Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT This Is Not A Love Story
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 9 | Aired on 06.06.2008
Karl stands up and looks at her; she backs off. He doesn't want to say it, the thing. It would embarrass him and ruin her. But he must, so he does. "Athena, my wife, she learned to do that. She never did that when I met her." Twinset won't meet his eyes. She's such a Scorpio it's ridiculous, but also: how do you explain something so big? How do you explain culture?
So Helo's like, "Eff culture, what are you up to?" The same way he would his wife. And Twinset explains, ashamed and afraid. "I got curious about Athena. About her and Hera, and you. So I accessed her... Her memories from her last download." She's sad because this is weird, and even though he is the best among us, this is a legit cultural fuckup, on a level with New Caprica Six from a few weeks ago. I got curious. I fucked it up. I brought something to the table we all kinda agreed not to deal with until this was all settled.
"You have her memories..." Well, sort of. Kind of. More like Cylons aren't humans and honestly if you pretend they are you'll end up back in a hate story so fast. Because the conflict we've been engaged in for the last let's say five years is also a biology issue. When you look at two Eights and can't tell them apart, are you a racist or are you not hardwired to tell them apart? When you look at Six's native language and think it looks crazy, is that a cultural oversight or a natural response to the Other? When you love, you love everything. You give yourself time to figure out the weirdness.
But this is weirdness on such a fundamental level that it's hard, if not impossible, to do so. Try listening to Japanese music after a day full of Top Forty. Adjust your brain. Not impossible. I still don't get most anime I have seen, but I am stuck in my personal place: I don't know if it's because I'm American, gay, or socially adaptive. It could literally be any of those, and no matter what I choose, I'm cutting off a foot or a hand in order to not understand. But is it because I hold individuality so high and the East is robots bowing to each other, or because boobs are boring and straight people are robots, or because I actually prefer to have sex with other people and don't get the mediating factor of giant robot suits or alien tentacles? Nobody will ever know.
So we have two discussions here, and they are diametrically opposed. Either Eights have a right to drink of the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream, or they don't. Or we have tainted their society such that they don't have that right anymore: the rate at which Twelve or Seven or Nine inches toward Infinity is the rate at which that sharing stops being okay. Or it's okay most of the time -- unless it's Sixes or Eights with human allegiances -- but the rest of the model is okay to share with. Or you can only dip into your own model -- with or without those exceptions -- but the other ones are now off-limits... These are new questions that have nothing to do with immortality. They'll still be aliens.
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