maggie2 | Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

Batman was my first true television love. Back when I was seven, I just loved Batman, Robin, and their battle with all those diabolical villains. When I was older, I realized that Batman was a spoof and I still loved it. Great that it could work for a literal-minded seven year old. Great that it could amuse her when she got older. Adam West and Burt Ward linger in my heart with the warmest affection.

I loved Tim Burton's Batman with Michael Keaton. Mostly because batman was back and I am and always will be pro-batman girl. I liked the serious tone, along with the cartoonish tone from the original show. I'm not sure they worked together very well, though. I loved that first Batman movie a lot, but more as a really cool failure than as a spectacular success. The sequels just got worse from there.

I really like the new Batman with Christian Bale. Oddly, I've only seen the first one once. It's a bit long and takes itself too seriously. But I like Dark Knight a lot. It makes you think a bit. It's definitely got some of that essential darkness that the TV show didn't have and that Burton couldn't quite blend with the cartoon sensibility..

Folks, these are three very different approaches to the source material which is batman. If you want to take one of them and canonize it and say the other two don't measure up, that's your perogative. But I'd like to be free to like all the batmans. I don't want to live in a world where embracing Christian Bale means I have to renounce Adam West. I want to live in a world that celebrates them both and which recognizes that the source material for batman is just that rich that it works well as serious brooding drama and as spoofy cheese.

Batman and Robin is a bad movie because it doesn't have the zany cheese of the series, or the weird combo that Burton tried. It's not a fun movie, or a serious movie or any kind of good movie. So of course, it's worse that Dark Knight. But NOT because it fails to be properly serious. Batman the series is NOT worse than Dark Knight. It's just different. Difference is good.

To the argument in question, season 8 might well be an abject failure -- but at least let it be a failure of Joss to do justice to his own schtick, not a failure to do something he isn't even trying to do. And please don't tell me that for any given set of ideas there is One True Way. (Or less snarkily, any subject worth doing well is worth doing in multiple tones. Literature is a conversation, not a dictatorship).

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I very much agree that it's not clear what Joss is trying to do. Twilight just is baffling. People can say it's bad writing because it's utterly baffling, and all I can reply is that I'm going to hang on to see if it's still baffling after Last Gleaming. It's the next step that I don't get -- slapping on some interpretation and declaring that it fails to live up to whatever that interpretation should be living up to. You'd think that the fact that it entirely fails to be that would constitute evidence that whatever Joss is trying to do, it's not that.

Anyway, sometimes a mood develops where people start making what I regard to be unfair complaints about whatever is the target of a generally-agreed on ire. I usually bristle when I think that is happening (not that complaints are made, just that some of the complaints start to be unfair, alongside all the perfectly fair ones). The problem is that the people making the complaints obviously think they are being fair and don't much like hearing me say they aren't. So I should learn to just step out of the way when that happens.

I'm glad you got to a place where you could enjoy Batman!

Yeah. The thing that really got me in the Promethea comparison was the "Buffy/Satsu happened because there was lesbianism in Promethea!" argument. But I do at least understand the comparison in general--because as flake-sake points out, the two share a motif (world-ending space frakking!) and one apparently worked and the other didn't.

The fact that Meltzer states that #35 was philosophy gives some more ammunition. But I don't really take Meltzer's interviews seriously, so it doesn't bother me much. I think signs point to aycheb's interpretation.

I wonder if the reason Meltzer got this arc is that Meltzer is a total fanboy? If Joss is mocking fan expectations as you have suggested, it might actually be that Joss used Meltzer as a fan to propose increasingly outlandish fannish ideas (all Buffy needs to do to be with Angel is get over herself! Bangel reunite and have sex immediately! Buffy is so awesome she goes to a higher plane! Giles gets to be exposition guy!) to skewer. I'm a bit worried even suggesting this, because the argument against this aesthetically is, what did the fans do to deserve being skewered canonically, at the expense of the story's internal consistency? Lots of questions.

