BSG icon and screencaps

[darcydodo]

I made one icon and several screencaps from the webisodes. The icons that I have in my head do not resemble the one that I made, but I can't think where in the first two seasons the scene I'm thinking of is. Anyway, here is the icon; caps and some discussion behind the cut.



The icon that I initially wanted to make was one of a god statue or two just standing there, maybe as an artistic cap, or maybe with some "my fandom has Etruscan bronzes" tagline. But the first time Starbuck pulls her Apollo and Artemis statuettes out of her locker, in "Flesh and Bone," she just holds them, and I can't remember in what episode she actually stands them up on their own, though I'm fairly sure she does. So I figured I'd look in the heavily-religious webisodes to see what other statueness there was, but I couldn't get much more than these, none of which is what I wanted:







I also capped this, because it's so easy to make a libation comment about. But the proportions are wrong for any icon that I'd want to make (and I'm all about 100x100, since they just look better in my opinion).



I'm not sure what I think about the icon that I did make — really I need a better image in my head of what I want before I start fiddling — but I think I like it well enough. At least it will probably grow on me, and then I will add it to my icons, and then I will begin to like it still more.

Oh, and on the subject of Colonial religion, but not on the subject of icons, people have been talking about how Roslin writes Mars rather than Ares in her diary, and I couldn't figure out why I hadn't noticed that to complain, but I just remembered that she actually said Day of Mars, which admittedly is still inconsistent, but on the other hand, my mind just immediately went "Tuesday" and glossed over the inconsistency. Because "Day of Ares" just wouldn't sound right. ;)

At some point I may or may not talk about tonight's episode, but suffice it to say that I liked it.

ETA: There are spoilers for Exodus pt 2 in the comments.

Comments

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

'...I just remembered that she actually said Day of Mars, which admittedly is still inconsistent, but on the other hand, my mind just immediately went "Tuesday" and glossed over the inconsistency. Because "Day of Ares" just wouldn't sound right.'

Well, the Colonial religion seems to be mostly Greek, but with lots of other Mediterranean thrown in--Boomer's daughter is named Hera, but when they send her to be raised by foster parents, she's renamed Isis. (And, of course, those Etruscan bronzes!)

So it's not entirely out of place for them to venerate the Italian god Mars--especially since he's a lot more respectable (and reliable!) than Ares.

[darcydodo]

Well, yes and no. The Etruscan bronzes, for a start, are also not dissimiliar to ninth and eighth century Greek bronzes. But I think that "officially," the Colonial religion is only Greek — if you start throwing in Egyptian and even Italian it fails to be linkable with the Terran Greek religion, which I firmly believe that it's meant to be. Of course, there's the issue of whether the Colonial religion was brought to or from Earth... but that's not as yet satisfactorily arguable, I think.

I want renaming Hera as Isis to be significant, I really do. But now that the Cylons have her again, she'll be Hera again, and the name Isis will be irrelevant. Yes, they have the name Isis, but they also have the name Lee, and that's not at all Greek (or religious). I feel like naming her Isis was one of those things that was significant to the writers and the audience, but not to the characters, whereas naming her Hera was significant to the characters as well.

Also, if it turned out that they did have the Roman pantheon as well as the Greek (do you know how happy I would be if some of the twelve colonies used the Roman names instead?), then one could admit Isis from that, since her cult was perfectly viable in Rome.

Gosh, if they're using Roman days of the week (as they apparently are), I wonder what they call Sunday, since it sure as hell won't be Dies Dominica. ;) Maybe they'll just match it with Monday and say Dies Solis.

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

'But I think that "officially," the Colonial religion is only Greek — if you start throwing in Egyptian and even Italian it fails to be linkable with the Terran Greek religion...'

Well, it fails to be linkable directly, neatly, with Greek religion. But I don't think it was ever meant to be a straight, clean correspondence, a la "Agamemnon's troops get a rocketship and start building robots"--rather, we were supposed to see a web of connections from one to the other. More Greek than anything else, but we've got two definite non-Greek connections established (Mars and Isis).

So I don't think you can say that non-Greek gods mean their religion "fails to be linkable with the Terran Greek religion". They worship Zeus and Hera and Apollo--well, there's a pretty big link to Greek religion. It's just that they also have a lot of other elements which aren't strictly Greek. Like a body of sacred scriptures, for example--that's far more Jewish than Greek. (The scriptures seem to have an authority in a believer's life that is far more like the Jewish attitude towards the Tanakh than like a Greek believer's attitude towards, say, the Iliad or the Theogony.)

One possibility that just occurs to me--it might be that the full-on Lords of Kobol are the Olympian gods, but that there are other figures, below the level of the LoKs, that correspond more closely with non-Greek gods. We know that Isis has some significance to the colonials, but we don't know just how. Perhaps she and Mars are demigods, or venerated heroes, or great ancestors--and they just ended up being worshipped as gods in Egypt and Italy.

For what little it's worth, the Colonies in the original BSG series were much more Egyptian in flavor. The new series conciously decided to shift away from Egypt and toward Greece, but I don't think they meant the shift to be entire.

[darcydodo]

For what little it's worth, the Colonies in the original BSG series were much more Egyptian in flavor.

That's something I'd been curious about, having not seen the original series.

Obviously the correspondence between Greek and Colonial religion isn't exact, or even close to exact, I don't disagree with that. But prophecies are so much at the heart of Greek religion, and that's what the colonial scriptures seem to be, that I really just read those as prophecies. I don't think that the Iliad or Theogony is even on a level to be compared with, e.g., Tanakh — I mean, Homer and Hesiod are poets, not priests. I think it would be easier, in a way, to make a comparison with Orphism (which, yes, is a wacky mystery cult, but on the other hand there are written texts specifying specific cult practices). I'm guessing that what they actually may have had foggily in mind is the Roman Sibylline prophecies. Besides which, of course, it just makes so much more "sense" to a modern-day Judeo-Christian audience (and writers of the show, apparently) if there is a physical handbook of the religion to refer to.

More Greek than anything else, but we've got two definite non-Greek connections established (Mars and Isis).

With Isis, I may agree, especially now that you've said the original series was more Egyptian than anything. In the case of Mars, though, I can't help but wonder whether it was a slip or whether it was intentional. Isis can be ignored so far, since the name's been used but there's been no mention of Isis as having divine status among the Colonies.

I also don't like the complete separation of Mars and Ares that Mars being a demigod (vel sim.) would imply. Yes, the Etruscan gods and the Greek gods are separate (though they didn't call him Mavors! *grin*), but the Romans thought of their pantheon as being the same as the Greek pantheon, and I'm very wary of dissociating the "reality" of gods from how they are perceived by the people who worship them.

Going back to inconsistencies between the religions, though, even having a temple be a place-where-you-go-to-worship is entirely wrong with the Greek religion. But every so often they do something that makes me go "yay!", like having snakes be oracularly significant.

It's obvious, yes, that the religion isn't supposed to completely be the Greek religion. I just hope that they have some fixed idea of what it's supposed to be, because it's nice when they flesh it out, but they usually only seem to flesh it out when it's directly relevant to the plot.