick and Dean are paired, and Sam and Cara have sex (again, in subtext, emphasising the sexual element of the Siren’s seduction of Dean, via this mirroring). Yockey also makes use of a similar type of mirroring in Ouroboros, by having Sam and Rowena pretend to be a married couple, at the vets with puppy-Jack, at the same time that Dean and Cas are investigating the Gorgon crime scene together (in subtext, emphasing the “married couple” element of the Dean/ Cas contemporary partnership via this Sam/ Rowena mirror). 

Just as Nick the Siren seduces Dean, Noah the Gorgon is also somewhat “seductive” towards Dean. He writes him a personalised note warning him off (addressed to Dean only, although Noah has seen that Rowena and Sam are part of the hunting team chasing after him, thanks to his eye-ball consuming visions). Dean himself picks up on something creepily erotic about Noah’s address (given they already know Noah is into cooking and eating dudes) when he says, in response to Cas’ query about why the Gorgon has failed to see Cas at Dean’s side in his vision:

DEAN: “Maybe you’re not his type.”

Later Noah does queer-target Cas (proving Cas is, in fact “his type” i.e. queer men) by giving the angel his seductive/poisoned kiss. 

By linking the two episodes, narratively, numerologically and thematically, Yockey strengthens the queer reading of the earlier one, Sex and Viokence, by its mirroring in Ouroboros, by having Noah explicitly seduce male victims via poisoned kiss on camera (one of those kisses being on the lips):

In Sex and Violence, we do not see a same-sex kiss. Instead, the Siren passes the poison, which is in his saliva, to Dean via a subtextual kiss (sharing swigs from Dean’s hip flask in Baby):

The Ouroboros narrative of Dean’s (and now Cas’) subtextual queerness has, in Yockey’s hands undertaken a tail-swallowing spiral, from male Siren to male Gorgon, but Yockey brings queerness more strongly into his text, via:

1) A more sympathetic “monstrous queer” character (yes, Noah the Gorgon eats people, but he’s lonely and miserable about it, whereas Nick the Siren was just gleeful about exerting eventual total power over his victims).

2) A monstrous character who’s more on the men-seducing end of the Kinsey scale. We don’t see Noah seduce any women (although he is seductively bisexual, as he tells us he eats women too) whilst see the Siren undertakes more hetero seduction, by approaching mostly men in female form (Dean being the exception).

2) An explicit M/M seductive kiss on screen (between the Gorgon and the trucker at the start of the episode) whereas there is only a sublimated exchange of M/M saliva, via the hip-flask, in Sex and Violence. 

3) One of our queer-coded heroes himself (Castiel) does gets explicitly M/M kissed (albeit it is a monstrous, poisoned and non-con kiss).

I <3 everything about Ouroboros. 

[blue-mint-winter]

[4x14] Such an underrated moment. They get the (false) news that Tigh is dead but Gaeta doesn’t rejoice, he’s not smug or satisfied that his personal nemesis is gone. Instead, he looks at Adama, realizing his very personal loss of a best friend and he says “I’m sorry.” This is a moment when Gaeta’s kindness and empathy comes through, but almost immediately after he gets back to the point of his questioning.

[blue-mint-winter]

BSG 4x14 Blood on the Scales rewatch

And finally in season 4 the curse of bad 14th episode was broken. This episode was good.

Gaeta finds out the hard way about Zarek’s true nature and that’s when he becomes to doubt their little revolution. Because for him it’s important how they do it.

I think Gaeta’s problem is that he is still an idealist at the core. Zarek is a pragmatist, ends justify the means sort of man. For Gaeta, the ends were truth and justice and that can’t happen when Zarek unlawfully murders Quorum and says that winners write history.

That’s why Gaeta puts Adama before a court martial for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Romo is brought on to handle the defense but he doesn’t do much. With Zarek as the judge, this trial is a sham. It’s more like Gaeta wants Adama to admit he’s wrong, but it’s not going to happen. Adama refuses to cooperate in any capacity so he’s brought before the firing squad.

Lee and Kara bust the prisoners out, but Sam gets shot in the neck in the corridor. Kara asks Romo who was passing by to help her bring Sam to the doctor. Romo doesn’t want to and for a momentI thought he’d really leave them, but he turns back. So there is some human decency in this one crooked lawyer :)

Zarek frakking lying to Adama that Tigh was killed in escape attempt.

I like that we see people not complying with mutiny, using their common sense, like Quorum still recognizing Roslin as the President, Hot Dog refusing to shoot Roslin’s Raptor, 10 ships not preparing to jump when Gaeta wanted to move the Fleet and leave the baseship behind. And Kelly letting Tyrol escape and then changing sides.

Idk, but I really like Kelly’s portrayal in this episode. He gets redeemed from lawyer killing imo. He lets Tyrol go because they were friends and he completely abandons the mutiny when Admiral is going to be executed. Kelly just can’t take part in this and so he helps Lee’s group save Adama.

It’s interesting that Gaius on the baseship had a dream about Adama’s execution, like a premonition. And then he gets a moment of self-reflection, he feels responsible for his flock and he’s ashamed he ran again. And these realizations come because a long-haired Six reminds him of his fan club.

Roslin on the baseship is great. She comes aboard and she immediately starts bossing the Cylons around :) She keeps trying to communicate with the Fleet, she convinces Cylons to stay because Adama will triumph and they should show him their true allegiance, not run like Tory wanted. Her emotions are out in the open and I think that’s what makes Cylons respond. I liked that Leoben helped her with communications, this is the first time she interacted with him since airlocking him in S1 after he lied to her that Adama was a Cylon. Looks like Leoben atoned for that lie in this episode by helping Roslin.

That badass moment when Zarek tells her about Adama’s execution and Roslin snaps and threatens the mutineers with her every weapon, every bullet etc. EPIC, epic.

Mutineers want to jump away, but Tyrol breaks the FTL. They can’t escape from Roslin’s wrath. All in all, Tyrol seems like a better man after Earth. His relationship with Adama has really improved from that time he yelled at Admiral in the bar and got demoted.

So, Adama takes back the ship and arrests Zarek and Gaeta. Zarek wanted to fight to the bitter end, but Gaeta was smarter and ordered to stand down. He realized that resistance would be futile and only result in more unnecessary deaths.

People in CIC were looking prety relieved when Adama came back and retook command :)

I love, love that Gaius and Gaeta have that last conversation. It’s cathartic, it’s beautiful. Gaeta talks about his childhood dreams and in a roundabout way brings up his admiration for Gaius, the scientist. And Gaius, telling him “I know who you are” is so important. Gaeta has his acknowledgement, his remembrance. In these last moments, they are friends, maybe better than before because there’s no more lies or illusions between them. They both know each other through, both the good and the bad. Gaius is probably the only one who sees Gaeta for who he really is. And he’s there with him to the end, at the execution.

Gaeta’s stump was hurting him all this time but before he’s shot it stops. I like this detail so much. Maybe the phantom pain represented his guilty conscience bothering him and in that last moment, he was free from it. Everything became clear, the upside down world was finally put right.

I really regret we didn’t get to see Hoshi saying goodbye to Gaeta :(((

So the mutiny failed, Quorum’s dead and Galactica lost many crewmembers. But they have to go on.