And someone would pick up on that if it became common knowledge that vampires were killing people and turning them into more vampires. If (and this was my original point) they equated turning with killing, rather than simply changing, and if they had decided that vampire demonstrably were not the people they used to be despite looking and sounding and, in large part, acting entirely like them. Tales of the Vampires explicitly shows ordinary humans taking the opposite view. We as the audience can arbitrarily decide to ignore those people and call them morons but that’s not what’s presented in the text.
I'd be happy to accept that there's a large minority of morons who think vampires are cool, but everyone? What happened to all the journalists, the scientists, the historians, the police? ☺Exactly whatever’s happened to them in all the years of supernatural denial. Sure it takes a little suspension of disbelief but not of a kind we haven’t always had to make to follow the story. For me BtVS only ever made sense as magic realism never as straight fantasy – as I prefer magic realism that worked out just fine. That said the comic isn’t saying that literally everyone thinks vampires are cool. Jacob’s mother doesn’t seem to feel that way and Alex definitely didn’t.
Which is why I thought it was an excellent idea for Buffy to never stray outside Sunnydale. Also, it was pretty heavily implied... make that outright stated that the hellmouth meant the supernatural activity was a lot more pervasive there than elsewhere. If supernatural goings on are rare outside of Sunnydale (and LA and New York and Tokyo and South Korean naval territory and Italy…) isn’t it more excusable that people are taking the word of serious American journalists (Anderson Cooper and Keith Olberman) as their best guide to what vampires are really like?
Alternatively, the world (or its significant uban areas, LA, New York , Tokyo etc) is more like Sunnydale writ large and in Sunnydale we found out that public ignorance was in fact actively cultivated by those in charge. Which would fit with what Lindsey told Angel about the soaky apocalypse and the contacts in high places that Twilight clearly has. Is it so difficult to accept that what we have here – what ‘s been shown here is a combination of general apathy (vampires exist but they don’t matter), an increase in active interest by the disaffected and sufficient of the media powers that be in Twilight’s pocket to spin critical focus away from vampires and onto Slayers? It’s the oldest trick in the political book. Scapegoat the external ‘terrorist’ threat and divert attention from the internal discontents that drive young men to drink being drunk from.
And yet it's been clearly stated twice now that Slayers who try to not work as Slayers end up dead, and that those who try to do it on their own end up dead. Why tell it if it doesn’t tell us anything about the world? Everybody dies. It tells us exactly what not!Buffy said in The Chain. “The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? There is a chain between each and every one of us. You either feel its tug or you ignore it.” As times grow hard ignoring it gets harder. Eventually sleepwalking your life away in a Pleasantville dream stops being an option.
She gave them access to power, yes, but she also gave them a ticket to persecution. Isn’t that blaming the Jews for the pogrom?
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Date: 2009-07-08 04:16 pm (UTC)If (and this was my original point) they equated turning with killing, rather than simply changing, and if they had decided that vampire demonstrably were not the people they used to be despite looking and sounding and, in large part, acting entirely like them. Tales of the Vampires explicitly shows ordinary humans taking the opposite view. We as the audience can arbitrarily decide to ignore those people and call them morons but that’s not what’s presented in the text.
I'd be happy to accept that there's a large minority of morons who think vampires are cool, but everyone? What happened to all the journalists, the scientists, the historians, the police?
☺Exactly whatever’s happened to them in all the years of supernatural denial. Sure it takes a little suspension of disbelief but not of a kind we haven’t always had to make to follow the story. For me BtVS only ever made sense as magic realism never as straight fantasy – as I prefer magic realism that worked out just fine. That said the comic isn’t saying that literally everyone thinks vampires are cool. Jacob’s mother doesn’t seem to feel that way and Alex definitely didn’t.
Which is why I thought it was an excellent idea for Buffy to never stray outside Sunnydale. Also, it was pretty heavily implied... make that outright stated that the hellmouth meant the supernatural activity was a lot more pervasive there than elsewhere.
If supernatural goings on are rare outside of Sunnydale (and LA and New York and Tokyo and South Korean naval territory and Italy…) isn’t it more excusable that people are taking the word of serious American journalists (Anderson Cooper and Keith Olberman) as their best guide to what vampires are really like?
Alternatively, the world (or its significant uban areas, LA, New York , Tokyo etc) is more like Sunnydale writ large and in Sunnydale we found out that public ignorance was in fact actively cultivated by those in charge. Which would fit with what Lindsey told Angel about the soaky apocalypse and the contacts in high places that Twilight clearly has. Is it so difficult to accept that what we have here – what ‘s been shown here is a combination of general apathy (vampires exist but they don’t matter), an increase in active interest by the disaffected and sufficient of the media powers that be in Twilight’s pocket to spin critical focus away from vampires and onto Slayers? It’s the oldest trick in the political book. Scapegoat the external ‘terrorist’ threat and divert attention from the internal discontents that drive young men to
drinkbeing drunk from.And yet it's been clearly stated twice now that Slayers who try to not work as Slayers end up dead, and that those who try to do it on their own end up dead. Why tell it if it doesn’t tell us anything about the world?
Everybody dies. It tells us exactly what not!Buffy said in The Chain. “The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? There is a chain between each and every one of us. You either feel its tug or you ignore it.” As times grow hard ignoring it gets harder. Eventually sleepwalking your life away in a Pleasantville dream stops being an option.
She gave them access to power, yes, but she also gave them a ticket to persecution.
Isn’t that blaming the Jews for the pogrom?