Part two of No Future For You. Evocative title, given it's for Faith. She's not participating fully in this new future she helped create either. And it's also referring to the end where, either through Buffy and Angel creating a new world that has a future and abandoning the old one to its demonic past, or through taking away the magic and everything they had built, the future is not quite what they (or we) hoped it would be.
We start on a voiceover from Faith, as we see a flashback to the fight she and Buffy had at the end of season 3. We hear Faith's perspective on their relationship. It's the reason she's alone so much now. "This is friendship" as we see Faith's face reflected in THE knife. Her list of friendship steps? 1. Meet someone you want as a friend. 2. Share everything with them while they share some of themselves with you. 3. "It all goes to crap." Then comes the pain and then sometimes you forgive it, but it's never the same again because the pain doesn't go away. "And in the end, no matter how many wicked good times you had together, you woulda been better off flying solo all along."
Thing is, I don't think Faith believes that last part, even though she lives like she does. I think she's still got a huge self-hate thing going on, and she more likely just doesn't think she deserves to be part of connections with other people. As always when it comes to Faith and Buffy, their parts are interchangable. Who hurts who first, who should be forgiver or forgiven, all of that goes back and forth. And part of this section of story is about how Faith isn't better off flying solo. Maybe she can't let herself be part of the larger family of slayers, but she is perfect for dealing one-on-one with other women who don't want to join the group, maybe making some connections there. Is this what the Faith spin-off would have been?
So Faith is thinking about all of this stuff with Buffy as she goes into the gala at Lady Genevieve's place, which makes sense, since she's the one heading out this time to kill a rogue slayer. Her and Buffy's roles, back and forth they go.
Giles is acting as her handler, she's got a 2-way radio bud in her ear and he's there to help her with her cover if need be. He starts (I'm sure) reiterating her objective, but she discards the radio, saying she's got too many voices in her head as it is.
Then she acts like a snobby aristocrat, spoiled brat type to get into the party without an invite. The footman or whatever is glad enough to pass her through, buying that she belongs there. Faith is sweating and nervous, not really up for the task. She's in the receiving line, and she's got two knives hidden as hair ornaments. Roden is watching over things from the balcony with two gargoyles. He's suspicious of her because she makes his "wand tingle, and not in the good way." Ew you very much.
Her cover name, BTW, is Hope Lyonne, daughter of the viscount of Avalon. There has been such a thing before, it looks like, but mostly Avalon is a big part of the King Arthur myth, being the isle where Excalibur was forged among other things. Hope is a reference to the episode where Faith first appeared, Faith, Hope & Trick, and also maybe a symbol of her possible transition, or maybe just what she needs now more than faith. Regarding Lyonne: Check this out, it's hysterical. http://www.kabalarians.com/Female/lyonne.htm.
(WRITER'S NOTE: Continuing after long hiatus between when I started this recap and now, when I'm finishing it)
We cut over to Scotland, for a brief interlude with Willow and Dawn. Giant Dawn is eating handfuls of apples from a tree. Willow needs to know exactly what happened if she's going to fix it. We get the first clue that maybe Kenny isn't to blame for what happened, at least in Dawn's mind, though we won't learn the details for a while. They have a nice moment, but it's interrupted before it can bear fruit (heh, see what I did there?). Buffy sent Renee to Will to get her to be "laptop-geek Willow" and check out their radar stations. As far as what they're going to do once the army guys come for them, Dawn says, "All's fair." Which of course refers to love and war, and I'd bet Dawnie's talking more about love right now, since she thinks she deserves what happened to her.
Back to Faith. She's out on the balcony (probably a specific name when it's on a huge mansion, but whatever), psyching herself up to kill a slayer. I have in my notes that this theme of good guys doing bad things touches on what Voll was afraid of and also links to the robbery and the overall balance issue. I think I know what I mean, but I'm so behind at this point I wrote that note probably 3 months ago. So I'll just let it stand.
Faith is definitely not excited about her assassin role. Ironically, her experience with this kind of thing that makes her well-suited for it is the very thing that makes her not want to do it. But her chance is coming. Gigi bums a fag from her and they talk about the crappy people at the party and bond over liking Amy Winehouse and hating their parents. Well, that's not going to make your job easier, Faith (I mean, Hope).
Gigi asks her, "You sure we're not sisters?" and Faith starts to answer while pulling out her knife, but then she's gone! Roden sent his gargoyles to deal with her. So we get a cool fight in the air. Faith is thinking about how she can't even say goodbye to Giles since she threw him away, wondering why she's "such a dick to every guy who's the least bit nice" to her. But she manages to shake it off and take out 2 gargoyles by crashing them into each other. Then Roden knocks her out with magic, and we're left with a crane shot of the aftermath, with Faith lying in the middle of the wreckage and Gigi and Roden looking on.
We have a little bit of an epilogue at this point. Faith comes to slowly, hearing the other two arguing about killing her. Gigi identifies with her, thinking she's a peer and not a commoner and being very impressed with her skill. Roden thinks that's what makes her dangerous. She's cleaned up and in Gigi's bed. And Gigi has decided to recruit Hope to her cause. She tells her about being one of a line of important, powerful people, an ancient force they're tapped into. "Roden says I'm going to lead the lot of us to take our rightful place at the head of this wretched society." After she takes care of the queen who's "holding us back." Whoa, Gigi has a serial killer wall starring Buffy. The biggest picture of her has the twilight symbol drawn over her face. The end.
So again we see a consequence of Buffy and Willow's spell in Chosen. Another activated slayer who thinks they're naturally at the top of the food chain and should act and be treated as such. It's interesting that they show this with both Simone, who is more low-class punk/rebel, gonna finally get some for myself type and Lady Geneveive, who is aristocratic entitled, gonna finally get even more for myself because I'm certainly not gonna let myself be set low in this new hierarchy type. Different motivations, but they come to the same conclusions when they receive the power.
And now Faith is left facing someone who is from a different world than her, but eerily similar in outlook and circumstance. And, as we'll see next issue, it's still all about Buffy.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #6 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
So the first 5 issues of Buffy season 8 were The Long Way Home, referring to getting back to Sunnydale at the end as well as Buffy getting back on firmer ground of a sort with beginning to define a Big Bad for the season, defining an enemy to fight.
This next set of stories is called No Future For You. It's about Faith and Genevieve and slayers that aren't operating within the larger Buffy/Giles umbrella organization.
We open up on a v.o. by Faith, who's Batmanning up on the Hope Memorial bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the other U.S. Hellmouth, as referenced in the Wish and Chosen. She's quoting Oh, The Places You'll Go, the Dr. Seuss book that sells out at graduation time. She's not happy in Cleveland. Her mom, when sober, would read it to her as a child. She's feeling very alone, and not in exciting locations.
Robin Wood calls her cell. She flirts a bit but it's business. Robin is running a squad of slayers in town, and they're taking out a nest of vamps. But one of the vampires was a single mom before she was turned, so there's children to worry about. Robin doesn't think the no0bs can handle that, so he called Faith.
She quotes again from the book as she ziplines off the bridge statue and heads off. "You're off to great places...today is your day." Poor Faith. She's not really feeling the connectedness of the great slayer collective either, plus she gets the shit jobs. Where's her Shanshu?
So of course all the kids were turned into mini vamps by their mother, 5 or 6 of them. And Faith has to take them all out. It's beautifully rendered, because we see her surrounded, then the pov pulls back out of the room and you see her silhouette as she begins staking them. We don't see it, just hear the dustings as we pull further and further back until we're out of the home, looking in. Very cinematic.
Faith heads home to her crappy place -- seriously, they can't get her better accommodations? I mean, I'm sure it's her choice, she's become quite the little brood-Angel, but damn. She sinks her stake into a wall full of older puncture wounds as she walks in. And someone asks, "Long night?"
Giles is there, wearing a hideous yellow submarine jumper and drinking the chamomile tea that's about all Faith has in the joint. (Although the design on the shirt, does it look a little like Spike's vehicle at the end?) Giles is making nice, but Faith figures he's here to give her another crap job, so she just asks what he wants.
Giles says he knows Faith was looking into forged passports to get the hell out of this dump (for some reason). He offers her papers and freedom to go anywhere, with a stipend, if she'll do one job for him. Faith doesn't trust the Watcher's Council to agree to anything that would be good for her (for some reason), but Giles basically is the entire Council right now and has the weight to make it happen. Must have some of the resources as well. And what he wants is for her to kill a slayer.
This one is setting up a lot, so it's really wordy, but not a lot actually happens. Giles tells her the deal. There's nearly 2,000 slayers out there now, and not all of them are choosing to use their powers in a good way. There's one in particular that is fated to usher in the end of the world if she's alive at the end of fall (the twilight of summer, you might say). Plus, fall's end, that wording alludes to the Fall from grace as well, which is Faith's whole deal really. But this slayer is not like Faith, wrong-headed but able to be rehabilitated; she has to be killed or we're doomed. Is Faith up to it?
She asks, "Who is this evil bitch?" and we cut to a black-haired aristocratic girl on a horse, saying she should like a puppy. Her name is Lady Genevieve Savidge, Gigi, and she's the daughter of an English duke. She's out with her tutor, Roden, supposedly learning the ins and outs of the foxhunt.
She mentions having nightmares and then senses something. It's a young girl, Roden's fox, a slayer. She was kidnapped for this hunt but fights back, kicking Genevieve and dirtying her shirt. She calls the girl a filthy commoner and backhands the crap out of her, snapping her neck without a thought. Then she's horrified, saying she thought the girl would be her equal in strength, is she not another slayer? Roden says she is, and that makes her first kill all the more impressive. What a jerkface.
Turns out tutor Roden is an Irish warlock who can call upon a couple of impressive-looking gargoyle-type demons to help dispose of annoyances like dead bodies. His book (grimoire?) has the Twilight symbol on it. Not good. Genevieve goes from shocked dismay to anger as she says she's tired of jumping through Roden's hoops and wants what was promised to her. So he's leading her by the nose, convincing her that her new abilities entitle her to something. We'll find out later that he's setting her up to depose Buffy.
Giles and Faith are still in Cleveland, much to Faith's disgust. They're in a big banquet hall with set tables where Giles intends to start her training. Faith doesn't think Giles can teach her much about wetworks (boy, is she out of that loop), but he says if that was it, he'd have taken a rifle and done it himself. The slayer's estate is mystically shielded (by Roden) so the only way to get to Genevieve is by going undercover and getting close to her "through subterfuge and cunning." Which Faith thinks means cunnilingus and she's not going there, thank you. (Leave that to Buffy. Or maybe then Faith will consider it since she likes to "share").
