The Time of Your Life arc begins.
Part one. We open with Buffy holding her scythe, commenting on it being a bad day. "Started out bad, stayed that way." Been there. Next panel shows her fighting with Fray?!? over the streets of Fray's future New York. Of course, that there would be a crossover was leaked way ahead of time, but still awesome reveal.
I have to say I have read Fray and loved it, but I haven't done so recently, so I'm not fluent in the characters and backstory at the moment. I will soldier on though.
As they continue falling and fighting, which seems to be a staple of comic book BTVS, Buffy wonders where she is and what's up with Dawn, pretty much just as a funny non sequitur brain thing to lead to the next scene.
Cut to Dawnie acting like she's got major cramps, screaming and grabbing her midsection. Well, that's my ex--never mind. Then we move past that into the castle, where Buffy, Willow and Xander eat Scottish Chinese takeout and discuss an upcoming trip to New York. Willow insists that the message she got in the battle with Kumiko last issue, the one implanted by Saga Vasuki, the snake lady, means they have to go there. I guess it's to find out "what's to come" for Willow, but she says it's to find the scythe. Hunh? I guess it was a big part of her fiery vision. Buffy's as confused as I am because they just successfully recovered the scythe, so not so much needing to find it. Willow insists it's important and should be dealt with in the downtime between battles. And the scythe's importance as more than just a weapon or a symbol, as a physical part of the spell, being what it is, she's no doubt right to be concerned.
The last arc was all about vampires trying to undo the slayers by using the scythe that fulfilled their potential to regress them back, so we continue to see it as crucial to this world they've created. Having a vision of a future world with the scythe in it, a world that we know from Fray does not include a myriad of slayers, is probably a big foreshadowing hint to us that this situation will not last, but I didn't get that at the time. Fray is pretty far in the future, so we don't know when the line became defunct. Anyway, the scythe is hugely important, but I'm still not sure that's Willow's real motivation to head to New York.
Renee's death comes up with all the talk of the last battle, and Xander insists that he's fine, he's dealing. He's certainly had the practice. Leah, who I keep mixing up with Rowena (not really doing much better at keeping the slayers straight than I did the potentials the first time through) interrupts them with Dawn drama, and they rush to the rescue to find that she's no longer a giant. Yay! Now, she's a centaur. Yay! Though she claims neigh.
Twilight interlude to remind us he's out there. He's hanging with Warren and Amy, who have mad scienced something for him. I could believe he was playing them for time, just trying to focus their attention under his guidance instead of leaving them out there as random free agents, although it still doesn't seem like his style. We'll get there. Anyway, they've created a missile that's been magified. The worst parts of science and magic entwined, just like Warren and Amy. Ew, the visual.
Back to Willow and Buffy taking leave of Xander, first in a helicopter, then a private jet. Willow alludes again to Buffy's Thomas Crown thing but they don't let it get heavy. Now Willow's talking about a mystical event that they're heading to. I guess she got more out of her dream vision than we were shown. Buffy, who had been on the phone with an unnamed someone just before they got in the chopper, says she's got a meeting to go to before the main event at midnight.
When they land in New York, they're met by Kennedy. She's coordinated with the Manhattan squad who will be handling security while Kennedy's people head the op. What op? Whatever that means. Buffy is acting all giddy to be in New York, and I don't know if it's for real and this seems like a nice vakay, or if she's overcompensating to avoid fallout from/dealing with the issues between herself and Willow. Kennedy comments that the local slayers are not unexcited about meeting "the great and terrible --" and I think we assume Buffy, the Slayer, is the end of that, but later it seems like Willow is the big draw, so IDK.
Violet is in charge of Manhattan. Is that Vi?? I do believe it is. Yay! Anyway, she gives a briefing on the local situation, and it seems that New York is seething with monsters. The more slayers, the more demons to fight? Part of the balancing?
We find out that Willow sent a mystical signature to the NY Wiccan group (could be a whole story on how the slayers managed to ally with so many Wiccans who are presumably less globally organized), and they've found a hot spot.
Willow gives a lecture on temporal anomalies. Okay, now it's a temporal anomaly I guess. I appreciate new ways of doing exposition, but don't know if this works for me. But at any rate, we're setting up Buffy's visit to Fray's time through a segue from Saga Vasuki sending Willow a message about the scythe/Willow's future through a goth witch allied with mystically talented vampires defeated by Dracula to where we're at now, and I suppose that's a tough path to draw.
So the time thing is temporary and fixed in space, and we get Willow being a teacher again, which is cool. It's here that the slayers are all excited to see a celebrity, and Buffy's just sitting in the back with Kennedy, so I think "great and terrible" refers to Willow rather than Buffy, especially since this will end up being her arc more than it is Buffy's.
Oh, and Kennedy tells Buffy to keep her experimental lesbo hands off of Willow.
(Slight side note. Sometimes I wonder if Willow still being with Kennedy and Dawn having an arc about boy troubles in the comics isn't Joss directly telling the vocal haters of both characters/story lines to suck it.)
And speaking of Dawn, she's hanging out with Xander. Their expectation now is that she will go through one more transformation before it's over. Xander tells her she looks awesome. And come on, who didn't want to be a centaur once? Only me then? Okay. But this is another Xander/Dawn moment leading to their eventual romance that's very natural. I liked their scenes together on TV and also like them in the comics.
Of course the moment is ruined when Xander tells her to enjoy this and not be whiny about it, and she storms off. The punniness of the closeness of whiny to whinny is left unstated but not unappreciated.
Xander heads back to the castle just in time to see the incoming missile wreathed with green witchfire. Boom!
Back in New York at the site where the temporal anomaly will be happening (hope they have some amber handy) we see that Kennedy doesn't know about Saga Vasuki, or at least about her being Willow's information source. Buffy shows up late in a hot dress (who was she meeting? do we find out? We must, but I don't remember right now.) And she pulls out the scythe and fmmit! A groky demon appears in her place; much like in Get it Done when she visits the shadow men, a tradeoff happens. And Buffy, after a fair bit of pain, pops out on a rooftop in future New York and is subjected to Frayspeak, which she doesn't understand.
Fray thinks she's just been tricked by the groky demon, it taking on the form of Buffy, who she knows from her history lessons that I barely remember from that comic. She's got her scythe, which is the same as the scythe Buffy has but from a later time, and now the Fringe parallel is even more apt because that's confusing. Anyway, the end.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Buffy needing darkness, a rambling (as usual) musing
Listening to yet another "was Riley good for Buffy" conversation, this time on Hellmouth Podcast for A New Man, I revisited an old pet peeve of mine. The following is just my rambling way of working through my thoughts on it.
I've always had a little trouble with the idea that Buffy rejected Riley because he was a good guy or boring or not dark enough. To me, the quality that Buffy needs from a partner isn't darkness, and I think it does the character a disservice to phrase it that way. It's not about darkness or evil. That's not what drew her to Angel. I mean sure, he was a mysterious force at the start, cryptic guy, but I never got the sense Buffy thought of him as dark. Just mysterious, which was a draw of course. But she fell in like with him before he was unveiled as a vampire, and then she loved him despite herself. But not because he was evil. If he were evil, she would have staked him, not offered up her neck. And she wasn't drawn to Angelus.
To me, what is similar about Buffy's more intensely passionate relationships isn't just that they were vampires, therefore somewhat evil, dark and dangerous. It's that they're from her world. They operate within it in a way closest to how Buffy operates, which is different from Riley or even Xander, and different from how the other vampires and demons deal with the world.
It's not about evil, it's not about the bad boy in any direct sense. Self-proclaimed nice guys need not feel threatened or depressed that Riley didn't get the girl, nor do they have to find ways to make it her fault that the relationship failed. Like many things in BTVS, it's a metaphor, much like the bad boy in cinema is a symbol more than a reality. So sometimes it is saying some women want the bad boy, the man who will treat them like shit, just as some men seem to want a cruel woman. But often the bad boy is symbolic of difference, of rebellion, or of the feminine. I'm thinking James Dean in Rebel. Bad on the surface, sensitive within. Women who go for that aren't looking to be treated badly or roughly, they're identifying with someone who isn't Captain America or Tim Allen, who isn't a soc or a jock, someone more in tune with traditional feminine qualities like empathy, intuition, sensitivity and openness to the world, not someone more traditionally male who seeks to dominate it through physical strength and force of will. These bad boys also usually have a more nuanced understanding of what the world is like, that it's not made for them, and an understanding of oppression. This is not the symbolic perfect white male ideal who's gone through life without realizing how many breaks he's had, how relatively easy it's been for him, who has never really had to come up against significant barriers so never had to question the world view he was taught. That perfect man works for some women, perhaps because they too have had the privilege not had to question what they've been taught about the world, perhaps because they seek the status that goes with it. But some of us are operating within a different paradigm.
I've gotten far afield from where I wanted to go (so new), but not too far, because now I'm going to talk about Riley. Riley was that guy, the one who continued to view the world pretty simply as a black and white, orderly place, a world where he could make a difference, could impose order when it went awry, a world where he had a pretty high status and was in control. He wasn't arrogant or cruel or particularly misogynistic or chauvinistic, he was a genuine nice guy, but simple. Buffy woke him up to some reality, opened his eyes to a grayer world, and he got pushed off his simple track and began questioning what he had been taught. He even went so far as to declare himself an anarchist, which he never was and never will be. But as much as he learned from Buffy and the Scoobies, he never really developed a more complex world view. The Initiative turned out to be evil, but their overall perspective and strategies were still the way to do things. He still saw the world simply. He lived a very goal-oriented life, planning out his desired future, acting to make his desires come true. Not a bad way to live, nothing wrong with it if it works for you. But that's not Buffy's world anymore, not since she became the Slayer. It can't be.
((Finding out you're the Slayer at puberty coincides with becoming a sexually mature woman for more reasons than one. Becoming the Slayer is a metaphor for becoming a woman, realizing that there's something different about you that makes you not completely human in the eyes of the patriarchal lenses that seem to abide. Having that realization is pretty intense, and definitely the end of childhood. ))
The world Buffy has to navigate is full of incredibly complex situations, not at all clear choices, and obstacles that appear without warning and have to be dealt with regardless. She's had to develop a very nuanced and complex case-by-case based strategy for dealing with her daily life that Riley never had to face. But Angel and Spike to some degree have. They live in the world of demons and myth as Buffy does. They too used to be fully human, living their own unexamined lives, when they were chosen to walk in a far larger, wilder realm. Since they managed to hold on to or reclaim their humanity in tandem with the beast within, they've had to negotiate ways of surviving in that more complicated world. I guess, simply put: They get it; Riley doesn't.
Of course, the wider world, the world full of danger and magic and very complex moral dilemmas doesn't have as much to do with order as it does with chaos and random uncertainty. And anyone who lives in that world develops very different coping mechanisms and strategies than someone living in (or thinking they live in) a world of order. When order is the norm, it's hard enough to deal with the occasional bits of chaos that creep in, but if you survive those, you can find a way to ignore them or to do as Riley did and pick your times to fight them and your times to pull back and regroup. Riley doesn't live in the chaos, he just visits there on occasion and works to keep that world away from his own. Buffy has to live in the chaos, where order is the unusual mode of being. She can't just drop in and out as needed because of who she is. Being the Slayer isn't part of her life she can turn off after 5:00, it affects every aspect of her existence, even when she tries to step away from it.
Buffy doesn't need darkness or evil, she doesn't normally want to be treated badly, even if she did go through a depression that led her to use Spike to punish herself for a while. She needs someone as a partner who acknowledges the same reality, lives in the same world and has developed similar strategies to deal with it.
Maybe that does manifest as darkness in the eye of the beholder, but darkness as a descriptor is too vague and misleading. It's about the feminine really. The long-standing dichotomy we use to discuss these things is male being intellect, power, order, control, light, science; female being emotion, compliance, chaos, the wild, dark, magic. Riley and Buffy were in a sense just as opposed and unlikely lovers as any of her beaus. He's the Initiative; she's the Slayer. They each learn from one another a great deal, and try walking in each other's worlds, but it ultimately doesn't make them more alike because they live in those separate worlds, Buffy out of necessity, Riley maybe out of choice or maybe because he just can't navigate the other and be happy. (The fun part is that I see Buffy as yang to Riley's yin in season 5 at least, which casts a really interesting dissonance on top of the more traditional male/female dichotomy they seem to symbolize. I <3 Joss Whedon.)
Anyway, Buffy lives in the wild places, yes, in the dark. When Riley tries to join her there, he picks that almost perfectly wrong way to do it, focusing on the exterior details of her vampire bites versus the more profound interior differences between the two of them in the ways they live in the world. He didn't get it, it didn't work for him, so he set a new goal, took off, and found something that did work for him, that kept him in his world, doing the work he was fulfilled doing. Buffy didn't try to cross into Riley's world in season 5. She toyed with it in season 4, found it wasn't right for her, and tried to bring Riley back home with her instead. So she didn't meet him halfway, and she owns that. But I think she blames herself too much for not giving him what he needed when to do so would have gotten her killed or changed her into a different person. As a slayer, she can't escape the chaos.
Buffy and Angel almost worked not because he was dark and could be evil. First, they had the Romeo and Juliet first love, star-crossed thing, which was passionate and intense, but their relationship survived the Angelus resurgence because of the maturity they both gained dealing with the adult ramifications of that turn and the choices they both had to make to come out of that alive and whole. The childish first love became Buffy's first adult relationship. It was a dive into the wild, the chaos, that they survived, first separately and then together. They share a history and understanding gained on that journey that can't be replicated. Angel gets it.
Buffy and Spike almost worked not just because he was evil, although that played a part in the beginning of their physical relationship. Spike thrived in the wild, and he had insights into what it was to be the Slayer and what it was to walk in the dark. He knew what it was to die and come back. And Buffy was in a place where she couldn't connect with anyone else. She was self-destructive and Spike stayed by her side through it. But season 6 Spike didn't fully get it either. He was on the opposite end of Riley then, trying to take Buffy to a place of pure chaos, away from even the bits of order the Slayer attempts to coax out of the wild. But season 7 Spike with his full humanity restored finally got it, and eventually understood that Buffy had grown past her own self-hatred, and they got past the crazy to a place where they could fully connect. They too traveled a journey together that no one else fully shared or understood. Spike gets it.
And maybe it's as simple as the fact that Riley and Buffy were together at a less tumultuous emotional time. The history he shares with Buffy doesn't hold as much weight, isn't singular enough to bind them together in a shared understanding. Riley never navigated the wild with Buffy in any meaningful and long-lasting way. Maybe there is some truth to the idea that those romantic dramas will ultimately result in a more intense bond. Most people don't need that, but most people don't live in the wild. That doesn't make Buffy a drama queen, just someone living her perforce intense, brutal existence.
Back to the metaphor, not that we left it. Joss created what I would argue is the greatest female hero ever for that time (or now in my mind). In defining her world, her philosophy, her relations to that world, he managed to combine the chaos of the wild feminine with a hero who takes action. Who gradually finds ways to traverse the chaos and mingle in some order without trying to bend the world to a masculine will or blow it up if it won't comply. She has the most intense connections to the lovers in her life that can do the same, and who can treat her as an equal partner in the endeavor. Buffy's so-called need for darkness is actually her need for a partner who can see the complexity of her circumstances, will attempt to navigate her world with her, and will accept her as an equal. Riley thought he saw the first, but didn't. He attempted the second, but not in any way that showed he understood it, and therefore failed. And he never fully succeeded at the third either. He wasn't a hidebound sexist, but he never gave equal credit to the intuitional, emotional feminine ways of dealing with chaos, never saw those strategies to be equally effective as his attempts at control, and couldn't fully accept that Buffy could be his protector just as he could be hers, in true egalitarian partnership. Open your eyes to the dark, Riley Finn, and then we'll talk.
--------
I could ramble on forever without streamlining my point, I think. Maybe in future I can come back and try to make this coherent and separate out the different strands of argument. It could happen.
I've always had a little trouble with the idea that Buffy rejected Riley because he was a good guy or boring or not dark enough. To me, the quality that Buffy needs from a partner isn't darkness, and I think it does the character a disservice to phrase it that way. It's not about darkness or evil. That's not what drew her to Angel. I mean sure, he was a mysterious force at the start, cryptic guy, but I never got the sense Buffy thought of him as dark. Just mysterious, which was a draw of course. But she fell in like with him before he was unveiled as a vampire, and then she loved him despite herself. But not because he was evil. If he were evil, she would have staked him, not offered up her neck. And she wasn't drawn to Angelus.
To me, what is similar about Buffy's more intensely passionate relationships isn't just that they were vampires, therefore somewhat evil, dark and dangerous. It's that they're from her world. They operate within it in a way closest to how Buffy operates, which is different from Riley or even Xander, and different from how the other vampires and demons deal with the world.
It's not about evil, it's not about the bad boy in any direct sense. Self-proclaimed nice guys need not feel threatened or depressed that Riley didn't get the girl, nor do they have to find ways to make it her fault that the relationship failed. Like many things in BTVS, it's a metaphor, much like the bad boy in cinema is a symbol more than a reality. So sometimes it is saying some women want the bad boy, the man who will treat them like shit, just as some men seem to want a cruel woman. But often the bad boy is symbolic of difference, of rebellion, or of the feminine. I'm thinking James Dean in Rebel. Bad on the surface, sensitive within. Women who go for that aren't looking to be treated badly or roughly, they're identifying with someone who isn't Captain America or Tim Allen, who isn't a soc or a jock, someone more in tune with traditional feminine qualities like empathy, intuition, sensitivity and openness to the world, not someone more traditionally male who seeks to dominate it through physical strength and force of will. These bad boys also usually have a more nuanced understanding of what the world is like, that it's not made for them, and an understanding of oppression. This is not the symbolic perfect white male ideal who's gone through life without realizing how many breaks he's had, how relatively easy it's been for him, who has never really had to come up against significant barriers so never had to question the world view he was taught. That perfect man works for some women, perhaps because they too have had the privilege not had to question what they've been taught about the world, perhaps because they seek the status that goes with it. But some of us are operating within a different paradigm.
