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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: 2014-10-11 04:22 pm (UTC)I'm on my phone so sorry if there are any mistakes!
no subject
Date: 2014-10-11 08:42 pm (UTC)Agreed on the above.
Willow is interesting though. And you could make a valid argument that she's another classic example of narcissism. Her parents barely acknowledge her - and from what little we see in Gingerbread, they view her as a trophy or a validation of themselves. So, her family is narcissistic.
Also, Willow gets her self-worth from others. It's why she falls apart when OZ leaves her, and falls apart again when Tara leaves. It's also why she needs magic - because she feels like a 0 or loser without it.
But what distinguishes Willow from Cordelia and Harmony and Angel as well as Wes...is she does have some inner strength. She manages to survive without the magic and without Tara. And when she accesses the magic again in S7- she is provided with a choice, whether to become like Amy or for that matter Warren, or more like Tara.
Willow doesn't completely rely on external validation, any more than Xander or Spike do. They don't really want or desire center stage. Willow only takes center stage when she's either pushed there after Chosen, or out of grief - when she loses Tara. But it's temporary in each case. And they appear to be beaten down a lot, yet still stand without constant stroking. They aren't told they are chosen or destiny.
Spike isn't cursed with soul. And Willow is good at the magic like the hacking, but she does seem to know who she is without the magic. She's not quite as lost.
In part it's the difference between the two genres...Angel's story is a dark one, it's about falling into the pit of despair and attempting, possibly futilely to rise above it. And like you stated so well above,
Angel doesn't believe in himself, any more than Cordelia does. Their friends were never real or true. They just had "groupies". Angel never quite trusts those around him, any more than Cordy does. Both surround themselves with groupies or people who will stroke them.
Angelus did this as well - with the Fanged Four (who were his groupies, he didn't love them or trust them, their purpose was to adore Angelus.)
Willow as lost as she seems at times - doesn't surround herself with groupies. She doesn't require Buffy's approval. Not really. Nor Tara's.
Nor Giles. If she did, she may not have gone quite as off the rails.
In some respects, I found her to be more complex than the characters on Angel - but that may just be my own preferences - since I know there are people online at this moment who felt the exact opposite.
Part of the reason Willow and Tara are doomed though, is well the same reason Willow and Oz were - Willow needed Tara and Oz's love, stroking, validation...and was petrified of losing it, but I don't think she trusted them completely. I think she was always afraid of their betrayal or desertion. And she couldn't quite be there for either OZ or Tara, without trying to control them in some way. Willow has major control issues - which has less to do with feelings of self-worth and more to do with trust.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 01:10 am (UTC)He learned from this new father figure and began to trust in himself. Then disaster, but after some some angst he finds himself now able to believe in himself. Lilah does give confirmation in a very real way. He rescues Angel but no longer needs affirmation from the fang gang. He even prepares what Angel will need next, without needing to listen to Angel's rationalizations for forgiving him.
So when his new father figure became abusive, Wesley stayed moral and detached. He reinvents himself over those seasons. And Angel takes away the memories.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 10:30 pm (UTC)It's interesting though that in Origin (I think it was Origin or something's window?) where Wes unravels with Illyria's help Angel's deal with WRH, aka the memory wipe - he thrusts those negative memories at Connor again. Except Connor, due to what Angel had done, can handle them.
He has the good memories to counter-act them. Connor has been reset and rewritten to a degree that he can love Angel and accept him. He's the only character who survived the memory wipe in this fashion. The others...not so much. Although it has been successfully argued that they may have ended up going down this road regardless of Angel's deal with WRH. Fred seemed on the fence. Not sure what they would have done if the memory wipe hadn't occurred.
Wes, being Wes, leaps to the conclusion that things would have been better - that Fred would not have died, but there's no evidence of that.