Anyhow, some of the irony cuts and jokes in this one don't quite work for me, but that's cool. Giles needs to teach Faith about high society in Britain, which is going to be a lot of memorizing stuff. Actually, it may not be an area that Faith feels confident, but it's got to be a little nice, training in something like that instead of decapitation techniques for a change.
But Faith is reluctant, thinking she's not the girl for this, and she starts to walk away. Giles says there's a reason why he wants Faith for this and he tries to take her arm. She flashes back to a kiddie vamp calling her a worthless whore and grabs a fork and stabs Giles in the arm. I don't know if one of the vamps actually called her that or she's confabulating, but the point is she still doesn't have a lot of self-love going on. It's about time someone in the slayer organization took some notice of where she's at in the head these days. Yay Giles.
She's instantly sorry about the fork, but Giles is chill. When he examines the wound, she sees his Eyghon tattoo for the first time and is surprised. That's right, she wasn't around in Band Candy; who knows what she was doing that episode, but she wasn't seeing Ripper. And she came to town after Dark Age, so she has no idea Giles is anything like her. He tells her she wasn't the first person to discover rebellion or let innocents be hurt through her stupidity. "You and I aren't so unalike." And he mentions that because of that, they have a greater responsibility to shoulder harsh burdens now. In a story that wasn't all that interesting to me up to now, it was really very cool to see them make that connection. And Faith starts learning utensils.
We flash over to Scotland for a quick not-quite-aside. Xander is trash talking a punching bag in the middle of the night as he preps for "sparring" with Renee. Buffy surprises him and gives him a hard time. He hides his shirtless self behind the bag and denies being anything other than a buddy to Renee.
Buffy can't sleep because of a recurring nightmare. She draws the Twilight symbol on the window and ponders it, saying they don't know its connection to the US Army hostility. They haven't heard from Giles for a few weeks, and Xander has a convoluted babblefest about him being more interested in checking out the new books (slayers) as opposed to the old (Buffy). Not that anybody's checking Buffy out. Again, it just didn't quite work for me; I don't know why. But it's important because it sets up Buffy's problems with Giles that come up later on when she finds out where he's been. They're just not that close anymore. And he's taking upon himself tasks that he doesn't want her to have to handle but not telling her about it. Kind of Lies My Parents Told Me still.
Anyway, Buffy's bad dream is of a creature that looks like a scary gryphon with a snake tongue and green flame mane chasing her. It says, "The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen." Funny that the flames are green, which in the comics is Willow magic, when it's supposed to refer to Genevieve. Maybe there's some leakage in the dream about the future Fray/Dark Willow stuff. Or maybe green just looked cool.
Back to England and a fun meta reference. We see Rose Tyler and the 10th Doctor in front of a telephone booth (red, not blue, probably for legal reasons)! Then we segue into the flat. Looks like a Watcher hangout or possibly -- actually I bet it's Giles' flat, since I think he gives it to Faith later. Full of books and artifacts. Faith has also been learning an accent, and how to swear in British, although that part probably was incidental. He's quizzing her as she comes down the stairs in a formal gown, feeling foolish. Giles looks, looks again and says she's actually "five by five." The end.
Like I said, a lot of setup, introduction of the players. Not much of Twilight other than Roden tying in in some way I don't fully understand. I can't remember all that happens in this section, so I'll have to see how that plays out. This is more about the other arc of the season that has to do with all the activated slayers and the different ways they see what has happened to them and what they choose to do with it. I'm liking all the different perspectives we're getting on that idea.
This next set of stories is called No Future For You. It's about Faith and Genevieve and slayers that aren't operating within the larger Buffy/Giles umbrella organization.
We open up on a v.o. by Faith, who's Batmanning up on the Hope Memorial bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the other U.S. Hellmouth, as referenced in the Wish and Chosen. She's quoting Oh, The Places You'll Go, the Dr. Seuss book that sells out at graduation time. She's not happy in Cleveland. Her mom, when sober, would read it to her as a child. She's feeling very alone, and not in exciting locations.
Robin Wood calls her cell. She flirts a bit but it's business. Robin is running a squad of slayers in town, and they're taking out a nest of vamps. But one of the vampires was a single mom before she was turned, so there's children to worry about. Robin doesn't think the no0bs can handle that, so he called Faith.
She quotes again from the book as she ziplines off the bridge statue and heads off. "You're off to great places...today is your day." Poor Faith. She's not really feeling the connectedness of the great slayer collective either, plus she gets the shit jobs. Where's her Shanshu?
So of course all the kids were turned into mini vamps by their mother, 5 or 6 of them. And Faith has to take them all out. It's beautifully rendered, because we see her surrounded, then the pov pulls back out of the room and you see her silhouette as she begins staking them. We don't see it, just hear the dustings as we pull further and further back until we're out of the home, looking in. Very cinematic.
Faith heads home to her crappy place -- seriously, they can't get her better accommodations? I mean, I'm sure it's her choice, she's become quite the little brood-Angel, but damn. She sinks her stake into a wall full of older puncture wounds as she walks in. And someone asks, "Long night?"
Giles is there, wearing a hideous yellow submarine jumper and drinking the chamomile tea that's about all Faith has in the joint. (Although the design on the shirt, does it look a little like Spike's vehicle at the end?) Giles is making nice, but Faith figures he's here to give her another crap job, so she just asks what he wants.
Giles says he knows Faith was looking into forged passports to get the hell out of this dump (for some reason). He offers her papers and freedom to go anywhere, with a stipend, if she'll do one job for him. Faith doesn't trust the Watcher's Council to agree to anything that would be good for her (for some reason), but Giles basically is the entire Council right now and has the weight to make it happen. Must have some of the resources as well. And what he wants is for her to kill a slayer.
This one is setting up a lot, so it's really wordy, but not a lot actually happens. Giles tells her the deal. There's nearly 2,000 slayers out there now, and not all of them are choosing to use their powers in a good way. There's one in particular that is fated to usher in the end of the world if she's alive at the end of fall (the twilight of summer, you might say). Plus, fall's end, that wording alludes to the Fall from grace as well, which is Faith's whole deal really. But this slayer is not like Faith, wrong-headed but able to be rehabilitated; she has to be killed or we're doomed. Is Faith up to it?
She asks, "Who is this evil bitch?" and we cut to a black-haired aristocratic girl on a horse, saying she should like a puppy. Her name is Lady Genevieve Savidge, Gigi, and she's the daughter of an English duke. She's out with her tutor, Roden, supposedly learning the ins and outs of the foxhunt.
She mentions having nightmares and then senses something. It's a young girl, Roden's fox, a slayer. She was kidnapped for this hunt but fights back, kicking Genevieve and dirtying her shirt. She calls the girl a filthy commoner and backhands the crap out of her, snapping her neck without a thought. Then she's horrified, saying she thought the girl would be her equal in strength, is she not another slayer? Roden says she is, and that makes her first kill all the more impressive. What a jerkface.
Turns out tutor Roden is an Irish warlock who can call upon a couple of impressive-looking gargoyle-type demons to help dispose of annoyances like dead bodies. His book (grimoire?) has the Twilight symbol on it. Not good. Genevieve goes from shocked dismay to anger as she says she's tired of jumping through Roden's hoops and wants what was promised to her. So he's leading her by the nose, convincing her that her new abilities entitle her to something. We'll find out later that he's setting her up to depose Buffy.
Giles and Faith are still in Cleveland, much to Faith's disgust. They're in a big banquet hall with set tables where Giles intends to start her training. Faith doesn't think Giles can teach her much about wetworks (boy, is she out of that loop), but he says if that was it, he'd have taken a rifle and done it himself. The slayer's estate is mystically shielded (by Roden) so the only way to get to Genevieve is by going undercover and getting close to her "through subterfuge and cunning." Which Faith thinks means cunnilingus and she's not going there, thank you. (Leave that to Buffy. Or maybe then Faith will consider it since she likes to "share").
Anyhow, some of the irony cuts and jokes in this one don't quite work for me, but that's cool. Giles needs to teach Faith about high society in Britain, which is going to be a lot of memorizing stuff. Actually, it may not be an area that Faith feels confident, but it's got to be a little nice, training in something like that instead of decapitation techniques for a change.
But Faith is reluctant, thinking she's not the girl for this, and she starts to walk away. Giles says there's a reason why he wants Faith for this and he tries to take her arm. She flashes back to a kiddie vamp calling her a worthless whore and grabs a fork and stabs Giles in the arm. I don't know if one of the vamps actually called her that or she's confabulating, but the point is she still doesn't have a lot of self-love going on. It's about time someone in the slayer organization took some notice of where she's at in the head these days. Yay Giles.
She's instantly sorry about the fork, but Giles is chill. When he examines the wound, she sees his Eyghon tattoo for the first time and is surprised. That's right, she wasn't around in Band Candy; who knows what she was doing that episode, but she wasn't seeing Ripper. And she came to town after Dark Age, so she has no idea Giles is anything like her. He tells her she wasn't the first person to discover rebellion or let innocents be hurt through her stupidity. "You and I aren't so unalike." And he mentions that because of that, they have a greater responsibility to shoulder harsh burdens now. In a story that wasn't all that interesting to me up to now, it was really very cool to see them make that connection. And Faith starts learning utensils.
We flash over to Scotland for a quick not-quite-aside. Xander is trash talking a punching bag in the middle of the night as he preps for "sparring" with Renee. Buffy surprises him and gives him a hard time. He hides his shirtless self behind the bag and denies being anything other than a buddy to Renee.
Buffy can't sleep because of a recurring nightmare. She draws the Twilight symbol on the window and ponders it, saying they don't know its connection to the US Army hostility. They haven't heard from Giles for a few weeks, and Xander has a convoluted babblefest about him being more interested in checking out the new books (slayers) as opposed to the old (Buffy). Not that anybody's checking Buffy out. Again, it just didn't quite work for me; I don't know why. But it's important because it sets up Buffy's problems with Giles that come up later on when she finds out where he's been. They're just not that close anymore. And he's taking upon himself tasks that he doesn't want her to have to handle but not telling her about it. Kind of Lies My Parents Told Me still.
Anyway, Buffy's bad dream is of a creature that looks like a scary gryphon with a snake tongue and green flame mane chasing her. It says, "The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen." Funny that the flames are green, which in the comics is Willow magic, when it's supposed to refer to Genevieve. Maybe there's some leakage in the dream about the future Fray/Dark Willow stuff. Or maybe green just looked cool.
