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shadowkatWas thinking tonight while watching Torchwood - after having read two completely opposite responses to the same episode (one person on my flist adored it, and one thought it was horribly written), that maybe people respond to that which speaks to them? That hits a nerve? Or echoes an experience? Or in some way, sometimes an indescrible one, touches upon a or relates to deeply personal experience, value, belief or emotion? Be it a person, place, piece of artwork, tv show, song, pair of shoes, food, book or film - we will either embrace, reject or be merely ambivalent? I'm not even sure we always know why we've reacted to it in this manner. And in some cases, cover the reaction with all sorts of objective criticisms or accolades of the work or person. I don't know. It's just a theory.
Speaking for myself, I know that this often true. Issue 11 of Buffy S8, much like issue 10 before it, and if I were really honest, most of the tv series did, spoke to me on an emotional and deeply personal level. And I think that when we view art - whether it be a painting, a song, a clay pot, a comic book or a tv show - our emotional response to that piece of art, our ability to identify with the feelings the artist appears to be conveying whether they realize it or not - has a lot to do with how we embrace it.
Review and Personal Analysis of A Beautiful Sunset - Issue 11 of BTVS S8
Whedon's comics are not filled with action - he is deliberately building up to the action over a long period of time. They are not episodic short stories, as I first suspected, but rather chapters in a lenghthy novel. Each episode linking to the next. Revealing a bit more of the characters, plots and themes. And since the novel is titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the focus is on her - in somewhat the same way that the focus is on say Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's The Chronicles of Lymond. We get other points of view, and are often in points of view that are commenting on the heroine - but not necessarily in a complimentary way - reminding me a great deal of Dunnet's Lymond novels. (Whedon plots his novels and creates characterizations that are suprisingly similar to Dunnett's which explains why there was a fan discussion group that focused on Dunnett and Buffy.) At any rate, I would not be the least bit surprised if the slow build is frustrating a few comic book fans who are used to the more episodic and action packed super-hero comics. While losing the tv fans, who miss the romantic entanglements and screen chemistry of the actors - unused to this format, not to mention the extraordinarly long wait between issues. (Not as bad by the way as the wait between X-Men issues - Whedon may be many things, but a fast writer is not amongst them. I've waited up to six months between X-men issues.) As far as the art goes, it is getting better with each issue. This issue, Jeanty actually managed to put the recognizable dent in Buffy's nose. And I could tell the women apart. While I prefer Cliff Richards, Jeanty did a good job with this issue. Best so far.
Anywho..there is a speech in the middle of the issue, which by itself isn't all that meaningful or fantastic, but if you read it within the context of the whole series and well, if you have experienced something similar on some level (most of us have, I suspect - those who haven't are incredibly lucky) - it will speak to you much as it did me. Differently most likely, but it will. And if you are anything like me, you may feel a little less lonely when you read it. A little less like a freak.
The speech occurs during a battle with a bunch of vampires. Buffy has taken Satsu, one of her slayers, to fight vamps. During the fight, Buffy reveals to Satsu that she knows the girl is in love with her and that this okay. Granted Buffy isn't gay, but as she notes - there's really no way anyone would know that at the moment. "Not that you would know," she says.
No, the problem isn't just that she doesn't return Satsu's romantic love. She actually appreciates it even if she can't return it. And has learned enough by now to know that you can love someone without the necessity of it being returned. Plus knowing someone as cool as Satsu loves her, makes her feel a little less lonely. No...the problem is that people who love her, and more importantly she allows herself to care about and love back, even count on - have a funky way of either dying or just plain leaving - disappearing even.
Here's the speech: People who love me tend to...oh, die[Joyce, Kendra]." She looks at her scythe. "Maybe go to a hell dimension[Angel], or burn up[Spike],or they start letting vamps suck on 'em and they leave[Riley], they all leave, even my friends [Anya, Tara, Willow, Giles, Wood (okay maybe he wasn't a friend), her father], sooner or later everybody realizes there's something wrong...something wrong with me, or around me, or...Wow. Did not mean to end up there.
