maggie2 | 8.36: The Preview Pages

8.36: The Preview Pages

So with four days left to go before #36 finally comes out, I figure I'd waste some time pondering the preview pages. They came out on a pretty crummy day, so I was grumpy when I first read them. Random thoughts below the cut.

1. So this is Angel from the future, or at least from 'a' future -- one where 'we' lost the war. The war in question was in LA, but that may or may not be a purely local deal. At the end of the preview we find out that future!Angel has some issues with the cheerleader.

The time travel angle has been in play all season long -- at least since #10 when Buffy talked about changing things if she was in a time loop. Time travel gives me a headache, and I can only hope this is written in a way that doesn't boil down to some "the characters get an infinite number of chances to make things right so nothing really matters" sort of a deal. The drama of life is that we only get one shot at it (says the woman who wishes she could have a do-over on a daily basis).

2. I love that Angel gets smashed by the O. More call backs to season 2.

3. DOG shows up. His first line is "I know I'm a dog. What a world, right?". Reminds me of Spike in School Hard talking to Angel about what a world it is where people buy all that Anne Rice stuff.   There are a few other places where DOG sounds Spike-ish. Fortunately there are places where DOG sounds not at all like Spike.

4. So the world's back the way it was supposed to be. Fortunatley this is DOG speaking which means we don't necessarily have to assume that we really are playing the "reset and redo as many times as it takes to get it right" game. The whole idea reminds me of fanfic, much of which is about resetting the game and getting it right. Which is a perfectly fine and enjoyable game to play -- in fanfic.

5. Angel pushes the O back into place. Superpowers already in place then.

6. Another joke about balls! Probably just the usual joke about why dogs lick themselves. But it'd be cool if DOG turns out to be channeling Saga Vasuki -- a female type would probably be very entertained by the situation.

7. Mention of Wesley. Along with Angel's reaction to mention of Buffy makes me think that future!Angel isn't from so very far in (his) future. The loss of the war rankles, and doesn't seem to be a dim memory.

8. Angel is twitchy about "chosen". Immediate reference is that he's twitchy about Buffy, which raises the possiblity that she had something to do with the war that was lost.   DOG asks what they're going to do about that, which Angel takes to be a threatening remark about Buffy. I'd love it if the subtext here is that Angel is twitchy about who Buffy chose in Chosen, and that's what he ought to do something about.  Probably wishful thinking, since honestly having the first pages be about Angel was disappointing to my Spike-centric self.

9. DOG is waiting for Angel to feel it.   Could mean Angel's superpowers -- maybe Angel didn't notice he had them when he pushed the O back up. But this line resonates with FDW waiting for Buffy to feel it -- the weight of her failure. In this case, Angel could be asked to feel something of how this world has changed. Dunno. It's pretty open ended.

There are two possible shoutouts to LOST: DOG looks like Vicent; there's an airplane about to crash. Certainly the preview reminded me of the un-joy of watching LOST where questions piled up faster than answers were granted. It's the last arc! But we knew there had to be some big back story on Angel. A war weary Angel who has lost everything makes some of Twangel easier to understand. The cynicism about the inevitable deaths of mortals. The lack of concern about seeing a world lost (since he's in a world that just got reconstituted after having already been lost).

My big wish is that DOG be related to Saga Vasuki and/or Willow. That's a plot line that needs to be joined. Angel listening to chaos means that the story isn't necessarily selling Angel as the poor hero who just had to become Twilgiht to save the world. And who knows, maybe they plucked the version of Angel who'd been through the crushing defeat because they knew that was the version that would most easily be their patsy?  Could work. But time travel and alternative universes need to be employed with care. Makes me nervous, in a grumpy sort of a way.

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So are you stating that because some of what Giles says is suspect, all of what Giles says is suspect? It feels like you're picking and choosing to cancel out the parts of Giles' exposition that challenges your interpretation.

mte

Is it her intellect you think less of or her morals? Buffy had sex with Angel, she didn't knowingly sign up to any consequentialist or material world-ending philosophies, she didn't knowingly rip a hole in the fabric of reality to create a brave new one. Maybe what she did was reckless or foolish or ill-considered (and now I'm getting flashbacks to the end of Innocence which may be just what Joss intended all along).

