There are also some people like, umm… this friend of mine I know, who had poor bladder control and wet their bed for an embarrassingly long period of time who find women as bad-ass as Kara Thrace far from emasculating. Or so my, umm… friend tells me.

The facts that my wife, when she had cancer (she’s better now) alternated a week of construction with a week of chemotherapy and is easily the toughest person I know, and could kick the crap out of most men she meets were definitely points in her favour rather than against.

I know my own durability and ability to kick the crap out of most people I meet were points in favour as far as she was concerned. Some people like tough, strong people of whatever gender. Or so I’ve been told.

And my friend doesn’t wet the bed anymore. Or so I’ve been told.

No, the guy with the two-inch dick was the one driving the shiny-new Hummer behind me last night.

3) Or you miss the fun of social bullying you enjoyed in adolescence, and resent the fact that Kara might be giving your marks ideas. From vague memories of the first BSG dirk always struck me as the first body thru the bar window in a fight, that is if he didn’t make it to the back door beforehand.

Guess I’m just a sucker for a woman with violent tendencies, Feona from Burn Notice is the hottest woman on TV, love that look of impish glee on her face when she’s blowing shit up.

Weird.  Kara Thrace and Samantha Carter are the two women for which I might go straight.  Sort of the opposite of the scaredy-cats.

Replace “for which” with “for whom.”

Imagine a future where all of our gender stereotypes have been preserved! Now that’s what I call your primo science fiction.

Anachronistic much, Mr. Benedict?

I don’t think the title suggests castration anxieties so much as it was supposed to catchily describe the transformation of his character from male to female. No more cool dude macking on the space bunnies.

Are there going to be spoilers?  Because if there are going to be spoilers, I’m going to stop following this thread and just look wistfully at that nice picture of Starbuck before scrolling down for more Snuggie Battle.

So, on a show about twelve earth-like planets within the same solar system, home to human beings who create a race of advanced robots which “evolve” until they’re basically indistinguishable from their creators except for being far stronger and having the ability to “resurrect” by downloading their consciousness into new bodies,  who then return to commit genocide and chase the human survivors around the universe on ships capable of faster-than-light travel, the part where he cannot suspend his disbelief is when a woman defeats men in the boxing ring.

Methinks his knowledge of science is as small as his penis.

PS. Starbuck 4eva.

Those guys are the same fucksacks that couldn’t handle having me on the hockey team as a kid.

<blockquote.1)You have a penis that’s two inches long and doctors have told you there’s nothing they can do for you.
2) Or you still wet the bed at 35. </blockquote>

Drive-by lecturing on behalf of the poor strawdisabled (incontinent Americans and Americans Living With Micropenii) by a Much Better Liberal than You Are in one, two, three ...

I thought it was wierd from a different angle. 

Much of the point of the toe-to-toe-with-the-guys tough broads ranging from Ripley to Kusanagi to Mrs Smith are there to appeal to guys.  As in,I can handle a girl like that, but nobody else can.  And you’d be hanging with her, the envy and fear of all of your pals.  Kinda like having a pet tiger around.

Of course, much of this type of fiction on text and screen also have these characters because they serve as power fantasy for women and because these characters are often fully realised and people like them, pure and simple.

I think it’s funny that there are now Snuggie google ads here. I’m sure someone’s mentioned this by now in That Thread, but I haven’t read it for a few hours.

Vox Day is still blogging?  Why haven’t we been told about this?  Is there some sudden oversupply of comic relief that explains his absence from Pandagon?

And now he’s blogging about BSG!

I want to make it clear that many people who have micropenises and who wet the bed into adulthood have the dignity not to make fools out of themselves by freaking out about Starbuck.  Remember kids—-the real crime is trying to cover it up by acting like a mega-choad.

Oh!

And Battlestar Galactica is bad science fiction, just like the first one, and pretty much like any show with a science fiction premise.  People targeted by Mass Media are generally not able to appreciate actual science fiction as opposed to various forms of science fantasy, whether that be CSI or the various star trek shows.  Big Bang Theory has more actual science, science thought, and cultural ideas in 30 minutes than BSG does in half a season, at least.

Another big problem, besides the cost in making the show, is that science fiction is ultimately about displaying ways that society can be different.  There are various censoring regimes (of a soft touch, natch) that would be highly resistant to showing alternative societies in positive lights, even if only because it wouldn’t be conducive to advertising.

I try not to give him too much attention.  It only feeds his castration anxieties. Whoever took Vox Day’s penis really owes the world an apology at this point.  He can’t stop freaking out about it.

This is a bit of an obsession for him.  He wrote an article last week in a fantasy fiction magazine about how the warrior-woman archetype ruins the genre.  He complained about Zoe existing in Firefly, the one female warrior in the show not conditioned in a lab to be as such. 