Of course when I read this speech - I thought, wait what about Xander or Dawn. They are still there. Or even the slayers. Willow is too, sort of, as is Giles - even though she rarely sees them or speaks to them and feels incredibly disconnected from them both - the two people she counted on most once upon a time. But...the thing of it is, when you have one or two steady folks in your life, who have always been there, you fear depending on them too much - you need/want more. You fear not having more. And you worry about the multitudes or at least it appears to be mulititudes that have left. You focus on the people who are gone, not the one's who have stayed. It's silly, I know. But...there it is.
Sometimes you think just because you aren't in contact, aren't talking, haven't seen the person - that they are gone. They don't love you anymore. They won't come back. They aren't connected. And most likely don't think of you. That you don't register. Or worse, you do, and they hate you.
It's human nature I think to think these thoughts. To feel these things. To fear being disconnected. Or maybe it is only me that feels this way - it's hard to know sometimes for certain until that is, you read a comic book and discover the lead character feels much the same way you do, a lead character who sprouts from the brain of a relative stranger.
At any rate - this has been playing on my mind a lot lately, which explains why I reacted to it so strongly. Plagued with nightmares of losing the people currently in my life. And plagued by nightmares of those who left it ages ago. Most recently people I knew and loved in college. A boy, blond haired, tall, and thin who wrote poetry and sang country folk songs similar to Johnny Cash. A friend not a lover. Who understood me. And I haven't heard from or seen since 1989.
Back to Buffy. At the end of the issue after fighting someone named Twighlight (who I'm guessing may be the big reveal that is rumored to happen in next month's issue - a rather big reveal that will sell out the next issue - stores have been told to get extra copies)), she has been somewhat demoralized and is beginning to question her mission. She turns to Xander and states: "Are we doing any good? We've been fighting more demons, but...But it just seems like there's more demons to fight, and what, is that because of us?"
A speech that reminds me a great deal of one in the film I saw this afternoon. Where a bone weary sheriff, policing a wasteland, asks another bone weary sheriff - after seeing what amounts to a massacre - if there is a point. They fight the demons. But more keep coming.
The answer...is well much the same in both the film and this issue, and it spoke to me in both because we live in odd times. Although as the decripet deputy in the film, I saw, No Country for Old Men, puts it - these times are no stranger than the past. We just think they are. After the primaries this week - I thought does it matter who becomes President of the US?
Does it matter if the earth's climate is going nutty? I can't do anything. What I'm doing feels like little more than a drop in the bucket. And my life seems to be all about work right now...and that scares me. I, like Buffy, feel lonely and disconnected and frustrated by it. Too focused on making "my job" work to exert the energy or take the time to change that.
What Xander tells Buffy is this: "Maybe now we're only cleaning up messes, but we're just getting started. What you've created here is a lot more than just monster fighters. It's you know a.."
"Connection."
Her tragedy is she can't feel it. And he says maybe she isn't supposed to as leader. But I wonder...it echoes too closely to what I remember an old man telling a bone weary sheriff at the end of the movie I just saw - to think you can change everything is vanity. We can only do small things. We feel connected sure, but it comes and goes. This country is hard on people.
When you spend a lot of time inside your own head, you lose perspective of the world around you. Lose the connection. As Xander puts it - "Buff, seriously, you spend too much time alone."
Struggling for a balance is constant, I think.
What I also identified with is a sense that Buffy keeps looking backwards. It is hard not to. Reliving her fight with Caleb, the evil minister, or her glory days. And her boyfriends, the ones who died, the ones who left...as well as her friends.
I read recently a piece of great advice in the oddest place - a newspaper or TV guide horoscope, it said:
"You will find life is a lot easier if you stop looking at the past and focus solely on the future."
