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Buffy season 8...
Picked up the latest Buffy issue today from my neighborhood comic shop - Rocketship, which is a pleasure to visit. It's designed more like an art gallery meets book store than your traditional comic shop. No dusty bins of old comics. Everything clearly displayed. Framed underground comics on the walls. With a chair in the corner. I can actually enter it without fear of having an allergy attack.
I ended up reading it while watching The Office (which was a hoot and a half) and 30 Rock (not as funny as usual - I think it had something to do with the added length, situation comedies do not fair well if they are drawn out too long, I've discovered. )
Mixed feelings regarding the issue. Haven't read anyone else's reviews as of yet, so this is my unaffected opinion - in that I haven't a clue what anyone else thought. I think reading others views of something before I offer my own - will often affect how I write it.
Not sure what Whedon is up to here. But he clearly plans to address the Angel/Buffy/Spike triangle of doom up front. My hunch is: Whedon will side-step the issue again, and more or less state she loves them both just differently. Either that or establish Angel is her one true love who she can never have - so as a result both characters won't ever move on or *truly* love anyone else - if he does that, then he's more or less fallen into a gothic romance by Laurell K. Hamilton or maybe Nabokov's Lolita meets Xenia Warrior Princess. Can't quite decide which. I'm admittedly biased. I want Buffy with either Xander, Spike, Faith or by her lonesome. Angel? I think his true love is either Spike or Darla. Can't quite decide which. Okay mostly joking there.
The gist? Evil Amy puts Buffy under a spell, so she's in a perpetual nightmare, and can only be woken by true love's kiss. Meanwhile the evil dead are climbing the castle walls. Xander's comments to Amy are priceless and quite funny. I adore Xander. "So, let me get this straight, it can't be a friend who loves her...it has to be someone who is passionately in love with her, and she doesn't have to love them back?" (Well, you could fix that pretty easily - just call up Angel or Spike - assuming of course this isn't taking place after NFA and they aren't dead or worse. And well that they know Spike is alive, which the jury is still out on. Problem with comic books is you never know when the stupid things are taking place in the time line. This is how writers get away with all sorts of weird stuff.) Xander's reaction to the evil dead? "Man, you're really pulling out all the classics on this one Amy." Hee.
The nightmare kiss scene with Xander was a tad confusing - I'm not quite sure when Buffy began dreaming...my guess before the conversation with Xander. Which means some of that bit, which she wasn't privy too, must have happened before she went into dream state?
Found it funny and enlightening. Yep, always figured part of Xander and Buffy's problem was they are both attracted to monsters, because they believe they are monsters themselves and fear destroying those that they are with. Can we say parental issues? Xander is attracted to Buffy because he knows he can't physically hurt her, he won't ever be his father with her. Buffy is not attracted to Xander because she fears she will hurt him, and she's attracted to Spike and Angel because she knows she can't hurt them, that they are equally matched. Plus they are older and in some ways probably represent her unresolved issues regarding her own father and his abandonment of her.
The main reason Buffy and Angel have had problems since S2, is now Buffy believes she can and will destroy Angel just as Angel believes he can and will destroy Buffy - after all that's more or less what happened in Season 2 - so they can't trust themselves with one another or for that matter trust one another period. She can't trust that Angel won't become the evil Angelus and destroy her entire world as he attempted to do and almost accomplished and Angel can't trust that Buffy won't send him to hell. Sort of takes the whole notion of star-crossed to the extreme. Those two get together? The world ends. Or we all die of boredom a la Veronica Mars S3. It's complicated and very psychological. Whedon likes psychological issues - sometimes I think he's a frustrated psychology major, since he seems to dwell on them more than anything else. Whedon's characters spend more time contemplating their own and each others navels than any superheroes I've come across to be honest - which may explain why I enjoy them.
Then there's Dawn. I'm enjoying Dawn. Even though some of the lines regarding her seem odd.
"The feminine hygiene product called Kenny"??? Uhm okay. Maybe my brain is just too fried to read this? But her talk with Xander - was great.
Also enjoyed Giles...even if we saw far too little of him. Whedon seems to use Giles sparingly for some reason. Giles struggling with the tables being turned, now slayers are in the majority, with watchers in the minority.
The central mystery is intriguing. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Amy's boyfriend is a sewn together Caleb. I *really* hope I'm wrong about that. If Spike hadn't ended up on Angel, I would have been worried it was him.
Okay must go to bed now.
I ended up reading it while watching The Office (which was a hoot and a half) and 30 Rock (not as funny as usual - I think it had something to do with the added length, situation comedies do not fair well if they are drawn out too long, I've discovered. )
Mixed feelings regarding the issue. Haven't read anyone else's reviews as of yet, so this is my unaffected opinion - in that I haven't a clue what anyone else thought. I think reading others views of something before I offer my own - will often affect how I write it.
