Cleaner Day and Buffy
Jul. 14th, 2015 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethMy Tuesday actually worked correctly.
Cleaner Day happened and things are clean and with the better smell. Delivery Day also worked, which is what happens when I remember to do Monday Order Food. And then I settled in to watch more Buffy and paint my nails.
I am currently wearing 10 different colours of nails. I threw out at least as many bottles due to conditions ranging from 'totally separated' to 'so solid the brush broke'. And there's three kinds I decided I just don't actually like. So that's progress.
At least as many colours still remain, needing sorting and testing. Pretty sure some of the glitter collection have passed usefulness. Sadly.
I also threw out some eyeshadows, lip gloss, and... makeup stuff. Some of them probably from teh 90s. I'm aware I shouldn't use old makeup, I was mostly keeping it because... actually whatever excuses I come up with right now about memories I'm mostly keeping it for hte same reason I used to have an empty envelope stack ie mental illness. So! Make up clean out. All make up now from this century, almost certainly. Also teh stuff that I threw away had gone lumpy solids instead of helpful powders anyway.
If places kept making the same colours so I could just replace stuff as necessary then I wouldn't horde it so much. But they keep on changing it just a tiiiiiny amount so you have to buy all new stuff to coordinate with the tiny changes. Fashion! Blah.
I watched Buffy while painting my nails so my attention was not the sharpest at some points.
But it remains very good through mid season 3.
I watched The Wish yesterday, so that's the whole Xander/Cordelia relationship seen, and honestly it seems like Xander really liked the idea of having a girlfriend and doing sexy things with her, and Cordelia for a while liked Xander. She lost a lot of social standing and people treated her poorly about the relationship, like she expected, but she went there anyway. And then she finds out Xander was cheating on her and she's actually hurt and upset. Xander was just, like, angry she took his toys away.
So I'm not really liking Xander much at all.
And after, he keeps trying to get people to move on and let it go and complaining about people assuming stuff about him, when in fact they're remembering stuff. He is totally refusing to own his own mess.
I realise he's a teenager, but still, ugh.
Amends is... it irritates me because it's got a whole Christian dichotomy going on but has inadequate theological support even for that. Like, okay, they're saying Angel went to Hell, but in a Christian framework that's not how it works, dude's get judged by the Almighty, not sucked down by demons. His soul, being innocent ish, and definitely full of repenting, shouldn't actually have problems. The ongoing demonic possession problem, sure, but not stuck in hell problems. And if he's all going on about 'am I a thing worth saving' well everyone is, that's kind of Christ's deal. And 'am I a righteous man' is, like, really? Saving is so you can become righteous. Dude has sinned: So far so human. Er, extreme, but human. So if they're throwing actual theology at his problem, he isn't in hell cause he shouldn't be, and of course he can be saved, he's got repentance down.
But they're talking eternal Hell when maybe they should be more with the Purgatory? Like, he suffered, he got kicked out again, maybe it's for time served.
Or maybe it's the wrong model and a more Buddhist enlightenment thing would be more help.
So I get distracted by shoddy theology when I guess I should be thinking fairytale or something?
So he gets pushed by the evil thing and saved by forces unknown and much less talky. Because he's just that special? It seems the wrong way up. Like, general case theology answer that of course you can repent and be saved is way more use, and it doesn't seem like the snow is just punctuation on that. It seems more like he gets unique treatment. Anyone else waiting for a sign is kind of screwed, there's so many every day that if they're waiting for a special one they're stuffed.
I like Buffy's bit about how keeping going is hard and every day. "Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together."
That's a good bit.
Angel is so much more boring in this show. Like, he broods, he reads poems, he broods, he has pouty feelings about Buffy. And then he declares it was love at first sight because her heart was showing. That's actually kind of creepy? To me. Also to them, 'taken literally', that was funny, but it's like... if he can be that sure of her just by looking then it isn't about her, it's some story he made up in his head.
