beer_good_foamy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beer_good_foamy) wrote2008-09-10 12:47 am
beer_good_foamy) wrote2008-09-10 12:47 am
Entry tags:
#18
Rambling thoughts on Season 8 #18, which left me feeling both intrigued and increasingly uneasy.
It's a small scene, but it's one that seems to spell out in very large letters what's going on with our title character and raises a number of questions.
Two Slayers come across a gang of vampires attacking defenseless humans. One, Melaka Fray, immediately charges in to stop them and then tends to the wounded. The other, Buffy Summers, tells her to sit back, let the vampires do their thing and then follow them back to their HQ – "look at the big picture." Later on, we even see Buffy complain that Fray refused to do as told. Really, how dare she ignore authority and experience? Since when is a Slayer supposed to save people, think for herself, and make up her own rules? Doesn't she know who Buffy is?
BUFFY: Wait. Handbook? What handbook? How come I don't have a handbook?
WILLOW: Is there a T-shirt, too? 'Cause that would be cool...
GILES: After meeting you, Buffy, I realized that, uh, the handbook would be of no use in your case.
BUFFY: I’m a Slayer from a long time ago. Buffy. You may have read about me?
We'll get back to that. There's three storylines in this arc, two of which are very closely connected and one which continues to be pure (if very repetititive) crack. The second of the interesting storylines is the tale of two Willows, one Kennedy and a snake.
We first saw the big green snake Saga Vasuki in #10, with a naked Willow in her arms. Now we get a proper interaction between her and Willow for the first time, and find out some, um, interesting stuff. The idea that Willow can only contact her while having an orgasm is, um, interesting and a nice callback to some good ol' fashioned s4 lesbian-sex-as-magic-metaphor. That's not to say it's all hugs and puppies, though; for one thing, I wonder if Willow has filled Kennedy in on all the, um, interesting details about where she goes and who she goes to... somehow I doubt it; there's gotta be some reason Joss made a big point of Kennedy's views on fidelity in #16, and Willow's expression and body language post-coitus positively scream "guilt." For another, we still don't know how trustworthy Saga Vasuki is, what the exact nature of their relationship is, how they came into contact in the first place, whether Willow knows what she's doing or is in over her head, etc... Call me prejudiced, but we have a huge magical green snake in an arc where green snake demons are killing Slayers (so far, apparently, unbeknownst to anyone in NYC – don't they have phones in Scotland?), who associates with and teaches people who try to wipe the Slayers from the face of the Earth, who passes on information that leads directly into a trap, who knows when the portal will open again, and who hints that she knows perfectly well what Willow will see if she looks into the future... With all that, I'm not going to go with innocent until proven guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt. As far as I can tell, the major factor suggesting that SV isn't a bad guy is that Willow trusts her, and even that seems to be in question since Willow apparently has spent some time trying to "hide" (#15 quote) from Saga Vasuki and approaches her with something between respect and submission. I'd really like to know why Willow is so sure of everything SV tells her. But even if it doesn't paint Willow in a very positive light, it's nice to see that plot progressing and getting filled in.
In the meantime, Future!Willow meets up with Fray and claims to not be human anymore and not have any magical powers – which raises a couple of interesting questions. What is she? If she's not powerful enough to do anything more than a small light show – who or what opened the time portal? (Hint: I'm thinking green scales.) And what exactly did she show Fray?
SAGA VASUKI: If you open the rift… reach across. Bring her back. But do not look.
FUTURE!WILLOW: I just need to show you something.
We'll get back to that. For now, let's just move on to the main storyline, which is easily done with the scene of Future!Willow having a chat with Fray. Fray is very easily convinced, isn't she? Perhaps not so surprising; after their patrol together, she's got good reason to not trust Buffy. If readers used Future!Willow's indifference towards Harth's vampires killing people in #17 as proof that she was evil-or-at-least-not-particularly-whitehat, what does that make Buffy? In fairness, it seems a logical development within the comic (that's as far as I'm willing to go) for the Buffy who, in #10, seems perfectly OK with not only putting those who fight WITH her at risk but also actively risk the lives of perfectly innocent bystanders if it serves "the bigger picture" (at least if that bigger picture had (useless) missile defenses and private airplanes). It would be nice if Buffy remembered why she considered being a cop – unless it was all about getting to order people around.