Oh, and I always enjoyed Batman :). I just used to think it was "so bad it's good," whereas now it's "so good it's good."

World-ending space frakking. On what basis are we saying that Joss's version didn't work? Because it didn't live up to Joss's intention for the use of that motif? If so, why compare it to Promethea? Or because Moore did it better? If so, I call foul on assuming that Joss intends what Moore intended and judging him by a standard he wasn't even aiming at. Aycheb spells the specifics on this out quite well. Joss doesn't want you to be transported by the sex; Moore does. They are after different things. Moore's sex was supposed to be moving in a way that Whedon's sex was not.

I share your temptation about how to view Metlzer's role, and your very good objection to it. I'd rather it not turn out to be that.

I do think Twilight needs to work internally to the story. I think I can see, with Aycheb, what was being aimed at in terms of Buffy turning to Angel. He's always been what she had to give up, it makes sense that beaten down so hard she might go ahead and grab it. I think the tone of the sex actually works with the theme because the actuality probably falls well short of what she long yearned for. That's true to life. We get what we want and we never want it again. The tone on the frakking doesn't bug me. On the contrary, if it had been beautiful and transporting I'd have been devastated and disappointed. Devastated because I don't want twu wuv Bangel validated. Disappointed because I read BtVS as not being about to validate a hearts and flowers view of love. I'd much rather leave that junk to Meyer's Twilight.

I think there had been a prior failure to really make Buffy's despair palpable. I had to think it through rather than feel it. It might have worked better if I hadn't read it month by month -- but the way I did read it just wasn't a very powerful emotional experience. I wonder what it will look like when I step back and read it all like a novel, but that doesn't fix the lack of impact it's had on me reading it this way.

I think the universe evolution stuff is baffling. Like I said to Flake Sake, I am willing to believe that the jumbled explanation is intentional -- no character serves as the authorial voice of true exposition. When you think of the various explanations given you can see why each one fits the character who is giving it. We started one of the issues with the Rorschach blot. This is what we have. Anyway, if (as I suspect) we are meant to experience the same confusion and temptation to fill in the blanks according to our own prior templates, I think the arc works very well. But if we *still* don't know what's going on by the end of Last Gleaming, then the best I could say for Joss is he was trying some avant garde deal of telling a story by not acutally telling the story. But I'm hoping that he is telling a story and we'll know what's happening by the end.

Angel seems be setting up as nothing but a puppet. He's been there before. I'm not sure how it works dramatically to find out he's a puppet -- but it does get rid of the motivation problems that are otherwise legion.

Have I covered all the bases? I still don't know what the big picture is -- which means it's all up in the air. But I don't see that it must necessarily fail based on what we have so far.

Maybe I'm being too forgiving. I'm a shark who smells blood in the water and at the end of the day, maybe that's all I care about.

A shark with feet? And on land? Great response.

To put my last comment in context: I'm actually hedging my bets a bit. I like season eight mostly and want it to succeed. But I am also not expecting Last Gleaming to solve too much, though I hope it will. When I was watching season seven (the first season I watched in real time), I held out hope until the last few episodes that all the dangling plot and character threads would genuinely be tied up, and so basically ALL my disappointment got concentrated into "Chosen," for a little while. Right now I stand back and I enjoy Chosen more, and the rest of the season less. But it made for a bit of a devastating viewing experience to have my hopes dashed. So I'm willing to see Twilight a failure, provisionally, and hope that it will be improved, so that I can still enjoy Last Gleaming if it works. I’m certainly in agreement with you that it’s too early to take it as certain that Twilight failed, but I also think it’s interesting to discuss what apparently didn’t work in Twilight in the interim while we wait for Joss to spin gold out of straw, or fail to do so, or to show us that that straw was actually gold all along and we missed it.