Back to England and a fun meta reference. We see Rose Tyler and the 10th Doctor in front of a telephone booth (red, not blue, probably for legal reasons)! Then we segue into the flat. Looks like a Watcher hangout or possibly -- actually I bet it's Giles' flat, since I think he gives it to Faith later. Full of books and artifacts. Faith has also been learning an accent, and how to swear in British, although that part probably was incidental. He's quizzing her as she comes down the stairs in a formal gown, feeling foolish. Giles looks, looks again and says she's actually "five by five." The end.
Like I said, a lot of setup, introduction of the players. Not much of Twilight other than Roden tying in in some way I don't fully understand. I can't remember all that happens in this section, so I'll have to see how that plays out. This is more about the other arc of the season that has to do with all the activated slayers and the different ways they see what has happened to them and what they choose to do with it. I'm liking all the different perspectives we're getting on that idea.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #5 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
The Chain. Wow. I don't even know where to begin with this story because it's one of Joss's best in any medium. And almost every word is important, so it's hard not to repeat them all. I also thought I might do it chronologically, to get the history of this girl in order, but the intercuts are so moving, it's hard to rearrange them. I guess I'll just go in story order, and we'll see what happens.
We start with a horned demon named Yamanh, the head of a demon army that's headed to the surface from deep underground. Where underground we don't know. He's holding a girl above his head and saying that Buffy Summers is dead. He raises her high above his head for all his minions to see, and here we get the first example of one of the themes of the piece as he tells them to scream the name of the one who killed the Slayer, let it be known, etc. Yamanh (Yah Mon the Jamaican demon?) is a name that all should remember. There's power in his name.
The Girl: The funny part about all this? I never even met her.
Then a quick cut to a jock looking down and asking, "Who the hell are you?"
So we're obviously seeing a story about the slayer who is one of Buffy's lookalikes, the one who is literally underground, who Buffy mentioned in her first voiceover this season. And we know the name of Buffy, we know the name of Yamanh, but we don't know her name. She doesn't tell us that.
Cut over to a flashback to just before the battle. The girl is talking to a pixie girl who's urging her to leave. She refuses because she's been sent to stop Yamanh from rising to the surface. She might die, but she's staying. Pixie girl says she didn't lay her faerie eggs in the girl's ear canal just to watch her die. Ew. But it's not fatal so whatever I guess. Never trust the sidhe. And the pixie has a touching farewell with the girl, "I love you, Buffy," without ever knowing her name.
The Girl: Here's how it works. You don't get a choice.
Then we're back to a time just before the jock's question, where 3 private school girls are bitching about the fascist regime at the school, gossiping about whose panties were in the utility closet. The depantier himself approaches them, looking for the pantiless one, when suddenly the brunette girl seizes and collapses to the ground as her potential is unleashed.
Cut to Giles saying, "And now I will tell you about the chain."
But first, a beautiful panel of the girl experiencing being a slayer for the first time, flashes of demons haunting the slayer dreams, an upside down chain of girls going back into the mists of time with the scythe floating there too, the girl giving a voiceover about how it felt, how it was different for everyone, but it hit her like a ton of Mike Tysons.
The Girl: The power, the shared memories, the...truth. The unbelievable truth.
Cut to Rona saying that there is no truth.
Then we get a fun commercial with Andrew and Vi (I bet he wrote & shot it). The housewife keeps breaking vases because she can't control her superstrength. Are you having this problem? And strange dreams of girls in the past? (Very much the movie mythology there, since it never really came up a lot in the series. We had prophetic dreams, but not so much other Slayer dreams.) There's a pamphlet you can get about this new condition. Call 1-800-CHOSEN-1. This should have been my first indication that the world of the comics was different from the world of the show in the amount of supernatural knowledge the lay people had, but I kind of glossed over it the first time. But this will tie into the whole Harmony story as well.
Flashing back again to her first days of training, where the Rona and Giles shots are coming from. First she thinks it's a cult, but she can't ignore how it feels to be a slayer now.
The Girl: And truth is, it's not cheesy like the commercial. It's actually amazing.
She continues to v.o., mentioning Giles' visit and what he taught them about their lineage, while at the same time reminiscing about the other Buffy lookalike in Rome, partying it up with the Immortal.
The Girl: You know ironically I'm probably even less famous [than Giles w/his association to Buffy] because of the name.
Then we're back to before the battle. A minion has found the girl. She sends him back to Yamanh with the message: Buffy Summers is coming for him. Using the power of Buffy's name to intimidate the demons.
The Girl: The name. What power. Not the greatest power though.
And we see another shot of her lying on the ground after the spell hit her. Then we're with Giles again, and he and the girl talk about the chain, the connection the slayers have with one another, going back to the beginning. She doesn't give him much space to talk, saying we've heard it and it isn't bullshit, but the words aren't what matters, it's the feeling.
Cut to a mission with 6 slayers and at least 6 vamps. I thought I had spotted Simone in some of the training shots, and it's true, she's on this mission, and as charming as ever. "Just stay out of my way, amateurs." Then there's this cool set piece of the fight, and we see our girl fighting, then a less confident redhead cornered by a vamp. As our girl says we have to focus and adapt and work together (the anti-Simone), she saves Red and takes a vamp bite. Then pulls the vamp off her and throws him onto Red's stake. The cool thing is immediately after 2 of the other slayers are gushing about how awesome it is, but they're talking about Simone, who took out the vamp with a sword and took the sword.
It's a foreshadowing of what we already know is to come, our girl will be fighting the good fight in the shadows, unseen by the others who will attract more attention and acclaim, but being the one who gets exactly why she's fighting and what she's fighting for. As opposed to Simone and those who end up gathering to her, who take sisterhood and turn it into a gang of thugs, using their power however they choose. Our girl is the perfect double for Buffy, the girl who never sought to have her name be the power source it is today, who just fought continually to save the world when very few people knew it.
Anyway, back to the book. Our girl mentions she got a souvenir too, not a sword but a vamp scar. And Red tells her that Buffy's got one too. Then we cut to Rona assigning her the mission. "No one up here can know you're her, no one down there can know you're not." The stakes are high and they're hoping the power of Buffy's name will help keep him distracted from rising all the way to the surface.
Why was she chosen? For this mission, for being a Slayer? Because she's strong enough to handle it? Or expendable enough to be tossed away? I think what we're told is summed up as: the strength of her belief in the rightness of her cause, in the bond they share, in the willingness to sacrifice herself for it if need be. Simone would have declared her true name, unwilling to (as she would see it) "hide" behind Buffy's name, needing to claim power in her own name as Yamanh does. This girl has gone beyond that.
The Girl: The truth? There is no truth. There's just what you believe.
The girl descends into the underworld and is slimed by a giant slug as pixies look on. The slug kills any who don't pass his test. I think his sliming was actually an info transfer. She comes out of it knowing what's up with the faeries and the slimefolk. And apparently they don't get along real well. Our girl, speaking from her own truth, tells them they need to work together to survive the demon uprising. "This is how we live. Together. With each other. For each other." Or she doesn't recognize them as people worthy of her help.
Pixie girl exults that they have the Chosen One on their side, that Yamanh knows enough to fear THE NAME Buffy Summers. Sluggo asks if she will face the blackness and not run to the light, and we flash back to that moment of becoming. And we see our girl snap out of her stupor when she hears screeching brakes. Without a thought, she's pushing her friends and the depantying jock out of the path of an out-of-control semi and taking the hit herself. She didn't need training or lessons, she was a slayer from the second she was awakened. And again we see the jock looking down at this girl who survived and saying, "Who the hell ARE you?"
The final fight. We see her taking on Yamanh as the slugs and pixies and Ravenclan and leafblowers fight demons at her side, together. We see the slayer backup team finally arrive too late. And we see her dead body again on the ground.
The Girl: But that's [who you are is] not the point. There's always a name. Lincoln. Hitler. Gandhi. The name can inspire terror, awe...sometimes great things. But there's millions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn't imagine they would. In the moments that matter, even our own names are just sounds people make to tell us apart. What we are isn't that. The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my sisters? My comrades, children, slimy slug-clan...
There is a chain. Between each and every one of us. And like the man said, you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it. I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that. You don't have to remember me. You don't even know who I am. But I do.
Gah! I can't read that without crying for this girl we just met and hardly knew. It's such a beautiful statement of what we should aspire to in life, of recognizing what's important and what really defines us. How many of us will reach the end of our lives and be content with our choices rather than full of regrets?
I don't think this story is hugely about the major arc of the season. It's more of an epilogue or musing on the themes of season 7, some of which were a bit sidelined by the whole fight with the First and everything that led up to it. It's a commentary on the spell cast at the end of the season and its metaphorical meaning.
I know there's people out there who feel the spell was a huge betrayal by Buffy, a girl who would never have chosen to be chosen forcing that choice upon all the other potentials in the world. I understand that reading a bit, although I maintain she never forced anyone to use those powers as a slayer, to fight evil or join the ranks. She merely unlocked the door to the potential already within them; they can use their powers as they wish. They can be superheroes or they can be construction workers or stunt women or whatever they want. The point to me is the metaphor of sharing power, and the idea that, however the power was instilled in the line of slayers at the beginning, it is part of the potentials now, and no shadow men have the right to lock away any part of their potential from them. Just as men never had the right to define womanhood (or manhood for that matter) according to what characteristics or what rights were acceptable for them to have, to show, to choose from.
Here is the fuller explanation of that intended meaning. The rest of the season will explore this idea, so even though it's not a part of the Twilight arc directly, it's peripheral and important. And Faith's story explores some of this as well. The slayers choose to come together to fight evil, to walk their own paths, to use or be used, or to not choose at all. By the end, they choose whether to be alone, to band together in smaller groups, to fight vampires or to try and punish Buffy. The chain seems to be broken. Maybe humans just can't sustain that tug on the chain, that feeling of connectedness to one another, for long. Maybe it is too much of a threat to the status quo if we all act as though we're in this together. And there is still always a them for us to side against.
Another thing I think about in relation to this story is Anne, the third season opener. There the thrust of Buffy's character arc was to reclaim her name and all that it implied, at a time when she was doing her best to hide from it. Again, the power of the name. In that case, not accepting her name for herself was an act that came from pain, from not being able to accept the name of the person who had to do the things she had done and would continue to have to do. She simply didn't want to be that person anymore. In that case, ignoring her name, trying not to give it power (while at the same time giving it total power over her choices) was a sign of weakness, of refusing to know herself. In this story, for our not-really Buffy Summers, ignoring her name, stating the unimportance of her name, was a sign of strength. She was not negating herself by refusing to claim her name, even for posterity. She was accepting that ultimately, she was herself entirely, and whatever sounds people made to identify her were irrelevant to that knowledge she had of herself that was unnameable, the concrete reality of her existence that needed no man-made symbol to signify it.
