I was thinking about this after reading a reply to another post, regarding character and relationship shipping.

Like most people, I suspect, I tend to love the characters that I personally can relate to the most or if I don't, fascinate or interest me. I often can't explain why I like them or why they fascinate me. Sometimes I'll write a post or meta in an attempt to figure it out. It's like writing fanfic, I guess, you play with the characters or bits that bug or intrigue or interest you? (shrugs)

There's not that many television series that I've gotten obsessive about or shipped characters on. Nor would I necessarily state that all the television series that I've been obsessive about were high quality or worth mentioning. Some are guilty pleasures, which I'm tentative about voicing aloud, for fear of being judged. (Alas, I still care far too much about what others think. I know should care less, but well...I'm not quite there yet.) All tend to be serials. I'm not a fan of non-serials, I like character stories more than plot driven ones; it's how I roll. And I have a weakness for the soap opera genre. If you hate the genre, don't tell me. It's not that I don't care, it's that I do, perhaps more than I should, and it hurts me. Feels like someone ripping apart a favorite toy. Have you ever had that happen? Had someone take a toy that you loved and rip it to pieces? Or stomp on it with their dirty boots?

I'm ashamed to say, I'm not much different. I have stomped on favorite toys with dirty boots -- in part because the toy in question irritated me or made me angry. I think it's hard sometimes to realize there's another perspective, another way of seeing it. There's this brilliant song in Sondheim's "Into the Woods", which has always haunted me -- No one is alone. One of the stanzas states that you have to remember, that while there are people on your side, there are people who are not, and there is always someone on the other person's side too, no one is alone.

Okay, tangent. But, I was thinking about this...because while there are characters I love in television shows, there are equally characters I despised. I'd go online and discover much to my considerable chagrin that are people out there who loved the characters that I despised. I'd think, what - is this bizarro land? How can you possibly like let alone love this character? And how can you hate my favorite character? Are you crazy? What universe are you residing in? I could not wrap my mind around it. How could there be people who liked Harmony? Or Robin Wood? Or that mean girl, Cordelia?? Or gasp, Warren Myers? WTF? What in the heck was so appealing about that scene stealing Andrew? Why didn't people like Connor? Why didn't they love Willow? How could they hate Buffy? Why did they hate Spike? How could they? Didn't they see how cool Darla and Drusilla were? Why did they think Buffy/Angel belonged together still? Wasn't it obvious that was a high school romance that could not work? Also, Angel was sooo much older than her? How could people ship Buffy and Giles?

But alas, they did. Not only that, they wrote lengthy posts on why and supported their rational. Still felt like bizarro world, but they had a right to their point of view, even if it skewed with my own. I found people who shared my own, of course. But often they had bizarre views as well - such as there was no way Spike would ever attack Buffy, when it was clear to me that he would. Or saw the characters very differently than I did, almost as if we were watching separate shows.

Over time, it occurred to me, of course, that people do not think the same way. We focus on different things. Different things irritate us. Or urk us. Or trigger us, in different ways. Willow's voice irritated some people. Some had issues with her redemption and the character grated on them. While Cordelia and Harmony irritated me. Heck, Cordelia's voice apparently irritated me, I realized this last night while watching Lucifer, where the actress made a brief guest-star experience. Yep, something about her voice and acting style irritated me. As did the actress playing Harmony. So it wasn't just the characters they played but the actresses themselves. I don't know why. It just is. They irritated me. But others loved them to pieces, thought they were amazing. Go figure.

By the same token, for some odd reason, the characters of Willow, Spike, Buffy, and Giles fascinated me. Giles -- mainly due to the actor who portrayed him, Anthony Stewart Head. I'd seen Head several years prior in a stage production of Chess, and fell in love with him. He was subbing for his brother Murray Head at the time. Then I followed him through various Taster's Choice commercials on to VR5 and finally Buffy. I started watching for Head, almost stopped because I was disappointed in the lack of a substantial role for the actor. I was also, fascinated by the character of Angel -- who seemed to have lots of dark secrets. Xander made me laugh for the most part, and I enjoyed the character and found him interesting up until the actor's personal demons caught up to him and he derailed taking the character along with him. (This happened sometime around S5 -S7, which is why Xander began to disappear from the story a bit. It wasn't that the writers lost interest in the character so much as the actor had serious issues and it interfered with his work. It happens.) Faith disappointed me, I wanted more and felt somehow swindled or let down by the writers. She was interesting, but fell into cliche, without ever quite rising above it. So much wasted potential there. I felt they handled Spike better -- he could have easily gone the route Faith did. But they managed to keep him more ambiguous and didn't fall as easily into cliche as they did with poor Faith. But others didn't see it that way. They saw it the exact opposite. They loved Faith and hated Spike and thought Spike was a walking cliche and that the writers ruined the character. Some thought Spike ruined the show, like Fonzie did Happy Days -- someone even wrote a lengthy post or essay on this. See, bizarro world. Up is down. Green is blue.