I think this may be true for us all. While it is helpful to learn from history, dwelling on it, only holds us back. Letting go of the past...is I think sometimes the only way to move foreward. People leave us in life - they either die, move away or we do, dump us or we dumb them, get too busy or we just for whatever reason lose contact with them - that does not make us losers, it just is, it is inevitable and it happens to us all, in that respect at least we are not alone.
The tough thing is to learn how to let go of them, to hold onto the pleasant memories, but not the regrets. To not blame ourselves for the parting. To not...worry too much about it. Or dwell on the pain of it, the hurt.
Easier said than done. It works best, I think, when you focus on what you are currently doing and what lies ahead of you. The people you will meet. The people who are still in your life right now. Present. And try not to look backwards too much. Not think too much about the ones that are gone.
This is what I got from the issue and why I liked it. Not sure it makes much sense though to anyone outside my brain...would like to think it did. Either way, here it is, make of it what you will.
Speaking for myself, I know that this often true. Issue 11 of Buffy S8, much like issue 10 before it, and if I were really honest, most of the tv series did, spoke to me on an emotional and deeply personal level. And I think that when we view art - whether it be a painting, a song, a clay pot, a comic book or a tv show - our emotional response to that piece of art, our ability to identify with the feelings the artist appears to be conveying whether they realize it or not - has a lot to do with how we embrace it.
Review and Personal Analysis of A Beautiful Sunset - Issue 11 of BTVS S8
Whedon's comics are not filled with action - he is deliberately building up to the action over a long period of time. They are not episodic short stories, as I first suspected, but rather chapters in a lenghthy novel. Each episode linking to the next. Revealing a bit more of the characters, plots and themes. And since the novel is titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the focus is on her - in somewhat the same way that the focus is on say Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's The Chronicles of Lymond. We get other points of view, and are often in points of view that are commenting on the heroine - but not necessarily in a complimentary way - reminding me a great deal of Dunnet's Lymond novels. (Whedon plots his novels and creates characterizations that are suprisingly similar to Dunnett's which explains why there was a fan discussion group that focused on Dunnett and Buffy.) At any rate, I would not be the least bit surprised if the slow build is frustrating a few comic book fans who are used to the more episodic and action packed super-hero comics. While losing the tv fans, who miss the romantic entanglements and screen chemistry of the actors - unused to this format, not to mention the extraordinarly long wait between issues. (Not as bad by the way as the wait between X-Men issues - Whedon may be many things, but a fast writer is not amongst them. I've waited up to six months between X-men issues.) As far as the art goes, it is getting better with each issue. This issue, Jeanty actually managed to put the recognizable dent in Buffy's nose. And I could tell the women apart. While I prefer Cliff Richards, Jeanty did a good job with this issue. Best so far.
Anywho..there is a speech in the middle of the issue, which by itself isn't all that meaningful or fantastic, but if you read it within the context of the whole series and well, if you have experienced something similar on some level (most of us have, I suspect - those who haven't are incredibly lucky) - it will speak to you much as it did me. Differently most likely, but it will. And if you are anything like me, you may feel a little less lonely when you read it. A little less like a freak.
The speech occurs during a battle with a bunch of vampires. Buffy has taken Satsu, one of her slayers, to fight vamps. During the fight, Buffy reveals to Satsu that she knows the girl is in love with her and that this okay. Granted Buffy isn't gay, but as she notes - there's really no way anyone would know that at the moment. "Not that you would know," she says.
No, the problem isn't just that she doesn't return Satsu's romantic love. She actually appreciates it even if she can't return it. And has learned enough by now to know that you can love someone without the necessity of it being returned. Plus knowing someone as cool as Satsu loves her, makes her feel a little less lonely. No...the problem is that people who love her, and more importantly she allows herself to care about and love back, even count on - have a funky way of either dying or just plain leaving - disappearing even.