When we go beyond the need for symbols and signifiers to what is real, that's when we know the truth.
To quote Spike: This is just...neat.
We start with a horned demon named Yamanh, the head of a demon army that's headed to the surface from deep underground. Where underground we don't know. He's holding a girl above his head and saying that Buffy Summers is dead. He raises her high above his head for all his minions to see, and here we get the first example of one of the themes of the piece as he tells them to scream the name of the one who killed the Slayer, let it be known, etc. Yamanh (Yah Mon the Jamaican demon?) is a name that all should remember. There's power in his name.
The Girl: The funny part about all this? I never even met her.
Then a quick cut to a jock looking down and asking, "Who the hell are you?"
So we're obviously seeing a story about the slayer who is one of Buffy's lookalikes, the one who is literally underground, who Buffy mentioned in her first voiceover this season. And we know the name of Buffy, we know the name of Yamanh, but we don't know her name. She doesn't tell us that.
Cut over to a flashback to just before the battle. The girl is talking to a pixie girl who's urging her to leave. She refuses because she's been sent to stop Yamanh from rising to the surface. She might die, but she's staying. Pixie girl says she didn't lay her faerie eggs in the girl's ear canal just to watch her die. Ew. But it's not fatal so whatever I guess. Never trust the sidhe. And the pixie has a touching farewell with the girl, "I love you, Buffy," without ever knowing her name.
The Girl: Here's how it works. You don't get a choice.
Then we're back to a time just before the jock's question, where 3 private school girls are bitching about the fascist regime at the school, gossiping about whose panties were in the utility closet. The depantier himself approaches them, looking for the pantiless one, when suddenly the brunette girl seizes and collapses to the ground as her potential is unleashed.
Cut to Giles saying, "And now I will tell you about the chain."
But first, a beautiful panel of the girl experiencing being a slayer for the first time, flashes of demons haunting the slayer dreams, an upside down chain of girls going back into the mists of time with the scythe floating there too, the girl giving a voiceover about how it felt, how it was different for everyone, but it hit her like a ton of Mike Tysons.
The Girl: The power, the shared memories, the...truth. The unbelievable truth.
Cut to Rona saying that there is no truth.
Then we get a fun commercial with Andrew and Vi (I bet he wrote & shot it). The housewife keeps breaking vases because she can't control her superstrength. Are you having this problem? And strange dreams of girls in the past? (Very much the movie mythology there, since it never really came up a lot in the series. We had prophetic dreams, but not so much other Slayer dreams.) There's a pamphlet you can get about this new condition. Call 1-800-CHOSEN-1. This should have been my first indication that the world of the comics was different from the world of the show in the amount of supernatural knowledge the lay people had, but I kind of glossed over it the first time. But this will tie into the whole Harmony story as well.
Flashing back again to her first days of training, where the Rona and Giles shots are coming from. First she thinks it's a cult, but she can't ignore how it feels to be a slayer now.
The Girl: And truth is, it's not cheesy like the commercial. It's actually amazing.
She continues to v.o., mentioning Giles' visit and what he taught them about their lineage, while at the same time reminiscing about the other Buffy lookalike in Rome, partying it up with the Immortal.
The Girl: You know ironically I'm probably even less famous [than Giles w/his association to Buffy] because of the name.
Then we're back to before the battle. A minion has found the girl. She sends him back to Yamanh with the message: Buffy Summers is coming for him. Using the power of Buffy's name to intimidate the demons.
The Girl: The name. What power. Not the greatest power though.
And we see another shot of her lying on the ground after the spell hit her. Then we're with Giles again, and he and the girl talk about the chain, the connection the slayers have with one another, going back to the beginning. She doesn't give him much space to talk, saying we've heard it and it isn't bullshit, but the words aren't what matters, it's the feeling.
Cut to a mission with 6 slayers and at least 6 vamps. I thought I had spotted Simone in some of the training shots, and it's true, she's on this mission, and as charming as ever. "Just stay out of my way, amateurs." Then there's this cool set piece of the fight, and we see our girl fighting, then a less confident redhead cornered by a vamp. As our girl says we have to focus and adapt and work together (the anti-Simone), she saves Red and takes a vamp bite. Then pulls the vamp off her and throws him onto Red's stake. The cool thing is immediately after 2 of the other slayers are gushing about how awesome it is, but they're talking about Simone, who took out the vamp with a sword and took the sword.
It's a foreshadowing of what we already know is to come, our girl will be fighting the good fight in the shadows, unseen by the others who will attract more attention and acclaim, but being the one who gets exactly why she's fighting and what she's fighting for. As opposed to Simone and those who end up gathering to her, who take sisterhood and turn it into a gang of thugs, using their power however they choose. Our girl is the perfect double for Buffy, the girl who never sought to have her name be the power source it is today, who just fought continually to save the world when very few people knew it.
Anyway, back to the book. Our girl mentions she got a souvenir too, not a sword but a vamp scar. And Red tells her that Buffy's got one too. Then we cut to Rona assigning her the mission. "No one up here can know you're her, no one down there can know you're not." The stakes are high and they're hoping the power of Buffy's name will help keep him distracted from rising all the way to the surface.
Why was she chosen? For this mission, for being a Slayer? Because she's strong enough to handle it? Or expendable enough to be tossed away? I think what we're told is summed up as: the strength of her belief in the rightness of her cause, in the bond they share, in the willingness to sacrifice herself for it if need be. Simone would have declared her true name, unwilling to (as she would see it) "hide" behind Buffy's name, needing to claim power in her own name as Yamanh does. This girl has gone beyond that.
The Girl: The truth? There is no truth. There's just what you believe.
The girl descends into the underworld and is slimed by a giant slug as pixies look on. The slug kills any who don't pass his test. I think his sliming was actually an info transfer. She comes out of it knowing what's up with the faeries and the slimefolk. And apparently they don't get along real well. Our girl, speaking from her own truth, tells them they need to work together to survive the demon uprising. "This is how we live. Together. With each other. For each other." Or she doesn't recognize them as people worthy of her help.
Pixie girl exults that they have the Chosen One on their side, that Yamanh knows enough to fear THE NAME Buffy Summers. Sluggo asks if she will face the blackness and not run to the light, and we flash back to that moment of becoming. And we see our girl snap out of her stupor when she hears screeching brakes. Without a thought, she's pushing her friends and the depantying jock out of the path of an out-of-control semi and taking the hit herself. She didn't need training or lessons, she was a slayer from the second she was awakened. And again we see the jock looking down at this girl who survived and saying, "Who the hell ARE you?"
The final fight. We see her taking on Yamanh as the slugs and pixies and Ravenclan and leafblowers fight demons at her side, together. We see the slayer backup team finally arrive too late. And we see her dead body again on the ground.
The Girl: But that's [who you are is] not the point. There's always a name. Lincoln. Hitler. Gandhi. The name can inspire terror, awe...sometimes great things. But there's millions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn't imagine they would. In the moments that matter, even our own names are just sounds people make to tell us apart. What we are isn't that. The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my sisters? My comrades, children, slimy slug-clan...
There is a chain. Between each and every one of us. And like the man said, you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it. I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that. You don't have to remember me. You don't even know who I am. But I do.
Gah! I can't read that without crying for this girl we just met and hardly knew. It's such a beautiful statement of what we should aspire to in life, of recognizing what's important and what really defines us. How many of us will reach the end of our lives and be content with our choices rather than full of regrets?
I don't think this story is hugely about the major arc of the season. It's more of an epilogue or musing on the themes of season 7, some of which were a bit sidelined by the whole fight with the First and everything that led up to it. It's a commentary on the spell cast at the end of the season and its metaphorical meaning.
I know there's people out there who feel the spell was a huge betrayal by Buffy, a girl who would never have chosen to be chosen forcing that choice upon all the other potentials in the world. I understand that reading a bit, although I maintain she never forced anyone to use those powers as a slayer, to fight evil or join the ranks. She merely unlocked the door to the potential already within them; they can use their powers as they wish. They can be superheroes or they can be construction workers or stunt women or whatever they want. The point to me is the metaphor of sharing power, and the idea that, however the power was instilled in the line of slayers at the beginning, it is part of the potentials now, and no shadow men have the right to lock away any part of their potential from them. Just as men never had the right to define womanhood (or manhood for that matter) according to what characteristics or what rights were acceptable for them to have, to show, to choose from.
Here is the fuller explanation of that intended meaning. The rest of the season will explore this idea, so even though it's not a part of the Twilight arc directly, it's peripheral and important. And Faith's story explores some of this as well. The slayers choose to come together to fight evil, to walk their own paths, to use or be used, or to not choose at all. By the end, they choose whether to be alone, to band together in smaller groups, to fight vampires or to try and punish Buffy. The chain seems to be broken. Maybe humans just can't sustain that tug on the chain, that feeling of connectedness to one another, for long. Maybe it is too much of a threat to the status quo if we all act as though we're in this together. And there is still always a them for us to side against.
Another thing I think about in relation to this story is Anne, the third season opener. There the thrust of Buffy's character arc was to reclaim her name and all that it implied, at a time when she was doing her best to hide from it. Again, the power of the name. In that case, not accepting her name for herself was an act that came from pain, from not being able to accept the name of the person who had to do the things she had done and would continue to have to do. She simply didn't want to be that person anymore. In that case, ignoring her name, trying not to give it power (while at the same time giving it total power over her choices) was a sign of weakness, of refusing to know herself. In this story, for our not-really Buffy Summers, ignoring her name, stating the unimportance of her name, was a sign of strength. She was not negating herself by refusing to claim her name, even for posterity. She was accepting that ultimately, she was herself entirely, and whatever sounds people made to identify her were irrelevant to that knowledge she had of herself that was unnameable, the concrete reality of her existence that needed no man-made symbol to signify it.
When we go beyond the need for symbols and signifiers to what is real, that's when we know the truth.
To quote Spike: This is just...neat.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #4 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
We start with Warren flashing back to the infamous "Bored now" line of Willow's as she flays him alive. We get the exposition of how he's still around as he taunts her with a scalpel near her eye. Mentions that she was spiraling (referencing the title of a season 5 episode where things are also sort of in a whirl).
We learn that Amy had continued to keep an eye on Willow through the end of season 6, I imagine already resenting her for tossing her aside when Will tried to get clean of magic. Warren said she began to watch over him. I don't know if she became enamored of him because he was the enemy of the Scoobies, and Buffy and Willow in particular, or just figured, hey, if Willow wants him dead, I want him alive, but at any rate she was able to swoop in and save him before Willow tried to burn him away to nothing. And now her magic is his skin. I ask you, why can't her magic be opaque, but whatever.