It's hard to ship characters or relationships with others. Oh, on shipping? I've even run into arguments regarding whether "ship" should just be used in regards to "relationship shipping" as opposed to "characters". And that it is inaccurate and wrong to use the word in regards to shipping a character, because that just isn't done. And what the hell am I doing? This is weird! So not only did people disagree on how I saw the characters, their relationships, and back stories, but also the word or semantics I used to describe how I felt about them.

The semantic's arguments drove me crazy, I'll admit. I'll try to explain why -- I think it goes back to having a speech impediment when I was in school and having people constantly make fun of me or correct my speech. They still do occasionally, because I have a sort of aphasia when it comes to uttering the correct word. Sometimes I'll say a completely different word than I thought I said. (It's a genetic quirk, my mother and brother do it too.) I'll think for example "wrote" but will say "route" sometimes will even write it. I won't know I said the other word. It's why I prefer writing -- you can go back and edit. You can't with speech. People also don't tend to be very patient, and will often be cruel about it and judgemental.

See, here is the problem with people, I think, and this goes beyond this post...people have difficulty wrapping their minds around the fact that other people don't think or see or view or taste or smell or perceive the world the same way they do. We don't. It's not possible. It's why life is so hard but also so interesting...because trying to connect, truly and authentically connect to another human soul is difficult. And can seem impossible. It rarely seems to happen. When it does -- it is magic. We gravitate to that person, who seems to "see" us. Or at least I do. Wow, I'll think, you get me! You see Spike the exact same way I did! This is so cool! Let's be buds. Of course, a little while later, you discover, okay that's the only thing we have in common, so not going to work out. But what the hey, it was fun while it lasted.

I thought this today when I read a long response to another post. While reading it in my email, since I don't have lj access at work...I thought, damn, I don't agree at all. We seem opposed. I don't like those characters. I like these characters. Did we see different shows? I was grumpy and in a foul mood already. But luckily I have no access to lj at work...so I was prevented from responding on the fly. Most posting mistakes are made on the fly. There's something to be said - for thinking it over. Although I've made colossal posting mistakes after taking a week to think it over. So there's that.

Anywho...after I read the response a second time, I realized the individual was simply being candid or authentic. They were trusting me with their views and hoping somehow for a connection. It didn't exactly come, but that's hardly their fault or mine. It just is, what it is.

I see this all the time on social media -- people hunting connection, and rarely finding it. Too often you sit there with your thumb hanging out in the wind, no takers. Crickets heard in the silence. Others, you have an insane number of responses, and yet still no connection, everyone has misunderstood your post or taken what you said out of context - reacting emotionally to a phrase here or there that triggered them. They didn't listen to what you said, they didn't hear the post. They just reacted to the portions that they felt related directly to them or affronted them. And then there are the times, in which magically, people get it. The connection happens. Somehow you connect with that guy in Sweden or in Brazil, or that gal in England or France or Canada. Half a world away. So far, in fact, it seems insane that you did connect, that they found you.

It's those rare moments that are addicting and bring me back time and again. I never know what post will bring them on. What will click. It's like sending a message out in a bottle, and suddenly having someone send one back. Except faster, oh so much faster.

To truly connect with another soul, another mind, is a wonderful feeling. But it happens so rarely in today's world. People don't take the time to listen, I think. There's too much noise, too much to do, too much to read, too much...I was wandering about in Barnes and Nobel the other day and felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new releases...so many, and I got depressed. Instead of excited. It depressed me and I walked out, thinking, too many books, no way to know which to read. And why am I bothering to write ...when there are so many other tales and stories out there. Who would want to listen to me? Me, a small, little voice in the wilderness? What could I possibly say that hasn't already been said? What story could I tell? Even now, I wonder that...amidst a thousand, more than a thousand posts...why would someone read this one? It's long. It's rambling. And it goes off on tangents.