FRAY: You look. I'm gonna do our job.
I'm honestly torn here: are we really supposed to see Buffy as unsympathetic? Because if we are, it's a very interesting storyline – albeit one that hinges on her doing just about everything wrong since "Chosen" and abandoning some of her most basic moral guidelines (funnily enough, that was Twilight's stated plan in #11). Buffy as the Big Bad is an intriguing idea, for sure. We'll get back to that.
FRAY: Something skew with that girl.
But if we're still supposed to see her as the hero, then it gets really iffy since she's mostly coming across as power-hungry, egotistic and cold. If there's one defining trait that runs through the TV version of Buffy from "Welcome to the Hellmouth" to "Chosen", it's her wish to help others. That's what brought her back in "Anne", in "Helpless", in "The Weight of the World", in "Normal Again", etc etc. There were no acceptable losses – in fact, her inability to accept that was exactly what almost broke her in s7 and eventually led her to the drastic move in "Chosen": letting helpless people die needlessly was never OK. (Thinking about it, I suppose it is possible to read her entire arc as just selfishly wanting more power and refusing to give up her ability to solve things with violence, but somehow I doubt that that's the idea Whedon was gunning for.) So this is new. Our girl was always a bit self-centered, but this Buffy is almost solipsist; so isolated from everything – personally, geographically, and now temporally - that she seems to have lost track of what that big picture is supposed to be a picture of. Here's the very negative interpretation: Voll was right. If you're not a Slayer, you're not on Buffy Summers' love list. Humans never did anything for Buffy – her lovers are vampires (as pointed out here by Willow) and Slayers, her friends are either super-powered fighters or loyal followers, the only thing the ordinary Joe Sixpacks do is get in the way, need rescuing, declare war on you... Isn't Buffy "Superiority complex" Summers, and by extension all of the girls that SHE empowered, better and more important than them? Yes, that's a VERY harsh conclusion, and I may be very wrong. But the thing is, it seems to fit with more than a few things Buffy has been up to in the comics. Her "Other SLAYERS?" to Gigi, her continuing annoyed non-concern for Dawn, her disowning of Giles, her strained relationship with Willow... if they're not Slayers, if they don't serve The Cause (whatever that may be) then what good are they? Look at the big picture. Half a dozen ordinary people dead is a cheap price to pay to restore things to the way they should be: with a big Slayer army to handle things the way Buffy thinks they should be handled.
BUFFY2: It’s fascism is what it is.
Of course, a far more benevolent interpretation – and one that would fit somewhat better with the way she was presented in TV canon – is simply that the pressure has gotten to her. Buffy being who she is, and with the way the other Slayers have come to see her, the good idea that was "Chosen" has turned spectacularly sour. Buffy has been unable to actually share her power (making the TV series finale a little more pointless if you take this as canon, but hey) and, with her control freak tendencies kicking in full-blast, got so caught up in assembling, training and protecting her army that she's been in the verge of a nervous breakdown for some time now and simply cannot get back to the old ways. She's lost the mission, bro.
BUFFY: Vampire by vampire. It's the only way I know how.
No matter which of these is true, she's definitely not doing well. In short: it may be about power, but is it about using it – and for whose benefit – or just getting it, holding on to it, and getting it back at any cost if you lose it?
So while all of that is going on, and is making Buffy very unsympathetic but at least in an interesting way, we've got Dawn and Xander meeting the Knights who say Ni. Well, their barkier cousins. It's not a bad idea as such – they're in the old world now, and bound to come up against some monsters that trace their lineage further back than to Karloff and Lugosi – but while it's a fun gag (or would be if I weren't so bored with that whole storyline) what happened to the supposedly very serious attack in which a bunch of Slayers got killed? Are we supposed to care, or is it really all just a joke? Well, according to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girlpire's dragoncon report, Allie says "the whole reason Dawn's a centaur now is because Joss wanted to use the Dawn/Xander 'ride me' joke." OK, fine. So now that they've told that joke – twice, even – I guess they'll be dropping Centaur!Dawn just like they dropped Giant!Dawn after setting up for 15 issues just to tell a Godzilla joke, right? Right? Please?
