Buffy S8 Review and a bit on writing...
Nov. 5th, 2009 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatPicked up the Buffy comic today and distracted self with it, along with General Hospital - which I'm adoring right now, it's a great story, with wonderful music and operatic overtones, makeing me think that I should see more Opera, something tells me that I have an affinity for it. The Buffy comic...was a bit on the disappointing side, but it has been for quite some time now so am sort of getting used to it. I think I've figured out where Whedon is going with it and why. And over all, I still love and identify with his themes and major two female characters, Buffy and Willow, even if the others have sort of fallen by the wayside.
When I picked up the comic, the store owner asked if it was written by one of the tv show writers. I responded - yes, Jane Espenson wrote for the tv show, she also wrote for BSG, and Star Trek or rather one of the Star Trek's and the fact that I know all of that..yeah, I'm not a geek. Sigh. Definitely a geek.;-) I added that this, meaning the comic, was unfortunately not Jane's best work.
The most interesting thing about the comic though was the letters page - there's a rather fascinating discourse between a fan and Scott Allie that made me sort of respect Allie's pov for a change or at least understand it. The fan was discussing how important it was for fans of a story to know that it was pre-planned, that the plot and world were built and outlined in advance, not completely but enough that things made sense, and something wouldn't pop out of nowhere or cause the world to fall into chaos.
The fan said this: I do think fans tend to prefer things to be specified ahead of time. There could be a number of reasons why this is so, but I think the main one is that a fan finds a world (and its characters, plots, and relationships) more satisfying when they "make sense"/"feel real". In order to make sense and feel real, it's important that each new piece of information that is revealed about the world is consistent with what we already know. That is, each new thing we learn should make the world make more sense, not threaten to throw it into unpredictable chaos. That doesn't mean there can't be any surprises - it's more that surprises should (usually) make sense iin retrospect (think of the Xisth Sense - if the twist ending had been tacked on without incorporating it into the earlier story, it would have been horrible; people liked it because it suddenly made everything make sense). People general prefer to have the "damn, I should have realize!" feeling than the "where the heck did they pull that one from ?" feeling.
So the problem with leaving things to be decided later is that, since you didn't know what had happeneded when writing about the intervening time, there wouldn't have been any clues about it. Even if you didn't intend to leave any clues as such, simply knowing what happened in the back of your mind would have likely subtly shaped how you told the rest of the story, since even small events tend to get tangled up with the rest of reality you're trying to create. Therefore, when making delayed decisions, the reveal, if and when it occurs, may seem to have come out of nowhere, leaving the world making less sense and being less satsifying.
Also the other aspect is simply that sometimes it's rather transparent (at least in appearance) that something is being deliberately treated in the "hey we'll figure it out later" way ....This can be irritating because it can create the feeling rightly or wrongly, that the writer thinks they are smarter than the audience and that they can get away with making things up as they go along rather than carefully planning.
Allie's response: I don't think I've ever really approached stories from this fan point of view, so I thind this all real interesting. I disagree with some of what Ryan says - that you need to have these things worked out, carved in stone, in order to convince the reader. In Hellboy, there is a lot of stuff we leave vague so we can change or work it out later. ...Too much careful planning can kill a story dead [God, don't I know it!], and in my experience, the one thing that careful long-term planning really guarantees is that the plans will change....[I'm leaving out spoilers on the comics]
Being flexible on this sort of thing keeps the story alive. Writers will often tell you that they don't work from outlines because if the story isn't able to surprise them, they know it won't surprise the reader. [That and it is tedious as hell to write from an outline. Too much like work if you ask me.] Every writer and sometimes every story has a different balance between planning and improv, and we all want the feeling of solving a mystery.
I find myself, oddly enough, agreeing with Allie. Except with one caveat - the problem with writing a comic or serial tv series is you cannot go back and change the first chapter, like you can in a novel. I can write like Allie states above - as long as no one sees each chapter until it's done and I've rewritten, revised, and fixed the inconsistencies. There are always a couple. But if I were writing it as a TV series? I'd have to be certain that I kept track.
