Jacob-inspired musing material

Jacob wisdom from recap of True Blood finale (http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/true_blood/and_when_i_die-1.php?page=17):

"...all other things being equal -- if Tara were out of the picture and Sookie had just killed Debbie on her own, let's start there -- then you are looking at a particular story, which is that when you choose to deviate from the norm, when you go it alone, or queer, or however you're going to do it, even just unmarried, that decision cuts both ways. Yes, you get to be free and true to yourself, but also, you have opted out of the game and can't expect validation from the game.

As Jessica's learning, you can either be a sex warrior gender revolutionary or a socially validated Good Girl, but you can't have both. And you can't flip back and forth between Sexy Faery You and Nice Christian You, not forever. You have to become something that is both. It is a trade-off. A wonderful, powerful, scary-as-hell trade-off.

"And I think for whatever reason, at this time in our culture, we've fallen into a lazy lull of somehow feeling owed something, in this way. That instead of acknowledging that living by our own lights and being true to ourselves might have a cost, we manage to either conform or do it half-assed and then whine about it later. "All I did was act like a slut and then you called me a slut" is not a well-formed sentence or valid complaint. "All I did was act like a slut, a word with zero meaning or power over me" is a well-formed sentence, and allows at least for the possibility that life is an unfair place for grownups and crybabies alike.

"As I said, it gets twisted by the fact that Tara died in the middle of it, but if you follow just the thread of Mine, His, Hers, it's a pretty complicated idea. "Why can't you both be Mine" is a meaningless question, because "Mine" isn't just about feelings -- it's about facts, and death, and danger. But to rebel against this idea that "You have to be His or you won't be at all," that can't possibly be a bad thing either, right?

"I think this is what it looks like, all this brain matter all over the kitchen. I think if you're willing to risk the danger of the real world, and be a complete person, the first thing that's gotta go is your fear of being the bad guy. Because it's not like Sookie killing a person in self-defense is really all that different from Sookie having one of her boyfriends take care of it for her, which is what you're really saying when you say Mine: Kill those that threaten me, so I don't have to get my hands dirty.

"Our mistake lies in thinking that grace attends any more to purity than to experience. But that's just nostalgia too: Because now is difficult to deal with at any given time, the past was always easier and kinder and clearer and purer. And that is imaginary, and reactionary, and gross, and scary. Especially when you apply it to yourself, which shouldn't be a show for other people anyway. Because the truth is, nobody lives that way.

"Nobody stays clean. We weren't designed for that. When your hands get dirty, all you have to do is wash them."

This is why I read his recaps; I always get things to mull over from his way of saying things that is so different from how I would say them but still meaningful to the things I think about. That dissonance is invigorating and extremely helpful.

Today

She didn’t always stop to take a look around the world. She guessed few people do. After all, we’re all so busy living our lives, thinking through our next mood, worrying about the immediate physical area around us, it’s amazing we see anything of the outer world.

Sometimes she would look up and realize that what she thought was around her actually looked totally different than the mental image she had assumed. Like the background desktop picture, overly simplified and bland, suddenly became uneven and pixelated and full of specifics, not all of which went together. The necessary blur. If we were to spend the time necessary to really see everything around us, we would sit for hours at the base of a tree, enraptured by its patterns.

But today was different, today she wanted to remember everything, to notice everything, and not let the blurriness take over her vision. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.

It wasn’t a special day really. Not her birthday or the day she fell in love. She didn’t get a promotion or win a prize or pass a test. And it wasn’t the worst of times either. No big personal breakup or national tragedy to live in infamy. She didn’t feel any better or worse than usual. And she wasn’t about to die. Nothing at all that dramatic. It was just a day.

It was the day she decided to make important instead, and thinking makes it so. Right?

Okay. So really it was just like any other day, except the desperation was upon her. It hit at different times, but often with no rhyme or reason. Just every once in a while she’d wake up and start to think a little too deeply about life, the universe and everything. If the normal course of affairs was to charge ahead through the day to get to the part where all the necessary tasks were finished and she could just stop doing things, the necessary balancing was this intermittent need to think too much, to ask herself the same philosophical questions again and see if her answers had changed or evolved.

Sometimes it manifested itself as depression and even despair about the lack of fill-in-the-blank of her life. Sometimes it was not so dark, just a yearning for something she suspected was universal and therefore unexceptional. And then there were times when it was an active force, a flowering of creativity and a small rebirth. Those were the good times.

That’s what she felt now, this desire to foster the creative parts of herself that got so little attention. The actual need to act, to emit, to do something besides just taking things in. The feeling that maybe there was something she could put into the world that would be new, for her at least.

Of course, how does she go from wanting to create something to the idea to look closely at stuff? Isn’t that just more letting things affect her?

