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shadowkatManaged to figure out how to make fried chicken and fried zuccini/summer squash with almond flour last night. Seasoned it with garlic/parsley/sea salt/pepper, and used coconut oil. Was rather tasty.
Read that some online blog or zine believes :
AtS is better than BtVS. "If Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show about becoming, then Angel is about something far more challenging: existing. There is a rot to the world, one that threatens to infect us all—not in grand, dramatic ways, but mundane ones. Entropy and inertia are the natural order of things. According to Holland Manners, the world doesn’t work in spite of evil—it works with it".
Eh, the two series are so completely different in tone and style, that it is akin to saying an apple is better than a pear. You either prefer the pear or the apple, but one is not necessarily better than the other. I personally prefer apples - I like the crunch and variety, pears are too mushy. Not a fan of mushy texture. Also pears are sweeter and have a higher inflammatory index. But I know lots of people who prefer pears.
My brother never understood why I preferred Buffy to Angel. He thought Angel was more adult (eh, not really - well not if you include the last four seasons of Buffy, which he wasn't fond of.) Also, my sister-in-law and brother never understood why my mother and I preferred Spike. My mother didn't like Angel and could never get into the series that bore his name, because in part she found the character uninteresting and the actor wooden. While my brother and sisinlaw loved the series, and found Angel adorable. Also they found the physical comedy on Angel hilarious, while it tended to fall flat for me - but the witty by-play and absurdist comedy on Buffy had me laughing out loud.
My father, on the other hand, blissfully ignored both series and watches NCIS instead.
Never been a fan of fantasy serials.
We don't discuss it much. But it is interesting - how people swear one series is better than another, when if fact they are merely just pointing out a preference which has zip to do with any objective criteria whatsoever. I mean, I can argue both are excellent and both are campy cheesy serials, with little effort.
I do however think that of the two, Buffy was far more innovative. Let's face it - Angel has been done multiple times. Brimstone (short-lived), Koljack the Night Stalker, Forever Knight, Moonlight, etc. The most innovative take on the whole Angel trope is probably the serial The Originals, which isn't nearly as well written or captivating. But Buffy? I can't think of anything that resembles Buffy past or present. The closest might have been Veronica Mars. Vamp Diaries - is more about the vampires, not about a girl's coming of age story fighting them. And is there any female superhero shows on at the moment? Not that I can think of. In the past? Maybe Wonder Woman or Dark Angel - but neither featured quite the type of character line up that Buffy had. No, I think one of the reasons I became a die-hard fan of Buffy in a way that I have not become a fan of anything else before or since, is that it just broke the mold or stood outside of the trope, often making fun of or satirising the tropes it found itself in. It just was so different. And unlike a lot of tv shows, never sat on its laurels or phoned it in - the writers kept experimenting and playing with the narrative form. I can't think of many tv shows that have done all of that.
So yes, from that perspective Buffy was the more innovative and interesting series. Angel was a spin-off that initially followed a fairly safe and traditional anti-hero noir detective trope. What Angel did do that separated itself from the pack, however, is it became highly serialized and built a mythology. It also played a little with the trope and commented on it, often making fun of itself in the process, particularly in the latter (and in my opinion at least far more interesting and innovative) seasons.
Actually if you think about it - both shows have that in common. The initial seasons sort of follow a standard and somewhat formulaic traditional television trope. A gang of high-school kids fight and occasionally fall in love with monsters, and the monsters reflect the nasty high school issues they are dealing with. That has sort of been done before and after Buffy - Vampire Diaries was sort of that trope, Hex, and a few others. Albeit not as often as the supernatural noirish lone detective trope has been done (the latest entry to that fold is Constantine and well Sleepy Hollow, Gotham, and Supernatural). Angel started out that way, then sort of drifted away from it - making a law firm of all things the main villain. Normally it's other vampires, family members, demons, or some criminal mob boss - but here it was lawyers and their ability to create order through "laws". Angel tackled order, law, regulations, and control as problems. The Authority - was always the main problem for Angel, the monster or demon that had to be overcome - whether that authority was religious in nature (ie. God or the PTB), legal (the evil law firm WRH), or societal pressures. The phrase "Everybody thinks this is a good idea" - was often the opposite on Angel. And this was in a way what set Angel apart from it's predecessors who often focused on chaos as the bad guy. In Forever Knight - the lead character was a cop, and the monsters were people outside of the police force. On Angel - the bad guy was the police force.
