beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2005-03-21 03:52 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2005-03-21 03:52 pm
Geek boys
Buffy has a lot of comic book geeks in it. Andrew, Jonathan, Oz, Xander, and Gunn. So now I'm thinking how they would all fit together, and particularly of all the ways Gunn does and doesn't fit in with the rest of that list.
For a start he seems older. Even if he wasn't older by the calendar he would always have seemed older. Not a sheltered suburban majority guy.
But he is a comic reader who comes up with comic book comparisons - with issue numbers, and full lists of everyone who wore a costume - when under stress. Like Xander. Like Andrew. Oz has only played the comics trivia game in a more laid back research context, but he knows kryptonite varieties. So they've all got these common points of reference.
I suspect Gunn would have had more trouble acquiring comics to get to that trivia. I mean I ended up in a comics or food situation and had to drop the comics, and that was with a roof over my head and steady income on disability. How did Gunn manage to get his reading material, when everything was scavenged?
All messed with the dark side by the end. Xander the least, of course. Just the possessed times, and the couple of times he did spells and people died.
If things had worked out just a little bit differently, I can see Xander ending up with the geek trio. If he didn't have Willow, if maybe she didn't make it home one night pre series, Xander would be a very different guy. Much less security and direction. So he could go trio that way.
Gunn... wouldn't ever have had the same priorities, if he turned to crime. He always had the opportunity. He knew where a stolen car was likely to end up. But this is a guy who sold his soul rather than go out and steal a truck. Very different priorities. If he got a ton of money he wouldn't have outfitted the basement of doom, he'd have shared with someone like Anne and got his crew someplace to live. And the hypnotising women thing? I just don't see it. Ever.
On the other hand the power up spheres are very much his kind of thing. Except while the geek trio always thought of themselves as physically weak but brainy enough to work out a solution, Gunn thought of himself as the muscle and jumped at the chance of a brain boost.
Xander was never the muscle. The soldier upgrade was exactly what he needed at the time. But there were a lot of times he doubted his value to the group, and I can totally see him taking any kind of upgrade he can get his hands on.
But some time between invisible girl and the frat house of fear demon, probably around the summer of strip club, he gave up on thinking of invisible as any kind of fun. Actually he might have figured that out before the end of the episode, what with how it drove her nuts and lonely. He wouldn't have wanted the invisibility ray, even though at 16 he was thinking along the same lines as the geeks. Xander actually grew up.
Of course the other thing I'm thinking on is slash pairings. Gunn/Xander I can see, now Xander has gone all practical. Actually right now I'm thinking AtS:No Limits and how Xander could turn up and be carpenter guy at Anne's place.
Gunn/Andrew... I have this mental image of big cat Gunn kind of cuffing little kitteny Andrew round the ears whenever he gets too, you know, Andrew like. And otherwise kind of ignoring him. But Gunn, at his best, had a whole bunch of people under his protection, brought them together to use their strengths. He might be able to see Andrew as kind of a project, see him trying to be useful and be glad for the help even if the package is kind of irritating. The / part... well skinny and crazy apparently doesn't put him off, so who knows.
Mostly Gunn isn't a character who ever grabbed me. He seemed to make all the wrong moves and, whereas Wesley spent the whole time since we met him getting stronger, Gunn spent the whole time getting more messed up. I mean he started out a leader with a lot of people he looked after, setting the direction and keeping them safe, then he just ended up working for Angel, then Wesley, then Angel again, and by the end of season 5 when he went to stake his territory he felt like he had to take it *from* Angel. Since when? Gunn had his own world. And last episode he went back to it, helping out Anne.
And no, that wasn't a 'his own world get back to the ghetto' it was a 'his own world that Angel didn't put him in or out of charge of'. Gunn meant something before he met Angel. And then he kind of wandered off and kept selling more pieces of himself and ending up a mess.
If there was another series... well, basically AtS No Limits is getting it right. Back to what matters to him. Using what he knows - because that is bought and paid for, so going back to the muscle approach is not so good - but being part of a wider community. Even when the AI crew were acting like family (however dysfunctional) they were cut off from the rest of the world. Gunn used to be part of his neighbourhood, know all the people and everything that was going on. He lost a lot when he lost that.
So he never grabbed me to write him since everything after he met Angel seemed like he went way wrong.
And also I don't fancy him. Trivial but crucial in the motivation department.
Just some rambly thoughts.
I could change the focus and compare the style of group cooperation and attitude to crime between Gunn and his crew, the Geek Trio and Ethan & Giles & the Eyghon lot. But there is a lack of canon on that last so I'd be comparing with my stories. Not so worky.
For a start he seems older. Even if he wasn't older by the calendar he would always have seemed older. Not a sheltered suburban majority guy.