And yet, I continue to write and continue to post. Am doing so now, even though I should be in bed listening to the rain fall outside my windows. I try to connect to you through characters in a long ago canceled television show entitled Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even though, to be honest, I've long since given up shipping or caring about them. Having moved on in the interim. But old habits, die hard. And this topic seems easier than most somehow...yet, false too. So..the loneliness seeps in, not from being alone, but from the sense that I can't quite connect. Can't quite be me. Candid. Authentic. Without somehow cutting off bits and pieces of myself. And wondering, if anyone out there perhaps..feels the same.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned 19 this week. To be clear, this is the 19th anniversary of its air date, not the final airing. So, no, we're not quite that old. I thought it aired 20 years ago...in 1996 while I was still living in Kansas City, but alas, no, it aired in 1997. I didn't have a tv for a period of time in 1996, and then for about six months...a tiny black and white tv. In fact, I didn't get Cable until around 1999 or 2000, so I could see La Femme Nikita. I remember finally getting a VCR in 1998 - which permitted me to tape Buffy and not miss episodes, which happened a lot back then.

WB and UPN, by the way, were not reliable channels, they usually aired on affiliate broadcast networks, not in HD (there was no such thing), and often had horrific reception. Plus lots of preemptions either for Basketball or some weird news event. I remember when the musical episode aired - you were lucky to have seen all of it. Because it went over - and some stations didn't show all of it. They cut it to ribbons for commercials. See - the affiliate stations control the number and length of commercial interruptions, not the network broadcaster or the studio.

I got the whole thing in NY - the first airing, but repeat airings on F/X or even on UPN were truncated.

Another problem with distribution was they didn't always send the right episode to the distribution channels in the correct order. Luckily there was enough time for most of the channels to get it right,
but in one instance the people who were watching it on their computers by downloading it from the satellite feed - got the episodes out of order, the two episodes they got out of order were Entropy and Seeing Red. While the vast majority of people were watching Entropy, they were watching Seeing Red. Which would have been okay, if the show was something like Elementary or still in its first season, but alas, no, it was heavily serialized by this point. At the end of Entropy, Tara returned to Willow, Xander and Buffy caught Anya and Spike shagging, and the team figured out that the Trioka was spying on them. In Seeing Red - Tara and Willow are shagging, Buffy fights the Trioka and sends two of them to jail, and Spike assaults Buffy. (You can sort of see how watching those two episodes out of order would be a problem.)

Oh, and the station didn't always air an episode. There was one episode that aired months after it was slated to air...Earshot, mainly because it's original airdate was right after the Columbine Shooting. And the subject matter was a wee bit too apropos. Some affiliates would air episodes, some wouldn't. For instance? There were various episodes in the latter seasons that affiliates in certain areas refused to air. They can do that -- they don't have to bow to the network. Or if an episode got pre-empted by an evil Basketball game or High School Football Game (if you lived in Texas)...the affiliate may not choose to air it or they'd air it at 2 AM on a Sunday night, and not tell you. Some stations would carry the sports, some didn't, so the episode rarely re-aired and you'd have to wait until it popped up on F/X.

This is where being an active member of a fandom came in handy. Fans would mail each other tapes of the episode or send them via the internet (which was dicey, since we all used broadband and at times it was impossible to download, due to memory and width space, without crashing your computer. Also some vids came with viruses...unfortunately.) Being a fan of Buffy back then was frustrating. Unlike the DVR, VHS was unreliable. If the show started late? You got half of it. Sometimes the VHS would tape something else. Or not at all. I remember skipping out on social events early to ensure I didn't miss the episode. My friends made fun of me. Oh, you can't miss Buffy!

In case, you haven't figured it out by now, I was one of those rare fans that actually watched the series live as it aired in real time. Not on videotape or in reruns on F/X or DVD -- those came later. And I held off on the whole DVD thing...due to cost. I didn't buy a DVD player until roughly 2003-2004. So, I re-watched via VHS, F/X reruns (back then F/X had no original programming and basically just showed Buffy reruns every night). We had a lot less television back then.

What follows is somewhat lengthy history of how I joined the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fandom and came to love the series. Detailing what it was like to watch the series live as it aired, without the benefit of DVDS or always reruns, and handling the internet in the 1990s and early 00s, when it is was just beginning to get its footing. Also, how I ended up on livejournal.

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Started this in another post...but decided today, on the way to church of all places, to do a complete listing. These are the episodes of the series that I found the most memorable and explain why this series continues to be a favorite. It is notably the only series that I ever got serious enough or rather, obsessive enough about, to join a fandom.

I think the list below may well be the most objective list that I've done regarding the series. Since it's been well on six to seven years since I last watched an episode of Buffy. And like various others on my flist, have drifted a bit away from the fandom. So, I'm more detached, and less emotionally invested in various characters and arcs. For example? I'm no longer a Spike or Spuffy shipper. Don't ship anyone at the moment. Well maybe the Tardis -- because having one's own interstellar time machine is sort of cool.

