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thedeadlyhookFeeling grumpy, but write-y. Sort of.
(Some mild spoilers for upcoming chapters of "Bad Trip.")
I'm essentially time-wasting today, taking a break from working on our "Bad Trip" fanfic. I actually wrote a large swath yesterday, but it's a part in which bad things happen - and yes, they are happening for a reason, not just because we're sadists or because the characters are more fun when they're being tortured, hah-hah, look at them squirm. But there's a part of me that's still grappling with the responsibility inherent in putting emotionally disturbing things into a story, or referencing and dealing with the disturbing stuff that was already there. After all, our mandate in beginning this fic was to pay off a lot of the emotional and thematic baggage that the BtVS show itself never got around to doing, so suffice it to say, there's going to be a lot of heavy stuff coming up. Things that... well, aren't so much fun to think about.
The next part I'll be writing is a tough one. I'm going to be trying to deal with light topics such as sin and punishment, and life after death. Just having to put myself into the brain space to tackle these things is enough to drop me into a state of... well, I suppose melancholy is as good a word as any. I'm reminded a bit of Brad Pitt, who, during the filming of Interview With the Vampire, admitted to feeling very, very depressed the entire time, simply as a result of having to exist in that story space, or James Marsters, who named his habit of method acting as the reason for why he got so damned thin during BtVS Season 6, as an expression of having to maintain that state of all-around emotional starvation.
It's probably a terribly, terribly unenlightening thing for me to observe that as a writer - or actor, as those were the examples I just used - your job is to try to walk around in people's heads and try to speak with their voices, so it's no wonder this ends up affecting your own moods. That is, after all, what you're trying to do as an artist - affect other people's moods, put them in the space you're in, make them feel along.
So this thoughtful space is more or less being brought to you because I've been pondering the mysteries of BtVS Seasons 6 and 7, not a very happy place to be in. There's other stuff too, of course - I can also blame some of my mood on the fact that today is the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide (I've read a number of very poignant remembrances in people's LJ posts about that today) and other timely complaints such as the wanton destruction of the historical pedestrian tunnels in my beloved San Francisco's Golden Gate park to make way for a parking garage (so much for the park being for use of the people, not the miserable swollen ticks on the Parks Planning Commission and their stretch limousines, gah), but essentially, it's just me thinking the deep thoughts.
For example...
There's been a lot of talk lately on the LJ about the Buffy S7 DVDs and Joss Whedon's final commentaries on "Chosen," in which (short form) he more or less confirms that Buffy really did mean it when she says she loves Spike at the end. He also has a number of conflicted and confusing other things to say about their relationship, the "fade to black" scene, yadda yadda, all of which in aggregate leaves the viewer still pretty much in the dark - intentionally so. Reactions (that I've seen) have ranged from the simple "hooray, validation!" on the Spuffy love, to those of the "Jeezus, what a mealy-mouthed coward" variety, on the overall 'tude of hemming and hawing and deliberately leaving things up the viewer's imagination. (A criticism with which I'm strongly inclined to agree - writer integrity is hard to defend if you admit that you're being unclear on purpose and avoiding taking a stand on topics because you're more comfortable straddling a moral twilight zone somewhere between pandering and ducking potential backlash.)
But most are saying what I've always thought - that regardless of what Whedon lays out in his DVD commentaries, the final arbiting truth in all this is what we can say we saw with our own eyes, felt for ourselves in reacting to it. It's an old, old adage of comedy that a joke you have to explain is not funny, and likewise, a story that requires extensive fanwanking or director's liner notes to be comprehensible is not a successful exercise in communication. Ultimately, it's the work itself that will have the last word - syndication is a greater power than Joss's commentary track, and viewers who get to experience the questionable joy of stumbling across "Seeing Red" or "Dead Things" on early morning or early evening reruns will have their own opinions about Spike/Buffy, and nothing Joss comes up with to excuse himself, or his storytelling methods, is going to have any bearing on that. The horse has already left the stable. Shutting the barn door now... well, you know how that saying goes. If you meant to say something specific, Joss, then you should have put it in the damn show.
That said, there were two things I found enlightening to read: one, Whedon's confession that he had writer's block while writing "Chosen" (I told the hubby even as we were watching it that it felt like a first draft) and two, that neither JM nor SMG knew what to make of his direction for that final "I love you" scene. It actually gave me some of my respect back for SMG to read that, and confirmed the impression I'd had throughout much of S7, that not even the actors could figure out from the scripts they were handed what they were supposed to be feeling. ("Never Leave Me" comes to mind - the extended talking scene in Buffy's bedroom was perhaps the most emotionally puzzling thing in the entire series, which was probably why it came off so damned blank.) That both actors came up with their own roughly similiar interpretation to fit the available facts is, I think, perhaps the strongest condemnation for just how poorly this story was explained. If even the performers couldn't tell what was going on, what hope were we supposed to have?
So screw behind the scenes. Kinda irrelevant now. Spike/Buffy is what it was, and I've got my own impression of it - or rather, what it meant to me. But that's another LJ post.
