The wonderful Jane Espenson (who many of you are familiar with because you saw her name in the credits for BtVS, if you can't place her name) wrote a very interesting post a little while back about giving characters "wrinkles". Good aspects, bad aspects. Making them complicated.
Part of it bugged me, though, and since I couldn't get it out of my head, I felt if I wrote about it, maybe it would go away.
As one of the examples she used, she cited President Roslyn on BSG being the closest thing to a moral compass that BSG had, but then the writers put her in a situation where she attempted to fix an election.
I just can't see Roslyn as being the moral compass for that show. I think Roslyn has done absolutely detestable things, just like almost every character on that show. Maybe in the beginning she was much more sheltered and naive, but now she's done things that more than rival anything the cylons have done. I've had to step back a bit from the show (I still try to watch it, but I've had to turn it off a few times and I'm not 100% sure what's going on anymore with everything I've missed) but the intensity of some of the storylines, as I've written about here before, just don't have a good effect on my emotional state since I've become a cream puff post-Brigid.
Is Roslyn really supposed to be this wonderful person? Ever since she took office after the massacre and she was the highest-ranking person left, I've thought there was a lot of moral ambiguity there. Am I really that far off base? I think she's one of the more despicable characters on the show.
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4 comments:
Jane Espenson has a blog! Yay! She's terrific.
Galactica gives us lots of choices for Most Despicable: genocide, treason, adultery, murder, kidnapping. Many of the characters have had to make tough choices, and that's why the writing is so good.
The flip side to Espenson's essay, though, is that sometimes your established characters do something that is so unlike them, it leaves the fans screaming "He would never do that!" It's a fine line to tread.
Oooh Jason, that's a really good point. You really have to couch it in a believable circumstance in order to make it fly.
I used to think of Adama as the hawk and Roslin as the dove but the lines have shifted. Following the trial I'd say Lee is now the dove.
Does it bother anyone else that William Adama is "Adama" and Lee Adama is "Lee"? Or Galen Tyrol is "Tyrol" and Cally Tyrol is "Cally"? Just griping here.
Jane's blog is really informative.
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