I was playing a bit of devil's advocate on the Promethea argument, saying, well, yeah, if Joss were trying to do Moore he failed, and since we don't know what he's trying to do for sure I understand the comparison. Some of Meltzer's comments in interviews (more on Meltzer & inverviews later) suggest that he was going for this type of transcendent thing. That interview provides circumstantial evidence that Joss was trying for transcendence, I.e. Moore-like, and failed. I don’t really buy that, because I don’t think Meltzer’s statement precludes the sex from also being ridiculous, and I also don’t think it’s certain that Whedon’s motives are the same as Meltzer’s anyway. My point is more that I can see where other people are getting the idea that Joss was trying for a Moore-like story and failed, even if I don’t think that was what was happening.

Because yes: the sex seems animalistic as opposed to transcendent. It's funny, it's silly, it's perhaps (as Meltzer insists) sexy and beautiful but it's very much about bodies. The glowhypnol actually makes some sense, because Buffy & Angel are giving into base urges, not transcendent, think-y ones. So I agree on that too. I also agree that if the sex itself really were transcendent, then that would actually rub me the wrong way, too.

As far as my comments on Twilight and Meltzer: as I indicated earlier I really do want season eight to work as much as you do. And I think it's very possible that Last Gleaming could rock the house and make sense of Twilight. I agree with you that a lot of interpretations of Twilight do make sense already. I am pretty much on board with Buffy jumping Angel as a matter of despair, and rereading 33 (and the look on her face there) I buy it. In fact a lot of my emotions are more engaged in rereading certain issues, even out of order; I really do feel the FDW killing now (which I think you've mentioned before left you very cold). 32 and 33 are, as far as I'm concerned, reasonably good issues, and 34 and 35 aren't so much "bad" (though they may be that) as head-scratchers--right now.

So when I say that it doesn't work, that is primarily a response to the fact that it doesn't do what Meltzer, in interviews, said it was doing. This was apparently a big problem during season six, where writer interviews were constantly going against the grain of what the text said, so I’m aware that one shouldn’t put too much stock in them, especially when the ’verse is deliberately polysemic. Still: Meltzer said that the sex was meant to be sexy and beautiful, and he talked excitedly about getting to write Giles-exposition; the last issue was supposed to be the philosophy issue. None of these play out the way Meltzer says they do (though yes, I’m fond of “It’s a Daffy Duck cartoon!”).

(cont'd)

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.

Yeah. I think the big problem with interviews--I'm not talking about the current Meltzer one--is that ME was always on the defensive in them. And in a work that's polysemic, they, like me urging pessimism when I'm probably one of the most optimistic people about the comics around, have to voice the opposition. There are lots of soundbytes of Marti Noxon saying that Spike was the bad boyfriend, but I bet anythying those are in response to fans who basically thought that Buffy should just get over herself and have hearts and flowers love with him. (I am not making a point about Spuffies in general--I'm making a point about fans and there are a lot of them that just want everything to suddenly be okay.) In other interviews she was more evenhanded and talked about how the relationship was bad news for both parties.

One of my favourite cases is Fury. I do think he doesn't quite get Joss' storytelling on some levels. He almost does, and he got it enough to know that it was missing on LOST. He was savvy enough to recognize that Spike had to win in Destiny. But in addition to his yanking fans' chains, often very cruelly, on Spike, and claiming (I think) that there was no way Spike could ever be good, eventually his way of reconciling himself to the story was that (he says so, I think, in the commentary for LMPTM), basically, that he was wrong about Spike, and that for some reason Spike kept some of his soul and so is a special vampire who's not as evil as the rest of them. To me, that suggests he buys into the soulless=pure evil thing more than Joss seems to, and has to concoct personal canon that doesn't make it into the episodes themselves (except maybe obliquely). Whereas for Joss, I think Spike isn't "special" in any mystical, "keeping part of his soul" way, but a fully self made man. But Fury's inability to get to (what I think is) the 'correct' story doesn't really affect the shows.