Never mind that though. It’s not about getting bogged down in the details. In order to act in the world, she has to be open to the world. That’s what it’s about. Yes, she normally feels a bit like a black hole, sucking in knowledge and images and ideas from the world around, synthesizing them inside her, and then integrating them into herself in a new form. But isn’t the problem that that’s the first few steps of art? It’s not that that process is the problem; it’s that she seldom goes beyond that process, to take what was created inside her and find a way to put it out in the world for others to see. She feels more like a rich person fighting the inheritance tax. She made her riches within the economic system, but doesn’t want to put any of it back into the system to keep it alive.

She wonders if an economic analogy is really the place to go to for this idea of artistic expression and the passing on of knowledge, keeping the intellectual and artistic legacy of culture alive. But it’s a recurring thought process, one of the ones that can turn dark sometimes in her thoughts. It goes along with the idea of what is a responsible citizen and what do we owe the future. That those get tangled into a mess of guilt and disappointment and sense of failure is not what she wants to allude to now. This is a more selfish question right now.

By wanting to look around at the world, be open to the world in a dynamic way, she wants to create a dialog. And of course that’s the problem. Talking is not her strong suit at all. She’s much better at listening than speaking. The ideas she forms in her head when listening to others, when reading, when watching entertainment, when viewing a waterfall, those all stay inside. When she wants to articulate what anything means to her, nothing comprehensible comes out. At best, she can explain how she understands something or recognize how something affects her state of mind or emotion, but meaning is not forthcoming.

It’s not about not being able to communicate. She has a good vocabulary and speaks clearly, using words correctly. The problem is inside. If she doesn’t know what something means to her, she can’t say it. She thinks that a copout and not really true though. For with many things she does know what they mean to her, and in her mind, she will discourse at great length many arguments about why something means this or that or affects her this way. It keeps her awake at night, this obsessive thinking through of what something means or why she feels the way she does about it.

But it’s so unstructured. It’s all over the place, repetitive, arguments incomplete and out of order. So is this seeming inability to put even words out into the world, the tools she’s most familiar and versatile with, simply a lack of discipline? Of not wanting to take the time to write it out, organize it, rewrite it, edit it until a cohesive piece is created that makes sense and is even persuasive or interesting? She doesn’t believe that’s it.

What it is is a deep and unrelenting belief that what she has to say does not matter. That’s really it. It’s not even a self-hate kind of deal, it’s simply a realistic view of her place in the world and its meaninglessness. And she can’t seem to make herself find that liberating or unimportant. It’s just words, words, as Hamlet would say, with that same inflection. There’s so many words out there. Everywhere you look, someone is saying something, writing something; it’s an incredible din of blather. How much of it means anything?

When she was young, the block was a feeling of fakeness. Writing about the world, in fact or fiction, was pretending a knowledge she didn’t have yet. It would come with experience, with living. It felt useless to try to write anything that hadn’t been said before and better, by people who knew so much more than she did.

Now it’s different. She realizes this was a lie she told herself out of cowardice. We all know something; we all live in this world. And it can’t be about becoming Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf. That’s either a pathetic excuse not to write or it’s some sort of arrogance. Like what she would write has so much importance attached to it, so much weight.

Now nothing has weight. Every day on Twitter, 140 characters are posted how many times a second? There’s how many blog posts online? So many of them saying the same things over and over. And even as we decry the end of publishing as we know it, how many books in whatever form are being put out there? And magazines and zines and songs and poems and essays and articles and advertisements and obituaries and sermons and debates and political speeches and laws and parking tickets and bumper stickers and graffiti, how much of that is produced and replicated every single day? Does she want to add to the din? Is it possible to be heard, should she finally decide she wants someone to listen?

But sometimes she almost gets it, almost understands the place her expression could live in between the ideas of what its weight would be and whether that matters and to whom. She feels like she’s almost beyond the pretension and the hopelessness and the false pretention and hidden hopefulness; maybe that’s just wisdom finally putting in its two cents. But shouldn’t wisdom feel more wise? More sure and strong? Shouldn’t wisdom be able to be put into words?

Most days she’s stuck on Angel’s epiphany, “If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.” If nothing we write matters, then all that matters is what we write. She doesn’t know if that makes sense at all. It almost feels right.

Today has moved on an hour now, and she’s not necessarily made it a special day after all. But she opened the file, she put the thoughts in her head on the blank paper facsimile in front of her, and she posted it online, a drop of water in the vast sea of internet babble. And she felt good.

Angel After the Fall - Issue #2 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY THRU SEASON 8, ANGEL THRU SEASON 5

Chapter two starts with Angel on his way to Santa Monica. It's the next 'evening.' He tells Wes about killing Burge's son last night. Wes offers to accompany him, but Angel's not feeling it. Wesley says he'll stay behind and "haunt the fort."

Angel feels bad about turning down Wes's companionship, but he just doesn't know where his loyalties lie, and he needs to warn Connor about the coming war. He figures Burge will want to take revenge by going after what Angel cares about most.

