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beccaelizabethI double checked some of my nail varnishes. Some remained goo for hours until I wiped them off, so they're gone in the bin, boo. But the sparklies layers actually worked this time They must have just not combined well last time. So I still have my glitter for fingers. Yaay.
Buffy season 3... I haven't been thinking of much to say about it because I've already said and read so much about it, but it's still good TV.
The whole 'high school is hell' metaphor and turning common experiences into demons still holds up strong. The more arc episodes where you're watching Faith and the Mayor do stuff sometimes actually feel almost thinner, cause it's just people having consequences and not layered metaphors with demons on them.
I like the Mayor, he's a model of evil not cliche yet cause it's less often seen, a cheerful personable kind of guy who has opinions about politeness and swearing. He's just also planning to kill and eat everyone to fuel his own ascension. Exploit everyone on his rise to power, behind happy politician mask. Plus, patriarchy. The guy Buffy calls Dick turns into a really giant snake, at that point it's not subtle. But he's in the season the Watchers screw up a lot, Giles gets fired for being too much of a father figure, and the Mayor gives Faith presents and cookies and stops her when she started being all 'sugar daddy' trying to make it a sex thing. Sexual exploitation isn't the only way to be a creepy guy, this is creepy paternalism telling women who to be. Except it's telling them who to kill, mostly, which is stereotypically more what happens to guys, so that's interesting.
Faith enjoying killing people, liking the power, that's one failure mode of violence.
But Buffy deciding to kill Faith and feed her to Angel is another. I mean, killing people, even people you know have killed someone and are pretty sure have killed more, that's generally disapproved of without judges and juries. And in many many countries even with them. Vengeance is motive for murder, not excuse for it. And then there's the blood part. I read arguments about organ donation which make an argue about bodily autonomy, like, the rule is that nobody can have your parts even after you've finished using them, because they're still yours. Wishes are supposed to be respected. Even if organ donation, or in this case simple blood donation, would save a life, the laws are set up so nobody can force you to do it and it isn't counted as like negligence or killing someone to let them die of not giving that particular form of help. Because it's your body. That you can decide to keep in one piece. So deciding to feed Faith to Angel is a whole additional bad to deciding to kill her. But Buffy was pretty sure she was in teh right there, because Faith did the poisoning, so Faith should do the curing. And sure, that's very eye for an eye, but that's not the prevailing law of the land. So Buffy is making some pretty big deal ethical choices there. But she's the protagonist, so story sidesteps the right and wrong of it by having her fail messy.
Faith was doing the dark mirror thing, but some of the ways they did it are actually pretty weird or creepy. Like, the Mayor pays her, at least in goods and services, and sometimes with an envelope of probable cash. Oh noes, now she's doing stuff for money. But... so do police? So do most people, on account of the whole needing to eat thing that's going around. It doesn't seem to be textually contrasted to the Watchers not paying Slayers, the closest it gets is the contrast with that Post lady praising the Spartan nature of Faith's existence. Making out it's a virtuous choice to live like that. How Faith had any money to live on was not addressed, and needed to be. The exploitation of women's labour for no money is pretty central to patriarchal oppression under capitalism. Finding someone that valued her, in dollars and cents and emotionally... everyone keeps calling Faith crazy but she makes a lot of sense. Watchers are screwing Slayers over. Slayers eventually notice.
Graduation Day always makes me tear up. Repeatedly. Like when Buffy tells Wes to sod off. (Wes is so hilariously awkward at this stage. Baby Wes, still a pillock. And then with the going splat... I'm sure he was actually pretty badly injured, supernatural strength plus neck injury equals badness, but he was also pretty funny. Poor boy.) And then when the whole school joins the fight, cause they're graduating now, they're not children being asked to do adult stuff, they're actual adults stepping up. The whole ascending thing, human style. Except then they're still pretty damn young and it's really pervasively creepy that teenagers have been having to deal with this stuff mostly alone. ... in universe it's probably because people that start trying tend to get killed a lot, like Slayers dying young. That's depressing.