Anyway--there are certainly moments where I have to take a leap of faith that the writers aren't cowardly or stupid, but I usually find it rewarding. (I did spend a few paragraphs defending the magic addiction, didn't I? Though I think stormwreath, predictably, got there first.) Still, finding out that Adam West was not only in on the parody of Batman but helped steer it was a big moment for me, at any rate--finding out exactly what goes on in those Mutant Enemy minds might be great. Or it might be disappointing. At any rate, Joss is clearly very ambivalent about the interview circuit (c.f. his so revealing Dr. Horrible Commentary! song) and I can see that extending down the line.

For the record, Meltzer could really be brilliant. I haven't read his other work, and Twilight isn't bad in the way that, e.g., Safe is bad--if it's bad, it is so in its own way. Following up on my Brad Meltzer = fanfic writer crackpot theory, it occurs to me that on the metanarrative level, Joss actually has experience with playing in other people's universes--his run on Astonishing X-Men is amazing but I've thought recently about how much it has some of the usual fanfic tropes, there might be a post on this if I knew more about fanfic which I don't really--and so may have brought in an outsider to write as "the Universe" and his somewhat fanfic-y story (Xander's geeking out in 32 MAY have crossed the line in some ways from "normal for Xander" to "Brad Meltzer!self insert," I think--but that's not necessarily a bad thing).

As far as your point: I actually am not all that convinced that BM sold Bangel--Jeanty certainly did, but Meltzer sold Teh Sex, and The Philosophy, and his great grasp of the characters. He seemed pretty happy to be introducing Spike at the end, too, so (in terms of the ship wars) I don't think Meltzer was really trying to take a stand, the way Jeanty has (though, in all fairness, Jeanty wouldn't have had to take the stand if he weren't constantly badgered with questions about who Buffy wuvs best, which is not Jeanty's fault).

(cont'd)

Have you noticed the deafening silence from Bangeldom since #35 came out?
Well, no, but then I'm not really in any Bangel corners of fandom. Whedonesque tries to shut down shipping, and though I occasionally lurk on BF it's not enough to get a feel for what Bangel HQ is feeling. But I believe you.

Your read on the contradictory guesses is very good. It doesn't explain everything. It doesn't explain why Angel goes from "We can fix it!" to "We don't have to fix it!" (or some such) in, like, two panels. It doesn't explain why Willow and Warren's first reaction upon seeing each other for the first time since The Long Way Home is to debate the merits of Bangel. To do that you either have to say it's bad or also say that there is deliberate OOC going on, beyond just characters making random guesses. But don't get me wrong--I think that some kind of OOC could work. And, hell, we have no way of knowing that the glow didn't affect everyone else in emotional proximity as well. Turbulence devoted a few panels to showing that glamours can make people behave mostly normally but act weird in specific ways (not remembering that Giles, Faith and Andrew are gone).

Anyway, I'm recommending some caution. I probably won't follow it. The one preview page got me really excited. And while I try to avoid any spoilers, I couldn't resist reading the blurb for 37 and I really want to read this issue (well, 36 first) RIGHT NOW. I really do want to know what you think indescriminate means. (Indescriminate = love the first black clad hunk of a knight thing you see? Love a person even though you don't trust them? Love them completely, with your whole heart, even though every sign says "get away"?)

(Indescriminate = love the first black clad hunk of a knight thing you see? Love a person even though you don't trust them? Love them completely, with your whole heart, even though every sign says "get away"?)

Yup. And it's yet another play off Always Darkest...Buffy can't tell Spike and Angel apart because they are wearing the same outfit (a soul). (A discriminating Buffy would be able to tell the difference between a curse and a quest). Most people want to say indiscriminate means Buffy going for Spike even though she was destined for Angel, but I like this way better. It also would give the blurb a nice symmetry. Buffy has to go back to the place of indiscrimnate love (Angel), where the Scoobies were formed (Scoobies) and the hell mouth was closed (Spike). Dawn is the only bond missing, and she wasn't there -- so that makes sense as well.