He also believes he'd be different - if anything, he may have been less likely to fall in love with Fred again - since he sort of disassociated himself from her at the end of S4, and if anything was harboring feelings for Lilah, who had died in part because of him. His guilt regarding Lilah - was standing between him and Fred. If it weren't for the memory wipe - he may have hung onto that. Note - he doesn't appear to remember Lilah in S5. (Doylist again? They couldn't get the actress - she'd jumped to another series. So they had to create a new character - Eve to take Lilah's place.)
no subject
Date: 2014-10-14 01:34 am (UTC)Connor's willingness to forgive Angel as readily as he does bothered me with Origin on a first viewing, but ultimately it makes a certain amount of sense. And while I think the mindwipe of Connor was a bad idea, and ultimately a kind of frightening one -- erasing who Connor is to make a better one in his place! -- I also will give Angel this: I think that, in "Home," Angel did what he thought was the best he could do for Connor. It's really not what I think would be best for him. But I think it makes sense with Angel's worldview, and view of himself. It is still a betrayal of the world and his friends, and it's still even bad to Connor -- but I think Connor is ultimately right to recognize that Angel did what he thought was right by him (by Connor).
I think Wesley remembers something about Lilah -- he tells Cordelia, "You didn't kill Lilah," in "You're Welcome." But he does seem to have been somewhat reset in his attitude toward Fred. I think it may be that he remembers something of what happened with Lilah, but not the intensity and the reason for it -- because it's unlikely he would have ended up with Lilah if he were not ejected from Angel's team. It's a fuzzy part of the text, but it sort of makes sense on a Watsonian level, which intersects with the Doylist one. Angel erases Connor, and that causes problems for everyone's memory -- but the mindwipe / the writer's fiat about keeping Connor and related events backgrounded prevents the characters from remembering exactly what was going on.
I think it's noteworthy that even if Wes, Fred et al. decided to join W&H, they might still have balked at it once they realized that Angel, their boss, did it for reasons having nothing to do with wanting to do good, and didn't really want to be there.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 03:49 am (UTC)This mostly seems right to me. A lyric in Strawberry Fields Forever that reminds me of Willow is 'No one I think is in my tree / I mean it must be high or low.' That Willow fails to connect to others leads Willow to both have major trust issues, and major self-esteem issues. In Restless - she is exposed as a nerd and rejected, which is presumably what she thinks is her fault. But no matter how much of a loser she is - no way should the classroom stand by and watch her be devoted, have the life sucked out of her. Her nightmare is that she is hated forever because she's a loser - but much of the problem is that others failed her. Which is why she alternates between self-hatred and bright hot rage and mistrust.
I think unlike Angel especially - Willow was exactly what her mother apparently wanted her to be. There were no rules she failed to follow, no academic achievements she fell short of. But approval never earned her love. And I think Willow wants love more than approval. I think she wants approval too to an extent - but I think part of that is that she strongly suspects that what little love she gets will disappear with disapproval. When she gets her mother's disapproval in Gingerbread, her mother tries to burn her at the stake. So I think she fears disapproval too. But if she really believes that she has no chance at 'earning' love - I think she did working about approval. Whereas Angel especially, and Cordelia as well, and Wes, seem to care about approval, social standing, more than love, IMO. I think Willow wants to do good - but she has the hubris to believe she knows best at times, which is sometimes, as in something like Weight of the World, true. And she is emotional enough that when she suffers a loss, or risks losing one, her anger takes over - and she starts relying more heavily on her inner instincts.
Willow, I think, wants to have her affection and love for individual others returned. When she goes dark or as a vampire - she wants to have control so she can get the attention she wants. But it's very personal, I think. Even vamp Willow is much more interested in Angel, or Sandy, or Xander, or our universe's Willow, than a large group of people - taking over the Bronze was largely a means to an end, to recreate an environment in which she could have a puppy, and she drops that plan as soon as she meets our Willow. When dark, Willow primarily fights the Trio and then Buffy and Giles - which is very personal; as opposed to even Faith, fighting strangers much of the time. Willow does I think care very much abstractly about the fate of the world - saving it in Chosen, 'saving it' by destroying it in Grave - but she seems even then to be not interested in crowds or groupies. I think it's partly a difference between introversion and caring a great deal about a few individuals and forming one's worldview abstractly from there, and extraversion and caring about a larger number of people at once. I think Willow has the strengths and weaknesses of a sensitive introvert - sometimes villainous, but ultimately heroic, I.e. ultimately like all major BtVS characters who end their stories on BtVS, choosing good after a touch and go period.
