Twenty-twenty-twentyfour
Apr. 2nd, 2009 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyI wasn't a huge fan of NFFY for various reasons, but there's no denying it was a well-told story with more character development than you could shick a stake at. So given my love for Faith, I was both looking forward to and dreading "Safe." Apart from the blurb, I had no idea what to expect of it.
But given how relatively successful NFFY was, I certainly didn't expectthe German inquisition a comic that's so metaphor-heavy that that's really all there is to it, with a plot that's equal part "Gingerbread" and Hostel, and almost no room for the characters to do anything at all except deliver the moral at the end. And while the art is among the worst so far – what happened to Richards since "Anywhere But Here"? – my main problem is with the writing.
People have complained about the depiction of Germany. And while there are still a couple of fairly rural places, the idea that a city in one of the most modern countries in Europe ("Dracula movie" indeed) can be this isolated by a demon and a gang of vampires for an entire generation spent sacrificing children is, of course, ridiculous, but that comes with the territory I suppose. (Again, see Hostel; anything "European" enough can be sold as essentially medieval, apparently, and any naïve American who goes there soon finds out how evil people really are. Married With Children did the same thing, btw.) Anyway, nevermind; maybe it's related to the Scottish wolves and the relaxed British gun laws somehow. Still, why don't they just move if they can't do anything about it? They're supposedly not under some sort of spell (as they were in "Gingerbread") or lulled into safety (as in Watership Down, which might be a slightly more benevolent comparison)... and you're telling me their first solution was to willingly sacrifice their own children rather than pack the Audi and move to the next town? The metaphor for the way things used to be in the fight against vampires is blatant, and if they hadn't already used Hansel and Gretel in the TV series the name of the town would have been pretty clever. But the story that's supposed to carry the metaphor doesn't work - unless we're deliberately supposed to be asking ourselves if mankind doesn't deserve to be wiped out. I like that Richards keeps trying throughout, though; from the "BAKERY" on the first page to the "BÄKEREI" and "BACKERAY" in Hanselstadt – another 10 pages and he might have stumbled across the correct spelling. ;-)
But nevermind, this isn't supposed to be a realistic series, it's about the characters. And Faith and Giles are woefully underused, despite supposedly being the main characters here. Nevermind the fact that we get no follow-up whatsoever on what they've been up to since last time we saw them (they seem to be pretty much on the same track) what do they actually do here? I suppose it's a good thing that we know they'll be turning up soon again, because much like the entirety of ATF, their appearance here serves little purpose for the characters but to make it clear that they're still around; the payoff depends on what happens to them next. (Though unlike ATF, at least there is a next.) The characters are only here to serve the metaphor.
Faith has a ton of backstory to work with, both implied and explicitly stated. And the best Krueger can come up with is to invent a brand new past trauma only to have her overcome it (without actually showing her overcoming it, since results are more interesting than character development in Season 8) 2 pages later? What, they didn't get the license to use Allan Finch, or Kakistos, or Angelus, or the Beast, or… Buffy? There's a fitting metaphorical layer to this ("Do you have any idea, girl, how many I've killed since your first few steps as a Slayer? How many I've sired since? How many they have sired themselves?") that matches the season arc, and I'm usually all for revealing interesting backstory, but if you have limited space to draw people in, why not use something they already have an opinion of - and if you're going to introduce something brand new, USE it. This feels so out-of-the-blue and then back-into-the-black that they could have told the exact same story with any other Slayer, and her reaction to it (which, again, we barely see) doesn't really tell us much about her we didn't already know. As motivations go, it's slightly more developed than Tucker "Twilight" Wells' reason for attacking the prom, only this time it's not supposed to be a joke. Oh well. I like the last scene, at least.
Also, Faith always referring to everyone by only their first initial is one of my pet peeves in bad fanfic.
Giles fares better. While he should have smelled the trapa mile 1.6 kilometres away, at least he figures it out eventually, and the "Jenny Calendar!" scene is actually pretty badass. His close relation with Faith may still creep me out a bit considering what he tried to have her become in NFFY, but at least he seems to have adopted much the same attitude towards her that he showed towards Buffy, and I guess they're both working on that atonement thing at the moment. So Giles saves Faith again; the girl needs a lot of that, apparently. Also, the reminder about the Watchers' council are interesting... and makes me not discount the "Lineage" cyborgs as Twilight.
