First off, thanks very much for doing this. I can see you've invested a lot.
I've decided to respond post by post because I'm lazy that way. So this is me writing without having read the next four.
We have important common ground: I'm massively Spike-obsessed. My ability to continue to be engaged by season 8 is a testimony to my interest in Whedon's work, because emotionally speaking it's never going to matter to me one way or another as long as Spike's story isn't a part of it.
This might be a difference: I'm post-Spuffy. I think it was a totally fabulous relationship. Hugely important for both characters. This whole post started because I think it defies imagination to say that we can understand who Buffy is now if we don't know what she knows about Spike. And I think it's obvious that Joss knows this. I can live without there being a Spuffy future, partly becasue I see Buffy as the sort of person who will never be in a long-haul relationship and partly because I think Spike has literally given everything he can for Buffy, and she really can't do the same. Your remark that Lynch doesn't understand Spuffy is alarming because, of course, it's central to how one understands Spike.
I have not read extensively in the non-Lynch Spike comic book world. (Boy that's a clunky way of putting it.) I have read all of Lynch's Spike stuff. I did like Asylum very much. With an important caveat. It seemed off about where Spike is vis a vis Angel, depending on where in the season 5 arc you thought it was. That didn't matter so much because it was a stand alone that had no clear tie to the arc of season 5. (Not canonical and all of that). A big disappointment in AtF is that Lynch seems to see that relationship as not having advanced through season 5. Minor caveats were that I don't see Spike as someone who is a braggart about sex. There were the teeniest hints of that in Lynch's earlier Spike work, it became very much a nails on the chalk board thing for me here.
Indeed, a fair amount of my energy about the books is that for all that Lynch does love Spike (and I know he does), he's not leading me to deeper insights or understandings about the character I adore. And he's regressed him in some ways. (We'll see if the POV thing helps here, but I think that just shifts the problem to Angel). And because I'm Spike-centric, I have a rather visceral reaction to the idea that Angel is the sort of guy who would jump from a 10-story building to help someone, while Spike would take an elevator. I might just be petty enough to have let that color my whole engagement with the book. (It was a one-two punch in that fatal issue of First Night: Spike in the elevator, and Lorne getting his groove back).
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Re: I'll try but with the following caveat.
Date: 2009-01-24 07:04 pm (UTC)I've decided to respond post by post because I'm lazy that way. So this is me writing without having read the next four.
We have important common ground: I'm massively Spike-obsessed. My ability to continue to be engaged by season 8 is a testimony to my interest in Whedon's work, because emotionally speaking it's never going to matter to me one way or another as long as Spike's story isn't a part of it.
This might be a difference: I'm post-Spuffy. I think it was a totally fabulous relationship. Hugely important for both characters. This whole post started because I think it defies imagination to say that we can understand who Buffy is now if we don't know what she knows about Spike. And I think it's obvious that Joss knows this. I can live without there being a Spuffy future, partly becasue I see Buffy as the sort of person who will never be in a long-haul relationship and partly because I think Spike has literally given everything he can for Buffy, and she really can't do the same. Your remark that Lynch doesn't understand Spuffy is alarming because, of course, it's central to how one understands Spike.
I have not read extensively in the non-Lynch Spike comic book world. (Boy that's a clunky way of putting it.) I have read all of Lynch's Spike stuff. I did like Asylum very much. With an important caveat. It seemed off about where Spike is vis a vis Angel, depending on where in the season 5 arc you thought it was. That didn't matter so much because it was a stand alone that had no clear tie to the arc of season 5. (Not canonical and all of that). A big disappointment in AtF is that Lynch seems to see that relationship as not having advanced through season 5. Minor caveats were that I don't see Spike as someone who is a braggart about sex. There were the teeniest hints of that in Lynch's earlier Spike work, it became very much a nails on the chalk board thing for me here.
Indeed, a fair amount of my energy about the books is that for all that Lynch does love Spike (and I know he does), he's not leading me to deeper insights or understandings about the character I adore. And he's regressed him in some ways. (We'll see if the POV thing helps here, but I think that just shifts the problem to Angel). And because I'm Spike-centric, I have a rather visceral reaction to the idea that Angel is the sort of guy who would jump from a 10-story building to help someone, while Spike would take an elevator. I might just be petty enough to have let that color my whole engagement with the book. (It was a one-two punch in that fatal issue of First Night: Spike in the elevator, and Lorne getting his groove back).
Continued...