They together came up with the spell in Killer in Me to punish Willow, and I think that works really well. I could understand before why Amy didn't like Willow and would go to the trouble to try and hurt her, but the method she used, the specifics of the spell seemed kind of weird. I mean, yeah, it was a nice hot button issue with Willow, but it would also be poetic justice to Warren, so it fits together nicely.
The scene ends with Warren asking Willow, "Are you bored now?"
Dawn's upset and hitting walls, but Buffy points out she's not proportionally as strong as she is large, so she could really hurt herself. Dawn feels useless to help Willow and tells Buffy that "Will is like a mom to me." Xander has either the mystics or the Wiccans or somebody figuring out how to use the portal echo to reopen it long enough to send in an extraction team or one or two people only. There's a nice moment where Xander tells Buffy she needs to pick a fighter to go with her, that he wouldn't be as useful there as here, even though you can tell he's worried about his oldest friend. Ah, Xander's all grown up now. And all Buffy starts to say is "Xander" so we don't know if she was going to ask him to come or try to find a way to say he couldn't. I like that ambiguity.
We intercut a lot in this episode, between Willow getting tortured by Warren, Buffy and Xander getting ready to go in, the military waiting for the Slayer, and a dreamspace/otherworldly plane that Willow visits in her mind to escape the pain her body is experiencing.
Pretty sure Warren pokes out Willow's eye before he starts to lobotomize her, but thankfully it's all suggested and talked about and not shown. Buffy chooses Satsu to accompany her into the portal (she's embarrassed to be singled out but the others just tell her to do them proud), and a chance sharing of lip gloss leads to Buffy realizing that Satsu is the one who kissed her to wake her up, meaning Satsu truly is in love with her. This isn't stated until later. We just hear Buffy commenting on the cinnamon lip gloss and have to remember she mentioned cinnamon buns when she awoke.
Willow calls on five goddesses(?) who we will see later -- is it in the Willow one-shot? Need to look it up. She asks entrance to their plane and they grant it. One looks like a tree person, maybe a dryad, another could be a naiad, a water or mist sprite, another looks pretty much like a wookie. Then there's a woman shaped piece of paper with math symbols on it who could be a representation of logic or mind maybe. And the fifth is a slightly diffuse looking woman who is blue on one side of her face and yellow on the other, at least in the shots we see. No clue. I don't think they're defined when we see them later either. I seem to recall them being possible mentors to Willow, but then she chooses snake lady instead. We'll see them again, that's all I remember for sure.
Suit guy and General Voll (I'm assuming guy in charge is always Voll because he's the character we've been introduced to. I don't have a good enough picture in my mind of his appearance to know that, but I'm going with it.) are asking Amy what the screaming is about. She tells them to just be ready for the portal to reopen, that Buffy will definitely come after Willow (bitter much), but that Willow belongs to Warren. I like that we continually see both sides in this being smart. The Twilight folk know the portal will reopen, it's part of the plan, and they're ready for it. Buffy and Xander know that it will be another trap, that they'll be ready for them, and they plan for that. None of it is talked about specifically, we just see it play out.
The goddesses keep Willow company. The naiad-like one talks to her the most. They show her a picture of her agony that looks like fire, with shadow people who represent pieces of what Willow could be. Ending. Brrr. This other plane of the goddesses is a lot like Buffy and Amy's dreamspace, and both seem to foreshadow or at least refer to the empty space that Buffy and Angel create. I'm not sure how it all ties together, and maybe it doesn't neatly tie together, but I think these mental spaces and thought planes are important to the season. I don't think they're just there because they can be drawn easily enough in the comic medium. But we'll have to see. For now, I'm just trying to notice when they appear.
Buffy calls Xander a Watcher again and he says he'll "Watcher your butt." Hee. The portal opens, the military fire, and the (what do I call Buffy's organization? They're not all slayers, they're not watchers. Anyway) Buffy's forces use a giant mirror to reflect the ray gun back upon itself, blowing it up as Buffy and Satsu go through the portal. Xander says, "Magic, it's all done with mirrors." I'm putting a mark by that comment to see if it means more later.
Buffy and Satsu take down all the military dudes, hurting some of them to the point where they could die. Buffy tells Voll that Willow can heal them so he better tell her where Will is. Xander gets their location -- 2 miles south of Sunnydale. Amy is waiting in front of the door.
The naiad says Willow is close to natural death, one she can't come back from, but Willow is no longer concerned She mentions her best friend, then there's a cut to Buffy who says what Willow was saying, that she's a part of me, even when she's gone, a part of her is with me. Then Buffy goes all black eyes and starts flinging Willow magic at Amy. This confuses me a bit. Well, a lot. Is Willow speaking through Buffy, or is Buffy answering something Amy said to her that we don't hear. And when did this magical exchange happen? Was it something Will set up long ago for dire occasions? Or is it just that they have a connection, and when Buffy was close enough, Willow was able to access it and give her the power? It seems to be part of a plan, but I'm not sure. Did Willow enter Buffy's dreamspace at that point? Very confused as to how it actually works. But I like the result.
Buffy mentions having seen Amy's dreamspace and conjures up an image of her mom, Catherine the Great. It distracts Amy long enough for Satsu to grenade her ass. Buffy breaks through the door and sees uggo boy, but Amy recovers and magics them both away, him still spouting off about how it's not over. He'll be played as a pretty over-the-top villain in this season, which is fair enough. He's completely nuts at this point after all. And he was always pretty close to it.
We don't see what Willow looks like as Buffy breaks through her magical bonds, but then we do see her and she looks untouched. I'm assuming she healed herself at that moment. Again, thanks for not showing that. Everyone rejoices, and Dawn causes a small earthquake with her jumping up and down.
The three women head out to heal the soldiers and leave, but Buffy sees a door with the number 30 and remembers her dream talk with Ethan, seeing him imprisoned in three Xs. So she breaks in to free him, but General Voll has beat her to it and shot him dead. RIP Ethan Rayne. Voll didn't want him to be able to help Buffy. Buffy sees his mark and finally gets the name for it from him. "Twilight is coming...it all ends very soon.
We get to hear his perspective and motivation, and it will shape the rest of the season. "You've upset the balance," creating a master race, if you win your war with the demons, "you'll decide the world still isn't the way you want it and the demon in you will just say one thing. 'Slay.'" He also knows about the spell and the fight against the First and the fact that Slayer powers come from a demonic source. He knows a lot for someone we've never met. I take it Angel filled him in on just enough.
Buffy accuses him of misogyny, just not being able to stand all the women with power. He says it's more than men that want to bring them down and stresses the fact that Slayers aren't human. It's a mishmash of things. He's afraid of them because of their demonic origins. I read it as he's afraid that means that humans are done for and the demons, whether trying to do something "good" or "evil" will fight each other and human race will be collateral damage. How much of that is mixed with bigotry for not pure humans is debatable, but interesting he would throw the master race charge against Buffy, when he seems to be the one obsessed with purity of human blood.
Ultimately, it's fallout from the spell, how the rest of the people in the know think of the spell, and how much of it is based on Twilight recruiting versus natural uneasiness and fear of the unknown, we'll never know. Also, how much of it is misogyny, I don't think, is ever clearly shown. He finishes by saying that Buffy and her forces are now at war with the human race. She takes it in and says okay, but his words will weigh upon her for the rest of the season.
This theme of them against humans will continue to play out in a lot of variations through the season, I think, and I'll watch for it. And not just in continuing the argument between Faith and Buffy in season 3 about whether Slayers are superior and not bound by any human laws or mores (something that takes on a lot more weight when there's 1800 of them). Off the top of my head, the werewolf stuff of giving their magic to the Earth and staying human, the end result of magic sucked from the world, even the coming out of real vampires to the mainstream human world exemplified by Harmony, all of that touches on this back and forth, can we all live together, magic-yes or magic-no tension. Buffy not only upset the balance of good and evil with her spell, but possibly the balance of human and demon, Wizard and Muggle. Not sure how or if it relates to the creating a new world, ascending to a new level story. Something to keep an eye on.
We learn that Amy had continued to keep an eye on Willow through the end of season 6, I imagine already resenting her for tossing her aside when Will tried to get clean of magic. Warren said she began to watch over him. I don't know if she became enamored of him because he was the enemy of the Scoobies, and Buffy and Willow in particular, or just figured, hey, if Willow wants him dead, I want him alive, but at any rate she was able to swoop in and save him before Willow tried to burn him away to nothing. And now her magic is his skin. I ask you, why can't her magic be opaque, but whatever.
They together came up with the spell in Killer in Me to punish Willow, and I think that works really well. I could understand before why Amy didn't like Willow and would go to the trouble to try and hurt her, but the method she used, the specifics of the spell seemed kind of weird. I mean, yeah, it was a nice hot button issue with Willow, but it would also be poetic justice to Warren, so it fits together nicely.
The scene ends with Warren asking Willow, "Are you bored now?"
Dawn's upset and hitting walls, but Buffy points out she's not proportionally as strong as she is large, so she could really hurt herself. Dawn feels useless to help Willow and tells Buffy that "Will is like a mom to me." Xander has either the mystics or the Wiccans or somebody figuring out how to use the portal echo to reopen it long enough to send in an extraction team or one or two people only. There's a nice moment where Xander tells Buffy she needs to pick a fighter to go with her, that he wouldn't be as useful there as here, even though you can tell he's worried about his oldest friend. Ah, Xander's all grown up now. And all Buffy starts to say is "Xander" so we don't know if she was going to ask him to come or try to find a way to say he couldn't. I like that ambiguity.
We intercut a lot in this episode, between Willow getting tortured by Warren, Buffy and Xander getting ready to go in, the military waiting for the Slayer, and a dreamspace/otherworldly plane that Willow visits in her mind to escape the pain her body is experiencing.
Pretty sure Warren pokes out Willow's eye before he starts to lobotomize her, but thankfully it's all suggested and talked about and not shown. Buffy chooses Satsu to accompany her into the portal (she's embarrassed to be singled out but the others just tell her to do them proud), and a chance sharing of lip gloss leads to Buffy realizing that Satsu is the one who kissed her to wake her up, meaning Satsu truly is in love with her. This isn't stated until later. We just hear Buffy commenting on the cinnamon lip gloss and have to remember she mentioned cinnamon buns when she awoke.