I've gotten far afield from where I wanted to go (so new), but not too far, because now I'm going to talk about Riley. Riley was that guy, the one who continued to view the world pretty simply as a black and white, orderly place, a world where he could make a difference, could impose order when it went awry, a world where he had a pretty high status and was in control. He wasn't arrogant or cruel or particularly misogynistic or chauvinistic, he was a genuine nice guy, but simple. Buffy woke him up to some reality, opened his eyes to a grayer world, and he got pushed off his simple track and began questioning what he had been taught. He even went so far as to declare himself an anarchist, which he never was and never will be. But as much as he learned from Buffy and the Scoobies, he never really developed a more complex world view. The Initiative turned out to be evil, but their overall perspective and strategies were still the way to do things. He still saw the world simply. He lived a very goal-oriented life, planning out his desired future, acting to make his desires come true. Not a bad way to live, nothing wrong with it if it works for you. But that's not Buffy's world anymore, not since she became the Slayer. It can't be.
((Finding out you're the Slayer at puberty coincides with becoming a sexually mature woman for more reasons than one. Becoming the Slayer is a metaphor for becoming a woman, realizing that there's something different about you that makes you not completely human in the eyes of the patriarchal lenses that seem to abide. Having that realization is pretty intense, and definitely the end of childhood. ))
The world Buffy has to navigate is full of incredibly complex situations, not at all clear choices, and obstacles that appear without warning and have to be dealt with regardless. She's had to develop a very nuanced and complex case-by-case based strategy for dealing with her daily life that Riley never had to face. But Angel and Spike to some degree have. They live in the world of demons and myth as Buffy does. They too used to be fully human, living their own unexamined lives, when they were chosen to walk in a far larger, wilder realm. Since they managed to hold on to or reclaim their humanity in tandem with the beast within, they've had to negotiate ways of surviving in that more complicated world. I guess, simply put: They get it; Riley doesn't.
Of course, the wider world, the world full of danger and magic and very complex moral dilemmas doesn't have as much to do with order as it does with chaos and random uncertainty. And anyone who lives in that world develops very different coping mechanisms and strategies than someone living in (or thinking they live in) a world of order. When order is the norm, it's hard enough to deal with the occasional bits of chaos that creep in, but if you survive those, you can find a way to ignore them or to do as Riley did and pick your times to fight them and your times to pull back and regroup. Riley doesn't live in the chaos, he just visits there on occasion and works to keep that world away from his own. Buffy has to live in the chaos, where order is the unusual mode of being. She can't just drop in and out as needed because of who she is. Being the Slayer isn't part of her life she can turn off after 5:00, it affects every aspect of her existence, even when she tries to step away from it.
Buffy doesn't need darkness or evil, she doesn't normally want to be treated badly, even if she did go through a depression that led her to use Spike to punish herself for a while. She needs someone as a partner who acknowledges the same reality, lives in the same world and has developed similar strategies to deal with it.
Maybe that does manifest as darkness in the eye of the beholder, but darkness as a descriptor is too vague and misleading. It's about the feminine really. The long-standing dichotomy we use to discuss these things is male being intellect, power, order, control, light, science; female being emotion, compliance, chaos, the wild, dark, magic. Riley and Buffy were in a sense just as opposed and unlikely lovers as any of her beaus. He's the Initiative; she's the Slayer. They each learn from one another a great deal, and try walking in each other's worlds, but it ultimately doesn't make them more alike because they live in those separate worlds, Buffy out of necessity, Riley maybe out of choice or maybe because he just can't navigate the other and be happy. (The fun part is that I see Buffy as yang to Riley's yin in season 5 at least, which casts a really interesting dissonance on top of the more traditional male/female dichotomy they seem to symbolize. I <3 Joss Whedon.)
Anyway, Buffy lives in the wild places, yes, in the dark. When Riley tries to join her there, he picks that almost perfectly wrong way to do it, focusing on the exterior details of her vampire bites versus the more profound interior differences between the two of them in the ways they live in the world. He didn't get it, it didn't work for him, so he set a new goal, took off, and found something that did work for him, that kept him in his world, doing the work he was fulfilled doing. Buffy didn't try to cross into Riley's world in season 5. She toyed with it in season 4, found it wasn't right for her, and tried to bring Riley back home with her instead. So she didn't meet him halfway, and she owns that. But I think she blames herself too much for not giving him what he needed when to do so would have gotten her killed or changed her into a different person. As a slayer, she can't escape the chaos.
Buffy and Angel almost worked not because he was dark and could be evil. First, they had the Romeo and Juliet first love, star-crossed thing, which was passionate and intense, but their relationship survived the Angelus resurgence because of the maturity they both gained dealing with the adult ramifications of that turn and the choices they both had to make to come out of that alive and whole. The childish first love became Buffy's first adult relationship. It was a dive into the wild, the chaos, that they survived, first separately and then together. They share a history and understanding gained on that journey that can't be replicated. Angel gets it.
Buffy and Spike almost worked not just because he was evil, although that played a part in the beginning of their physical relationship. Spike thrived in the wild, and he had insights into what it was to be the Slayer and what it was to walk in the dark. He knew what it was to die and come back. And Buffy was in a place where she couldn't connect with anyone else. She was self-destructive and Spike stayed by her side through it. But season 6 Spike didn't fully get it either. He was on the opposite end of Riley then, trying to take Buffy to a place of pure chaos, away from even the bits of order the Slayer attempts to coax out of the wild. But season 7 Spike with his full humanity restored finally got it, and eventually understood that Buffy had grown past her own self-hatred, and they got past the crazy to a place where they could fully connect. They too traveled a journey together that no one else fully shared or understood. Spike gets it.
And maybe it's as simple as the fact that Riley and Buffy were together at a less tumultuous emotional time. The history he shares with Buffy doesn't hold as much weight, isn't singular enough to bind them together in a shared understanding. Riley never navigated the wild with Buffy in any meaningful and long-lasting way. Maybe there is some truth to the idea that those romantic dramas will ultimately result in a more intense bond. Most people don't need that, but most people don't live in the wild. That doesn't make Buffy a drama queen, just someone living her perforce intense, brutal existence.
Back to the metaphor, not that we left it. Joss created what I would argue is the greatest female hero ever for that time (or now in my mind). In defining her world, her philosophy, her relations to that world, he managed to combine the chaos of the wild feminine with a hero who takes action. Who gradually finds ways to traverse the chaos and mingle in some order without trying to bend the world to a masculine will or blow it up if it won't comply. She has the most intense connections to the lovers in her life that can do the same, and who can treat her as an equal partner in the endeavor. Buffy's so-called need for darkness is actually her need for a partner who can see the complexity of her circumstances, will attempt to navigate her world with her, and will accept her as an equal. Riley thought he saw the first, but didn't. He attempted the second, but not in any way that showed he understood it, and therefore failed. And he never fully succeeded at the third either. He wasn't a hidebound sexist, but he never gave equal credit to the intuitional, emotional feminine ways of dealing with chaos, never saw those strategies to be equally effective as his attempts at control, and couldn't fully accept that Buffy could be his protector just as he could be hers, in true egalitarian partnership. Open your eyes to the dark, Riley Finn, and then we'll talk.
--------
I could ramble on forever without streamlining my point, I think. Maybe in future I can come back and try to make this coherent and separate out the different strands of argument. It could happen.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #15 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Wolves at the Gate conclusion
We open with Renee's thoughts as she dies, impaled on the stake end of the scythe. Fog is curling up around the team, Kumiko tackles Willow out the building window, and Xander is coming towards her as the fighting starts. "Xander, I'm not ready." Six Feet Under style whiteout as she dies.
Xander cradles her body and Buffy rallies the others around them to keeps the vamps from Xander. Dracula tells Buffy he can stop the spell, but he needs Willow, so would she please go get her. She doesn't want to leave Xander vulnerable, but Dracula has his back. What did happen with those two? Buffy transfers command to Satsu and dives out after the witches.
Willow and Kumiko are flying and falling, Will's green magic against Kumiko's red. Kumiko tells her they were both students of Saga Vasuki, aka the green snake lady. Did we know her name yet? I can't remember. Anyway, Will reads Kumiko's mind and finds Vasuki there. "Did you think I could not find you? Did you think you could hide from what you are? Or what's to come?" Those words echo from Restless and Buffy vs. Dracula, only then there were for Buffy. Now Willow gets a dose of it, along with a fiery vision of a city in flames, the scythe, and the snake lady curled around it. I think all this is foreshadowing the Fray future arc to come.
Kumiko is on top and Will is stunned from her vision when Buffy lands on Kumiko and sticks a knife into her heart. Hopefully she's dead, but who knows. Buffy and Willow continue to fall towards the battle below.
The slayers aren't having much luck, and Rowena calls for them to fall back, but Dawn is not having it. She stomps on a few more vamps and leads the charge toward the building. But the vampires were prepared for this. Come one, Tokyo, robotics division, you knew it was coming. Mecha Dawn! Toru: "Well, there's something you don't see everyday." Echoing Andrew's words last issue. Dawnzilla vs. Mecha Dawn commences.
Raidon says the slayers are within the radius -- so does that mean the spell is still limited to the city/country and not global? -- but no word from Kumiko. Turo's up for doing the incantation himself, and he starts that now that the lens is powered up. Then Dracula leads the infiltration team onto the roof. He tackles Turo, freeing the scythe. Satsu jumps for it and gets it and continues her arc over the edge of the building. Oops.
On the street, Willow woke up just in time to turn the sidewalk to water for them to land in. They crawl out dripping wet and see Satsu falling through the air. We focus on the two of them talking as they watch Satsu's descent. They discuss whether Satsu is Buffy's girlfriend now, and Willow tells Buffy to be careful with her Sappho sister's heart. And BTW, Willow never wanted Buffy that way, she's not even on the list. So there. Then they decide to catch Satsu.
From the roof, Raidon has the chance to be there when Willow appears with Buffy, Satsu and the scythe. Lucky him. But the vampires are still all full of gypsy tricks and can't be killed. Dracula calls to Willow, gives her his sword. He says -- this is interesting -- it's an ancient relic and bound with demon spirit, like the scythe. (Was there stuff about this in Fray at all? I can't remember.) Dracula tells Willow to do some sort of reversal spell that uses his sword and the lens to take the power from the vampires pretty much the same way they were going to take the power from the slayers using the scythe. Interesting. I guess Dracula's weird magic powers come from the sword somehow. Anyway, Willow casts the spell and the vampires are killable again. The slayers go to work.
Dawnzilla and Mecha Dawn fight while Andrew offers his finally useful expertise. Mecha Dawn says things like, "I like blue jeans and irony," "I cry a lot," and "I often let boys take advantage of my weak emotional states." Dawnzilla has had enough. She rips Mecha Dawn's head off.
In the battle on the roof, Satsu kills Raidon, saving Buffy. Dracula takes on Toru, calling for his sword back. Will tosses it his way and Toru intercepts. But Vlad Dracule is no slouch at combat. He takes back the sword, cuts Toru's hands and feet off, claiming that he has always been unique among vampires and Toru shouldn't be so cocky. Then he hands the sword to Xander. Xander cuts off Toru's head with determination but no joy.
The vampires run for it. Buffy orders her slayers to seal off the streets and let none escape as she walks to Xander to hold him as he collapses and cries.
Aftermath. At the Japanese fort, Dracula takes his leave of Xander. And I guess the manservant label is going the way of the dodo.
Buffy and Satsu talk once more. Satsu can't handle it. "I'm in love with you. And I need not to be." She wants to stay in Japan in Aiko's place, leading this squad. Buffy agrees. They say nice things and make love one last time.
The last page mingles Dracula's words to the captain of the ship carrying him away to quick shots of our Scooby gang:
"We have a cold journey ahead of us." Willow, meditating or communing with her snake lady.
"Find what warmth you can for now." Buffy and Satsu entangled in bed.
"And I'll stand watch alone." Xander scattering Renee's ashes and saying goodbye.
Now that was a particularly fine story arc.
We open with Renee's thoughts as she dies, impaled on the stake end of the scythe. Fog is curling up around the team, Kumiko tackles Willow out the building window, and Xander is coming towards her as the fighting starts. "Xander, I'm not ready." Six Feet Under style whiteout as she dies.
Xander cradles her body and Buffy rallies the others around them to keeps the vamps from Xander. Dracula tells Buffy he can stop the spell, but he needs Willow, so would she please go get her. She doesn't want to leave Xander vulnerable, but Dracula has his back. What did happen with those two? Buffy transfers command to Satsu and dives out after the witches.
Willow and Kumiko are flying and falling, Will's green magic against Kumiko's red. Kumiko tells her they were both students of Saga Vasuki, aka the green snake lady. Did we know her name yet? I can't remember. Anyway, Will reads Kumiko's mind and finds Vasuki there. "Did you think I could not find you? Did you think you could hide from what you are? Or what's to come?" Those words echo from Restless and Buffy vs. Dracula, only then there were for Buffy. Now Willow gets a dose of it, along with a fiery vision of a city in flames, the scythe, and the snake lady curled around it. I think all this is foreshadowing the Fray future arc to come.
Kumiko is on top and Will is stunned from her vision when Buffy lands on Kumiko and sticks a knife into her heart. Hopefully she's dead, but who knows. Buffy and Willow continue to fall towards the battle below.
The slayers aren't having much luck, and Rowena calls for them to fall back, but Dawn is not having it. She stomps on a few more vamps and leads the charge toward the building. But the vampires were prepared for this. Come one, Tokyo, robotics division, you knew it was coming. Mecha Dawn! Toru: "Well, there's something you don't see everyday." Echoing Andrew's words last issue. Dawnzilla vs. Mecha Dawn commences.
Raidon says the slayers are within the radius -- so does that mean the spell is still limited to the city/country and not global? -- but no word from Kumiko. Turo's up for doing the incantation himself, and he starts that now that the lens is powered up. Then Dracula leads the infiltration team onto the roof. He tackles Turo, freeing the scythe. Satsu jumps for it and gets it and continues her arc over the edge of the building. Oops.
On the street, Willow woke up just in time to turn the sidewalk to water for them to land in. They crawl out dripping wet and see Satsu falling through the air. We focus on the two of them talking as they watch Satsu's descent. They discuss whether Satsu is Buffy's girlfriend now, and Willow tells Buffy to be careful with her Sappho sister's heart. And BTW, Willow never wanted Buffy that way, she's not even on the list. So there. Then they decide to catch Satsu.
From the roof, Raidon has the chance to be there when Willow appears with Buffy, Satsu and the scythe. Lucky him. But the vampires are still all full of gypsy tricks and can't be killed. Dracula calls to Willow, gives her his sword. He says -- this is interesting -- it's an ancient relic and bound with demon spirit, like the scythe. (Was there stuff about this in Fray at all? I can't remember.) Dracula tells Willow to do some sort of reversal spell that uses his sword and the lens to take the power from the vampires pretty much the same way they were going to take the power from the slayers using the scythe. Interesting. I guess Dracula's weird magic powers come from the sword somehow. Anyway, Willow casts the spell and the vampires are killable again. The slayers go to work.
Dawnzilla and Mecha Dawn fight while Andrew offers his finally useful expertise. Mecha Dawn says things like, "I like blue jeans and irony," "I cry a lot," and "I often let boys take advantage of my weak emotional states." Dawnzilla has had enough. She rips Mecha Dawn's head off.
In the battle on the roof, Satsu kills Raidon, saving Buffy. Dracula takes on Toru, calling for his sword back. Will tosses it his way and Toru intercepts. But Vlad Dracule is no slouch at combat. He takes back the sword, cuts Toru's hands and feet off, claiming that he has always been unique among vampires and Toru shouldn't be so cocky. Then he hands the sword to Xander. Xander cuts off Toru's head with determination but no joy.
The vampires run for it. Buffy orders her slayers to seal off the streets and let none escape as she walks to Xander to hold him as he collapses and cries.
Aftermath. At the Japanese fort, Dracula takes his leave of Xander. And I guess the manservant label is going the way of the dodo.
Buffy and Satsu talk once more. Satsu can't handle it. "I'm in love with you. And I need not to be." She wants to stay in Japan in Aiko's place, leading this squad. Buffy agrees. They say nice things and make love one last time.
The last page mingles Dracula's words to the captain of the ship carrying him away to quick shots of our Scooby gang:
"We have a cold journey ahead of us." Willow, meditating or communing with her snake lady.
"Find what warmth you can for now." Buffy and Satsu entangled in bed.
"And I'll stand watch alone." Xander scattering Renee's ashes and saying goodbye.
Now that was a particularly fine story arc.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #14 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Wolves at the Gate part 3
Aiko is strung up downtown, her blood spelling out "Welcome to Tokyo." Buffy and her crew cut her down and take her body to the local headquarters, a building that looks kind of like a Shinto shrine out in the country, heavily fortified. Buffy lays Aiko's wrapped body at the feet of Buddha as the girls watch. Then she sits vigil.
Night falls, and Willow comes to see if she's gone catatonic again. They discuss options, not really clear on how to attack these vamps when they can't physically touch them. Enter Dracula with information on a containment spell, being snotty and condescending and laying claim to the master suite, poor Xander running along behind him.
At the top of a Tokyo building, which we later hear is called Ashikaga (which is the name of a city, a clan, and a shogunate), the huge red-tinted circle o' doom is buzzing away. Raidon is talking to a new woman about their plans, mentioning tech support (for the lens mechanism) and robotics division (just wait). They also have an army of vamps to guard them from the slayers while they're getting the lens up to speed. Kumiko hangs around sleeping or meditating like a bat. (Not that bats meditate, although they may, what do I know, I just mean hanging upside down, basically).
Renee is playing schoolgirl damsel in distress, luring a vampire into a Scooby ambush. Will uses the containment spell Dracula taught her, putting up a force-field box around the vamp. They pour gas on him and Buffy questions him about Toru. They find out what we already know, that Kumiko is going to use the scythe to reverse the spell, making all the slayers human again using the super lens on the Ashikaga building. They're just finishing getting the lens ready, which should happen before dawn -- be back before Dawn. (It's also going to happen before, as in in front of, Dawn, so punny foreshadowing).
After he spills, Buffy sets him on fire, and the four of them walk off through the night, a box of fiery light behind them. Cool if dark power shot.
