beer_good_foamy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beer_good_foamy) wrote2010-09-03 08:52 pm
beer_good_foamy) wrote2010-09-03 08:52 pm
Entry tags:
#36
Barring unforseen events, this is my last post on the Buffy comics. A couple of months ago, some people asked me to do a review of this issue when it came out. This is probably not that review - sorry, guys - but since I'd already jotted down a "previously on" before the last two issues, I might as well post it, along with some sort of final word.
So, for those who haven't been keeping up with the story or whose memory grew hazy over the six-month break, a short summary of the more recent events of Season 8 AKA Twilight.
Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world.
- Cyndi Lauper
Angelus: I got a message for Buffy.
Buffy: Why don't you give it to me yourself?
Angelus: Well, it's not really the kind of message you tell. It sort of involves finding the bodies of all your friends.
- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
At some point after "Not Fade Away" (we don't know if Joss counts After The Fall, but it's moot after ATF Bobby Ewinged itself), Angel traded his sanity and moral compass for Superman powers, put on a Mexican wrestling mask, renamed himself Twilight and took over the world. Now he's "focusing" humanity's efforts to love the vampires who kill them and exterminate vampire Slayers, except he's apparently just doing it for Buffy's sake (he claims he's trying to minimize damage, but we haven't actually seen him prevent anything - quite the contrary). When Buffy finds out, after many a strange adventure that somehow led to her also having Superman powers, she's understandably miffed that her high school boyfriend is responsible for killing hundreds of Slayers, hunting her all over the world, and basically making her life hell. But Angel tells her it's OK since he was just doing it toimpress Jodie Foster demoralize her, that he's not responsible for all the people he had killed since they would have died at some point anyway, and besides nobodysawmeyoucan'tproveanythingitlookedlikethatwhenIgothere. Then he starts sparkling. So Buffy does what any Twilight heroine would do at that point: drops trou and boinks Angel senseless (-er). What Angel has conveniently forgotten to tell her, however - and I'm sure it just slipped his mind - is that since the Universe is sentient and has its own Bangel fanfic (also called Twilight), this means that they ascend (literally, through outer space, while fucking) to a We-are-as-gods-like Eden (also called Twilight) where only the two of them will live happily ever after. How romantic. Unfortunately, the price for this is the destruction of Earth and everyone on it. Buffy points out that the apocalypse and the death of all their friends and loved ones (and, y'know, the entire human race and fluffy kittens too) is a bad thing, Angel says "nuh-uh", Buffy says "is too", Angel says "whatevs" and they go back to Earth just in time to meet up with Spike, who lives in a yellow submarine (no word yet on whether it's called Twilight, but the odds are pretty good).
---
I wrote that a month ago, thinking I'd write a proper review to tack onto it at some point. Because hey, it's Joss, and surely he had some reason for dragging this story out for four years even as it seemed to sink hopelessly into nonsense. And the Riley oneshot, for all its plot-related faults, was pretty decent. Then i read #36, hoping it would start getting things back on track, and... no. It got worse. I've read the interview with Scott Allie (who as usual works hard to dispel any notions that there might be a good story in here somewhere), I've read the defenses by various people, and I've got nothing.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things to snark at here. The sudden reveals of even more completely off-the-wall plot, as if they didn't have enough to make sense of already; The Master not only being back (if only Buffy had killed him all those years ago! Did you forget again, Joss?) but being the source of all magic in the world; Angel travelling back in time but not time-travelling, which is apparently a completely different thing; Angel suggesting that he needs psychiatric help when he hears dogs talking to him, and the dog not contradicting him; Willow, for some reason, turning Angel back into the superpowered villain instead of a harmless frog; Bella declaring the end of the world "the bestest day ever" and sending the guy who's been killing Slayers out to protect them from himself; that Angel could still have stopped all this by doing absolutely nothing; etc etc etc. There's even some potentially interesting tie-backs to the good ol' Bangel days of s1-s2 - The Master, the prophecy that only comes true if you try to stop it ("Prophecy Girl"), Angel's mind games to drive the object of his obsession desperate ("Lie To Me"), his plan to open a portal and suck the world into hell ("Becoming")... Maybe Allie really is honest this time when he promises it will finally start making sense by #39, 4 years into the story, and we won't get there and be told sorry, but it'll make sense by the end of Season 9. And it's quite possible that Emmie is right: maybe this time, the complete OOC-ness really is a plot point and not just a combination of misaimed fandom, bad writing, and Georges Jeanty. So, it's not that I'm ruling out that Joss has an explanation for all this, despite the all the new wtfery and Allie's assurances that it's going to be all about the action and explosions from now on. If we're really lucky, it might even be an explanation that makes sense, unlike 66.6% of the plot so far. I just don't see how an explanation can make it better.
