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maggie2OK, batteries (somewhat) recharged.
So, I've been puzzling for quite a while about how Bangel space porn could possibly fit into season 8 as a whole, since season 8 was all about the consequences of the slayer spell. #34 has been a central plot point from the get go, we are told -- so it's not like it's just stuck in there for the heck of it.
If you step back, I think at least one point of the Bangel pornfest is that it's playing off season 2. As Willow says, Buffy should have staked Angel -- she did it back in Belonging in order to save the world. But here Buffy basically renounces her choice in Becoming and doubles down on Surprise/Innocence -- only this time without the innocence part. This time she can't say she doesn't know that very bad things happens when she sleeps with Angel.
How does this connect to the themes of season 8? I think season 8 is about how badly Buffy's first major project as an adult has gone. Chosen was something like Buffy's college graduation (season 7 would have been her senior year if she'd not had to drop out). So season 8 is about Buffy's life as an adult. The slayer army is her first big adult project. She's full of idealism about wanting to fix the world. Alas, it's gone spectacularly badly. Her army has been soundly defeated by the people she thinks she's been fighting for; she's compromised her own ideals along the way. To rub salt into the wound, she's given up a lot for the project... no personal life, no connection. Angel spells it all out for her back in #11 -- has the slayer spell made the world better off? Has it made Buffy better off?
I think #33/#34 is meant as an exclamation point on all of this. Buffy's noblest moment was killing the man she loved to save the world. She had told Whistler she had nothing left to lose, and he says that she's got one more thing to lose. After Becoming, she's never quite the same. How can you feel yourself to be deeply in love with someone (or anyone) once you have learned that you are the sort of person who would kill your lover if you had to? Buffy carried on with her project of being a hero, but the story has long dwelt on the enormous personal cost to Buffy that project has exacted. So by the end of #33, Buffy has fallen so low, her project has failed so badly, that she effectively takes back that original choice. She's sacrificed her personal happiness for the sake of the world for years, this is what the world gives back, so screw the world by screwing Angel. I think that's the drama of the moment that they were going for. (I'm not going to say the drama actually worked -- the porn was pretty ridiculous).
#35 is supposed to set up Buffy's lesson in coming back to herself. She's not fighting for an ungrateful humanity. She's fighting for the particular people who are her friends. She unequivocally chooses them over Angel. I rather suspect that the next hammer to fall is that she's not going to easily get her friends back. The other item of note is that while she clearly is happy about the sex, there's nothing else here that we'd expect from Buffy indulging in her forbidden love for Angel. The Bangel sex has not a few overtones from season 6 Spuffy. Angel wants to talk about the romance, Buffy has at best an off-hand romantic remark at the very end when she's already given him up. Buffy initiates the sex, and they're doing things they probably can't spell. Bangel 2010 doesn't have anything like the hostility that is strewn all over season 6 Spuffy, but the rest is pretty similar.
So we have Buffy destroying the world in a moment of despair when she decides to go after something that she has always thought she wanted, but which turns out to be more like something she's already had. That sounds like a Jossian thing to go for.
(Whether it works or not is another question; and I think there are other things in the mix -- most notably turning off the fact that Buffy can't kill what's inside her; but at least it gives me a way of looking at this and not thinking it's totally random.)
ETA: Check out![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
local_max's excellent follow-up post on all this!
So, I've been puzzling for quite a while about how Bangel space porn could possibly fit into season 8 as a whole, since season 8 was all about the consequences of the slayer spell. #34 has been a central plot point from the get go, we are told -- so it's not like it's just stuck in there for the heck of it.
If you step back, I think at least one point of the Bangel pornfest is that it's playing off season 2. As Willow says, Buffy should have staked Angel -- she did it back in Belonging in order to save the world. But here Buffy basically renounces her choice in Becoming and doubles down on Surprise/Innocence -- only this time without the innocence part. This time she can't say she doesn't know that very bad things happens when she sleeps with Angel.
How does this connect to the themes of season 8? I think season 8 is about how badly Buffy's first major project as an adult has gone. Chosen was something like Buffy's college graduation (season 7 would have been her senior year if she'd not had to drop out). So season 8 is about Buffy's life as an adult. The slayer army is her first big adult project. She's full of idealism about wanting to fix the world. Alas, it's gone spectacularly badly. Her army has been soundly defeated by the people she thinks she's been fighting for; she's compromised her own ideals along the way. To rub salt into the wound, she's given up a lot for the project... no personal life, no connection. Angel spells it all out for her back in #11 -- has the slayer spell made the world better off? Has it made Buffy better off?
I think #33/#34 is meant as an exclamation point on all of this. Buffy's noblest moment was killing the man she loved to save the world. She had told Whistler she had nothing left to lose, and he says that she's got one more thing to lose. After Becoming, she's never quite the same. How can you feel yourself to be deeply in love with someone (or anyone) once you have learned that you are the sort of person who would kill your lover if you had to? Buffy carried on with her project of being a hero, but the story has long dwelt on the enormous personal cost to Buffy that project has exacted. So by the end of #33, Buffy has fallen so low, her project has failed so badly, that she effectively takes back that original choice. She's sacrificed her personal happiness for the sake of the world for years, this is what the world gives back, so screw the world by screwing Angel. I think that's the drama of the moment that they were going for. (I'm not going to say the drama actually worked -- the porn was pretty ridiculous).
#35 is supposed to set up Buffy's lesson in coming back to herself. She's not fighting for an ungrateful humanity. She's fighting for the particular people who are her friends. She unequivocally chooses them over Angel. I rather suspect that the next hammer to fall is that she's not going to easily get her friends back. The other item of note is that while she clearly is happy about the sex, there's nothing else here that we'd expect from Buffy indulging in her forbidden love for Angel. The Bangel sex has not a few overtones from season 6 Spuffy. Angel wants to talk about the romance, Buffy has at best an off-hand romantic remark at the very end when she's already given him up. Buffy initiates the sex, and they're doing things they probably can't spell. Bangel 2010 doesn't have anything like the hostility that is strewn all over season 6 Spuffy, but the rest is pretty similar.
So we have Buffy destroying the world in a moment of despair when she decides to go after something that she has always thought she wanted, but which turns out to be more like something she's already had. That sounds like a Jossian thing to go for.
(Whether it works or not is another question; and I think there are other things in the mix -- most notably turning off the fact that Buffy can't kill what's inside her; but at least it gives me a way of looking at this and not thinking it's totally random.)
ETA: Check out
local_max's excellent follow-up post on all this!