Buffy and Satsu are arguing. Buffy doesn't want to take the local slayers, still reeling from Aiko's death, into battle with her. She wants Satsu to stay behind and watch over them, bury Aiko, stay out of it. Satsu is pissed about being put out of harm's way or out of sight, either one. She refuses to obey the order and storms off. Buffy: "I can't believe I find it sexy when she calls me ma'am." Heh.
Xander and Renee talk while gearing up, an unwilling? Dracula overhearing it off to the side. Xander makes a case for calling today their first date, avoiding all the normal first date awkwardness. Like getting tied up and sacrificed to open the Hellmouth you mean, Xander? Except that is like this. Anyway, Renee is not down with her first date with Xander being all schoolgirl vampbait, roasting vampsmores, and the company of the freaking dark prince...bator. She agrees to bypass the awkward waiting to see if a kiss is in order phase though, by planting one on Xander. They make out for a bit. Tick tock.
There's an army of a thousand vampires around the base of the building. They have plenty of slayers, but still no way to engage the enemy. We get a nice shot of Xander, Renee, Buffy, Dracula, Satsu, Andrew, and Leah ready to infiltrate the building. Buffy's only concern is to get in and get that scythe. To that end, Willow is creating a distraction. Come on, they already have a giant, are in Tokyo, you knew it was coming. Dawnzilla! Andrew: "Well, there's something you don't see everyday."
Dawn starts stomping havoc on the vamps as they run in terror. Buffy's team heads in and up, finding Toru and the scythe. But it's not him, it's a projection of him. Yes, it's a trap. Bye bye Renee. That may be the shortest love affair destroyed in its glory yet. Bong. Poor Xander.
Aiko is strung up downtown, her blood spelling out "Welcome to Tokyo." Buffy and her crew cut her down and take her body to the local headquarters, a building that looks kind of like a Shinto shrine out in the country, heavily fortified. Buffy lays Aiko's wrapped body at the feet of Buddha as the girls watch. Then she sits vigil.
Night falls, and Willow comes to see if she's gone catatonic again. They discuss options, not really clear on how to attack these vamps when they can't physically touch them. Enter Dracula with information on a containment spell, being snotty and condescending and laying claim to the master suite, poor Xander running along behind him.
At the top of a Tokyo building, which we later hear is called Ashikaga (which is the name of a city, a clan, and a shogunate), the huge red-tinted circle o' doom is buzzing away. Raidon is talking to a new woman about their plans, mentioning tech support (for the lens mechanism) and robotics division (just wait). They also have an army of vamps to guard them from the slayers while they're getting the lens up to speed. Kumiko hangs around sleeping or meditating like a bat. (Not that bats meditate, although they may, what do I know, I just mean hanging upside down, basically).
Renee is playing schoolgirl damsel in distress, luring a vampire into a Scooby ambush. Will uses the containment spell Dracula taught her, putting up a force-field box around the vamp. They pour gas on him and Buffy questions him about Toru. They find out what we already know, that Kumiko is going to use the scythe to reverse the spell, making all the slayers human again using the super lens on the Ashikaga building. They're just finishing getting the lens ready, which should happen before dawn -- be back before Dawn. (It's also going to happen before, as in in front of, Dawn, so punny foreshadowing).
After he spills, Buffy sets him on fire, and the four of them walk off through the night, a box of fiery light behind them. Cool if dark power shot.
Buffy and Satsu are arguing. Buffy doesn't want to take the local slayers, still reeling from Aiko's death, into battle with her. She wants Satsu to stay behind and watch over them, bury Aiko, stay out of it. Satsu is pissed about being put out of harm's way or out of sight, either one. She refuses to obey the order and storms off. Buffy: "I can't believe I find it sexy when she calls me ma'am." Heh.
Xander and Renee talk while gearing up, an unwilling? Dracula overhearing it off to the side. Xander makes a case for calling today their first date, avoiding all the normal first date awkwardness. Like getting tied up and sacrificed to open the Hellmouth you mean, Xander? Except that is like this. Anyway, Renee is not down with her first date with Xander being all schoolgirl vampbait, roasting vampsmores, and the company of the freaking dark prince...bator. She agrees to bypass the awkward waiting to see if a kiss is in order phase though, by planting one on Xander. They make out for a bit. Tick tock.
There's an army of a thousand vampires around the base of the building. They have plenty of slayers, but still no way to engage the enemy. We get a nice shot of Xander, Renee, Buffy, Dracula, Satsu, Andrew, and Leah ready to infiltrate the building. Buffy's only concern is to get in and get that scythe. To that end, Willow is creating a distraction. Come on, they already have a giant, are in Tokyo, you knew it was coming. Dawnzilla! Andrew: "Well, there's something you don't see everyday."
Dawn starts stomping havoc on the vamps as they run in terror. Buffy's team heads in and up, finding Toru and the scythe. But it's not him, it's a projection of him. Yes, it's a trap. Bye bye Renee. That may be the shortest love affair destroyed in its glory yet. Bong. Poor Xander.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #13 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Wolves at the Gate part 2
15 minutes before the end of the last issue, Dracula was an old and depressed dude. His servant, Butterfield, tries to entice him into a hunt for an Albanian boy at loose in the hedge maze, but it's no go. Apparently Dracula's been sitting in his own stink for months. But he sees the helicopter approaching and snaps out of it.
Xander says they need his help, while Dracula plays it coy. He insults Renee, calling her a Moor, insinuating she's a slave -- why do they need this douche's help again? Dracula relents and lets them in, saying Xander will want a nice snack of mealworms before he dons his manservant bloomers. Obviously some history there we haven't seen. I'm not sure if I ever want to or not.
Cut to Andrew, dressed as the count, giving a class to the slayers about the dark master...bator. On the chalkboard, Dracula's known powers include: Romantic Undertones (technically not a power). Very reminiscent of season 7.
The girls know about Dracula, they want to know what's up with him and Xandman. Andrew says they stayed in touch after Dracula visited Sunnydale. Whether that's true or not is unclear. After all, this is the man who taught that Faith fought a Vulcan once upon a time. But can't you just see Xander's face when he opens up that letter? Anyway, apparently, for whatever reason, Xander spent time with Dracula after Anya's death. There's a whole story about their weird buddy movie hijinks still to be written I guess. It includes a motorbike, which Andrew adds to the chalkboard as another power.
Meanwhile, real work is being done. The slayers have found out that the vampires are from Tokyo, the leader is Toru. Slayer local field op Aiko found them. She confabs with Buffy from a scene of carnage, having just taken out at least five ugly Kabuki demons. Buffy is impressed, but tells Aiko to surveil, not approach until reinforcements arrive.
We get some awkward drama as Satsu questions Buffy's plan to take every last one of them with her to Japan, and Buffy snaps at her all general-style. I guess the honeymoon is over.
Xander and Renee take tea with Dracula. Renee watches as they make polite talk in an ersatz homosexual marriage kind of way, wondering why she came no doubt. They finally get down to business, explaining the sitch, and Renee gets up in his face about him selling his powers to the highest bidder. Dracula is offended, saying he's the worldly guardian of these ancient magics. Hmmm. Wonder if that's significant at all. Ancient magics. Highlight that. Then Dracula seems to remember something painful. "Oh, balls."
Tokyo. Toru and Raidon discuss how Kumiko wants the kill (of Buffy I thought at first, but now I assume Willow). Toru wants her to concentrate on the spell. Aiko follows them. They notice and know why, decide to give Buffy something to see. Toru pulls out a red-tinted lens and twirls his nonexistent mustache as we...
...cut back to Dracula freaking out and being all racist against East Asians. He apparently got wasted at a Tibetan speakeasy and gambled some knowledge of his powers away in a game of pai gow poker, trying for a Kawasaki Z1000. Andrew knows all. Dracula says he was cheated and mentions a witch with them (Kumiko). He's so pissed off he agrees to join their battle even though he loathes Buffy and her crew and wants to see them all destroyed. Great ally.
While flying the troops in a big transport plane to Japan, Willow talks with Satsu. She gives her the deal on Buffy, how she's the general, has to be separate, that won't change. Oh and BTW, not gay, so don't get your hopes up. Then she wants to dish on Buffy's prowess in bed, but Satsu stays mum, a true gentlelady.
Aiko checks in with Buffy, then finds Toru's lens on the ground and picks it up. She's hit through the lens with a blast of light from the scythe in Kumiko's hand, and her powers are gone. !! Toru taunts her and then eats her. Another one down. And they're planning to do this spell on a larger scale with a big old lens to reverse the spell on all the slayers. Crap.
15 minutes before the end of the last issue, Dracula was an old and depressed dude. His servant, Butterfield, tries to entice him into a hunt for an Albanian boy at loose in the hedge maze, but it's no go. Apparently Dracula's been sitting in his own stink for months. But he sees the helicopter approaching and snaps out of it.
Xander says they need his help, while Dracula plays it coy. He insults Renee, calling her a Moor, insinuating she's a slave -- why do they need this douche's help again? Dracula relents and lets them in, saying Xander will want a nice snack of mealworms before he dons his manservant bloomers. Obviously some history there we haven't seen. I'm not sure if I ever want to or not.
Cut to Andrew, dressed as the count, giving a class to the slayers about the dark master...bator. On the chalkboard, Dracula's known powers include: Romantic Undertones (technically not a power). Very reminiscent of season 7.
The girls know about Dracula, they want to know what's up with him and Xandman. Andrew says they stayed in touch after Dracula visited Sunnydale. Whether that's true or not is unclear. After all, this is the man who taught that Faith fought a Vulcan once upon a time. But can't you just see Xander's face when he opens up that letter? Anyway, apparently, for whatever reason, Xander spent time with Dracula after Anya's death. There's a whole story about their weird buddy movie hijinks still to be written I guess. It includes a motorbike, which Andrew adds to the chalkboard as another power.
Meanwhile, real work is being done. The slayers have found out that the vampires are from Tokyo, the leader is Toru. Slayer local field op Aiko found them. She confabs with Buffy from a scene of carnage, having just taken out at least five ugly Kabuki demons. Buffy is impressed, but tells Aiko to surveil, not approach until reinforcements arrive.
We get some awkward drama as Satsu questions Buffy's plan to take every last one of them with her to Japan, and Buffy snaps at her all general-style. I guess the honeymoon is over.
Xander and Renee take tea with Dracula. Renee watches as they make polite talk in an ersatz homosexual marriage kind of way, wondering why she came no doubt. They finally get down to business, explaining the sitch, and Renee gets up in his face about him selling his powers to the highest bidder. Dracula is offended, saying he's the worldly guardian of these ancient magics. Hmmm. Wonder if that's significant at all. Ancient magics. Highlight that. Then Dracula seems to remember something painful. "Oh, balls."
Tokyo. Toru and Raidon discuss how Kumiko wants the kill (of Buffy I thought at first, but now I assume Willow). Toru wants her to concentrate on the spell. Aiko follows them. They notice and know why, decide to give Buffy something to see. Toru pulls out a red-tinted lens and twirls his nonexistent mustache as we...
...cut back to Dracula freaking out and being all racist against East Asians. He apparently got wasted at a Tibetan speakeasy and gambled some knowledge of his powers away in a game of pai gow poker, trying for a Kawasaki Z1000. Andrew knows all. Dracula says he was cheated and mentions a witch with them (Kumiko). He's so pissed off he agrees to join their battle even though he loathes Buffy and her crew and wants to see them all destroyed. Great ally.
While flying the troops in a big transport plane to Japan, Willow talks with Satsu. She gives her the deal on Buffy, how she's the general, has to be separate, that won't change. Oh and BTW, not gay, so don't get your hopes up. Then she wants to dish on Buffy's prowess in bed, but Satsu stays mum, a true gentlelady.
Aiko checks in with Buffy, then finds Toru's lens on the ground and picks it up. She's hit through the lens with a blast of light from the scythe in Kumiko's hand, and her powers are gone. !! Toru taunts her and then eats her. Another one down. And they're planning to do this spell on a larger scale with a big old lens to reverse the spell on all the slayers. Crap.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #12 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Wolves at the Gate part 1.
Xander and Renee are on guard, seeing a pack of creepy, red-eyed animals coming towards the castle, arguing over whether they're wolves or panthers. Renee thinks Xander is checking up on her since the zombies attacked last time on her watch. He assures her he's there to hang out with her.
Cut to THE panel, the first really controversial shot of season 8, Buffy and Satsu in bed together! I guess loneliness and knowing someone wanted her kind of naturally led Buffy to this action, but hello power imbalance!
Willow is flying Andrew up from Italy, and he's trying to be Lois to her Superman. He enters the castle to sleep off the Dramamine and Will gets grabbed by a Japanese girl who materializes out of a fog. We'll soon learn she's a witch named Kumiko.
Xander finally asks Renee out. Start the death clock. They don't seem overly concerned about the creepy wolves, but that's flirting for you.
Buffy and Satsu talk over la passion. Buffy is happy but not sure it goes further, and suggests they keep it between them. I think she's trying to honestly process where her head is at and be thoughtful towards Satsu and not creepy. Oh, and start the death clock.
Then we get a farcical scene that doesn't work that well for me, not sure why. Basically everyone and their wolf ends up coming into the room and catching them together naked. Ha ha, let's keep it a secret, oops, Xander knows, oops, and Renee. And here comes Andrew with news of wolves in the castle, and Dawn with talk of bees in the barn. Then Will crashes through the roof and the party is complete. Well, at least we don't have to have the dramatic irony secret drag on.
Wolves find the armory and turn into vampires. They go straight for the scythe. Uh-oh. One is named Raidon. We'll find out soon enough the other is Turo. Buffy interrupts them, but Raidon turns into a panther, takes the scythe and runs while Buffy tries to fight Turo, who turns to fog and disappears. No fair! Raidon passes the scythe to Kumiko, and the vamps retreat.
Castle meeting. The slayers say that all the vampires were changing into fog and bees and wolves and panthers, oh my. Xander calls them Japanese vampire goths. Buffy is concerned they got the scythe. It finally occurs to them that they know a vamp who can pull off those tricks. All eyes turn to Xanfield.
Cut to Xander and Renee in a helicopter, headed to Dracula's castle. Yeesh, lot of medieval settings this season. Dracula opens his door. "Hello, manservant." "How's it going, Master?" The end.
Xander and Renee are on guard, seeing a pack of creepy, red-eyed animals coming towards the castle, arguing over whether they're wolves or panthers. Renee thinks Xander is checking up on her since the zombies attacked last time on her watch. He assures her he's there to hang out with her.
Cut to THE panel, the first really controversial shot of season 8, Buffy and Satsu in bed together! I guess loneliness and knowing someone wanted her kind of naturally led Buffy to this action, but hello power imbalance!
Willow is flying Andrew up from Italy, and he's trying to be Lois to her Superman. He enters the castle to sleep off the Dramamine and Will gets grabbed by a Japanese girl who materializes out of a fog. We'll soon learn she's a witch named Kumiko.
Xander finally asks Renee out. Start the death clock. They don't seem overly concerned about the creepy wolves, but that's flirting for you.
Buffy and Satsu talk over la passion. Buffy is happy but not sure it goes further, and suggests they keep it between them. I think she's trying to honestly process where her head is at and be thoughtful towards Satsu and not creepy. Oh, and start the death clock.
Then we get a farcical scene that doesn't work that well for me, not sure why. Basically everyone and their wolf ends up coming into the room and catching them together naked. Ha ha, let's keep it a secret, oops, Xander knows, oops, and Renee. And here comes Andrew with news of wolves in the castle, and Dawn with talk of bees in the barn. Then Will crashes through the roof and the party is complete. Well, at least we don't have to have the dramatic irony secret drag on.
Wolves find the armory and turn into vampires. They go straight for the scythe. Uh-oh. One is named Raidon. We'll find out soon enough the other is Turo. Buffy interrupts them, but Raidon turns into a panther, takes the scythe and runs while Buffy tries to fight Turo, who turns to fog and disappears. No fair! Raidon passes the scythe to Kumiko, and the vamps retreat.
Castle meeting. The slayers say that all the vampires were changing into fog and bees and wolves and panthers, oh my. Xander calls them Japanese vampire goths. Buffy is concerned they got the scythe. It finally occurs to them that they know a vamp who can pull off those tricks. All eyes turn to Xanfield.
Cut to Xander and Renee in a helicopter, headed to Dracula's castle. Yeesh, lot of medieval settings this season. Dracula opens his door. "Hello, manservant." "How's it going, Master?" The end.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #11 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Okay. This is kind of a prequel to the Wolves at the Gate arc, just giving us something to think about as we go forward.
A Beautiful Sunset
Flashback to THE spell at the end of season 7 with a voiceover by Buffy. "Once upon a time I did something good." She goes on to consider how she not only shared her strength with the other potentials, but also meant to give them purpose and meaning. (Of course, purpose and meaning without reflection and a sense of history don't do you much good as we'll soon see.) Oh, and she gave them connection.
"Saving the world means keeping the status quo." (Assuming the status is quo.) "But apocalypses come because the world is trying to change. It has to." This can be read many different ways I think. In some sense it's a repudiation of everything Buffy's worked for, saying trying to stop the apocalypse is trying to disallow change. But while I think that crosses her mind, I think right now she's thinking how she tried to not stop change, but initiate it. Her saving the world by changing the slayer status quo was intended to be a positive redefinition of the ways things were, not an attempt to keep things as they always had been.
This time wasn't just about stopping an invasion, it was Buffy being proactive, riding the change the world wished to enact and guiding it to a better resolution. So casting that spell was not just an act of desperation in the face of overwhelming odds, which is certainly was, but also a game-changing move to make whatever world is left afterwards a better place.
A lot has been out of balance in the Buffyverse since she was brought back. Her returned overbalanced the good side, allowing the First a stronger foothold in reality. Then it upped the ante and Buffy responded, and then some.
But what can you do? Balancing the forces of good and evil in the world isn't like balancing your ratio of exercise to TV viewing, it's a so much larger scale, and so much harder to see in its entirety. All Buffy knows is evil is always out there, and it's always coming back bigger and badder than the last time. She couldn't know her masterstroke would tip the balance so heavily and send the world into chaos. Just as none of us know when a choice we make will have unforeseen consequences. Not all of it is in our control, but we still have to make the choice.
Ahem. Anyway.