Here's the speech: People who love me tend to...oh, die[Joyce, Kendra]." She looks at her scythe. "Maybe go to a hell dimension[Angel], or burn up[Spike],or they start letting vamps suck on 'em and they leave[Riley], they all leave, even my friends [Anya, Tara, Willow, Giles, Wood (okay maybe he wasn't a friend), her father], sooner or later everybody realizes there's something wrong...something wrong with me, or around me, or...Wow. Did not mean to end up there.
Of course when I read this speech - I thought, wait what about Xander or Dawn. They are still there. Or even the slayers. Willow is too, sort of, as is Giles - even though she rarely sees them or speaks to them and feels incredibly disconnected from them both - the two people she counted on most once upon a time. But...the thing of it is, when you have one or two steady folks in your life, who have always been there, you fear depending on them too much - you need/want more. You fear not having more. And you worry about the multitudes or at least it appears to be mulititudes that have left. You focus on the people who are gone, not the one's who have stayed. It's silly, I know. But...there it is.
Sometimes you think just because you aren't in contact, aren't talking, haven't seen the person - that they are gone. They don't love you anymore. They won't come back. They aren't connected. And most likely don't think of you. That you don't register. Or worse, you do, and they hate you.
It's human nature I think to think these thoughts. To feel these things. To fear being disconnected. Or maybe it is only me that feels this way - it's hard to know sometimes for certain until that is, you read a comic book and discover the lead character feels much the same way you do, a lead character who sprouts from the brain of a relative stranger.
At any rate - this has been playing on my mind a lot lately, which explains why I reacted to it so strongly. Plagued with nightmares of losing the people currently in my life. And plagued by nightmares of those who left it ages ago. Most recently people I knew and loved in college. A boy, blond haired, tall, and thin who wrote poetry and sang country folk songs similar to Johnny Cash. A friend not a lover. Who understood me. And I haven't heard from or seen since 1989.
Back to Buffy. At the end of the issue after fighting someone named Twighlight (who I'm guessing may be the big reveal that is rumored to happen in next month's issue - a rather big reveal that will sell out the next issue - stores have been told to get extra copies)), she has been somewhat demoralized and is beginning to question her mission. She turns to Xander and states: "Are we doing any good? We've been fighting more demons, but...But it just seems like there's more demons to fight, and what, is that because of us?"
A speech that reminds me a great deal of one in the film I saw this afternoon. Where a bone weary sheriff, policing a wasteland, asks another bone weary sheriff - after seeing what amounts to a massacre - if there is a point. They fight the demons. But more keep coming.
The answer...is well much the same in both the film and this issue, and it spoke to me in both because we live in odd times. Although as the decripet deputy in the film, I saw, No Country for Old Men, puts it - these times are no stranger than the past. We just think they are. After the primaries this week - I thought does it matter who becomes President of the US?
Does it matter if the earth's climate is going nutty? I can't do anything. What I'm doing feels like little more than a drop in the bucket. And my life seems to be all about work right now...and that scares me. I, like Buffy, feel lonely and disconnected and frustrated by it. Too focused on making "my job" work to exert the energy or take the time to change that.
What Xander tells Buffy is this: "Maybe now we're only cleaning up messes, but we're just getting started. What you've created here is a lot more than just monster fighters. It's you know a.."
"Connection."
Her tragedy is she can't feel it. And he says maybe she isn't supposed to as leader. But I wonder...it echoes too closely to what I remember an old man telling a bone weary sheriff at the end of the movie I just saw - to think you can change everything is vanity. We can only do small things. We feel connected sure, but it comes and goes. This country is hard on people.
When you spend a lot of time inside your own head, you lose perspective of the world around you. Lose the connection. As Xander puts it - "Buff, seriously, you spend too much time alone."
Struggling for a balance is constant, I think.
What I also identified with is a sense that Buffy keeps looking backwards. It is hard not to. Reliving her fight with Caleb, the evil minister, or her glory days. And her boyfriends, the ones who died, the ones who left...as well as her friends.