I love that the closing of the hell mouth finally gets raised in the wake of Spike's entrance to the story. He is the one who destroyed Sunnydale. It was always his job to destroy Sunnydale -- see, e.g. the SD sign getting knocked over thrice by Spike. I have no idea what it means. The blurb is capable of being read as Spike discovering that he (Spike) is the source of the problems, not Angel. That might mean that the closure of the hellmouth is the problem. I hope Spike isn't the problem -- or maybe he is one third of the problem. The easiest way to read this story is as a meta commentary on the story and fandom and what not. There are three tribes in the fandom, and we're all tearing Buffy apart. And the divisions in fandom reflect the divisions in Buffy. There was always a tension between her vampire side and her Scoobie side. Not hard to see a wedge between her Angel side and her Spike side. What remains is some plot device to have those three things flow together to be causing Buffy's problems here.

So many possibilities. It could turn out very bad for a Spike fan, but I'm still excited.

I heart Joss's commentary! song in a big way.

Yup. And it's yet another play off Always Darkest...Buffy can't tell Spike and Angel apart because they are wearing the same outfit (a soul). (A discriminating Buffy would be able to tell the difference between a curse and a quest).

I wonder if Joss would actually go there. I wonder how on good terms he is with David Greenwalt. He seems pretty willing to trash Angel, which no the one hand I think is kind of cool (because antihero Angel is my favourite Angel) but I do wonder if having Angel not only not be Buffy's twu luv anymore, but the person she shouldn't have loved in the first place, may be too much for the character and his fans to bear.

It also would give the blurb a nice symmetry. Buffy has to go back to the place of indiscrimnate love (Angel), where the Scoobies were formed (Scoobies) and the hell mouth was closed (Spike).

When 34 came out I mentioned right away that the three vamps in the Giles-exposition flashbacks where black-hair, red-haired, and white-haired, which still seem to me to mean Angel, Willow, Spike in that order (Willow is not a vamp, but she has been coded as one in ToYL and is superpowered and possibly immortal now besides). So I am on board.

If these three are the problem, I wonder if this means that there will be a break--permanent, even?--with Angel, Spike and the Scoobies--or just Angel, Spike and WILLOW? The end of Anywhere But Here, with the two walking away in opposite directions, as well as Buffy killing Willow, may herald a rift there in particular. Buffy and Giles are already pretty rifty. Though your theory about a Dawn-related rift with Xander is tempting....

Dawn: Dawn is complicated though, isn't she? Because in one set of memories, she came in years after Spike did--and wasn't "real" so was never in Sunnydale; but in the other she first appeared in Buffy's life as a baby in L.A., long before Sunnydale.

If Dawn is left out, that could mean that she's toast. It could mean that she's really Buffy's problem, and not the rest of them. This would tie into fandom as well (LOVE the fandom-ripped-apart insight)--the general idea that Dawn was the jump-the-shark moment, that Buffy shouldn't have jumped to save her sister, must have trickled through to Joss. You mention the rifts in fandom; well, there are very few Summers Sisters Power! fans (in comparison to the Spuffies, Bangels, Banders/Billows/Scooby-friendshippers), and fans used to shout "Shut up Dawn!" at OMWF screenings. Buffy's been ignoring Dawn all this time because (?) fandom ignores her too. All Buffy's late-series emotional problems happened after Dawn's entrance in the narrative forced her to become an adult. And if she's not real, then.... But that's kind of too horrible. Could Joss actually do that? Throw away Dawn and the last seasons of the show? Or maybe have Buffy make that choice, and regret it?

OR: maybe it really is Angel, the Scoobies, and Spike who are the problems--and the season ends with Dawn's keyness actually destroyed and Dawn, conversely, a real girl again. You talk about Living Doll's foreshadowing, but Dawn does turn into a real girl again at the end--the killing her thing is tempting but it really could be a mislead, and maybe it's the key part of her that gets killed off so that Buffy gets a real life with her sister.