Honestly I feel like those two never had a relationship, they had a very teenage crush and were all intense about the idea.
And then Buffy got it labelled wrong in her head and measured other feelings against that and that doesn't work.
YMMV.
Also, with the way Willow and Oz's relationship was going, and how she was reacting out of guilt, it seems like a comparison, like pushing a relationship to get away from the bad feelings. Angel's bad feelings are somewhat epic scale but what the First was pushing in Amends was him getting away from them via Buffy, and he was tempted. And that seems more like what their relationship actually is. Like, he doesn't have to feel so bad about himself while she likes him.
If the actual idea is that someone loving him can save him then I have to disagree a lot. We fix and mess up ourselves. Someone loving him won't work until he's sorted himself out to, like, let them.
Amends. Not a favourite, yet full of think.
Also, it always always bothers me that Xander's friends let him sleep outside for Christmas. In Sunnydale. Where they hunt vampires. Who are outside. At night. Like Xander.
Xander is in full knowledge of what goes bump in the night. He knows being vulnerable like that could get him killed.
And he does it anyway.
How bad are his family?
It pretty much has to involve actual physical danger or he's being a very big idiot.
And his friends leave him to it.
Bad.
Gingerbread is a bit disturbing with the parents trying to set their kids on fire. Witch hunts are bad, obvs.
Willow calling on dark powers was a really bad idea, given that she should understand said powers both exist and answer calls.
Powers answered Amy. Which worked out poorly for her.
I don't know, I have less to say about that.
And then there's Helpless.
You know that dude Blair who screws up and frees the vampire? Star Trek Enterprise. Much funnier noticing that.
... I may have spent much of the episode distracted by plot bunnies where he lives and gets recruited by team good...
ANYway
Watchers suck. They exist to keep the Slayer under control, not help her, not even primarily to fight evil. Like Giles says "She's fighting a war, you're waging one", so they're the ugly version of the officer/political class sending youths to die.
Giles was a Watcher until rather past the last minute.
Betrayal. Big time.
Lots of it going around.
It's also the point where he's most explicitly compared to Buffy's father, both by Buffy trying to get him to do the traditional dad role in her birthday and where the Watcher Council dude says he has a father's love for her. It actually winds me up when people call him a father, because they only do it to say he's a bad one. He's a teacher. Students graduate, they learn and they leave. Your offspring remain your offspring, but your students get gone. She grows beyond him. He isn't a failed father, he's a successful teacher.
Not, however, in this episode.
Here he's just a screw up who should have broken with the Council rather earlier.
It's difficult though. His father and grandmother before him? Did this. Exactly this. If they ever had a Slayer, they did this to her. If they ever helped with the 'test'. They participated and agreed with it. So he's not just disagreeing with centuries of abstract hypothetical people, he's disagreeing with his family, with what he's been taught his whole life.
I can see why it took him a while, but he's still very much in the wrong to have done what he did at all.
But he's playing the role of Patriarchy in this story, so on occasion he's representing how bloody stupid traditions of oppression really are.
The Council do what they do to keep the Slayer dependent and controllable. It limits her. Like Kendra being so regimented and used to following orders she had nothing to fight back with against Dru's hypnosis. They aren't raising them the way that's best for them, they're trying to keep them down. And it must have got so many of them killed. Wasted lives, for the Council's reassurance. Creepy wrong.
So, good story.
Also I like how Buffy outsmarts the guy. Look on his face. Heh.
For the rest of the day I get to decide what colours to paint my toes. This is the kind of high pressure lifestyle I live now.
;-)
Cleaner Day happened and things are clean and with the better smell. Delivery Day also worked, which is what happens when I remember to do Monday Order Food. And then I settled in to watch more Buffy and paint my nails.
I am currently wearing 10 different colours of nails. I threw out at least as many bottles due to conditions ranging from 'totally separated' to 'so solid the brush broke'. And there's three kinds I decided I just don't actually like. So that's progress.
