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shadowkatTaking tomorrow and Friday off, and get Xmas Day off of course - it's a Federal and State Holiday in the US.
Happy to have the break at last - work has become infuriatingly tedious of late. Needless to say, I'm burnt out, and desperately need a break from all of it. Also the commute is playing havoc with my right knee, and I've been sleeping poorly as a result.
I hope to do knee exercises, and maybe get some watercolors and writing done. Lately, I've become addicted to Royal Match on my phone. Only one problem with it? It costs money - or I get tempted to expend small amounts for more tries. I need to find a game with no costs and no ads. The Majhong game's pop up ads kept freezing the game and my Iphone. See? This is why I'm not much of a gamer. I should try the board game link.
Pondering Buffy S5 and Angel S2 today - and in my rewatch, I picked up something that in hindsight, is relatively obvious. It's a television trope that I've actually seen a lot since Buffy/Angel aired, but not as much prior. I think the series may have influenced a lot of writers to play with it. What it is - is the bait and switch, or mislead the audience into thinking this is going to happen, but do something else entirely. Otherwise known as the hairpin plot twist. It's hard to pull off well, without annoying the audience. The writers of Buffy and Angel tried to pull it off in just about every episode of the series and in the seasonal arcs.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Like I said - it's hard to pull off.
What's interesting in Buffy and Angel, and possibly aggravating to some viewers - is the writers liked to undermine the rules of their verse or rewrite them. Often shedding doubt on the authorities that conveyed them, and undermining or upturning those authorities. I find it comforting - but I also work in an agency that keeps rewriting it's procedures and rules, so for me, it's not only realistic but comforting in a misery loves company sort of way?
Spike mentions to Buffy in Fool for Love - when she scoffs about him trading up in the food chain, that becoming a vampire opened his eyes, for the first time - he was free of society's rules. Free of society. Could do as he pleased for the most part. It's worth keeping in mind, that Spike was turned in 1880, London. He was an upper-middle class Victorian - worse, a British Victorian and trapped by the rules and power structure of his time period. (That time period, particularly in London, was rather rigid rules wise.) That is, until Drusilla turned him into a vampire. Spike likes to break the rules. Vampires veer away from slayers, Spike tells Buffy that he seeks them out. Vampires can't love, Spike loves with a poet's heart. Vampires would never aid good, Spike decides to team up with Buffy to defeat Angel for love and kicks. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he was a Victorian Poet. (Buffy, also, is a rules breaker. She keeps doing the exact opposite of what is prophesized or finds a third way. I think that's why Spike fell for her - the fact that she also breaks the rules.)
Regardless - the writers use the character to help with their hairpin plot twists, and keep the audience guessing. (I think the writers loved the character so much - because they could play with him and keep the audience guessing as to his actions/and motivations.) Because it really isn't that clear what Spike will do at any given moment. He tends to do the opposite of what the audience often thinks he'll do - mainly because the writers hoodwinked the audience, by feeding them a pile of bullshit in S1 via Giles, and making people think Giles was a reliable narrator. As the series progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that Giles doesn't really know all that much, and most of what he does know is unreliable. As is most of what the Watcher Council knows and dictates. All the Watchers we meet are ineffectual, unreliable, and kind of dangerously incompetent. Giles spends 90% of the time knocked out. Wes misinterprets prophecies, and screws up calling the Council on Faith. The Council tries to kill Faith and is taken out instead, twice, once by Faith, and once by Buffy. And so on. The audience and Buffy are shown that the Watcher Council is ineffectual, unreliable, and incompetent at every turn. Anya, Angel, and Spike know more about demons than the council - and try to explain at various points that it's not nearly as clear cut as Giles likes to make it.
So we don't have all the information going in. Also the rules we've been told, aren't necessarily the correct ones. Or all-encompassing.
Over in Angel, the same thing is happening, Angel is told that WRH is the authority, except we're shown that they lie, screw up, and aren't reliable.
And the Oracles are taken out early on - so it's not clear that there is a prophecy about a vampire and the apocalypse, or that Angel is even the vampire in question. It could be a vampire who got a soul because of Angel.