Nina is all hostile at first, and Angel calls her his ex, but then she gets all "let's eat bloody things together" on him. Seriously, she needs some animal tranks. But Connor is not there. He's in Westwood, looking into the whole KR'PH thing.

In Westwood, a huge, roiling mess of a dominance battle is going on between the would-be demon lords, and there's a bunch of humans caught in the crossfire. Angel jumps into the fight to save them, thinking about how he let Connor down with the whole getting him stuck in hell thing. Angel needs to get over it.

Connor joins in the fight and they cover each other's backs and talk. Angel tells him the score and he gets it immediately. He's still cool Connor of season 5, as far as I can tell. Awesome. He asks Angel where he's been and why he's being all stupid re above. They stop fighting to talk and are surrounded. Luckily Gwen comes in at this point and fries the demon horde. She wants them to check out the crime scene with her because there's a new player in town and "he's out for blood."

Cut to Gunn, the vampire. SO messed up that he would become what he hates most. He's got George on a bed surrounded by some kind of blood-drawn mystical trap. This is where we hear George's name. Gunn tells him that he's one of the good guys. George is understandably hesitant to acknowledge that to be true. "Trust the vampire who kidnapped me, done." Gunn doesn't like being called a vampire.

We find, in what will continue to be a theme with the last standers, that Gunn blames Angel for his situation. Says he was a fool to ever trust a vampire, claims he was getting vamped while Angel was playing "dragon-whisperer." But he says even with this "disease" he's going to do what's right. Then he starts amping up into a rant about Angel thinking he's so good because of his soul, but maybe he never was that great of a man anyway, and then "he gives up. On everything. On us. But it's fine." Then he just whales on poor George while shouting that he's going to save everyone. Okay. Anger issues much? Talk about prior traits being amplified when vamped.

When he says Angel gave up on everything, on us, I wonder if he's referring to something specific that happened after the battle. Maybe Angel saw what happened to Gunn and couldn't stake him, but also told him to get lost because he was a vampire? I guess we'll find out more later. I've read some of this already, but I don't remember much.

Gunn apologizes for beating the crud out of George, then leaves him, carrying the yellow orb he stole from KR'PH. He walks into a room, tendrils seem to grab the orb and take it to something. What the hell? Looks like a group of demons stuck together, overflowing another bed (are they in a hotel too?) with treasures beneath them/it. I assume they're/it's alive because of the tendril, but what the hell it is, no clue. But Gunn's plan to save everyone must involve this monstrosity, and it definitely doesn't include Angel.

Angel, Gwen and Connor take in the scene. We find out the yellow thing is the Eye of Ramras. It's a token of power. It amplifies the power you have already, hence the George being able to force the gladiators to fight moment from last issue. And that's how a low level demon like KR'PH was able to rise so high. He was on Angel's to-do list, but someone beat him to it. Gwen says it was vamps, judging by all the dead girls with ruptured necks. Although I don't know that they've shown anyone but Gunn being a vampire in his crew. Wouldn't think he'd work with vampires. He may have convinced some humans to join him. IDK.

Angel says he doesn't know who did this, but he lies. Apparently the fact that it's a vampire combined with the (we soon find out) Sanskrit drawings on the arena wall make him think he has the answer. He sends Connor off to find his dragon, whose name we aren't supposed to be able to make out yet, and heads to Beverly Hills...

...to find Spike! Or is it Hugh Hefner? He's in a big estate, surrounded by greenery, fountains of some sort of blood or demon brew, and bikini babes, of both human and demon persuasions. He's lounging about in silk pajamas, on some sort of plush throne-like chair, being waited on as he tells a highly biased version of the season 5 ending battle. It involves himself as hero and Angel as a blubbering coward.

He picked a bad time to tell this story though, as Angel makes an appearance. One of Spike's girls, Spider, says Angel reeks of magic, so I guess she's more than human. Angel tries to talk to Spike, but a bodybuilding type lady bars his path and says no one touches the Lord of Beverly Hills. Angel says, "it's officially hell."

Spike is not happy to see Angel either, claiming he rose from the ranks of "prisoner to prisoner with benefits to protector back to prisoner with benefits to Lord." And he doesn't want to lose that because of Angel. He's given up on the good fight and is just enjoying his creature comforts here. Bad Spike. Seriously. They get into an argument. Spike joins the ranks of those who blame Angel for the choices they all agreed to. Bad Spike.

Angel gets the upper hand since Spike is drunk (he says). I think he might just be soft at this point. Angel tells Spike a demon lord was killed by something that drained people's blood, and the inscription on the wall was in Sanskrit, so where is she? Ohh. I get it now. Time for our last hero to join the fun.

Illyria: "Your presence is irritating my pet. Perhaps your dismemberment will soothe him." The end.