Now unlike most fans, who I'm guessing agree with the letter writer, or Ryan, I'm a bit more tolerant of the chaos not completely, I like it to make sense, but more tolerant than some. See I disagree with Ryan the fan on one particular bit - planned stories are NOT real. Life cannot be planned. We are thrown curve balls that screw up our plans every day of the week. We don't know what is going to happen next. We don't know what happened to the person halfway around the globe. We can't see all the variables or all the people or all the things that can screw us up. I think the reason fans like Ryan and even myself want a plan, want it to make sense is because it comforts us. Our lives feel so chaotic, so out of our control, so random, as if there is some joker upstairs pulling strings and throwing stuff at us out of nowhere, that we yearn for meaning, for planning, for order in stories. We want our stories to make sense at least in part. Because reality painfully does not.
I think the reason soap operas and tv shows like Buffy often feel more real to me than say a well planned affair such as Law & Order or CSI, is because the writer is to a degree making it up as he goes along. The characters much like we all are, are at the writer's whim. They are Pirandello's six characters in search of an author, in search of a plot, of something that makes sense. There's something oddly comforting to me to see characters at the whim of a capricious writer...but at the same time, I do, admittedly yearn for the order.
Allie states in his response to Ryan the fan - that most of the story is planned. The plot arc is. The reveal on Twilight is. The romantic relationships in the tale were. It was smaller bits that were not. And that I think to a degree is true of most tv shows and serials, except of course the ones that change writers so many times, the new ones have no clue what the old ones did.
In the Buffy Retreat Part 5 Comic - we end up with a super-buffy, or a buffy who can fly, who I'm guessing got all the goddesses' powers, although that is not clear in the final frame - just from the reviews I've read on it. The story itself is about a battle going badly for both sides - yet another allegory on why war does not work for anyone involved. I still think JRR Tolkien did this best in The Hobbit - as I was telling someone at work today, who is re-reading the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit in a way does what the LOTR tries, far better and in less pages - it discusses why war does not work. Why war destroys. Buffy is more or less making the same point. Neither Twilight nor Buffy really win here. Although it appears Twilight has...but that's the thing about victories in war, they all to a degree are false ones.
The issue is also about power - the giving it up, and the regaining of it. Buffy has a lot of power. She gave it up. Now she has it all back but to what end?
I'm not sure what Riley's role is here. He's supposed to be spying for Buffy, but he didn't appear to give her any useful information - including who Twilight is. Sort of liked his interaction with Buffy and his comment regarding Buffy - which echoed past comments. Not quite sure what his purpose was or why the writer bothered to include him. (shrugs). But had more or less figured out he was supposed to be Buffy's spy, what I haven't figured out is if he is also Twilight's spy? I'm guessing if Riley survived, there may be another twist in the works?
The Dawn/Xander romance is leaving me cold. Which is surprising, because I was sort of shipping them in Season 7 and a good portion of S8. Now that they are together? They are irritating me, particularly Dawn. Not sure why. It may be how they are being written?
But I do adore the Willow-Buffy story.
So who died? Anyone important? Or just random red shirts that we don't care all that much about? I hate it when shows and comics do this...they have huge wars, and convienently the only people who die are the ones we didn't know that well or otherwise known to Trekkies the "red shirt" syndrom or "random good guy syndrom". That's not how real life works.
Other than that? I liked the issue and adore the cover. On the art front? Am still having troubles telling characters apart. OZ looked like Andrew. Giles looked like Andrew. Riley looks like Andrew. Kennedy looked like Satsu. And Dawn looked like a random slayer. I think they felt the need to get rid of all of the random slayers, so we'd be less confused as to who was who. Going with that thematic they should also kill off Andrew - that would simplify things a bit. But also piss off fans. Andrew is admittedly growing on me. So maybe kill off Riley and Oz - they aren't doing all that much. Either that or put name tages or dialogue tags on them.
When I picked up the comic, the store owner asked if it was written by one of the tv show writers. I responded - yes, Jane Espenson wrote for the tv show, she also wrote for BSG, and Star Trek or rather one of the Star Trek's and the fact that I know all of that..yeah, I'm not a geek. Sigh. Definitely a geek.;-) I added that this, meaning the comic, was unfortunately not Jane's best work.
The most interesting thing about the comic though was the letters page - there's a rather fascinating discourse between a fan and Scott Allie that made me sort of respect Allie's pov for a change or at least understand it. The fan was discussing how important it was for fans of a story to know that it was pre-planned, that the plot and world were built and outlined in advance, not completely but enough that things made sense, and something wouldn't pop out of nowhere or cause the world to fall into chaos.