I'm not sure who I'm more personally uncomfortable with as the source of Buffy's problems--Spike, Dawn, or the Scoobies. (I'm surprisingly okay with Angel being the source of her problems, but we know that's not it.) Since I'm very fond of Spike, Dawn and the Scoobies all, it's kind of tough.

I could probably live with a permanent Buffy/Giles separation if Giles gets to do "Ripper" finally, hopefully live action with AT LEAST a Dushku cameo and maybe Hannigan as well and ghosts of Jenny and Ethan and, sure, let's throw Quentin and Welsey in there too.... (If Ethan is dead.)

So many possibilities. It could turn out very bad for a Spike fan, but I'm still excited.

It could turn out bad for everyone! It's kind of an all-bets-are-off thing. So: yes, exciting.

I heart Joss's commentary! song in a big way.

Yes yes yes. "I said some things I didn't mean/Okay let's talk about this scene...."

... but I do wonder if having Angel not only not be Buffy's twu luv anymore, but the person she shouldn't have loved in the first place, may be too much for the character and his fans to bear.

You are right. And I freely confess that I'm sure I have a major bias distortion thing going on with this subject. I mean, I really do see things this way. But it's so obviously Spike-centric I figure it's not 'true'. Still... would Joss go there? Nah -- it'd literally rip the fandom apart. Destroy the world, demons might come pouring in. Very bad stuff.

When 34 came out I mentioned right away that the three vamps in the Giles-exposition flashbacks where black-hair, red-haired, and white-haired, which still seem to me to mean Angel, Willow, Spike in that order (Willow is not a vamp, but she has been coded as one in ToYL and is superpowered and possibly immortal now besides). So I am on board.

Ooh, cool -- I had forgotten that observation. Willow keeps floating out of my head -- but you are totally right that we're set up for Buffy/Willow rift stuff in a big way. Another trio I keep thinking about is Buffy-Willow-Spike, the three central players in the closing of the hellmouth/slayer spell deal.

I forgot about the Giles-Buffy bond. It's not alluded to, unless he counts as a Scooby.

It could mean that she's [Dawn] really Buffy's problem, and not the rest of them. This would tie into fandom as well (LOVE the fandom-ripped-apart insight)--

I think the problem of Dawn has always been a chip to be played. There's such a huge nexus of issues there, along with lots of space to put in an in-story issue (Buffy dying for Dawn causing some instability; Dawn made out of Buffy causing some instability; the time-line split problem etc. etc.) The issues: Dawn represents Buffy's attachment to humanity. Buffy died rather than give it up, even though Dawn wasn't real. But it didn't quite work because when she came back Buffy was even less attached to humanity (Dawn-neglect). Dawn now as a rival for the ordinary life Buffy doesn't get; and Dawn's own reference to the slayers' need to choose between demon or humanity... I don't know how it adds up, or if anything will happen. But this is the stew that makes me think that a lot can be done to make Dawn play a 'gigantic' role in the conclusion to the story.

I don't know if that specifically means erasing all memory of her -- though one way to read the Twilight symbol is as time lines. We have the Dawnless timeline on the bottom. The the Dawn insert jumps the timeline up only to have it collapse back down and disappear again, with the original time line left to run its course. That would explain why the apparently undisturbed Fray future does not have any memory of a slayer army -- which has always been the main reason I think something about juggling time lines has to be in play this season. To make that work, Willow would have to have kept the memory of the lost time line (since she knows how to link to it), but she's got dimension crossing ability, so why not.

See? Very excited about this final arc. Thanks for letting me blather about it!

"Charybdis tested well with teens" I love every line of that song.

You are right. And I freely confess that I'm sure I have a major bias distortion thing going on with this subject. I mean, I really do see things this way. But it's so obviously Spike-centric I figure it's not 'true'. Still... would Joss go there? Nah -- it'd literally rip the fandom apart. Destroy the world, demons might come pouring in. Very bad stuff.