...Sorry, there I go again. Moving right along, let's get back to the discussion between Willow and Fray.
FRAY: I’m not killing any Slayer.
WILLOW: She won’t show the same mercy.
Paired with the "Slayer of Slayers" line in #16, that sounds pretty ominous. This Willow, after all, knows how Buffy's story ends (in this timeline), and what she showed Fray – true or not - was obviously very incriminating. So if Buffy does end up killing one or more Slayers, who's for the chop? People have been worrying about Kennedy (or would have been, if not for the fact that the majority of the Buffy fandom would still be howling for poor Kennedy's blood even if we'd spent an entire arc on her rescuing puppies, catching Bin Laden, and stopping the greenhouse effect while naked) but I'm starting to wonder... with the whole timey-wimey thing going on and Willow's line about "what happens in your time will cause your time to come", what if it's Fray? And what would it do to Buffy to actually put down one of her own – especially one who, unlike Faith in s3, is unmistakably the good guy? Would that be the rough awakening that Buffy seems to need about now, and if so would it be too late, or would it push her over the edge completely? It's funny; I can accept that Giles, Willow, Faith, Angel, Gunn, and Wesley are murderers and still see them as essentially good, but I have trouble seeing Buffy in the same situation. Maybe I'm just a hypocrite, or maybe it's such an integral part of her character that it would be difficult to bring her back from that. Of course, it's also quite possible that what Fray was shown is something that hasn't yet happened in Buffy's timeline – after all, she says she's saving the world, not herself. Is this Fray deliberately causing – or undoing - her own future?
There's a lot of talk about being shown things. Saga Vasuki showed Willow something that led them into a trap. Willow must not look through the portal, possibly for the simple reason that she'll see what she might become – and for whatever reason, that's not inher mistress' Saga's best interests. Fray looked at Future!Willow's vision and saw something that turned her against Buffy. Buffy has gotten to see what a world without a Slayer army looks like. Fray tells Buffy to look at a Slayer doing her job. What if it's all just about seeing what might happen? With a perfectly valid sideplot involving Harth and various other vamps to beat up, it's quite possible that this will all end with nothing more traumatic for Buffy than getting sent back to her own time (possibly with a brief layover in cartoonland) having seen what's to come - "Get It Done" all over again. Supposedly; because we still have Future!Willow's line about something in Fray's timeline causing Fray's timeline to happen, and just because Buffy knows what could happen doesn't necessarily mean she knows how to stop it. Prophecies and visions are notoriously ambiguous, and we've seen more than one case in the Buffyverse where trying to stop something from happening is actually what causes it to happen...
And here's a thought: given that vampires are supposed to become common knowledge after #21 or so, is it possible that Buffy decides to spread the info specifically to stop this future? Or maybe she's already working on that – what if her date in #16 was with a reporter? Let's get everyone to read about her.
That all remains to be seen, of course, so we'll get back to that at some future point. Right now, I suppose we'll have to settle for debating exactly how far off the rails Buffy has gone and might still go. With her now letting vampires kill people, I'm reminded of the old doctor's joke about how a hospital would work much more efficiently if it weren't for those pesky patients getting in the way. Who cares if the "Chosen" spell was a good idea or not at the time? Operation successful; patientdead not at all well.
BUFFY: I created a race of Slayers. To tip the scales, to beat back the darkness. To make the world better.
VOLL: You’ve upset the balance, girl. Do you really think we were going to sit by and let you create a master race? You’re not human. You’ve been to war with demons, with the First, but believe me you picked the wrong side. ‘Cause God help us, if you win then you’ll decide the world still isn’t the way you want it and the demon in you will say just one thing. “Slay.”
BUFFY: Does any part of that of that sentence involve me beating something up? Include me in.
Any time you're ready to start proving him wrong, showing us that you're still the good guy, and reminding us why we loved your TV incarnation, Buffy, get back to me. Just don't wait too long, and try not to kick the dog too hard.
Meanwhile, a few random questions:
- Would you let someone who just arrived from 200 years ago drive a stolen car through downtown Manhattan? With you in it?
