In which I blink my eyes, and three months have gone by

[thedeadlyhook]

Figures that the moment I actually find the time, energy, and something to say on LJ the damn journal chooses to all but shut down. I mean, just getting this text to post has been like fighting a siege.

Seriously, is it just me? My computer is a few years old and not running the latest browser, plus I recently let my account lapse from paid to free (due to financial woes with which I will not bore you), but hoo-boy, those advertisements are browser speed killers. I'm running NoScript to block the worst of it, but it's still bad - if I were a newbie looking for a journal right now, and the community I was eager to commune with wasn't already there, I wouldn't like twice at LiveJournal, not when I can get ad-free accounts elsewhere: Blogger, Twitter, Dreamwidth, etc. Video and audio ads! Jeebus! Facebook is certainly as irritating as hell with its ad content, but at least it's never thrown audio at me. Yikes. Fail, LJ. Gigantic fail.

Sigh. Does that whole invite thing still apply for Dreamwidth?

Anyway, on to the main event. Do I even dare comment on the current Buffy Season 8 hijinkery? Can I resist?

First, fair warning: I haven't read the actual issue. But flake_sake's excellent summary gave me a pretty good idea of what's going on, at least enough to make a critique from 30,000 feet, which is about the distance I prefer to view the comics from these days. So... Um. Where to start.

I do feel compelled to continue being tiresome about accredidation in the comics, and point out that, although Joss can plausibly be given credit for the overall story, he isn't actually writing this. Brad Meltzer is. I'm not doing this to nitpick so much as to observe that it's completely in character for Joss to hand off this kind of material - sex, I mean - to someone else. If I think back over Buffy and Angel, I come up with a portrait of a writer who prefers foreplay - he's great at awkward, teenage-y sexual tension - and wreckage of a relationship after it's over, to the sticky, nuts-and-bolts in-and-out (heh) of what goes in between. That part, he typically leaves to others to detail, and I don't think it's an accident that every major relationship I can think of in his catalog is structured in a way to be mostly about the Before and After, with what goes in the middle set on fast-forward, offscreen, fade-to-black, or just not there. (I'm hardly the authority on Firefly or Dollhouse, but I'd be very surprised if they broke this trend.)

Otherwise, I have no opinion to speak of, other than to observe that whenever an author brings a universal force into a story as an explanation, they are basically talking about themselves - to a fictional universe, the author is, after all, the only God. So what we have here is basically a story about how this is happening because that's what "the universe" wants to happen. Even if that doesn't make a lick of sense. So, um, there. *eyeroll* It's not an elegant plot structure, and I've only ever seen it used effectively maybe once or twice, most notably in that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Beverly Crusher creates a shrinking bubble universe consisting of her own fears of people disappearing.

And given that observation, I do begin to suspect that the whole thing is a dream. Maybe Buffy's been asleep since the original storyline. (Srsly, Love's True Kiss?) This would make the intervening issues be All About Buffy's Hopes and Fears - a potentially good storyline - explain a lot of cracktastic craziness, generally remove the problem of Angel being so out of character as to be unrecognizable, and confirm that even Buffy's most wish-fulfill-y fantasies about having it off with Angel include squicky reservations about him possibly being evil and "the universe" conspiring to remove all choice from her menu of options. On the other hand, that would also make it a story about the nutty junk inside Buffy's head (Women, eh?) and a comic book imitation of a TV trope at that. (Although neither of those erases it as a possibility.)

That said, I don't actually expect it to be a dream. It's more likely that the whole idea of "the universe" causing things to happen because of "balance" is so coded into the show's DNA that it's now the default explanation. I hated that tie-in book Queen of the Slayers for making similar suggestions about the mechanics of the Buffy world, but with this, I might just have to throw up my hands and admit that this story apparently has no place for free will. And that's sad.

Otherwise, I've missed so many birthdays as to really not be funny. Very Belated Very Happy Birthdays to danceswitwords, asta77, rahirah, sangueuk, makd, paratti, calove, goldenusagi, crackers4jenn, constance_b, revdorothyl, irfikos, entrenous88, sharelle, quinara, eowyn_315, and Happy Birthday in advance (tomorrow) to evilawyer!!!

Comments

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

It's not your computer -- LJ has been fucked up for two weeks. It had one day of normal functioning yesterday, and now it's back to being crap.

Thanks for reminding me about DW. I backed up my whole LJ there when I first bought an account, but crossposting feels like a pain and I haven't been keeping up. Yet they have a pretty easy thing for doing it. I'm just... stressed.