This opens things up on world building level. That said, one rule the writers stick with - and kind of hammer home - is you cannot be redeemed or change without a soul. This is emphasized on both Buffy and Angel. Angel has an episode about a kid with no soul. And shows demons who have demon souls - who may not be pure evil, but tend to be purely self-serving. So in retrospect, redeeming Spike with a chip but not with soul wasn't happening, that would cause a ripple effect and upturn one too many rules in the verse. The soul in Angel is meant to be the connection to humanity, without it - Spike has no reason to care about humanity. He cares about Buffy, Dawn, and Buffy's friends (because Buffy cares about them), but if Buffy were to decide to go on a crime spree or kill all her friends or ditch them and live with Spike? He'd been fine with that. That's what they mean by no moral compass. To state anything else - would kind of upturn the verse - which the writers keep trying to explain to the viewers in various guises throughout a handful of episodes in both series. Some of the writers are a touch heavy-handed about it (I think they were online too much arguing with fans). The difficulty is - they want to continue to be vague about it too - because you can't have people with souls just be good guys, and the demons without souls be bad guys, that's boring. So it gets confusing, and often the writers contradict themselves, sometimes in the same episode (See Crush and Reprise).
I think their attempt to hoodwink the audience or keep the audience guessing, and make their verse less black and white and more grey morally speaking - had mixed results? It did make both series more interesting to me on a thematic level, and more character centric. But from a plot and world-building stand-point? It's a bit on the choppy side?
I keep writing about this because I can't figure out how to articulate my thoughts on it. And keep thinking, perhaps erroneously, that writing it out will help.
**
Working my way through Angelica Huston's Memoir - which I keep forgetting the name of. Ah found it - A Story Lately Told - Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York. It's well written and narrated. Listening to it on audible.
Gave up on "Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem" and went back to T Kingfisher's novel "What Moves the Dead". I like Kingfisher's writing style (possibly because it's very close to my own and I don't have to work that hard to read it? I've learned recently that reading a writing style that is close to my own style is easier for me to process, than one that is alien to it - or very different from it. Because of what I do for a living, and the amount of legal and technical reading I do - I have a tendency to skim formal writing, and disconnect from it. The more formal it is - the less likely I will be able to remember what I've read, without re-reading it five or six times.) It has a lot to do with dyslexia - I think? Formal writing has a tendency to make my eyes glaze over, and my focus shift away from the text.
Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem - has a formal writing style - in that the writer is trying to copy a formal British style of writing, most likely from the Victorian period. While I respect this choice? I wish they wouldn't. It makes it hard for me to stay focused on their story.
I can actually write in more than one style. I've been trained to do so, and can shift on a whim. I often do in these posts. I just prefer the casual or conversational writing style - it's easier for me to write in and to read. YMMV. People don't process information the same way or read the same way.
***
Off to bed, and hopefully to sleep. I need sleep. Been averaging 5 and a half hours the last couple of nights.
Happy to have the break at last - work has become infuriatingly tedious of late. Needless to say, I'm burnt out, and desperately need a break from all of it. Also the commute is playing havoc with my right knee, and I've been sleeping poorly as a result.
I hope to do knee exercises, and maybe get some watercolors and writing done. Lately, I've become addicted to Royal Match on my phone. Only one problem with it? It costs money - or I get tempted to expend small amounts for more tries. I need to find a game with no costs and no ads. The Majhong game's pop up ads kept freezing the game and my Iphone. See? This is why I'm not much of a gamer. I should try the board game link.
Pondering Buffy S5 and Angel S2 today - and in my rewatch, I picked up something that in hindsight, is relatively obvious. It's a television trope that I've actually seen a lot since Buffy/Angel aired, but not as much prior. I think the series may have influenced a lot of writers to play with it. What it is - is the bait and switch, or mislead the audience into thinking this is going to happen, but do something else entirely. Otherwise known as the hairpin plot twist. It's hard to pull off well, without annoying the audience. The writers of Buffy and Angel tried to pull it off in just about every episode of the series and in the seasonal arcs.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Like I said - it's hard to pull off.
What's interesting in Buffy and Angel, and possibly aggravating to some viewers - is the writers liked to undermine the rules of their verse or rewrite them. Often shedding doubt on the authorities that conveyed them, and undermining or upturning those authorities. I find it comforting - but I also work in an agency that keeps rewriting it's procedures and rules, so for me, it's not only realistic but comforting in a misery loves company sort of way?
Spike mentions to Buffy in Fool for Love - when she scoffs about him trading up in the food chain, that becoming a vampire opened his eyes, for the first time - he was free of society's rules. Free of society. Could do as he pleased for the most part. It's worth keeping in mind, that Spike was turned in 1880, London. He was an upper-middle class Victorian - worse, a British Victorian and trapped by the rules and power structure of his time period. (That time period, particularly in London, was rather rigid rules wise.) That is, until Drusilla turned him into a vampire. Spike likes to break the rules. Vampires veer away from slayers, Spike tells Buffy that he seeks them out. Vampires can't love, Spike loves with a poet's heart. Vampires would never aid good, Spike decides to team up with Buffy to defeat Angel for love and kicks. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he was a Victorian Poet. (Buffy, also, is a rules breaker. She keeps doing the exact opposite of what is prophesized or finds a third way. I think that's why Spike fell for her - the fact that she also breaks the rules.)