Buffy was similar in a way - it too had issues with Authority. The Mayor was one the major villains in the series. As was the Watcher Council - who could not be counted on and often did more harm than good. Buffy was in some respects based heavily on the Western Trope of the lone gunfighter who comes into town to fix it up, the police, mayor, principal, council - all being a bit on the shady side and part of the problem. It's notable that when Buffy finally becomes an authority figure herself - she becomes her own worst enemy and must blow the town apart along with her image, until she becomes once again - the fighter, not the leader of an increasingly bureaucratic and fascist system.
While it's tempting to think that the writers/creators of these series have been reading a wee bit too much Ayn Rand in their spare time, I don't believe this to be the case. For one thing, not all authority is circumspect, nor is the individual always right. In Rand's universe - as satirized recently online, Buffy would not suffer the aid of Xander or pre-witch Willow. She would do it on her own. And she'd demand to be paid for it. (Although to be fair, I always thought the Council should have given her some compensation. I don't buy into the naive and somewhat childish theory that superheros should save people for free or out of pure altruism - when they have no income and aren't independently wealthy. Heck, soliders, firemen, and cops don't. Support your local sheriff. But that's beside the point and has zip to do with Rand, who was a bit of an extremist in her views. Probably the result of growing up in Stalinist Russia. A good and nasty dictatorship could turn anyone into an extremist.) At any rate - the rebellion against Authority or the Powers that Be is certainly not a new concept and not limited to Whedon or even Rand, although I think Rand had more problems with people who wanted to be taken care of - than authority per se, as long as she was the authority. Phillip Pullman certainly tackles similar issues with his controversial series of children's books entitled His Dark Materials - where a couple of kids challenge The Authority or the organization supporting HIM, the Authority doesn't appear to be around. An idea that has been borrowed to a degree by Supernatural - where Dean and Sam, demon hunters extrordinare, equally question the unknowable and notably absent Authority - and his crumbling organization of angelic followers. Or George Orwell and Adolus Huxley who warn of the dangers of trusting an Authority too much with our basic freedoms and rights in the sci-fi novels 1984 and Brave New World respectively.
But just because it's not a new idea, does not mean you can't be innovative. After all, to borrow an old adage from copyright law, there are no new ideas or even original ones, just new ways of playing with them. What Angel and Buffy did differently was how they envisioned the Authority, and dealt with the struggle to defeat it - discovering to both their considerable chagrin - that when they did finally overthrow or seemingly overthrew the Authority, someone or something had to fill the vaccume left behind - and in both cases it turned out to be Buffy and Angel.
When they became the Authority or guy/gal in charge - things didn't quite work as they thought. They found themselves making some of the same mistakes the authority figures they spent so much time fighting had made. In the end, the only escape, was to blow it apart. Creating another problem - chaos.
Unlike most series, there is no neat ending here. Buffy blows up her town, shares her power, journey's off into the horizon - but is suddenly responsible for all those girls she empowered and the consequences of unleashing them into the world with no rules or authority to train or hinder them. Angel similarly blows up the law firm, and is dumped into Chaos...with hell raining down on him.
The writer's don't provide neat answers. Just questions. Destroy the authority, do we become it? And what then? The child rebels against the adult order, only to become that order...Neither extreme works, and both try to work towards the happy medium.
Most series don't appear to explore it to quite that degree or in quite that fashion. Since Buffy and Angel don't just tackle religious order but also societal order. Most series seem to stop short somewhere along the road. And that may be how these differed at least to me.
Your Mileage May Vary of course.
Need to make dinner.This was unedited and not proofed. Read at your own risk. I may come back and edit tomorrow. Not sure. Didn't plan on writing it. Just sort of came out. [ETA - has been edited somewhat.]