Whatever, "you became a figure head for the forces against me, organized them so they'd thoroughly defeat me, stood by while they killed hundreds of my girls, all so that you could get me to become what you wanted to be" is just another way of saying crazed villain and hence not what I think Buffy is thinking. It looks to me as if what she's focussing on is the sense making part of Angel's account of himself where he says what he was doing was making himself a figure head for the forces already ranged against her in order to divert them from making the 206 a round 500 and much sooner. True she's not pushing him on why he didn't do a better job of it but my reading is that she's more consumed by the godawful mess she's made of her girl's lives (and I've pointed out too many times where that's textual). The allusion he makes to "while I push" gets lost in the confusion over not pushing her to soak up power from her dead friends. The bottom line is that none of this makes intellectual sense. Not to the readership but we have the luxury of being able to wait and see what the full back story is. The characters don't and rather than trying to figure out why two plus two now equals the square root of minus one they make decisions based on what does add up what makes emotional sense since intellect is no help. Who knows what the hell Angel's plan was but he's not talking like a big bad, he's not trying to persuade her that killing those girls was necessary for some greater good, he's still talking about it as an unavoidable evil, he's still talking like someone who cares that the world got messed up (apparently) by her changing it and was trying to do something, however cockeyed, to fix it. Towards the end, he's talking like someone who's just as confused and at the mercy of unholy forces as she is.

Yes; or at least, she believed that he thought he was doing it for her own good, and therefore his intentions were coming from the right place.

If she believed him, then her intuition let her down - because he lied. Deaths of 200+ slayers was part of the plan from the very beginning. It was a necessity to give Buffy superpowers.

If she "believed that he thought he was doing it for her own good" - the situation becomes uncomfortably close to Pete/Debby dynamics in "Beauty and the Beasts".

But I admit, I may be wrong in my assumptions about Buffy being under the influence. It's just my impression.

Honestly, when I read explanations for how it was perfectly normal for Buffy to dive into sex just 'cause it's Angel and that's what she does, I feel like the argument is devoid of character insight into Buffy.
Which explanations are those? They seem to me to be the counter to arguments that Buffy wouldn't have sex with him just 'cause it's Angel and she's over him rather than straight interpretations of the text but there are enough straw men flying around for my allergies to go into overdrive so let's dust it all up and start all over again.

The problem with the despair angel for me is that Buffy gets a tearful glint in her eye with a smile on her face when she looks at Angel.
When are you talking about here (honestly curious). The end of #33 or in #35? The art in #33 was what initially sold me on the whole thing, the big head shot on the end of the last but one page that I've seen so many interpretations of but for me most recalls her response to Angel falling to her knees in Beauty and the Beasts.

Buffy's not like us though. In S6 she went for the mind blowing sex in the moment of being told all her fears were justified and she'd come back wrong.

Here is a fic where Buffy 'has sex' with Angel: All Ways. And how. I believe every second of it. (B/A, B/S, S/A, S/B/A. Everyone should read it. Mmmmm.)

I do not believe Buffy would have sex with Twangel, unless otherwise influenced.

Actually - remember Fred/Gunn and what broke them up? Don't tell me that something like that can bring people *together*.

Gob was I being snotty in my previous - haven't posted in a while and am internet rusty. I'm trying to think of disconnects with the text on TV and and can only think of episodes I thought were crap like Gone and OAFA or New Moon Rising. There's been those with the comics although really only Safe hits those lows for me. But I did get a disconnect in the middle of reading #2 with the Xander dream thing, a big "O Noes, this can't be happening." It made me flip back and forward through the comic wildly until I realised the very fact I could do this was new and exhilarating and, although it had been a while the best thing about Joss writing Buffy again was not feeling safe. Ans so I stopped worrying and learned to love (the war). Nothing else has been so disorientating since.

