Falling down and getting up again.

[shadowkat]

Difficult weekend ahead. Now that I have an agent - she wants to take me to lots of places. One on Saturday, and four on Sunday. Somehow I have to find a way to fit church activities admist all of this apartment hunting, which admittedly gives me the heebie jeebies - or jitters. The apartment hunting not church.

Church last week had a rather annoying guest speaker that put me in a foul mood. Not comforting at all. Just snarky and holier than thou. Which I so don't need in church. I can get that on the internet and well at work and on tv, thank you very much. Luckily for me - it was a guest speaker.

Work aggravating. Everyone is grouchy. We all hate the Windows 2010 Word, Excel package. It's not that bad for MAC (as far as I can tell) but for Dell it is a nightmare. Can't find things. Documents won't open without shutting down the entire program and making it restart, then shutting it down again. Ugga bugga, indeed.

Add to the aggravation - two cold and rainy days...that smelled of old leaves and mud. Making me itchy and restless and a bit cranky.

Also...I've got a question for you all, it's rather general and I'm not even sure you've read this far or at all - so may not get any answers or just one or two.

What do you do when you realize that you are starting to, ahem, dislike a writer and a story thread/verse, characters that you loved to pieces? I'm not talking about something you casually like or a tv show you loved but never wrote about. I mean something that you invested in emotionally. Wrote meta on. Fanfic. Joined a fandom. Discussed to death. Drew pictures of.
Collected all the DVD's and stories about. Something you really loved. And then, wham...an episode, a comic, a novelization - something that the "original creator" - the writer you loved, creates or does with that story - makes you see it in a light...that well, causes you to feel
a sense of deep dissatisfaction and disappointment. And as time wears on...much like water and wind slowly eroding at rocks...you find your love for the characters, the verse and the writer eroding...until you wake up one day and think, I don't love this writer or his work any longer.
I don't even like it. It offends me. And you find yourself struggling with the feeling, because you don't want to dislike it, you want to like it, damn it! You want to...to hold on to what it felt like. But the more you try...it just doesn't quite work. And you think, uhm, okay, maybe I'll change my mind with the next episode or issue...maybe this is a passing phase, a mood...but it isn't. And well, you have this fandom you've joined. And they post comments to you only when you write about that show or that comic or that book. But you realize what you are writing is getting increasingly negative, increasingly ranty and snarky...and you feel like you might be alienating folks, losing friends, and you don't want to. You want to hold on to the fun. But...you really really hate have issues with what the writer is doing...to such a degree that you want to kick the writer or slap him upside the head and say, why? Why are you doing this to the characters I fell in love with? WHY!!! And you want to hurt this writer. You want this writer to feel your pain and your frustration. And you feel incredibly guilty for feeling this way, and think...life is too short and maybe I should just not ever read anything by this silly writer again. But you want to know the end of the story or tv show...so you hang in there...but it gets worse.

Has this ever happened to you? If so, what did you do? Did you go find another fandom? Or just ignore everything that soured you on the writer and focus on the things you loved? Or shrug and move away from it all, after engaging a bit of private grief?

Now that I've written all of the above, odd as it may sound? I'm not sure I want to know the answers? Or perhaps I do, just without any advice attached? Like "you should do this or that", or "I don't get invested in such and such..." or "maybe you are just looking at it the wrong way". I think what I want tonight, in my cool apartment, is comfort. Hugs. A blanket. Or a touch. Such as..."yes, feel that way too, totally". Or "I have felt that way. And you are not an idiot for falling in love with a fictional piece of work only to become disappointed and disillusioned in it, regardless of what that work is or was, or minor it may seem to the world. It meant something to you, and that's all that is important."

The problem with life sometimes I think is regardless of what we do, we are always navigating around pot-holes, shit, quick-sand, and mosquitos, to get to the rainbows and sunshine.

Comments

[rahirah]

Oh, hell yeah, I've been there. What I hate most is that the stuff I don't like inevitably backwashes over the stuff I did like, making me see it in new and unpleasant lights. I ended up sort of but not quite dropping out. People found my rantiness offensive, so I try not to post about it any longer. (Ironically, some of the people who were most offended by my rantiness are now writing rants of their own.)

I still want to write fanfic in that fandom, but I currently dislike the source material so much that it's even affecting the way I see my own way-AU version. :P

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

What I hate most is that the stuff I don't like inevitably backwashes over the stuff I did like, making me see it in new and unpleasant lights.

That's how I'm feeling at the moment. I'm seeing a pattern that I don't want to see and it's ruining the things I loved about it.
And at the same time, I keep hoping I'm wrong, maybe if I squint and look at it from another angle? (I've read all the reviews and all the meta, but all it does is reinforce these feelings and make it harder and harder to ignore.)

It's not about shipping a relationship...god if only it were that simple. But no, there's something else...there's a thematic thread or tone in this work that rubs me the wrong way, is disturbing. It's a bit like discovering the Wizard of OZ is actually Warren Miers.

I still want to write fanfic in that fandom, but I currently dislike the source material so much that it's even affecting the way I see my own way-AU version. :P

I find I can't read the fanfic any longer. It's affecting that too.

[rahirah]

But no, there's something else...there's a thematic thread or tone in this work that rubs me the wrong way, is disturbing.