Read that some online blog or zine believes :
AtS is better than BtVS. "If Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show about becoming, then Angel is about something far more challenging: existing. There is a rot to the world, one that threatens to infect us all—not in grand, dramatic ways, but mundane ones. Entropy and inertia are the natural order of things. According to Holland Manners, the world doesn’t work in spite of evil—it works with it".
Eh, the two series are so completely different in tone and style, that it is akin to saying an apple is better than a pear. You either prefer the pear or the apple, but one is not necessarily better than the other. I personally prefer apples - I like the crunch and variety, pears are too mushy. Not a fan of mushy texture. Also pears are sweeter and have a higher inflammatory index. But I know lots of people who prefer pears.
My brother never understood why I preferred Buffy to Angel. He thought Angel was more adult (eh, not really - well not if you include the last four seasons of Buffy, which he wasn't fond of.) Also, my sister-in-law and brother never understood why my mother and I preferred Spike. My mother didn't like Angel and could never get into the series that bore his name, because in part she found the character uninteresting and the actor wooden. While my brother and sisinlaw loved the series, and found Angel adorable. Also they found the physical comedy on Angel hilarious, while it tended to fall flat for me - but the witty by-play and absurdist comedy on Buffy had me laughing out loud.
My father, on the other hand, blissfully ignored both series and watches NCIS instead.
Never been a fan of fantasy serials.
We don't discuss it much. But it is interesting - how people swear one series is better than another, when if fact they are merely just pointing out a preference which has zip to do with any objective criteria whatsoever. I mean, I can argue both are excellent and both are campy cheesy serials, with little effort.
I do however think that of the two, Buffy was far more innovative. Let's face it - Angel has been done multiple times. Brimstone (short-lived), Koljack the Night Stalker, Forever Knight, Moonlight, etc. The most innovative take on the whole Angel trope is probably the serial The Originals, which isn't nearly as well written or captivating. But Buffy? I can't think of anything that resembles Buffy past or present. The closest might have been Veronica Mars. Vamp Diaries - is more about the vampires, not about a girl's coming of age story fighting them. And is there any female superhero shows on at the moment? Not that I can think of. In the past? Maybe Wonder Woman or Dark Angel - but neither featured quite the type of character line up that Buffy had. No, I think one of the reasons I became a die-hard fan of Buffy in a way that I have not become a fan of anything else before or since, is that it just broke the mold or stood outside of the trope, often making fun of or satirising the tropes it found itself in. It just was so different. And unlike a lot of tv shows, never sat on its laurels or phoned it in - the writers kept experimenting and playing with the narrative form. I can't think of many tv shows that have done all of that.
So yes, from that perspective Buffy was the more innovative and interesting series. Angel was a spin-off that initially followed a fairly safe and traditional anti-hero noir detective trope. What Angel did do that separated itself from the pack, however, is it became highly serialized and built a mythology. It also played a little with the trope and commented on it, often making fun of itself in the process, particularly in the latter (and in my opinion at least far more interesting and innovative) seasons.
Actually if you think about it - both shows have that in common. The initial seasons sort of follow a standard and somewhat formulaic traditional television trope. A gang of high-school kids fight and occasionally fall in love with monsters, and the monsters reflect the nasty high school issues they are dealing with. That has sort of been done before and after Buffy - Vampire Diaries was sort of that trope, Hex, and a few others. Albeit not as often as the supernatural noirish lone detective trope has been done (the latest entry to that fold is Constantine and well Sleepy Hollow, Gotham, and Supernatural). Angel started out that way, then sort of drifted away from it - making a law firm of all things the main villain. Normally it's other vampires, family members, demons, or some criminal mob boss - but here it was lawyers and their ability to create order through "laws". Angel tackled order, law, regulations, and control as problems. The Authority - was always the main problem for Angel, the monster or demon that had to be overcome - whether that authority was religious in nature (ie. God or the PTB), legal (the evil law firm WRH), or societal pressures. The phrase "Everybody thinks this is a good idea" - was often the opposite on Angel. And this was in a way what set Angel apart from it's predecessors who often focused on chaos as the bad guy. In Forever Knight - the lead character was a cop, and the monsters were people outside of the police force. On Angel - the bad guy was the police force.