[ETA: What motivated this list was a list of top 20 Buffy Episodes on Gameraider - which had been linked by petz. Suffice it to say, I really didn't agree with their list.]

The Most Notable Episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

First off, here are one from ten (as grouped together from a previous post, which can be found here, along with a review of The Sherlock Episode - The Abominable Bride.)

( Notable Episodes 1-10 )

11. Selfless (S7) --- Anya has become a vengeance demon again, but she's having difficulty with the gig. Before, she could justify it. Now, she finds herself feeling sympathy for her targets, and well the whole demon thing has lost its appeal. The episode delves into who we are, the dance of light and darkness inside, and the degree to which our choices define us. In addition - it comments on vengeance, justice, and to a degree redeemption. Does killing our enemy solve the problem? Can we heal with hate and violence? No, we really can't -- as Xander begins to realize. He who up to this point was all about killing the demons, begins to realize demons aren't what they appear to be.
Anya like Spike trades roles, defining herself by how others see her or their proscribed roles. "Spouse, Scorned Wife, Vengeance Demon, Mrs. Xander Harris, Xander's Girl-Friend..." but who is Anya?

12.The Zeppo (S3), Superstar (S4), and Storyteller(S7) -- These three episodes, while not amongst my favorites, from an objective stance are rather brilliant meta-narratives on the nerdy writer of the verse. The nerdy writer who fantasizes about being a hero and writes himself into the story, but turns out to be an observer, on the sidelines. At the same time -- it's an interesting commentary on the side-kick, or character who has no powers...and is jealous of the hero. Taken from three different perspectives, Xander (the sidekick), Jonathan ( the nerdy fanboy, damsel, who resents not being a hero) and finally Andrew (the fanboy observer, who sees everything as little more than a game or fantasy.) Each episode asks what is real, and has an unreliable narrator at its core. In Xander's episode - he's the hero, and Buffy and Angel are sappy heroes going through the same old silly crap.
The episode feels at times like a parody of itself. Same with Superstar -except it goes further, satirizing both the genre and the fans who worship it, then Storyteller, goes a bit further, satirizing the writers who make it up...

13. Bad Girls/Consequences/Enemies (S3) -- the problem with serials is there really aren't any stand-alone episodes. It's not like Twilight Zone, where you can do a list of best episodes separate from the rest. Each episode in a serial builds on the last one. To fully appreciate these episodes, you really have to see all three of them, one right after the other. Bad Girls delves into how one handles power and the desire to do whatever you want. Consequences is well the consequences of doing just that. And Enemies...is how do you come back from it, if at all? And to what degree can we really trust someone who has broken our trust and gone down that road? The desire to forgive and forget is key, but so is remorse and the desire to change. What these episodes do is take what appears on the surface to be an accident, and watch it derail through cover-up into a serious crime resulting in one of the characters surrending to the dark side of her soul -- and attempting to take everyone with her.
In between, it has some interesting gender flipping moments regarding sexual violence and power.

14. Passion (S2) - Angelus decides to take out two birds with one stone. He goes after tech-witch, Jenny Calendar, who is attempting to bring back his soul. And in a horrifying sequence, snaps her neck. Signifying to the audience that he has gone full-blown dark side. Then, he artfully places her in Giles bed, plays a record, sets up a romantic venue of roses, and wine...and hangs back in the shadows to see what transpires. The voice over is pure gothic poetry...that coments on and to a degree satirizes the romantic vampire trope, made so popular with Anne Rice. It underlines the dark side of love - obsessive, lustful, without brakes, devouring.

15, Bargaining I & II (S6) - After Buffy has died, the world goes crazy. And her friends decide to bring her back, to save her from hell, or so they believe. This episode doesn't make a lot of sense without watching the Gift first. What's interesting about the episode and why it is notable is the commentary to 9/11 which occurred not long before it. Buffy stands at the top of decaying tower, the world burning below her and wonders if it makes sense to stay. The world is filled with dread. It burns. Is there any hope? Hope arrives in the form of her sister, Dawn, whom she'd previously sacrificed her life for...and Dawn reminds her of her own words at the end of the Gift, the it's not supposed to be easy -- but if she isn't alive, how can it be better? The episode perfectly captures the insane emotional angst that I felt during 9/11 - where the world suddenly appears to go insane.

