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.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

Sent you a DW invite. :)

[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!

[sharelle.livejournal.com]

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

[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.)

[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.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Thanks, mate:)

And Team Free Will all the way.

[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?

[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!"

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

"waves"

[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.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Good to have you back!

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

[herself_nyc]

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

[elisi]

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

*waves* Hello! :)

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.