Hee! I saw your comments on the Jeanty-interview thread and like what you have to say there. The comments there also show what Joss is up against if he is going to trash B/A. If he does, will he be able to get his issue drawn? Bring Karl Moline in to finish it up?

I was going to say that Joss needs his fans, but I guess in a sense he doesn't; fan loyalty means a lot but his devoted Buffy fans didn't save Firefly and they didn't save Dollhouse. It's possible that he's really willing to cut the apron strings here.

I also don't think the attitude is Spike-centric; you just have to not buy destiny. And there *are* Spuffies who see Buffy & Spike as destined, but I think they're missing much of the fun.

Ooh, cool -- I had forgotten that observation. Willow keeps floating out of my head

Oddly, I seldom have that problem for more than a day or two at a time. It's tough.

I forgot about the Giles-Buffy bond. It's not alluded to, unless he counts as a Scooby.

I was wondering if he'd count as a Scooby. (And if he doesn't--does Andrew? Nah.) There's also Faith--whom Buffy was drawn to over the Scoobies as well. It's possible that Giles and Faith come in as a connection to the overall watcher/slayer line, which also predates Sunnydale even though she met both in Sunny D.

Dawn: as well as hints about Dawn's death, Living Doll does have her go through the trajectory doll ==> real girl. So I do wonder if maybe all her keyness will be deployed and she'll survive, pure human. But since she's mostly been portrayed as pure human, that would be a bit pat. I guess I'm just hoping she makes it through this okay.

Sunnydale: I forgot to mention last time, but the season is interestingly structured around a return to Sunnydale, with returns in the first arc ("Well, I wanted to go home"), at the midpoint as an intermission (After These Messages) and then a third time in the finale. Amy and Warren were presumably introduced as villains because they were Sunnydale denizens, and not just because they were villains from the show. Since they were in Twilight I figure they're along for the ride as well, so I have a feeling that one or both of them will do something significant in the final arc, though I have no idea what.

A key line to think about as we go into the arc: in ToYL, Willow says, "When you've lived as long as I have, you learn that it's not who dies, it's who kills them." Possibly Last Gleaming is where she learns that lesson.

I'm pretty excited too! And I don't mind listening to the ranting at all. Hopefully you don't let the Jeanty interview get you down. (And I'm serious about wondering whether Joss will have to quash a rebellion from Jeanty when the last few scripts come in. How do these things go?)

I'll have to ponder the weirdness of the Willow/Warren conversation. But I think it's in the context of the fourth-wall breaking that is going on all over the place in #34. Dawn with the Ben/Glory thing, for example. I'm pretty sure that if we rake the show we could find examples of fourth-wall breaking that really can't work in-story very well. "It must be Tuesday" being the one that most readily comes to mind.

Without #34 at hand, I think I can put on my Stormwreath hat and deliver the following:

1. We can fix it/ We don't have to fix it. They don't have to fix the lower plane's destruction because they are going to 'fix it' by creating new happier versions of everybody in the higher plane. He's talking high in the first remark and low in the second.

OR He's 100% in rationalization mode. He just wants to stay and will say anything to keep Buffy there. Rationalization probably represents 95% of the human exercise of 'reason' and when people are worked up about something they'll self-contradict in spectacular fashion and not be aware that they're doing it.

2. Warren/Willow. They are both nerdy Geeks who don't always see the whole picture at once when something else has their attention. Their attention in that moment is on the cataclysm going on around them, of which Bangel is a part. So they talk about it. I dont' think you even have to be a blindered geeky type to forget about a lot of things in the midst of the world literally being ripped apart.

How did I do with my Stormwreath impression?