Out of universe it's just a weird world view. Like, what problems are there where there's no community, no other generations facing them too? Sometimes the olders are the problem, obvs, see Ted or Xander's parents, and sometimes they're well meaning but ignorant, but it's just... it seems like an odd world view where Giles, Jenny, and Wesley represent 100% of the alive adult help. I don't know how that metaphor holds. Sure teenagers can feel like they're the first ones to discover all their problems, but really?
Eh, is a problem with any 'verse with a Masquerade, what the logic is on people not knowing. Especially since with all the stuff that goes on and gets seen and gets actively covered up it's more like the olders have agreed not to know. Creepy.
... actually reminding me of a lot of headlines vs people who were actually there accounts. Issues that get ignored by the dominant 'majority' have a discourse of everything's fine no worries here. Any exception has to be exceptional or the story can't hold.
okay, so, maybe it makes sense, that's disquieting.
It's weird how this is the only time everyone helps though. They could organise. Get a movement going.
... actually that's a bit real too, there's people who'll turn up for a one off and then have lives to get back to, while the ones who can't walk away and a few core allies keep trying. But eventually much more attention/help?
If I was writing it then the Slayer would make more friends quicker. Also there would be relevant police departments. And elders who survived long term fighting the good fight.
hope and support.
Earshot has that bit about how nobody notices your pain cause they're too busy with theirs.
powerful, but, Buffy is like the busiest and she totally notices everyone's. So the story is contradicting the character there, in a good way. People care.
... Buffy notices if problems have a demon attached. But the demons are metaphors for problems. So it's like noticing?
Jonathan in the Prom giving Buffy the umbrella :-D
Willow and Oz and panic :-)
... Oz is so sweet. I usually just <3 him. But also he's... I'm not sure it's lazy, but he's actively avoiding leaving high school, what with repeating the year, and he seems down on himself and ready to accept pretty low judgements about the music and all. Like he's staying a kid so he won't have to... adult. He has some Stuff to deal with, with the wolfing and all, but there's also some flaking out. And I think of it as sweet, but if Willow had skipped classes and had to repeat a year and it was at least partly because of hanging out with her boyfriend, that would not be so much sweet. But then there's the saving the world stuff. He hung around for that. In the alternate universe too, he was a white hat, he was saving the world a lot. So there's an angle where you could argue he stayed in school to help, and skipped summer school to help patrol at night. So, surfeit of adult, holding him back from paper achievement.
But he very rarely says actual words, so you never really know.
Buffy and Angel... :eyeroll:
sorry, but that's all I got left by the time he leaves. Big drama gestures guy, won't say goodbye, won't stay with Buffy because what, she'll want kids one day? She should have a normal life? Who is he to tell her what to want? Blah.
He's acting like it's all noble and painful to make decisions for her.
Stupid reason.
Also, when he's spent three years helping her, you know, not die? The initial decision to leave her is difficult to sell as for her own good.
So then she decides to die to save him.
At that point it's def for her own good, and also she maybe needs help.
Like, that whole Slayer blood thing, they couldn't get a nice clean kit and donate it in bags and feed him a pint and wait for her to stop feeling woozy cause Slayer with super healing and then try it again if they need to? No, she does it the drama way.
... the story does it the drama way, but also, her feelings are doing the driving right then. It's big demonstration of how self sacrifice has down side. Because she's also all that stands between the world and annihilation by Mayor at that point, so dying? Not unalloyed generosity.
When it was Willow being hostage and Wes was talking numbers and saying they should destroy the box... in the short term he seems right, but think of all the other times Willow wouldn't have been around to save the world. Win battle, lose war. Plus he didn't know it but the Mayor compared the spider things to the chocolate chips, not the cookies, so probably he'd remain a really big snakey problem even without it. Also it's difficult to get people to come fight on your side if you're going to screw them over, for the greater good or otherwise. It's like that parable of the lost sheep, cause if you don't save one lamb then pretty soon you've lost all of them. The Watchers haven't had to think that way though because one Slayer dies the next is Chosen and she doesn't get much say in it. There's always more sheep. Creepy habits of mind develop.