IMO, Willow did love Oz and Tara (and Xander, and Buffy, and Giles), and wanted to do right by them. But it was a doomed and incomplete love because she could never really trust then to love her - and part of that is not fully trusting them to love her for her, and I think part of that is that I think she doesn't know who she really is, and is afraid it'd be impossible to love that person. But not all of it - some of it may be that she thinks there is just something about everyone that will make them reject her no matter what she does. I think she is starting to be able to believe that she is loved for herself with Buffy, Xander and Giles in season seven, and I think tries to be as upfront with Kennedy as possible. I think she was ultimately very accepting of them (Oz' werewolfism, Tara's possible demonhood) *except* where their love for her seemed threatened or shaky - and then all bets or off. Fatal flaw, I would say. Which does mean that ultimately their relationships were doomed to fail, because Willow is always overreacting to possible signs of rejection.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 10:53 pm (UTC)I think unlike Angel especially - Willow was exactly what her mother apparently wanted her to be. There were no rules she failed to follow, no academic achievements she fell short of. But approval never earned her love. And I think Willow wants love more than approval. I think she wants approval too to an extent - but I think part of that is that she strongly suspects that what little love she gets will disappear with disapproval. When she gets her mother's disapproval in Gingerbread, her mother tries to burn her at the stake. So I think she fears disapproval too. But if she really believes that she has no chance at 'earning' love - I think she did working about approval. Whereas Angel especially, and Cordelia as well, and Wes, seem to care about approval, social standing, more than love, IMO.
I think that's the main difference there. And it's why Willow can love, while I'm not sure the others ever quite do. Wes' love for Lilah or Fred felt self-serving and to a degree narcissitic - both stroked his ego.
Willow could care less about approval - she has had that in spades and it hasn't really gotten her anywhere. Actually she scoffs at it - with Giles in various episodes. It matters, but not THAT much. She seems to question it.
But love is something she doesn't quite trust - and is afraid will be yanked away from her. For a bit she thought approval equaled love. Realized nope - doesn't.
But it was a doomed and incomplete love because she could never really trust then to love her - and part of that is not fully trusting them to love her for her, and I think part of that is that I think she doesn't know who she really is, and is afraid it'd be impossible to love that person. But not all of it - some of it may be that she thinks there is just something about everyone that will make them reject her no matter what she does.
She's a bit surprised when they are interested in her. And as she states to Buffy in Wrecked (while I wasn't crazy about the episode there are three scenes that are quite good, one is the last one with Buffy and Willow) - without magic, Tara won't love me, you won't, I won't be anyone. I'll be that normal ordinary geeky girl that no one noticed in high school. It goes back to her dream in Restless - where the geeky girl without magic isn't loved. "They'll figure out who you are." And in Willow's dream everyone is wearing costumes, playing roles, but rip it off ...and I think you are correct Willow is afraid that she is the person people defined her as being in high school.
She fights against that. Spike and Willow have that in common. Both reinvent themselves - vampire and witch - in part to counteract the definition their peers thrust at them. Neither accepts it. And both scoff and question authority - societial standing, peer acceptance and views, and patriachial authority. Note - both Spike and Willow question Giles at various points.
And the council, and Buffy. I think that may explain why I love and identify with both the way I do - because I sort of get that.
But they also are super-sensitive to the rejection and these views, so internalize the critical voices - and create a persona to handle them. For William - that persona is Spike, for Willow - it is Vamp Willow, Dark Willow, Geek Willow. To which they hide behind. The only problem with that is after a while, you are no longer certain who you are - the role you play, or what is hidden beneath the surface. In S7 - both characters manage to figure out who they are and come to terms with it - so that they can incorporate both sides - the persona that protected them and the persona beneath the surface. Spike is able to be both William the poet and Spike.
Willow is able to be Willow and magic/hacker Willow. Once they do, they are able to trust others and love fully.
In contrast, I'm not sure this ever quite happens for Angel, Cordy or even Wes - who still feel fractured by the end of the Angel series.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-14 01:28 am (UTC)I think with both Willow and Spike/William, there is an additional level, which is that neither "geek Willow" nor "nerdy poet William" were the full story of who they were "deep inside" either. William was reserved, bashful, and afraid of people -- he had real anger lurking beneath the surface. And also, I think, a bravery that he was not accessing. Similar for Willow. It's not that the evil persona is made up, because it ends up expressing things that they have mostly been denying. Spike basically goes full-tilt evil within a day or two of being turned by Dru. Willow tries to hold on to her goodness, and her non-threatening-ness, while still remaking herself as cool (and ultimately dangerous) -- until she eventually gives that up after Tara's death. They come to believe that their conscience wasn't real -- and maybe no conscience of any human is. With Spike, the soul loss really helps there, though it turns out that he does still like the world, and for a very small number of people very close to him he can still care. With Willow, I think that she recognizes that she doesn't really, in her heart of hearts, believe in these rules that have been imposed on her, by her parents, or Snyder, or Giles or even Buffy or Tara, and I think she begins to suspect she's a monster deep down. But I think what it really is is that she can sort of see the falseness and hypocrisy -- sometimes also seeing hypocrisy that isn't there, it's not that her perception isn't skewed, either -- and can't bring herself to care, deep down, about rules that don't seem to have any purpose, that don't seem to help people, or seem to help others more than her.
