BSG Vid: Dolled-up in Straps (Baltar/HeadSix)

[beccatoria]

I'm not entirely sure whether this one counts as a 'shipper vid... o_O

Title: Dolled-up in Straps
Video: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Audio: All dolled-up in straps // The National
Summary: Gaius Baltar is a love letter to no one. (Baltar/HeadSix, Sixes)
Editor's Notes: As usual, my thanks to my beta cyborganize.

Direct download available here. RightClickSaveAs. 50 megs approx.

Password: vidses

Watch on Vimeo

Cross-posted to galactica_vids and vidding

Other vids available here

(In case you were wondering, yes, this does mark the beginning of my vidding obsession with The National; expect another vid and a vidlet hopefully before 4.5 starts. You know; it'll be nice to have my life back, BSG. :/ Maybe one day I'll even learn to vid things that aren't you...)

Comments

[daybreak777.livejournal.com]

Yay! Head!Six. I missed her. And I like the line, "All Dolled Up in Straps" for a vid with her in it. She is that and much more than that. But she is that too. :-)

The vid was mostly about her for me. And just me watching the evolution of her and Baltar's relationship. It's still hard for me to believe that was Caprica in the mini and in some ways it wasn't. I liked Head!Six. Whatever she was, she made Baltar answer the hard questions, and I wish the other Cylons were more like her. Heh. Maybe Cavil is.

I love the glowy thing you are doing on fades! Is that a WMM add-on? I'm so curious about it! Hee, I haven't vidded in months. But that doesn't mean I don't have vid embryos. They are frozen at the moment, but soon!

I'm sure others will say more elaborate things, other than just "Yay! Head!Six." But I really do miss her. And, I like that you put Raven-haired!Six in there too. Baltar and death and these Sixes. Not really articulate about it at the moment, but there is something there.

Thanks for sharing it!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Yes, the glowy thing is a WMM add-on, not any clever shenanigans on my part. ;)

It's WMM Vista only, but if you run Vista, you can get it (and many others) here:

http://movies.blainesville.com/search/label/custom

I miss Head!Six too! Or rather, I miss her before Caprica came along (not that I regret that; I like Caprica more). I miss her when she was a person. After that she was less 'real' somehow because we, and the writers, and Baltar knew, whoever she was, she wasn't the woman he was with on Caprica.

It's interesting that you say this vid is all about her for you. For me, it's definitely a Baltar vid, but I kind of felt like the only way I could really get at Baltar was through HeadSix, so yes; this vid hinges on her. I suppose the vid is all about how Baltar is all about her.

I think what fascinates me about Caprica and HeadSix is the ways in which I can see their common origin. HeadSix took Six's anger, her absolute certainty and conviction and then magnified it through Baltar's subconscious. Caprica lost those things because of her experiences after her first death. It's amazing how different that makes them.

Anyway, thank you so much for your feedback! I'm really glad you enjoyed it and hooray for Raven!Haired Six!

[daybreak777.livejournal.com]

No, not Vista!!! I refuse to put Vista on my computer until I'm forced to. And I know it seems to cause bitmapping in others' vids in WMM which seems like a nightmare. Farewell, glowy thing. :-( I had such plans for the glows too.

HeadSix took Six's anger, her absolute certainty and conviction and then magnified it through Baltar's subconscious. Caprica lost those things because of her experiences after her first death. It's amazing how different that makes them.
I miss Head!Six's righteous anger. Gina had a bit of it but only wanted to use it to kill or to die. And Natalie was so very righteous but her anger was . . . tempered. She had that certainty,though. Head!Six was about unapologetic rage.

I don't know where Caprica is now in her anger or what is going on with her and Tigh.

What I see in the vid too is the Six's pain. They all have it running through them and it makes them sympathetic. Even Head!Six, sometimes Baltar hurt her so. And he doesn't seem to realize that. It's all very fascinating to watch in your vid.

You're very welcome. I'm going to have to search for something similar to the glowy thing in Windows XP. Hmm . . .

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

I've never had a lot of trouble with Vista, but I know too many bad stories to believe that's an accurate assessment for most people. I mean, I do have trouble with it, just not more than I have with all the rest of windows...

Then again, I'm had Vista since a few months after it came out so maybe I just don't notice by now. I'm not so familiar with custom effects available for XP for that reason, but google it and I'm sure you'll find loads; I'd be surprised if you didn't find some sort of glowy thing!

