Reading meme and buffy
Apr. 24th, 2018 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWell, I flipped from Romance Novels (finally got burned out and sort of fed up to be honest), to comics -- this round the Buffy Comics. Last round it was the X-men comics. Thinking of reading "The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman" at night, because I'm not supposed to looking at blue screens prior to bed. I'm reading the comics on my spanking brand new Amazon HD Fire. It's perfect for reading them, although I get annoyed at times with the guided method -- have to do it, the print is too small for the regular. And really annoyed by all the frigging ads. Amazon - really? You're motivating me to buy another ipad, and I don't want to.
1. What I just finished reading?
Buffy S9 Freefall Vol #1 and Buffy S9 - Apart of Me".
Apart of Me is better than Freefall, which has a lot of meandering about and expository stuff.
Both focus on Buffy struggling with the events of S8, and the end of magic. Also, once again she's trying for a normal life -- you'd think she'd realize by now that having a witch, a vampire, a magical sister, as friends and family would sort of contradict that possibility. But no.
My difficulty with this bit of storyline is it feels repetitive like Whedon is treading over old ground. A problem I've had with Whedon's writing of late -- he keeps going over the same territory.
The first issue of Freefall is written by Whedon, and the second one is co-written by him. Jeanty's art, to be fair, has improved, or they've hired a better inker and colorist? I'm thinking the later.
Comics is a collaborative art form for the most part (unless you are Frank Miller or Kate Bechdel and do both the art and the writing yourself, and don't color anything in). I like the more collaborative works to be honest.
I could tell when the artist changed, and I liked the new artist a bit better. What can I say? I have my preferences.
"Freefall" is the set up of "Apart of Me". And the story syncs rather well with the Spike series that immediately follows it. Buffy and Spike much like Angel and Faith, their counterparts, are struggling with the same things. Spike wants a home and family, connection. Now that he has a soul -- he desires it more than ever. I can't help but think he yearned for it without one. Buffy also wants this in her own way. Buffy also is struggling with what she did -- she feels ending magic was the right thing to do, but it hasn't made the world better, exactly, just different. The problems are different ones. This is a nifty commentary on the theme -- that no matter what you do or where you go there you are..or rather, you can't fix the world or save it, you can only fix a few issues at time. No one can play god. And when you use power -- in this manner, it will blow up in your face, because you can't see the bigger picture. All you see is this one spot or one thread in the tapestry -- so how will you know that pulling a strand may unravel it or change it into a way you never intended. People who think there is no pattern to the universe are rather arrogant in a way, believing that what they see or perceive is all there is. It's not. There's more. I think the writers here are intuitive ones, in that they write to figure things out, not because they know it. They try this and they try that..and think whoa...didn't know that., alrighty then. Which may be why I find there stories appealing?
Anyhow from a plot standpoint? Buffy has a wild party. Feels horrible for days afterwards, can't figure out why. Runs across various threats and villains. Including a potential ally, Dowling, a cop, who runs across these threats. Dowling's partner who doesn't trust Buffy and thinks she's responsible, gets turned into a nasty vampire for her efforts.
Then Buffy takes a pregnancy test and discovers, whoops, pregnant, but by who? She'd blacked out most of the evening, getting snot-faced drunk. So it could be by Riley, Andrew, Spike, Tumble, the guy next door, etc. Goes off to talk to Robin Wood about it -- he advises her to have the kid. (Honestly what did she expect? Wood is old school. Also his mother, who was single, no dad in the picture, and a slayer, had him. He never forgave her for not putting him above her mission. Or getting help. But let's face it, Wood is and has always been a sanctimonious prick. Also DB who portrayed him? Specializes in playing sanctimonious pricks. His played one in everything single thing I've seen him in. He's playing one now in Lucifer. He's good at it. He actually can make them half-way likable.)
Buffy decides Wood is full of it, that there's no way she can do it. Although she does for a moment or two fantasize/consider asking Spike to run away with her to raise the kid, which I found interesting. Eventually she calls Spike. He comes with the intent of telling her that he is still in love with her as advised by his new cop-buddy Dowling. They'd been out on a ride-a-long. Spike in these comics is the Spike that was in Bryan Lynch's comics...which I adored, because frankly that's how I viewed the character. Same voice. Etc. But she sort of trumps (and that word will never work again will it?) with the whole pregnancy bit. She goes first, tells him how she considered asking him to run away with her, but instead, realizes that would never work and the only thing to do is have an abortion. Off they go, but alas, run into vampires -- specifically Dowling's partner and a hord of zompires, which Dowling is struggling to fight off. One of which yanks off Buffy's arm -- proving that she can't be pregnant because she's a bloody robot.
