what do you do when you get a computer hacker to narrate her own story and the world around her?
You get what you get when you have a computer programmer do something by themselves without the aid of a system architect: trial and error, with constant bugfixes and a non-userfriendly interface. :)
Which, a narrower version of apes/angels is cavemen/astronauts (...) Hey have you seen season five of Mad Men yet?
Oh yeah, there's another epigram: "She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper. She's an astronaut." (Bert Cooper) Except neither Willow nor Illyria die in this, even though it's doubtful if they're still what they define themselves as.
Which is to say yes, I've seen s5. Thought it was often brilliant, though in the end it felt a bit like a lead-up to s6 (I'm guessing).
Cavemen do eventually win, if you take away astronauts' weapons (physical world eventually overwhelms the abstract, maybe), but what happens if the astronauts keep their weapons?
Ah yes, that old favourite. :) For starters, I always disagreed that cavemen win, with or without weapons. Cavemen were hunter-gatherers who spent their entire lives just above starvation, not necessarily brawlers, while (most) astronauts all have military training including hand-to-hand combat. But even so, astronauts' best weapons are their brains, or rather their knowledge of what is possible. Speaking of Star Trek, remember Kirk's comment about Khan still thinking two-dimensionally...?
Buffy's right to be the sole arbiter of good is so unquestioned that it takes becoming the Big Bad and for Buffy to be completely useless in stopping her (though she saves Jonathan and Andrew and Dawn) for Willow to knock a big enough chink in Buffy's Sole Protagonist armour for Buffy to herself realize that that is the key to saving the world the next year.
Oh, I like that.
I've been feeling a little washed up in Willow Should Know Her Place land lately
Urgh. Yeah, I really know what you mean. I had a discussion with someone over at Mark Watches who told me that "Frankly, you can't deny that everything Willow does with magic helps no one but... herself!" and I had to sit on my hands to not respond "Frankly, you don't make an argument simply by using the word 'frankly' and dramatic ellipses." I get why a lot of people have a hard time with Willow's s6-s7 arc, but I really think both the show and the character needs both Willow and Spike (and to a lesser extent Faith) to serve Buffy's story. (Plus, the whole underlying "Wanting power is a bad thing unless it was arbitrarily given to you against your will!" message is... like I said, urgh.)
I saw that discussion and I basically agreed with you, but yeah, it didn't seem like the right place to continue it. I need to get a few things in order and we may have a post to discuss stuff like that soon... :) (And tbh I always feel a bit light-headed when discussing philosophy with norwie - hell, he's READ all that stuff. :) ) I keep thinking lately about that Doctor Who line, the "question hidden in plain sight": Buffy The Vampire Slayer isn't just the title of the show, it's the problem to be solved. The narrative is its own enemy. Its purpose is to be strong enough to destroy itself. (And there's that Cabin In The Woods ending again...)
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You get what you get when you have a computer programmer do something by themselves without the aid of a system architect: trial and error, with constant bugfixes and a non-userfriendly interface. :)
Which, a narrower version of apes/angels is cavemen/astronauts (...) Hey have you seen season five of Mad Men yet?
Oh yeah, there's another epigram: "She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper. She's an astronaut." (Bert Cooper) Except neither Willow nor Illyria die in this, even though it's doubtful if they're still what they define themselves as.
Which is to say yes, I've seen s5. Thought it was often brilliant, though in the end it felt a bit like a lead-up to s6 (I'm guessing).
Cavemen do eventually win, if you take away astronauts' weapons (physical world eventually overwhelms the abstract, maybe), but what happens if the astronauts keep their weapons?
Ah yes, that old favourite. :) For starters, I always disagreed that cavemen win, with or without weapons. Cavemen were hunter-gatherers who spent their entire lives just above starvation, not necessarily brawlers, while (most) astronauts all have military training including hand-to-hand combat. But even so, astronauts' best weapons are their brains, or rather their knowledge of what is possible. Speaking of Star Trek, remember Kirk's comment about Khan still thinking two-dimensionally...?
Buffy's right to be the sole arbiter of good is so unquestioned that it takes becoming the Big Bad and for Buffy to be completely useless in stopping her (though she saves Jonathan and Andrew and Dawn) for Willow to knock a big enough chink in Buffy's Sole Protagonist armour for Buffy to herself realize that that is the key to saving the world the next year.
Oh, I like that.
I've been feeling a little washed up in Willow Should Know Her Place land lately
Urgh. Yeah, I really know what you mean. I had a discussion with someone over at Mark Watches who told me that "Frankly, you can't deny that everything Willow does with magic helps no one but... herself!" and I had to sit on my hands to not respond "Frankly, you don't make an argument simply by using the word 'frankly' and dramatic ellipses." I get why a lot of people have a hard time with Willow's s6-s7 arc, but I really think both the show and the character needs both Willow and Spike (and to a lesser extent Faith) to serve Buffy's story. (Plus, the whole underlying "Wanting power is a bad thing unless it was arbitrarily given to you against your will!" message is... like I said, urgh.)
I saw that discussion and I basically agreed with you, but yeah, it didn't seem like the right place to continue it. I need to get a few things in order and we may have a post to discuss stuff like that soon... :) (And tbh I always feel a bit light-headed when discussing philosophy with norwie - hell, he's READ all that stuff. :) ) I keep thinking lately about that Doctor Who line, the "question hidden in plain sight": Buffy The Vampire Slayer isn't just the title of the show, it's the problem to be solved. The narrative is its own enemy. Its purpose is to be strong enough to destroy itself. (And there's that Cabin In The Woods ending again...)