Angel After the Fall - Issue #1 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY THRU SEASON 8, ANGEL THRU SEASON 5

Our first words reprise the beginning of Angel the series. "It all started with a girl." Only this girl is actually Fred, and Angel is giving us a voiceover recap of season 5 while he jumps in between some nasty looking demons and a threesome of humans. He tells us how he wanted to channel the evil resources of Wolfram and Hart (W&H) into something positive, how it was his worst choice ever, how it changed him, it killed Fred, and led to him taking a stand.

Which led to his current situation, which he characterizes as him trying to make up for that stand he took. As he fights, it looks like the demons get the upper hand, but then arrives The Dragon. The one last seen flying ahead of a demon army, coming down the streets of Los Angeles towards the alley where our four surviving heroes stood, wounded but ready to fight. Angel says he and the dragon realized neither of them wanted to work for W&H anymore, and they teamed up. The dragon takes out the rest of the demons here with little effort and a lot of flame.

Angel tells the human survivors to take his car and go to an address immediately. The woman, who was once a lawyer, asks him why this is happening, saying she didn't deserve it. Angel says he doesn't know, but tells us differently. And then we find out exactly what was the cost of Angel's last stand: Wolfram and Hart sent L.A. to hell.

After that, the demons divided up the city, and Angel was left to lick his wounds back at the W&H office. He's been headquartered there ever since. He returns there now, sending the dragon to the parking garage, reflecting on how it wasn't the worst punishment he could get from W&H. So it seems he's still waiting for the shoe to drop, to find out what else they have planned for him and why they kept him alive. And we have no news yet on the others, aside from Angel's comment that there were losses on both sides of the fight.

As Angel walks through the building, he's attacked by a demon, Burge, Lord of Downtown L.A., and his son. They're annoyed about Angel's having killed 6 of the kid's men. Burge wants Angel (and all) to respect the boundaries of his turf and not hunt within them. His son is just pissed Angel took out his guys and wants to kill him. As they're having this mostly one-sided conversation, someone asks if there's a problem. Shock number 2 of the story is here: Wesley!

Funny the one person we knew was dead would show up before we find out the fates of the ones left standing at the end of season 5. Apparently Wes is in the Lilah position now. His contract with W&H didn't end with his death, and they've brought him back to what? Watch over Angel? Run the L.A. office? Something else nefarious? We don't know yet.

At this point he argues for Angel's life to Burge, claiming that W&H don't condone his actions and will take away his TV privileges, but that he was left alive for a reason, and Burge would do well to leave him that way. "Angel's fate isn't up to you." Burge agrees to leave it for now, but won't abide any other attacks on his holdings or his men. Angel needs to stay inside tonight. His son isn't happy and tries to kill Wes, which doesn't work 'cause he's all ghostly now.

For some reason Angel has a stake in his hand at this point. Not sure why or if he had it on him or grabbed a piece of broken furniture. He gets nostalgic with it, but Wes doesn't follow. They talk about the night's 'rounds' and we cut to the address Angel gave the humans as a refuge.

Santa Monica. They approach a hotel, arguing whether they should have trusted the guy on the dragon. They enter to see a large group of people, humans and demons, all armed. Then the air turns electric as Gwen! enters the picture. As she appears in front of them, holding them in place with her juju, Nina! approaches from the rear, giving them a good smell. She's all feral and gross, and the lawyer asks if she's hungry or bi-curious when Nina gives her a lick. Apparently the sun and moon are both out all the time in this hell, and it's keeping the werewolves constantly in flux.

And then who would appear but Connor! He's running this place; calls the group his family.

Angel is getting his wounds tended to by a creepy Cronenbergian demon bug thing. Ew. He and Wes talk some more. It's obvious things are strained between them. Wes is being stoic but depressive. Angel doesn't trust him because of his contract with W&H. Angel tells Wes he didn't fight back against Burge because he knew it would escalate to fullout war with demons using human targets. So Angel's pretty much spent the last couple of months just saving small groups of humans under attack and sending them to Connor for protection.

He asks Wes if that's what W&H wants, but Wes says he doesn't know. Angel doesn't know whether to believe that or not. Wes says he would give anything to get out of his contract and move on, but knows no way to do it. So he says he wants Angel to stop being so gunshy about having damned the city to hell and start trying to take some control back before someone else does.

Cut to KR'PH, Lord of Westwood, Dark Overseer of Everything West of Beverly Hills. He's a creepy dude that looks like a skeleton covered with a blue protoplasm, with glowing red eyes and a glowing yellow globe in the center of his chest. He's in the UK-LA Sporting Field? -- some arena, surrounded by scantily-clad slave girls and demon bodyguards, trying for some human gladiator action. The humans are ex-cops and bouncers dressed vaguely like Roman gladiators. (Shout-out to DeKnight?) They're not excited to fight one another.