So saving the one, always necessary. Just it kind of helps to also have a plan to save the many.
Also also? You know when Buffy went after Faith and she took a knife, turned off the music, and faced her in fair and honorable combat?
If she'd taken the tranq rifle and shot her in the back before she noticed she was there, crisis averted, blood donor achieved, and murder quite possibly avoided.
Faith poisoned Angel to get Buffy reacting, distracted by her feelings and not thinking things through, and it worked.
... the writers wanted a final confrontation so they skipped the whole 'things that would work better' category. but with plausibility.
BtVS so far has explored a lot of down sides of relationships, assorted abusive ones, fallout from breakups, and here the whole 'would die for you' issue kind of blinding them from options that do not in fact involve dying.
also, with the making vampires look sexy / biting look like sex (yowza), there's some about how appealing it is. like, wouldn't you want to be able to solve your lover's health problems with just yourself? And they really really need you... or the blood parts anyways.
... I'd like to say I used to be really into the vampire thing but much of my library sees that 'used to' and laughs. I'm into it. Vampire Xander and Willow feeding on Cordelia while Giles in the cage watches? Still about the hottest thing. Vampire Willow in general. Spike. Angel, when he's not being... him. It's just now? It's kind of embarrassing. ... actually no, it's been kind of embarrassing a real long time. I really hope I'm not Chanterelle in a cellar hoping for the lonely ones to save me but I always fear I kind of am. It's not like my real life relationships... exist, let alone be successful. But there's always vampires, and I'd always be enough to appeal to them, at least very very briefly.
Buffy has a lot to deal with, a dark mystery guy who doesn't talk enough to take the shine off and who very regularly turns up to help, and now an experience with biting that seems kind of interesting. You can see the appeal.
But then they act like they can hear their own background music and I just want to :eyeroll: at them hard.
:eyeroll:
It's a good story to watch, but wow am I glad they're moving on now.
It's been suggested that after high school BtVS lost its central metaphor and went less good. I disagree. Girls' still got to grow up. Plenty of demons there.
So now they're heading for college, where they meet those olders currently dealing with the same problems that I've been grumping about. It just goes very... Buffy.
I look forward to it.
Buffy season 3... I haven't been thinking of much to say about it because I've already said and read so much about it, but it's still good TV.
The whole 'high school is hell' metaphor and turning common experiences into demons still holds up strong. The more arc episodes where you're watching Faith and the Mayor do stuff sometimes actually feel almost thinner, cause it's just people having consequences and not layered metaphors with demons on them.
I like the Mayor, he's a model of evil not cliche yet cause it's less often seen, a cheerful personable kind of guy who has opinions about politeness and swearing. He's just also planning to kill and eat everyone to fuel his own ascension. Exploit everyone on his rise to power, behind happy politician mask. Plus, patriarchy. The guy Buffy calls Dick turns into a really giant snake, at that point it's not subtle. But he's in the season the Watchers screw up a lot, Giles gets fired for being too much of a father figure, and the Mayor gives Faith presents and cookies and stops her when she started being all 'sugar daddy' trying to make it a sex thing. Sexual exploitation isn't the only way to be a creepy guy, this is creepy paternalism telling women who to be. Except it's telling them who to kill, mostly, which is stereotypically more what happens to guys, so that's interesting.
Faith enjoying killing people, liking the power, that's one failure mode of violence.
But Buffy deciding to kill Faith and feed her to Angel is another. I mean, killing people, even people you know have killed someone and are pretty sure have killed more, that's generally disapproved of without judges and juries. And in many many countries even with them. Vengeance is motive for murder, not excuse for it. And then there's the blood part. I read arguments about organ donation which make an argue about bodily autonomy, like, the rule is that nobody can have your parts even after you've finished using them, because they're still yours. Wishes are supposed to be respected. Even if organ donation, or in this case simple blood donation, would save a life, the laws are set up so nobody can force you to do it and it isn't counted as like negligence or killing someone to let them die of not giving that particular form of help. Because it's your body. That you can decide to keep in one piece. So deciding to feed Faith to Angel is a whole additional bad to deciding to kill her. But Buffy was pretty sure she was in teh right there, because Faith did the poisoning, so Faith should do the curing. And sure, that's very eye for an eye, but that's not the prevailing law of the land. So Buffy is making some pretty big deal ethical choices there. But she's the protagonist, so story sidesteps the right and wrong of it by having her fail messy.
