(no subject)

[shadowkat]

We're having what one of my cubicle neighbors likes to call "air conditioning/air circulation wars" at work. It is freezing in the morning and hot in the afternoon. Yesterday, I was boiling at 79 degrees and in a sweater shirt (couldn't take it off, nothing under it except the bra) and today I'm freezing with the air on full blast.

Currently eating soup, which I made over the weekend and is quite tasty.
While I'm getting better - didn't feel like braving the cold to go out to lunch with my colleagues who were taking one of the secretaries out for her birthday. I did contribute two bucks to her lunch though.

Everyone at work has the dreaded it. They either have a sinus infection they can't get rid of or bronchitis...which has lingered and become a sinus infection. We're all taking some brand of antibotic. Never knew there were so many brands...

Oh, in regards to Buffy - there are six characters I despised on that show, luckily for me they were all peripherial characters or guest characters, and rarely on it. Unfortunately for me, about four of them have popped up in the comic regardless of whether or not they were killed.
They are in no particular order - Harmony, Andrew, Warren, Amy, Robin Wood, and Sam Finn (Riley's wife). Of the six, the only actor I liked was the one who played Warren - he was great in it and in everything else he's been in. I don't expect I was supposed to like him in Buffy, much.

Comments

And..

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You may not like her, which is fine, because characters don't exist to be liked. But I do think there are some problematic elements raised by her role in the story.

Quite a few problematic elements actually. If you analyze the series from a social-political pov, it is disturbing and leaves a decidedly bad taste in your mouth. But then, I'd argue about 85% of the tv shows on right now do - specifically the science-fiction/fantasy adventure ones. I'm not completely certain the writers are responsible for this - well not until I started reading the comics. Now, I'm just wondering if they may think they are conveying one set of messages while in actuality conveying another? Or perhaps I'm reading things into it based on my own experiences and "buttons"??

It is hard to know how someone else will interpret what you write or create, after all. And we aren't always aware of the extent that we project our own issues on that which we are watching or reading.

It is more than possible that the reason Harmony bugs me, particularly in this issue, is not for the reasons I suggest in my post above but rather your point - that I sense there are some problematic elements raised by her role in the story, which are creating a dissonance. Particularly as seen in this comic - where once again, a young minority slayer is cruelly slain - in front of Buffy and the world. This time by Harmony, and on reality tv, to humongous ratings and applause - and she, the minority woman slayer, is portrayed by the media as the villian. It bugged me. Or created dissonance - making me feel guilty for reading and even enjoying the story. This may or may not have been Espenson's intent -I'm guessing Espenson sees Harmony as a metaphor for the vampiric nature of celebrity and fame here? (Not sure if you read the comic or not. But in it Harmony is the star of a reality tv series entitled Reality Bites on MTV - where she is followed about and bites and eats people in front of the camera.)

But that doesn't excuse the fact that in a hero story about female empowerment, a white, blond, blue-eyed, pretty girl, with a lot of money - Harmony - appears to constantly get away with murder in the series. Much like Paris Hilton - she even looks and sounds like Paris, just with a better figure. She never pays for her sins. She always gets away intact. Even in Angel this was the case. They never staked her - or punished her. Sure you can say the same thing about Angel and Spike - but we actually see both suffer - Spike in his quest for the soul and burning alive at the mouth of the hellmouth, plus his months in hellLA etc. Same deal with Angel. But Harmony - considered a joke - well - the worst thing that appears to happen to her is Spike slaps her around a bit and breaks up with her?? (Which brings up a separate problem - the male vampires are able to seek redemption or be redeemed or live to seek it, while the female, not so much. Darla, you could argue does - but only because she has a male child that she stakes herself to give birth to and it is his soul, not her own that redeems her. And Harmony appears to seek it in Disharmony, but it is dismissed as a joke.)

Meanwhile in this issue - we see a Hispanic slayer, lower class, street girl, struggling to find her own way, do the right thing - get killed by Harmony in her rich spread, to much fanfair. This would be fine, if it weren't so repetitive of earlier killings of minority slayers - we have Renee, Nikki, and Kendra, just to name three. Here - it is told in the framework of a joke - but the joke isn't funny. It leaves a bitter after-taste. And once again Buffy is looking on, unable to help or even offer comfort. Buffy - the petite, pretty, privileged blond girl - who survives no matter what.

I'm not sure if this was intentional on the writer's parts or not? And I'm not entirely sure if I'm reading more into that than there is.

Nor am I sure if that is what you are getting at, or something else entirely? It's late and I'm trying to write this while listening to the new Beriut CD that I got for Xmas from my brother - so hopefully it is coherent.