Well, we've seen so little of Caprica this season *shakes fist*

But remember when she decked Tigh in the S3 finale after he decked her for bringing up Ellen? That was frakking awesome right there.

And she certainly has her righteousness. Sort of. I mean, the whole beating the shit out of Tigh in some jubilant state of religious ecstacy was hella creepy/awesome...

And he doesn't seem to realize that.

Totally. I think that's a good chunk of what I was trying to say in the vid. Gaius can't cope with reality; can't understand anything that's more than half a centimeter from himself except in terms of how it relates to himself.

The vid's about how he chooses HeadSix over the inadequate realworld Sixes, but truthfully, HeadSix is, well, him, or at least a woman manufactured solely for him which is equally icky. So the vid is about how Baltar doesn't really love or perhaps even care about anyone except himself?

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the rest of your very smart talk about this vid to dwell on technical stuff: Namely, I'm bookmarking that custom site because you know I was like "Damn Obi-Wan, how you do that glowy thing?" and to say that I have Vista and I don't think it's as problematic as people make it out to be. Granted I just got my version not long ago, so maybe they worked out the kinks, but as far as WMM goes...let's see I just finished my 7th vid and after #3 I've had (knocks on wood) no issues with crashing or pixellation or anything! I think it's down to a new codec package I downloaded at that time, but not sure. Also possibly I got smarter about the way I was pulling in episodes/clips.

[daybreak777.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind my asking, how do you pull the eps in differently?

I'm still avoiding dealing with codecs. But it's getting annoying. I'm not even vidding but codecs are posing a problem with just watching some avis now.

:-( Now Windows Media Player wants to hate me! I just want to watch vids! DIVX player works. But still it's all weird to me.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Re: pulling the eps...I meant that I've been more careful about keeping my collection folder pretty clean and excising the "extra" bits of episodes and clips that I really am not using.

[millari.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't know that I've ever heard a more perfect summary of the Head!Six/Caprica Six connection. Nor have I seen a vid that more precisely captures what fascinates me about the Head!Six/Baltar relationship. You caught exactly the moments in that brig scene from "Six Degrees" where he is most afraid and psychologically broken, much like "deprogammers" do to people taken away from cults.

In that episode, Head!Six's mission seems to have been to break Baltar down psychologically until he was so desperate that he lost all his arrogance, all his confidence, his atheism, all his defense mechanisms that had been helping him not think about the magnitude of what he'd unleashed in the Miniseries. As soon as he truly gave up all his coping mechanisms in that cell, Head!Six started to build his identity back up in her own mold and has been slowly doing so along the way, with many detours and bumps along the way, but her ultimately objective (whatever that is exactly) is slowly being realized. Your vid really understands all that.

I really like how you show that the first time all these elements really came together in the show is in that brig scene, and how you use clips from much later episodes in conjunction with that brig scene to really show the essence of Baltar's psychological and spiritual journey, filtered through his obsession with the Six model in all their forms.

In other words, great job. :)

[nicole-anell.livejournal.com]

Jumping in here just to say aaaaah thank you for putting the brig scene meta into words. It's like you can pinpoint the exact minute where the Stockholm Syndrome kicked in.

[millari.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks. Yeah, that for me is Stockholm Syndrome moment numero uno in the Head!Six/Gaius dynamic. Number Two is the one where she makes him say that he loves her while under torture. Number Three is the imaginary baby in the Opera House, and number Four....

It just goes on and on, doesn't it? And I didn't even get to the one in Season 2 where she more or less pets him encouragingly while he compares watching the Galacticans to watching fish swimming desperately, almost pointlessly upstream.

[nicole-anell.livejournal.com]

the imaginary baby in the Opera House
Gah, the way his face lights UP.

He says "I love you" under torture-sex and he *means* it, is what gets me. He means it.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I'm glad that the HeadSix/CapricaSix connection makes sense to someone other than me, and that you think I managed to capture the Gaius/HeadSix relationship in the vid. Like nicole_anell, I feel like you really capture what was going on in that scene. It's also so beautifully filmed; I was really glad to be able to use so much of it. It's the quintessential, "Love, where have you been?" moment. So desperate and unhealthy.

Thanks again for the feedback!