I do keep forgetting how the Meltzer interviews impact people. I have so much cognitive dissonance with them that I just keep forgetting them. As you say, there's a very similar problem with the show itself. I bet we could run a regression and find a very strong correlation between weight placed on interviews and dissatisfaction with ME. I think Joss, at least, is never to be taken at face value. Whether the writers follow suit, or are themselves never fully hep to the way Joss drops in details that pull against whatever surface stuff they think they are selling is hard to tell. Or maybe (as some of the anti's would have it) Joss is also a shallow dope and BtVS is pretty much the equivalent of a bunch of monkeys finally coughing up a Hamlet.
Very mysterious. It's on my list of questions to ask the Big Guy along with Did Oswalt act alone and Whatever happened to Virginia Dare?
Be that as it may, it seems harder to take the interviews/PR seriously than to discount it. Bangel got a hard sell from Jeanty and Meltzer and some random PR guy. I don't recall if Allie was so OTT with it. But let's take as given that the PtBs spoke of Bangel as the IT couple. The text is still far too littered with anti-Bangel stuff for that to be taken straight-up. Angel is insane and probably a puppet. Buffy's last "I love you" still belongs to Spike, not Angel -- who had to settle for an afterthought about Buffy actually missing him. The world is destroyed. Buffy couldn't leave her Bangel paradise fast enough. And the big dramatic beat at the end isn't Angel, it's Spike. Have you noticed the deafening silence from Bangeldom since #35 came out? How is it possible to think that Bangel PR points to some bottom line on what Twilight is about?
And if we grant that, why not the same with the philosophy/exposition stuff? I really like my present read that Daffy Duck *is* the philosophy, and that all the breathless but contradictory exposition reflects everyone's *guesses*. The guesses are all in character. And what other function does the instant retcon on Willow's first exposition play than to tell us that these are guesses? Or Giles saying that it's a guess? Or Buffy recognizing that Angel is just guessing?
All that said, I think your reservation/caution is all good. I'll stress the optimisim with the pessimists, but if there were any optimists in the house, I'd be more than happy to make sure they saw all the reasons to be pessimistic.
I need to get some work done, but I want to talk to you about the #37 blurb at some point. I have some kooky ideas about what indiscriminate means.
no subject
Very mysterious. It's on my list of questions to ask the Big Guy along with Did Oswalt act alone and Whatever happened to Virginia Dare?
Be that as it may, it seems harder to take the interviews/PR seriously than to discount it. Bangel got a hard sell from Jeanty and Meltzer and some random PR guy. I don't recall if Allie was so OTT with it. But let's take as given that the PtBs spoke of Bangel as the IT couple. The text is still far too littered with anti-Bangel stuff for that to be taken straight-up. Angel is insane and probably a puppet. Buffy's last "I love you" still belongs to Spike, not Angel -- who had to settle for an afterthought about Buffy actually missing him. The world is destroyed. Buffy couldn't leave her Bangel paradise fast enough. And the big dramatic beat at the end isn't Angel, it's Spike. Have you noticed the deafening silence from Bangeldom since #35 came out? How is it possible to think that Bangel PR points to some bottom line on what Twilight is about?
And if we grant that, why not the same with the philosophy/exposition stuff? I really like my present read that Daffy Duck *is* the philosophy, and that all the breathless but contradictory exposition reflects everyone's *guesses*. The guesses are all in character. And what other function does the instant retcon on Willow's first exposition play than to tell us that these are guesses? Or Giles saying that it's a guess? Or Buffy recognizing that Angel is just guessing?
All that said, I think your reservation/caution is all good. I'll stress the optimisim with the pessimists, but if there were any optimists in the house, I'd be more than happy to make sure they saw all the reasons to be pessimistic.
I need to get some work done, but I want to talk to you about the #37 blurb at some point. I have some kooky ideas about what indiscriminate means.