But he is a comic reader who comes up with comic book comparisons - with issue numbers, and full lists of everyone who wore a costume - when under stress. Like Xander. Like Andrew. Oz has only played the comics trivia game in a more laid back research context, but he knows kryptonite varieties. So they've all got these common points of reference.
I suspect Gunn would have had more trouble acquiring comics to get to that trivia. I mean I ended up in a comics or food situation and had to drop the comics, and that was with a roof over my head and steady income on disability. How did Gunn manage to get his reading material, when everything was scavenged?
All messed with the dark side by the end. Xander the least, of course. Just the possessed times, and the couple of times he did spells and people died.
If things had worked out just a little bit differently, I can see Xander ending up with the geek trio. If he didn't have Willow, if maybe she didn't make it home one night pre series, Xander would be a very different guy. Much less security and direction. So he could go trio that way.
Gunn... wouldn't ever have had the same priorities, if he turned to crime. He always had the opportunity. He knew where a stolen car was likely to end up. But this is a guy who sold his soul rather than go out and steal a truck. Very different priorities. If he got a ton of money he wouldn't have outfitted the basement of doom, he'd have shared with someone like Anne and got his crew someplace to live. And the hypnotising women thing? I just don't see it. Ever.
On the other hand the power up spheres are very much his kind of thing. Except while the geek trio always thought of themselves as physically weak but brainy enough to work out a solution, Gunn thought of himself as the muscle and jumped at the chance of a brain boost.
Xander was never the muscle. The soldier upgrade was exactly what he needed at the time. But there were a lot of times he doubted his value to the group, and I can totally see him taking any kind of upgrade he can get his hands on.
But some time between invisible girl and the frat house of fear demon, probably around the summer of strip club, he gave up on thinking of invisible as any kind of fun. Actually he might have figured that out before the end of the episode, what with how it drove her nuts and lonely. He wouldn't have wanted the invisibility ray, even though at 16 he was thinking along the same lines as the geeks. Xander actually grew up.
Of course the other thing I'm thinking on is slash pairings. Gunn/Xander I can see, now Xander has gone all practical. Actually right now I'm thinking AtS:No Limits and how Xander could turn up and be carpenter guy at Anne's place.
Gunn/Andrew... I have this mental image of big cat Gunn kind of cuffing little kitteny Andrew round the ears whenever he gets too, you know, Andrew like. And otherwise kind of ignoring him. But Gunn, at his best, had a whole bunch of people under his protection, brought them together to use their strengths. He might be able to see Andrew as kind of a project, see him trying to be useful and be glad for the help even if the package is kind of irritating. The / part... well skinny and crazy apparently doesn't put him off, so who knows.
Mostly Gunn isn't a character who ever grabbed me. He seemed to make all the wrong moves and, whereas Wesley spent the whole time since we met him getting stronger, Gunn spent the whole time getting more messed up. I mean he started out a leader with a lot of people he looked after, setting the direction and keeping them safe, then he just ended up working for Angel, then Wesley, then Angel again, and by the end of season 5 when he went to stake his territory he felt like he had to take it *from* Angel. Since when? Gunn had his own world. And last episode he went back to it, helping out Anne.
And no, that wasn't a 'his own world get back to the ghetto' it was a 'his own world that Angel didn't put him in or out of charge of'. Gunn meant something before he met Angel. And then he kind of wandered off and kept selling more pieces of himself and ending up a mess.
If there was another series... well, basically AtS No Limits is getting it right. Back to what matters to him. Using what he knows - because that is bought and paid for, so going back to the muscle approach is not so good - but being part of a wider community. Even when the AI crew were acting like family (however dysfunctional) they were cut off from the rest of the world. Gunn used to be part of his neighbourhood, know all the people and everything that was going on. He lost a lot when he lost that.
So he never grabbed me to write him since everything after he met Angel seemed like he went way wrong.
And also I don't fancy him. Trivial but crucial in the motivation department.
Just some rambly thoughts.
I could change the focus and compare the style of group cooperation and attitude to crime between Gunn and his crew, the Geek Trio and Ethan & Giles & the Eyghon lot. But there is a lack of canon on that last so I'd be comparing with my stories. Not so worky.
no subject
In a lot of ways I see Gunn as very young, in the way that kids who caretake ill parents or otherwise get shoved early into adulthood have some pockets of infantile behavior that never go away; accepting the upgrade, and panicking when it starts to fade, are really very childish things to do, far more so than his protective behavor when Eve toches his robots, even.
Julia, that may be as close to intelligent analysis as I an get on Monday
no subject
the pockets of very young bit - my thought was 'but he seems quite normal to me... oh, yeah'. The familiar kind of normal.
yeah, he is an interesting mixture.