All this is behind Buffy's eyes as she watches her monitor screen. The Buffyster is bummed because the less positive results of her choice are playing out on a security feed of a weapons storage facility. The not-so-lovely Simone (Doffler, for what it's worth) is flipping off a camera as she and a few other slayers go rogue in a big way, collecting some major firepower. We hear that she's been a known problem to some extent, having been shipped out of Chicago by Rona -- so Rona is in charge of the Chicago squad -- to Italy to cool her jets away from the big city. That "plan" didn't really do much good apparently.
One of the other girls with her is from Andrew's Italy squad, but the rest are newcomers who didn't come up in the Buffy organization. Xander is concerned about Twilight and others learning about slayers with guns.
Buffy is blaming herself, not just because of the spell, but the robbery she committed initially to fund their endeavors, like we learned about in her side adventure with Willow. Xander asks if that's why Will didn't stick around, but Buffy says it's complicated, not going on to say that Willow doesn't want her loved ones to die anymore because they fight near Buffy.
To change the subject, Xander lets Buffy know he found and was saving a vamp nest for her. She decides to take Satsu with her so they can talk. Then we see there's a big party going on in the castle, even giant Dawn is there, along with tons of slayers and many kegs of beer. Buffy won't be joining in, but she looks on as they enjoy each other's company, connecting.
Xander says Buffy spends too much time alone. Surrounded by slayers, she's still in charge and separate. But she doesn't make speeches anymore, so there's that. (I think) later she'll say she created this connection but she doesn't feel it herself. Some of us are just like that, Buff. No big.
Buffy and Satsu head to a cemetery for a vamp fight slash girl talk scenario. Buffy tells her she's the best fighter and could be a great leader someday, but she needs to remember she's always in danger. The particular danger right now is Buffy figured out from the lip gloss that Satsu is the one who kissed her awake, who is in love with her.
Buffy says knowing someone feels that way about her makes her feel a little bit less lonely, but, fresh from her talk with Will, goes to the Doomed place. Says there's something wrong with her that makes her friends and lovers all die or leave her. Ironically, enter Twilight.
He takes her for a fly, roughs her up a bit, says he came to talk but hates to see her cry. He also gives her some info on his motivations, saying the world can't contain all these slayers and they'll suffer for that. Which he intends as a fact, not a threat I suppose. He says his only gift to her is not killing her now, but she's brought disaster to the world that he has to deal with. If he's trying to get a message to her, I don't see it. "Have you made a difference? Have your slayers helped change anything in this world? Have they helped you?"
VERY SPOILERY PARAGRAPH
He didn't really tell her anything she didn't know, just bummed her out some more. I guess I'm not sure where's he at right now and whether it stays consistent or changes throughout the series. He told his crew he was stripping her of her moral certainty, which is exactly what he did while they were completely alone. Very Angelus kind of talk/fight really. Was he just being cruel to get her to think about the ramifications of her actions? I know ultimately he's trying to help by gathering her enemies together under his banner, and presumably he's still acting as a champion for the greater good, but I still can't see the through-line of his thoughts.
Quick scene with Buffy and Satsu in the infirmary, where she seems to get the message about people near Buffy being targets for pain.
Buffy and Xander talk again in the ramparts, in a bookend scene to the beginning. Buffy asks if they're really doing good. There seems to be ever more demons to fight, and is that their fault? Xander thinks all these girls filled with purpose is pretty rad and says they're just starting out, beginning to make a difference. Maybe they're cleaning up messes now, but they can change the world for the better later. And who's to say he's wrong? I'm not even sure if the season says he's wrong or not conclusively.
Aha! This is where Buffy mentions she doesn't feel the connection. Xander says maybe that's the mystical price of leadership as well. Buffy looks down on the slayers below training together and repeats the words she said in the beginning while watching Simone at her finest. "Yay me." She may have a very different view this time, but she doesn't look any happier as she says it.
A Beautiful Sunset
Flashback to THE spell at the end of season 7 with a voiceover by Buffy. "Once upon a time I did something good." She goes on to consider how she not only shared her strength with the other potentials, but also meant to give them purpose and meaning. (Of course, purpose and meaning without reflection and a sense of history don't do you much good as we'll soon see.) Oh, and she gave them connection.
"Saving the world means keeping the status quo." (Assuming the status is quo.) "But apocalypses come because the world is trying to change. It has to." This can be read many different ways I think. In some sense it's a repudiation of everything Buffy's worked for, saying trying to stop the apocalypse is trying to disallow change. But while I think that crosses her mind, I think right now she's thinking how she tried to not stop change, but initiate it. Her saving the world by changing the slayer status quo was intended to be a positive redefinition of the ways things were, not an attempt to keep things as they always had been.
This time wasn't just about stopping an invasion, it was Buffy being proactive, riding the change the world wished to enact and guiding it to a better resolution. So casting that spell was not just an act of desperation in the face of overwhelming odds, which is certainly was, but also a game-changing move to make whatever world is left afterwards a better place.
A lot has been out of balance in the Buffyverse since she was brought back. Her returned overbalanced the good side, allowing the First a stronger foothold in reality. Then it upped the ante and Buffy responded, and then some.
But what can you do? Balancing the forces of good and evil in the world isn't like balancing your ratio of exercise to TV viewing, it's a so much larger scale, and so much harder to see in its entirety. All Buffy knows is evil is always out there, and it's always coming back bigger and badder than the last time. She couldn't know her masterstroke would tip the balance so heavily and send the world into chaos. Just as none of us know when a choice we make will have unforeseen consequences. Not all of it is in our control, but we still have to make the choice.
Ahem. Anyway.
All this is behind Buffy's eyes as she watches her monitor screen. The Buffyster is bummed because the less positive results of her choice are playing out on a security feed of a weapons storage facility. The not-so-lovely Simone (Doffler, for what it's worth) is flipping off a camera as she and a few other slayers go rogue in a big way, collecting some major firepower. We hear that she's been a known problem to some extent, having been shipped out of Chicago by Rona -- so Rona is in charge of the Chicago squad -- to Italy to cool her jets away from the big city. That "plan" didn't really do much good apparently.
One of the other girls with her is from Andrew's Italy squad, but the rest are newcomers who didn't come up in the Buffy organization. Xander is concerned about Twilight and others learning about slayers with guns.
Buffy is blaming herself, not just because of the spell, but the robbery she committed initially to fund their endeavors, like we learned about in her side adventure with Willow. Xander asks if that's why Will didn't stick around, but Buffy says it's complicated, not going on to say that Willow doesn't want her loved ones to die anymore because they fight near Buffy.
To change the subject, Xander lets Buffy know he found and was saving a vamp nest for her. She decides to take Satsu with her so they can talk. Then we see there's a big party going on in the castle, even giant Dawn is there, along with tons of slayers and many kegs of beer. Buffy won't be joining in, but she looks on as they enjoy each other's company, connecting.
Xander says Buffy spends too much time alone. Surrounded by slayers, she's still in charge and separate. But she doesn't make speeches anymore, so there's that. (I think) later she'll say she created this connection but she doesn't feel it herself. Some of us are just like that, Buff. No big.
Buffy and Satsu head to a cemetery for a vamp fight slash girl talk scenario. Buffy tells her she's the best fighter and could be a great leader someday, but she needs to remember she's always in danger. The particular danger right now is Buffy figured out from the lip gloss that Satsu is the one who kissed her awake, who is in love with her.
Buffy says knowing someone feels that way about her makes her feel a little bit less lonely, but, fresh from her talk with Will, goes to the Doomed place. Says there's something wrong with her that makes her friends and lovers all die or leave her. Ironically, enter Twilight.
He takes her for a fly, roughs her up a bit, says he came to talk but hates to see her cry. He also gives her some info on his motivations, saying the world can't contain all these slayers and they'll suffer for that. Which he intends as a fact, not a threat I suppose. He says his only gift to her is not killing her now, but she's brought disaster to the world that he has to deal with. If he's trying to get a message to her, I don't see it. "Have you made a difference? Have your slayers helped change anything in this world? Have they helped you?"
VERY SPOILERY PARAGRAPH
He didn't really tell her anything she didn't know, just bummed her out some more. I guess I'm not sure where's he at right now and whether it stays consistent or changes throughout the series. He told his crew he was stripping her of her moral certainty, which is exactly what he did while they were completely alone. Very Angelus kind of talk/fight really. Was he just being cruel to get her to think about the ramifications of her actions? I know ultimately he's trying to help by gathering her enemies together under his banner, and presumably he's still acting as a champion for the greater good, but I still can't see the through-line of his thoughts.
Quick scene with Buffy and Satsu in the infirmary, where she seems to get the message about people near Buffy being targets for pain.
Buffy and Xander talk again in the ramparts, in a bookend scene to the beginning. Buffy asks if they're really doing good. There seems to be ever more demons to fight, and is that their fault? Xander thinks all these girls filled with purpose is pretty rad and says they're just starting out, beginning to make a difference. Maybe they're cleaning up messes now, but they can change the world for the better later. And who's to say he's wrong? I'm not even sure if the season says he's wrong or not conclusively.
Aha! This is where Buffy mentions she doesn't feel the connection. Xander says maybe that's the mystical price of leadership as well. Buffy looks down on the slayers below training together and repeats the words she said in the beginning while watching Simone at her finest. "Yay me." She may have a very different view this time, but she doesn't look any happier as she says it.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #10 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Anywhere But Here
We've concluded Faith's arc and are back in Buffyland full-time with a little adventure/fact-finding mission of Willow and Buffy's.
We start with a fantasy about being anywhere but here, their old game from high school days. Probably suggested by Willow to get Buffy's mind off of being so far above the ground. She's on a beach with Daniel Craig, in desperate need of sunblock. Willow claims it's a bit generic, but Buffy can't concentrate while riding on Willow's back through the air trying to find something they can't teleport to.
Xander is giving Dawn a gift. The Wiccans bigged up her stuff so she has a change of clothes now. She's so excited she dumps Xander in her giant suitcase with the clothes.
Willow's fantasy is of Tina Fey. They're stuck in a ski lodge and need to stay warm. Buffy asks her again about Kennedy. Willow says it's a fantasy game with no significant others allowed. Buffy talks about not seeing her much or Will for that matter. And they arrive...
...at the Lair of Sephrilian, who walks between worlds. His house is TARDIS-like, he has a female minder to watcher over the unstable reality field he creates. Buffy doesn't know how Willow knows all this stuff. We'll find out later.
The Minder is Robin, who Willow meets later on but doesn't know now or something timey-wimey. They're there to consult I guess. Robin tries not to be gloomy. Tells Buffy the important this is to rescue the prince. Hunh? We also find out Minders are chosen, they don't volunteer to go slowly nuts watching over this thing. Buffy's pretty peppy (or nervous?) enjoying Will's company and making jokes about time loops.
Dawn is enjoying her clean-smelling clothes. Xander is swimming in lacy underthings (foreshadowing) when he finds a picture of Dawn and Kenny.
We're back in the game, and Buffy is enjoying the company of Little Women Christian Bale and Reign of Fire Christian Bale in some gothic ballroom, plotting an escape. Buffy assures Willow she likes Kennedy, thinking Willow is keeping them apart, wondering where they went anyway and what's up with Will generally. She's doing all the talking.
They're interrupted by a giant claw attached to a creepy-looking demon with faces on its tail and lots of teeth that must be Sephrilian. Buffy asks for help, saying he's demon elite or Tichajt, and knows the future. "You know where we are heading. The imbalance between our worlds is going to rain destruction on all our heads." Visions of Beljoxa's Eye swimming in my brain. He prophesies the end "...of the struggle, of the hellmouths...the final triumph of the base humans over the demons. It's your life's goal achieved, Slayer. The death of magic." We'll definitely have to come back here later.
Dawn looks at the picture of Kenny and says it's all her fault. Xander says guys suck. Dawn tells him she didn't sleep with Kenny. She slept with his roommate.
Sephrilian says all human beings can comprehend are the lies they tell to avoid reality, then opens the faces on his tail and show them their secrets. We see a squad of slayers led by Buffy stealing gold and gems from a Swiss bank. That's how she was able to bankroll her organization. Buffy says it's a victimless crime and it's only money. Willow says, "Money changes everything. This is where it all starts, Buffy. What your enemies saw." She calls it the first domino leading to Twilight.
Then we see Willow getting up close and naked with a green snake goddess type woman. Much more on this to come.
Dawn flashes back to her own secret, Nick. She says she cheated and is a skank and deserves what she got from it. She wanted to tell Willow, thought she could, but couldn't. Xander compares Nick to Parker and says all Dawn is guilty of is being a cliche. Then claims he's special because Dawn opened up to him. Too true.
Robin shows up with Buffy and Willow somewhere neither of them recognize. It's a domed stone structure with a cracked red egg. There's fog on the ground and Buffy is lying there, crying and injured. Robin claims what happens here is "betrayal. The closest, the most unexpected." Then Robin leaves because they're about to cause a disruption. Buffy immediately asks Willow if it's her.
Willow says she won't betray her more than she has, and we get the story behind her taking Kennedy and running. Flashback to Kennedy fighting with Willow about why she's keeping her away from Buffy, is she ashamed of her?
We find out Kennedy sort of died once for Willow, and that Will went away for 6-months to presumably learn naughty things from snake goddess. More on that in the Willow one-shot.
Willow says it's not about shame, but when she saw Warren again, she realized it was about Tara. Her and Tara were happy when Buffy died. And so was Buffy. But Willow brought her back anyway, and that led to Tara's death. She's talking both to Kennedy in the flashback and Buffy in reality now. "I chose to put Tara in a bullet's path. I chose you (Buffy) over her." She can't do that again.
Sephrilian pops back up with his faces. He says all of them are there for you to see, but humans hide so many of their own. Buffy and Willow can't look at each other now. Buffy is so not in the mood for Sephrilian to gloat about welcoming the coming war or threatening to expose their weaknesses to other demons. Neither is Willow. Buffy takes the fire Willow gives her and uses it to slay Sephrilian. The place explodes. Robin keeps shielded. She's glad to have some time off, and she doesn't remember what happened there. Apparently it was only a projection of her, so their secrets are safely hidden.
Buffy, looking sad, calls what happened demons playing games. Will looks guilty. They head off separately.
Man, that's rough. I get Willow's point, but poor Buffy. She didn't ask for, well, any of that. Harsh.
We've concluded Faith's arc and are back in Buffyland full-time with a little adventure/fact-finding mission of Willow and Buffy's.
We start with a fantasy about being anywhere but here, their old game from high school days. Probably suggested by Willow to get Buffy's mind off of being so far above the ground. She's on a beach with Daniel Craig, in desperate need of sunblock. Willow claims it's a bit generic, but Buffy can't concentrate while riding on Willow's back through the air trying to find something they can't teleport to.
Xander is giving Dawn a gift. The Wiccans bigged up her stuff so she has a change of clothes now. She's so excited she dumps Xander in her giant suitcase with the clothes.
Willow's fantasy is of Tina Fey. They're stuck in a ski lodge and need to stay warm. Buffy asks her again about Kennedy. Willow says it's a fantasy game with no significant others allowed. Buffy talks about not seeing her much or Will for that matter. And they arrive...
...at the Lair of Sephrilian, who walks between worlds. His house is TARDIS-like, he has a female minder to watcher over the unstable reality field he creates. Buffy doesn't know how Willow knows all this stuff. We'll find out later.
The Minder is Robin, who Willow meets later on but doesn't know now or something timey-wimey. They're there to consult I guess. Robin tries not to be gloomy. Tells Buffy the important this is to rescue the prince. Hunh? We also find out Minders are chosen, they don't volunteer to go slowly nuts watching over this thing. Buffy's pretty peppy (or nervous?) enjoying Will's company and making jokes about time loops.
Dawn is enjoying her clean-smelling clothes. Xander is swimming in lacy underthings (foreshadowing) when he finds a picture of Dawn and Kenny.
We're back in the game, and Buffy is enjoying the company of Little Women Christian Bale and Reign of Fire Christian Bale in some gothic ballroom, plotting an escape. Buffy assures Willow she likes Kennedy, thinking Willow is keeping them apart, wondering where they went anyway and what's up with Will generally. She's doing all the talking.
They're interrupted by a giant claw attached to a creepy-looking demon with faces on its tail and lots of teeth that must be Sephrilian. Buffy asks for help, saying he's demon elite or Tichajt, and knows the future. "You know where we are heading. The imbalance between our worlds is going to rain destruction on all our heads." Visions of Beljoxa's Eye swimming in my brain. He prophesies the end "...of the struggle, of the hellmouths...the final triumph of the base humans over the demons. It's your life's goal achieved, Slayer. The death of magic." We'll definitely have to come back here later.
Dawn looks at the picture of Kenny and says it's all her fault. Xander says guys suck. Dawn tells him she didn't sleep with Kenny. She slept with his roommate.
Sephrilian says all human beings can comprehend are the lies they tell to avoid reality, then opens the faces on his tail and show them their secrets. We see a squad of slayers led by Buffy stealing gold and gems from a Swiss bank. That's how she was able to bankroll her organization. Buffy says it's a victimless crime and it's only money. Willow says, "Money changes everything. This is where it all starts, Buffy. What your enemies saw." She calls it the first domino leading to Twilight.
Then we see Willow getting up close and naked with a green snake goddess type woman. Much more on this to come.
Dawn flashes back to her own secret, Nick. She says she cheated and is a skank and deserves what she got from it. She wanted to tell Willow, thought she could, but couldn't. Xander compares Nick to Parker and says all Dawn is guilty of is being a cliche. Then claims he's special because Dawn opened up to him. Too true.
Robin shows up with Buffy and Willow somewhere neither of them recognize. It's a domed stone structure with a cracked red egg. There's fog on the ground and Buffy is lying there, crying and injured. Robin claims what happens here is "betrayal. The closest, the most unexpected." Then Robin leaves because they're about to cause a disruption. Buffy immediately asks Willow if it's her.
Willow says she won't betray her more than she has, and we get the story behind her taking Kennedy and running. Flashback to Kennedy fighting with Willow about why she's keeping her away from Buffy, is she ashamed of her?
We find out Kennedy sort of died once for Willow, and that Will went away for 6-months to presumably learn naughty things from snake goddess. More on that in the Willow one-shot.
