Funny how arguments can bother, even when they're weak. (I've often had that reaction). But this argument really is weak. Notice, for example, the way his original argument places a lot of weight on two quotes from the scene. It turns out that neither quote fits into the sequence as he would have you believe and as he needs to make the argument work. It's the telltale sign of someone who is working very hard to convince themselves that an unpleasant fact is false. For him, the unpleasant fact is that Buffy and the Slayerettes did not route the ubervamps themselves. Too bad, though. They didn't.
If Joss doesn't mention Spike in season 8, then not only is my theory completely wrong; it's also the case that Joss has abandoned his most basic principles about story-telling, namely that histories matter and that events permanently mark his characters. Moreover, he's portraying his protagonist as the sort of shallow bitch who went through all of that with Spike, but who hasn't been affected by him in any way (to the extent that we don't need to know what the final chapter was there in order to understand her). I just can't believe that's where Joss is at. And if he is, then I'll just have to believe that BtVS is sort of the equivalent of a bunch of monkeys typing and accidentally producing Hamlet. Which, you know, is possible, but not very likely.
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Date: 2009-01-30 06:48 pm (UTC)Funny how arguments can bother, even when they're weak. (I've often had that reaction). But this argument really is weak. Notice, for example, the way his original argument places a lot of weight on two quotes from the scene. It turns out that neither quote fits into the sequence as he would have you believe and as he needs to make the argument work. It's the telltale sign of someone who is working very hard to convince themselves that an unpleasant fact is false. For him, the unpleasant fact is that Buffy and the Slayerettes did not route the ubervamps themselves. Too bad, though. They didn't.
If Joss doesn't mention Spike in season 8, then not only is my theory completely wrong; it's also the case that Joss has abandoned his most basic principles about story-telling, namely that histories matter and that events permanently mark his characters. Moreover, he's portraying his protagonist as the sort of shallow bitch who went through all of that with Spike, but who hasn't been affected by him in any way (to the extent that we don't need to know what the final chapter was there in order to understand her). I just can't believe that's where Joss is at. And if he is, then I'll just have to believe that BtVS is sort of the equivalent of a bunch of monkeys typing and accidentally producing Hamlet. Which, you know, is possible, but not very likely.