Buffy season 2 eps 1 & 2
Jul. 2nd, 2015 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI watched a couple episodes of Buffy season 2. The discs seem to have gone wrong a bit, there's black stripes all over it? And like 3D blur double edges on a lot of things? 3D Buffy would be kind of cool. This, however, is not. I fiddled with all the settings on the TV and player and nothing changed the problem, so I guess I have to put up with it. Unhelpful.
Did I hear the newer DVDs changed the framing to pretend they were 16:9 ? Because that would be Not Cool.
But watching them with stripes and blurs isn't cool either.
I kept on finding myself with my hands over my ears, because apparently today having the sound on is Too Much. Helpful. So I turned the sound right down, which at least was more relaxing for my arms. I probably miss subtleties that way though. I know the subtitles aren't 100% . Giles in particular uses big words quickly and has a tendency to get simplified. I don't know how often, I could study that, I'm sure it woudl be useful to crit subtitles of a 1997 show.
"When she was bad" I had few thoughts about. Long long fight scenes. Weird long view of the classroom at the end, went on for like a whole minute with tacky music and no lines. How short did this episode come in?
"Some Assembly Required" bothers me on a disability level. Like, there's this guy who was in a bad accident and he now has extensive scarring. And kind of glistens, which, probably not a good thing. So he reacts to that by hiding in a basement, not even telling his mother he's alive, and pressuring his brother into making a woman just as scarred and otherwise disabled as he is. Because that's how people react to disability, by trying to share it around??? Nasty.
There's layers where it's about social pressure on guys and how he found himself not-pretty and not... well, it doesn't say he can't play football anymore, but it seems strongly implied by the not actually doing his favourite thing in the world? Possibly it's just his reaction to trauma that's stopping him, but still, he is stopped. And when he loses those markers, looks and sports, he loses any feeling of self worth and any belief he could attract someone or even be accepted as a human being. So that's a pretty toxic masculinity thing there, that being disabled means losing all his ... everything, and the only thing he can think of to fix it is to make a woman to be his. At the end with him grabbing the headless patchwork body and yelling "mine!" is super creepy, because he wasn't even in danger, he could have run, he could have even cared about the actual alive girl and tried to save her earlier, but nope. He just goes "mine" and burns with the remains of the women-as-things. This is the episode that gives you "love makes you do the wacky", but that isn't love. Like the photographer's creepy porn selection and showing a menu of faces to choose one for the new zombie girlfriend, that's 100% objectification fail. And it destroys the men.
This view around the science club guy who reanimates his brother kind of strikes me as autistic? Epic avoidance of eye contact. Very closed in body language. Fixing on this one task and getting stuck. But that's like extremes of stress and isolation and science obsession, that's not necessarily anything to do with autism. It just felt like I could empathise with him getting talked into things like that. He's being very stupid, but, he seems to have a very limited social network, his mother doesn't even know if he's in the room or not, he's isolated and trying to cope as best he can. And when the little island of people he's still in contact with tell him a thing? Their local standard of acceptable all wanders off together. But he knew it wasn't right, that's probably what the lack of eye contact was about, just guilt and bad feels, avoiding people. And he changes his mind before there's actual damage done to alive people. So on balance he saved a life and then his life went horror movie and he tried to cope and only very nearly let his 'friend' do something appalling.
... cutting up dead girls is also bad, but he was trying to make them be alive girls, so, I can see why he'd figure that's reasonable. But there's the bodily autonomy thing, you don't have to donate organs, they probably weren't organ donors or they wouldn't have had enough parts in the box with them, he was ignoring their wishes and treating them like parts, he was still doing bad.
It's just a lot more sympathetic bad when the goal is trying to help people. Creepy photographer dude's goal seemed to be more about dead girl parts. Ew.
Cordelia has no luck. Everything in town fixates on her, she's favourite victim no. 1. No luck.
Xander did heroic save the day stuff, got her away from the fire by going right through it, very cool. And then when she was telling him how cool he was he kept treating her the way he always does, because she's always at least attempting to insult them. And then he has the funny line about wondering why they can't get a date. But it's also got a point because he didn't do it to get a date, or even for Cordelia, he did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. It's the opposite of the creepy friend zone dude who hangs out being nice because he thinks he'll earn credits towards boyfriend status. Xander is not thinking about status or how other people will react. He's thinking about saving lives. Yaay Xander.
... he has his problematic days, but for that much, yaay.
Giles trying to ask Jenny out was mildly hilarious. Social skills fail. How long since he's tried, if he's that nervous about it?
I still don't see what it is they have in common. I mean, Xander and Buffy guess who he's planning to ask out on the basis that she's the only woman he talks to, which would be... unromantic? Possibilities: 1. Not that he's basement guy. Libraries are a much more civilized place to hide.