The fan said this: I do think fans tend to prefer things to be specified ahead of time. There could be a number of reasons why this is so, but I think the main one is that a fan finds a world (and its characters, plots, and relationships) more satisfying when they "make sense"/"feel real". In order to make sense and feel real, it's important that each new piece of information that is revealed about the world is consistent with what we already know. That is, each new thing we learn should make the world make more sense, not threaten to throw it into unpredictable chaos. That doesn't mean there can't be any surprises - it's more that surprises should (usually) make sense iin retrospect (think of the Xisth Sense - if the twist ending had been tacked on without incorporating it into the earlier story, it would have been horrible; people liked it because it suddenly made everything make sense). People general prefer to have the "damn, I should have realize!" feeling than the "where the heck did they pull that one from ?" feeling.
So the problem with leaving things to be decided later is that, since you didn't know what had happeneded when writing about the intervening time, there wouldn't have been any clues about it. Even if you didn't intend to leave any clues as such, simply knowing what happened in the back of your mind would have likely subtly shaped how you told the rest of the story, since even small events tend to get tangled up with the rest of reality you're trying to create. Therefore, when making delayed decisions, the reveal, if and when it occurs, may seem to have come out of nowhere, leaving the world making less sense and being less satsifying.
Also the other aspect is simply that sometimes it's rather transparent (at least in appearance) that something is being deliberately treated in the "hey we'll figure it out later" way ....This can be irritating because it can create the feeling rightly or wrongly, that the writer thinks they are smarter than the audience and that they can get away with making things up as they go along rather than carefully planning.
Allie's response: I don't think I've ever really approached stories from this fan point of view, so I thind this all real interesting. I disagree with some of what Ryan says - that you need to have these things worked out, carved in stone, in order to convince the reader. In Hellboy, there is a lot of stuff we leave vague so we can change or work it out later. ...Too much careful planning can kill a story dead [God, don't I know it!], and in my experience, the one thing that careful long-term planning really guarantees is that the plans will change....[I'm leaving out spoilers on the comics]
Being flexible on this sort of thing keeps the story alive. Writers will often tell you that they don't work from outlines because if the story isn't able to surprise them, they know it won't surprise the reader. [That and it is tedious as hell to write from an outline. Too much like work if you ask me.] Every writer and sometimes every story has a different balance between planning and improv, and we all want the feeling of solving a mystery.
I find myself, oddly enough, agreeing with Allie. Except with one caveat - the problem with writing a comic or serial tv series is you cannot go back and change the first chapter, like you can in a novel. I can write like Allie states above - as long as no one sees each chapter until it's done and I've rewritten, revised, and fixed the inconsistencies. There are always a couple. But if I were writing it as a TV series? I'd have to be certain that I kept track.
Now unlike most fans, who I'm guessing agree with the letter writer, or Ryan, I'm a bit more tolerant of the chaos not completely, I like it to make sense, but more tolerant than some. See I disagree with Ryan the fan on one particular bit - planned stories are NOT real. Life cannot be planned. We are thrown curve balls that screw up our plans every day of the week. We don't know what is going to happen next. We don't know what happened to the person halfway around the globe. We can't see all the variables or all the people or all the things that can screw us up. I think the reason fans like Ryan and even myself want a plan, want it to make sense is because it comforts us. Our lives feel so chaotic, so out of our control, so random, as if there is some joker upstairs pulling strings and throwing stuff at us out of nowhere, that we yearn for meaning, for planning, for order in stories. We want our stories to make sense at least in part. Because reality painfully does not.
I think the reason soap operas and tv shows like Buffy often feel more real to me than say a well planned affair such as Law & Order or CSI, is because the writer is to a degree making it up as he goes along. The characters much like we all are, are at the writer's whim. They are Pirandello's six characters in search of an author, in search of a plot, of something that makes sense. There's something oddly comforting to me to see characters at the whim of a capricious writer...but at the same time, I do, admittedly yearn for the order.
Allie states in his response to Ryan the fan - that most of the story is planned. The plot arc is. The reveal on Twilight is. The romantic relationships in the tale were. It was smaller bits that were not. And that I think to a degree is true of most tv shows and serials, except of course the ones that change writers so many times, the new ones have no clue what the old ones did.