16. Restless (S4) --- a surreal, somewhat avant guard episode, that delves deeply into the four prinicipal characters identies. Exploring each character's deepest fear in depth - and in a way exploring our own as well. The slayer - the original slayer - jumps from each character's dream slaying them through their fear. For Xander - the heart of the group -- it's his fear of romantic love, of giving his heart to another, without becoming his parents in the process. For Willow -the spirit of the group- it's her fear of being herself, of who she is...and how she appears to others.
For Giles (the brains or head) -- it's the fear of making the wrong decisions, or not thinking it through or getting it right. And for Buffy, the hands, its the fear of the power that resides inside her, the darkness it represents and being defined soley by it. Through his examination of each characters emotional and psychological issues - the writer gives his audience a road-map of sorts to the series as a whole, where he plans on going with it, and the themes he wishes to explore. He also does an intricate meta-narrative on the series and the genre.

17. Something Blue (S4) & Tabula Rasa (S6) - a comedic tour de force, that also serves as foreshadowing on each character's emotional arc. A precurser to Restless. Buffy goes nuts over Spike -- but it's all sexual and not quite real. Giles is blind to everyone's issues, too focused on his own. Xander attracts demons, for fear of being one himself. And Willow wrecks vengeance on those she loves most out of grief.Tabula Rasa (S6) - another comedic tour de force, but this time the identity of the characters is examined through a momentary loss of memory. They gravitate towards those who they've been most attached to of late, yet their pairings don't quite work and seem awkward. It too makes fun of itself and its genre.

18. Crush (S5) and Smashed (S6) - In Crush - Spike goes out of his way to win Buffy, by doing all the wrong things. And up pops Drusilla - who offers him a chance to go back to his old ways. He's stuck between three women, Buffy, Harmony and Dru...and all three get the better of him. Even though it appears at first that he has the upper hand. Smashed - notable for how the episode culminated. The heroine has violent, hot, sex with the villain. Or the presumed villain. The ambiguous Spike --- who can turn on a dime. Up until this point, it hadn't been done or not in series like Buffy. Also, notable for the ambiguity of the Spike character. Spike finds out his chip isn't working - so he tries to talk himself into eating a girl in an alleyway, being a vampire again. It doesn't work. His chip, it turns out, just doesn't work on Buffy. And Buffy is struggling with her attraction to Spike, who represents death, bliss, a return to the grave from which she came. When he confronts her - offers her a chance to dance with death - she takes him up on it - and brings the building down. I examines sex and lust and love as addictions...a way of escaping oneself and one's own reality.

19. Normal Again(S6) and The Wish(S3) -- two episodes that explore another reality, and to a degree reality itself as a construct. In the Wish Anya, grants Cordelia's ill-advised wish that Buffy never came to Sunnydale, believing her life would be so much better if Buffy weren't in it. Too bad she doesn't last more than five minutes in a Buffyless world. She's killed immediately. And we get to see dark versions of all of our heroes, from Xander to Buffy herself. Normal Again - Buffy is infected by a demon with a hallucinetory poison, which makes her believe that she's actually inside an insane asylum and this is all in her head. A make believe world that she has created. It's difficult to know which world is real, the world where she slays vampires, or the one in which she is committed to an asylum? And it also comments on the character's own self-absorption - and how one can feel as if the entire world rests on their shoulders.

20. Prophecy Girl(S1) and The Gift(S5) -- in both these episodes the heroine dies. And in both it is prophesized. In the first episode, Prophecy Girl, she drowns, after the Master (Vampire) sucks her blood. With it strengthening him, he breaks his bounds and goes after the town. Xander revives her, with Angel's reluctant assistance -- and together they take on the villains with great success. Notable for small touches her and there, and the flip in genre tropes. The Gift - Buffy actually dies saving the world. As her sister's blood opens the gates of hell, she leaps into them, her own blood, and her own death sealing them, as her friends mourn her loss. The metaphor of the death of childhood is underlined in both or innocence lost.

Okay those are mine, off the top of my head. Or basically the episodes I remember after six or seven years. What are yours?

1. Watching the Tony's, which are boring me. Come back, Neil Patrick Harris, come back!
Also, Fun Home reminds me a lot of Next to Normal, while American in Paris reminds me of Singing in the Rain and On the Town. Something Rotten seems sort of different...But nothing is really grabbing me. Which is a good thing -- since I can't afford to go to the plays being honored at the Tony's.

2. They are adapting Neil Gaiman's Sandman for film. Joseph Gordon-Levit is doing it. Gaiman's one requirement was that there is no punching. Sandman does not punch people.