And didn’t Starbuck more or less get thrashed by Apollo anyway?

You probably know this guy calls you Amynda and doesn’t think women should be able vote.  You probably also know that you will be getting a deluge of wank from his commenters over the next few hours.  Hope that doesn’t suck too much.

Empowered women are hot. Things might not go as I had planned, but I’m sure things will be interesting. I’m flexible.

That Dirk Benedict essay will literally never get old for me. I think I could read it every day over breakfast. It’s such a perfect mix of bitterness, insecurity, and woefully misplaced pride.

Yeah, Hari, I know he calls me Amynda.  That he thinks this somehow evens out the bed-wetting gap just makes me sad.

Floyd: You’re awesome. Seriously. You made me inhale my wine.

Shah8: If it helps, you can call it speculative fiction instead of science fiction. But I will admit to being constantly astonished by how awesome Big Bang Theory is.

Everyone: I’m hung up on the commenter who insisted that the show seems very Jewish. Because in all the seasons and all the talk about religion, I have never once thought “Hey, that seems Jewish to me.” Ever.

On top of his obvious terror over women (this isn’t the first time Vox has admitted that he’s only interested in women insofar as he can convince himself he has power over them), it’s worth remembering just who Vox is, and how little credibility he has when it comes to literary critique.

I wonder how often Vox wakes up screaming with visions of being beaten senseless by Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the girl who picked on him in fourth grade.

The same dimwits who used Murphy Brown to make a sociological point?

Oh wait…

I think shah8 sorta mentioned this, but this is wierd because often guys get attracted to the hot but tough women in sci-fi or fantasy shows. They’re often there precisely for the men. Yet, this Vox Day guy feels they are a threat. Weird.

There’s something really amazing about men who openly admit that the fictional character of Kara Thrace provokes castration anxieties in them.  Saying this automatically tells anyone with common sense that either:

1)You have a penis that’s two inches long and doctors have told you there’s nothing they can do for you.
2) Or you still wet the bed at 35.

3) You are Calum Keith Rennie.

What was it Wash said?

“Have you ever been with a warrior-woman?”

He wrote an article last week in a fantasy fiction magazine about how the warrior-woman archetype ruins the genre.

Yeah, Britomart just sucked the life out of the Fairye Queene, and all those damn “girls-disguised-as-boys” make most of Shakespeare’s comedies unwatchable. And don’t even get me started about Eowyn!

Fucking archetypes. Always thinking they have some kind of deep-seated psychological truth to teach us. Next, they’ll be turning in deities right and left.

Kind of off topic—more of a digression maybe:
There’s an old book called “The Best Book of Fantasy Roleplaying”, wherein a group of self-important college dudes lecture the hoi polloi on how fantasy role-playing games “suck” and how lucky we are that they are here to fix all that for us. Among the complex maze of stupid rules, the rules on character gender are Teh BEST!

First, female characters have three occupations available to them: housewife, nun, and prostitute. Any female character attempting to do anything else would be subject to beatings, arrest or worse. Second, female characters took minuses across the board, on all character statistics, skill checks, and combat rolls. Third, the book essentially forbid (or at least strongly discouraged) cross-gender characters, so you know, if you were a girl, you had to play a housewife, a nun, or a prostitute. (You know, cause it’s fantasy roleplaying, right?)

Everyone that I knew found this gaming system ridiculous and the whole tone of the book pompous and insulting. I don’t know know any gamers who actually played the system other than one or two test runs to see if it really was as bad as it seemed (no—it was worse).

Now I’m starting to wonder if this VoxDay person plays this game…it would explain a lot.

That Dirk Benedict essay will literally never get old for me. I think I could read it every day over breakfast. It’s such a perfect mix of bitterness, insecurity, and woefully misplaced pride.

Yes.  This is something that, though it comes up constantly whenever a new season of Battlestar is on, never ceases to amuse me.  Benedict just can’t get over the fact that he got shown up by a woman.  It’s bizarre that he takes his Starbuck so seriously.  The original series really wasn’t trying to be anything more than an easy way to cash in on the wake of Star Wars.  He wore a damn cape!

There are plenty of people who don’t like BSG reboot, but I only ever hear people express a preference for the original series because the new one violates some tenet of conservative orthodoxy.  The women aren’t cooking anything!  I can’t follow it if there isn’t a clear black/white view of morality!  Vox Day says he hasn’t even watched the series, but just the thought of a tough, unapologetically sexual woman makes his peepee hurt.

Mr. Benedict is going to be really upset when he finds out that the re-imagined “A-Team” features a lesbian Latina as Face.

Of course, the macho-guy-preferred warrior woman needs a man to feel complete, so that’s still OK for the needs-a-hot-car types. But it’s my impression that Thrace has sorta gone beyond that.