KR'PH tells the Splenden Beast beside him (looks like a giant, floating fish with hair) to brain-yell them into action. The fish claims to be a telepath, but he can't control other people. KR'PH uses his yellow globe to amp up the fish's power and tells him to do it or the humans will start dying. So the Splenden--look, we find out later his name is George, so let's go with that--George complies.

Then he senses others approaching the arena, angry others. We see a group of hooded figures approaching with weapons. They knock out George and fall upon the demons. KR'PH is fine at first, but as more of his bodyguards bite it, he starts shrieking about making a deal. Then we see who leads this band of merry men: Gunn! Yay, Gunn is alive! But surprising really.

He grabs the yellow globe from KR'PH's chest and the demon is down. "Chalk that up to a win for Team Gunn!" His teammates are all what? Apparently they were together before he came in and took over and then dressed them like his old gang. Anyway, the only ones besides them left alive now are the slave girls. Gunn tells them it's okay, that the last couple of months were just a bad dream. Then he hits on them. Ew.

Back at W&H, Burge's son is outside with 6 humans. He's an eye for an eye type I guess. He's going to kill them while Angel watches, having agreed (in their minds) to stay in the building. Angel ruminates on what to do. Wes told him everything he has been doing is wrong, but Angel doesn't know if that's Wes talking or W&H. But ultimately he can't stand by and watch this happen, so he stakes Burge's son in the eye, killing him. And war is declared.

"Of course, this might be exactly what Wolfram & Hart wants. That's fine. Let them think they're in charge. Wolfram & Hart has taken away everything I had. Everyone I cared about. Everything I was. But that's how I'm going to win. They think they've changed me." As the last bit of voiceover occurs, we see Gunn, in full vamp face, killing all the slave girls. Man.

Buffy Season 8 - Issue #9 SPOILERS FOR BUFFY 1-8 ENTIRE & ANGEL THRU AFTER THE FALL

No Future for You Part 4.

We start with Faith thinking about and flashing back to Mayor Wilkins. She knows now that he was the evil scumbag everyone thought he was, but she can't feel it. It didn't feel like he was exploiting her at the time and even now, so she gets how girls can get sucked into bad relationships like that. She's remembering him asking her to call him Richard, saying she's a daughter who would make him and his departed wife proud, and thanking her for helping him with his plan and making it fun. Faith thinks that it's hard to remember that time in her life and not feel loved. I would guess it's probably the only time in her life she can say she felt that way.

But anyway, she is under attack from Lady Genevieve right now. Gigi is feeling betrayed by Hope (heh), but doesn't kill her right away. They start a slayer conversation instead, meaning they fight, banter, and talk. Faith drops her accent, which is another betrayal, and kicks Gigi into the greenhouse. They fight there amid the plants and statuary, under the eyes of a sculpted girl who looks not a little like Buffy. Nice symbolism of the other slayers being always under Buffy's shadow.

After getting past the betrayal and the America vs. Britain stuff that feels frankly a little tired, they get on the subject of Roden. It's obvious that's what Faith wants to talk about, after her thoughts on the Mayor.

Cut to Giles and Trafalgar, as the dwarf's special hammer gets eaten by Roden's magic. He says they'll need darker magic than his to get past the defenses. Cue Willow calling Giles' phone.

Except it's not Willow, it's Buffy, and she's still in a foul mood. "You're working with her and you didn't even tell me?" I wonder if something happened after season 7 and before season 8 between Buffy and Faith. Maybe Faith's starting out in Cleveland was less a tactical move and more a personal one, on either her part or Buffy's. Because it seems Buffy is more bent out of shape than at least I would expect after their End of Days reconciliation. But at any rate...

Giles is wanting Willow's help to get to Faith, but Buffy fills him in on what just happened to her last issue. Now he's really worried that Faith is still stuck there. Buffy won't put Willow on until he explains himself. And he refuses. See, this is where Giles has gotten annoying lately. He used to be so good at giving Buffy support when she needed it, letting her handle things when she could, helping her from the background but following her lead. But now, he goes behind her back to do what's best for her without telling her he's doing it (LMPTM) and tries to "fix" these problems in her slayerdom without her being aware they exist. I know it's just more of the killing Ben thing, where he doesn't think heroes should have to deal with the dirty stuff, but it's just not right in this situation. He tells her to be the leader and make the decisions, then he keeps information from her that she needs to lead. Argh!

Anyway, Buffy is hurt by his refusal, and she bails, leaving Will the phone, to go have some, as Xander puts it, alone time. "What other kind is there?" Well, Buff, that's a bit more self-pitying than I think is warranted at this point, even after what I said previously, but I get it. I do appreciate that Buffy, Giles, Faith and the others are still strong, complex and nuanced characters in the comics.

Back to Faith and Gigi fighting and arguing over Roden, who is conspicuously absent from this fight. Gigi says he trusts her to win and he adores her. Faith doesn't try to argue that point because maybe he does, but she knows he's using her too. She tells Gigi, "Part of you knows something ain't right...'cause you've never deserved to be loved by anybody." Hey, slayers fighting each other are always fighting themselves, I guess.