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Date: 2014-10-14 01:28 am (UTC)I sort of relate to Willow in this regard because I think I have a complicated relationship to "authority" or "society" -- I think I do on some level still internalize expectations, and worry that I'm supposed to feel different things than I feel. I also feel frustrated at what seems to be hypocrisies, or inconsistencies, or just some things that I don't feel I really understand. But it comes and goes. I feel like I'm doing better now than I used to be in this regard -- I feel a little more secure, more "season seven-y." Spike, as you say, also questions authority, Giles' and Buffy's -- but I think that he flaunts convention more consistently and more overtly. Willow seems to be on the edge, constantly dancing back and forth between overtly defying convention and following convention even though she doesn't fully believe in it, and covertly defying convention while trying not to get noticed, which is...not always about deception, though it is sometimes.
I do agree that it seems different with Angel, Cordy and Wes. Wesley and Angel are older, and that has some impact; they are more set in their ways than Willow, and less flexible than Spike. Wesley is actually very flexible in terms of his personality, but yes there is something a little twisted about him. I'm not sure. With Cordy, I think that she might have done better if she were not with Angel so much. And certainly, she lost basically all control over her life when Jasmine started slowly taking her over. It's a shame that Cordelia seems, in "You're Welcome," to have split Jasmine off from the other Powers That Be, and to be..."content" to do the Powers' bidding, and to devote her last day to making Angel's life better, by making Angel feel more important.
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Date: 2014-10-18 02:29 am (UTC)Agree a great deal with this. I have similar issues, which may explain why I loved the characters of Willow and Spike as much as I did. I related to their authority issues on a certain level. In particular the frustrations with hypocrisies and inconsistencies - which both characters highlight and poke at it in the story.
I often struggled more with Buffy and Angel - who were often in a position of authority, and hypocritical in how they related to things and people as a result being in that position.
One of my frustrations with the series - was ME did not pair Spike and Willow together platonically, often enough. In part because they were afraid of the chemistry the two actors had. Let's face it - Marsters generated chemistry with everyone and everything including air. But I really craved a good sit down conversation between Spike and Willow in S7. They gave that to me with Angel and Faith, they should have done the same with Spike and Willow. Also, done one with Willow and Faith, another missed opportunity. It is a problem with tv series that are focused on going through a lot of plot at a breakneck pace. And have too many characters. Series like Breaking Bad, which have fewer characters, tend to have better and richer character moments.
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Date: 2014-10-18 03:19 am (UTC)A friend suggested that it might have been interesting had Willow intervened to save Spike from Robin -- for various reasons; Willow would be acting to save Robin from being consumed by vengeance, would be acting to stop Giles' overstep of authority, and her entry would correspond with when Spike "gets his memories back" about his mother -- which ties in with Willow's own attempts to erase the past in s6 with Tara / Buffy. It'd be a way to bring the two characters' stories together while also showing the progress both had made. I think it would be difficult to pull off, especially since LMPTM is already a jam-packed episode, and a very controversial one at that. But it's an idea that struck me as very interesting, at least.
I like season seven more than most, but I did miss a lot of important character interactions.
I didn't mention, but of course the thing with Spike and authority is that Spike has internalized all the expectations as well -- the way he deals with it is to go full-on rejecting any authority he can. Willow tries to play along with others' authority, but it stifles her. Neither strategy is sustainable in the long run by itself.