“Kusanagi “

Motoko Kusanagi appeals to a lot of guys for being a woman who isn’t afraid to wear a leotard or other garments that would get feminists up in arms, is bisexual often with several women at once, and appears from that and other comments to enjoy sex. The kickassness is just icing on the cake.

“Objectifying” Major Kusanagi is an interesting philosophical quandary in of itself.

I don’t believe we’ll ever see a demure female protagonist spring from the pen of Shirow Masamune.

“First, female characters have three occupations available to them: housewife, nun, and prostitute. Any female character attempting to do anything else would be subject to beatings, arrest or worse.”

Because being a mage or a magical cleric was so common for dudes in the middle ages.  Most male “fighters” were peasant conscripts given a pointy stick and a modicum of training.  For every successful “rogue” there were dozens of people (both male and female) that had their hands cut off for petty theft.

Whether your game world is patriarchal or not, player-characters are by definition exceptional.  They wouldn’t be heroes if they were bound by societal norms.

First, female characters have three occupations available to them: housewife, nun, and prostitute.

And even one of those isn’t necessarily subservient...

Av0gadro: I was weirded out by that Jewish comment too.  The 12 tribes thing had occurred to me, and it’s probably intentional, but they crib from a lot of other mythologies too.  My first reaction to that guy’s comment was, wow, if Judaism is all about strong women, sex and flesh, democracy, and miscegenation, maybe I should convert.  (Although I could do without the wimpy men.)  My second reaction was, since when is revenge “not Christian”?  Ah, the idiots, they keep one amused.

And what is up with the next guy’s comment about Deadwood?  No such thing ever happened in that show.  I suspect it’s a private fantasy of his.

Dorothy:

If you get a chance, look up the Jason Sartin review of a game called “FATAL”, which sounds very much like what you wrote about. Not only viciously misogynist, but racist and obsessed with bathroom and sex humor. Along with some horrifyingly bad mechanics that could theoretically allow you to perform a hysterectomy on your opponent without leaving a mark. From a head shot. On a male.

In conclusion, The Famous Teddy B is almost as big a dirtbag as his perpetual tax cheat dad, and is the literal embodiment of the (allegedly) straw man College Republican. I’ve met people like him—the lucky ones become Libertarians. The scary part is that if you were to meet them one on one, they’re usually seemingly nice people—it’s only when they get blogs and/or op-eds in the college right rag that you find out what douchetards they really are.

Wow. that link. Those guys are D-U-M-B.

Wow.  When I skimmed this post I first thought that Amanda was having an exceptionally bad day. Then I saw that she had linked to V.D. and all became clear. He’s definitely a case, all right. The scariest thing in the world for him is a woman who has mastered her own destiny.

(I find it hilarious that I got a Google ad “Kids afraid of the dark” at the bottom of the post.

Amanda, you’re talking about a misogynist blogger who took a picture of himself waving a big flaming sword and you’re surprised that he’s anxious about his masculinity?

Vox Day should hang it up.  His hair is not dishonest, but rather too honest: it honestly says, with clarity and intent, “I am such a weeny, weeny choad.”

Didn’t they say that about Hillary Clinton?

So, on a show about twelve earth-like planets within the same solar system….

Um, Floyd, no one ever said the 12 Colonies were all in one star system. If they were, they’d hardly need Jump drives.

And, given that habitability of a planet is a function of each planet’s distance from its star, the 12 planets would all have to be pretty much in the same orbit. The gravitational instability of such a setup would require the planets to all have some kind of propulsion system to correct for the perturbations that would otherwise send them into new, divergent orbits that would render most if not all of them uninhabitable, assuming none of them simply collided with each other. It would scream “this system was terraformed by aliens/ancient ancestors with incredibly advanced technology.”

There are a lot of things that do require industrial-grade suspension of disbelief in this series, but not that.

PS. Starbuck 4eva.
Floyd on 03/01 at 05:49 PM

Well, sure!

Well, some of the colonies are apparently on moons now.

Or were.

I have a hard time with people who look up Dirk Benedict’s views on BSG and complain about the new version being clueless about the Mormon foundations of the original.  If you are all gung-ho aboutthe original, maybe you should know what you’re talking about first.

It’s not JEWISH.  It’s Mormon.  Thirteenth tribe?  Kobol/Kolob?

Because in all the seasons and all the talk about religion, I have never once thought “Hey, that seems Jewish to me.” Ever.
Av0gadro on 03/01 at 07:03 PM

I never had that thought either. Pagan, yes. Islamic, sometimes, particularly when the Cylons or Baltar are expounding about monotheism. Mainly, I’m more struck by how similar Colonial society is to American/British Commonwealth type society despite these exotic elements.