Buffy was similar in a way - it too had issues with Authority. The Mayor was one the major villains in the series. As was the Watcher Council - who could not be counted on and often did more harm than good. Buffy was in some respects based heavily on the Western Trope of the lone gunfighter who comes into town to fix it up, the police, mayor, principal, council - all being a bit on the shady side and part of the problem. It's notable that when Buffy finally becomes an authority figure herself - she becomes her own worst enemy and must blow the town apart along with her image, until she becomes once again - the fighter, not the leader of an increasingly bureaucratic and fascist system.
While it's tempting to think that the writers/creators of these series have been reading a wee bit too much Ayn Rand in their spare time, I don't believe this to be the case. For one thing, not all authority is circumspect, nor is the individual always right. In Rand's universe - as satirized recently online, Buffy would not suffer the aid of Xander or pre-witch Willow. She would do it on her own. And she'd demand to be paid for it. (Although to be fair, I always thought the Council should have given her some compensation. I don't buy into the naive and somewhat childish theory that superheros should save people for free or out of pure altruism - when they have no income and aren't independently wealthy. Heck, soliders, firemen, and cops don't. Support your local sheriff. But that's beside the point and has zip to do with Rand, who was a bit of an extremist in her views. Probably the result of growing up in Stalinist Russia. A good and nasty dictatorship could turn anyone into an extremist.) At any rate - the rebellion against Authority or the Powers that Be is certainly not a new concept and not limited to Whedon or even Rand, although I think Rand had more problems with people who wanted to be taken care of - than authority per se, as long as she was the authority. Phillip Pullman certainly tackles similar issues with his controversial series of children's books entitled His Dark Materials - where a couple of kids challenge The Authority or the organization supporting HIM, the Authority doesn't appear to be around. An idea that has been borrowed to a degree by Supernatural - where Dean and Sam, demon hunters extrordinare, equally question the unknowable and notably absent Authority - and his crumbling organization of angelic followers. Or George Orwell and Adolus Huxley who warn of the dangers of trusting an Authority too much with our basic freedoms and rights in the sci-fi novels 1984 and Brave New World respectively.
But just because it's not a new idea, does not mean you can't be innovative. After all, to borrow an old adage from copyright law, there are no new ideas or even original ones, just new ways of playing with them. What Angel and Buffy did differently was how they envisioned the Authority, and dealt with the struggle to defeat it - discovering to both their considerable chagrin - that when they did finally overthrow or seemingly overthrew the Authority, someone or something had to fill the vaccume left behind - and in both cases it turned out to be Buffy and Angel.
When they became the Authority or guy/gal in charge - things didn't quite work as they thought. They found themselves making some of the same mistakes the authority figures they spent so much time fighting had made. In the end, the only escape, was to blow it apart. Creating another problem - chaos.
Unlike most series, there is no neat ending here. Buffy blows up her town, shares her power, journey's off into the horizon - but is suddenly responsible for all those girls she empowered and the consequences of unleashing them into the world with no rules or authority to train or hinder them. Angel similarly blows up the law firm, and is dumped into Chaos...with hell raining down on him.
The writer's don't provide neat answers. Just questions. Destroy the authority, do we become it? And what then? The child rebels against the adult order, only to become that order...Neither extreme works, and both try to work towards the happy medium.
Most series don't appear to explore it to quite that degree or in quite that fashion. Since Buffy and Angel don't just tackle religious order but also societal order. Most series seem to stop short somewhere along the road. And that may be how these differed at least to me.
Your Mileage May Vary of course.
Need to make dinner.
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no subject
Date: 2014-10-10 02:30 am (UTC)Would make life easier.
Writing the post above clarified something for me - or I finally figured out why I have become fannish over certain shows and not others. I have issues with authority figures - and power, and series that explore that issue in depth clearly resonate for me on a certain level that other series that don't explore it do.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-10 02:34 am (UTC)Yeah, the "outsider who challenges power" theme is pretty compelling to me too. But BtVS also grabbed me emotionally through Buffy, Willow, and Spike, in ways that no other show has. Maybe Arya Stark, but that includes the book so it's not an equal comparison.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-10 02:39 am (UTC)Nor for that matter does Game of Thrones.