His guess for what she does in her free time is magic. He's surprised she watches the sports. So what he thinks they've got in common is that stuff he is currently pretending he never did?
... I realise G/E shipping skews my view, but, she always reads to me like the more socially acceptable version of the guy he broke up with in epic bad circs back when. Possibly healthier for that, because chaos isn't exactly relaxing to be around and they take some work to get pointed in the same direction, whereas Ms Calendar has been a helpful partner a couple times already. But the gender thing... *sigh* I can't read it the way round the writing went, I just see Giles running away from other attractions by finding this woman who reminds him of someone.
Also it's kind of cute how she takes charge of their relationship and has expectations and all that, but it's also kind of uncute that he's always off balance and doesn't necessarily have fun?
Giles remains my favourite and I can and will overthink his love life at length.
Did I hear the newer DVDs changed the framing to pretend they were 16:9 ? Because that would be Not Cool.
But watching them with stripes and blurs isn't cool either.
I kept on finding myself with my hands over my ears, because apparently today having the sound on is Too Much. Helpful. So I turned the sound right down, which at least was more relaxing for my arms. I probably miss subtleties that way though. I know the subtitles aren't 100% . Giles in particular uses big words quickly and has a tendency to get simplified. I don't know how often, I could study that, I'm sure it woudl be useful to crit subtitles of a 1997 show.
"When she was bad" I had few thoughts about. Long long fight scenes. Weird long view of the classroom at the end, went on for like a whole minute with tacky music and no lines. How short did this episode come in?
"Some Assembly Required" bothers me on a disability level. Like, there's this guy who was in a bad accident and he now has extensive scarring. And kind of glistens, which, probably not a good thing. So he reacts to that by hiding in a basement, not even telling his mother he's alive, and pressuring his brother into making a woman just as scarred and otherwise disabled as he is. Because that's how people react to disability, by trying to share it around??? Nasty.
There's layers where it's about social pressure on guys and how he found himself not-pretty and not... well, it doesn't say he can't play football anymore, but it seems strongly implied by the not actually doing his favourite thing in the world? Possibly it's just his reaction to trauma that's stopping him, but still, he is stopped. And when he loses those markers, looks and sports, he loses any feeling of self worth and any belief he could attract someone or even be accepted as a human being. So that's a pretty toxic masculinity thing there, that being disabled means losing all his ... everything, and the only thing he can think of to fix it is to make a woman to be his. At the end with him grabbing the headless patchwork body and yelling "mine!" is super creepy, because he wasn't even in danger, he could have run, he could have even cared about the actual alive girl and tried to save her earlier, but nope. He just goes "mine" and burns with the remains of the women-as-things. This is the episode that gives you "love makes you do the wacky", but that isn't love. Like the photographer's creepy porn selection and showing a menu of faces to choose one for the new zombie girlfriend, that's 100% objectification fail. And it destroys the men.
This view around the science club guy who reanimates his brother kind of strikes me as autistic? Epic avoidance of eye contact. Very closed in body language. Fixing on this one task and getting stuck. But that's like extremes of stress and isolation and science obsession, that's not necessarily anything to do with autism. It just felt like I could empathise with him getting talked into things like that. He's being very stupid, but, he seems to have a very limited social network, his mother doesn't even know if he's in the room or not, he's isolated and trying to cope as best he can. And when the little island of people he's still in contact with tell him a thing? Their local standard of acceptable all wanders off together. But he knew it wasn't right, that's probably what the lack of eye contact was about, just guilt and bad feels, avoiding people. And he changes his mind before there's actual damage done to alive people. So on balance he saved a life and then his life went horror movie and he tried to cope and only very nearly let his 'friend' do something appalling.
... cutting up dead girls is also bad, but he was trying to make them be alive girls, so, I can see why he'd figure that's reasonable. But there's the bodily autonomy thing, you don't have to donate organs, they probably weren't organ donors or they wouldn't have had enough parts in the box with them, he was ignoring their wishes and treating them like parts, he was still doing bad.
It's just a lot more sympathetic bad when the goal is trying to help people. Creepy photographer dude's goal seemed to be more about dead girl parts. Ew.
Cordelia has no luck. Everything in town fixates on her, she's favourite victim no. 1. No luck.
Xander did heroic save the day stuff, got her away from the fire by going right through it, very cool. And then when she was telling him how cool he was he kept treating her the way he always does, because she's always at least attempting to insult them. And then he has the funny line about wondering why they can't get a date. But it's also got a point because he didn't do it to get a date, or even for Cordelia, he did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. It's the opposite of the creepy friend zone dude who hangs out being nice because he thinks he'll earn credits towards boyfriend status. Xander is not thinking about status or how other people will react. He's thinking about saving lives. Yaay Xander.
... he has his problematic days, but for that much, yaay.