Regardless - the writers use the character to help with their hairpin plot twists, and keep the audience guessing. (I think the writers loved the character so much - because they could play with him and keep the audience guessing as to his actions/and motivations.) Because it really isn't that clear what Spike will do at any given moment. He tends to do the opposite of what the audience often thinks he'll do - mainly because the writers hoodwinked the audience, by feeding them a pile of bullshit in S1 via Giles, and making people think Giles was a reliable narrator. As the series progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that Giles doesn't really know all that much, and most of what he does know is unreliable. As is most of what the Watcher Council knows and dictates. All the Watchers we meet are ineffectual, unreliable, and kind of dangerously incompetent. Giles spends 90% of the time knocked out. Wes misinterprets prophecies, and screws up calling the Council on Faith. The Council tries to kill Faith and is taken out instead, twice, once by Faith, and once by Buffy. And so on. The audience and Buffy are shown that the Watcher Council is ineffectual, unreliable, and incompetent at every turn. Anya, Angel, and Spike know more about demons than the council - and try to explain at various points that it's not nearly as clear cut as Giles likes to make it.
So we don't have all the information going in. Also the rules we've been told, aren't necessarily the correct ones. Or all-encompassing.
Over in Angel, the same thing is happening, Angel is told that WRH is the authority, except we're shown that they lie, screw up, and aren't reliable.
And the Oracles are taken out early on - so it's not clear that there is a prophecy about a vampire and the apocalypse, or that Angel is even the vampire in question. It could be a vampire who got a soul because of Angel.
This opens things up on world building level. That said, one rule the writers stick with - and kind of hammer home - is you cannot be redeemed or change without a soul. This is emphasized on both Buffy and Angel. Angel has an episode about a kid with no soul. And shows demons who have demon souls - who may not be pure evil, but tend to be purely self-serving. So in retrospect, redeeming Spike with a chip but not with soul wasn't happening, that would cause a ripple effect and upturn one too many rules in the verse. The soul in Angel is meant to be the connection to humanity, without it - Spike has no reason to care about humanity. He cares about Buffy, Dawn, and Buffy's friends (because Buffy cares about them), but if Buffy were to decide to go on a crime spree or kill all her friends or ditch them and live with Spike? He'd been fine with that. That's what they mean by no moral compass. To state anything else - would kind of upturn the verse - which the writers keep trying to explain to the viewers in various guises throughout a handful of episodes in both series. Some of the writers are a touch heavy-handed about it (I think they were online too much arguing with fans). The difficulty is - they want to continue to be vague about it too - because you can't have people with souls just be good guys, and the demons without souls be bad guys, that's boring. So it gets confusing, and often the writers contradict themselves, sometimes in the same episode (See Crush and Reprise).
I think their attempt to hoodwink the audience or keep the audience guessing, and make their verse less black and white and more grey morally speaking - had mixed results? It did make both series more interesting to me on a thematic level, and more character centric. But from a plot and world-building stand-point? It's a bit on the choppy side?
I keep writing about this because I can't figure out how to articulate my thoughts on it. And keep thinking, perhaps erroneously, that writing it out will help.
**
Working my way through Angelica Huston's Memoir - which I keep forgetting the name of. Ah found it - A Story Lately Told - Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York. It's well written and narrated. Listening to it on audible.
Gave up on "Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem" and went back to T Kingfisher's novel "What Moves the Dead". I like Kingfisher's writing style (possibly because it's very close to my own and I don't have to work that hard to read it? I've learned recently that reading a writing style that is close to my own style is easier for me to process, than one that is alien to it - or very different from it. Because of what I do for a living, and the amount of legal and technical reading I do - I have a tendency to skim formal writing, and disconnect from it. The more formal it is - the less likely I will be able to remember what I've read, without re-reading it five or six times.) It has a lot to do with dyslexia - I think? Formal writing has a tendency to make my eyes glaze over, and my focus shift away from the text.
Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem - has a formal writing style - in that the writer is trying to copy a formal British style of writing, most likely from the Victorian period. While I respect this choice? I wish they wouldn't. It makes it hard for me to stay focused on their story.
I can actually write in more than one style. I've been trained to do so, and can shift on a whim. I often do in these posts. I just prefer the casual or conversational writing style - it's easier for me to write in and to read. YMMV. People don't process information the same way or read the same way.
***
Off to bed, and hopefully to sleep. I need sleep. Been averaging 5 and a half hours the last couple of nights.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-24 08:47 am (UTC)