- What in the history books is "too ridiculous to comprehend"?
- What would have happened if Buffy had done her job and jumped in with Fray? Wouldn't she have met up with Willow too?
- Given Fray's familiarity with Buffy's face, that Snyder line (hee!) and the upcoming cartoon oneshot, is it possible that Buffy is indeed a fictional character in Fray's timeline? After all, we've seen a 21st century Slayer reading Fray...
It's a small scene, but it's one that seems to spell out in very large letters what's going on with our title character and raises a number of questions.
Two Slayers come across a gang of vampires attacking defenseless humans. One, Melaka Fray, immediately charges in to stop them and then tends to the wounded. The other, Buffy Summers, tells her to sit back, let the vampires do their thing and then follow them back to their HQ – "look at the big picture." Later on, we even see Buffy complain that Fray refused to do as told. Really, how dare she ignore authority and experience? Since when is a Slayer supposed to save people, think for herself, and make up her own rules? Doesn't she know who Buffy is?
BUFFY: Wait. Handbook? What handbook? How come I don't have a handbook?
WILLOW: Is there a T-shirt, too? 'Cause that would be cool...
GILES: After meeting you, Buffy, I realized that, uh, the handbook would be of no use in your case.
BUFFY: I’m a Slayer from a long time ago. Buffy. You may have read about me?
We'll get back to that. There's three storylines in this arc, two of which are very closely connected and one which continues to be pure (if very repetititive) crack. The second of the interesting storylines is the tale of two Willows, one Kennedy and a snake.
We first saw the big green snake Saga Vasuki in #10, with a naked Willow in her arms. Now we get a proper interaction between her and Willow for the first time, and find out some, um, interesting stuff. The idea that Willow can only contact her while having an orgasm is, um, interesting and a nice callback to some good ol' fashioned s4 lesbian-sex-as-magic-metaphor. That's not to say it's all hugs and puppies, though; for one thing, I wonder if Willow has filled Kennedy in on all the, um, interesting details about where she goes and who she goes to... somehow I doubt it; there's gotta be some reason Joss made a big point of Kennedy's views on fidelity in #16, and Willow's expression and body language post-coitus positively scream "guilt." For another, we still don't know how trustworthy Saga Vasuki is, what the exact nature of their relationship is, how they came into contact in the first place, whether Willow knows what she's doing or is in over her head, etc... Call me prejudiced, but we have a huge magical green snake in an arc where green snake demons are killing Slayers (so far, apparently, unbeknownst to anyone in NYC – don't they have phones in Scotland?), who associates with and teaches people who try to wipe the Slayers from the face of the Earth, who passes on information that leads directly into a trap, who knows when the portal will open again, and who hints that she knows perfectly well what Willow will see if she looks into the future... With all that, I'm not going to go with innocent until proven guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt. As far as I can tell, the major factor suggesting that SV isn't a bad guy is that Willow trusts her, and even that seems to be in question since Willow apparently has spent some time trying to "hide" (#15 quote) from Saga Vasuki and approaches her with something between respect and submission. I'd really like to know why Willow is so sure of everything SV tells her. But even if it doesn't paint Willow in a very positive light, it's nice to see that plot progressing and getting filled in.
In the meantime, Future!Willow meets up with Fray and claims to not be human anymore and not have any magical powers – which raises a couple of interesting questions. What is she? If she's not powerful enough to do anything more than a small light show – who or what opened the time portal? (Hint: I'm thinking green scales.) And what exactly did she show Fray?
SAGA VASUKI: If you open the rift… reach across. Bring her back. But do not look.
FUTURE!WILLOW: I just need to show you something.
We'll get back to that. For now, let's just move on to the main storyline, which is easily done with the scene of Future!Willow having a chat with Fray. Fray is very easily convinced, isn't she? Perhaps not so surprising; after their patrol together, she's got good reason to not trust Buffy. If readers used Future!Willow's indifference towards Harth's vampires killing people in #17 as proof that she was evil-or-at-least-not-particularly-whitehat, what does that make Buffy? In fairness, it seems a logical development within the comic (that's as far as I'm willing to go) for the Buffy who, in #10, seems perfectly OK with not only putting those who fight WITH her at risk but also actively risk the lives of perfectly innocent bystanders if it serves "the bigger picture" (at least if that bigger picture had (useless) missile defenses and private airplanes). It would be nice if Buffy remembered why she considered being a cop – unless it was all about getting to order people around.