3. Five things that did not work in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or made you scratch your head or fanwank the hell out of them. This occurred to me over the weekend...via circumstances that are better left unsaid.
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[Since this is being pimped, I'm going to shamelessly tout my book "Doing Time on Planet Earth", it's a work of fiction - which you can go buy HERE.]

Managed to figure out how to make fried chicken and fried zuccini/summer squash with almond flour last night. Seasoned it with garlic/parsley/sea salt/pepper, and used coconut oil. Was rather tasty.

Read that some online blog or zine believes :

AtS is better than BtVS. "If Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show about becoming, then Angel is about something far more challenging: existing. There is a rot to the world, one that threatens to infect us all—not in grand, dramatic ways, but mundane ones. Entropy and inertia are the natural order of things. According to Holland Manners, the world doesn’t work in spite of evil—it works with it".

Eh, the two series are so completely different in tone and style, that it is akin to saying an apple is better than a pear. You either prefer the pear or the apple, but one is not necessarily better than the other. I personally prefer apples - I like the crunch and variety, pears are too mushy. Not a fan of mushy texture. Also pears are sweeter and have a higher inflammatory index. But I know lots of people who prefer pears.

My brother never understood why I preferred Buffy to Angel. ( Read more... )

We don't discuss it much. But it is interesting - how people swear one series is better than another, when if fact they are merely just pointing out a preference which has zip to do with any objective criteria whatsoever. I mean, I can argue both are excellent and both are campy cheesy serials, with little effort.

I do however think that of the two, Buffy was far more innovative. Let's face it - Angel has been done multiple times. Brimstone (short-lived), Koljack the Night Stalker, Forever Knight, Moonlight, etc. The most innovative take on the whole Angel trope is probably the serial The Originals, which isn't nearly as well written or captivating. But Buffy? I can't think of anything that resembles Buffy past or present. The closest might have been Veronica Mars. Vamp Diaries - is more about the vampires, not about a girl's coming of age story fighting them. And is there any female superhero shows on at the moment? Not that I can think of. In the past? Maybe Wonder Woman or Dark Angel - but neither featured quite the type of character line up that Buffy had. No, I think one of the reasons I became a die-hard fan of Buffy in a way that I have not become a fan of anything else before or since, is that it just broke the mold or stood outside of the trope, often making fun of or satirising the tropes it found itself in. It just was so different. And unlike a lot of tv shows, never sat on its laurels or phoned it in - the writers kept experimenting and playing with the narrative form. I can't think of many tv shows that have done all of that.

So yes, from that perspective Buffy was the more innovative and interesting series. Angel was a spin-off that initially followed a fairly safe and traditional anti-hero noir detective trope. What Angel did do that separated itself from the pack, however, is it became highly serialized and built a mythology. It also played a little with the trope and commented on it, often making fun of itself in the process, particularly in the latter (and in my opinion at least far more interesting and innovative) seasons.

Actually if you think about it - both shows have that in common. The initial seasons sort of follow a standard and somewhat formulaic traditional television trope. A gang of high-school kids fight and occasionally fall in love with monsters, and the monsters reflect the nasty high school issues they are dealing with. That has sort of been done before and after Buffy - Vampire Diaries was sort of that trope, Hex, and a few others. Albeit not as often as the supernatural noirish lone detective trope has been done (the latest entry to that fold is Constantine and well Sleepy Hollow, Gotham, and Supernatural). Angel started out that way, then sort of drifted away from it - making a law firm of all things the main villain. Normally it's other vampires, family members, demons, or some criminal mob boss - but here it was lawyers and their ability to create order through "laws". Angel tackled order, law, regulations, and control as problems. The Authority - was always the main problem for Angel, the monster or demon that had to be overcome - whether that authority was religious in nature (ie. God or the PTB), legal (the evil law firm WRH), or societal pressures. The phrase "Everybody thinks this is a good idea" - was often the opposite on Angel. And this was in a way what set Angel apart from it's predecessors who often focused on chaos as the bad guy. In Forever Knight - the lead character was a cop, and the monsters were people outside of the police force. On Angel - the bad guy was the police force.

Buffy was similar in a way - it too had issues with Authority. ( Read more... )

Need to make dinner. This was unedited and not proofed. Read at your own risk. I may come back and edit tomorrow. Not sure. Didn't plan on writing it. Just sort of came out. [ETA - has been edited somewhat.]