(Some mild spoilers for upcoming chapters of "Bad Trip.")
I'm essentially time-wasting today, taking a break from working on our "Bad Trip" fanfic. I actually wrote a large swath yesterday, but it's a part in which bad things happen - and yes, they are happening for a reason, not just because we're sadists or because the characters are more fun when they're being tortured, hah-hah, look at them squirm. But there's a part of me that's still grappling with the responsibility inherent in putting emotionally disturbing things into a story, or referencing and dealing with the disturbing stuff that was already there. After all, our mandate in beginning this fic was to pay off a lot of the emotional and thematic baggage that the BtVS show itself never got around to doing, so suffice it to say, there's going to be a lot of heavy stuff coming up. Things that... well, aren't so much fun to think about.
The next part I'll be writing is a tough one. I'm going to be trying to deal with light topics such as sin and punishment, and life after death. Just having to put myself into the brain space to tackle these things is enough to drop me into a state of... well, I suppose melancholy is as good a word as any. I'm reminded a bit of Brad Pitt, who, during the filming of Interview With the Vampire, admitted to feeling very, very depressed the entire time, simply as a result of having to exist in that story space, or James Marsters, who named his habit of method acting as the reason for why he got so damned thin during BtVS Season 6, as an expression of having to maintain that state of all-around emotional starvation.
It's probably a terribly, terribly unenlightening thing for me to observe that as a writer - or actor, as those were the examples I just used - your job is to try to walk around in people's heads and try to speak with their voices, so it's no wonder this ends up affecting your own moods. That is, after all, what you're trying to do as an artist - affect other people's moods, put them in the space you're in, make them feel along.
So this thoughtful space is more or less being brought to you because I've been pondering the mysteries of BtVS Seasons 6 and 7, not a very happy place to be in. There's other stuff too, of course - I can also blame some of my mood on the fact that today is the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide (I've read a number of very poignant remembrances in people's LJ posts about that today) and other timely complaints such as the wanton destruction of the historical pedestrian tunnels in my beloved San Francisco's Golden Gate park to make way for a parking garage (so much for the park being for use of the people, not the miserable swollen ticks on the Parks Planning Commission and their stretch limousines, gah), but essentially, it's just me thinking the deep thoughts.
For example...
There's been a lot of talk lately on the LJ about the Buffy S7 DVDs and Joss Whedon's final commentaries on "Chosen," in which (short form) he more or less confirms that Buffy really did mean it when she says she loves Spike at the end. He also has a number of conflicted and confusing other things to say about their relationship, the "fade to black" scene, yadda yadda, all of which in aggregate leaves the viewer still pretty much in the dark - intentionally so. Reactions (that I've seen) have ranged from the simple "hooray, validation!" on the Spuffy love, to those of the "Jeezus, what a mealy-mouthed coward" variety, on the overall 'tude of hemming and hawing and deliberately leaving things up the viewer's imagination. (A criticism with which I'm strongly inclined to agree - writer integrity is hard to defend if you admit that you're being unclear on purpose and avoiding taking a stand on topics because you're more comfortable straddling a moral twilight zone somewhere between pandering and ducking potential backlash.)
But most are saying what I've always thought - that regardless of what Whedon lays out in his DVD commentaries, the final arbiting truth in all this is what we can say we saw with our own eyes, felt for ourselves in reacting to it. It's an old, old adage of comedy that a joke you have to explain is not funny, and likewise, a story that requires extensive fanwanking or director's liner notes to be comprehensible is not a successful exercise in communication. Ultimately, it's the work itself that will have the last word - syndication is a greater power than Joss's commentary track, and viewers who get to experience the questionable joy of stumbling across "Seeing Red" or "Dead Things" on early morning or early evening reruns will have their own opinions about Spike/Buffy, and nothing Joss comes up with to excuse himself, or his storytelling methods, is going to have any bearing on that. The horse has already left the stable. Shutting the barn door now... well, you know how that saying goes. If you meant to say something specific, Joss, then you should have put it in the damn show.
That said, there were two things I found enlightening to read: one, Whedon's confession that he had writer's block while writing "Chosen" (I told the hubby even as we were watching it that it felt like a first draft) and two, that neither JM nor SMG knew what to make of his direction for that final "I love you" scene. It actually gave me some of my respect back for SMG to read that, and confirmed the impression I'd had throughout much of S7, that not even the actors could figure out from the scripts they were handed what they were supposed to be feeling. ("Never Leave Me" comes to mind - the extended talking scene in Buffy's bedroom was perhaps the most emotionally puzzling thing in the entire series, which was probably why it came off so damned blank.) That both actors came up with their own roughly similiar interpretation to fit the available facts is, I think, perhaps the strongest condemnation for just how poorly this story was explained. If even the performers couldn't tell what was going on, what hope were we supposed to have?