Thing is, I see some people saying:

Buffy having sex with Angel in 'Twilight' - out of character!
Buffy snogging Angel in 'Chosen' - out of character!
Buffy almost snogging Angel in 'Forever' - out of character!

... and after a while, I start to think that if she ends up getting temporarily snuggly with him practically every time she see the guy, 'Sanctuary' being the one exception... maybe it's actually in character? :-)

I'm saying everything is suspect if it's said in-character by someone who doesn't have perfect information about the situation: yes.

As for picking and choosing evidence: from the angle I'm seeing things, people have already held the trial in absentia, decided Buffy and Angel are guilty and are queuing up to deliver sentence.

I'm trying to argue that things aren't that cut and dried. When 8.36 comes out in a week or so we'll know more, and if Spike gives Willow a counterspell to "undo the effects of the glow" and Buffy and Angel both start acting outraged when they realise they were under its effects, then I'll accept my interpretation was wrong. But if he doesn't, the storyline still makes sense to me without that.

Well there's a difference between 'snuggly' (whether it's a kiss or a hug), and jumping someone's bones.

Also there's a difference between the Chosen kiss (where the objection is the fact that she's as good as dating Spike, and people don't like to see her as jumping between them) and the space frakking (where the objection is that he's revealed himself as the Big Bad who's been fighting her for a year). Apples and oranges.

(Does anyone say that seeking comfort in Angel's arms in 'Forever' is OOC? Really? That's bizarre.)

he lied. Deaths of 200+ slayers was part of the plan from the very beginning

That's never been said. Angel's plan was simply to make Buffy feel under pressure and powerless, while doing his best to delay or prevent the plan of his followers to kill all 2,000 Slayers. I don't think his culpability for the 206 that he failed to save is as cut and dried as 99% of fandom seems to assume.

And the Riley one-shot surely established that he didn't think he was doing it for "her own good" - he was doing it to save the world, and regretted what he had to do to her even if he did think she'd benefit from it in the end?

Does anyone say that seeking comfort in Angel's arms in 'Forever' is OOC? Really? That's bizarre.

They certainly do: mostly concentrating on the fact that it's so soon after her mother's death for this sort of thing to be happening;

Raw and vulnerable, Buffy looks at him - wanting to believe it. Wanting him closer still. She leans forward and kisses him. He responds gently - meaning to comfort, but the intensity builds quickly, the desire bubbling just under the surface. Buffy would like nothing better to forget herself with him - and he feels it powerfully. They break away from each other, breathing hard.

BUFFY
Told you.
(reluctantly)
You'd better go.

he's revealed himself as the Big Bad who's been fighting her for a year

He's revealed that the figurehead of the organisation she's been fighting for a year was not the Big Bad after all, but a double agent.

So it's been a busy couple of days, so not much to add. I like these notes. I'm still very excited for this issue. A few notes:

1. The time travel business does tie in not only with all the previous references (ABH, TOYL, Twilight's camp being three seconds in the future) but also the reset in After the Fall. I don't know if I buy that the story is ultimately going to be meaningless, or that there are infinite resets, though I understand your concern.

2. The pages are very Angel POV, which, if you think about it, is the first time we have seen this in all of season eight. (Not counting the preview page from previous!) Angel gets heroic trappings here--King of Cretins mentioned Superman as a reference, with Angel possibly going to save that plane from crashing. But this is Angel POV so I am not too worried about a whitewash as others above are. Hero is what he thinks he is, and it reads as confused hero.

3. Great call on the big O! Heading for another one. He also crashes through the Hollywood sign, which ties in with Angel-the-celebrity from AtF and, more significantly, with the whole celebrity culture things from Buffy ("Oh God, it's you!") and Twilight (and Harmony and Dracula).