I have some DW codes somewhere, I'll try to find one.

PS: Agree with your observations about the comic. My heart is moved to compassion for all the people trying to parse this thing so it makes sense with Buffy canon -- which, let's face it, has ultimately shown itself to be largely a construct of the more intelligent fans anyway. Fandom has imposed an order on the Buffyverse that just didn't exist, and expecting a comic book that Whedon is slumming/farming out to a brand to make thematic sense is futile. It's depressing to watch all this fan investment in a product the author isn't invested in at all.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

It's depressing to watch all this fan investment in a product the author isn't invested in at all.

Yeah, that's the part that depresses me the most, actually. Never mind what's happening in the story, it's the impression of disinterest I keep getting, like it really doesn't matter what happens to these characters or what kind of worldview is being put forth, that brings me down. (I'm reminded, faintly, of a panel I saw during the aftermath of Tara's death, where the writers on hand seemed genuinely surprised by the anguished reaction of the lesbian community. Like, wow, Willow/Tara meant something to some people, you know, besides the shock value. Who would've thought? It's just, you know, TV, ain't it?)

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

Sent you a DW invite. :)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was fast! Thank you, sweetie!

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

Oh hi you're alive! :D

I just biffed a DW invite code to your hotmail account. I love it over there -- both the interface (so many tiny awesome tweaks, omg) and the community. It's fun to watch it grow.

I might miss the good ol' days of open-canon Buffy fandom, but not enough to subscribe to the comics. Your post is a great summary of why it's not the paradigm I signed up for anymore. :/ Otoh, (http://quinara.dreamwidth.org/profile)quinara (http://quinara.dreamwidth.org/) is writing awesome Dawn/Satsu + Andrew fic!

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

Oh, ha, jwaneeta beat me to it. Well, if anybody else wanders by and wants a code, feel free to grab one of these:

4R5M6J3K7TV5SAAAD5DG
FF2V3FQR5YZRKAAAED4S
BBSJB4XQ3ZAWJAAADGRU

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'm still kicking, just not very talkative these days. And thanks for the invite, although I already started signing up under the one [Unknown site tag] sent.

I do still read fic when I have a spare moment, although it's getting to the point where I find myself more interested in analzying my own reactions to it than the fic itself... which is fun in a way, but not the same kind of fun I originally had from reading fic. And the comics... well, I ignore them for the most part, but they do unfortunately affect the fandom - they've conspired to turn my impression of the Buffy universe into something I do not at all agree with (I have huge issues with predestination and the whole "Chosen One" thing, which are so not be subverted at this point). Which, again, is sad.

[quinara]

<3 :D

(Must make myself a Datsu icon.)

[sharelle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the birthday wishes, hon! Nice to see you back! :)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Nice to see you too! Hope you had a great day!

[quinara]

Cheers for the birthday wishes!

And that's such a good point about 'the universe' deciding things - it basically removes all in-verse causality and makes it 'I want this to happen nao'...

It could be an interesting dream (and at this point, actually, I'd be happy to buy that cop-out and have S9 dealing with the fallout), but I'm not sure Joss has the foresight to let his crack go that far. (Hmm, so, after this, Buffy slays her own internalised misogyny through some sort of metaphoric bad guy - that could be interesting. Maybe. Or not.)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I hope you had a terrific day!

The it-was-all-meant-to-be thing offends me so much that I'd personally welcome the it-was-all-a-dream resolution than the idea that Buffy seriously made the world worse by trying to empower women, or that she is seriously meant to be mother to a new race via Angel because women are for the having of mystic babies, not for the fighting of the evil! I don't even know where to begin...

[cordykitten]

My PC is probably even older; I have IE 6.0 and FF 3.6. FF's ad-block works like a charm, should work for LJ too.
But I don't read the comics, only spoilers. Thankfully so.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I don't know why I didn't think of AdBlocker; thanks for reminding me. I'll go dig through the Firefox archives for a version that'll work with my creaky browser.

I generally ignore the comics until something like this pops up on my flist, and then it's like, what?!? And then comes the sad.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Thanks, mate:)

And Team Free Will all the way.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Hope you had a wonderful day!

Yes, praise be to free will. I can choose not to embrace any of this hooey.

[toysdream.livejournal.com]

Just in case you're curious, here are some preview pages from the Dark Horse site, and a few more from Scans Daily. Wow, it really is weird to see Willow chatting with Skinless Warren.