Gigi keeps monologuing about blood and birthrights, saying the nightmares will die when she kills the rest of "your" kind, and Faith kicks her hard, telling her to "wake the #^%* up." Sad really. The slayer dreams can fill you with hope that you can fight the darkness, or they can fill you with dread at the amount of darkness out there. Either way, it's a lot to handle when it just hits you from the blue. For every nameless slayer pretending to be Buffy, you get another like Gigi. It has always been that way for the slayer, but with so many slayers now, with the potential for sisterhood and comradery, one could hope it wouldn't be so devastating. Did Buffy and her cohorts not have time to deal with this, or did they make a mistake to concentrate on building defenses and training the actual recruits before finding the rest?

Faith's kick sends Gigi flying back towards a tree that has her double-bladed battleax stuck in it, so Faith sees it coming when Gigi lands against the ax and dies.

Roden steps in now to claim the victor. He says his orders were to "train the slayer to end all slayers" and obviously now Faith could play that role. (Who plays it at the end of the season?) Faith is so not into Roden's deal, but he is observant and he offers her the chance to make Buffy go away forever. He holds up a guidebook with the Twilight symbol on it and says it will show them the way to end Buffy. Faith takes the book and nails him with it.

Roden magicks her across the greenhouse and then calls up a fist from the earth to squeeze her to death, saying, "Girls like you are supposed to shuffle off this mortal coil when you're young and fresh." That kind of echoes the Beljoxa's Eye thing about Buffy's resurrection and the balance of the world.

As Faith is dying, she sees Giles coming up behind Roden. Willow must have broken through. Giles shoves some gardening shears into Roden's back, releasing Faith. Roden magicks Giles and calls him the kennel master and says all his bitches will die. Lovely. Faith tosses Giles the Twilight book, and he uses it to create a containment field not around, but within Roden. Grossness ensues. And it's over.

Later, in Giles' flat, Faith is wearing a Lil' Devil T-shirt! They share a moment about how depressing it is to do wetworks, and Giles acknowledges that he generally tries to keep that side of himself from his charges (meaning Buffy). But Faith has seen it and understands. They both can feel the bond they have now.

Giles tries to give her the passport and 'discharge' they agreed upon in the beginning, but she refuses. This is cool. After all that happened with Gigi, she wants to find girls like her who haven't gone too far from redemption and "help walk a few bad girls back from the brink." Awesome. I think it means she's taken the next step, making the change that Angel made in season 3 Buffy, from regretting his past actions and trying not to make the same mistakes to actively trying to help others. Faith had already rededicated herself to fighting evil, but other than Angel in season 4 of Angel, she hadn't made it personal, about saving other people rather than focusing on herself.

Giles, having possibly burnt his last bridge with Buffy and wanting to continue dealing with the slayer situation, asks if he can join her. He wants to be not a mentor, but a partner. On those terms, and after hearing he and Buffy aren't on speaking terms, Faith agrees. Maybe these crazy slayer/watcher kids can make it work. (Not that way. Gross.)

Epilogue. A female lieutenant, Molter, has come to talk to Twilight. He's all in costume (is this the first time we see him?) and floating in the air. She tells him his plan failed and Summers lives. He claims Roden and Genevieve were actually the targets. Molter thought they were his soldiers. Twilight says this was about manipulating their enemies into fighting each other. The goal apparently is "bringing the age of magic to a close." Molter still doesn't think it's a victory because Buffy is still out there, but Twilight says she can have the day, "night falls soon enough."

EVEN MORE SPOILERS
Okay. So first off, nice calling her Summers and talking about her having the day. They're not the same, but related by sunlight. Second, we know Twilight is Angel. So it seems he planned for Buffy to learn of Roden and Gigi's threat and neutralize it, all while having his minions think he's aiming for her. His general plan has been supposedly to gather all of Buffy's enemies in one place to make it easier to deal with them, make them visible and fightable, as opposed to scattered and hard to find and predict. So this fits I guess. He must have recruited Roden as a potential enemy, set him up to find the most dangerous anti-Buffy slayer and thereby bring her to his and then Buffy's attention by aiming her right at Buffy.

I guess it hangs together. Still not sure it's a great plan. But it's interesting to see the parallels with what Giles was doing. He too was trying to help Buffy in ways he thought she wouldn't approve of to make things ultimately better for her. Do they think they're cleaning up her mess? The problem is that she doesn't know what is happening around her. Maybe she can't handle all this herself, but she should be able to delegate to her chosen lieutenants knowingly, rather than having them take on those tasks in total obscurity. I think, anyway.

But it is interesting that Twilight's goal is to end the age of magic. That is what happens at the end. Was it really Angel's goal all along or did he just think it would come to that? Or the opposite? I can't remember all of how the end went down, that's part of the reason for my reread, but I'll be watching for clues as I go.