4. LOST references: good catch! The reference is actually to the first & last episode of the show (Jack + Vincent + plane is in the first and last sequence of the series). Note that (spoilers, readers!) LOST ends with basically everyone going to a mind-created dimension where they worked out their issues, ala Twilight. LOST plays this straight, but the fuzzy-wuzzies seems to be not Joss' style, and I think this came through in Meltzer's arc (rickety, to say the least, as it was). So I think I buy that the play here is satire, wherein Angel thinks he's in LOST and the comic "shows" this too, but it's not the real story.

4. I can hear Alyson Hannigan in my head saying "Hey, balls!" excitedly, so I kind like FDW as a theory. Dunno if I actually buy it, or really want it. Saga Vasuki, maybe, though she still feels too much a secondary player to work. Still, someone or something has to be behind this.

5. I'm less invested than you in this being a Spike-heavy issue (obviously!) but I'm not too concerned about the Angel focus of the pages, regardless. I'm anticipating (mainly because of the preview page from way back) that this issue will basically be the "Angel & Spike issue," with both characters getting lots of pages to themselves and their backstories with lots of doubling and ironic contrast so that the next four issues are set to deal with their interactions with Buffy and the gang. Structurally Angel and Spike almost always showed up together in the meta of the story, so I think this issue might just be about both of them. Angel gets the first pages of the issue because he's the surface story (Spike's the subtext one). Just a thought.

7. Wednesday. Can't wait! Also, how cool is the recent Joss interview, where he pretty much confirmed that Angel having his soul thrust upon him, whereas Spike getting it himself, is significant? (If not necessarily to season eight.)

Damn, what a missed opportunity in Forever! She didn't have sex with him and she totally should've hit that while overlooking her mother's grave. I mean, she was said and full of despair and wanted to get away from all her responsibilities. Why wouldn't she frak his brains out?

As for Chosen, I think you're getting your wires crossed. People say Angel was OOC, not Buffy.

Again, the difference between how Buffy acts in Forever and how Buffy acts in Twilight continue to reinforce the point. Buffy's emotional state does not immediately jump to spacefrakking, not even when she's feeling the most intense grief and burden of responsibility.

Buffy is perfectly in character in Chosen. Angel punches Caleb, shows up to help her and she says hello with a kiss. Now instead imagine that Caleb pulls off his fleshmask to reveal Angel underneath--then cue Buffy kissing him with the swooning and the basking. Still in character? I sure hope you don't think that's still the same.

What's baffling to me about your argument is you think that Buffy and Angel merely being in the same room together must lead to Buffy wanting to kiss or have sex with Angel. Huh? Not even want it, but that it's inevitable. In all appearances post-Season 3, whenever Buffy and Angel have reunited it's only immediately (note the emphasis on time) gone to kissing when Buffy has no reason to be angry with Angel and that only happened in Chosen. Forever took a long time to get to the point where Buffy was kissing Angel desperately (how long did they stand silently at the grave just holding hands? How long before Buffy could even work up the will to speak?). IWRY began with Buffy so angry with Angel that they didn't kiss till midway through the episode when he appears miraculously in the sunlight. Sanctuary was fighting. The Yoko Factor was about making peace and not romance. I imagine in the S6/S3 offscreen reunion they kissed, but again it's a miraculous reunion that has no reason for them to be angry with each other.

On the occasions that Buffy is angry with Angel, it doesn't immediately result in kissing (much less balls-to-the-wall spacefrakking). The immediate kissing only happens when they meet in harmony and Angel is there to help her. Buffy was shocked when Angel hit her in the face in Sanctuary. So shocked that she doubted how much he still cared for her. But now Angel can spend months on end hurting her and pushing an agenda that requires Slayers die and she's just okay and wants to make kissey faces?

I really don't understand the Buffy you're talking about. Buffy doesn't immediately dive into kissing Angel no matter what and to say one should read #33/34 and find it all perfectly in order runs counter to what was shown in the show. When Buffy encounters Angel's darkness, she freaks out (see Lie To Me, see Enemies) and runs away from him. She just got hit with a mack truck of Angel darkness in #33/34--behavioral patterns show she should've shut down, felt hurt and betrayed by him and questioned if he still loved her or still had his soul.