Faith was doing the dark mirror thing, but some of the ways they did it are actually pretty weird or creepy. Like, the Mayor pays her, at least in goods and services, and sometimes with an envelope of probable cash. Oh noes, now she's doing stuff for money. But... so do police? So do most people, on account of the whole needing to eat thing that's going around. It doesn't seem to be textually contrasted to the Watchers not paying Slayers, the closest it gets is the contrast with that Post lady praising the Spartan nature of Faith's existence. Making out it's a virtuous choice to live like that. How Faith had any money to live on was not addressed, and needed to be. The exploitation of women's labour for no money is pretty central to patriarchal oppression under capitalism. Finding someone that valued her, in dollars and cents and emotionally... everyone keeps calling Faith crazy but she makes a lot of sense. Watchers are screwing Slayers over. Slayers eventually notice.
Graduation Day always makes me tear up. Repeatedly. Like when Buffy tells Wes to sod off. (Wes is so hilariously awkward at this stage. Baby Wes, still a pillock. And then with the going splat... I'm sure he was actually pretty badly injured, supernatural strength plus neck injury equals badness, but he was also pretty funny. Poor boy.) And then when the whole school joins the fight, cause they're graduating now, they're not children being asked to do adult stuff, they're actual adults stepping up. The whole ascending thing, human style. Except then they're still pretty damn young and it's really pervasively creepy that teenagers have been having to deal with this stuff mostly alone. ... in universe it's probably because people that start trying tend to get killed a lot, like Slayers dying young. That's depressing.
Out of universe it's just a weird world view. Like, what problems are there where there's no community, no other generations facing them too? Sometimes the olders are the problem, obvs, see Ted or Xander's parents, and sometimes they're well meaning but ignorant, but it's just... it seems like an odd world view where Giles, Jenny, and Wesley represent 100% of the alive adult help. I don't know how that metaphor holds. Sure teenagers can feel like they're the first ones to discover all their problems, but really?
Eh, is a problem with any 'verse with a Masquerade, what the logic is on people not knowing. Especially since with all the stuff that goes on and gets seen and gets actively covered up it's more like the olders have agreed not to know. Creepy.
... actually reminding me of a lot of headlines vs people who were actually there accounts. Issues that get ignored by the dominant 'majority' have a discourse of everything's fine no worries here. Any exception has to be exceptional or the story can't hold.
okay, so, maybe it makes sense, that's disquieting.
It's weird how this is the only time everyone helps though. They could organise. Get a movement going.
... actually that's a bit real too, there's people who'll turn up for a one off and then have lives to get back to, while the ones who can't walk away and a few core allies keep trying. But eventually much more attention/help?
If I was writing it then the Slayer would make more friends quicker. Also there would be relevant police departments. And elders who survived long term fighting the good fight.
hope and support.
Earshot has that bit about how nobody notices your pain cause they're too busy with theirs.
powerful, but, Buffy is like the busiest and she totally notices everyone's. So the story is contradicting the character there, in a good way. People care.
... Buffy notices if problems have a demon attached. But the demons are metaphors for problems. So it's like noticing?
Jonathan in the Prom giving Buffy the umbrella :-D
Willow and Oz and panic :-)
... Oz is so sweet. I usually just <3 him. But also he's... I'm not sure it's lazy, but he's actively avoiding leaving high school, what with repeating the year, and he seems down on himself and ready to accept pretty low judgements about the music and all. Like he's staying a kid so he won't have to... adult. He has some Stuff to deal with, with the wolfing and all, but there's also some flaking out. And I think of it as sweet, but if Willow had skipped classes and had to repeat a year and it was at least partly because of hanging out with her boyfriend, that would not be so much sweet. But then there's the saving the world stuff. He hung around for that. In the alternate universe too, he was a white hat, he was saving the world a lot. So there's an angle where you could argue he stayed in school to help, and skipped summer school to help patrol at night. So, surfeit of adult, holding him back from paper achievement.