Of course once someone pointed out that Larson’s original BSG was a thinly-disguised vehicle for Mormon proselytizing, a lot of stuff snapped into focus. (Including the Americanness—what religion is more American than the Latter-Day Saints?)

I guess that’s where he might get the “Jewish” thing since the LDS do recycle a lot of Old Testament stuff—“12 Tribes,” in fact 12 of a lot of things.

But who can guess at the mind of a Vox Day? Certainly not someone like me who refuses to look at his nonsense.

Well, Kara Thrace turns me on, but her hard-drinking ways would be a problem for me.  But then, she has some pretty good reasons for drinking.

“Um, Floyd, no one ever said the 12 Colonies were all in one star system. If they were, they’d hardly need Jump drives. “

Considering how many ships they had to leave behind jump drives didn’t seem that all to common with the exceptions being military ships, commerical vessels that did mining and some passenger liners. They may have been just in two or three star systems. A gas giant could have moons that could support life and there could be several of these moons in one solar system.

As for colonies you can have artifical enviroments built on moons or asteroids or on a planet. There are designs for artifical environments that outside their startup cost would house millions each and be self sufficent. Mars could actually be terraformed and be an inhabitle planet that is two right off the bat. There are even theortical ways we could transform Venus into a planet that could support Earth life. Three Earths right in the same Solar System.

Doesn’t have to be same orbit if certain atmospheric conditions or variables are in place.

I didn’t say I was surprised, Ginger.  :D

Doesn’t have to be same orbit if certain atmospheric conditions or variables are in place.

And don’t forget that the size of the habitable zone is a function of the size and heat of the anchoring star. A blue supergiant would have a habitable zone several orbits deep. And then, of course, there are systems with multiple stars.

I guess that’s where he might get the “Jewish” thing since the LDS do recycle a lot of Old Testament stuff—“12 Tribes,” in fact 12 of a lot of things.

Hell the New Testament recycles the Old.  I think it is very disingenuous for someone to claim that the the 12 tribes in BSG represent Judaism and then conveniently forget the 12 disciples of Jesus.

The truth is the number twelve is very significant to many religions, current and past, and it is probably due to the twelve zodiac constellations and signs.  Which I think BSG is quite obvious in referring to through the names of the twelve tribes.  Caprica = Capricorn etc. etc.

“The truth is the number twelve is very significant to many religions, current and past, and it is probably due to the twelve zodiac constellations and signs.  “

Uh, I think you have a causation/correlation problem there. 12 is a special number symbolically because it has lots of factors, more than any smaller number, which makes it good for counting things (12 hours in a Roman watch, 12 inches in a foot etc) and especially because there are just over 12 lunar months in a year.  Not all zodiacs historically had 12 signs.

I think it is very disingenuous for someone to claim that the the 12 tribes in BSG represent Judaism and then conveniently forget the 12 disciples of Jesus.

Also 12 minor prophets in the OT, the LDS’s Quorum of 12, the 12 Imams and, of course, the 12 Olympian deities, many of whom are actually mentioned in BSG.

But Ginger’s right, it’s origin as an important number is in the synodic month and Sumerian time-keeping.

The Kara Thrace character is interesting in that at first, she comes really close to being the show Mary Sue in that she can seemingly do everything a lot better than you, whether you are male or female. In later seasons, they actually make her one of the more realistic characters on the show, reminding me a lot of people I know who have exceptional skills in that she’s horribly self-destructive and has a host of other personal problems that are directly responsible for who she is.

“Uh, I think you have a causation/correlation problem there. 12 is a special number symbolically because it has lots of factors, more than any smaller number, which makes it good for counting things (12 hours in a Roman watch, 12 inches in a foot etc) and especially because there are just over 12 lunar months in a year.  Not all zodiacs historically had 12 signs.”

I certainly did not say that all zodiacs have had twelve signs. 

I stated that many religions pick up on twelve in the zodiac because many religions pick up on twelve in the zodiac.  If you travel your way back through the history of religions you can see where this religion lifted from that one and so on and so forth.  You only have to get back as far as Greek and Egyptian Mythologies to see how strongly the worship of the sun and stars played into the daily lives of people and how it made it’s way into both their deities and their time keeping, including the twelve constellations.  Of course it’s also these mythologies that the Judeo-Christian tradition has lifted about 90% of their material from.  So yes the fascination with the number twelve in Judaism and Christianity and the LDS and many other religions does go back to the twelve zodiac because they have lifted from other religious traditions that were based on the zodiac of twelve.

Now as for why that number is of such high interest; why divide the sky into twelve instead of ten for instance? I don’t claim to know. You could be right about the factors and it may just be psychologically satisfying or perhaps it was the favourite number of the priest on duty the day.  That said, the twelve of the clock and the lunar months is directly related to the twelve constellations.  As for twelve inches in a foot, well the imperial system is just a mess.