FRAY: You look. I'm gonna do our job.
I'm honestly torn here: are we really supposed to see Buffy as unsympathetic? Because if we are, it's a very interesting storyline – albeit one that hinges on her doing just about everything wrong since "Chosen" and abandoning some of her most basic moral guidelines (funnily enough, that was Twilight's stated plan in #11). Buffy as the Big Bad is an intriguing idea, for sure. We'll get back to that.
FRAY: Something skew with that girl.
But if we're still supposed to see her as the hero, then it gets really iffy since she's mostly coming across as power-hungry, egotistic and cold. If there's one defining trait that runs through the TV version of Buffy from "Welcome to the Hellmouth" to "Chosen", it's her wish to help others. That's what brought her back in "Anne", in "Helpless", in "The Weight of the World", in "Normal Again", etc etc. There were no acceptable losses – in fact, her inability to accept that was exactly what almost broke her in s7 and eventually led her to the drastic move in "Chosen": letting helpless people die needlessly was never OK. (Thinking about it, I suppose it is possible to read her entire arc as just selfishly wanting more power and refusing to give up her ability to solve things with violence, but somehow I doubt that that's the idea Whedon was gunning for.) So this is new. Our girl was always a bit self-centered, but this Buffy is almost solipsist; so isolated from everything – personally, geographically, and now temporally - that she seems to have lost track of what that big picture is supposed to be a picture of. Here's the very negative interpretation: Voll was right. If you're not a Slayer, you're not on Buffy Summers' love list. Humans never did anything for Buffy – her lovers are vampires (as pointed out here by Willow) and Slayers, her friends are either super-powered fighters or loyal followers, the only thing the ordinary Joe Sixpacks do is get in the way, need rescuing, declare war on you... Isn't Buffy "Superiority complex" Summers, and by extension all of the girls that SHE empowered, better and more important than them? Yes, that's a VERY harsh conclusion, and I may be very wrong. But the thing is, it seems to fit with more than a few things Buffy has been up to in the comics. Her "Other SLAYERS?" to Gigi, her continuing annoyed non-concern for Dawn, her disowning of Giles, her strained relationship with Willow... if they're not Slayers, if they don't serve The Cause (whatever that may be) then what good are they? Look at the big picture. Half a dozen ordinary people dead is a cheap price to pay to restore things to the way they should be: with a big Slayer army to handle things the way Buffy thinks they should be handled.
BUFFY2: It’s fascism is what it is.
Of course, a far more benevolent interpretation – and one that would fit somewhat better with the way she was presented in TV canon – is simply that the pressure has gotten to her. Buffy being who she is, and with the way the other Slayers have come to see her, the good idea that was "Chosen" has turned spectacularly sour. Buffy has been unable to actually share her power (making the TV series finale a little more pointless if you take this as canon, but hey) and, with her control freak tendencies kicking in full-blast, got so caught up in assembling, training and protecting her army that she's been in the verge of a nervous breakdown for some time now and simply cannot get back to the old ways. She's lost the mission, bro.
BUFFY: Vampire by vampire. It's the only way I know how.
No matter which of these is true, she's definitely not doing well. In short: it may be about power, but is it about using it – and for whose benefit – or just getting it, holding on to it, and getting it back at any cost if you lose it?
So while all of that is going on, and is making Buffy very unsympathetic but at least in an interesting way, we've got Dawn and Xander meeting the Knights who say Ni. Well, their barkier cousins. It's not a bad idea as such – they're in the old world now, and bound to come up against some monsters that trace their lineage further back than to Karloff and Lugosi – but while it's a fun gag (or would be if I weren't so bored with that whole storyline) what happened to the supposedly very serious attack in which a bunch of Slayers got killed? Are we supposed to care, or is it really all just a joke? Well, according to
girlpire's dragoncon report, Allie says "the whole reason Dawn's a centaur now is because Joss wanted to use the Dawn/Xander 'ride me' joke." OK, fine. So now that they've told that joke – twice, even – I guess they'll be dropping Centaur!Dawn just like they dropped Giant!Dawn after setting up for 15 issues just to tell a Godzilla joke, right? Right? Please?Apparently, in an upcoming issue, the naked horse parts become... an issue... when a male horse sort of smells her out and becomes interested. Dawn is indignant and Xander and Willow have to "cockblock the horse."Oh, FMGWAC... I said gently. Just remember, kids: it's most definitely not crackfic. Nope. Perish the thought.