At least as many colours still remain, needing sorting and testing. Pretty sure some of the glitter collection have passed usefulness. Sadly.
I also threw out some eyeshadows, lip gloss, and... makeup stuff. Some of them probably from teh 90s. I'm aware I shouldn't use old makeup, I was mostly keeping it because... actually whatever excuses I come up with right now about memories I'm mostly keeping it for hte same reason I used to have an empty envelope stack ie mental illness. So! Make up clean out. All make up now from this century, almost certainly. Also teh stuff that I threw away had gone lumpy solids instead of helpful powders anyway.
If places kept making the same colours so I could just replace stuff as necessary then I wouldn't horde it so much. But they keep on changing it just a tiiiiiny amount so you have to buy all new stuff to coordinate with the tiny changes. Fashion! Blah.
I watched Buffy while painting my nails so my attention was not the sharpest at some points.
But it remains very good through mid season 3.
I watched The Wish yesterday, so that's the whole Xander/Cordelia relationship seen, and honestly it seems like Xander really liked the idea of having a girlfriend and doing sexy things with her, and Cordelia for a while liked Xander. She lost a lot of social standing and people treated her poorly about the relationship, like she expected, but she went there anyway. And then she finds out Xander was cheating on her and she's actually hurt and upset. Xander was just, like, angry she took his toys away.
So I'm not really liking Xander much at all.
And after, he keeps trying to get people to move on and let it go and complaining about people assuming stuff about him, when in fact they're remembering stuff. He is totally refusing to own his own mess.
I realise he's a teenager, but still, ugh.
Amends is... it irritates me because it's got a whole Christian dichotomy going on but has inadequate theological support even for that. Like, okay, they're saying Angel went to Hell, but in a Christian framework that's not how it works, dude's get judged by the Almighty, not sucked down by demons. His soul, being innocent ish, and definitely full of repenting, shouldn't actually have problems. The ongoing demonic possession problem, sure, but not stuck in hell problems. And if he's all going on about 'am I a thing worth saving' well everyone is, that's kind of Christ's deal. And 'am I a righteous man' is, like, really? Saving is so you can become righteous. Dude has sinned: So far so human. Er, extreme, but human. So if they're throwing actual theology at his problem, he isn't in hell cause he shouldn't be, and of course he can be saved, he's got repentance down.
But they're talking eternal Hell when maybe they should be more with the Purgatory? Like, he suffered, he got kicked out again, maybe it's for time served.
Or maybe it's the wrong model and a more Buddhist enlightenment thing would be more help.
So I get distracted by shoddy theology when I guess I should be thinking fairytale or something?
So he gets pushed by the evil thing and saved by forces unknown and much less talky. Because he's just that special? It seems the wrong way up. Like, general case theology answer that of course you can repent and be saved is way more use, and it doesn't seem like the snow is just punctuation on that. It seems more like he gets unique treatment. Anyone else waiting for a sign is kind of screwed, there's so many every day that if they're waiting for a special one they're stuffed.
I like Buffy's bit about how keeping going is hard and every day. "Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together."
That's a good bit.
Angel is so much more boring in this show. Like, he broods, he reads poems, he broods, he has pouty feelings about Buffy. And then he declares it was love at first sight because her heart was showing. That's actually kind of creepy? To me. Also to them, 'taken literally', that was funny, but it's like... if he can be that sure of her just by looking then it isn't about her, it's some story he made up in his head.
Honestly I feel like those two never had a relationship, they had a very teenage crush and were all intense about the idea.
And then Buffy got it labelled wrong in her head and measured other feelings against that and that doesn't work.
YMMV.
Also, with the way Willow and Oz's relationship was going, and how she was reacting out of guilt, it seems like a comparison, like pushing a relationship to get away from the bad feelings. Angel's bad feelings are somewhat epic scale but what the First was pushing in Amends was him getting away from them via Buffy, and he was tempted. And that seems more like what their relationship actually is. Like, he doesn't have to feel so bad about himself while she likes him.