I read recently a piece of great advice in the oddest place - a newspaper or TV guide horoscope, it said:
"You will find life is a lot easier if you stop looking at the past and focus solely on the future."
I think this may be true for us all. While it is helpful to learn from history, dwelling on it, only holds us back. Letting go of the past...is I think sometimes the only way to move foreward. People leave us in life - they either die, move away or we do, dump us or we dumb them, get too busy or we just for whatever reason lose contact with them - that does not make us losers, it just is, it is inevitable and it happens to us all, in that respect at least we are not alone.
The tough thing is to learn how to let go of them, to hold onto the pleasant memories, but not the regrets. To not blame ourselves for the parting. To not...worry too much about it. Or dwell on the pain of it, the hurt.
Easier said than done. It works best, I think, when you focus on what you are currently doing and what lies ahead of you. The people you will meet. The people who are still in your life right now. Present. And try not to look backwards too much. Not think too much about the ones that are gone.
This is what I got from the issue and why I liked it. Not sure it makes much sense though to anyone outside my brain...would like to think it did. Either way, here it is, make of it what you will.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 09:01 pm (UTC)However, I did accept that I would have to adapt, and now my patience is being rewarded as things are starting to come together in this story. I recently went back and re-read the entire season 8 series to date, and was (almost) surprised to see how well it has been planned out.
I think a key issue Whedon is approaching for the long term story is the manner in which Buffy will make the transition from the leader of a few (or of simply herself) to the leader of many. I think that Xander had it basically right (although his phrasing could have been better) when he said that Buffy has difficulty feeling the "connection" because of the fact that she is the leader, not one of the followers.
However, Buffy is still Buffy, and that means resolutions will not come quickly or easily-- she'll learn from the past about some things and fail to about others. That strikes me as pretty much the way real people do things.
I really loved this current issue, and especially the portions you cited regarding Satsu. I thought it was both clever and insightful that while Twilight is making his speech to his followers about how Buffy "trusts her moral certainty" -- something he sees as her great potential weakness-- she is cradling Satsu head against hers and consoling that her friend and Slayer didn't let her down.
Then later, we see an homage to S7 Buffy telling Willow that "I have so much power, I'm giving it away."
The fatal weakness of Buffy's enemies, I would say, it that such a concept is simply beyond their understanding.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-12 01:32 am (UTC)Whedon tends to reward patient readers and viewers. His tales never start off at a fast clip, and it is often not until the middle of the tale that you start to realize what he is doing and how well-plotted characterwise it truly is. Each character's actions and motivations deftly affect another's as well as the plot's yet - the character's themselves remain unaware of it - they don't see the thread unfolding the way we do - this makes the story more real.
I think one of the larger themes of the work is Buffy's strength - a strength I'm not sure she is aware of. It's why Angel, Riley, and Spike fell in love with her and were to an extent inspired by her. They all tell her much the same thing - "you're a hell of a woman, Buffy" or "you're the one". But she doesn't know why and that is part of her appeal.
And the writer is doing a good job of showing us what that is, and how difficult it is.
It's not easy to forgive, to show mercy to one's enemies, to console and comfort someone during a battle or after a battle that you lost and got severly hurt during, to admit one's mistakes, and to give someone who tried to kill you on numerous occassions a chance to redeem themselves. That's not easy to do. Buffy has done it. Nor is it easy to know when to do it. It's also not easy to try and understand someone else.
Yet, by the same token, Buffy is imperfect, she's deeply flawed, which makes her all the more interesting. Whedon creates flawed characters, who are incredibly complex. His heroes are far from perfect. And his villains are not always simplistic. Twilight certainly isn't.
Curious to see where this goes.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-12 05:21 am (UTC)Judging by the latest clues dropped in this issue, I'm speculating that Twilight is a newly anointed avatar (if that's the right word) of the First Evil, like Caleb only now even more powerful, perhaps with the combined abilities of many of Buffy's previous enemies, such as Caleb, Adam, The Master and maybe even Glory.