Not sure what Whedon is up to here. But he clearly plans to address the Angel/Buffy/Spike triangle of doom up front. My hunch is: Whedon will side-step the issue again, and more or less state she loves them both just differently. Either that or establish Angel is her one true love who she can never have - so as a result both characters won't ever move on or *truly* love anyone else - if he does that, then he's more or less fallen into a gothic romance by Laurell K. Hamilton or maybe Nabokov's Lolita meets Xenia Warrior Princess. Can't quite decide which. I'm admittedly biased. I want Buffy with either Xander, Spike, Faith or by her lonesome. Angel? I think his true love is either Spike or Darla. Can't quite decide which. Okay mostly joking there.
The gist? Evil Amy puts Buffy under a spell, so she's in a perpetual nightmare, and can only be woken by true love's kiss. Meanwhile the evil dead are climbing the castle walls. Xander's comments to Amy are priceless and quite funny. I adore Xander. "So, let me get this straight, it can't be a friend who loves her...it has to be someone who is passionately in love with her, and she doesn't have to love them back?" (Well, you could fix that pretty easily - just call up Angel or Spike - assuming of course this isn't taking place after NFA and they aren't dead or worse. And well that they know Spike is alive, which the jury is still out on. Problem with comic books is you never know when the stupid things are taking place in the time line. This is how writers get away with all sorts of weird stuff.) Xander's reaction to the evil dead? "Man, you're really pulling out all the classics on this one Amy." Hee.
The nightmare kiss scene with Xander was a tad confusing - I'm not quite sure when Buffy began dreaming...my guess before the conversation with Xander. Which means some of that bit, which she wasn't privy too, must have happened before she went into dream state?
Found it funny and enlightening. Yep, always figured part of Xander and Buffy's problem was they are both attracted to monsters, because they believe they are monsters themselves and fear destroying those that they are with. Can we say parental issues? Xander is attracted to Buffy because he knows he can't physically hurt her, he won't ever be his father with her. Buffy is not attracted to Xander because she fears she will hurt him, and she's attracted to Spike and Angel because she knows she can't hurt them, that they are equally matched. Plus they are older and in some ways probably represent her unresolved issues regarding her own father and his abandonment of her.
The main reason Buffy and Angel have had problems since S2, is now Buffy believes she can and will destroy Angel just as Angel believes he can and will destroy Buffy - after all that's more or less what happened in Season 2 - so they can't trust themselves with one another or for that matter trust one another period. She can't trust that Angel won't become the evil Angelus and destroy her entire world as he attempted to do and almost accomplished and Angel can't trust that Buffy won't send him to hell. Sort of takes the whole notion of star-crossed to the extreme. Those two get together? The world ends. Or we all die of boredom a la Veronica Mars S3. It's complicated and very psychological. Whedon likes psychological issues - sometimes I think he's a frustrated psychology major, since he seems to dwell on them more than anything else. Whedon's characters spend more time contemplating their own and each others navels than any superheroes I've come across to be honest - which may explain why I enjoy them.
Then there's Dawn. I'm enjoying Dawn. Even though some of the lines regarding her seem odd.
"The feminine hygiene product called Kenny"??? Uhm okay. Maybe my brain is just too fried to read this? But her talk with Xander - was great.
Also enjoyed Giles...even if we saw far too little of him. Whedon seems to use Giles sparingly for some reason. Giles struggling with the tables being turned, now slayers are in the majority, with watchers in the minority.
The central mystery is intriguing. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Amy's boyfriend is a sewn together Caleb. I *really* hope I'm wrong about that. If Spike hadn't ended up on Angel, I would have been worried it was him.
Okay must go to bed now.
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Whedon's not very good at making his characters sound different from each other. They all use the same slang. Watch Firefly after Buffy some time, and you'll catch the same slang words and speech rhythms at the oddest times.
Granted it's impossible not to do that a bit as a writer. But some writers are better at distinguishing their characters voices than others. And I'm admittedly oversensitive to it - since it's something I'm working hard to overcome in my own writing and dialogue.
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Different character voices are tough to keep straight. I've heard that doing exercises like character bios help but I've yet to try that. I think I just make up quick little mini bios in my head.
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The successful tv shows are more often than not collaborative ones.
(One of the problems Studio 60 had was the head writer did not trust anyone else to write an episode - he didn't let it be collaborative).
Whedon works very well in a collaborative atmosphere - better than solo, I think. And this series will be collaborative in some ways, just not quite in the same way as the tv series was, if that makes sense - which makes it very interesting to me.
Different character voices are tough to keep straight. I've heard that doing exercises like character bios help but I've yet to try that. I think I just make up quick little mini bios in my head.
Agreed. I'm much the same way. I've tried the character bio exercise - it doesn't work for me. I find it too constraining, I guess - never been good at doing plot outlines either. Instead, I make them up in my head and well my characters tend to form as I'm writing them. I go back after to make sure things are consistent.