In the Buffy Retreat Part 5 Comic - we end up with a super-buffy, or a buffy who can fly, who I'm guessing got all the goddesses' powers, although that is not clear in the final frame - just from the reviews I've read on it. The story itself is about a battle going badly for both sides - yet another allegory on why war does not work for anyone involved. I still think JRR Tolkien did this best in The Hobbit - as I was telling someone at work today, who is re-reading the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit in a way does what the LOTR tries, far better and in less pages - it discusses why war does not work. Why war destroys. Buffy is more or less making the same point. Neither Twilight nor Buffy really win here. Although it appears Twilight has...but that's the thing about victories in war, they all to a degree are false ones.
The issue is also about power - the giving it up, and the regaining of it. Buffy has a lot of power. She gave it up. Now she has it all back but to what end?
I'm not sure what Riley's role is here. He's supposed to be spying for Buffy, but he didn't appear to give her any useful information - including who Twilight is. Sort of liked his interaction with Buffy and his comment regarding Buffy - which echoed past comments. Not quite sure what his purpose was or why the writer bothered to include him. (shrugs). But had more or less figured out he was supposed to be Buffy's spy, what I haven't figured out is if he is also Twilight's spy? I'm guessing if Riley survived, there may be another twist in the works?
The Dawn/Xander romance is leaving me cold. Which is surprising, because I was sort of shipping them in Season 7 and a good portion of S8. Now that they are together? They are irritating me, particularly Dawn. Not sure why. It may be how they are being written?
But I do adore the Willow-Buffy story.
So who died? Anyone important? Or just random red shirts that we don't care all that much about? I hate it when shows and comics do this...they have huge wars, and convienently the only people who die are the ones we didn't know that well or otherwise known to Trekkies the "red shirt" syndrom or "random good guy syndrom". That's not how real life works.
Other than that? I liked the issue and adore the cover. On the art front? Am still having troubles telling characters apart. OZ looked like Andrew. Giles looked like Andrew. Riley looks like Andrew. Kennedy looked like Satsu. And Dawn looked like a random slayer. I think they felt the need to get rid of all of the random slayers, so we'd be less confused as to who was who. Going with that thematic they should also kill off Andrew - that would simplify things a bit. But also piss off fans. Andrew is admittedly growing on me. So maybe kill off Riley and Oz - they aren't doing all that much. Either that or put name tages or dialogue tags on them.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 05:52 am (UTC)However, I'm now assuming that she died and came back with greater powers than before, likely from the fact that the power may not lie in the goddesses, but in the Earth. Whether the goddess who dropped her intended for the power transfer to happen or it just did because it was convenient for the plot, I have no idea.
BTW, I am assuming that Buffy did die one way or the other here, because she had no powers when she was dropped, and a fall of that height would surely have killed a normal human. Also, the art reinforces the idea, with the snow over her eyes looking very much like coins on the eyes of the dead.
Another idea that just now occurs to me-- this development is the result of a deal that Willow made with the serpent woman? Willow, knowing the future, knows that Buffy will die in this battle. Willow trades her life (when she is killed in the future) for Buffy to be resurrected yet again.
Hummm...
no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 04:39 pm (UTC)There's a rather good review of all of this in
no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 09:53 pm (UTC)The time thing can always be easily misused to "fix" almost any story-telling problem, and I'm hoping such isn't the case here (used badly, that is-- we already know time-travel is part and parcel of this season's story).
My short (sorta) explanation would be along these lines: We are now in an alternate time path, with Buffy's death after the goddess dropped her the locus or pivot point.
In the original time stream, Buffy died in this battle and stayed dead. Willow (who didn't die in the battle) plots a way to reverse things, and meets the serpent woman. In the first time stream, this was their first meeting. The serpent woman provides (directly or more likely indirectly) a means to this end, but to keep the cosmic balance (for lack of a better term) someone else with great power must die to bring Buffy back. Willow volunteers, and eventually, in the far future, gives her life.
The time stream gets reset, and only Willow and the serpent woman remember the old one, so now what we have been watching in Season 8 is the new stream. Willow continues to interact with SW, and things get nudged along further in the new, desired direction. This time the battle in Tibet ends with Buffy dying but being reborn/resurrected. Perhaps the goddess was in on the deal. No matter-- we are now in the new timestream, and all future events will radiate out from this new locus.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 10:12 pm (UTC)BTW, I had to go look up this issue for the specific dialog, but I remembered some possible foreshadowing of this back in the Fray arc. From earlier on in issue #19--
Fray: You've been spinning us all.
Willow: Yes, well, I'm dark that way.