Willow calls on five goddesses(?) who we will see later -- is it in the Willow one-shot? Need to look it up. She asks entrance to their plane and they grant it. One looks like a tree person, maybe a dryad, another could be a naiad, a water or mist sprite, another looks pretty much like a wookie. Then there's a woman shaped piece of paper with math symbols on it who could be a representation of logic or mind maybe. And the fifth is a slightly diffuse looking woman who is blue on one side of her face and yellow on the other, at least in the shots we see. No clue. I don't think they're defined when we see them later either. I seem to recall them being possible mentors to Willow, but then she chooses snake lady instead. We'll see them again, that's all I remember for sure.
Suit guy and General Voll (I'm assuming guy in charge is always Voll because he's the character we've been introduced to. I don't have a good enough picture in my mind of his appearance to know that, but I'm going with it.) are asking Amy what the screaming is about. She tells them to just be ready for the portal to reopen, that Buffy will definitely come after Willow (bitter much), but that Willow belongs to Warren. I like that we continually see both sides in this being smart. The Twilight folk know the portal will reopen, it's part of the plan, and they're ready for it. Buffy and Xander know that it will be another trap, that they'll be ready for them, and they plan for that. None of it is talked about specifically, we just see it play out.
The goddesses keep Willow company. The naiad-like one talks to her the most. They show her a picture of her agony that looks like fire, with shadow people who represent pieces of what Willow could be. Ending. Brrr. This other plane of the goddesses is a lot like Buffy and Amy's dreamspace, and both seem to foreshadow or at least refer to the empty space that Buffy and Angel create. I'm not sure how it all ties together, and maybe it doesn't neatly tie together, but I think these mental spaces and thought planes are important to the season. I don't think they're just there because they can be drawn easily enough in the comic medium. But we'll have to see. For now, I'm just trying to notice when they appear.
Buffy calls Xander a Watcher again and he says he'll "Watcher your butt." Hee. The portal opens, the military fire, and the (what do I call Buffy's organization? They're not all slayers, they're not watchers. Anyway) Buffy's forces use a giant mirror to reflect the ray gun back upon itself, blowing it up as Buffy and Satsu go through the portal. Xander says, "Magic, it's all done with mirrors." I'm putting a mark by that comment to see if it means more later.
Buffy and Satsu take down all the military dudes, hurting some of them to the point where they could die. Buffy tells Voll that Willow can heal them so he better tell her where Will is. Xander gets their location -- 2 miles south of Sunnydale. Amy is waiting in front of the door.
The naiad says Willow is close to natural death, one she can't come back from, but Willow is no longer concerned She mentions her best friend, then there's a cut to Buffy who says what Willow was saying, that she's a part of me, even when she's gone, a part of her is with me. Then Buffy goes all black eyes and starts flinging Willow magic at Amy. This confuses me a bit. Well, a lot. Is Willow speaking through Buffy, or is Buffy answering something Amy said to her that we don't hear. And when did this magical exchange happen? Was it something Will set up long ago for dire occasions? Or is it just that they have a connection, and when Buffy was close enough, Willow was able to access it and give her the power? It seems to be part of a plan, but I'm not sure. Did Willow enter Buffy's dreamspace at that point? Very confused as to how it actually works. But I like the result.
Buffy mentions having seen Amy's dreamspace and conjures up an image of her mom, Catherine the Great. It distracts Amy long enough for Satsu to grenade her ass. Buffy breaks through the door and sees uggo boy, but Amy recovers and magics them both away, him still spouting off about how it's not over. He'll be played as a pretty over-the-top villain in this season, which is fair enough. He's completely nuts at this point after all. And he was always pretty close to it.
We don't see what Willow looks like as Buffy breaks through her magical bonds, but then we do see her and she looks untouched. I'm assuming she healed herself at that moment. Again, thanks for not showing that. Everyone rejoices, and Dawn causes a small earthquake with her jumping up and down.
The three women head out to heal the soldiers and leave, but Buffy sees a door with the number 30 and remembers her dream talk with Ethan, seeing him imprisoned in three Xs. So she breaks in to free him, but General Voll has beat her to it and shot him dead. RIP Ethan Rayne. Voll didn't want him to be able to help Buffy. Buffy sees his mark and finally gets the name for it from him. "Twilight is coming...it all ends very soon.
We get to hear his perspective and motivation, and it will shape the rest of the season. "You've upset the balance," creating a master race, if you win your war with the demons, "you'll decide the world still isn't the way you want it and the demon in you will just say one thing. 'Slay.'" He also knows about the spell and the fight against the First and the fact that Slayer powers come from a demonic source. He knows a lot for someone we've never met. I take it Angel filled him in on just enough.
Buffy accuses him of misogyny, just not being able to stand all the women with power. He says it's more than men that want to bring them down and stresses the fact that Slayers aren't human. It's a mishmash of things. He's afraid of them because of their demonic origins. I read it as he's afraid that means that humans are done for and the demons, whether trying to do something "good" or "evil" will fight each other and human race will be collateral damage. How much of that is mixed with bigotry for not pure humans is debatable, but interesting he would throw the master race charge against Buffy, when he seems to be the one obsessed with purity of human blood.
Ultimately, it's fallout from the spell, how the rest of the people in the know think of the spell, and how much of it is based on Twilight recruiting versus natural uneasiness and fear of the unknown, we'll never know. Also, how much of it is misogyny, I don't think, is ever clearly shown. He finishes by saying that Buffy and her forces are now at war with the human race. She takes it in and says okay, but his words will weigh upon her for the rest of the season.
This theme of them against humans will continue to play out in a lot of variations through the season, I think, and I'll watch for it. And not just in continuing the argument between Faith and Buffy in season 3 about whether Slayers are superior and not bound by any human laws or mores (something that takes on a lot more weight when there's 1800 of them). Off the top of my head, the werewolf stuff of giving their magic to the Earth and staying human, the end result of magic sucked from the world, even the coming out of real vampires to the mainstream human world exemplified by Harmony, all of that touches on this back and forth, can we all live together, magic-yes or magic-no tension. Buffy not only upset the balance of good and evil with her spell, but possibly the balance of human and demon, Wizard and Muggle. Not sure how or if it relates to the creating a new world, ascending to a new level story. Something to keep an eye on.
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #3 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
We begin this with the cliffhanger from Buffy's dream, who is that man? Ethan Rayne! He tells Buffy "my love" is just an expression, but she still wants to hurl. He somehow hitched a ride into her dreamspace via Amy. Dreamspace is different than a dream, it's a place comprised of all the dreams you could dream all the time. Does this place relate in any way to the new world Buffy and Angel will create? Is it the dreamspace of a world or of the Seed?
Anyway, this dreamspace of Buffy's has my eternal gratitude for the next image we see. Buffy, dressed as a sexy nurse, chained between naked Angel and naked Spike, watched by (they better not be Viking!) cherubs, with Georgia O'Keefe flowers and an erupting volcano and trains heading straight towards a tunnel and each other. Ahem...I'm back.
Ethan says Buffy's trapped in here and needs to get out. I'm not sure I'd ever leave, but whatever, Ethan.
In the real world, Willow and Amy are fighting high in the air above the castle battle. Amy taunts Willow about her unimpressive magicks, but Will is just tasting Amy's power so she can disrupt it. She tampers with the spell and the zombies stop trying to kill everyone and start asking the slayers to dance instead. Xander applauds but then Amy hits Willow hard.
In dreamspace, Ethan leads Buffy towards what he wants her to see. On the way, they tumble past a ton of snippets of Buffy dreams that come from her memories of the past. I can pick out pictures of Faith, Dawn, Angel, Caleb, Joss Whedon!!!, dead on the couch Joyce, and a grad pic. We see her walking the halls with Xander and Willow, talking about French, a necessary ingredient to all Whedon dreamscapes. Also a scene of Buffy reading the book Vampyr with Giles looking on. That comes back at the very end of the season when that book, part of their first conversation together in the pilot, is Giles' legacy to Buffy. I think I see Riley in there, possibly the Master, and a scrawled: Buffy & Angel 4ever. I can't remember if that's from the show specifically, like the Prom ep or something, or just a general sentiment. It's also another bit of foreshadowing of the events that happen towards the end. Not only because it comes back to that relationship, but also the 4ever part is implied in their created paradise.
Willow is pixelating from Amy's blow, and she goes all veiny and hits her back hard, knocking her to the ground. Xander calls in his final weapon with a fe fi fo that Dawn finishes with f%$#ing fum! And then stomps Amy like she's Gachnar. Nice. She also asks Willow if she's evil again. I love that most of the characters on the show have to ask each other that whenever they've been apart for too long. Because you really never know.
Ethan and Buffy reach a giant rat cage that Buffy recognizes as Amy's, so she knows who attacked her now. Ethan says he didn't know her, couldn't see outside of himself, but he managed to connect with Amy and therefore was able to get to Buffy. Amy's dreamspace has the rat cage, seems to be in a cavern that is fleshy and red and gooey, kind of like Warren, or the inside of the not-an-asteroid from Empire Strikes Back. There's some dead, orc-looking creature there too. And Ethan is framed by a three-sided construction of X's, leaving Buffy to wonder if it's all about sex. Ethan tells her, "Remember what you see here. Twilight is falling. You're going to need all the help you can get."
Willow is assessing Buffy's condition while Xander and many slayers look on, and Dawn stares in the window, asking about the undead playing Pride and Prejudice around her ankles. Will makes an offhand remark that when the ball is over, they'll go away. Hee. We get a first indication of some sort of time when Xander tells Willow it's been a long year. We don't know if that's since the Hellmouth collapsed or since they got settled in Scotland or started organizing or what, but it's something.
Amongst the slayers in the room are Rowena, Leah and Satsu. Willow says there is someone in the room who is truly in love with Buffy and can break the spell. We're left to wonder if it's Xander or Willow or one of the slayers, presumably one whose name we know already or it's no fun, because Willow has everyone close their eyes so the one person can kiss Buffy in private. Buffy wakes saying, "Cinnamon buns!"
Giles is parlaying with a demon. Apparently it was members of this demon's brood that were slain in the church in the first episode. Twilight's people sent two of their own as bait to lure the demons out and force a confrontation with the slayers. Whether this was just their standard practice, to make their enemies fight one another, or it was part of a bigger plan, we don't know. Amy found Buffy by magic after that, but maybe Twilight used that tactic to find her himself. I don't remember if we find out all the details of that. But Giles tries to convince the demon it was in both their interests to fight each other on their own terms, not someone else's, so they should try to figure out what the symbol means and share information.