Willow says it's not about shame, but when she saw Warren again, she realized it was about Tara. Her and Tara were happy when Buffy died. And so was Buffy. But Willow brought her back anyway, and that led to Tara's death. She's talking both to Kennedy in the flashback and Buffy in reality now. "I chose to put Tara in a bullet's path. I chose you (Buffy) over her." She can't do that again.
Sephrilian pops back up with his faces. He says all of them are there for you to see, but humans hide so many of their own. Buffy and Willow can't look at each other now. Buffy is so not in the mood for Sephrilian to gloat about welcoming the coming war or threatening to expose their weaknesses to other demons. Neither is Willow. Buffy takes the fire Willow gives her and uses it to slay Sephrilian. The place explodes. Robin keeps shielded. She's glad to have some time off, and she doesn't remember what happened there. Apparently it was only a projection of her, so their secrets are safely hidden.
Buffy, looking sad, calls what happened demons playing games. Will looks guilty. They head off separately.
Man, that's rough. I get Willow's point, but poor Buffy. She didn't ask for, well, any of that. Harsh.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Jacob-inspired musing material
Jacob wisdom from recap of True Blood finale (http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/true_blood/and_when_i_die-1.php?page=17):
"...all other things being equal -- if Tara were out of the picture and Sookie had just killed Debbie on her own, let's start there -- then you are looking at a particular story, which is that when you choose to deviate from the norm, when you go it alone, or queer, or however you're going to do it, even just unmarried, that decision cuts both ways. Yes, you get to be free and true to yourself, but also, you have opted out of the game and can't expect validation from the game.
"...all other things being equal -- if Tara were out of the picture and Sookie had just killed Debbie on her own, let's start there -- then you are looking at a particular story, which is that when you choose to deviate from the norm, when you go it alone, or queer, or however you're going to do it, even just unmarried, that decision cuts both ways. Yes, you get to be free and true to yourself, but also, you have opted out of the game and can't expect validation from the game.
As Jessica's learning, you can either be a sex warrior gender revolutionary or a socially validated Good Girl, but you can't have both. And you can't flip back and forth between Sexy Faery You and Nice Christian You, not forever. You have to become something that is both. It is a trade-off. A wonderful, powerful, scary-as-hell trade-off.
"And I think for whatever reason, at this time in our culture, we've fallen into a lazy lull of somehow feeling owed something, in this way. That instead of acknowledging that living by our own lights and being true to ourselves might have a cost, we manage to either conform or do it half-assed and then whine about it later. "All I did was act like a slut and then you called me a slut" is not a well-formed sentence or valid complaint. "All I did was act like a slut, a word with zero meaning or power over me" is a well-formed sentence, and allows at least for the possibility that life is an unfair place for grownups and crybabies alike.
"As I said, it gets twisted by the fact that Tara died in the middle of it, but if you follow just the thread of Mine, His, Hers, it's a pretty complicated idea. "Why can't you both be Mine" is a meaningless question, because "Mine" isn't just about feelings -- it's about facts, and death, and danger. But to rebel against this idea that "You have to be His or you won't be at all," that can't possibly be a bad thing either, right?
"I think this is what it looks like, all this brain matter all over the kitchen. I think if you're willing to risk the danger of the real world, and be a complete person, the first thing that's gotta go is your fear of being the bad guy. Because it's not like Sookie killing a person in self-defense is really all that different from Sookie having one of her boyfriends take care of it for her, which is what you're really saying when you say Mine: Kill those that threaten me, so I don't have to get my hands dirty.
"Our mistake lies in thinking that grace attends any more to purity than to experience. But that's just nostalgia too: Because now is difficult to deal with at any given time, the past was always easier and kinder and clearer and purer. And that is imaginary, and reactionary, and gross, and scary. Especially when you apply it to yourself, which shouldn't be a show for other people anyway. Because the truth is, nobody lives that way.
"Nobody stays clean. We weren't designed for that. When your hands get dirty, all you have to do is wash them."
This is why I read his recaps; I always get things to mull over from his way of saying things that is so different from how I would say them but still meaningful to the things I think about. That dissonance is invigorating and extremely helpful.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Today
She didn’t always stop to take a look around the world. She guessed few people do. After all, we’re all so busy living our lives, thinking through our next mood, worrying about the immediate physical area around us, it’s amazing we see anything of the outer world.
Sometimes she would look up and realize that what she thought was around her actually looked totally different than the mental image she had assumed. Like the background desktop picture, overly simplified and bland, suddenly became uneven and pixelated and full of specifics, not all of which went together. The necessary blur. If we were to spend the time necessary to really see everything around us, we would sit for hours at the base of a tree, enraptured by its patterns.
But today was different, today she wanted to remember everything, to notice everything, and not let the blurriness take over her vision. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.
It wasn’t a special day really. Not her birthday or the day she fell in love. She didn’t get a promotion or win a prize or pass a test. And it wasn’t the worst of times either. No big personal breakup or national tragedy to live in infamy. She didn’t feel any better or worse than usual. And she wasn’t about to die. Nothing at all that dramatic. It was just a day.
It was the day she decided to make important instead, and thinking makes it so. Right?
Okay. So really it was just like any other day, except the desperation was upon her. It hit at different times, but often with no rhyme or reason. Just every once in a while she’d wake up and start to think a little too deeply about life, the universe and everything. If the normal course of affairs was to charge ahead through the day to get to the part where all the necessary tasks were finished and she could just stop doing things, the necessary balancing was this intermittent need to think too much, to ask herself the same philosophical questions again and see if her answers had changed or evolved.
Sometimes it manifested itself as depression and even despair about the lack of fill-in-the-blank of her life. Sometimes it was not so dark, just a yearning for something she suspected was universal and therefore unexceptional. And then there were times when it was an active force, a flowering of creativity and a small rebirth. Those were the good times.
That’s what she felt now, this desire to foster the creative parts of herself that got so little attention. The actual need to act, to emit, to do something besides just taking things in. The feeling that maybe there was something she could put into the world that would be new, for her at least.
Of course, how does she go from wanting to create something to the idea to look closely at stuff? Isn’t that just more letting things affect her?
Never mind that though. It’s not about getting bogged down in the details. In order to act in the world, she has to be open to the world. That’s what it’s about. Yes, she normally feels a bit like a black hole, sucking in knowledge and images and ideas from the world around, synthesizing them inside her, and then integrating them into herself in a new form. But isn’t the problem that that’s the first few steps of art? It’s not that that process is the problem; it’s that she seldom goes beyond that process, to take what was created inside her and find a way to put it out in the world for others to see. She feels more like a rich person fighting the inheritance tax. She made her riches within the economic system, but doesn’t want to put any of it back into the system to keep it alive.
She wonders if an economic analogy is really the place to go to for this idea of artistic expression and the passing on of knowledge, keeping the intellectual and artistic legacy of culture alive. But it’s a recurring thought process, one of the ones that can turn dark sometimes in her thoughts. It goes along with the idea of what is a responsible citizen and what do we owe the future. That those get tangled into a mess of guilt and disappointment and sense of failure is not what she wants to allude to now. This is a more selfish question right now.
By wanting to look around at the world, be open to the world in a dynamic way, she wants to create a dialog. And of course that’s the problem. Talking is not her strong suit at all. She’s much better at listening than speaking. The ideas she forms in her head when listening to others, when reading, when watching entertainment, when viewing a waterfall, those all stay inside. When she wants to articulate what anything means to her, nothing comprehensible comes out. At best, she can explain how she understands something or recognize how something affects her state of mind or emotion, but meaning is not forthcoming.
It’s not about not being able to communicate. She has a good vocabulary and speaks clearly, using words correctly. The problem is inside. If she doesn’t know what something means to her, she can’t say it. She thinks that a copout and not really true though. For with many things she does know what they mean to her, and in her mind, she will discourse at great length many arguments about why something means this or that or affects her this way. It keeps her awake at night, this obsessive thinking through of what something means or why she feels the way she does about it.
But it’s so unstructured. It’s all over the place, repetitive, arguments incomplete and out of order. So is this seeming inability to put even words out into the world, the tools she’s most familiar and versatile with, simply a lack of discipline? Of not wanting to take the time to write it out, organize it, rewrite it, edit it until a cohesive piece is created that makes sense and is even persuasive or interesting? She doesn’t believe that’s it.
What it is is a deep and unrelenting belief that what she has to say does not matter. That’s really it. It’s not even a self-hate kind of deal, it’s simply a realistic view of her place in the world and its meaninglessness. And she can’t seem to make herself find that liberating or unimportant. It’s just words, words, as Hamlet would say, with that same inflection. There’s so many words out there. Everywhere you look, someone is saying something, writing something; it’s an incredible din of blather. How much of it means anything?
When she was young, the block was a feeling of fakeness. Writing about the world, in fact or fiction, was pretending a knowledge she didn’t have yet. It would come with experience, with living. It felt useless to try to write anything that hadn’t been said before and better, by people who knew so much more than she did.
Now it’s different. She realizes this was a lie she told herself out of cowardice. We all know something; we all live in this world. And it can’t be about becoming Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf. That’s either a pathetic excuse not to write or it’s some sort of arrogance. Like what she would write has so much importance attached to it, so much weight.
Now nothing has weight. Every day on Twitter, 140 characters are posted how many times a second? There’s how many blog posts online? So many of them saying the same things over and over. And even as we decry the end of publishing as we know it, how many books in whatever form are being put out there? And magazines and zines and songs and poems and essays and articles and advertisements and obituaries and sermons and debates and political speeches and laws and parking tickets and bumper stickers and graffiti, how much of that is produced and replicated every single day? Does she want to add to the din? Is it possible to be heard, should she finally decide she wants someone to listen?
But sometimes she almost gets it, almost understands the place her expression could live in between the ideas of what its weight would be and whether that matters and to whom. She feels like she’s almost beyond the pretension and the hopelessness and the false pretention and hidden hopefulness; maybe that’s just wisdom finally putting in its two cents. But shouldn’t wisdom feel more wise? More sure and strong? Shouldn’t wisdom be able to be put into words?
Most days she’s stuck on Angel’s epiphany, “If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.” If nothing we write matters, then all that matters is what we write. She doesn’t know if that makes sense at all. It almost feels right.
Today has moved on an hour now, and she’s not necessarily made it a special day after all. But she opened the file, she put the thoughts in her head on the blank paper facsimile in front of her, and she posted it online, a drop of water in the vast sea of internet babble. And she felt good.
Sometimes she would look up and realize that what she thought was around her actually looked totally different than the mental image she had assumed. Like the background desktop picture, overly simplified and bland, suddenly became uneven and pixelated and full of specifics, not all of which went together. The necessary blur. If we were to spend the time necessary to really see everything around us, we would sit for hours at the base of a tree, enraptured by its patterns.
But today was different, today she wanted to remember everything, to notice everything, and not let the blurriness take over her vision. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.
It wasn’t a special day really. Not her birthday or the day she fell in love. She didn’t get a promotion or win a prize or pass a test. And it wasn’t the worst of times either. No big personal breakup or national tragedy to live in infamy. She didn’t feel any better or worse than usual. And she wasn’t about to die. Nothing at all that dramatic. It was just a day.
It was the day she decided to make important instead, and thinking makes it so. Right?
Okay. So really it was just like any other day, except the desperation was upon her. It hit at different times, but often with no rhyme or reason. Just every once in a while she’d wake up and start to think a little too deeply about life, the universe and everything. If the normal course of affairs was to charge ahead through the day to get to the part where all the necessary tasks were finished and she could just stop doing things, the necessary balancing was this intermittent need to think too much, to ask herself the same philosophical questions again and see if her answers had changed or evolved.
Sometimes it manifested itself as depression and even despair about the lack of fill-in-the-blank of her life. Sometimes it was not so dark, just a yearning for something she suspected was universal and therefore unexceptional. And then there were times when it was an active force, a flowering of creativity and a small rebirth. Those were the good times.
That’s what she felt now, this desire to foster the creative parts of herself that got so little attention. The actual need to act, to emit, to do something besides just taking things in. The feeling that maybe there was something she could put into the world that would be new, for her at least.
Of course, how does she go from wanting to create something to the idea to look closely at stuff? Isn’t that just more letting things affect her?
Never mind that though. It’s not about getting bogged down in the details. In order to act in the world, she has to be open to the world. That’s what it’s about. Yes, she normally feels a bit like a black hole, sucking in knowledge and images and ideas from the world around, synthesizing them inside her, and then integrating them into herself in a new form. But isn’t the problem that that’s the first few steps of art? It’s not that that process is the problem; it’s that she seldom goes beyond that process, to take what was created inside her and find a way to put it out in the world for others to see. She feels more like a rich person fighting the inheritance tax. She made her riches within the economic system, but doesn’t want to put any of it back into the system to keep it alive.
She wonders if an economic analogy is really the place to go to for this idea of artistic expression and the passing on of knowledge, keeping the intellectual and artistic legacy of culture alive. But it’s a recurring thought process, one of the ones that can turn dark sometimes in her thoughts. It goes along with the idea of what is a responsible citizen and what do we owe the future. That those get tangled into a mess of guilt and disappointment and sense of failure is not what she wants to allude to now. This is a more selfish question right now.
By wanting to look around at the world, be open to the world in a dynamic way, she wants to create a dialog. And of course that’s the problem. Talking is not her strong suit at all. She’s much better at listening than speaking. The ideas she forms in her head when listening to others, when reading, when watching entertainment, when viewing a waterfall, those all stay inside. When she wants to articulate what anything means to her, nothing comprehensible comes out. At best, she can explain how she understands something or recognize how something affects her state of mind or emotion, but meaning is not forthcoming.
It’s not about not being able to communicate. She has a good vocabulary and speaks clearly, using words correctly. The problem is inside. If she doesn’t know what something means to her, she can’t say it. She thinks that a copout and not really true though. For with many things she does know what they mean to her, and in her mind, she will discourse at great length many arguments about why something means this or that or affects her this way. It keeps her awake at night, this obsessive thinking through of what something means or why she feels the way she does about it.
But it’s so unstructured. It’s all over the place, repetitive, arguments incomplete and out of order. So is this seeming inability to put even words out into the world, the tools she’s most familiar and versatile with, simply a lack of discipline? Of not wanting to take the time to write it out, organize it, rewrite it, edit it until a cohesive piece is created that makes sense and is even persuasive or interesting? She doesn’t believe that’s it.
What it is is a deep and unrelenting belief that what she has to say does not matter. That’s really it. It’s not even a self-hate kind of deal, it’s simply a realistic view of her place in the world and its meaninglessness. And she can’t seem to make herself find that liberating or unimportant. It’s just words, words, as Hamlet would say, with that same inflection. There’s so many words out there. Everywhere you look, someone is saying something, writing something; it’s an incredible din of blather. How much of it means anything?
When she was young, the block was a feeling of fakeness. Writing about the world, in fact or fiction, was pretending a knowledge she didn’t have yet. It would come with experience, with living. It felt useless to try to write anything that hadn’t been said before and better, by people who knew so much more than she did.
Now it’s different. She realizes this was a lie she told herself out of cowardice. We all know something; we all live in this world. And it can’t be about becoming Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf. That’s either a pathetic excuse not to write or it’s some sort of arrogance. Like what she would write has so much importance attached to it, so much weight.
Now nothing has weight. Every day on Twitter, 140 characters are posted how many times a second? There’s how many blog posts online? So many of them saying the same things over and over. And even as we decry the end of publishing as we know it, how many books in whatever form are being put out there? And magazines and zines and songs and poems and essays and articles and advertisements and obituaries and sermons and debates and political speeches and laws and parking tickets and bumper stickers and graffiti, how much of that is produced and replicated every single day? Does she want to add to the din? Is it possible to be heard, should she finally decide she wants someone to listen?
But sometimes she almost gets it, almost understands the place her expression could live in between the ideas of what its weight would be and whether that matters and to whom. She feels like she’s almost beyond the pretension and the hopelessness and the false pretention and hidden hopefulness; maybe that’s just wisdom finally putting in its two cents. But shouldn’t wisdom feel more wise? More sure and strong? Shouldn’t wisdom be able to be put into words?
Most days she’s stuck on Angel’s epiphany, “If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.” If nothing we write matters, then all that matters is what we write. She doesn’t know if that makes sense at all. It almost feels right.
Today has moved on an hour now, and she’s not necessarily made it a special day after all. But she opened the file, she put the thoughts in her head on the blank paper facsimile in front of her, and she posted it online, a drop of water in the vast sea of internet babble. And she felt good.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Angel After the Fall - Issue #2 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY THRU SEASON 8, ANGEL THRU SEASON 5
Chapter two starts with Angel on his way to Santa Monica. It's the next 'evening.' He tells Wes about killing Burge's son last night. Wes offers to accompany him, but Angel's not feeling it. Wesley says he'll stay behind and "haunt the fort."
Angel feels bad about turning down Wes's companionship, but he just doesn't know where his loyalties lie, and he needs to warn Connor about the coming war. He figures Burge will want to take revenge by going after what Angel cares about most.
Nina is all hostile at first, and Angel calls her his ex, but then she gets all "let's eat bloody things together" on him. Seriously, she needs some animal tranks. But Connor is not there. He's in Westwood, looking into the whole KR'PH thing.
In Westwood, a huge, roiling mess of a dominance battle is going on between the would-be demon lords, and there's a bunch of humans caught in the crossfire. Angel jumps into the fight to save them, thinking about how he let Connor down with the whole getting him stuck in hell thing. Angel needs to get over it.
Connor joins in the fight and they cover each other's backs and talk. Angel tells him the score and he gets it immediately. He's still cool Connor of season 5, as far as I can tell. Awesome. He asks Angel where he's been and why he's being all stupid re above. They stop fighting to talk and are surrounded. Luckily Gwen comes in at this point and fries the demon horde. She wants them to check out the crime scene with her because there's a new player in town and "he's out for blood."
Cut to Gunn, the vampire. SO messed up that he would become what he hates most. He's got George on a bed surrounded by some kind of blood-drawn mystical trap. This is where we hear George's name. Gunn tells him that he's one of the good guys. George is understandably hesitant to acknowledge that to be true. "Trust the vampire who kidnapped me, done." Gunn doesn't like being called a vampire.