Fray: To what end?
Willow: Death, of course.
Fray: Whose?
Willow: (doesn't answer Fray's question) You see what I've seen, you come and go as I have... you realize the most important thing about death isn't who dies... it's who kills them.
( - continued - )
no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 10:14 pm (UTC)Buffy: I'm sorry.
Willow: About what... failing?
Buffy: You know I'll go through you.
Willow: And you know you'll have to.
Buffy: Why?
Willow: Maybe I think the 20th century can soldier along without you.
Buffy: I'm not stupid, Will. You dragged me here and then told me exactly how to get out. Everything, every lie, to get us here. Why? What happened? Why does it have to be me?
Willow: (looks down, very sadly) It's a long story.
See, now reading those lines again gives me this little chill that it didn't the first time around. Things are starting to fall into place. And of course, I could be wrong, but, hey. Would be cool (for me anyway) if I was even close.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 10:54 pm (UTC)I think it goes back to aycheb's repeat of the line: "you think you know what you are, what's to come, you've barely even begun" and to a point I was trying to make to 2maggie2, although aycheb may have made it better - up until now Buffy has let the power control her life, make her decisions, as well others. She's playing Twilight's game, much as she was playing the First's and Caleb's game up until Touched/Chosen, when she finally realized she wasn't doing it alone.
Both Willow and Buffy are catering to the power - letting it tell them what to do, or throwing it away. All or nothing.
In Fray - DarkWillow realizes that throwing the magic away did not solve the problem. That deciding power was evil, lets throw it out, more or less was akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What led to the Fray verse - was Buffy pushing the demons into another dimension and closing the door, with Willow's help after herself. Willow sufferred the backlash, and went insane, but was cursed to live forever somehow. (At least that was what I got from reading the comic Fray and Time of Your Life simultaneously). What Buffy and Willow did that lead to Fray is not all that different than what they try here - to get rid of the magic, thinking that will make everything okay.
What Whedon, I think is trying to say is power in of itself is not bad, we shoulding throw it out. It's similar to Superman, who tries to become human, and discards his role as Superman, but realizes that if he does so, he can't save lives.
Here - what happened is the earth gave Buffy back her power. I don't think Willow was directly involved, so much as indirectly. Willow took her power from the earth - she grabbed at it and tugged. Buffy was given hers. Willow does have a natural affinity for it, it does fit her, but she wanted it - she kept grabbing for more, sucking at it. While Buffy didn't want it, and kept rejecting it. Now they've both thrown their power back at the earth - and the goddesses got it all, then got called. And the goddesses represent raw power, uncontrolled, unchained, the slayer in its purest, rawest form.
The hands without spirit, or mind, or heart.
I think Willow's arc is parallel to Buffy's, her power is often contrasted to Buffy.
I don't know. And my mind is a big fogged with other things.
I do think that the Willow one shot in December may shed some light on what's going on with Willow here. I also think that the comics are Willow and Buffy's story - they appear to be the central focus, which may be why I still enjoy them to some extent, because I am at heart a Willow and Buffy shipper.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-07 10:36 pm (UTC)Here's what happened before the comic books began or in the intervening time frame between Chosen and Long Way Home:
1. Dawn meet Kenny, cheated on Kenny, enacted a spell similar to the one Amy cursed Willow with in The Killer in Me, and got turned into a Giant (or Giant Slut as Dawn likes to call it) - each of her configurations fits terms like that - a "filly", a "doll".
2. Willow was on an astral plan learning majicks from the snake goddess whose name I can't remember.
3. Buffy was busy recruiting and training slayers, along with Xander, Wood, Faith, Giles, and Andrew (as far as we know)
4. Buffy to finance her operation, without input from anyone else (as far as we know) okayed the infilitration and robbery of a Swiss Bank. Her slayers, run by the rogue one, were caught on tape.
That happened before everything else.
So that time line was in effect before Time of Your Life. When Buffy kills Willow in the future, Willow is not shown that future, she doesn't know about it. It is not until Buffy tells her about it two issues ago that she knows a thing.
So the new time line can't happen until after Buffy told Willow. Doesn't make sense. And requires way too much explaining.
Also, I remain unconvinced that Whedon plans on changing the timeline that leads to Fray - rather I think this story is to show us how Fray occurred or the events that lead to the Fray universe being created. So no, I don't think the timeline has been changed by anyone as of yet.