She doesn't do the above--all are perfectly natural and expected reactions for her based on how she deals emotionally. This is why people are saying she's not acting in character; and since she's not in character, people are wondering if it's bad writing (Meltzer's execution of Joss' idea) or if there's a textual reason for why she's acting abnormally (glow and the influence of the Universe).

My impression is that getting superpowers was the first necessary step of Buffy's initiation; that without superpowers she couldn't ascend to a higher plane. But she couldn't get superpowers without a number of girls dead.

His words say 'I did it for your own good' while she's got a bunch of dead bodies and the memory of him throwing a church at her.

And let's all remember that Buffy gets very upset and insecure when Angel keeps secrets from her, when he lies to her, when he does things that break her trust. And when she feels upset with him about this, she doesn't go from mid-pout or yell to sucking his tongue.

Find a scene where she actually does this with Angel. Not with Spike, but with Angel. Because her reactions are dictated by how she relates to Angel specifically. Her Smashed sex is specific and has to do with self-hatred and self-punishment. Kissing Angel in that moment isn't about hurting herself, so the reaction doesn't translate.

Replies numbered to match your paragraphs:

1) She very nearly did, according to Marti's shooting script.

2) I've heard both.

3) It didn't in 'Twilight' either. She spent half the issue trying to kill Angel, remember? It was the way her body was glowing plus her instincts ("But as he says the words -- I know he's right") that convinced her he was telling the truth after all.

4) No, it's not the same. Buffy had personally seen Caleb blind Xander, kill several Potentials and make misogynistic comments. She hasn't seen Twilight|Angel kill anyone, and he tells her he hasn't. She hated Caleb personally; she hated Twilight for what he represented and the deeds done in his name, not for anything he himself had done.

Remember the really moving speech in 'The Chain' about how there's always a name, even though in reality it's the actions of millions of people behind those names that actually matter? S8 all ties together in a really clever way. :-)

5) No, of course I don't think it's inevitable that they'll end up having sex or otherwise getting physical. It does, however, seem to happen often enough that I can't say it's out of character if it happens again, as here.

6) See 3., re: she spent half the issue trying to kill Angel before she realised he was telling the truth (-as-he-saw-it). There was some definite catharsis going on there. And notice that Angel just lets her swing punches at him? Reminiscent of Spike in the alley in 'Dead Things', that was.

7) You're seeing Angel's darkness: I'm seeing Buffy clinging to hope that somehow this will all turn out for the best after all.

8) To me, Buffy acting impulsively and putting her trust in her friend even when that friend has done something, let's say questionable - is the very essence of Buffy.

I feel this is the closest interpretation of the text as I also see it and have argued for.

Angel says he must "push" Buffy to ascension. Buffy must feel demoralized and stripped of power to ascend. The only way to truly get Buffy on the ropes is to kill her followers.

It's an inescapable means to an end. And Angel knows people have to die for his goal to be reached. Also, when he says to Buffy in #33 that this was already happening, I don't believe it would've happened in quite the same way unless he wanted it to.

Angel is Superman in this scenario. Angel could pretty much stop anything from happening. He could orchestrate a situation where the President's family is endangered and then rescued by Slayers, thereby more firmly pushing them into the heroic camp. There's so many things he could do and doesn't.

Considering this is BtVS, inevitability is a no go.

Master: But prophecies are tricky creatures. They don't tell you everything. You're the one that sets me free! If you hadn't come, I couldn't go.

Master: You were destined to die! It was written!
Buffy: What can I say? I flunked the written.

I find it all the more likely that Angel is committing the sin of self-fulfilling prophecy here. He's simply not thinking creatively enough to defy prophecy. Besides the fact that Angel going along with Whistler and the talking animals leads to a powered up Buffy, spacefrakking, natural disasters that probably killed thousands of people and finally a dimensional pocket opening and demons overrunning the world.