Yes, that. Shipwise, I've been an extreme cynic since s6/S7 - the comics are disappointing in that respect, but sadly not surprising. What bothers me more is that... this is really the way Whedon really sees his characters. This is what he thinks Buffy and Angel are like. And that makes me kind of ill.

Exactly.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Exactly. As I wrote in response to a query in moscow_watcher's post on issue 38, which I'm reposting here because I said it better there :

" It has a lot to do with how Buffy and Angel are being depicted. And to a smaller degree Willow. There's a patronizing tone to the comics, both in the art and in the plot/thematic thread that is unsettling to me. Granted it may not be directed towards me, personally - but, it's unsettling all the same. Also it feels as though the writer has reduced these characters to their base or rudimentary characteristics in order to make a point, which could have been made in another way - without doing that and actually has been made repeatedly. Being a character gal - it aggravates me when characters are crammed into a story or plot-thread in order to serve the story-teller's whim. It sort of goes against the grain of the characters...and their free will, so the characters in effect become little more than the writers sock-puppets. For a writer who prides himself on being both an existentialist and athesist who believes in free will - I find this ironic and it well explains a lot.

Add to that - while the whole S7 plot-line did not quite work for me, what I did like about it - was the empowerment and sharing of power with others. The theme of sharing power - I liked. Of empowering other women. It was a metaphor that worked for me, personally. While I liked Becoming in S2, the replay here...has a connotation to it that is severely paternalistic in tone and says something about the writer... that is well, just plain creepy. There's I'm guessing a lot more of Warren Miers and Topher in Joss Whedon than I wanted to know about."

Re: Exactly.

[rahirah]

There's this really strong and icky subtext running through S7 of "Women can't handle power." The Slayer spell sets Twilight in motion. Willow's on the verge of going Dark Phoenix again. Simone and her followers are out and out criminals, but hey, they learned from Buffy that Slayers deserve castles and submarines. Buffy exploits a subordinate's crush to assuage her loneliness. A rogue Slayer is the one who sets the idiotic "Everybody loves vampires and hates Slayers" plot in motion. Buffy's been an ineffective leader, making one bad decision after another, and then succumbing to Twangel's sinister attraction, and then not caring an awful lot that the world has effectively already been destroyed.

I'm reminded, and not in a good way, of Chris Claremont's endless string of female characters who get ultimate power, go crazy, and have to be stripped of it.

Re: Exactly.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Only quibble is I think you mean S8 not S7? ;-) (Although s7 is actually part of the problem.)

I've read the latest issue now. And am on the fence about reviewing it, most likely will just to figure out what it is that's bugging me and why it has tainted the entire series and my enjoyment of everything Whedon has done.

I think I know now. And it fits with what you state above. And I definitely see that in Claremont and Grant Morrison's X-men arcs. Every time a woman got power she went nuts, but men have no problems with it? Also her power either had to be controlled, taught, or given to her by men.

Here, Whedon empowered all these women at the end of S7, but the question arose - why just potentials, shouldn't men get power too,
and did these women even ask for it? The question that was not being asked, and unfortunately has to be if you are going to ask those other questions is this - why is the heroine of Buffy - chosen at 16, the only girl with powers, has to be controlled and overseen by a male watcher, and die young? Note adolescent girl, gets powers, only one in the world, dies young. AND..is controlled by a male organization that is the "brains" behind her, while she's their "weapon". In S7-8, Buffy's crime appears to be a) she didn't die young or opt to stay dead like a good little slayer once she outlasted her expiration date, b) she outlived and moved past her watcher and become her own boss not controlled, and c) she had the audacity to empower other girls her age, who would be chosen only if she died, without sending the Watcher Council to them to control them (note the girls wouldn't have gotten to choose anyhow - choosing to be a slayer was never in the offing.)
Then we are told that the power isn't her's to begin with, never was, it was given to her by male witches or wizards or shaman.
Now...all of this is easier to ignore, with the empowerment spell metaphor or the idea that Buffy wins in the end. But what S8 does is underline what I just stated and put big stars and quotes around it and jump up and down and say - look little girl with big power can't handle it, plus she only got it because I gave it to her. (I think I hear Warren Miers cackling in the background).

And I could dismiss this as...well my imagination or me reading far too much into it. BUT...every meta I've read references how Buffy needs to learn, how Buffy can't handle power, how Buffy shouldn't have empowered other girls.
Over and over. Also, when I look back over all of Whedon's work, everything he has done to date, which he had control over...
which include but are not limited to Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, Alien Resurrection, and his brief time on X-Men. In each of those - it's an adolescent girl or a woman who has been turned into a weapon by men and her power backfires on her, or she is lead to find a better way by the help of some guy or his fatherly guidance (River/Mal, Fray/Demon Watcher, Kitty/Colossus, Illyria (Fred)/Wes, Cordelia/Angel, Jasmine/Connor, Darla/Angel, Echo/Boyd, Echo/(the guy who used to play Helo on BSG)). Even Fray needs a male demon to help her figure out how to use her power, and he of course betrays her and she has to kill him. (The battle in Fray and conflict in Fray is the same as the battle in this comic series. Except it's the Watcher (Giles stand-in) as opposed to her lover.)

The pattern is there and it's not particularly one I want to see.