As you already know, I have stepped away a bit from the Buffy fandom, but I did read this essay by the writer Foz Meadows - Buffy and the men in her life. Which to be truthful is actually more of a comparison piece of Spuffy vs. all of Buffy's other romantically inclined relationships. I read it mainly because I'm stuck in my apartment with a broken foot and don't feel like getting up and fixing breakfast, which I know I should do. Maybe I'll just combine lunch and breakfast - and that way I only have to get up once.

What is interesting about this meta, although I prefer the word essay for various reasons, is the following paragraph:

[Eh, prior to this paragraph, foz meadows establishes how Riley, Xander, and other characters that are considered good are never really taken to task for their actions nor shown to redeem themselves. In particular Xander. And it occurs to me that this essay should come with an advisory to Xander fans - Foz Meadows clearly doesn't like the character that much. I don't know why this is...but it is rare to find Xander fans who like Spike and vice versa. You will find Xander fans that are ambivalent about Spike or found him interesting on a certain level, and well vice versa. I'm in that category. But fans who "love" both? Or consider both favorite male characters? No.]

There is, I suspect, a rather awful reason for this – and, indeed, for why Spike alone of all Buffy’s lovers and love interests accepts responsibility for his actions. It’s all down to narrative impetus: we, the viewers, are meant to sympathise with Xander, just as we’re meant to sympathise with Angel and Riley. At base, we “know” they’re all good guys, and as such, their contrition is implied. We don’t need to see them apologise, because the surrounding story is structured to suggest that they’ve already been forgiven off-camera. But Spike, by contrast, begins as a villain. His developmental arc is the most dramatic and varied in the whole show, culminating in a radical heel face turn at the end of S6. We need to see his redemption, because otherwise, there’s no reason to believe that it’s taken place – and to an extent, this makes sense: if the audience can reasonably infer that something has happened, then it’s a waste of script and wordage to insert it. The problem is that, if the good guys never apologise on screen, then their goodness is called into question – which is why the most fucked up relationship in the whole show is simultaneously the most equitable. Neither Buffy nor the audience can assume anything about Spike’s intentions that we aren’t actually shown, and as a result, he has to work the hardest out of anyone to be seen as good.

This fascinates me as both a writer myself, and a critique of a narrative structure or style quite common with television and comic book writers of my generation. The next generation of writers, I've noticed, is sort of breaking with this pattern. And it is admittedly not all of them. It also underlines something that has been needling me about Mutant Enemy's writing in all of their series, in particular Whedon. This tendency to take it on faith that if a character is "good" - they can do horrible things, but the audience forgives them without requiring the audience to necessarily witness apologies or redemptive acts. Or you can just blame it on the drugs, the booze, or they just weren't themselves. The writer's seem to stop just short of examining why the character did it and the character's actions.
( Read more... )

[Have a lot to say in a limited amount of time, no time to edit or proof, so you will have to bear with me. And have two things, which may seem to be completely unconnected.]

1. Have you ever been a fan? Been so emotionally invested in something that you actually bought season tickets to every game, stood line for hours, dressed up in the colors, and skipped work for the ticker-taper parade when they won? Or have fallen so deeply in love with a tv show that you taped every single episode, rescheduled your life around it, and even read heaven forbid a fanmagazine? Or followed a band across the country, no matter where they went, and collected every single version of their song? If you have -- do you know what it feels like when that team loses, not just loses, but loses sooo badly, that you want to throw rotten tomatoes at the coach? (I think they wrote a poem about this entitled Casey at the Bat.) Or you may know what it feels like when your favorite tv series or books serial or say comic serial or just a story flitting across the mediums does something sooo offensive to you, pushes your buttons so badly, that you want to well send hate mail to writer who did it or burn everything you bought? Or you may know what if feels likes when that band you loved to death, gets drunk and lip-synch's the lyrics at a live performance, sucks sooo bad, and you spent your entire paycheck to hear them. That they aren't who you thought. Disappointment is a bitch when you are emotionally invested, when you are a fan. It feels a bit like someone has pulled off a layer of skin.

2. The Rorschach Picture Test

I've been reading Buffy issue 34 reviews - okay, scanning them. Including, unfortunately some of the writers and artist's comments which pushed my buttons. (see item #1 above). I won't tell what they said or link you to them. Seriously, do you care? I thought not. As I was reading them - two comments to rather snarky previous posts I'd made on the subject of the comics, comments that I did not necessarily agree with - stuck in my head. Why is it that it is always the comments you don't agree with - that stick with you? (or maybe that's just me). At any rate one mentioned "The Rorsache Picture Test" and the other mentioned "Pattern analysis" or rather how they liked to pick up the patterns in things and did not really get emotionally involved in the story, per se. They appeared to assume that no one else saw patterns in things or was into that sort of thing. And I felt myself bristle, thinking, you idiot, have you been reading my blog? All I do is pattern analysis. But..during a rather lengthy chat on the phone last night, it occurred to me - we all see patterns in things, it's not the fact that we don't see patterns, that's human nature, no what is the distinguishing factor here is well how we each interpret the patterns that we see.