Well, I think the best example from OMWF is Xander's summoning Sweet. I had trouble with it for years, before it hit me rather suddenly recently that Joss was "serious" in the commentary when he says, "Just because it was fun." The whole episode is artifice anyway, and artifice that produces strong emotional reaction (and there are PUPPETS! walking, almost singing puppets!); I think Joss couldn't help himself at letting us see the puppeteer’s strings there a bit. And how meta is it that Xander, who is the "ordinary guy" and often the viewer representative, is the one who summoned the demon (WE wanted this to happen!--and we brought doom upon our characters for inviting Joss to our town, and we still didn’t shut off the set!), and then regretted it? Suddenly the fact that Xander waited on this piece of information while people were dying makes sense: it's just a show. The way Joss plays with this cognitive dissonance (it's just a show, and it's emotionally true, and it's distancing, and...) is mind-boggling. And the weird fact is that it WORKS--people are angry about Xander summoning Sweet but OMWF still gets regularly voted the best episode ever, even though almost no one has been able to explain this in a nemotionally credible way (besides, “Xander’s a horrible person with no conscience,” which, while one possible interpretation, isn’t I think the ‘correct’ one)

How did I do with my Stormwreath impression?

It was very good! I actually do agree with the fourth-wall breaking stuff--it was basically the first thing I noticed. Angel rationalizing makes sense, but still doesn't flow well--but that may be the point. To expand on your Will/War point: Willow and Warren also fulfill similar roles in Buffy's and Twilight's camps, and are parallels for each other in different ways (Warren is Willow's dark side, and Willow is...well, Warren is almost all dark side, so I don't know what Willow is to Warren). So there's a lot of meat there, and I don't just mean Warren himself. My point is more that you can’t just say that the story works without appealing to somewhat tortured rationalizations or self-preferentiality. Which is fine--I’m (after several years!) actually kind of okay with Xander summoning Sweet in the narrative and I could see Twilight going this way too. (Though I really don’t think Twilight is ever going to be an OMWF-type favourite.)

I have to go meet a friend. Will reply to other comment soon!

And contributing to my “fan boy” theory is that Meltzer spends #32 making comics references and Twilight plays off fandom tropes re: Bangel, and goes so far out of the way to make things ridiculous as Willow and Warren, who, you know, have both killed/tortured the other, getting into Bangel debates.

So Meltzer wrote some uninteresting and/or OOC characterizations and potboiler philosophy. There are lots of reasons this could work in a grander story. The question I have, I guess, is whether Meltzer was “in on it.” If he was, his interviews are part of Joss' game, and are perhaps partly true. If he wasn't, then Joss is playing his cards very close to the chest, and so he hired Meltzer to get whatever affect he wanted to satirize. Stanley Kubrick reportedly didn't tell Slim Pickens that Dr. Strangelove was a comedy, and so got a very funny performance that probably wouldn't have been possible if Pickens were self-consciously playing toward that; I'm just guessing that that might be what's going on here. That's very ungenerous to Meltzer, of course; and he may really be in on the joke, such as it is. Either way, I think as an outside-the-Buffyverse person he might have had insights into what “fans” want to see, which may have been some of the inspiration for the arc. There are lots of other possibilities as well--it could be that Twilight actually does make literal sense once we've seen Last Gleaming.

The sentient Universe stuff, Angel-as-puppet: I agree. And I like the idea of the jumbled, silly explanations as being all about no one knowing what's going on. (One of the good sound bites in Meltzer's interview, one of the ones that make me a bit more sanguine about his role, is when he says how Giles, basically, has so much information in his head--how is he supposed to know what of the thousands of things he knows are going to come true? Which fits in with Giles being, well, wrong, in spite of being Giles.)

Re: Joss and avant-garde storytelling: I actually could buy that; in season six he certainly ditched the show's whole metaphorical structure (you come back from the dead after facing a god, and suddenly your villains are a bunch of nerds with a freeze ray, a magic crack dealer, a rubber loan shark and a giant penis-monster) in order to establish a new, more complicated one. The cost/benefit there was definitely to the benefit end, and fit with the show's overarching growing up story. I think whatever he's doing here might end up there, too.

Sorry, that was me!

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