But even with the glimpses of something good, the story itself is all over the place. The plot is a repeat, our lead characters are stuck completely in it with no real room to move, ideas are overstated (gee, Coco, could you say that bit about "choosing not to be chosen" just once more?), the dialogue is wooden and almost as unconvincing as the plot, the villain forgets what he said 2 minutes earlier (the monster needs innocent, open minds, so let's feed it... Giles?) This month's OCs... do we care? An old Watcher whom we've never heard of before and quickly turns out to be only slightly less psycho than Fray's, only to get the most clichéd ending possible; and a bland Slayer with a completely generic backstory and personality. And the supposed public love for vampires and hatred of Slayers is still supposedly driving the arc without ever actually being shown. I'm reminded of The Howling IV, where the budget was so low they couldn't afford werewolf suits and filmed every attack from the werewolf's POV…
The one interesting thing about the MOTW is that it very specifically targets the insecurities of each individual. This, along with the final shot (this arc is all about the final shots, isn't it?) might be worth keeping in mind - especially given Faith's explicit rejection of Buffy's methods on the last page.
FAITH: You people wanna live? Then you fight.
COURTNEY: Faith, I'm just... I haven't trained...
FAITH: There's only one lesson, kid. Aim for the heart.
That's not to say that the Slayer army is necessarily a bad concept; however, it can't be the *only* concept. Here's what I wrote about #21:
If there's still any trace of the original idea - battling demons as a metaphor for battling your own problems - then they need help to find their own way of doing it; not battle *Buffy's* demons.
"Yes, we are all different..." and so they can't all do it the same way. They've got the numbers now, they've had uprising; now they need an ideological revolution too, one in which the fight can be fought in many different ways - since it's not all the same fight.
Which leads us to the central metaphor of the story, which is quite interesting, clumsy though it is. Because what it seems to say is this: you cannot choose to not be chosen, to not take part. Whether this applies to everyone that Buffy supposedly empowered at the end of "Chosen" or just the ones that became aware of it and at one time decided to join the fight remains to be seen; but it's still something of a cold shower. Without wanting to get too far into the violation-or-empowerment debate, I think one problem is that "Chosen" and its fallout suffers – to a lesser degree, but still – a little bit from the same problem as this issue: the metaphor (giving people the strength to fight their own demons) and the story used to carry it (drafting thousands of girls into a life-or-death battle against bloodsucking fiends) have very different implications, one definitely good and the other all sorts of murky despite the best intentions. Of course you can choose not to fight, but as of this issue, doing so is likely to kill you (in a very complicated way involving medieval German peasants, but still). You'll be back in the library, one Slayer, one Watcher, dealing with your own demons by yourself, with no changes to the status quo; just an ever-repeating cycle of dead children. You either join the fight or you end up dead. The metaphor works; it's essentially a rephrasing of Mal's quote in the Firefly episode "The Train Job":
SHERIFF: These are tough times. A man can get a job, he might not look too close at what that job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours... well... then he has a choice.
MAL: I don't believe he does.
That's all hunky dory. But as a story, it pretty much makes a mockery of the idea that the Slayers who are not working with Buffy are free to live their lives any way they choose; it's join the cause or end up dead. Unless of course the improbablility of the story is just meant to signify that this is the extreme possibility, making it just an outside chance that maybe you'll still be in danger if you try to live a normal life, but then what was the point of this story?
Possible ways out of this, then?
It's interesting that Faith (very easily) rallies the "normal" people, the ones who supposedly hate Slayers and are ruthless enough to sacrifice their own kids, behind her. Funnily enough, in a season arc where the Slayers are supposedly at war with the human race, she's the first one in 24 issues to reach across that divide and try to get everyone on the same side – granted, it's questionable whose side the good upstanding citizens of Hanselstadt should be on, and whether Faith draws a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Maybe she should have just left them to the vampires? Are humans really that good?
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2maggie2 points out (and as pretty clumsily stated by both Courtney and the Watcher here in their diatribes against ungrateful humans) it's a pretty clear contrast to Simone's story in the previous issue. How do you fight against evil in a world that doesn't want you to? Here's the part where you make a choice: you can join the Slayer Army, with all its restrictions, and be (supposedly) persecuted by the world. You can try to fight by yourself, and be killed live on TV. You can say "fuck you" to humanity and become a villain yourself. You can try to stay out of it, and be sacrificed to a squid demon. Or, and I suppose this is the only bit where having Faith and Giles in this makes any sense, you can try to come up with something different; bring it back to the basics of why you fight and build whatever you need from there.
COURTNEY: You're her! You're Buffy!
FAITH: She's calling me names, G.