We find, in what will continue to be a theme with the last standers, that Gunn blames Angel for his situation. Says he was a fool to ever trust a vampire, claims he was getting vamped while Angel was playing "dragon-whisperer." But he says even with this "disease" he's going to do what's right. Then he starts amping up into a rant about Angel thinking he's so good because of his soul, but maybe he never was that great of a man anyway, and then "he gives up. On everything. On us. But it's fine." Then he just whales on poor George while shouting that he's going to save everyone. Okay. Anger issues much? Talk about prior traits being amplified when vamped.
When he says Angel gave up on everything, on us, I wonder if he's referring to something specific that happened after the battle. Maybe Angel saw what happened to Gunn and couldn't stake him, but also told him to get lost because he was a vampire? I guess we'll find out more later. I've read some of this already, but I don't remember much.
Gunn apologizes for beating the crud out of George, then leaves him, carrying the yellow orb he stole from KR'PH. He walks into a room, tendrils seem to grab the orb and take it to something. What the hell? Looks like a group of demons stuck together, overflowing another bed (are they in a hotel too?) with treasures beneath them/it. I assume they're/it's alive because of the tendril, but what the hell it is, no clue. But Gunn's plan to save everyone must involve this monstrosity, and it definitely doesn't include Angel.
Angel, Gwen and Connor take in the scene. We find out the yellow thing is the Eye of Ramras. It's a token of power. It amplifies the power you have already, hence the George being able to force the gladiators to fight moment from last issue. And that's how a low level demon like KR'PH was able to rise so high. He was on Angel's to-do list, but someone beat him to it. Gwen says it was vamps, judging by all the dead girls with ruptured necks. Although I don't know that they've shown anyone but Gunn being a vampire in his crew. Wouldn't think he'd work with vampires. He may have convinced some humans to join him. IDK.
Angel says he doesn't know who did this, but he lies. Apparently the fact that it's a vampire combined with the (we soon find out) Sanskrit drawings on the arena wall make him think he has the answer. He sends Connor off to find his dragon, whose name we aren't supposed to be able to make out yet, and heads to Beverly Hills...
...to find Spike! Or is it Hugh Hefner? He's in a big estate, surrounded by greenery, fountains of some sort of blood or demon brew, and bikini babes, of both human and demon persuasions. He's lounging about in silk pajamas, on some sort of plush throne-like chair, being waited on as he tells a highly biased version of the season 5 ending battle. It involves himself as hero and Angel as a blubbering coward.
He picked a bad time to tell this story though, as Angel makes an appearance. One of Spike's girls, Spider, says Angel reeks of magic, so I guess she's more than human. Angel tries to talk to Spike, but a bodybuilding type lady bars his path and says no one touches the Lord of Beverly Hills. Angel says, "it's officially hell."
Spike is not happy to see Angel either, claiming he rose from the ranks of "prisoner to prisoner with benefits to protector back to prisoner with benefits to Lord." And he doesn't want to lose that because of Angel. He's given up on the good fight and is just enjoying his creature comforts here. Bad Spike. Seriously. They get into an argument. Spike joins the ranks of those who blame Angel for the choices they all agreed to. Bad Spike.
Angel gets the upper hand since Spike is drunk (he says). I think he might just be soft at this point. Angel tells Spike a demon lord was killed by something that drained people's blood, and the inscription on the wall was in Sanskrit, so where is she? Ohh. I get it now. Time for our last hero to join the fun.
Illyria: "Your presence is irritating my pet. Perhaps your dismemberment will soothe him." The end.
Angel feels bad about turning down Wes's companionship, but he just doesn't know where his loyalties lie, and he needs to warn Connor about the coming war. He figures Burge will want to take revenge by going after what Angel cares about most.
Nina is all hostile at first, and Angel calls her his ex, but then she gets all "let's eat bloody things together" on him. Seriously, she needs some animal tranks. But Connor is not there. He's in Westwood, looking into the whole KR'PH thing.
In Westwood, a huge, roiling mess of a dominance battle is going on between the would-be demon lords, and there's a bunch of humans caught in the crossfire. Angel jumps into the fight to save them, thinking about how he let Connor down with the whole getting him stuck in hell thing. Angel needs to get over it.
Connor joins in the fight and they cover each other's backs and talk. Angel tells him the score and he gets it immediately. He's still cool Connor of season 5, as far as I can tell. Awesome. He asks Angel where he's been and why he's being all stupid re above. They stop fighting to talk and are surrounded. Luckily Gwen comes in at this point and fries the demon horde. She wants them to check out the crime scene with her because there's a new player in town and "he's out for blood."
Cut to Gunn, the vampire. SO messed up that he would become what he hates most. He's got George on a bed surrounded by some kind of blood-drawn mystical trap. This is where we hear George's name. Gunn tells him that he's one of the good guys. George is understandably hesitant to acknowledge that to be true. "Trust the vampire who kidnapped me, done." Gunn doesn't like being called a vampire.
We find, in what will continue to be a theme with the last standers, that Gunn blames Angel for his situation. Says he was a fool to ever trust a vampire, claims he was getting vamped while Angel was playing "dragon-whisperer." But he says even with this "disease" he's going to do what's right. Then he starts amping up into a rant about Angel thinking he's so good because of his soul, but maybe he never was that great of a man anyway, and then "he gives up. On everything. On us. But it's fine." Then he just whales on poor George while shouting that he's going to save everyone. Okay. Anger issues much? Talk about prior traits being amplified when vamped.
When he says Angel gave up on everything, on us, I wonder if he's referring to something specific that happened after the battle. Maybe Angel saw what happened to Gunn and couldn't stake him, but also told him to get lost because he was a vampire? I guess we'll find out more later. I've read some of this already, but I don't remember much.
Gunn apologizes for beating the crud out of George, then leaves him, carrying the yellow orb he stole from KR'PH. He walks into a room, tendrils seem to grab the orb and take it to something. What the hell? Looks like a group of demons stuck together, overflowing another bed (are they in a hotel too?) with treasures beneath them/it. I assume they're/it's alive because of the tendril, but what the hell it is, no clue. But Gunn's plan to save everyone must involve this monstrosity, and it definitely doesn't include Angel.
Angel, Gwen and Connor take in the scene. We find out the yellow thing is the Eye of Ramras. It's a token of power. It amplifies the power you have already, hence the George being able to force the gladiators to fight moment from last issue. And that's how a low level demon like KR'PH was able to rise so high. He was on Angel's to-do list, but someone beat him to it. Gwen says it was vamps, judging by all the dead girls with ruptured necks. Although I don't know that they've shown anyone but Gunn being a vampire in his crew. Wouldn't think he'd work with vampires. He may have convinced some humans to join him. IDK.
Angel says he doesn't know who did this, but he lies. Apparently the fact that it's a vampire combined with the (we soon find out) Sanskrit drawings on the arena wall make him think he has the answer. He sends Connor off to find his dragon, whose name we aren't supposed to be able to make out yet, and heads to Beverly Hills...
...to find Spike! Or is it Hugh Hefner? He's in a big estate, surrounded by greenery, fountains of some sort of blood or demon brew, and bikini babes, of both human and demon persuasions. He's lounging about in silk pajamas, on some sort of plush throne-like chair, being waited on as he tells a highly biased version of the season 5 ending battle. It involves himself as hero and Angel as a blubbering coward.
He picked a bad time to tell this story though, as Angel makes an appearance. One of Spike's girls, Spider, says Angel reeks of magic, so I guess she's more than human. Angel tries to talk to Spike, but a bodybuilding type lady bars his path and says no one touches the Lord of Beverly Hills. Angel says, "it's officially hell."
Spike is not happy to see Angel either, claiming he rose from the ranks of "prisoner to prisoner with benefits to protector back to prisoner with benefits to Lord." And he doesn't want to lose that because of Angel. He's given up on the good fight and is just enjoying his creature comforts here. Bad Spike. Seriously. They get into an argument. Spike joins the ranks of those who blame Angel for the choices they all agreed to. Bad Spike.
Angel gets the upper hand since Spike is drunk (he says). I think he might just be soft at this point. Angel tells Spike a demon lord was killed by something that drained people's blood, and the inscription on the wall was in Sanskrit, so where is she? Ohh. I get it now. Time for our last hero to join the fun.
Illyria: "Your presence is irritating my pet. Perhaps your dismemberment will soothe him." The end.
Angel After the Fall - Issue #1 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY THRU SEASON 8, ANGEL THRU SEASON 5
Our first words reprise the beginning of Angel the series. "It all started with a girl." Only this girl is actually Fred, and Angel is giving us a voiceover recap of season 5 while he jumps in between some nasty looking demons and a threesome of humans. He tells us how he wanted to channel the evil resources of Wolfram and Hart (W&H) into something positive, how it was his worst choice ever, how it changed him, it killed Fred, and led to him taking a stand.
Which led to his current situation, which he characterizes as him trying to make up for that stand he took. As he fights, it looks like the demons get the upper hand, but then arrives The Dragon. The one last seen flying ahead of a demon army, coming down the streets of Los Angeles towards the alley where our four surviving heroes stood, wounded but ready to fight. Angel says he and the dragon realized neither of them wanted to work for W&H anymore, and they teamed up. The dragon takes out the rest of the demons here with little effort and a lot of flame.
Angel tells the human survivors to take his car and go to an address immediately. The woman, who was once a lawyer, asks him why this is happening, saying she didn't deserve it. Angel says he doesn't know, but tells us differently. And then we find out exactly what was the cost of Angel's last stand: Wolfram and Hart sent L.A. to hell.
After that, the demons divided up the city, and Angel was left to lick his wounds back at the W&H office. He's been headquartered there ever since. He returns there now, sending the dragon to the parking garage, reflecting on how it wasn't the worst punishment he could get from W&H. So it seems he's still waiting for the shoe to drop, to find out what else they have planned for him and why they kept him alive. And we have no news yet on the others, aside from Angel's comment that there were losses on both sides of the fight.
As Angel walks through the building, he's attacked by a demon, Burge, Lord of Downtown L.A., and his son. They're annoyed about Angel's having killed 6 of the kid's men. Burge wants Angel (and all) to respect the boundaries of his turf and not hunt within them. His son is just pissed Angel took out his guys and wants to kill him. As they're having this mostly one-sided conversation, someone asks if there's a problem. Shock number 2 of the story is here: Wesley!
Funny the one person we knew was dead would show up before we find out the fates of the ones left standing at the end of season 5. Apparently Wes is in the Lilah position now. His contract with W&H didn't end with his death, and they've brought him back to what? Watch over Angel? Run the L.A. office? Something else nefarious? We don't know yet.
At this point he argues for Angel's life to Burge, claiming that W&H don't condone his actions and will take away his TV privileges, but that he was left alive for a reason, and Burge would do well to leave him that way. "Angel's fate isn't up to you." Burge agrees to leave it for now, but won't abide any other attacks on his holdings or his men. Angel needs to stay inside tonight. His son isn't happy and tries to kill Wes, which doesn't work 'cause he's all ghostly now.
For some reason Angel has a stake in his hand at this point. Not sure why or if he had it on him or grabbed a piece of broken furniture. He gets nostalgic with it, but Wes doesn't follow. They talk about the night's 'rounds' and we cut to the address Angel gave the humans as a refuge.
Santa Monica. They approach a hotel, arguing whether they should have trusted the guy on the dragon. They enter to see a large group of people, humans and demons, all armed. Then the air turns electric as Gwen! enters the picture. As she appears in front of them, holding them in place with her juju, Nina! approaches from the rear, giving them a good smell. She's all feral and gross, and the lawyer asks if she's hungry or bi-curious when Nina gives her a lick. Apparently the sun and moon are both out all the time in this hell, and it's keeping the werewolves constantly in flux.
And then who would appear but Connor! He's running this place; calls the group his family.
Angel is getting his wounds tended to by a creepy Cronenbergian demon bug thing. Ew. He and Wes talk some more. It's obvious things are strained between them. Wes is being stoic but depressive. Angel doesn't trust him because of his contract with W&H. Angel tells Wes he didn't fight back against Burge because he knew it would escalate to fullout war with demons using human targets. So Angel's pretty much spent the last couple of months just saving small groups of humans under attack and sending them to Connor for protection.
He asks Wes if that's what W&H wants, but Wes says he doesn't know. Angel doesn't know whether to believe that or not. Wes says he would give anything to get out of his contract and move on, but knows no way to do it. So he says he wants Angel to stop being so gunshy about having damned the city to hell and start trying to take some control back before someone else does.
Cut to KR'PH, Lord of Westwood, Dark Overseer of Everything West of Beverly Hills. He's a creepy dude that looks like a skeleton covered with a blue protoplasm, with glowing red eyes and a glowing yellow globe in the center of his chest. He's in the UK-LA Sporting Field? -- some arena, surrounded by scantily-clad slave girls and demon bodyguards, trying for some human gladiator action. The humans are ex-cops and bouncers dressed vaguely like Roman gladiators. (Shout-out to DeKnight?) They're not excited to fight one another.
KR'PH tells the Splenden Beast beside him (looks like a giant, floating fish with hair) to brain-yell them into action. The fish claims to be a telepath, but he can't control other people. KR'PH uses his yellow globe to amp up the fish's power and tells him to do it or the humans will start dying. So the Splenden--look, we find out later his name is George, so let's go with that--George complies.
Then he senses others approaching the arena, angry others. We see a group of hooded figures approaching with weapons. They knock out George and fall upon the demons. KR'PH is fine at first, but as more of his bodyguards bite it, he starts shrieking about making a deal. Then we see who leads this band of merry men: Gunn! Yay, Gunn is alive! But surprising really.
He grabs the yellow globe from KR'PH's chest and the demon is down. "Chalk that up to a win for Team Gunn!" His teammates are all what? Apparently they were together before he came in and took over and then dressed them like his old gang. Anyway, the only ones besides them left alive now are the slave girls. Gunn tells them it's okay, that the last couple of months were just a bad dream. Then he hits on them. Ew.
Back at W&H, Burge's son is outside with 6 humans. He's an eye for an eye type I guess. He's going to kill them while Angel watches, having agreed (in their minds) to stay in the building. Angel ruminates on what to do. Wes told him everything he has been doing is wrong, but Angel doesn't know if that's Wes talking or W&H. But ultimately he can't stand by and watch this happen, so he stakes Burge's son in the eye, killing him. And war is declared.
"Of course, this might be exactly what Wolfram & Hart wants. That's fine. Let them think they're in charge. Wolfram & Hart has taken away everything I had. Everyone I cared about. Everything I was. But that's how I'm going to win. They think they've changed me." As the last bit of voiceover occurs, we see Gunn, in full vamp face, killing all the slave girls. Man.
Which led to his current situation, which he characterizes as him trying to make up for that stand he took. As he fights, it looks like the demons get the upper hand, but then arrives The Dragon. The one last seen flying ahead of a demon army, coming down the streets of Los Angeles towards the alley where our four surviving heroes stood, wounded but ready to fight. Angel says he and the dragon realized neither of them wanted to work for W&H anymore, and they teamed up. The dragon takes out the rest of the demons here with little effort and a lot of flame.
Angel tells the human survivors to take his car and go to an address immediately. The woman, who was once a lawyer, asks him why this is happening, saying she didn't deserve it. Angel says he doesn't know, but tells us differently. And then we find out exactly what was the cost of Angel's last stand: Wolfram and Hart sent L.A. to hell.
After that, the demons divided up the city, and Angel was left to lick his wounds back at the W&H office. He's been headquartered there ever since. He returns there now, sending the dragon to the parking garage, reflecting on how it wasn't the worst punishment he could get from W&H. So it seems he's still waiting for the shoe to drop, to find out what else they have planned for him and why they kept him alive. And we have no news yet on the others, aside from Angel's comment that there were losses on both sides of the fight.
As Angel walks through the building, he's attacked by a demon, Burge, Lord of Downtown L.A., and his son. They're annoyed about Angel's having killed 6 of the kid's men. Burge wants Angel (and all) to respect the boundaries of his turf and not hunt within them. His son is just pissed Angel took out his guys and wants to kill him. As they're having this mostly one-sided conversation, someone asks if there's a problem. Shock number 2 of the story is here: Wesley!
Funny the one person we knew was dead would show up before we find out the fates of the ones left standing at the end of season 5. Apparently Wes is in the Lilah position now. His contract with W&H didn't end with his death, and they've brought him back to what? Watch over Angel? Run the L.A. office? Something else nefarious? We don't know yet.
At this point he argues for Angel's life to Burge, claiming that W&H don't condone his actions and will take away his TV privileges, but that he was left alive for a reason, and Burge would do well to leave him that way. "Angel's fate isn't up to you." Burge agrees to leave it for now, but won't abide any other attacks on his holdings or his men. Angel needs to stay inside tonight. His son isn't happy and tries to kill Wes, which doesn't work 'cause he's all ghostly now.
For some reason Angel has a stake in his hand at this point. Not sure why or if he had it on him or grabbed a piece of broken furniture. He gets nostalgic with it, but Wes doesn't follow. They talk about the night's 'rounds' and we cut to the address Angel gave the humans as a refuge.
Santa Monica. They approach a hotel, arguing whether they should have trusted the guy on the dragon. They enter to see a large group of people, humans and demons, all armed. Then the air turns electric as Gwen! enters the picture. As she appears in front of them, holding them in place with her juju, Nina! approaches from the rear, giving them a good smell. She's all feral and gross, and the lawyer asks if she's hungry or bi-curious when Nina gives her a lick. Apparently the sun and moon are both out all the time in this hell, and it's keeping the werewolves constantly in flux.
And then who would appear but Connor! He's running this place; calls the group his family.
Angel is getting his wounds tended to by a creepy Cronenbergian demon bug thing. Ew. He and Wes talk some more. It's obvious things are strained between them. Wes is being stoic but depressive. Angel doesn't trust him because of his contract with W&H. Angel tells Wes he didn't fight back against Burge because he knew it would escalate to fullout war with demons using human targets. So Angel's pretty much spent the last couple of months just saving small groups of humans under attack and sending them to Connor for protection.