Turns out that Andrew during the wild party, roofied Buffy, switched her brain with the robots, so the robot is in Buffy's body, while Buffy is in the robot's. So if anyone assassinates Buffy -- it will be the robot, and Buffy's body will be safe elsewhere. What confused Spike and I was what if the robot gets destroyed with Buffy's brain or someone grabs Buffy's body and kills that? Wouldn't it bet better if Buffy were in her own body at that point? Andrew never made any logical sense. The character is less annoying here, mainly because we don't have to hear the high squeaky voice.
Anyhow things go awry, but eventually, after fighting off nasty slayer Simone who kidnaps Buffy's body, all is restored. The best bits are the interactions between Spike and Buffy. Where Buffy sort of says she wants normal and Spike isn't normal. And Spike says he wants ordinary and normal too, but he's done lurking at the edge of her life until she calls for him, because she needs him to fix her problems.
I rather liked the arc a bit, for the metaphors. Buffy is living her life a bit like a robot. Going and doing what is expected. Job, etc. But it's not working. Her friends have left her. Xander and Dawn have kicked her out. She feels disconnected from herself and her family -- so the physical metaphor robot. She also is robbed of the normal decision to have an abortion -- the gut-wrenching aspects of it. Everything. It's more real to be put in a robot body than to be pregnant and worry over an abortion.
Spike is equally disconnected. He wants to be part of Buffy's life, not lurking in the shadows. He's changed. He doesn't want to be wandering about with a bunch of alient bugs. But to be with her.
2. What I'm reading now?
Spike - Into the Dark -- Season 9 miniseries. (I have a feeling the spin-offs and miniseries didn't do as well as expected, so they brought everyone back to home base and gave up on it? You don't see as much of it in the later two seasons.)
This isn't bad. It's about Spike finding out about the shards of the seed that everyone is hunting, and returning to the Hellmouth in Sunnydale again. Also realizing he needs to be connected to someone.
3. What I'm reading next?
Probably Buffy S9 - Core. Then S10 again, because I'm not crazy about S9. There's more volumes in 10. Nine was a shorter season and struggled apparently.
Whedon is apparently coming back along with Jeanty (oh joy - not) to write S12, which I may skip. Since he wants to hook it up with Fray. I don't know why. I disliked Fray. Keep the two separate please and let Buffy have her happy ending.
1. What I just finished reading?
Buffy S9 Freefall Vol #1 and Buffy S9 - Apart of Me".
Apart of Me is better than Freefall, which has a lot of meandering about and expository stuff.
Both focus on Buffy struggling with the events of S8, and the end of magic. Also, once again she's trying for a normal life -- you'd think she'd realize by now that having a witch, a vampire, a magical sister, as friends and family would sort of contradict that possibility. But no.
My difficulty with this bit of storyline is it feels repetitive like Whedon is treading over old ground. A problem I've had with Whedon's writing of late -- he keeps going over the same territory.
The first issue of Freefall is written by Whedon, and the second one is co-written by him. Jeanty's art, to be fair, has improved, or they've hired a better inker and colorist? I'm thinking the later.
Comics is a collaborative art form for the most part (unless you are Frank Miller or Kate Bechdel and do both the art and the writing yourself, and don't color anything in). I like the more collaborative works to be honest.
I could tell when the artist changed, and I liked the new artist a bit better. What can I say? I have my preferences.
"Freefall" is the set up of "Apart of Me". And the story syncs rather well with the Spike series that immediately follows it. Buffy and Spike much like Angel and Faith, their counterparts, are struggling with the same things. Spike wants a home and family, connection. Now that he has a soul -- he desires it more than ever. I can't help but think he yearned for it without one. Buffy also wants this in her own way. Buffy also is struggling with what she did -- she feels ending magic was the right thing to do, but it hasn't made the world better, exactly, just different. The problems are different ones. This is a nifty commentary on the theme -- that no matter what you do or where you go there you are..or rather, you can't fix the world or save it, you can only fix a few issues at time. No one can play god. And when you use power -- in this manner, it will blow up in your face, because you can't see the bigger picture. All you see is this one spot or one thread in the tapestry -- so how will you know that pulling a strand may unravel it or change it into a way you never intended. People who think there is no pattern to the universe are rather arrogant in a way, believing that what they see or perceive is all there is. It's not. There's more. I think the writers here are intuitive ones, in that they write to figure things out, not because they know it. They try this and they try that..and think whoa...didn't know that., alrighty then. Which may be why I find there stories appealing?
