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rivendellroseursula asked me to talk about my Brave Little Toaster icon (seen above). Happily, it is an icon I actually have a fair bit to say about. XDOn the face of it, this icon is speaking to two pieces of media: the 2005 Battlestar Galactica reboot, and the the 1987 animated movie The Brave Little Toaster. The connection relies on the simple fact that Cylons in the BSG reboot (and possibly the original series? I have no idea about that) were derisively called "toasters" by the Human colonists they're fighting, and the term is extended from the old Centurion-style Cylons to the Human-form Cylons like the Model Eights, including Sharon Valerii (later Sharon Agathon).
Sharon Agathon is, therefore, literally a very brave little toaster. She's also my favorite character in BSG. I love her courage, her determination to stick with her guns and be herself, and her occasional questions over who 'herself' really is. As a character, she raises a lot of really interesting questions that I had a ton of fun exploring in fanfic, and I identified a lot with her. I use the icon as my default BSG icon, but also whenever I need to be brave about something, or when I'm semi-joking that I need to be brave about something.
We also briefly had a cat whose name, in reference both to BSG and The Brave Little Toaster, was Toaster. She was a small, half-grown gray kitten who The Boy and I found running stray in our apartment's parking lot next to a very busy downtown road. When we found her she was skinny, dirty, and had a badly healed break on her back leg. We caught her, intending to take her straight to the shelter, but she was such a mess and so nervous of people (but so interested in them nonetheless) that we decided to clean her up and take her to the vet first... which turned into trying to find a home for her with friends... which turned into me getting really attached to her even though we weren't supposed to have her. Her whole story with us is documented here, but the short version is that I loved that neurotic little cat desperately, even though we eventually decided we couldn't keep her and had to give her up to the shelter, and in trying to give her a name... I think I suggested Athena at one point, because she used to love watching the space battles in BSG, and shortly after that The Boy said something like "She's a brave little toaster. We can call her Toaster." And that stuck for as long as she stayed with us. So the icon always reminds me of her, too.
Lastly... has anybody actually thought about the movie The Brave Little Toaster since becoming an adult? Because I have, and, honestly, I wonder sometimes if it didn't play some small part in making me the heavily animist person that I am today. Children are always exposed via stories like The Velveteen Rabbit to the idea that toys have feelings and personalities, but this movie goes and says that lamps and blankets and toasters and vacuums do, too? That stuck with me. While my personal religious beliefs are mixed up and muddled and highly unusual, a strong sense of animism is central to them. And I wonder if that movie was the first little push in that direction.
Comment if you would like me to ask you about one (or more) of your icons!
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Date: 2019-01-28 10:05 pm (UTC)...How have I know you this long and yet never known about this?!
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Date: 2019-01-28 10:33 pm (UTC)At this point the bigger question might be if either of us had any serious youthful media obsessions the other didn't share. Like... I was really into this show called DinoSaucers for a while? And also Dino-Riders? (If it had dinosaurs in it, I was probably into it, at that age...)
But yeah, I have no idea how this never came up before! I would've thought it must've at least come up when Toaster-cat was living with us, or in one of our many discussions of my obsession with Sharon Valerii in BSG!
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Date: 2019-01-29 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 10:37 pm (UTC)He's in storage because his wiring is screwed up to the point that I got concerned he was a fire hazard, but he is exactly the lamp from the movie and my dad made sure he came to me when my grandparents got rid of their beach cabin where he used to live.
Not at all gloating. Just letting you know.
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Date: 2019-01-29 02:56 am (UTC)Five-year-old me is so magnificently jealous of you right now.
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Date: 2019-02-01 06:57 am (UTC)Huh!
Anyway, that is an awfully sweet story about your cat Toaster. I hope she had a happy life, all told. <3
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Date: 2019-02-03 05:29 am (UTC)Toaster was a sweet cat, and I think about her a lot. She wanted so badly to be a good kitty and be with people, she was just so uncertain and scared, and had some serious house-training issues from having been stray during a formative time. But she would cuddle with me (and only with me, which was really of special because our boys both like The Boy better for the most part) sometimes if I pretended not to notice her.
With the shelter we gave her to, the worst that could've happened if she couldn't get past her house-training issues and find a home with people would be that she'd be found a place as a barn cat out in the country or something similar, which she'd like. But I hope she got to be a people-cat after all. ♥
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Date: 2019-02-04 11:02 am (UTC)This comment is mostly to squee over your new Georgiou icon, though. HEE. <3
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Date: 2019-02-04 05:26 pm (UTC)