He asks Wes if that's what W&H wants, but Wes says he doesn't know. Angel doesn't know whether to believe that or not. Wes says he would give anything to get out of his contract and move on, but knows no way to do it. So he says he wants Angel to stop being so gunshy about having damned the city to hell and start trying to take some control back before someone else does.
Cut to KR'PH, Lord of Westwood, Dark Overseer of Everything West of Beverly Hills. He's a creepy dude that looks like a skeleton covered with a blue protoplasm, with glowing red eyes and a glowing yellow globe in the center of his chest. He's in the UK-LA Sporting Field? -- some arena, surrounded by scantily-clad slave girls and demon bodyguards, trying for some human gladiator action. The humans are ex-cops and bouncers dressed vaguely like Roman gladiators. (Shout-out to DeKnight?) They're not excited to fight one another.
KR'PH tells the Splenden Beast beside him (looks like a giant, floating fish with hair) to brain-yell them into action. The fish claims to be a telepath, but he can't control other people. KR'PH uses his yellow globe to amp up the fish's power and tells him to do it or the humans will start dying. So the Splenden--look, we find out later his name is George, so let's go with that--George complies.
Then he senses others approaching the arena, angry others. We see a group of hooded figures approaching with weapons. They knock out George and fall upon the demons. KR'PH is fine at first, but as more of his bodyguards bite it, he starts shrieking about making a deal. Then we see who leads this band of merry men: Gunn! Yay, Gunn is alive! But surprising really.
He grabs the yellow globe from KR'PH's chest and the demon is down. "Chalk that up to a win for Team Gunn!" His teammates are all what? Apparently they were together before he came in and took over and then dressed them like his old gang. Anyway, the only ones besides them left alive now are the slave girls. Gunn tells them it's okay, that the last couple of months were just a bad dream. Then he hits on them. Ew.
Back at W&H, Burge's son is outside with 6 humans. He's an eye for an eye type I guess. He's going to kill them while Angel watches, having agreed (in their minds) to stay in the building. Angel ruminates on what to do. Wes told him everything he has been doing is wrong, but Angel doesn't know if that's Wes talking or W&H. But ultimately he can't stand by and watch this happen, so he stakes Burge's son in the eye, killing him. And war is declared.
"Of course, this might be exactly what Wolfram & Hart wants. That's fine. Let them think they're in charge. Wolfram & Hart has taken away everything I had. Everyone I cared about. Everything I was. But that's how I'm going to win. They think they've changed me." As the last bit of voiceover occurs, we see Gunn, in full vamp face, killing all the slave girls. Man.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #9 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
No Future for You Part 4.
We start with Faith thinking about and flashing back to Mayor Wilkins. She knows now that he was the evil scumbag everyone thought he was, but she can't feel it. It didn't feel like he was exploiting her at the time and even now, so she gets how girls can get sucked into bad relationships like that. She's remembering him asking her to call him Richard, saying she's a daughter who would make him and his departed wife proud, and thanking her for helping him with his plan and making it fun. Faith thinks that it's hard to remember that time in her life and not feel loved. I would guess it's probably the only time in her life she can say she felt that way.
But anyway, she is under attack from Lady Genevieve right now. Gigi is feeling betrayed by Hope (heh), but doesn't kill her right away. They start a slayer conversation instead, meaning they fight, banter, and talk. Faith drops her accent, which is another betrayal, and kicks Gigi into the greenhouse. They fight there amid the plants and statuary, under the eyes of a sculpted girl who looks not a little like Buffy. Nice symbolism of the other slayers being always under Buffy's shadow.
After getting past the betrayal and the America vs. Britain stuff that feels frankly a little tired, they get on the subject of Roden. It's obvious that's what Faith wants to talk about, after her thoughts on the Mayor.
Cut to Giles and Trafalgar, as the dwarf's special hammer gets eaten by Roden's magic. He says they'll need darker magic than his to get past the defenses. Cue Willow calling Giles' phone.
Except it's not Willow, it's Buffy, and she's still in a foul mood. "You're working with her and you didn't even tell me?" I wonder if something happened after season 7 and before season 8 between Buffy and Faith. Maybe Faith's starting out in Cleveland was less a tactical move and more a personal one, on either her part or Buffy's. Because it seems Buffy is more bent out of shape than at least I would expect after their End of Days reconciliation. But at any rate...
Giles is wanting Willow's help to get to Faith, but Buffy fills him in on what just happened to her last issue. Now he's really worried that Faith is still stuck there. Buffy won't put Willow on until he explains himself. And he refuses. See, this is where Giles has gotten annoying lately. He used to be so good at giving Buffy support when she needed it, letting her handle things when she could, helping her from the background but following her lead. But now, he goes behind her back to do what's best for her without telling her he's doing it (LMPTM) and tries to "fix" these problems in her slayerdom without her being aware they exist. I know it's just more of the killing Ben thing, where he doesn't think heroes should have to deal with the dirty stuff, but it's just not right in this situation. He tells her to be the leader and make the decisions, then he keeps information from her that she needs to lead. Argh!
Anyway, Buffy is hurt by his refusal, and she bails, leaving Will the phone, to go have some, as Xander puts it, alone time. "What other kind is there?" Well, Buff, that's a bit more self-pitying than I think is warranted at this point, even after what I said previously, but I get it. I do appreciate that Buffy, Giles, Faith and the others are still strong, complex and nuanced characters in the comics.
Back to Faith and Gigi fighting and arguing over Roden, who is conspicuously absent from this fight. Gigi says he trusts her to win and he adores her. Faith doesn't try to argue that point because maybe he does, but she knows he's using her too. She tells Gigi, "Part of you knows something ain't right...'cause you've never deserved to be loved by anybody." Hey, slayers fighting each other are always fighting themselves, I guess.
Gigi keeps monologuing about blood and birthrights, saying the nightmares will die when she kills the rest of "your" kind, and Faith kicks her hard, telling her to "wake the #^%* up." Sad really. The slayer dreams can fill you with hope that you can fight the darkness, or they can fill you with dread at the amount of darkness out there. Either way, it's a lot to handle when it just hits you from the blue. For every nameless slayer pretending to be Buffy, you get another like Gigi. It has always been that way for the slayer, but with so many slayers now, with the potential for sisterhood and comradery, one could hope it wouldn't be so devastating. Did Buffy and her cohorts not have time to deal with this, or did they make a mistake to concentrate on building defenses and training the actual recruits before finding the rest?
Faith's kick sends Gigi flying back towards a tree that has her double-bladed battleax stuck in it, so Faith sees it coming when Gigi lands against the ax and dies.
Roden steps in now to claim the victor. He says his orders were to "train the slayer to end all slayers" and obviously now Faith could play that role. (Who plays it at the end of the season?) Faith is so not into Roden's deal, but he is observant and he offers her the chance to make Buffy go away forever. He holds up a guidebook with the Twilight symbol on it and says it will show them the way to end Buffy. Faith takes the book and nails him with it.
Roden magicks her across the greenhouse and then calls up a fist from the earth to squeeze her to death, saying, "Girls like you are supposed to shuffle off this mortal coil when you're young and fresh." That kind of echoes the Beljoxa's Eye thing about Buffy's resurrection and the balance of the world.
As Faith is dying, she sees Giles coming up behind Roden. Willow must have broken through. Giles shoves some gardening shears into Roden's back, releasing Faith. Roden magicks Giles and calls him the kennel master and says all his bitches will die. Lovely. Faith tosses Giles the Twilight book, and he uses it to create a containment field not around, but within Roden. Grossness ensues. And it's over.
Later, in Giles' flat, Faith is wearing a Lil' Devil T-shirt! They share a moment about how depressing it is to do wetworks, and Giles acknowledges that he generally tries to keep that side of himself from his charges (meaning Buffy). But Faith has seen it and understands. They both can feel the bond they have now.
Giles tries to give her the passport and 'discharge' they agreed upon in the beginning, but she refuses. This is cool. After all that happened with Gigi, she wants to find girls like her who haven't gone too far from redemption and "help walk a few bad girls back from the brink." Awesome. I think it means she's taken the next step, making the change that Angel made in season 3 Buffy, from regretting his past actions and trying not to make the same mistakes to actively trying to help others. Faith had already rededicated herself to fighting evil, but other than Angel in season 4 of Angel, she hadn't made it personal, about saving other people rather than focusing on herself.
Giles, having possibly burnt his last bridge with Buffy and wanting to continue dealing with the slayer situation, asks if he can join her. He wants to be not a mentor, but a partner. On those terms, and after hearing he and Buffy aren't on speaking terms, Faith agrees. Maybe these crazy slayer/watcher kids can make it work. (Not that way. Gross.)
Epilogue. A female lieutenant, Molter, has come to talk to Twilight. He's all in costume (is this the first time we see him?) and floating in the air. She tells him his plan failed and Summers lives. He claims Roden and Genevieve were actually the targets. Molter thought they were his soldiers. Twilight says this was about manipulating their enemies into fighting each other. The goal apparently is "bringing the age of magic to a close." Molter still doesn't think it's a victory because Buffy is still out there, but Twilight says she can have the day, "night falls soon enough."
EVEN MORE SPOILERS
Okay. So first off, nice calling her Summers and talking about her having the day. They're not the same, but related by sunlight. Second, we know Twilight is Angel. So it seems he planned for Buffy to learn of Roden and Gigi's threat and neutralize it, all while having his minions think he's aiming for her. His general plan has been supposedly to gather all of Buffy's enemies in one place to make it easier to deal with them, make them visible and fightable, as opposed to scattered and hard to find and predict. So this fits I guess. He must have recruited Roden as a potential enemy, set him up to find the most dangerous anti-Buffy slayer and thereby bring her to his and then Buffy's attention by aiming her right at Buffy.
I guess it hangs together. Still not sure it's a great plan. But it's interesting to see the parallels with what Giles was doing. He too was trying to help Buffy in ways he thought she wouldn't approve of to make things ultimately better for her. Do they think they're cleaning up her mess? The problem is that she doesn't know what is happening around her. Maybe she can't handle all this herself, but she should be able to delegate to her chosen lieutenants knowingly, rather than having them take on those tasks in total obscurity. I think, anyway.
But it is interesting that Twilight's goal is to end the age of magic. That is what happens at the end. Was it really Angel's goal all along or did he just think it would come to that? Or the opposite? I can't remember all of how the end went down, that's part of the reason for my reread, but I'll be watching for clues as I go.
We start with Faith thinking about and flashing back to Mayor Wilkins. She knows now that he was the evil scumbag everyone thought he was, but she can't feel it. It didn't feel like he was exploiting her at the time and even now, so she gets how girls can get sucked into bad relationships like that. She's remembering him asking her to call him Richard, saying she's a daughter who would make him and his departed wife proud, and thanking her for helping him with his plan and making it fun. Faith thinks that it's hard to remember that time in her life and not feel loved. I would guess it's probably the only time in her life she can say she felt that way.
But anyway, she is under attack from Lady Genevieve right now. Gigi is feeling betrayed by Hope (heh), but doesn't kill her right away. They start a slayer conversation instead, meaning they fight, banter, and talk. Faith drops her accent, which is another betrayal, and kicks Gigi into the greenhouse. They fight there amid the plants and statuary, under the eyes of a sculpted girl who looks not a little like Buffy. Nice symbolism of the other slayers being always under Buffy's shadow.
After getting past the betrayal and the America vs. Britain stuff that feels frankly a little tired, they get on the subject of Roden. It's obvious that's what Faith wants to talk about, after her thoughts on the Mayor.
Cut to Giles and Trafalgar, as the dwarf's special hammer gets eaten by Roden's magic. He says they'll need darker magic than his to get past the defenses. Cue Willow calling Giles' phone.
Except it's not Willow, it's Buffy, and she's still in a foul mood. "You're working with her and you didn't even tell me?" I wonder if something happened after season 7 and before season 8 between Buffy and Faith. Maybe Faith's starting out in Cleveland was less a tactical move and more a personal one, on either her part or Buffy's. Because it seems Buffy is more bent out of shape than at least I would expect after their End of Days reconciliation. But at any rate...
Giles is wanting Willow's help to get to Faith, but Buffy fills him in on what just happened to her last issue. Now he's really worried that Faith is still stuck there. Buffy won't put Willow on until he explains himself. And he refuses. See, this is where Giles has gotten annoying lately. He used to be so good at giving Buffy support when she needed it, letting her handle things when she could, helping her from the background but following her lead. But now, he goes behind her back to do what's best for her without telling her he's doing it (LMPTM) and tries to "fix" these problems in her slayerdom without her being aware they exist. I know it's just more of the killing Ben thing, where he doesn't think heroes should have to deal with the dirty stuff, but it's just not right in this situation. He tells her to be the leader and make the decisions, then he keeps information from her that she needs to lead. Argh!
Anyway, Buffy is hurt by his refusal, and she bails, leaving Will the phone, to go have some, as Xander puts it, alone time. "What other kind is there?" Well, Buff, that's a bit more self-pitying than I think is warranted at this point, even after what I said previously, but I get it. I do appreciate that Buffy, Giles, Faith and the others are still strong, complex and nuanced characters in the comics.
Back to Faith and Gigi fighting and arguing over Roden, who is conspicuously absent from this fight. Gigi says he trusts her to win and he adores her. Faith doesn't try to argue that point because maybe he does, but she knows he's using her too. She tells Gigi, "Part of you knows something ain't right...'cause you've never deserved to be loved by anybody." Hey, slayers fighting each other are always fighting themselves, I guess.
Gigi keeps monologuing about blood and birthrights, saying the nightmares will die when she kills the rest of "your" kind, and Faith kicks her hard, telling her to "wake the #^%* up." Sad really. The slayer dreams can fill you with hope that you can fight the darkness, or they can fill you with dread at the amount of darkness out there. Either way, it's a lot to handle when it just hits you from the blue. For every nameless slayer pretending to be Buffy, you get another like Gigi. It has always been that way for the slayer, but with so many slayers now, with the potential for sisterhood and comradery, one could hope it wouldn't be so devastating. Did Buffy and her cohorts not have time to deal with this, or did they make a mistake to concentrate on building defenses and training the actual recruits before finding the rest?
Faith's kick sends Gigi flying back towards a tree that has her double-bladed battleax stuck in it, so Faith sees it coming when Gigi lands against the ax and dies.
Roden steps in now to claim the victor. He says his orders were to "train the slayer to end all slayers" and obviously now Faith could play that role. (Who plays it at the end of the season?) Faith is so not into Roden's deal, but he is observant and he offers her the chance to make Buffy go away forever. He holds up a guidebook with the Twilight symbol on it and says it will show them the way to end Buffy. Faith takes the book and nails him with it.
Roden magicks her across the greenhouse and then calls up a fist from the earth to squeeze her to death, saying, "Girls like you are supposed to shuffle off this mortal coil when you're young and fresh." That kind of echoes the Beljoxa's Eye thing about Buffy's resurrection and the balance of the world.
As Faith is dying, she sees Giles coming up behind Roden. Willow must have broken through. Giles shoves some gardening shears into Roden's back, releasing Faith. Roden magicks Giles and calls him the kennel master and says all his bitches will die. Lovely. Faith tosses Giles the Twilight book, and he uses it to create a containment field not around, but within Roden. Grossness ensues. And it's over.
Later, in Giles' flat, Faith is wearing a Lil' Devil T-shirt! They share a moment about how depressing it is to do wetworks, and Giles acknowledges that he generally tries to keep that side of himself from his charges (meaning Buffy). But Faith has seen it and understands. They both can feel the bond they have now.
Giles tries to give her the passport and 'discharge' they agreed upon in the beginning, but she refuses. This is cool. After all that happened with Gigi, she wants to find girls like her who haven't gone too far from redemption and "help walk a few bad girls back from the brink." Awesome. I think it means she's taken the next step, making the change that Angel made in season 3 Buffy, from regretting his past actions and trying not to make the same mistakes to actively trying to help others. Faith had already rededicated herself to fighting evil, but other than Angel in season 4 of Angel, she hadn't made it personal, about saving other people rather than focusing on herself.
Giles, having possibly burnt his last bridge with Buffy and wanting to continue dealing with the slayer situation, asks if he can join her. He wants to be not a mentor, but a partner. On those terms, and after hearing he and Buffy aren't on speaking terms, Faith agrees. Maybe these crazy slayer/watcher kids can make it work. (Not that way. Gross.)
Epilogue. A female lieutenant, Molter, has come to talk to Twilight. He's all in costume (is this the first time we see him?) and floating in the air. She tells him his plan failed and Summers lives. He claims Roden and Genevieve were actually the targets. Molter thought they were his soldiers. Twilight says this was about manipulating their enemies into fighting each other. The goal apparently is "bringing the age of magic to a close." Molter still doesn't think it's a victory because Buffy is still out there, but Twilight says she can have the day, "night falls soon enough."
EVEN MORE SPOILERS
Okay. So first off, nice calling her Summers and talking about her having the day. They're not the same, but related by sunlight. Second, we know Twilight is Angel. So it seems he planned for Buffy to learn of Roden and Gigi's threat and neutralize it, all while having his minions think he's aiming for her. His general plan has been supposedly to gather all of Buffy's enemies in one place to make it easier to deal with them, make them visible and fightable, as opposed to scattered and hard to find and predict. So this fits I guess. He must have recruited Roden as a potential enemy, set him up to find the most dangerous anti-Buffy slayer and thereby bring her to his and then Buffy's attention by aiming her right at Buffy.
I guess it hangs together. Still not sure it's a great plan. But it's interesting to see the parallels with what Giles was doing. He too was trying to help Buffy in ways he thought she wouldn't approve of to make things ultimately better for her. Do they think they're cleaning up her mess? The problem is that she doesn't know what is happening around her. Maybe she can't handle all this herself, but she should be able to delegate to her chosen lieutenants knowingly, rather than having them take on those tasks in total obscurity. I think, anyway.
But it is interesting that Twilight's goal is to end the age of magic. That is what happens at the end. Was it really Angel's goal all along or did he just think it would come to that? Or the opposite? I can't remember all of how the end went down, that's part of the reason for my reread, but I'll be watching for clues as I go.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
An open letter to Jacob of TWOP in response to a Gossip Girl recap wherein I go on way too long about thoughts & questions I had while reading
**Author's Note**
This is a weird way to do this, but, A, I'm not going to bother Jacob with an email of this length, and, B, I did write it as if to him, and I'm not willing to do the work to redo the focus. I'm lazy. Deal with it, imaginary readers.