So yeah, there's definitely stuff here worth keeping in mind for the rest of the story. It's just a pity that they wasted the first appearance in ages of two favourite characters on a plot this flat and unconvincing. In as much as the comics can feel at all like an episode of the TV series – not quality-wise, but in terms of plot, intent and execution - this felt like any number of s1/early s2 MOTW episodes. There's an interesting metaphor underneath it, and it's bound to make sense in the larger scheme, but the surface is dull, dull, dull.
But given how relatively successful NFFY was, I certainly didn't expect
People have complained about the depiction of Germany. And while there are still a couple of fairly rural places, the idea that a city in one of the most modern countries in Europe ("Dracula movie" indeed) can be this isolated by a demon and a gang of vampires for an entire generation spent sacrificing children is, of course, ridiculous, but that comes with the territory I suppose. (Again, see Hostel; anything "European" enough can be sold as essentially medieval, apparently, and any naïve American who goes there soon finds out how evil people really are. Married With Children did the same thing, btw.) Anyway, nevermind; maybe it's related to the Scottish wolves and the relaxed British gun laws somehow. Still, why don't they just move if they can't do anything about it? They're supposedly not under some sort of spell (as they were in "Gingerbread") or lulled into safety (as in Watership Down, which might be a slightly more benevolent comparison)... and you're telling me their first solution was to willingly sacrifice their own children rather than pack the Audi and move to the next town? The metaphor for the way things used to be in the fight against vampires is blatant, and if they hadn't already used Hansel and Gretel in the TV series the name of the town would have been pretty clever. But the story that's supposed to carry the metaphor doesn't work - unless we're deliberately supposed to be asking ourselves if mankind doesn't deserve to be wiped out. I like that Richards keeps trying throughout, though; from the "BAKERY" on the first page to the "BÄKEREI" and "BACKERAY" in Hanselstadt – another 10 pages and he might have stumbled across the correct spelling. ;-)
But nevermind, this isn't supposed to be a realistic series, it's about the characters. And Faith and Giles are woefully underused, despite supposedly being the main characters here. Nevermind the fact that we get no follow-up whatsoever on what they've been up to since last time we saw them (they seem to be pretty much on the same track) what do they actually do here? I suppose it's a good thing that we know they'll be turning up soon again, because much like the entirety of ATF, their appearance here serves little purpose for the characters but to make it clear that they're still around; the payoff depends on what happens to them next. (Though unlike ATF, at least there is a next.) The characters are only here to serve the metaphor.
Faith has a ton of backstory to work with, both implied and explicitly stated. And the best Krueger can come up with is to invent a brand new past trauma only to have her overcome it (without actually showing her overcoming it, since results are more interesting than character development in Season 8) 2 pages later? What, they didn't get the license to use Allan Finch, or Kakistos, or Angelus, or the Beast, or… Buffy? There's a fitting metaphorical layer to this ("Do you have any idea, girl, how many I've killed since your first few steps as a Slayer? How many I've sired since? How many they have sired themselves?") that matches the season arc, and I'm usually all for revealing interesting backstory, but if you have limited space to draw people in, why not use something they already have an opinion of - and if you're going to introduce something brand new, USE it. This feels so out-of-the-blue and then back-into-the-black that they could have told the exact same story with any other Slayer, and her reaction to it (which, again, we barely see) doesn't really tell us much about her we didn't already know. As motivations go, it's slightly more developed than Tucker "Twilight" Wells' reason for attacking the prom, only this time it's not supposed to be a joke. Oh well. I like the last scene, at least.
Also, Faith always referring to everyone by only their first initial is one of my pet peeves in bad fanfic.
Giles fares better. While he should have smelled the trap
But even with the glimpses of something good, the story itself is all over the place. The plot is a repeat, our lead characters are stuck completely in it with no real room to move, ideas are overstated (gee, Coco, could you say that bit about "choosing not to be chosen" just once more?), the dialogue is wooden and almost as unconvincing as the plot, the villain forgets what he said 2 minutes earlier (the monster needs innocent, open minds, so let's feed it... Giles?) This month's OCs... do we care? An old Watcher whom we've never heard of before and quickly turns out to be only slightly less psycho than Fray's, only to get the most clichéd ending possible; and a bland Slayer with a completely generic backstory and personality. And the supposed public love for vampires and hatred of Slayers is still supposedly driving the arc without ever actually being shown. I'm reminded of The Howling IV, where the budget was so low they couldn't afford werewolf suits and filmed every attack from the werewolf's POV…
The one interesting thing about the MOTW is that it very specifically targets the insecurities of each individual. This, along with the final shot (this arc is all about the final shots, isn't it?) might be worth keeping in mind - especially given Faith's explicit rejection of Buffy's methods on the last page.