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Date: 2014-10-18 02:12 pm (UTC)I agree with your friend. That would have actually in some respects worked better. It also would have made the episode a little less offensive. But unfortunately the writers felt the need to make every episode about Buffy - it was unfortunately a series that focused on one character, with the others supporting, as opposed to a more ensemble effort. (It is interesting to note that all of Whedon's later series and movies do not have a title character, and tend to be ensembles. I think he felt constrained after a bit by the "lead character" framework, which isn't true to life or our reality anyhow.) As a result of the lead character framework or solo pov - a lot of tv series tend to be a bit stuck. You can't have episodes that focus too much on other characters, well you can - but the lead must be involved and it must reflect on them somehow. It's very hard to pull off that sort of dynamic in the limited time frame they are expected to work within.
Also they seemed obsessed with the sick mother/wounded boy(child) theme - a bit more so than they should have been. Very Freudian. And used a lot in both series. (Whedon wrote the series and the original movie in part for his own sick mother, who had died before she could see either. And I think that to an extent overshadowed the series - and became a recurring, if subconscious theme.) I know the sick mother bit was Whedon's idea, with Fury and Goodard putting their own twist on it. (Keep in mind Fury wrote the other episode that focused on this - the one in S3, where the vampire kidnaps Joyce, and Giles has taken away her powers - which in many ways is the companion piece to this one. The two episodes mirror each others themes and structure in a lot of ways.)
I think if they'd gone the Willow route, some of that would have been watered down and it would have been a far less controversial episode.
Part of the problem with S7 was that it had too many characters and took the focus away from a lot of the core characters. They made the mistake, which tv shows often do, of introducing a lot of new ancillary characters to the story in the last two seasons. Mainly because the writers thought at the time the series would continue - that was their aim. (Just because Whedon was going to stop being showrunner, didn't mean another writer couldn't head it - that happens all the time - Supernatural, Marvel Agents of Shield, West Wing, ER,
Greys Anatomy, the list is endless. 98% of tv shows change head writers half way through - they have to because the writers burn out.
What they can't change so easily is the lead or star, unless they are ensemble casts like Marvel Agents of Shield - hence the drift to that format.) If the series had continued - this wouldn't have been as big a problem, but since it was the last season - the new characters defused the story, too busy, too much, in too short a time.
Like you said, LMTP was jam-packed to begin with - in part because of all of that.
I liked the episode better than most - but I knew while watching it that first time, heck I'd been spoiled on it, so knew in advance, that it would piss off a lot of fans and why. Which wouldn't have happened if they'd taken a slightly different tact.
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Date: 2014-10-18 03:46 am (UTC)I have similar issues with Angel, but to a much greater extent with Angel than with Buffy. I think with Buffy, the narrative sort of shows the problems with having a sole leader, even when that sole leader is near the best she can be. With Angel, the more nihilistic take is showing what happens with a much worse leader -- one who trades in his team.
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Date: 2014-10-19 02:28 am (UTC)Buffy is a very heroic, and believably portrayed, character, and I identify with her a lot, especially in the later seasons. However, I have problems with her authority. When Willow, Spike, Faith, Xander, or Dawn (for starters) criticize Buffy's authority, I'm usually at least a bit sympathetic. Buffy is benevolent, but she is in some senses a monarch -- she earns her leadership role through constant sacrifice and through hard work, but at the same time her strength is no guarantee that her decisions will be the best of anyone's.
Part of her problem is her leadership role models have been less than stellar. Giles - is a decent educator, but not much in the authority/leader department - and a wee bit too machiavellian for his own good. Robin Wood? Ditto. And he has massive mother issues, plus trained by a Watcher. And the Watcher Council? Oh dear. Then there's Professor Walsh, Riley, and Angel - who well...tend to also be a bit too machiavellian for their own good.
She has had no good role models to follow. (From a Doylist perspective, I think it's a nice metaphor for Hollywood and the Entertainment Biz.)
In short she's making it up as she goes and following what Wood and Giles have more or less dictated. It's not until she throws out the rule book in End of Days/Chosen and lets everyone make their own choices that things begin to work. But even then - you basically have a lone wolf personality attempting to lead people. It's not as easy as it looks - and she's not charismatic.
t's not that Buffy doesn't question herself -- she does. She does think hard about how to use her power, especially as time goes on, but the deck is still somewhat stacked until the "Chosen" spell changes the fundamental arrangement -- Buffy ultimately makes the final call, and is it fair for any person, no matter how virtuous, to be always the one to make that last call?
And...sometimes, there's no right or wrong answer. No matter what you do, you're screwed. Buffy does however at least take full responsibility for her actions, which makes her more admirable than most.