The major clue from the earlier issues would appear to be the nightmare where Buffy meets this lion/dragon (?) creature that proclaims "The Queen is dead..." etc. This suggests to me that the creature represents Twilight, and that he or it is a chimera of some kind.
This would have an additional resonance in that Buffy used the mystical energy of the Scythe to make many Slayers from one; the First could counter by making one opponent from many-- all of whom have fought Buffy in the past.
We've seen very little of him so far, and already I'm finding him a fascinating character. Any additional thoughts from your brain re: Twilight?
Ohhh fun - Guessing Who Twilight is
Date: 2008-02-12 11:32 pm (UTC)Most of us, myself included, are thinking the reveal must be who Twilight is - we can't think of anything else. And let's face it a new character being revealed as the big bad or avatar, while potentially interesting, is hardly going to sell out comic books. No - the only things that sell comics books are well the same things that sell newspapers or make us tune in to tv shows - someone getting killed, someone we thought dead being revealed as alive or someone we know and love being revealed as the bad guy. Sad but true. And yes, I've read and watched one too many serials in my life time. ;-)
That's why people placing bets that Twilight is either Xander, Riley, Caleb or Spike or Angel. The reason they are picking Xander, Spike, Angel, Riley and Caleb is that all of these characters have seen Buffy's moves up close and personal. She makes a swing with the Scythe and Twilight states - like I haven't seen you do that before? Leading us and Buffy to believe that she's fought this guy in the past or at the very least he's watched footage of her fights.
Personally, I think only Riley and Caleb are remotely plausible out of that group for numerous reasons - even if the other choices are a bit more fun.
If it weren't for Angel After the Fall - I'd have listed Spike or Angel as potential candidates, but fortunately or unfortunately depending on your pov those characters are completely off the table due to 1)Brian Lynch's excellent Angel After the Fall, 2) rights issues and 3)well, Whedon already promised that he wouldn't do anything to screw up IDW's Angel stories and would use those two characters sparingly if at all. Granted it's plausible that Buffy S8 is taking place long after the Angel miniseries, but revealing that Angel is Twilight or Spike is - could hurt whatever IDW has planned or the Angel miniseries sales. Whedon can't and won't do that, he's already said as much numerous times. Plus...he doesn't own the rights to Angel, so anything he does with the character or any of the characters in the Angel series - he has to get permission first from IDW to do it.
Riley on the other hand is a plausible and good candidate. Also a tad more fun from an emotional angle than Caleb or a previously unknown entity. What do we really know about Riley? Very little. Anything could have happened to him between AYW and now. Plus the character has always been linked to the military. Is a leader. And has issues with demons and magic. I'm somewhat surprised that Riley has not made an appearance yet - considering every time the military has come up in Buffy, Riley is usually mentioned. Plus - the Initiative was covert ops - and Riley when he left Buffy went back to covert ops - or top secret work. (Remember she does the phone call to the florist shop to ask for help with Spike, gives up, and runs into Riley's men in the basement of the old Initiative, which she'd thought had been abandoned?) There's no reason why it can't be Riley. If it were Riley, the character would be a lot more complex than the other bad guys have been and a lot harder for Buffy to fight.
A lot of people have guessed Xander. And while I think Xander is a fun choice for a lot of reasons - he's really not a very plausible one. Unless of course we want to throw all logic out the window or the writer wants to jump through a series of hoops justifying it. Why? Xander can't be in two places at exactly the same time. Sure this is fantasy and you can play with time a bit, but that is stretching things. Especially since Xander unlike Buffy, Willow, Giles, Andrew, and even Dawn has not had any unexplained absences that we know of.
And..unlike Riley, we know quite a bit about Xander. He has no motivation for joining the military and going against his friends. He's happy where he is. And he hasn't been shown as either a leader or a strategist - so much as a support system. Riley on the other hand has.