FAITH: You people wanna live? Then you fight.
COURTNEY: Faith, I'm just... I haven't trained...
FAITH: There's only one lesson, kid. Aim for the heart.
That's not to say that the Slayer army is necessarily a bad concept; however, it can't be the *only* concept. Here's what I wrote about #21:
If there's still any trace of the original idea - battling demons as a metaphor for battling your own problems - then they need help to find their own way of doing it; not battle *Buffy's* demons.
"Yes, we are all different..." and so they can't all do it the same way. They've got the numbers now, they've had uprising; now they need an ideological revolution too, one in which the fight can be fought in many different ways - since it's not all the same fight.
Which leads us to the central metaphor of the story, which is quite interesting, clumsy though it is. Because what it seems to say is this: you cannot choose to not be chosen, to not take part. Whether this applies to everyone that Buffy supposedly empowered at the end of "Chosen" or just the ones that became aware of it and at one time decided to join the fight remains to be seen; but it's still something of a cold shower. Without wanting to get too far into the violation-or-empowerment debate, I think one problem is that "Chosen" and its fallout suffers – to a lesser degree, but still – a little bit from the same problem as this issue: the metaphor (giving people the strength to fight their own demons) and the story used to carry it (drafting thousands of girls into a life-or-death battle against bloodsucking fiends) have very different implications, one definitely good and the other all sorts of murky despite the best intentions. Of course you can choose not to fight, but as of this issue, doing so is likely to kill you (in a very complicated way involving medieval German peasants, but still). You'll be back in the library, one Slayer, one Watcher, dealing with your own demons by yourself, with no changes to the status quo; just an ever-repeating cycle of dead children. You either join the fight or you end up dead. The metaphor works; it's essentially a rephrasing of Mal's quote in the Firefly episode "The Train Job":
SHERIFF: These are tough times. A man can get a job, he might not look too close at what that job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours... well... then he has a choice.
MAL: I don't believe he does.
That's all hunky dory. But as a story, it pretty much makes a mockery of the idea that the Slayers who are not working with Buffy are free to live their lives any way they choose; it's join the cause or end up dead. Unless of course the improbablility of the story is just meant to signify that this is the extreme possibility, making it just an outside chance that maybe you'll still be in danger if you try to live a normal life, but then what was the point of this story?
Possible ways out of this, then?
It's interesting that Faith (very easily) rallies the "normal" people, the ones who supposedly hate Slayers and are ruthless enough to sacrifice their own kids, behind her. Funnily enough, in a season arc where the Slayers are supposedly at war with the human race, she's the first one in 24 issues to reach across that divide and try to get everyone on the same side – granted, it's questionable whose side the good upstanding citizens of Hanselstadt should be on, and whether Faith draws a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Maybe she should have just left them to the vampires? Are humans really that good?
As
2maggie2 points out (and as pretty clumsily stated by both Courtney and the Watcher here in their diatribes against ungrateful humans) it's a pretty clear contrast to Simone's story in the previous issue. How do you fight against evil in a world that doesn't want you to? Here's the part where you make a choice: you can join the Slayer Army, with all its restrictions, and be (supposedly) persecuted by the world. You can try to fight by yourself, and be killed live on TV. You can say "fuck you" to humanity and become a villain yourself. You can try to stay out of it, and be sacrificed to a squid demon. Or, and I suppose this is the only bit where having Faith and Giles in this makes any sense, you can try to come up with something different; bring it back to the basics of why you fight and build whatever you need from there.COURTNEY: You're her! You're Buffy!
FAITH: She's calling me names, G.
So yeah, there's definitely stuff here worth keeping in mind for the rest of the story. It's just a pity that they wasted the first appearance in ages of two favourite characters on a plot this flat and unconvincing. In as much as the comics can feel at all like an episode of the TV series – not quality-wise, but in terms of plot, intent and execution - this felt like any number of s1/early s2 MOTW episodes. There's an interesting metaphor underneath it, and it's bound to make sense in the larger scheme, but the surface is dull, dull, dull.
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Date: 2009-04-02 09:23 pm (UTC)Not really. Basically, their interaction is Faith says something snarky/bitter, Giles cleans his glasses and tells her not to be so hard on herself/other Slayers/other Watchers. As more than one person has remarked, making Faith and Giles this dull is quite the achievement.
I was looking forward to these comics because I was curious about what happens now? You've given all these girls this power and then what?
Same here. And to their credit, that is the main storyline... I just wish they could have done it better, without making me go "Huh?" with every issue.