If the actual idea is that someone loving him can save him then I have to disagree a lot. We fix and mess up ourselves. Someone loving him won't work until he's sorted himself out to, like, let them.
Amends. Not a favourite, yet full of think.
Also, it always always bothers me that Xander's friends let him sleep outside for Christmas. In Sunnydale. Where they hunt vampires. Who are outside. At night. Like Xander.
Xander is in full knowledge of what goes bump in the night. He knows being vulnerable like that could get him killed.
And he does it anyway.
How bad are his family?
It pretty much has to involve actual physical danger or he's being a very big idiot.
And his friends leave him to it.
Bad.
Gingerbread is a bit disturbing with the parents trying to set their kids on fire. Witch hunts are bad, obvs.
Willow calling on dark powers was a really bad idea, given that she should understand said powers both exist and answer calls.
Powers answered Amy. Which worked out poorly for her.
I don't know, I have less to say about that.
And then there's Helpless.
You know that dude Blair who screws up and frees the vampire? Star Trek Enterprise. Much funnier noticing that.
... I may have spent much of the episode distracted by plot bunnies where he lives and gets recruited by team good...
ANYway
Watchers suck. They exist to keep the Slayer under control, not help her, not even primarily to fight evil. Like Giles says "She's fighting a war, you're waging one", so they're the ugly version of the officer/political class sending youths to die.
Giles was a Watcher until rather past the last minute.
Betrayal. Big time.
Lots of it going around.
It's also the point where he's most explicitly compared to Buffy's father, both by Buffy trying to get him to do the traditional dad role in her birthday and where the Watcher Council dude says he has a father's love for her. It actually winds me up when people call him a father, because they only do it to say he's a bad one. He's a teacher. Students graduate, they learn and they leave. Your offspring remain your offspring, but your students get gone. She grows beyond him. He isn't a failed father, he's a successful teacher.
Not, however, in this episode.
Here he's just a screw up who should have broken with the Council rather earlier.
It's difficult though. His father and grandmother before him? Did this. Exactly this. If they ever had a Slayer, they did this to her. If they ever helped with the 'test'. They participated and agreed with it. So he's not just disagreeing with centuries of abstract hypothetical people, he's disagreeing with his family, with what he's been taught his whole life.
I can see why it took him a while, but he's still very much in the wrong to have done what he did at all.
But he's playing the role of Patriarchy in this story, so on occasion he's representing how bloody stupid traditions of oppression really are.
The Council do what they do to keep the Slayer dependent and controllable. It limits her. Like Kendra being so regimented and used to following orders she had nothing to fight back with against Dru's hypnosis. They aren't raising them the way that's best for them, they're trying to keep them down. And it must have got so many of them killed. Wasted lives, for the Council's reassurance. Creepy wrong.
So, good story.
Also I like how Buffy outsmarts the guy. Look on his face. Heh.
For the rest of the day I get to decide what colours to paint my toes. This is the kind of high pressure lifestyle I live now.
;-)
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no subject
Date: 2015-07-15 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-15 11:27 am (UTC)Hmm yeah, I could at least understand it more if Angel saw Buffy doing something really Idk heartfelt that caught his eye and impressed him, but all he basically saw was a 15 year old chatting with her friends about boys and acting shallow, I don't see how her great heart was so obvious from the first moment he saw her walking down the steps? It definitely comes across to me like it was more about the youth and innocence that she represented to an Angel in the depths of despair, rather than Buffy as a person.
But then that matches up with Buffy falling for Angel as the talk, dark, and handsome stranger who would barely say more than two words to her before disappearing back into the shadows, it seems like the story wanted to portray both of them as falling more for an ideal that the other person represented to them, because they both wanted that storybook romance? And then of course that fairytale eventually leads to Buffy's heartbreak in Surprise/Innocence because she didn't really know that much about Angel