TBC
Re: Ohhh fun - Guessing Who Twilight is
Date: 2008-02-12 11:34 pm (UTC)Also Andrew has a superhero fetish - so the costume makes sense. And he's been a villian before. Plus - Buffy mentioned in this issue that the slayers robbing banks and using guns had been under Andrew's watch. But unlike Riley, Andrew has never lead anyone and he is not a strategist. Nor does he have military training nor has he ever been part of the military.
Another option is Caleb. I *really* hope it isn't Caleb. Too obvious. Been there, done that. And honestly wasn't a resurrected skinless Warren enough? Do we need two resurrected misogynistic bad guys from the series? That said, I wouldn't be suprised if they did that. Disappointed. But not surprised. On the other hand - not sure Caleb is plausible. The military clearly trusts Twilight - leading me to believe he may be one of their own. Or at the very least appear to be one of their own. The military is not in the habit of trusting just anyone. And Riley remember has been part of the military for a long time, also Riley was a psychology T.A.
My favorite? One that no one else has appeared to come up with - Buffy's long absent father. Who is a lot like Riley in Buffy's life - in that he disappears from it and is not killed. He just leaves her. And much like Riley, we don't know much about him.
Actually we know less about her father than anyone else. But...I don't think Whedon has thought of this either and I'd be really surprised if Twilight turned out to be her father. It would be fun for all sorts of reasons, but I'm not sure it has occurred to the writer to do it.
My hunch? He's either someone lame like Caleb, Graham, Tucker, or someone we have never seen. If he's someone we haven't seen - that would mean the rumored reveal has got to be something else. Regardless of what it is, I hope it's not lame or worse non-existent - because there is nothing worse than disappointed comics fans, okay, wait, there is...disappointed tv fans. ;-)
Re: Ohhh fun - Guessing Who Twilight is
Date: 2008-02-13 05:38 pm (UTC)We shall see. One last bit-- I took a guess that the "shocking event" that's supposed to sell a lot of issues was that Dawn gets turned back into raw Key energy again, instead of just being made normal-sized. There have been clues all along in this direction, but of course they could just be misdirects.
Feels good to be thinking too much again!
Re: Ohhh fun - Guessing Who Twilight is
Date: 2008-02-14 12:17 am (UTC)I have no idea why people are so opposed to the concept of Riley as Twilight. I actually think that one is sort of cool. Is it the speech? Or do people just perceive the character (Riley or Twilight for that matter) as bit more one-dimensional than I do? Shrug.
Nevertheless, I doubt Whedon will do it.
Oh I didn't mean the dead Initiative guy, I meant the one who Riley goes off with in Season Five. I thought his name was Grahem?
The other guy was blown up - so he'd have to be a ghost or avatar.
I don't think they'll do the First again - problematic villian, also this guy can touch things and is pro-order as opposed to pro-chaos like the First, and anti-demon/anti-magic as opposed to the First. From the last issue - we know that Twilight has the same overall purpose as Buffy to get rid of demons, just that Twilight sees Buffy as part of the problem.
You may well be right - the reveal could be something else. I know Drew's arc is supposed to be about Dawn. But, I can't see them turning her back into the key. I wouldn't mind seeing them do that - but I can't see it happening. Goes against the overall thematic structure of the story...about power and female and sisterhood.
Re: Ohhh fun - Guessing Who Twilight is
Date: 2008-02-15 05:55 am (UTC)I suppose the major reveal that points in the "key" direction to me was that scene in the previous issue with the time-shifting demon, where Buffy is beaten rather badly and is crying, while behind her is this broken egg-like object. I'd view the egg thing as a "death of a child" metaphor, and might even posit it as an bit of an homage to "Smile Time".
Not saying what issue this would happen in, though, if it happens at all. Whedon's a master at timing these shocking plot developments.