But he very rarely says actual words, so you never really know.
Buffy and Angel... :eyeroll:
sorry, but that's all I got left by the time he leaves. Big drama gestures guy, won't say goodbye, won't stay with Buffy because what, she'll want kids one day? She should have a normal life? Who is he to tell her what to want? Blah.
He's acting like it's all noble and painful to make decisions for her.
Stupid reason.
Also, when he's spent three years helping her, you know, not die? The initial decision to leave her is difficult to sell as for her own good.
So then she decides to die to save him.
At that point it's def for her own good, and also she maybe needs help.
Like, that whole Slayer blood thing, they couldn't get a nice clean kit and donate it in bags and feed him a pint and wait for her to stop feeling woozy cause Slayer with super healing and then try it again if they need to? No, she does it the drama way.
... the story does it the drama way, but also, her feelings are doing the driving right then. It's big demonstration of how self sacrifice has down side. Because she's also all that stands between the world and annihilation by Mayor at that point, so dying? Not unalloyed generosity.
When it was Willow being hostage and Wes was talking numbers and saying they should destroy the box... in the short term he seems right, but think of all the other times Willow wouldn't have been around to save the world. Win battle, lose war. Plus he didn't know it but the Mayor compared the spider things to the chocolate chips, not the cookies, so probably he'd remain a really big snakey problem even without it. Also it's difficult to get people to come fight on your side if you're going to screw them over, for the greater good or otherwise. It's like that parable of the lost sheep, cause if you don't save one lamb then pretty soon you've lost all of them. The Watchers haven't had to think that way though because one Slayer dies the next is Chosen and she doesn't get much say in it. There's always more sheep. Creepy habits of mind develop.
So saving the one, always necessary. Just it kind of helps to also have a plan to save the many.
Also also? You know when Buffy went after Faith and she took a knife, turned off the music, and faced her in fair and honorable combat?
If she'd taken the tranq rifle and shot her in the back before she noticed she was there, crisis averted, blood donor achieved, and murder quite possibly avoided.
Faith poisoned Angel to get Buffy reacting, distracted by her feelings and not thinking things through, and it worked.
... the writers wanted a final confrontation so they skipped the whole 'things that would work better' category. but with plausibility.
BtVS so far has explored a lot of down sides of relationships, assorted abusive ones, fallout from breakups, and here the whole 'would die for you' issue kind of blinding them from options that do not in fact involve dying.
also, with the making vampires look sexy / biting look like sex (yowza), there's some about how appealing it is. like, wouldn't you want to be able to solve your lover's health problems with just yourself? And they really really need you... or the blood parts anyways.
... I'd like to say I used to be really into the vampire thing but much of my library sees that 'used to' and laughs. I'm into it. Vampire Xander and Willow feeding on Cordelia while Giles in the cage watches? Still about the hottest thing. Vampire Willow in general. Spike. Angel, when he's not being... him. It's just now? It's kind of embarrassing. ... actually no, it's been kind of embarrassing a real long time. I really hope I'm not Chanterelle in a cellar hoping for the lonely ones to save me but I always fear I kind of am. It's not like my real life relationships... exist, let alone be successful. But there's always vampires, and I'd always be enough to appeal to them, at least very very briefly.
Buffy has a lot to deal with, a dark mystery guy who doesn't talk enough to take the shine off and who very regularly turns up to help, and now an experience with biting that seems kind of interesting. You can see the appeal.
But then they act like they can hear their own background music and I just want to :eyeroll: at them hard.
:eyeroll:
It's a good story to watch, but wow am I glad they're moving on now.