It's hard to explain this. I've tried to phrase it in all sorts of rational-sounding arguments, with examples from the TV series (Angelus' reaction to voices telling him to kill people is still priceless), tried to parse the contradictory statements from both the story and the people behind it, tried to figure out what the plot is and why it's that way and where they're going and what it means and how on earth these are supposed to be the same characters as in the TV series. There were, at least up until they suddenly decided to make it all about the same old Buffy/Angel angst that the TV show left several seasons ago, some really interesting themes in Season 8 if you knew where to look. But de gustibus non est disputandum and I guess what it finally comes down to, for me, is that the entire Twilight plot is ... let's call it Jar Jar syndrome:
Jar Jar Binks is annoying. I don't want an explanation for why Jar Jar Binks is annoying. I don't want backstory on how he became so annoying. I don't want to see his medical report detailing the mental issues that make him annoying. I don't want excuses along the lines of "Well, the ewoks were a little annoying too, so clearly you just hate Jar Jar to have something to complain about." I don't want a huge epic story dragged out over four years which may or may not end with him being slightly less annoying. I don't want big tearjerker scenes in which he admits that he knows he's annoying. I don't want all the other characters reacting to Jar Jar being annoying and changing all their actions accordingly. I don't want to have to quantify why I find him annoying (and just a little bit offensive). He's just incredibly fucking annoying. That, in itself, makes him a bad character, and if you base the entire story around him, the entire story will be fundamentally flawed. The mere (almost) absence of Jar Jar Binks in parts II and III didn't in and of itself make those movies good, just slightly less annoying.
If you base an entire 4-year story around a nonsense plot that requires all characters up to and including The Universe itself to act insane, morally corrupt for no reason, and tremendously out of character, with every flaw quickly hidden under a bigger one and any sense of logic abandoned years ago, it doesn't matter if after four years they give us a good explanation for why the story was that way. The story as a whole still sucks, and any payoff can at best be a sigh of relief that it stops sucking.
But hey, at least once Season 8 is over, we'll never have to hear of it again, right?
So, for those who haven't been keeping up with the story or whose memory grew hazy over the six-month break, a short summary of the more recent events of Season 8 AKA Twilight.
Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world.
- Cyndi Lauper
Angelus: I got a message for Buffy.
Buffy: Why don't you give it to me yourself?
Angelus: Well, it's not really the kind of message you tell. It sort of involves finding the bodies of all your friends.
- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
At some point after "Not Fade Away" (we don't know if Joss counts After The Fall, but it's moot after ATF Bobby Ewinged itself), Angel traded his sanity and moral compass for Superman powers, put on a Mexican wrestling mask, renamed himself Twilight and took over the world. Now he's "focusing" humanity's efforts to love the vampires who kill them and exterminate vampire Slayers, except he's apparently just doing it for Buffy's sake (he claims he's trying to minimize damage, but we haven't actually seen him prevent anything - quite the contrary). When Buffy finds out, after many a strange adventure that somehow led to her also having Superman powers, she's understandably miffed that her high school boyfriend is responsible for killing hundreds of Slayers, hunting her all over the world, and basically making her life hell. But Angel tells her it's OK since he was just doing it to
---
I wrote that a month ago, thinking I'd write a proper review to tack onto it at some point. Because hey, it's Joss, and surely he had some reason for dragging this story out for four years even as it seemed to sink hopelessly into nonsense. And the Riley oneshot, for all its plot-related faults, was pretty decent. Then i read #36, hoping it would start getting things back on track, and... no. It got worse. I've read the interview with Scott Allie (who as usual works hard to dispel any notions that there might be a good story in here somewhere), I've read the defenses by various people, and I've got nothing.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things to snark at here. The sudden reveals of even more completely off-the-wall plot, as if they didn't have enough to make sense of already; The Master not only being back (if only Buffy had killed him all those years ago! Did you forget again, Joss?) but being the source of all magic in the world; Angel travelling back in time but not time-travelling, which is apparently a completely different thing; Angel suggesting that he needs psychiatric help when he hears dogs talking to him, and the dog not contradicting him; Willow, for some reason, turning Angel back into the superpowered villain instead of a harmless frog; Bella declaring the end of the world "the bestest day ever" and sending the guy who's been killing Slayers out to protect them from himself; that Angel could still have stopped all this by doing absolutely nothing; etc etc etc. There's even some potentially interesting tie-backs to the good ol' Bangel days of s1-s2 - The Master, the prophecy that only comes true if you try to stop it ("Prophecy Girl"), Angel's mind games to drive the object of his obsession desperate ("Lie To Me"), his plan to open a portal and suck the world into hell ("Becoming")... Maybe Allie really is honest this time when he promises it will finally start making sense by #39, 4 years into the story, and we won't get there and be told sorry, but it'll make sense by the end of Season 9. And it's quite possible that Emmie is right: maybe this time, the complete OOC-ness really is a plot point and not just a combination of misaimed fandom, bad writing, and Georges Jeanty. So, it's not that I'm ruling out that Joss has an explanation for all this, despite the all the new wtfery and Allie's assurances that it's going to be all about the action and explosions from now on. If we're really lucky, it might even be an explanation that makes sense, unlike 66.6% of the plot so far. I just don't see how an explanation can make it better.
It's hard to explain this. I've tried to phrase it in all sorts of rational-sounding arguments, with examples from the TV series (Angelus' reaction to voices telling him to kill people is still priceless), tried to parse the contradictory statements from both the story and the people behind it, tried to figure out what the plot is and why it's that way and where they're going and what it means and how on earth these are supposed to be the same characters as in the TV series. There were, at least up until they suddenly decided to make it all about the same old Buffy/Angel angst that the TV show left several seasons ago, some really interesting themes in Season 8 if you knew where to look. But de gustibus non est disputandum and I guess what it finally comes down to, for me, is that the entire Twilight plot is ... let's call it Jar Jar syndrome:
Jar Jar Binks is annoying. I don't want an explanation for why Jar Jar Binks is annoying. I don't want backstory on how he became so annoying. I don't want to see his medical report detailing the mental issues that make him annoying. I don't want excuses along the lines of "Well, the ewoks were a little annoying too, so clearly you just hate Jar Jar to have something to complain about." I don't want a huge epic story dragged out over four years which may or may not end with him being slightly less annoying. I don't want big tearjerker scenes in which he admits that he knows he's annoying. I don't want all the other characters reacting to Jar Jar being annoying and changing all their actions accordingly. I don't want to have to quantify why I find him annoying (and just a little bit offensive). He's just incredibly fucking annoying. That, in itself, makes him a bad character, and if you base the entire story around him, the entire story will be fundamentally flawed. The mere (almost) absence of Jar Jar Binks in parts II and III didn't in and of itself make those movies good, just slightly less annoying.
If you base an entire 4-year story around a nonsense plot that requires all characters up to and including The Universe itself to act insane, morally corrupt for no reason, and tremendously out of character, with every flaw quickly hidden under a bigger one and any sense of logic abandoned years ago, it doesn't matter if after four years they give us a good explanation for why the story was that way. The story as a whole still sucks, and any payoff can at best be a sigh of relief that it stops sucking.
But hey, at least once Season 8 is over, we'll never have to hear of it again, right?
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