Musings

[beer_good_foamy]

First of all, I just discovered that I won some stuff at wicked_awards! Check out all the winners here - I'm proud to be in such illustrous company.



Also... I hesitate to call this meta since I'm not exactly sure if it's fully thought through, but what the hell. So I'm watching Buffy s6 and I'm reading N. Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman (which is interesting, especially if you're into cyborgs and Neal Stephenson and perception of reality and the nature of humanity as encoded information and so forth, but very heavy on theory). Anyway, I stumble onto this section on entropy which got me thinking.

Things Fall Apart. The Centre Cannot Hold. Should It?

Season 6 is the season with no Big Bad, no huge arc, no outside disturbance, all conflicts turned inwards. Everything comes from inside, dug up (quite literally in Buffy's case) from within themselves, all the old unaddressed conflicts unearthed to lash out at each other. (They even spend an entire episode locked in the same house with two complete strangers - failed attempts at making friends outside their warforged group - as if to hammer the point home.) Culminating in "Entropy", where everything gets ripped apart, every spanner in sight is thrown into the works, to lead to complete heat death in the next episode.

The title of "Entropy", of course, might remind you of the layman's version of the (not as simple as it sounds) second law of thermodynamics; within a closed system, entropy increases. Or as Tara defines it after they've spent a whole season with no new challenges, no new energy, no new information from outside their own closed circle:

TARA: Things fall apart. They fall apart so hard. You can't ever put them back the way they were.

Now this is, of course, normally seen as something bad. And obviously, "Entropy" and "Seeing Red" aren't exactly happy episodes. Order deteriorates into chaos, strong binds are ripped apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, etc. That thing we liked changes.

Hayles notes this common concept of entropy. And then she flips it, saying: Entropy is (can be) GOOD - or at least essential. Earlier, she's dismissed the notion that perfect communication of information only happens when the exact same information is received as was sent, when there's no noise to disturb the signal – that that's a misunderstanding of communication, since it would mean no new information ever turns up. With no changes (mutations) in the existing message, there's no evolution, whether biological or philosophical. Information, by definition, must be unique; otherwise, it's just noise. So if the world can be organized as information, then it follows that the more things stay the same, the less distinct one thing is from another, the stricter we organise everything into clearly defined boxes - the less information there is, since there are a limited and shrinking number of possible patterns and combinations.

...identifying entropy with information can be seen as a crucial crossing point, for this allowed entropy to be reconceptualized as the thermodynamic motor driving systems to self-organization rather than as the heat engine driving the world to universal heat death. (…) As a result, chaos went from being associated with dissipation in the Victorian sense of dissolute living and reckless waste to being associated with dissipation in a newly positive sense of increasing complexity and new life.

The end of season 6 is horrific and heartbreaking and things will never be the same again after that. Things fall apart into chaos. But it's also the season that starts with Buffy descending into hell and ends with her climbing out of her grave into a brightly lit multi-coloured garden, and gives way to a season that changes the entire basis of the show and ultimately turns it into something completely different, turning from The Slayer to Slayers. From entropy springs not annihilation, but increased complexity and new life. (There's a reason Destruction is was one of the Endless.)

In short, the much-maligned Beljoxa's Eye was right; the noise that got introduced into the signal when Buffy was resurrected ended up garbling the message. The signal that had passed unchanged for millennia mutated. One year later, there are thousands of Slayers, and millions of fans, all with their own version of the message.

JOSS: Write fanfic.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this. But I found it interesting. Here's a song for ya.

The sun don't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning 'round.

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I love so much the idea here that it's about a closed system. The villains here? There's the gang. There's the Trio who are a shadow Scooby gang, and useless to boot. There's Amy, who is was in Willow's care. Stuart Burns is Anya's victim, Halfrek William's castoff and Anya's BFF, Wig Lady Buffy's customer, Sweet got summoned, the Loan Shark is out to collect Spike's debts, and then we're basically left with Dawn's vampire boyfriend, a second-rate druggy-magic dealer and a demon who cheats at kitten poker. Closed box. And it's also where instead of introducing new metaphors, new supernatural elements, they are exhausted until we're left with nothing but awful humanity, an attempted rape on the bathroom floor, a gunshot through the window and a woman's perfect order all collapsing into chaotic rage.

This is right after season five, in which Glory is a bit of a perpetual motion machine, feeding her way through humans. Dawn is added to the show and she contains a seemingly infinite amount of energy (and story potential), but it gets used up on that tower. (Adam was a 100% closed system, relying on nuclear decay to keep him running. Until he started upgrading.)

And you know, Giles gets out in Tabula Rasa--he shouldn't, maybe, but he does--Tara leaves but comes back, and after seeing where Entropy gets him Spike leaves town. Because Giles got out he can add a new element to the system at the season's end. He comes in with something new, imbues Willow with new magic, deeper power and connection. And Spike asks for something that he has never had. Buffy's crawling out of the grave into spring (spring brings new flowers, new life), Spike's soul and Willow's power are the new-element trifecta that leads to the slayer spell and the end of the Hellmouth.

I just love the image of Willow wrecking the Magic Box at the season's end, at any rate. And I love that the finale in three acts is basically just Willow tearing at and apart the tiny, tiny world they've built together. But it's like that house falling down in Smashed. Left to itself, it has to fall down. And you need that before you can build something else. And season seven begins with the high school being rebuilt.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Rather enjoyed reading this meta. Nothing thoughtful to add. Just thanks for reminding me of why I loved that show and season as much as I did. I'd forgotten.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Puts a slant on that season that never occurred to me. Bravo. (and cookies for the awards. well done.)

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the awards and thanks for the meta. Good thinky thoughts.

[shapinglight]

Congrats on the awards. Prof Brian Cox in his Astrophysics for Idiots Wonders of the Universe series has already managed to convince me that entropy isn't so bad, and this argument fits right in with what he said.

Your argument also lends weight to those of us who think the underlying themes of season 7 are wonderful, even if the execution is occasionally botched.