Xander is talking to Andrew on the phone about the symbol as well, and warning him about the latest attack. Andrew says it's boring where he is, and he couldn't find out anything about the symbol, despite now having parchment fingers. There's a good sight gag of Andrew talking about how bored Xander would be if he were there, while slayers are playing strip poker in the background. Also, one of the other women in the scene is reading a book called Fray. This is another instance of comics being a different medium than TV. If that was on air, people would be debating whether that reference was too meta, or whether that meant that Fray was a fictional character in the Buffyverse and how could that be, etc. But you see sight gags like that, and like the picture of Joss in Buffy's dreamspace, in comics and they're meant to only be meta allusions. At least, that's how I read it.
Xander is dealing with the wounded. Oh, Renee was impaled on a broadsword in the fight last issue, and I totally forgot to mention it. She survived, but blames herself for letting the undead army breach the walls. Xander tough talks her down, saying she did good raising the alarm and has nothing to feel guilty about. They're cute. Uh-oh.
Buffy and Willow look over a magically shackled Amy. Willow says her spell reeked of tech so she is probably working with someone. She's trying to trace her teleportation origin. Apparently, as we guessed before from Xander's comment, Willow's been gone a while. Buffy wonders where. She doesn't get an answer. We will fill in this gap later at various points. From what I remember, she spent most of the time with the snake lady goddess, seeking mentorship or something. We'll get there.
Buffy asks about Kennedy and is told she died (don't cheer yet, people) -- but it was a mystical thing and only lasted a month. Get some good Willow language that you can really hear Alyson Hannigan say in your head. Xander walks in to find them laughing at the end of a Buffy story. "And I was covered in it!" I know I'm curious.
Xander calls Willow Elphaba, which is fun, and Buffy starts to remember her dream and the kiss that awoke her, then Willow starts getting an image from Amy. It's high tech military guys, and someone mentions the Initiative. Buffy senses a cavern. Is that from Amy's dreamspace or is that the Hellmouth crater? I guess they're the same thing ultimately. Or it could be the cavern of the shadow men that Buffy is reminded of because a portal activates. It pulls Willow through and closes. Xander calls for the mystics. Okay. Are their mystics different from their witches and their psychics? I'm positive we never get that sorted out, but I'm fascinated by all the non-slayer parts of their organization, so I'd like to know.
Willow is strapped to a table in a lab with Amy gloating again over her. They were contracted to bring in the Slayer, but she'll be here, etc. We? BaDum! Warren is Amy's boyfriend, and he's still skinless, and he's megapissed at Willow. End.
It was shocking to see him the first time through. Never would have predicted that. We'll get the story of how he survived in the next issue. What a couple he and Amy are. I'm interested in watching their relationship again as I reread. They start out as major threats and end up being played almost for laughs before Warren turns back to goo. But I'm sure I missed a lot of their thing the first time through. He's just so gross to look at.
This issue was pretty much all action, balanced a bit by Buffy's dream journey that we haven't fully interpreted at this point. I think that happens soon though too; we'll get back to Ethan Rayne. But there's not a lot here thematically that echoes down to the end, unless you count the idea of dreamspace which does tie in a bit to the new world space I think. But we're moving right along.
Anyway, this dreamspace of Buffy's has my eternal gratitude for the next image we see. Buffy, dressed as a sexy nurse, chained between naked Angel and naked Spike, watched by (they better not be Viking!) cherubs, with Georgia O'Keefe flowers and an erupting volcano and trains heading straight towards a tunnel and each other. Ahem...I'm back.
Ethan says Buffy's trapped in here and needs to get out. I'm not sure I'd ever leave, but whatever, Ethan.
In the real world, Willow and Amy are fighting high in the air above the castle battle. Amy taunts Willow about her unimpressive magicks, but Will is just tasting Amy's power so she can disrupt it. She tampers with the spell and the zombies stop trying to kill everyone and start asking the slayers to dance instead. Xander applauds but then Amy hits Willow hard.
In dreamspace, Ethan leads Buffy towards what he wants her to see. On the way, they tumble past a ton of snippets of Buffy dreams that come from her memories of the past. I can pick out pictures of Faith, Dawn, Angel, Caleb, Joss Whedon!!!, dead on the couch Joyce, and a grad pic. We see her walking the halls with Xander and Willow, talking about French, a necessary ingredient to all Whedon dreamscapes. Also a scene of Buffy reading the book Vampyr with Giles looking on. That comes back at the very end of the season when that book, part of their first conversation together in the pilot, is Giles' legacy to Buffy. I think I see Riley in there, possibly the Master, and a scrawled: Buffy & Angel 4ever. I can't remember if that's from the show specifically, like the Prom ep or something, or just a general sentiment. It's also another bit of foreshadowing of the events that happen towards the end. Not only because it comes back to that relationship, but also the 4ever part is implied in their created paradise.
Willow is pixelating from Amy's blow, and she goes all veiny and hits her back hard, knocking her to the ground. Xander calls in his final weapon with a fe fi fo that Dawn finishes with f%$#ing fum! And then stomps Amy like she's Gachnar. Nice. She also asks Willow if she's evil again. I love that most of the characters on the show have to ask each other that whenever they've been apart for too long. Because you really never know.
Ethan and Buffy reach a giant rat cage that Buffy recognizes as Amy's, so she knows who attacked her now. Ethan says he didn't know her, couldn't see outside of himself, but he managed to connect with Amy and therefore was able to get to Buffy. Amy's dreamspace has the rat cage, seems to be in a cavern that is fleshy and red and gooey, kind of like Warren, or the inside of the not-an-asteroid from Empire Strikes Back. There's some dead, orc-looking creature there too. And Ethan is framed by a three-sided construction of X's, leaving Buffy to wonder if it's all about sex. Ethan tells her, "Remember what you see here. Twilight is falling. You're going to need all the help you can get."
Willow is assessing Buffy's condition while Xander and many slayers look on, and Dawn stares in the window, asking about the undead playing Pride and Prejudice around her ankles. Will makes an offhand remark that when the ball is over, they'll go away. Hee. We get a first indication of some sort of time when Xander tells Willow it's been a long year. We don't know if that's since the Hellmouth collapsed or since they got settled in Scotland or started organizing or what, but it's something.
Amongst the slayers in the room are Rowena, Leah and Satsu. Willow says there is someone in the room who is truly in love with Buffy and can break the spell. We're left to wonder if it's Xander or Willow or one of the slayers, presumably one whose name we know already or it's no fun, because Willow has everyone close their eyes so the one person can kiss Buffy in private. Buffy wakes saying, "Cinnamon buns!"
Giles is parlaying with a demon. Apparently it was members of this demon's brood that were slain in the church in the first episode. Twilight's people sent two of their own as bait to lure the demons out and force a confrontation with the slayers. Whether this was just their standard practice, to make their enemies fight one another, or it was part of a bigger plan, we don't know. Amy found Buffy by magic after that, but maybe Twilight used that tactic to find her himself. I don't remember if we find out all the details of that. But Giles tries to convince the demon it was in both their interests to fight each other on their own terms, not someone else's, so they should try to figure out what the symbol means and share information.
Xander is talking to Andrew on the phone about the symbol as well, and warning him about the latest attack. Andrew says it's boring where he is, and he couldn't find out anything about the symbol, despite now having parchment fingers. There's a good sight gag of Andrew talking about how bored Xander would be if he were there, while slayers are playing strip poker in the background. Also, one of the other women in the scene is reading a book called Fray. This is another instance of comics being a different medium than TV. If that was on air, people would be debating whether that reference was too meta, or whether that meant that Fray was a fictional character in the Buffyverse and how could that be, etc. But you see sight gags like that, and like the picture of Joss in Buffy's dreamspace, in comics and they're meant to only be meta allusions. At least, that's how I read it.
Xander is dealing with the wounded. Oh, Renee was impaled on a broadsword in the fight last issue, and I totally forgot to mention it. She survived, but blames herself for letting the undead army breach the walls. Xander tough talks her down, saying she did good raising the alarm and has nothing to feel guilty about. They're cute. Uh-oh.
Buffy and Willow look over a magically shackled Amy. Willow says her spell reeked of tech so she is probably working with someone. She's trying to trace her teleportation origin. Apparently, as we guessed before from Xander's comment, Willow's been gone a while. Buffy wonders where. She doesn't get an answer. We will fill in this gap later at various points. From what I remember, she spent most of the time with the snake lady goddess, seeking mentorship or something. We'll get there.
Buffy asks about Kennedy and is told she died (don't cheer yet, people) -- but it was a mystical thing and only lasted a month. Get some good Willow language that you can really hear Alyson Hannigan say in your head. Xander walks in to find them laughing at the end of a Buffy story. "And I was covered in it!" I know I'm curious.
Xander calls Willow Elphaba, which is fun, and Buffy starts to remember her dream and the kiss that awoke her, then Willow starts getting an image from Amy. It's high tech military guys, and someone mentions the Initiative. Buffy senses a cavern. Is that from Amy's dreamspace or is that the Hellmouth crater? I guess they're the same thing ultimately. Or it could be the cavern of the shadow men that Buffy is reminded of because a portal activates. It pulls Willow through and closes. Xander calls for the mystics. Okay. Are their mystics different from their witches and their psychics? I'm positive we never get that sorted out, but I'm fascinated by all the non-slayer parts of their organization, so I'd like to know.
Willow is strapped to a table in a lab with Amy gloating again over her. They were contracted to bring in the Slayer, but she'll be here, etc. We? BaDum! Warren is Amy's boyfriend, and he's still skinless, and he's megapissed at Willow. End.
It was shocking to see him the first time through. Never would have predicted that. We'll get the story of how he survived in the next issue. What a couple he and Amy are. I'm interested in watching their relationship again as I reread. They start out as major threats and end up being played almost for laughs before Warren turns back to goo. But I'm sure I missed a lot of their thing the first time through. He's just so gross to look at.
This issue was pretty much all action, balanced a bit by Buffy's dream journey that we haven't fully interpreted at this point. I think that happens soon though too; we'll get back to Ethan Rayne. But there's not a lot here thematically that echoes down to the end, unless you count the idea of dreamspace which does tie in a bit to the new world space I think. But we're moving right along.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Buffy Season 8 - Issue #2 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL
Issue #2 begins with Giles' voiceover as he watches and critiques a group of slayers sparring. There's a large group of women there. Not sure where it is. There's a big cathedral looking thing in the background. Do we hear where Giles is before he finds Faith? Will watch for that.
He's reflecting on how there used to be one slayer and hundreds of watchers, and now that's all changed. The world is different. He scolds the slayers for fighting well but alone, telling them they're not working together, not using their most valuable asset...