So - I do have to connect with the characters on a deep level. And for it to sustain itself - there has to be a steady flow of new and interesting character development.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-10 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 12:28 am (UTC)Arya is the ultimate realist - and she refuses to give in - that is also why I like BtVS. And why I like Wesley in Angel. They see through illusions and lies. The same can be said for Spike, but issues involving his love life are exempted.
They challenge power on so many levels.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 01:09 am (UTC)And she doesn't quite see things that clearly.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 01:16 am (UTC)I suppose you could say the same for Anya, in a way. But I get so pissed that they did not do more with a thousand year demon than use her as a tiresome joke....sigh.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 10:16 pm (UTC)And well, personal preferences aside, they had too many characters in S7 - due to the whole potential slayer plot arc which was admittedly integral to the plot.
So, they did the whole thousand year demon bit in the space of four-five episodes. After she gave up being a demon, Anya reverted to well comic relief.
There were some good bits and pieces in there - Anya's interactions with Spike, which resolved their hook-up in Entropy as being little more than a drunken misstep on Spike's part or a way to assuage the pain, but not all that satisfying. And on Anya's part - a way to kick Xander for being an ass or make him jealous, as well as a means of assuaging pain.
So, I think Anya did sort of recover - but like Wes, she dies at the end.
In Buffy - she's the only lead character that is killed. (Mainly for Doylist reasons - the actress was fighting with Fox and wanted to be killed off. Whedon needed to kill off the character and let her have her wish. At this point, there was a possibility of a spin-off. Many of the characters Whedon has killed off - oddly, were for that reason.) So neither recovered completely. Angel does however forgive Wes, just as Buffy forgives Anya.
However, Wes' recovery is kicked to the curb by Angel's devil's bargain with WRH, where he succeeds in conning poor Wes again - and when Wes unravels the con - it destroys him and his world. Wes dies at the end of Angel in part because of what Angel did in Home.
So, doesn't end well for Wes.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-13 12:47 am (UTC)She should have been a resource all along. 1000 years of different demons and different dimensions - and they barely touch on it. I can see why in the Doylist sense. But Watsonian - what an amazing waste.
Not a big Andrew fan either - except for his crossover episodes I did like those. I would have far preferred less attention spent on new characters and more on the gang. And I am one of those who believe that Giles came back a pod person. One scene of him listing those he lost in the explosion would have softened that, IMHO. The kill Spike arc - while I truly love it - was really nonsensical.
And Spike does die, as well. It really diminishes his sacrifice if his resurrection in Angel is used to ameliorate that sacrifice.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-13 02:54 am (UTC)And Xander didn't want to be reminded that she was a thousand year old demon, any more than they did. Any more than Anya did. When they asked her for info, she reluctantly gave it - and wasn't always right. They asked Anya in somewhat the same way they asked Spike - as a last resort, and grudgingly.
Honestly, she was someone who killed thousands - not something you want to think about when she's your pal.
So I don't think from a story-telling perspective, considering we are not telling this from Anya's pov but Buffy's, it made no sense to do what you wanted. It doesn't fit the framework of the story.
And Spike does die, as well. It really diminishes his sacrifice if his resurrection in Angel is used to ameliorate that sacrifice.
Not really. It was painful, and he thought he died. Then he came back as an incoporeal ghost that no one but Fred appeared to care about - forever separated from Buffy.
So even though he lived, he sacrificed a great deal. Dying actually would have been a heck of lot easier. Spike himself admits that. Living is harder.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-13 04:10 am (UTC)Yeah - Xander and Anya - don't get me going there because I need this computer so I can't through it against the wall. Xander, the self righteous, hypocritical, whiny and entitled....we will have to move on now...
I can't see why you don't see Spike as having died and been ressurected. He was crumbling into a pile of ashes and still burning when last we saw him. This is a universe where more than a few characters are brought back to life, but that doesn't mean that they didn't die. Darla, Buffy, Joyce, Angel, Buffy again....they all died and they all came back.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-13 04:22 pm (UTC)Although Joyce was never resurrected - that was The First Evil pretending to be Joyce. Remember?
no subject
Date: 2014-10-15 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-15 10:25 pm (UTC)