So screw behind the scenes. Kinda irrelevant now. Spike/Buffy is what it was, and I've got my own impression of it - or rather, what it meant to me. But that's another LJ post.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-05 09:29 pm (UTC)You're right on target, I think, with what the idea might have been with the initial Spuffy!Sex arc - the whole bad-bad-wrong that made Wes/Lilah so scorching... except for some reason, ME felt the need to junk it up with Buffy being oh-so-very elitist about it, which really killed the hotness for me. Not so much fun to watch someone treat their lover like, for all intents and purpose, a rottweiler she won't allow in the house. Wes and Lilah were mean to each other at the outset, but I never got that overseer-visits-the-slave-cabin vibe from it.
Well that was how I read his last moments actually....that she's going back into some kind of love-the-martyr complex saying she loves him, realizing he's going to sacrifice himself for her, and he provides a kind of gallant corrective. It's the resolution of their relationship -- at least that's the way I've always read it, and I don't think the show's ever given me any reason to think otherwise (post-resurrection Spike included). And it's not an "eternal love" resolution.
That's pretty much exactly how it came off to me too. The only variable is Buffy's level of self-awareness or calculation in the whole thing - did she make him her "champion" because he was more expendable, or because she "believes" in him? Did she expect him to do that, die for her, or did it take her by surprise (it actually kind of seemed to, which bothered me - she didn't think he would?).
Yes, what the HELL was up with that? She and Angel parted on, relatively speaking, poor terms (if you're counting that she doesn't remember IWRY)
That bugged me when Riley came back too. I don't remember their parting being the most coziest, given the whole I-went-to-vampire-hookers-and-asked-them-to-suck-me thing. Again, it just came off as elitist - look, Buffy's human boyfriend is back! Let us now reflect on Buffy's lowly status as being forced to slum with a vampire. Ew, the shame. (retch)
"But people eat raw cookie dough....don't they? Fred? Don't girls eat raw cookie dough? Lilah? Anybody?
BWAH! Somebody's gotta write this. Ohpleaseohplease.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-05 11:45 pm (UTC)Maybe Angel will go searching through AI's fridge and find a half-eaten tube of cookie dough with "FRED" written on it in Sharpie.
Ooh, sublimated Fred lust...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-06 12:10 am (UTC)Re: spec, not spoilage
Date: 2004-04-06 09:55 am (UTC)Okay, looking it up now. Shanshu has roots in so many different languages. The most ancient source is the Proto-Bantu and they consider life and death the same thing, part of a cycle, only a thing that's not alive never dies. It's- it's saying - that you get to live until you die. - It's saying - it's saying you become human."
What if Wes is wrong? What if the Shanshu already happened when Spike came back from the dead? All that living and dying being the same thing... it's confusing.
Re: Sisyphus the Vampire vs. Shanshu
Date: 2004-04-06 05:45 pm (UTC)Ha hah, yes, that was lovely. The only reason I wasn't caught was that the poor hubby got smacked with it first. And he almost fell for it, too! (pinches his cheek) So cute.
But it does sort of bother me than the shanshu's always hanging over Angel -- it's like he's doing good Just For The Reward, which the anti-Spike contingency was always accusing Spike of doing (he did good for Buffy! he got the soul for Buffy! he died for Buffy! &c).
Yeah, I'm sitll not clear on the redemption-for-love being a Very Bad Thing concept... esp. when you add in stuff like him hanging around to help the Scoobs when she was dead. Not a lot of trim coming his way from that one. And also, Angel only really got on his redemption trip because of Buffy too - Whistler the demon shows him young Buffster, and Angel's all "I want to help her," then proceeds to stalk her around and be all Deep Throat for awhile in S1 whilst feeding her Tiger Beat teen lust. It's actually scarily familiar how he describes what he did to Drusilla, only for good or something. But Buffy still ends up driven sort of crazy by it, so the overall effect... not that different.
I guess part of what bothers me as a genre grrl is Angel's roots are so firmly in noir, and in noir the hero isn't redeemed, he doesn't get the girl, he's rarely rewarded... They got their shanshu in my noir!
Hah hah hah... so true. So the reward even as a concept seems wrong for Angel. I agree. I really hope that's not how it plays out. He shouldn't be rewarded, if only because this worldview is absolutely not clear enough on its views on sin and punishment to go handing out rewards. Unless the point is supposed to be that the gods are unfair and don't give a crap about consistency, or fairness... eek, now I'm worried that is the way it's going to turn out. (shiver)
Re: Sisyphus the Vampire vs. Shanshu
Date: 2004-04-06 07:28 pm (UTC)What I enjoyed so much about Season 2 is that, once Angel's had the Glorious Reward dangled in front of him, he goes nuts. When we sat down and watched the DVD box set straight through, I really came away with the impression that Angel's whole ends-justifies-the-means phase, where he cuts off all his human connections and devotes himself to taking down the White Whale that is Wolfram & Hart, is largely a reaction to the Shanshu prophecy. Sure, there's the whole Darla thing mixed in there too, but I think a lot of it comes from the belief that if he can pull off This One Last Big Score then he can Get Out Of The Game For Good. Like you said, it's a noir thang.
They got their shanshu in my noir!
Hee!