I'm not after a straight-forward continuation. Not at all. I've liked the in media res. But I did think it came with a promise of linking back somehow to the characters we once knew. And we are getting some of that We know that Robin broke up with Faith, and that Faith ended up alone in Cleveland. We know that Willow's been away and why. etc. They're little flashes of insight that give us a sense that we could dope out the particular trail.
There are three problems I have with your take (and with what they are doing if that's what they are doing):
1. They've got no hold on people who cannot connect with a Buffy who has leaped so far down her story that they can't make out who she is. It's one thing to say that bank robbing was in her possibility set, it's another thing to say that we should care about her after she got to that possibility in a way that is completely opaque to us. And it was something of a lie to sell this as season 8. Call it season 9 and let us know that it's going to be like skipping from season 2 to season 4 for all that we will know or understand the characters.
2. If we really go with "she looked at her growing army, blah blah blah" this still begs a huge number of questions. Who said she needed a well-financed army? What war are they fighting? What enemy requires that they have castles and helicopters and all the rest? If it's in the public interest, why couldn't they finance it? If it's not, how did Buffy decide that it should be done anyway. Did she slide into this as amatter of expediency; as a well-thought out last resort; in a fit of pique against humans for any number of possible imaginable reasons? Different answers deliver different Buffy's. What we make of what we're seeing is going to depend a fair amount on which Buffy we're seeing. To tell the story they want to tell would seem to require that know something about the character whose reactions we are interested in -- but to understand and gauge the reactions, we need to know what got her into this mess in the first place. Oh, and if we are supposed to have some measure of the "corruption" resulting from this decision, we need to know more about it. The different possible answers to the questions posed above generate different degrees of corruption. That's not relevant to the story about how that corruption playes out?
3. It's a totally and utterly non-trivial issue by the standards of the verse. A huge amount of Buffy's self-identification is that she is NOT Faith, she's the slayer who is still subject to human law; she is the slayer who is prudent, etc. Yes she's hardened. Yes she's always fallen short of her own self-image. Yes, we've seen her modify the requirements of that self-image. But Joss is the one who trotted Faith out into the second arc and begged us to compare and contrast. They've inverted positions. That's important. We know how Faith got where she is. Not the slightest clue of what got Buffy to where she is. So what comparison can we really make? What can we really learn from that carefully constructed mirror? The second issue of the first arc called back that alley way in Dead Things, where Buffy did terrible things specifically in the cause of rejecting the Faith of season 3. So why ask us to ask, if he's already decided not to answer?
Anyway, if this is what Joss is up to, he's got the audience that does care. I'd so like to. I LOVE the questions being raised here But I can't think well about them if I don't know who Buffy is or how she got here. Too frustrating to engage all the complexities when there's a cypher at the heart of them.
no subject
There are three problems I have with your take (and with what they are doing if that's what they are doing):
1. They've got no hold on people who cannot connect with a Buffy who has leaped so far down her story that they can't make out who she is. It's one thing to say that bank robbing was in her possibility set, it's another thing to say that we should care about her after she got to that possibility in a way that is completely opaque to us. And it was something of a lie to sell this as season 8. Call it season 9 and let us know that it's going to be like skipping from season 2 to season 4 for all that we will know or understand the characters.
2. If we really go with "she looked at her growing army, blah blah blah" this still begs a huge number of questions. Who said she needed a well-financed army? What war are they fighting? What enemy requires that they have castles and helicopters and all the rest? If it's in the public interest, why couldn't they finance it? If it's not, how did Buffy decide that it should be done anyway. Did she slide into this as amatter of expediency; as a well-thought out last resort; in a fit of pique against humans for any number of possible imaginable reasons? Different answers deliver different Buffy's. What we make of what we're seeing is going to depend a fair amount on which Buffy we're seeing. To tell the story they want to tell would seem to require that know something about the character whose reactions we are interested in -- but to understand and gauge the reactions, we need to know what got her into this mess in the first place. Oh, and if we are supposed to have some measure of the "corruption" resulting from this decision, we need to know more about it. The different possible answers to the questions posed above generate different degrees of corruption. That's not relevant to the story about how that corruption playes out?
3. It's a totally and utterly non-trivial issue by the standards of the verse. A huge amount of Buffy's self-identification is that she is NOT Faith, she's the slayer who is still subject to human law; she is the slayer who is prudent, etc. Yes she's hardened. Yes she's always fallen short of her own self-image. Yes, we've seen her modify the requirements of that self-image. But Joss is the one who trotted Faith out into the second arc and begged us to compare and contrast. They've inverted positions. That's important. We know how Faith got where she is. Not the slightest clue of what got Buffy to where she is. So what comparison can we really make? What can we really learn from that carefully constructed mirror? The second issue of the first arc called back that alley way in Dead Things, where Buffy did terrible things specifically in the cause of rejecting the Faith of season 3. So why ask us to ask, if he's already decided not to answer?
Anyway, if this is what Joss is up to, he's got the audience that does care. I'd so like to. I LOVE the questions being raised here But I can't think well about them if I don't know who Buffy is or how she got here. Too frustrating to engage all the complexities when there's a cypher at the heart of them.