Giles trying to ask Jenny out was mildly hilarious. Social skills fail. How long since he's tried, if he's that nervous about it?
I still don't see what it is they have in common. I mean, Xander and Buffy guess who he's planning to ask out on the basis that she's the only woman he talks to, which would be... unromantic? Possibilities: 1. Not that he's basement guy. Libraries are a much more civilized place to hide.
His guess for what she does in her free time is magic. He's surprised she watches the sports. So what he thinks they've got in common is that stuff he is currently pretending he never did?
... I realise G/E shipping skews my view, but, she always reads to me like the more socially acceptable version of the guy he broke up with in epic bad circs back when. Possibly healthier for that, because chaos isn't exactly relaxing to be around and they take some work to get pointed in the same direction, whereas Ms Calendar has been a helpful partner a couple times already. But the gender thing... *sigh* I can't read it the way round the writing went, I just see Giles running away from other attractions by finding this woman who reminds him of someone.
Also it's kind of cute how she takes charge of their relationship and has expectations and all that, but it's also kind of uncute that he's always off balance and doesn't necessarily have fun?
Giles remains my favourite and I can and will overthink his love life at length.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 08:25 pm (UTC)Like I read this book once where there was a society living alongside humans who had telepathy and used it for all communication among themselves, and there was this man who lacked the ability to communicate that way which was a very obvious disability parallel, they referred to him as deaf and everything. And they had him go... crazy I guess... from isolation and from being outside his society and iirc he ends up trying to find a child to cut the... appendages they use for telepathy off of to get them grafted to himself. It was. Weird. And unsettling.
I didn't think much either way of Jenny at the time when I watched the seasons, I think. I see what you mean about it being sort of Designated Woman To Ask Out. But also I can see her as Giles wanting a... tamer replacement of Ethan, which is interesting and I kind of want to write angsty fic now?
no subject
Date: 2015-07-14 12:00 pm (UTC)one big problem with abled people writing about disabled people is they act like it's all new and they're discovering stuff. Like, they try and imagine themselves in that situation, and zomg so isolating nothing about their current life works... but they can't imagine as far as there being an existing community who has been dealing with that exact stuff in a stable way for ages. Like zombie guy in that episode wanted someone who shared his disabilities, but he didn't start out by going online and finding zombie chat rooms (wow, in universe there are probably zombie chat rooms), he was all isolated like this was the first time that ever happened. So then making another disabled person is one way to get community. But it's still weird to feel like it's necessary. People adjust.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-14 07:29 pm (UTC)I remember a conversation I saw on tumblr about how turning people into animals is a common fanfic trope, and the characters never try any of the many AAC options meant for people with not so great motor control and no speech because it never occurs to the writers that this isn't a unique and totally new problem? This reminded me of that.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-13 08:39 pm (UTC)It's not luck, it's being attractive AND assertive at the same time. It gets you in trouble unless you have super powers. It's like in the Wish - it's standing out. And being punished for that.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-14 11:51 am (UTC)which, judging the early episodes alone, is problematic
but Cordelia has this whole character arc of becoming a hero by standing up for herself and other women, which is pretty awesome... er, up until it gets way problematic again around pregnancy and stuff.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-14 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-13 08:41 pm (UTC)...What I didn't think of before, and I do now, is that Jenny would've ended up like Olivia - friendly, with benefits, but not really in his life like that. See?
no subject
Date: 2015-07-14 11:55 am (UTC)She just doesn't seem to get anything else about him, or to quite respect him. So it's not best.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-12 04:12 pm (UTC)I do this too, a little bit. Spike in particular has a lot of traits that strike me as ADHD-like - impatient, impulsive, easily bored, etc. But I'm probably just projecting.
This is the episode that gives you "love makes you do the wacky", but that isn't love. Like the photographer's creepy porn selection and showing a menu of faces to choose one for the new zombie girlfriend, that's 100% objectification fail.
This is exactly what bothers me when people take Spike's statement that he "loves" Buffy at face value, and it's why I was really glad about the direction his character has gone in the Season 10 comics (not sure if you're caught up with that yet and I don't want to spoil it if you're not.) I find Spike to be a really interesting character and he's definitely my favorite, but for most of the series he's operating on a really screwed-up definition of "love". He sometimes does things for Buffy that are exactly what someone would do for a person they love, but that's sort of the broken clock (or in this case, the broken/absent moral compass) being right twice a day. You then have the rest of the time where he's stealing her underwear and kidnapping her and generally being creepy, right up until "Seeing Red" when he finally goes so far that even he understands that being "good by vampire standards" isn't good enough. And even then, I sometimes suspect that even in getting his soul he was mainly motivated by selfishness - he knew he didn't have a chance with Buffy otherwise, and wildly underestimated how much it was going to change him.