(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Found a few things of interest on lj today:

1. http://community.ew.com/2015/07/24/love-bites-angel-or-spike/

Basically one EW blogger writes for Team Angel, and one for Team Spike. So far they have one comment.
The Team Angel comment lost me when she told me that both Angel and Buffy were heroes...eh, not really. Angel is what I'd call an anti-hero or classic noir hero - whose actions inevitably doom everyone around him, and he can never quite rise above his flaws. Reminds me a lot of the character of Luke in General Hospital, actually, abusive father, saintly mother, adoring sister, killed both his parents, and tries to be a hero, has an earth-shaking soul-mate relationship with a petite blond girl, who is a hero, but he can't ever really be with -- without destroying her. Later, he has a far more adult relationship with a rich bitchy heiress, who saves him a few times from himself, but is always feeling put aside by his one great first love with the pretty blond heroine (Laura). Finally, coming to grips with his issues, he decides to leave town, leave both loves, and go find his own redemption. It's not a new trope. Actually I didn't realize how similar the character's arcs were until I just wrote that.

Hero? Eh...depends on how narrow or broad your definition is and what your criteria for hero is.
Mileage varies on it. I've argued it to death on lj. Dlgood and I used to fight over it. We have yet to persuade one another. Actually, we just end up pissing each other off. Which to be honest happens most of the time that anyone engages in this particular debate. Because let's face it - one person's idea of a hero may well be another person's idea of a villain. Look at the political landscape, for every person who saw Obama or Bush or Reagan or Clinton or Carter or Nixon or Roosevelt or Churchill as heroic, there was someone else who REALLY didn't. Same is true with religion and mythology. Hercules - if read one way, is heroic, read another way is anything but.

Actually that was what I liked about how they wrote Angel and Spike on Buffy, you could argue it both ways. This was true of all the characters on that series, at any given moment they could either do something unexpectedly heroic or villainous.

People want it to clear cut or black and white. Black hats vs. White Hats. Heroes vs. Villains. But seriously? That's boring and predictable. Far more interesting when its not.

2. Tumblr discussions.

*People on Tumblr miss livejournal, while there are folks defending tumblir

* and Frelling Talk's discussion of it in LJ

Personally, I think the popularity is a side effect of people doing everything communication oriented on their smartphone.

Comments

[rahirah]

Oh, the Twilight arc is an abomination before the Lord, no argument there. (I could perhaps see Angel coming around to the idea that the world had to be destroyed to be remade, and that he was just the guy to make the hard decisions etc., but... not on the advice of a talking dog.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! I don't know...Angel could be dopey at times. But I completely agree - the Twilight arc doesn't work on multiple levels. (Although after watching the Brad Meltzer interview - I know why. Meltzer is a plot/theme guy, not a character guy.
Instead of having the characters move the plot, he creates a plot and sort of plugs the characters into it - as if they are actors cast in various roles that might fit them. Actually reminds me a lot of some AU Real Person fanfic I've read.)

[elisi]

Instead of having the characters move the plot, he creates a plot and sort of plugs the characters into it
Which wouldn't be quite so terrible if the plot itself wasn't awful. Spacefrack that results in a new world? I'm not a plot-writer, but I could think of something better in under five minutes.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I agree. When I watched the Brad Meltzer video, I thought, okay was Whedon stoned when he decided this was a brilliant idea? (I do wonder about television serial writers sometimes, they like to take their stories off the rails.) Apparently the space-frak came out of the fact that they really really wanted to do an explicit sex scene in a comic book because they thought it had never been done before. ( Oh dear. These boys need to get out more - because the Japanese, various cult and underground comic writers, not to mention anime have been doing nudity in comics and explicit sex scenes (and far better) I might add for decades. Also, Alan Moore did an explicit sex scene in Promethesis, which at least some of the Buffy writers clearly read. It made sense and was far better done, except that Moore only writes sex scenes between 70 year old men and twenty-something women. Personally I find that sort of a major turn-off, not to mention creepy, but that's just me.) Whedon apparently wanted to see if he could shock the mainstream superhero comic book reading public. He likes doing that. That's why they had kinky sex in S6, he likes shocking people.

And...I think that was why they thought Meltzer's plot was a great idea - because of the shock value. There's a pressure in serial writing to do bigger, better, splashier. Bigger villain. Shocking twists. Etc. Unfortunately, if done poorly it looks dumb, and well is jumping the shark. But serial writers - comic book and notably television do it, because of that constant pressure to have that "must-see" moment. It's less about telling a story, and more about grabbing media attention or having that big marketing moment.

Say what you will about that issue - but it did grab the media's attention and sell a lot of comic books. That's why they did it. But it's also why Fonzie literally jumped the shark in jet-ski stunt on Happy Days, the ratings were failing, so they decided to do a stunt to grab viewers attention and create a "must-see" moment.