It's been suggested that after high school BtVS lost its central metaphor and went less good. I disagree. Girls' still got to grow up. Plenty of demons there.
So now they're heading for college, where they meet those olders currently dealing with the same problems that I've been grumping about. It just goes very... Buffy.
I look forward to it.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-20 01:28 pm (UTC)On one hand it's annoying that Buffy does horrible things and still gets to be good guy. On the other hand, slayers and demons, they're on a different plane than the laws of man in this moment in time and place, you know? Something goes deeper. It's blood, like Spike said.
Funny, with humans I absolutely despise the "it's biology!" excuses, but in a fantasy setting, I'm totally okay with nonhumans acting on impulse and primal urges. You know, road rage is inexcusable, but Kronos wanting to slaughter everyone, that's okay, he's not exactly one of us. I dunno.
"The exploitation of women's labour for no money" is a main point of much fantasy and ALL OF BUFFY in particular. Although the Faith thing specifically I think is less "stuff for money" and more "assassinations for money".
Wes never got a chance. Yes, he was woefully unprepared and too arrogant, but you can say that for almost any newbie. Newbies need the older generation to nurture them. The Scoobies as a whole just gave up on Wes before he arrived - for reasons that have to do with the council and what they've done, yes, but they just decided in advance they'll never give this new guy a chance. And they never did. Imagine au where Wes gets taught properly and doesn't have to leave. Doesn't get himself nearly-killed, nearly-killed, actual-killed. Is useful to Buffy, not Angel.
"Except then they're still pretty damn young and it's really pervasively creepy that teenagers have been having to deal with this " - where I come from people go out of high school and directly into military. Army at 18, given a gun and targets... So yeah. "American teenagers" can be a more sheltered group, on the whole, than others.; it's not age, it's culture, and in Sunnydale anyone at 18 has already seen gruesome deaths, plural. You graduate, you step up and fight. Imagine au where that small army actually stayed as a cohesive militia. :) Strange, I never considered it, and don't think I've seen it written either.
"it seems like an odd world view where Giles, Jenny, and Wesley represent 100% of the alive adult help" - compare: school bullying in previous years, decades, centuries. Adults accepted it as a way of life, children were abused and sometimes killed themselves - or were "accidentally" killed. It's not that far fetched from reality, it's just ugly.
"she does it the drama way." - so here's what's in my head: why is there that all the shows I can think of are either UBERDRAMA or they're comedies? Why not "realistic" (in the sense that people act like normal people, I don't mean un-fantasy) understated subtle drama? All the understated things I can think of right now are Brit comedies. I want "drama" that is a little less melodramatic. And then, what you said: "'things that would work better' category"
"But then they act like they can hear their own background music and I just want to :eyeroll: at them hard."
LOL
oh god so true.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-12 03:21 pm (UTC)This has come up in quite a few fanfics that I've read lately, and so it was something that I was kind of kicking around in my head. I do wish they'd addressed this more directly in the series, but after thinking about it for a little bit - the more you learn about the Watcher's Council, the more it makes sense that the Slayer doesn't get paid. This is a group of old men, founded back in the days of yore when women were either the property of their parents or their husbands. So whatever rules they originally set up probably wouldn't have included paying the Slayer directly - maybe it was just assumed that her Watcher, or her parents, or somebody else would provide for her. In any case, they (according to my headcanon) established the tradition that being the Chosen One is a calling and not a job, sort of like being a nun.
Then they just never bothered to rewrite the rules to keep up with the changing times, because that's how ancient tradition-bound institutions tend to work. The only person who would benefit from this rule change is the Slayer herself, and a single "employee" (who is a teenager on top of that) isn't going to be able to make demands very effectively from a bunch of adults. In fact, I think it's stated (or at least, really heavily implied) in season 7 that the Shadow Men made only one Slayer because they thought more than that would be too hard to control, and apparently this bothered them more than the idea of pitting a single person against all the demons in the entire world. And considering that they fired Giles just for being too "fatherly", it seems unlikely that any Watcher who raised the issue of paying the Chosen One would have gotten to a position to do anything about it.