Rorschach Picture Test involves an inkblot. That's all it is an inkblot. Randomly stamped on a piece of paper. In tv shows from M*A*S*H to House, writers have used the Rorsach inkblot test. Often a psychiatrist will show the inkblot to the patient and ask what do you see. The character/patient often states nothing, or an inkblot, or something else - when pushed. It's a test that permeates our literature and pop landscape. To the point in which you may well groan or roll your eyes when it appears.

( cut for length and spoilers on the Buffy comics..although I doubt anyone cares at this point. )

TRADING CLOTHES & RINGING PAVLOV’s BELL

I have never attempted a meta quite like this before. Oh sure, I’ve written metas about Spike and about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a cult television series that ended in 2003 but I still love with wild abandon, but not a meta that includes embedded videos and screen shots, which take up space. This is my first Web 2.0 meta or essay. Also, a confession – every time I write and post a meta – I am afraid. Afraid no one will read it. And if they do, they won’t like it enough to bother responding. I find myself counting the responses – to see how good the post was or how well it was received. Which is silly of course – a sort of behavioral conditioning if you think about it. If a post gets no responses, I will often decide to either delete it or never write anything like it again. It’s almost as if in my own journal, much against my better judgment, I am trading clothes and ringing pavolov’s bell. (Sigh, writing like painting, is a difficult love, chock-full of rejection, and the lucky few get past that. Also, much as the saying goes - does a tree fall if no one sees it, does a post or a piece of writing exist if no one but you reads it?)

The below is a meta on behavioral conditioning, the soul or conscience and its effects on the persona in relation to the character of Spike, a vampire on the fictional television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was inspired in part by conversations with people on my flist, as well as fanfiction regarding the character, and the tv series itself. In a way it expresses why I prefer the television series version of Spike or Canon!Spike to the character most people have written about in their fanfiction. [Warning: Long and may be difficult to download on dial-up.]

( What follows is an analysis of the character of Spike aka William the Bloody, aka William Pratt, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, spoilers only include the television series, will also include bits on Angel/Angelous for purposes of comparison only. )

You'll have to excuse the subject heading - because I haven't a clue how to sum up the mumble jumble of thoughts regarding the above.

Picked up the latest Buffy S8 Issue today. Read it twice, or rather three times. I read comics differently than other people do. I first look at all the art work and don't read the captions at all. Then I'll scan the captions and the art. Then I'll read the captions and look at the art. It's odd, I know.

Anyhow, before I read this issue - it's probably worth noting that I had recently rewatched two Season 7 episodes, Get it Done and Storyteller - which I rather loved this time around, and rather hated the first time around. What a difference six years makes. We do change how we feel about stuff. Life does it to us, I think. As one person on my flist once put so well, "I am agnostic about my opinions" - in other words, don't hold me responsible for something I may have thought two weeks ago, there is an outside chance that you can change my mind or I will change my mind. Not on everything of course. So this does not make me wishy-washy, it merely makes me open-minded.

Before I discuss the comic, I'm going to discuss Get it Done and Storyteller. So forgive me if this is rather long and rambling. But as you've no doubt noticed by now when it comes to Buffy meta, I tend to be on the verbose side of the fence, short and pithy only occurs in my business/work related writing, not my metas. I think it's because my metas are spontaneous and stream of consciousness, and the fact that I do not take the time to edit them.

( Telling Stories, Handling Power - major spoilers for the most recent Buffy comic Retreat III inside )

Done. Finally.

Will go back and edit and put in links of previous posts, of course.

Previous post here: Prologue

Part I: Tragedy Television and Buffy

Part II:The Pitfalls of Plotting TV Shows

Part III: TV Show Grind and Writer Burn-Out

Part IV: Difficulties of Operating Within Structure and Boundaries of TV Formula

Part V: Can Actors Really Make or Break a Show

Part VI: Fans - Breaking the Fourth Wall - Part A: Media Critics

Part VI: Fans- Breaking the Fourth Wall- Part B: Fans and Majority Rules

Also for an in-depth and fairly objective discussion of these posts at the time I posted them - go here: http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/aug03_p12.html

( Conclusion on Buffy and Pitfalls of TV. )