It seems clear Angel's plan leads to the world ending without Buffy and Angel leaving Twilight to stop it. So I don't even understand why anyone's arguing that Angel was working on the side of good. His plan leads to the apocalypse--is he supposed to get credit for paving his own special road to hell with good intentions?

Angel is the Big Bad this season in the sense that he willingly (so it appears) became the figure head of an organization that brought forth the apocalypse--sure, he thought he was saving the world by pushing Buffy into an ubermensche all by carefully orchestrating deaths to push her into despair and make her powerless (she must be powerless to know true power), but it turns out he wasn't working for a greater good. Nope, still just ending the world.

I'm not sure that 24-year old Buffy is going to be as insecure and vulnerable around Angel as 17-year old Buffy was. And while the comparison to 'Smashed' may not be perfect - don't forget, Buffy is feeling a fair amount of self-hate right now. But I don't think the sex here was about self-punishment, but rather clinging to a lifeline.

Though I will say - this is me agreeing with you here! *g* - that she ought to be upset about Angel lying to her, keeping secrets from her, etc. I just think it would be in character for her to bring it up as a snarky remark at some point in the future, when she's had more time to think things through.

I pretty much agree with what you're saying here. (You can pick yourself up off the floor now.) Angel is following the prophecy while Buffy is thinking of how to defy it; and the prophecy has backfired on him.

It seems clear he didn't realise that fulfilling the prophecy would lead to mass slaughter and destruction - or maybe he thought it would be less bad than the alternative, whatever that was. We may know more when the final arc is published. I still disagree that the deaths were part of his plan, though it may be a case of "If he can do it without any Slayers at all dying, that's best, but if some have to die, that's not as bad as not trying at all." It's a war, and not a war Angel started, and people die in wars.

That doesn't make him "good", it makes him a screw-up who did harm with good intentions. Like almost all the other 'Buffy' characters.

she couldn't get superpowers without a number of girls dead.

That was Willow's theory, which Angel said was wrong.

Of coure it's possible he was either lying (I doubt it, but maybe) or misled (more likely IMO).

He didn't quite say she was wrong. He said she wasn't seeing the whole picture. I believe Allie has also said that Willow was partially right.

But then, Twangel himself doesn't have a clue either, as Buffy points out in #35.

I think the perception of people queuing up to deliver sentence is in response to posts by people who think that others are queuing up to give them big medals for heroism (and epic true love greatness). (In other words, the conversation is suffering from over-polarization on both sides.)

It's hard to say what is going on just reading the text. I don't think it makes sense as written. I hope we'll get more explanation. But as of now we've got unreliable narrators all over the place, and pieces that don't add up. (Most notably, Angel going off to save the world in the Riley one-shot, when we've already seen him trying to distract Buffy from the fact that the world was being destroyed in #35). The confusion about what the facts are no doubt plays into all the polarized declarations on all sides.

2. You may have heard both, but ascribing that belief to everyone who has a problem with #34/#35 is bound to lead to a lot of misunderstanding, since not everyone you're responding to thinks that. I think Buffy was in character in Chosen, but Angel was unrecognizable.

4. No she'd only personally seen Twilight put Satsu in the hospital, batter her badly enough to require extensive bandaging, and taunt her in a misogynistic fashion. How different is that, really from what she saw Caleb do? Throw in that she'd spent a YEAR thinking Twilight was responsible for everything. Buffy's steam of anger at Angel didn't slow down in Sanctuary, even though Angel was right. Why does it slow down here? I think you underestimate just how apt the Caleb analogy is.

5. The fact that it doesn't ALWAYS happen means you have to explain why it happens here, and not (remotely) in Sanctuary. The burden of proof is on you to explain why this time, of all times, Buffy can't resist Angel when we've seen her resist him on many other occasions. She didn't boink him in Chosen. Why not? In the middle of a war. Well -- she's in the middle of a losing war right now with massive casualties. No boinking then. Why inevitable boinking now?

7. Since when has Buffy led with trust with Angel? Again, see Sanctuary.

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8.36: The Preview Pages

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