But yeah, this notion of pinning everything on "Earth" and "the universe" is new and weird. I keep thinking of that Galactica tagline - "God didn't create the Cylons, man did" - except I guess in Galactica, it turned out God did everything after all. At least "the powers that be" suggested some kind of vague cosmic bureaucracy, whereas attributing everything to the will of the universe seems even more passive and helpless.

As for the sex, I guess this is in keeping with the Buffyverse tradition that anytime anyone, anywhere, gets it on, it's always Teh Greatest Sexxx Evah. But if boinking is the key to opening the dimensional portals and letting the Old Ones back in, does this mean we need to go back and reevaluate seven seasons' worth of Hellmouth symbology?

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Ohmigod. I think I would've preferred not seeing.

You're probably right on the money with the Galactica reference. I remembering thinking that "Chosen" came off a bit like JW had just seen Lord of the Rings; now all the exposition in this makes me think he's just mainlined Galactica, and was thus inspired to misinterpret evolution. But the sex is just... silly, really. It plays like a joke, albeit of the sort of potty-mouthed fanboy variety. So glad to see Buffy's love life reduced to the same level as jokes about Captain America's shield. That has dignity.

But if boinking is the key to opening the dimensional portals and letting the Old Ones back in, does this mean we need to go back and reevaluate seven seasons' worth of Hellmouth symbology?

So... the Hellmouth was always meant to be a vagina, giving birth to monsters? But then there's the Slayer with her phallic symbol stake and... yeah, shutting up now.

[st_salieri.livejournal.com]

Hi! Nice to see you. :)

Oh, and also?

that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Beverly Crusher creates a shrinking bubble universe consisting of her own fears of people disappearing.

I adore this episode. Bev in the warp bubble!

"If there's nothing the matter with me...maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Hey there! Great to see you!

"If there's nothing the matter with me...maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"

Hee! It's one of my favorite episodes. And I love that line so much. Beverly's approach to solving the puzzle is so rational and reasoned, and the exact opposite of current storytelling vogue for throwing rationality out the window and having characters go with their gut. I think I miss ST:TNG a little more every year that goes by.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

"waves"

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Hi there! Good to see you!

[silverusagi]

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

The comics...I don't even know. This is just the latest crack filled twist in the crackfest the story has become. I don't care anymore. The characters act like idiots, the entire universe has been retconned, Buffy's sex will destroy the world, whatever.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I hope you had a terrific day!

I don't really know what to say about the comics. I read comics, and I loved the show, so I should be part of their natural audience, but I don't like them. They don't work for me. They contain nothing that I liked about the show, and plenty that just annoys me. Crackfest indeed.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Good to have you back!

Re: the comics, I'm feeling talked out. Only thing I can say is, "God." ::headdesk::

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Good to be back.

I ended up having more to say than I expected, but I guess it's mostly just kvetching about the general lack of feminism, which is a song I've been singing for awhile now, and a more specialized WTF about the intelligent design = evolution info dump, which... uh, yeah. WTF? Can I call a moratorium on stories where characters are just cosmic puppets? It doesn't make anyone look good. Plus BORED NOW.

[herself_nyc]

Boy am I glad I quit reading this comic months ago. It sounds DEPRESSING.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Hi there!

I think it's meant to make me snicker like a 12-year-old at all the naughty sex. And yeah, that's depressing.

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

Good to see you! And thanks for the birthday wishes.

I don't have any more DW invites, but I think I can get some more if you still haven't gotten one yet. No ads on DW, which is very, very nice. LJ's still the main spot for me and my real life journal (I only use the crosspost feature between my DW and LJ fic journal), but one more ad I can't turn off before it starts and I'm going to have to rethink that.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Here's to hoping that your day tomorrow will fun, fun, fun! Have a great one.

I'm good for the DW invite - thanks, though! I'm still setting up at this point, but the crosspost thing seems like the way to go. So I'll still be posting here, but with luck it's help me avoid the ads, mostly. : )

[elisi]

Remember back when Joss was a feminist? Those were good times, weren't they?

*waves* Hello! :)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Hey there! *waves back*

I think in the real world, he definitely still is. It's just a little strange the way feminist issues tend to get expressed - or not - in his stories. A lot of times, it seems like he builds the very structure of his worlds in such a way as to hold women down... and that's on top of real life issues that do the same, since they're taken as read. You could argue that this makes his female characters twice as heroic just for getting up in the morning, but then you also have the looming specter of the authorial intent that made the world that way in the first place.

Yeah, it's a little weird.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Glad my review could be of assistence. The whole thing really is going south very quickly...