I think with Buffy, the narrative sort of shows the problems with having a sole leader, even when that sole leader is near the best she can be. With Angel, the more nihilistic take is showing what happens with a much worse leader -- one who trades in his team.
Angel is a fascinating character who I like a lot. But I agree - his story is the negative take on heroism. Or how it can go wrong. He is the typical noir hero - the ends justify the means, tries to do the right thing but inevitably does the wrong one and ends up falling into the abyss.
I thought the series did a good job of depicting how easy it is to make these types of mistakes, yet think you are doing the right thing - that you are making the world better.
Angel was complex - his heart was in the right place, he wanted to save people, he wanted redemption, he wanted to be a hero - but he was his own worst enemy. He kept making the same mistakes - hunting the approval of an absent father figure, or trying to redeem himself through a son that shouldn't even exist.
He wanted to be superman, but ended up being batman. Ultimately making his world worse than better - which is in keeping with the gothic genre.
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Date: 2014-10-12 05:32 am (UTC)As she grows in confidence she thinks she escapes this by 'becoming' a new and powerful person. She thinks this is what Tara wants her for and it's not inconceivable why she would think that. Basically the first thing Tara says to her is that Willow has a lot of power, like Tara's beloved mother. They bond over magic and Willow would never have met Tara without it. And so when Tara starts objecting to and even fearing Willow's magic use, she freaks out - because she must somehow both do magic and not at the same time!? She also, I think, views herself as responsible for Glory's attack on Tara - she says she's sorry when she reaches Tara, the reason Willow wasn't there with her is because of their fight about magic, AND Willow couldn't think of the right spell to clear the crowd so she could get to Glory in time. Again, I think the reason Willow freaks out so much is that she is torn between contradictory beliefs - knowing that they fought because Tara is scared at how powerful Willow is and that's why she was alone; Willow not being powerful enough is why she couldn't stop Glory in time. Willow goes after Glory on a possibly suicidal mission even when Tara is still around - because, I think, Willow can't deal with feeling responsible, and needs an external target.
I think by s6, Willow basically believes that if she does not maintain full power at all times, disaster will strike - and also believes that her power makes her dirty and evil somehow, and she blows out eventually because she can't resolve the contradiction. If Willow had been using magic when Warren came by the house, would Willow have been able to stop the bullet in time to save her? I think Willow is not so much interested in approval as a) love, as I said earlier, and b) security - and when really, really angry, c) revenge. Security and love combine - because by s6 she doesn't really trust anyone either to keep them safe, or to treat her fairly, and it's only in nearly killing Dawn that Willow really recognizes that she is a bigger danger than, like, the world in general. I think in sore of being a person who thinks often, Willow respond to crises emotionally - and basically doesn't actually fully recover from the huge threats from Glory, Buffy's death, the resurrection, the difficulty running the gang in Buffy's absence, the demon bikers etc. until near the end of s6, at which point Tara's death reactivated her extreme emotional, rage-grief default to power - even though it was now too late to use that power to protect Tara. I think she only barely is ready to recover from this by Chosen - and I suspect she'll still be screwed up for many years to come, though hopefully she'll be able to stave off angry rage.
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Date: 2014-10-12 05:44 am (UTC)I ran out of space so had to cut some nuances.
I think Willow and Spike especially are *extremely* sensitive to others' treatment, approval/disapproval, and love/dislike for them - but mostly they want to do what they think is right. They are emotion driven, intuitive - and the conclusions they come to about what will make them good or worthy of love are often way off. They are dangerous - because they internalize others' messages and codes while sometimes missing important features of them. But I think they are far less likely than Angel or Cordelia to blindly follow a higher power. They do listen to others - but I think, at least before s7, they fail to fully listen, only picking up part of what others say. They are sort of seeking approval, but would rather follow their own instincts - to figure out from others what general principles to follow and then internalize them and follow then through to their conclusion. I.e. Spike admires Angelus and then becomes a slayer-killer; Willow admires Buffy's power so builds a dark arsenal of power. On the good side, Spike admires Buffy and chooses to sacrifice himself as she might do; Willow admires Tara and tries to become a good witch. Whether good or evil - they are not so much seeking direct approval, as to figure out through observations what qualities are admirable, and then to reproduce these qualities in their own way. I think that's the difference between them and Angel - who needs something of the direct line to the Powers trekking him exactly what they want him to do, rather than trying to determine who he wants to be.