...Sorry, there I go again. Moving right along, let's get back to the discussion between Willow and Fray.
FRAY: I’m not killing any Slayer.
WILLOW: She won’t show the same mercy.
Paired with the "Slayer of Slayers" line in #16, that sounds pretty ominous. This Willow, after all, knows how Buffy's story ends (in this timeline), and what she showed Fray – true or not - was obviously very incriminating. So if Buffy does end up killing one or more Slayers, who's for the chop? People have been worrying about Kennedy (or would have been, if not for the fact that the majority of the Buffy fandom would still be howling for poor Kennedy's blood even if we'd spent an entire arc on her rescuing puppies, catching Bin Laden, and stopping the greenhouse effect while naked) but I'm starting to wonder... with the whole timey-wimey thing going on and Willow's line about "what happens in your time will cause your time to come", what if it's Fray? And what would it do to Buffy to actually put down one of her own – especially one who, unlike Faith in s3, is unmistakably the good guy? Would that be the rough awakening that Buffy seems to need about now, and if so would it be too late, or would it push her over the edge completely? It's funny; I can accept that Giles, Willow, Faith, Angel, Gunn, and Wesley are murderers and still see them as essentially good, but I have trouble seeing Buffy in the same situation. Maybe I'm just a hypocrite, or maybe it's such an integral part of her character that it would be difficult to bring her back from that. Of course, it's also quite possible that what Fray was shown is something that hasn't yet happened in Buffy's timeline – after all, she says she's saving the world, not herself. Is this Fray deliberately causing – or undoing - her own future?
There's a lot of talk about being shown things. Saga Vasuki showed Willow something that led them into a trap. Willow must not look through the portal, possibly for the simple reason that she'll see what she might become – and for whatever reason, that's not in
And here's a thought: given that vampires are supposed to become common knowledge after #21 or so, is it possible that Buffy decides to spread the info specifically to stop this future? Or maybe she's already working on that – what if her date in #16 was with a reporter? Let's get everyone to read about her.
That all remains to be seen, of course, so we'll get back to that at some future point. Right now, I suppose we'll have to settle for debating exactly how far off the rails Buffy has gone and might still go. With her now letting vampires kill people, I'm reminded of the old doctor's joke about how a hospital would work much more efficiently if it weren't for those pesky patients getting in the way. Who cares if the "Chosen" spell was a good idea or not at the time? Operation successful; patient
BUFFY: I created a race of Slayers. To tip the scales, to beat back the darkness. To make the world better.
VOLL: You’ve upset the balance, girl. Do you really think we were going to sit by and let you create a master race? You’re not human. You’ve been to war with demons, with the First, but believe me you picked the wrong side. ‘Cause God help us, if you win then you’ll decide the world still isn’t the way you want it and the demon in you will say just one thing. “Slay.”
BUFFY: Does any part of that of that sentence involve me beating something up? Include me in.
Any time you're ready to start proving him wrong, showing us that you're still the good guy, and reminding us why we loved your TV incarnation, Buffy, get back to me. Just don't wait too long, and try not to kick the dog too hard.
Meanwhile, a few random questions:
- Would you let someone who just arrived from 200 years ago drive a stolen car through downtown Manhattan? With you in it?
- What in the history books is "too ridiculous to comprehend"?
- What would have happened if Buffy had done her job and jumped in with Fray? Wouldn't she have met up with Willow too?
- Given Fray's familiarity with Buffy's face, that Snyder line (hee!) and the upcoming cartoon oneshot, is it possible that Buffy is indeed a fictional character in Fray's timeline? After all, we've seen a 21st century Slayer reading Fray...