An open letter to Jacob of TWOP in response to a Gossip Girl recap wherein I go on way too long about thoughts & questions I had while reading

**Author's Note**
This is a weird way to do this, but, A, I'm not going to bother Jacob with an email of this length, and, B, I did write it as if to him, and I'm not willing to do the work to redo the focus. I'm lazy. Deal with it, imaginary readers.
************************************************************************************

"The definition of a genius is somebody that agrees with you. The definition of an asshole is somebody that doesn't. The definition of good art is art that somehow follows your precise personal instructions. The definition of bad art is anything administrated by somebody else, even somebody who knows what they're doing. The less important the issue, the louder the volume. This is what it's like to feel utterly powerless in your real life." -- Jacob Clifton, Gossip Girl 4x22 Recap.

Wow, what a bitch slap. I can only imagine the sheer shrillness of commentary that you're responding to, but I often try to fill in the blanks. I liked what you said above because I agree with it. See what I did there?

INTERWEBS AND FANDOM

It occurred to me recently, in a more complete fashion than ever prior, how much every opinion we form and express as a truism to others is really about ourselves, our views and our needs. Not that I didn't get that before, but it's a thought that bears revisiting. I was reading a comment (on the Buffy Rewatch I believe) where someone posted about how she has problems with Buffy (the character), but it seems like everyone else loves her so much they overlook her faults, and therefore the poster feels the need to point them out. What struck me about the comment was that it is almost word-for-word the exact opposite of how I feel. Meaning not only do I like the character, but to me it seems that people are always criticizing her or hating on her, so I feel the need to speak out in her defense all the time.

It really clicked over in my mind how subjective what we see on screen or read online is. Not only in the perceived biases of what we're seeing at the moment, but in what we choose to take notice of in general. Whether we're the kind of people that usually only take note of the things that speak positively to us (and I'm not sure those people are ever on the internet) or we always notice as ubiquitous the things that strike us negatively, those impressions are what stay with us to form the default atmosphere of our lives. To shift metaphors, the pictures we see on our cave wall are playing out behind a hazy curtain of unexamined ideas, with holes worn through by our obsessively picking at the curtain in a few key places allowing us to see small parts of the larger picture. Our favorite things and/or our pet peeves emerge picture-perfect while the rest of the image remains hidden behind that slightly opaque barrier. All the things we don't notice.

Like I said, none of this is new to me, but I think I'm beginning to understand it more now. It's not just seeing what you want to see, it's not just turning away from things you don't want to hear, it's our attempts to construct the world around us in the exact way we want it to be that blinds us to the world as it is and makes us try to force the world to conform to the way we imagine it. We don't always consciously decide what sources of light we want to turn our faces toward, but the choices we make almost without thinking become equally important to us because we believe it defines who we are; that's no small thing. And part of who we are is what we stand in opposition to.

I get why we do these things; I see myself do it too. I fully understand the need to define myself against the pressures of a world that assumes me to be someone else. I believe in the right of people to define art for themselves. I can accept their unattenuated (while obviously personal and subjective) statements about the quality of a show's characters or the relevance of a written piece or the larger sociopolitical ramifications of a storyline. What I don't get is when people take what they read or see in artistic works and commentary on such works (that are created for a large audience) as personal attacks that must be defended against. What I don't get is the sense of absolute surety that they're right about what they say, followed almost immediately by a sense of martyrdom and a righteous desire to stand up for their truth in face of this horrifying (and usually largely imagined) oppression. I mean, I feel the feelings, but I tend not to blame others for them.

Maybe I'm jealous. I have a bit of a Hamlet problem, always have, in that I find it very hard to make a definitive choice. I see more than one side of things; I don't tend to think in stark binaries. I think it would be nice to have that sense of the rightness of my beliefs and my words, but it without fail feels like a lie. I may watch something and think, "Oh, that storyline is crap." And I may never want to watch the show again. But do I believe I'm objectively correct? No. I believe that's my opinion. I don't even believe it will always be my opinion because I've changed my mind on those kinds of things a thousand times. So why the shrill?

POLITICAL STUFF

I have to confess to being (perhaps pruriently) interested in the conversation you often seem to be continuing about feminism. Myself, I tend to be someone who appreciates the historical value of second wave feminism, but sees the flaws it had then and especially has now in being applicable in any concrete way to specific situations that arise in our current world. And it seems like I'm always in some way trying to negotiate a path through the muck to get to a place where I know how to react to the issues of the day in a way that doesn't reject the past, but integrates itself comfortably into the now and the future. Because it can be such a mess.