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"The definition of a genius is somebody that agrees with you. The definition of an asshole is somebody that doesn't. The definition of good art is art that somehow follows your precise personal instructions. The definition of bad art is anything administrated by somebody else, even somebody who knows what they're doing. The less important the issue, the louder the volume. This is what it's like to feel utterly powerless in your real life." -- Jacob Clifton, Gossip Girl 4x22 Recap.
Wow, what a bitch slap. I can only imagine the sheer shrillness of commentary that you're responding to, but I often try to fill in the blanks. I liked what you said above because I agree with it. See what I did there?
INTERWEBS AND FANDOM
It occurred to me recently, in a more complete fashion than ever prior, how much every opinion we form and express as a truism to others is really about ourselves, our views and our needs. Not that I didn't get that before, but it's a thought that bears revisiting. I was reading a comment (on the Buffy Rewatch I believe) where someone posted about how she has problems with Buffy (the character), but it seems like everyone else loves her so much they overlook her faults, and therefore the poster feels the need to point them out. What struck me about the comment was that it is almost word-for-word the exact opposite of how I feel. Meaning not only do I like the character, but to me it seems that people are always criticizing her or hating on her, so I feel the need to speak out in her defense all the time.
It really clicked over in my mind how subjective what we see on screen or read online is. Not only in the perceived biases of what we're seeing at the moment, but in what we choose to take notice of in general. Whether we're the kind of people that usually only take note of the things that speak positively to us (and I'm not sure those people are ever on the internet) or we always notice as ubiquitous the things that strike us negatively, those impressions are what stay with us to form the default atmosphere of our lives. To shift metaphors, the pictures we see on our cave wall are playing out behind a hazy curtain of unexamined ideas, with holes worn through by our obsessively picking at the curtain in a few key places allowing us to see small parts of the larger picture. Our favorite things and/or our pet peeves emerge picture-perfect while the rest of the image remains hidden behind that slightly opaque barrier. All the things we don't notice.
Like I said, none of this is new to me, but I think I'm beginning to understand it more now. It's not just seeing what you want to see, it's not just turning away from things you don't want to hear, it's our attempts to construct the world around us in the exact way we want it to be that blinds us to the world as it is and makes us try to force the world to conform to the way we imagine it. We don't always consciously decide what sources of light we want to turn our faces toward, but the choices we make almost without thinking become equally important to us because we believe it defines who we are; that's no small thing. And part of who we are is what we stand in opposition to.
I get why we do these things; I see myself do it too. I fully understand the need to define myself against the pressures of a world that assumes me to be someone else. I believe in the right of people to define art for themselves. I can accept their unattenuated (while obviously personal and subjective) statements about the quality of a show's characters or the relevance of a written piece or the larger sociopolitical ramifications of a storyline. What I don't get is when people take what they read or see in artistic works and commentary on such works (that are created for a large audience) as personal attacks that must be defended against. What I don't get is the sense of absolute surety that they're right about what they say, followed almost immediately by a sense of martyrdom and a righteous desire to stand up for their truth in face of this horrifying (and usually largely imagined) oppression. I mean, I feel the feelings, but I tend not to blame others for them.
Maybe I'm jealous. I have a bit of a Hamlet problem, always have, in that I find it very hard to make a definitive choice. I see more than one side of things; I don't tend to think in stark binaries. I think it would be nice to have that sense of the rightness of my beliefs and my words, but it without fail feels like a lie. I may watch something and think, "Oh, that storyline is crap." And I may never want to watch the show again. But do I believe I'm objectively correct? No. I believe that's my opinion. I don't even believe it will always be my opinion because I've changed my mind on those kinds of things a thousand times. So why the shrill?
POLITICAL STUFF
I have to confess to being (perhaps pruriently) interested in the conversation you often seem to be continuing about feminism. Myself, I tend to be someone who appreciates the historical value of second wave feminism, but sees the flaws it had then and especially has now in being applicable in any concrete way to specific situations that arise in our current world. And it seems like I'm always in some way trying to negotiate a path through the muck to get to a place where I know how to react to the issues of the day in a way that doesn't reject the past, but integrates itself comfortably into the now and the future. Because it can be such a mess.
I think I have issues with some of the same topics you do. I'm thinking especially of atheism and feminism. How they manifest online in both obvious and subtle ways; how the labels destroy or betray what they're labeling more often than not. I wonder how much of the problem is with trying to move forward from identity politics to a new thing. In the past it has been important to be loudly and proudly one thing or another, just to get attention and results in the political arena. But the finer distinctions, the individuality of people, gets lost in the label. And people stop talking with real words and start using slogans. And then they forget what the slogans used to mean and why they were once so vitally important. It's all words, words. (What the hell does "the personal is political" mean now to me?)
But I can't abandon the old ways completely because they did and still do have some value. It is important to analyze art for its political and social assumptions and to point out when the message isn't always such a good thing. But when the people doing the pointing out don't have a sense of history or an understanding of how art works, yet still have equal voice in critiquing it -- it sounds elitist, doesn't it? To say those opinions are less important. Maybe they're less relevant? Or maybe it's not that there are opinions posted online that do not always relate in any way to reality; maybe it's that inability we all seem to have in the internet age to rank them according to their worth. (Worth again being a value judgment, and no, I don't know where I was going with that.)
Alternately, that reminds me of arguments I've read about TV images of women. For example, often critics can make a good argument about how a show is not actually feminist because of X, Y, and Z. Yet if women watch the show and feel empowered by it because they don't see X, Y, or Z, or because they reject X, Y, and Z as relevant criteria for feminism, is it then feminist for them anyhow?
MY POINT, MAYBE
Perhaps instead of droning on and on about the wild segues of thought your comments cause me to experience, I should just ask outright about some things. What's the root of the behind-the-scenes, long-running gag about Chuck the rapist? What's the latest foofaraw from proponents of Dair about? Are you actually getting nasty emails about your recaps or are you reacting to comments you've read somewhere else? You don't have to answer of course, it's none of my business, but I am curious because of the allusions to this background conversation in your recaps.
So I've written this overly lengthy letter to you because I am interested in your opinions on any of the topics I've raised, should you care to engage with them. The hints I get from your recaps and Facebook posts always intrigue me and make me think. I believe that your point of view on things is different than mine; not in an argument-causing, diametrically opposed way, but in an interesting, "never thought of it that way, not sure I agree but also not sure I don't" kind of way. If that makes sense.
To end (finally), just wanted to say thanks, again, for your words. This is a poor way to repay them, but in some ways apt.
Your long-winded and unfocused friend,
Tami
P.S. I'm actively and only somewhat successfully resisting the urge to qualify all of the above in a way that makes myself seem more clever and less derivative. Oh, well. Guess I'll post it anyway.
This is a weird way to do this, but, A, I'm not going to bother Jacob with an email of this length, and, B, I did write it as if to him, and I'm not willing to do the work to redo the focus. I'm lazy. Deal with it, imaginary readers.
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"The definition of a genius is somebody that agrees with you. The definition of an asshole is somebody that doesn't. The definition of good art is art that somehow follows your precise personal instructions. The definition of bad art is anything administrated by somebody else, even somebody who knows what they're doing. The less important the issue, the louder the volume. This is what it's like to feel utterly powerless in your real life." -- Jacob Clifton, Gossip Girl 4x22 Recap.
Wow, what a bitch slap. I can only imagine the sheer shrillness of commentary that you're responding to, but I often try to fill in the blanks. I liked what you said above because I agree with it. See what I did there?
INTERWEBS AND FANDOM
It occurred to me recently, in a more complete fashion than ever prior, how much every opinion we form and express as a truism to others is really about ourselves, our views and our needs. Not that I didn't get that before, but it's a thought that bears revisiting. I was reading a comment (on the Buffy Rewatch I believe) where someone posted about how she has problems with Buffy (the character), but it seems like everyone else loves her so much they overlook her faults, and therefore the poster feels the need to point them out. What struck me about the comment was that it is almost word-for-word the exact opposite of how I feel. Meaning not only do I like the character, but to me it seems that people are always criticizing her or hating on her, so I feel the need to speak out in her defense all the time.
It really clicked over in my mind how subjective what we see on screen or read online is. Not only in the perceived biases of what we're seeing at the moment, but in what we choose to take notice of in general. Whether we're the kind of people that usually only take note of the things that speak positively to us (and I'm not sure those people are ever on the internet) or we always notice as ubiquitous the things that strike us negatively, those impressions are what stay with us to form the default atmosphere of our lives. To shift metaphors, the pictures we see on our cave wall are playing out behind a hazy curtain of unexamined ideas, with holes worn through by our obsessively picking at the curtain in a few key places allowing us to see small parts of the larger picture. Our favorite things and/or our pet peeves emerge picture-perfect while the rest of the image remains hidden behind that slightly opaque barrier. All the things we don't notice.
Like I said, none of this is new to me, but I think I'm beginning to understand it more now. It's not just seeing what you want to see, it's not just turning away from things you don't want to hear, it's our attempts to construct the world around us in the exact way we want it to be that blinds us to the world as it is and makes us try to force the world to conform to the way we imagine it. We don't always consciously decide what sources of light we want to turn our faces toward, but the choices we make almost without thinking become equally important to us because we believe it defines who we are; that's no small thing. And part of who we are is what we stand in opposition to.
I get why we do these things; I see myself do it too. I fully understand the need to define myself against the pressures of a world that assumes me to be someone else. I believe in the right of people to define art for themselves. I can accept their unattenuated (while obviously personal and subjective) statements about the quality of a show's characters or the relevance of a written piece or the larger sociopolitical ramifications of a storyline. What I don't get is when people take what they read or see in artistic works and commentary on such works (that are created for a large audience) as personal attacks that must be defended against. What I don't get is the sense of absolute surety that they're right about what they say, followed almost immediately by a sense of martyrdom and a righteous desire to stand up for their truth in face of this horrifying (and usually largely imagined) oppression. I mean, I feel the feelings, but I tend not to blame others for them.
Maybe I'm jealous. I have a bit of a Hamlet problem, always have, in that I find it very hard to make a definitive choice. I see more than one side of things; I don't tend to think in stark binaries. I think it would be nice to have that sense of the rightness of my beliefs and my words, but it without fail feels like a lie. I may watch something and think, "Oh, that storyline is crap." And I may never want to watch the show again. But do I believe I'm objectively correct? No. I believe that's my opinion. I don't even believe it will always be my opinion because I've changed my mind on those kinds of things a thousand times. So why the shrill?
POLITICAL STUFF
I have to confess to being (perhaps pruriently) interested in the conversation you often seem to be continuing about feminism. Myself, I tend to be someone who appreciates the historical value of second wave feminism, but sees the flaws it had then and especially has now in being applicable in any concrete way to specific situations that arise in our current world. And it seems like I'm always in some way trying to negotiate a path through the muck to get to a place where I know how to react to the issues of the day in a way that doesn't reject the past, but integrates itself comfortably into the now and the future. Because it can be such a mess.
I think I have issues with some of the same topics you do. I'm thinking especially of atheism and feminism. How they manifest online in both obvious and subtle ways; how the labels destroy or betray what they're labeling more often than not. I wonder how much of the problem is with trying to move forward from identity politics to a new thing. In the past it has been important to be loudly and proudly one thing or another, just to get attention and results in the political arena. But the finer distinctions, the individuality of people, gets lost in the label. And people stop talking with real words and start using slogans. And then they forget what the slogans used to mean and why they were once so vitally important. It's all words, words. (What the hell does "the personal is political" mean now to me?)
But I can't abandon the old ways completely because they did and still do have some value. It is important to analyze art for its political and social assumptions and to point out when the message isn't always such a good thing. But when the people doing the pointing out don't have a sense of history or an understanding of how art works, yet still have equal voice in critiquing it -- it sounds elitist, doesn't it? To say those opinions are less important. Maybe they're less relevant? Or maybe it's not that there are opinions posted online that do not always relate in any way to reality; maybe it's that inability we all seem to have in the internet age to rank them according to their worth. (Worth again being a value judgment, and no, I don't know where I was going with that.)
Alternately, that reminds me of arguments I've read about TV images of women. For example, often critics can make a good argument about how a show is not actually feminist because of X, Y, and Z. Yet if women watch the show and feel empowered by it because they don't see X, Y, or Z, or because they reject X, Y, and Z as relevant criteria for feminism, is it then feminist for them anyhow?
MY POINT, MAYBE
Perhaps instead of droning on and on about the wild segues of thought your comments cause me to experience, I should just ask outright about some things. What's the root of the behind-the-scenes, long-running gag about Chuck the rapist? What's the latest foofaraw from proponents of Dair about? Are you actually getting nasty emails about your recaps or are you reacting to comments you've read somewhere else? You don't have to answer of course, it's none of my business, but I am curious because of the allusions to this background conversation in your recaps.
So I've written this overly lengthy letter to you because I am interested in your opinions on any of the topics I've raised, should you care to engage with them. The hints I get from your recaps and Facebook posts always intrigue me and make me think. I believe that your point of view on things is different than mine; not in an argument-causing, diametrically opposed way, but in an interesting, "never thought of it that way, not sure I agree but also not sure I don't" kind of way. If that makes sense.
To end (finally), just wanted to say thanks, again, for your words. This is a poor way to repay them, but in some ways apt.
Your long-winded and unfocused friend,
Tami
P.S. I'm actively and only somewhat successfully resisting the urge to qualify all of the above in a way that makes myself seem more clever and less derivative. Oh, well. Guess I'll post it anyway.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thoughts that arise while reading comments online
Reading some online comments this week made me send this tweet: Everyone's a martyr in their own way, in their own not that martyric way. #captainhammerrevisedfortheinternet
It just occurred to me in a clearer way than normal that the martyr complex I've noted in annoyance in people is universal and in me as well. Not that I didn't know it, but it was really -- well, like I said, clear to me at that point. Someone was saying she was annoyed that Buffy's faults were overlooked and she was put on a pedestal by everyone, whereas the poster felt the need to counterbalance that by always pointing out where she did less than stellar things. The funny thing is I feel EXACTLY the opposite. I always see Buffy HATORZ online or off, talking about how they love the show but hate the character. Or if not hate, don't like very much, put low in their list of favorites. They're always calling her selfish and blaming her for more things even than all the things she blames herself for, and I always feel like those of us who like her are in the minority and should speak up. Exactly the opposite.
And I realized that that's probably true of things like the Season 6 debate. To me, I can't bring up liking the season (and I'm terrified to even mention Marti Noxon online for fear of what comments would ensue) without the people who hate it jumping on to say how it sucks. I've often thought that you could have a forum titled Discussion of Buffy Season Six for Those Who Love It and still those who hate it would have to state their case over and over on it. So it's entirely possible that the haters of the season feel like those nuts who love it never shut up about how great it is and would even be on an Anti forum and...You get the drift.
So the reason (I've always felt like) American Christians always act as though they're martyrs, standing proudly as representatives of a group that's socially victimized and derided (even though you can't get through a day in the U.S. without something about Christianity being right in your face) is not because Christians are just deluded or hypocritical, it's because of this prevalent strain in people of getting off on being the only one who sees the light. Or part of the select group that sees the light in a sea of obtuseness and misunderstandings. Like it's a byproduct of the group instinct, or the us against them, or a result of righteousness being linked to oppression.
I have to wonder if it's more of an American thing than a general one. Yet then there's the internet. Full of people standing up for their minority view in the face of the oppression of the majority, who actually consist of those you notice that could be just some of the few people that actually disagree with you. We may seek news and opinions written by those we agree with, but what we really notice, what really sticks with us and just strikes the deepest into our hearts and minds is those who disagree with us. And it doesn't take many of them. And then we feel alone, under attack from these different opinions that suddenly seem to be all over. Even if they're really not. Is it a function of individualism, part of the idea that we're all different? Or is it a reaction against that? Rebellion or an unusual form of conformity?
Mea culpa, too.
It just occurred to me in a clearer way than normal that the martyr complex I've noted in annoyance in people is universal and in me as well. Not that I didn't know it, but it was really -- well, like I said, clear to me at that point. Someone was saying she was annoyed that Buffy's faults were overlooked and she was put on a pedestal by everyone, whereas the poster felt the need to counterbalance that by always pointing out where she did less than stellar things. The funny thing is I feel EXACTLY the opposite. I always see Buffy HATORZ online or off, talking about how they love the show but hate the character. Or if not hate, don't like very much, put low in their list of favorites. They're always calling her selfish and blaming her for more things even than all the things she blames herself for, and I always feel like those of us who like her are in the minority and should speak up. Exactly the opposite.
And I realized that that's probably true of things like the Season 6 debate. To me, I can't bring up liking the season (and I'm terrified to even mention Marti Noxon online for fear of what comments would ensue) without the people who hate it jumping on to say how it sucks. I've often thought that you could have a forum titled Discussion of Buffy Season Six for Those Who Love It and still those who hate it would have to state their case over and over on it. So it's entirely possible that the haters of the season feel like those nuts who love it never shut up about how great it is and would even be on an Anti forum and...You get the drift.
So the reason (I've always felt like) American Christians always act as though they're martyrs, standing proudly as representatives of a group that's socially victimized and derided (even though you can't get through a day in the U.S. without something about Christianity being right in your face) is not because Christians are just deluded or hypocritical, it's because of this prevalent strain in people of getting off on being the only one who sees the light. Or part of the select group that sees the light in a sea of obtuseness and misunderstandings. Like it's a byproduct of the group instinct, or the us against them, or a result of righteousness being linked to oppression.
I have to wonder if it's more of an American thing than a general one. Yet then there's the internet. Full of people standing up for their minority view in the face of the oppression of the majority, who actually consist of those you notice that could be just some of the few people that actually disagree with you. We may seek news and opinions written by those we agree with, but what we really notice, what really sticks with us and just strikes the deepest into our hearts and minds is those who disagree with us. And it doesn't take many of them. And then we feel alone, under attack from these different opinions that suddenly seem to be all over. Even if they're really not. Is it a function of individualism, part of the idea that we're all different? Or is it a reaction against that? Rebellion or an unusual form of conformity?
Mea culpa, too.
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