Cut to Buffy, talking to her Scotland-based slayers and finishing his thought: ...each other. She asks the three slayers who jumped out of the helicopter with her at the start of the season to attack her now. They are Satsu, who we will get to know better later, Rowena, a German-accented blonde, and Leah, a redhead whose name we didn't hear last time. Buffy cleans their clocks because they don't fight as a team. This theme introduced by Giles and Buffy is important to later developments as some of the slayers do start to fracture off and doing their own thing rather than work together outside of battle as well. And by the end, they're all over the place in small groups or alone.
One more "training" scene relates to that as well. Andrew is having a campfire outing with about 32 women and regaling them with his theories as to why Return of the Jedi sucked. And it's not about the Ewoks. He is interrupted by the punker slayer we later learn is named Simone. She's wanting to know why they don't use modern weapons instead of medieval stuff. Andrew's answer is unhelpful and possibly the final impetus to her and her allies to leave Buffy's camp and go out on their own, stealing weapons and villages and running things her way. He tells her, "No slayer carries a gun. Ever, end of story." And I'm sure she sees this a proof that Buffy is out of touch and not worthy of following.
Next we visit with Dawn, who's having a bath in the lake while Xander, looking the other way, talks with her. She's bitching about Buffy not wanting her there, Buffy's got her own slayer sisters and doesn't need Dawn, blah blah same-cakes. I like Dawn, but it's sad to see her still stuck on this riff, when it seemed she had come to terms with things in season 7. But she has had a rough time of it and was alone in college with no family there to help her through things. Xander suggests that maybe the giant thing is a cry for attention and gets splashed by half the lake.
Cut to Drextalcorp Recycling Technologies, a front for General Voll's operation. He and sweaty suit guy enter and go down an elevator into a huge armory, then make their way to the general's quarters. They're talking about how their op has been inserted, which we'll soon see means that Amy's gotten to Buffy. The general is a Twilight true believer who wants to just nuke Buffy's base, but suit guy doesn't want to be indicted and hung, so suggests they not do that. So I guess that means they aren't official military regulars, but another off-the-books black ops group. Or just military members recruited over to Twilight. I don't know if we ever find out.
They decide to use magic to fight magic for now, and the general goes into his quarters thinking about how the suit doesn't get the stakes. That's when we see his Twilight symbol. So is the suit Twilight or just doing his job? Probably doesn't matter, but I want to look at everything happening, even if the military stuff is Initiative-level boring so far. They also tease Amy's monstrosity of a boyfriend again, who we haven't seen yet but I think is revealed next issue.
We enter into a dream sequence that starts off as what seems to be a replay of a conversation Xander and Buffy actually had offpage. That's my take anyway. It looks real to us but will be seen to be a dream soon. He's telling her his giant Dawn theory and thinking that Kenny, the thricewise, cursed Dawn but her own issues could be shaping the curse. Buffy then asks Xander if he's coming to bed. I remember reading that the first time and going WHA?! Then wondering if it was Xander's dream. She says she won't be so rough this time but then kisses him and pops his head clean off. Definitely a dream then. What's awesome is she then swears like Spike, "Oh, balls."
Xander's head is tasting Scottish lint on the floor when the window blows out and Buffy says she can't go outside because she's afraid of the dark. Xander: "Buffy, you are the dark." Buffy: "That's what I meant." Makes me think of "how do you like my darkness now." But it foreshadows also, because darkness follows twilight.
She is pulled out the window and falls onto the hand of a giant gargoyle-like demon whose claws impale her hands and feet, crucifying her face up over its palm. Buffy says, "I know you" and it says, "Yes. Scream." And spits fire down upon her.
Then we cut to the real world and see Amy poised over Buffy, who is tied hand and foot in that same position on the bed, holding a dagger aimed at her heart, saying how she wants it to hurt. Xander and four slayers burst in to stop her, but she stabs at Buffy before they can shoot her with a crossbow and tackle her. But the dagger is broken and not in Buffy because she has mystical protections on her when she sleeps. Unfortunately, she's still stuck in nightmareland because of Amy's spell, and she can't be awoken without the kiss of true love. Makes the image of the talons through her hands even more evocative, resembling the piercing brambles surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle.
Quick cutaway to Renee and another slayer on guard on the ramparts. Renee is getting teased about how closely her latest interests seem to mirror Xander's. But then they see an army of zombies climbing the wall.
Amy is bound by their security spells. Xander sends the slayers with him to the walls, telling Renee to get their witches working on unspelling Buffy. This is the first mention that they have witches as well as psychics on their team.
Another shot of the zombie fight transitions into Buffy's dream. She's crumpling under the pain Amy's injected into her dream when a stranger offers her a hand, saying not to give up, and calling her "my love." That was also enigmatic the first time. Seemed like it would be Spike, but that's too easy, right? We'll find out soon enough who it is.
Meantime the battle is not going well for the castle, and Amy is starting to gloat about how all she did while trapped in the Sunnydale crater was practice and get stronger, and how a hundred slayers can't best her, no one can, blah blah gloat-cakes. Then we get a call-back to Giles' terrific entrance at the end of season 6 as Willow finally joins the comic. "I'd like to test that theory."
So we got right into the action in this issue. We're still adding back in characters and seeing where they're at, but the season-long fight between Buffy and Twilight and their factions is revving up, and the differing opinions and positions of the good guys are starting to be hinted at. And soon the casualties will start rolling in.
He's reflecting on how there used to be one slayer and hundreds of watchers, and now that's all changed. The world is different. He scolds the slayers for fighting well but alone, telling them they're not working together, not using their most valuable asset...
Cut to Buffy, talking to her Scotland-based slayers and finishing his thought: ...each other. She asks the three slayers who jumped out of the helicopter with her at the start of the season to attack her now. They are Satsu, who we will get to know better later, Rowena, a German-accented blonde, and Leah, a redhead whose name we didn't hear last time. Buffy cleans their clocks because they don't fight as a team. This theme introduced by Giles and Buffy is important to later developments as some of the slayers do start to fracture off and doing their own thing rather than work together outside of battle as well. And by the end, they're all over the place in small groups or alone.
One more "training" scene relates to that as well. Andrew is having a campfire outing with about 32 women and regaling them with his theories as to why Return of the Jedi sucked. And it's not about the Ewoks. He is interrupted by the punker slayer we later learn is named Simone. She's wanting to know why they don't use modern weapons instead of medieval stuff. Andrew's answer is unhelpful and possibly the final impetus to her and her allies to leave Buffy's camp and go out on their own, stealing weapons and villages and running things her way. He tells her, "No slayer carries a gun. Ever, end of story." And I'm sure she sees this a proof that Buffy is out of touch and not worthy of following.
Next we visit with Dawn, who's having a bath in the lake while Xander, looking the other way, talks with her. She's bitching about Buffy not wanting her there, Buffy's got her own slayer sisters and doesn't need Dawn, blah blah same-cakes. I like Dawn, but it's sad to see her still stuck on this riff, when it seemed she had come to terms with things in season 7. But she has had a rough time of it and was alone in college with no family there to help her through things. Xander suggests that maybe the giant thing is a cry for attention and gets splashed by half the lake.
Cut to Drextalcorp Recycling Technologies, a front for General Voll's operation. He and sweaty suit guy enter and go down an elevator into a huge armory, then make their way to the general's quarters. They're talking about how their op has been inserted, which we'll soon see means that Amy's gotten to Buffy. The general is a Twilight true believer who wants to just nuke Buffy's base, but suit guy doesn't want to be indicted and hung, so suggests they not do that. So I guess that means they aren't official military regulars, but another off-the-books black ops group. Or just military members recruited over to Twilight. I don't know if we ever find out.
They decide to use magic to fight magic for now, and the general goes into his quarters thinking about how the suit doesn't get the stakes. That's when we see his Twilight symbol. So is the suit Twilight or just doing his job? Probably doesn't matter, but I want to look at everything happening, even if the military stuff is Initiative-level boring so far. They also tease Amy's monstrosity of a boyfriend again, who we haven't seen yet but I think is revealed next issue.
We enter into a dream sequence that starts off as what seems to be a replay of a conversation Xander and Buffy actually had offpage. That's my take anyway. It looks real to us but will be seen to be a dream soon. He's telling her his giant Dawn theory and thinking that Kenny, the thricewise, cursed Dawn but her own issues could be shaping the curse. Buffy then asks Xander if he's coming to bed. I remember reading that the first time and going WHA?! Then wondering if it was Xander's dream. She says she won't be so rough this time but then kisses him and pops his head clean off. Definitely a dream then. What's awesome is she then swears like Spike, "Oh, balls."
Xander's head is tasting Scottish lint on the floor when the window blows out and Buffy says she can't go outside because she's afraid of the dark. Xander: "Buffy, you are the dark." Buffy: "That's what I meant." Makes me think of "how do you like my darkness now." But it foreshadows also, because darkness follows twilight.
She is pulled out the window and falls onto the hand of a giant gargoyle-like demon whose claws impale her hands and feet, crucifying her face up over its palm. Buffy says, "I know you" and it says, "Yes. Scream." And spits fire down upon her.
Then we cut to the real world and see Amy poised over Buffy, who is tied hand and foot in that same position on the bed, holding a dagger aimed at her heart, saying how she wants it to hurt. Xander and four slayers burst in to stop her, but she stabs at Buffy before they can shoot her with a crossbow and tackle her. But the dagger is broken and not in Buffy because she has mystical protections on her when she sleeps. Unfortunately, she's still stuck in nightmareland because of Amy's spell, and she can't be awoken without the kiss of true love. Makes the image of the talons through her hands even more evocative, resembling the piercing brambles surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle.
Quick cutaway to Renee and another slayer on guard on the ramparts. Renee is getting teased about how closely her latest interests seem to mirror Xander's. But then they see an army of zombies climbing the wall.
Amy is bound by their security spells. Xander sends the slayers with him to the walls, telling Renee to get their witches working on unspelling Buffy. This is the first mention that they have witches as well as psychics on their team.
Another shot of the zombie fight transitions into Buffy's dream. She's crumpling under the pain Amy's injected into her dream when a stranger offers her a hand, saying not to give up, and calling her "my love." That was also enigmatic the first time. Seemed like it would be Spike, but that's too easy, right? We'll find out soon enough who it is.
Meantime the battle is not going well for the castle, and Amy is starting to gloat about how all she did while trapped in the Sunnydale crater was practice and get stronger, and how a hundred slayers can't best her, no one can, blah blah gloat-cakes. Then we get a call-back to Giles' terrific entrance at the end of season 6 as Willow finally joins the comic. "I'd like to test that theory."
So we got right into the action in this issue. We're still adding back in characters and seeing where they're at, but the season-long fight between Buffy and Twilight and their factions is revving up, and the differing opinions and positions of the good guys are starting to be hinted at. And soon the casualties will start rolling in.
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