I think I have issues with some of the same topics you do. I'm thinking especially of atheism and feminism. How they manifest online in both obvious and subtle ways; how the labels destroy or betray what they're labeling more often than not. I wonder how much of the problem is with trying to move forward from identity politics to a new thing. In the past it has been important to be loudly and proudly one thing or another, just to get attention and results in the political arena. But the finer distinctions, the individuality of people, gets lost in the label. And people stop talking with real words and start using slogans. And then they forget what the slogans used to mean and why they were once so vitally important. It's all words, words. (What the hell does "the personal is political" mean now to me?)

But I can't abandon the old ways completely because they did and still do have some value. It is important to analyze art for its political and social assumptions and to point out when the message isn't always such a good thing. But when the people doing the pointing out don't have a sense of history or an understanding of how art works, yet still have equal voice in critiquing it -- it sounds elitist, doesn't it? To say those opinions are less important. Maybe they're less relevant? Or maybe it's not that there are opinions posted online that do not always relate in any way to reality; maybe it's that inability we all seem to have in the internet age to rank them according to their worth. (Worth again being a value judgment, and no, I don't know where I was going with that.)

Alternately, that reminds me of arguments I've read about TV images of women. For example, often critics can make a good argument about how a show is not actually feminist because of X, Y, and Z. Yet if women watch the show and feel empowered by it because they don't see X, Y, or Z, or because they reject X, Y, and Z as relevant criteria for feminism, is it then feminist for them anyhow?

MY POINT, MAYBE

Perhaps instead of droning on and on about the wild segues of thought your comments cause me to experience, I should just ask outright about some things. What's the root of the behind-the-scenes, long-running gag about Chuck the rapist? What's the latest foofaraw from proponents of Dair about? Are you actually getting nasty emails about your recaps or are you reacting to comments you've read somewhere else? You don't have to answer of course, it's none of my business, but I am curious because of the allusions to this background conversation in your recaps.

So I've written this overly lengthy letter to you because I am interested in your opinions on any of the topics I've raised, should you care to engage with them. The hints I get from your recaps and Facebook posts always intrigue me and make me think. I believe that your point of view on things is different than mine; not in an argument-causing, diametrically opposed way, but in an interesting, "never thought of it that way, not sure I agree but also not sure I don't" kind of way. If that makes sense.

To end (finally), just wanted to say thanks, again, for your words. This is a poor way to repay them, but in some ways apt.

Your long-winded and unfocused friend,
Tami

P.S. I'm actively and only somewhat successfully resisting the urge to qualify all of the above in a way that makes myself seem more clever and less derivative. Oh, well. Guess I'll post it anyway.

Thoughts that arise while reading comments online

Reading some online comments this week made me send this tweet: Everyone's a martyr in their own way, in their own not that martyric way. #captainhammerrevisedfortheinternet

It just occurred to me in a clearer way than normal that the martyr complex I've noted in annoyance in people is universal and in me as well. Not that I didn't know it, but it was really -- well, like I said, clear to me at that point. Someone was saying she was annoyed that Buffy's faults were overlooked and she was put on a pedestal by everyone, whereas the poster felt the need to counterbalance that by always pointing out where she did less than stellar things. The funny thing is I feel EXACTLY the opposite. I always see Buffy HATORZ online or off, talking about how they love the show but hate the character. Or if not hate, don't like very much, put low in their list of favorites. They're always calling her selfish and blaming her for more things even than all the things she blames herself for, and I always feel like those of us who like her are in the minority and should speak up. Exactly the opposite.

And I realized that that's probably true of things like the Season 6 debate. To me, I can't bring up liking the season (and I'm terrified to even mention Marti Noxon online for fear of what comments would ensue) without the people who hate it jumping on to say how it sucks. I've often thought that you could have a forum titled Discussion of Buffy Season Six for Those Who Love It and still those who hate it would have to state their case over and over on it. So it's entirely possible that the haters of the season feel like those nuts who love it never shut up about how great it is and would even be on an Anti forum and...You get the drift.

So the reason (I've always felt like) American Christians always act as though they're martyrs, standing proudly as representatives of a group that's socially victimized and derided (even though you can't get through a day in the U.S. without something about Christianity being right in your face) is not because Christians are just deluded or hypocritical, it's because of this prevalent strain in people of getting off on being the only one who sees the light. Or part of the select group that sees the light in a sea of obtuseness and misunderstandings. Like it's a byproduct of the group instinct, or the us against them, or a result of righteousness being linked to oppression.

I have to wonder if it's more of an American thing than a general one. Yet then there's the internet. Full of people standing up for their minority view in the face of the oppression of the majority, who actually consist of those you notice that could be just some of the few people that actually disagree with you. We may seek news and opinions written by those we agree with, but what we really notice, what really sticks with us and just strikes the deepest into our hearts and minds is those who disagree with us. And it doesn't take many of them. And then we feel alone, under attack from these different opinions that suddenly seem to be all over. Even if they're really not. Is it a function of individualism, part of the idea that we're all different? Or is it a reaction against that? Rebellion or an unusual form of conformity?

Mea culpa, too.