Yeah, the status quo as of the start of the Season 8 comic seemed like "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." The Watchers Council was back, Xander and Andrew were both in command roles despite their total lack of any qualifications whatsoever, and the "empowered" new Slayers were treated like boot-camp conscripts and disposable cannon fodder. (Which is why I stopped reading it, making my thoughts on the subsequent issues fairly hazy and ill-informed!)
I recall the initial batch of villains were given some sort of cliche "threatened patriarchy" motive, but that's undercut by the eventual revelation that the masked mystery villain they were working for was playing them for suckers all along. For all their talk of "changing the world," did Buffy and friends ever really pose a threat to the status quo, or was that just something Twangel used to manipulate his scaredy-cat henchmen? I was kinda hoping they'd rob a lot more banks and really stir things up, but all they ever seemed to do was train and get attacked. Hey, just like the X-Men! Does that mean Twangel is Magneto?
So would the mystic manhole cover be a diaphragm? And the blood's like... sperm? Clearly I'm thinking about this too hard.
Somebody else on this thread mentioned that the manhole ritual in the final episode was meant to be about menstruation, so I don't know where we'd go with that analogy. But if memory serves, earlier in the season the portal was opened with random blood sacrifices - you spill your precious bodily fluid onto the opening, and it pops open to disgorge a baby monster, kinda like putting coins in a Gashapon machine - so sure, the blood = sperm analogy works there. Then we have Glory's bloodletting ritual, which was also about opening dimensional portals and spewing out monsters. As we all know from Ghostbusters, being the Key(master) is an inherently masculine job description. :-)
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Date: 2010-04-11 11:03 pm (UTC)I recall the initial batch of villains were given some sort of cliche "threatened patriarchy" motive, but that's undercut by the eventual revelation that the masked mystery villain they were working for was playing them for suckers all along. For all their talk of "changing the world," did Buffy and friends ever really pose a threat to the status quo, or was that just something Twangel used to manipulate his scaredy-cat henchmen? I was kinda hoping they'd rob a lot more banks and really stir things up, but all they ever seemed to do was train and get attacked. Hey, just like the X-Men! Does that mean Twangel is Magneto?
So would the mystic manhole cover be a diaphragm? And the blood's like... sperm? Clearly I'm thinking about this too hard.
Somebody else on this thread mentioned that the manhole ritual in the final episode was meant to be about menstruation, so I don't know where we'd go with that analogy. But if memory serves, earlier in the season the portal was opened with random blood sacrifices - you spill your precious bodily fluid onto the opening, and it pops open to disgorge a baby monster, kinda like putting coins in a Gashapon machine - so sure, the blood = sperm analogy works there. Then we have Glory's bloodletting ritual, which was also about opening dimensional portals and spewing out monsters. As we all know from Ghostbusters, being the Key(master) is an inherently masculine job description. :-)