I loved to read your thoughts on the matter and I wonder did you read the "Always darkest" webcomic (http://www.darkhorse.com/Features/eComics/1087/Dark-Horse-Presents-No-24?part_num=1&page=2) (don't be afraid for your eyes, it's done by the cover artist, not by Jeanty). I think it pretty much sums up what is happening now. Buffy has the fairy tale ending marriage, but it's skinless Warren, she marries. Buffy has a giant get back together with her first love, but it ends up being essentially rape.

It's all quite twisted and I haven't lost hope that Joss knows, at least where Buffy the feminist icon is concerned, what he's doing. Well, or not.

If you set up a DW account, you'll let us know, yes? my name is rogin there. I constantly forget to update it, but you being there would be another motivation to finally consequently doublepost.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember that story! Yes, I did read it. The art is, of course, absolutely gorgeous. It probably goes without saying that if Joan Chen were drawing the interior of the comic as well as the covers, fans probably wouldn't have half as many issues with it as they do - the artwork sells the story in a way that's simply more palatable. (If I imagine the same sequence drawn by the regular artist, for example... yeah, it doesn't work the same way at all.) In fact, I have no idea why Chen wasn't contracted to draw #34, if they had this planned all along. Talk about sales!

The two things that stuck out to me on this reading were that I hadn't noticed Tara there the first time (and that her blue shirt reminds me of Spike's in "Beneath You"), and wow, Spike got taller, didn't he? : )

I was talking with the husband about some of the quote-unquote feminism in Buffy the other night, and he's had a good argument that the sex-a-thon is a strange for Buffy (the character) in that she's being gender-coded as very female here, whereas in nearly all of her previous relationships, the mapping puts Buffy far more into a male role, and her partners are, in gender terms, mapped onto a female stereotype. So while I can give the series points for gender-bending subservion, I'm having a hard time picturing by-the-numbers male/female yin/yang sex as being anything other than... uh, exactly what it looks like. With the laws of nature and all. Um.

I'm working on a setting up a Dreamwidth account today, and I'll be sure and add you there! I don't know how much I'm likely to post there as opposed to here, but I'm definitely going to poke around and see what kind of crossposting option might work best.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Maybe Buffy's been asleep since the original storyline.

Oh, I think you could be onto something there. It would explain a heck of a lot. Everyone being generally WTF, it fixes up the issue with the AtS series (if Angel's not really there, it doesn't feck up their story) and it explains a very strange usage of the phrase "true loves" by Willow in the last issue. Not something she'd typically say and definitely hints at the first arc, not that people speaking weird would be a strange thing in S8.

Eh, if it was a small arc, I might think it would be a cool thing. But 3 years? That's just chickenshit storytelling. Of course you could say doing it knowing it would piss people off is brave, it's still weak and doesn't really fix the way everything was presented to the audience.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

It would fix a lot, sure, and part of me is suspicious things might go there, if only for the way the Angel: After the Fall story ended with essentially a reset - frankly, that put me off the Angel comics too, and I'd been more or less enjoying them up to that point. But then again, there was that Star Trek show that pulled that stunt in recent memory, and I seem to recall some large rage over that... not sure a creator of Whedon's status would be wise to go there because yeah, it does play like a giant cop-out if you let the story go on too long. At that point, you're just bailing on your readers' investment. So... yeah, I dunno how they're gonna resolve this one.

[shakatany.livejournal.com]

OK I don't read the comics (just skim through the few I come across) but when you mentioned Love's True Kiss - was Angel in the room to give it to her? If not how can he be her true love? Or did I misunderstand that bit?

Shakatany

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

No, Angel wasn't there. It was this whole thing at the end of the very first story arc, where things were set up as this sort of Sleeping Beauty scenario, where Buffy had to be awakened with a kiss. That's actually how they did the setup for Buffy/Satsu, in fact, but I'd have to go back and look at the wording to see if it conflicts with this story, and the whole big true destiny thing... not that it would surprise me if it did conflict. The continuity hasn't been particularly tight in this book.

[corvus1970.livejournal.com]

One of my LJ friends, sueworld2003, said long ago that she believes that Joss has lost the plot, and I completely agree.

And, you mentioned "Queen of the Slayers"? Yeah...didn't like THAT book either, as my review (http://corvus1970.livejournal.com/109645.html#cutid1) attested at the time.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Heh, you were a lot harsher on her actual writing than I was, but I definitely made up the difference complaining about the plot (http://thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com/104036.html#cutid2). Man, I'd forgotten I wrote such a long piece on it.

And yeah, my feelings haven't changed since then either, so the current comics storyline is waaay off the deep end for me, if it turns out to be at all serious.