Anyhow from a plot standpoint? Buffy has a wild party. Feels horrible for days afterwards, can't figure out why. Runs across various threats and villains. Including a potential ally, Dowling, a cop, who runs across these threats. Dowling's partner who doesn't trust Buffy and thinks she's responsible, gets turned into a nasty vampire for her efforts.
Then Buffy takes a pregnancy test and discovers, whoops, pregnant, but by who? She'd blacked out most of the evening, getting snot-faced drunk. So it could be by Riley, Andrew, Spike, Tumble, the guy next door, etc. Goes off to talk to Robin Wood about it -- he advises her to have the kid. (Honestly what did she expect? Wood is old school. Also his mother, who was single, no dad in the picture, and a slayer, had him. He never forgave her for not putting him above her mission. Or getting help. But let's face it, Wood is and has always been a sanctimonious prick. Also DB who portrayed him? Specializes in playing sanctimonious pricks. His played one in everything single thing I've seen him in. He's playing one now in Lucifer. He's good at it. He actually can make them half-way likable.)
Buffy decides Wood is full of it, that there's no way she can do it. Although she does for a moment or two fantasize/consider asking Spike to run away with her to raise the kid, which I found interesting. Eventually she calls Spike. He comes with the intent of telling her that he is still in love with her as advised by his new cop-buddy Dowling. They'd been out on a ride-a-long. Spike in these comics is the Spike that was in Bryan Lynch's comics...which I adored, because frankly that's how I viewed the character. Same voice. Etc. But she sort of trumps (and that word will never work again will it?) with the whole pregnancy bit. She goes first, tells him how she considered asking him to run away with her, but instead, realizes that would never work and the only thing to do is have an abortion. Off they go, but alas, run into vampires -- specifically Dowling's partner and a hord of zompires, which Dowling is struggling to fight off. One of which yanks off Buffy's arm -- proving that she can't be pregnant because she's a bloody robot.
Turns out that Andrew during the wild party, roofied Buffy, switched her brain with the robots, so the robot is in Buffy's body, while Buffy is in the robot's. So if anyone assassinates Buffy -- it will be the robot, and Buffy's body will be safe elsewhere. What confused Spike and I was what if the robot gets destroyed with Buffy's brain or someone grabs Buffy's body and kills that? Wouldn't it bet better if Buffy were in her own body at that point? Andrew never made any logical sense. The character is less annoying here, mainly because we don't have to hear the high squeaky voice.
Anyhow things go awry, but eventually, after fighting off nasty slayer Simone who kidnaps Buffy's body, all is restored. The best bits are the interactions between Spike and Buffy. Where Buffy sort of says she wants normal and Spike isn't normal. And Spike says he wants ordinary and normal too, but he's done lurking at the edge of her life until she calls for him, because she needs him to fix her problems.
I rather liked the arc a bit, for the metaphors. Buffy is living her life a bit like a robot. Going and doing what is expected. Job, etc. But it's not working. Her friends have left her. Xander and Dawn have kicked her out. She feels disconnected from herself and her family -- so the physical metaphor robot. She also is robbed of the normal decision to have an abortion -- the gut-wrenching aspects of it. Everything. It's more real to be put in a robot body than to be pregnant and worry over an abortion.
Spike is equally disconnected. He wants to be part of Buffy's life, not lurking in the shadows. He's changed. He doesn't want to be wandering about with a bunch of alient bugs. But to be with her.
2. What I'm reading now?
Spike - Into the Dark -- Season 9 miniseries. (I have a feeling the spin-offs and miniseries didn't do as well as expected, so they brought everyone back to home base and gave up on it? You don't see as much of it in the later two seasons.)
This isn't bad. It's about Spike finding out about the shards of the seed that everyone is hunting, and returning to the Hellmouth in Sunnydale again. Also realizing he needs to be connected to someone.
3. What I'm reading next?
Probably Buffy S9 - Core. Then S10 again, because I'm not crazy about S9. There's more volumes in 10. Nine was a shorter season and struggled apparently.
Whedon is apparently coming back along with Jeanty (oh joy - not) to write S12, which I may skip. Since he wants to hook it up with Fray. I don't know why. I disliked Fray. Keep the two separate please and let Buffy have her happy ending.