BtBR and all that jazz

[maggie2]

A recap of some exchanges about Scott Allie's answer about Buffy the Bank Robber, a few thoughts, and one conclusion

BtBR and all that Jazz

 

I’ve been running around for a few weeks now saying that I remain hopeful about how season 8 will pan out. Part of that hope has been the confidence I have had that Joss meant to jar us with the revelation that Buffy was robbing banks, and that of course he would know that we would need something in the story to help us understand how the Buffy at the end of The Chosen could come to be a bank robber. Not necessarily a flashback to a straightforward report of her making the decision, but something about what’s happened to her that would illuminate for us how she could have come to think robbing banks was a good idea.

 

Anyway, Allie replied to another question that there really wasn’t going to be anything in the way of “filler” about what happened between season 7 and season 8. That was in answer to a question about whether we’d see Anya’s funeral – and I think it’s safe to say that while a flashback like that would provide closure for fans, it’s not something we need to see in order to understand what’s happening now. Buffy’s decision to rob banks, on the other hand, needs some explaining. There are a variety of different stories about how that evolved and they have bearing on how we understand the story as it unfolds.  I  asked the following question (via Enisy and Emmie):
 

I have a follow up question for Scott on a different subject. He has an answer in his latest where he says that they aren't going to do any filler between season 7 and season 8. That's specifically in response to a question about whether we'll see Anya's funeral or anyuthing like that.

What I want to know is whether we should take his answer to mean that we've been told all we are going to be told about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved into Buffy the Bank Robber. Do Joss and Scott think that this is such an organic development of her character that we should have no problem filling in the blanks for ourselves (much as we really shouldn't have any problems filling in the blanks about Anya's funeral)?

 

And Allie posted the reply late last night:

Yes, I believe this is all you're going to be told about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved into Buffy the Bank Robber. You might learn a little more by the end of the arc. I do think there's a story there, of how she came to make the decisions to do these things, how she looked at her growing army of Slayers and tried to think of a way to finance it all, and settled for crime. But I don't think that's a story that needs telling in Season Eight. I know that the desire to fill in continuity goes directly against the narrative device of in media res, and I know that Season Eight still has a lot of open questions. I think what's important for Season Eight is understanding how corruption/compromise has affected Buffy, rather than how she came to be a little corrupt. I hope the story is succeeding there, in the long run.

 

So that’s pretty depressing if we take it at face value.

I find it really, really hard to believe that Joss Whedon, for all of his failures and blindspots, would disregard what I had taken to be one of his first principles and that’s that we need to be able to trace out how characters have developed over time and what events and choices have impacted that development. Personally I thought BtBR was the greatest moment of the comics so far. It explained a lot about what had seemed off in No Future For You. And it seemed like such a huge thing, for Buffy the Vampire Slayer to have consciously decided to completely and utterly flout human laws, something that Buffy was capable of, but which she certainly was not necessarily destined to arrive at. Because BtBR helped crystallize for me a good bit of what had seemed puzzling, I took it to be the first in many such revelations, each one of us would give us a better sense of what it is that we’re really looking at. That’s the main reason I’ve been so patient with the fact that we’ve gone nearly two years watching a set of characters who are still not so easily connected to the ones we last saw in Sunnydale.

 

Beer Good Foamy had some interesting reactions when we exchanged about this a bit this morning:

 

His remarks:

Thanks a lot for posting that! Wish I could say I was surprised, but I agree that it's depressing.

I don't think that's a story that needs telling in Season Eight.

Because obviously, the motivations of the main character aren't all that interesting.

know that the desire to fill in continuity goes directly against the narrative device of in media res

That's not an argument against filling in continuity; it's an argument against in medias res, at least the way it's being used here.

think what's important for Season Eight is understanding how corruption/compromise has affected Buffy, rather than how she came to be a little corrupt.

Even when the corruption/compromise is in large part due to her own actions? Like I've said before, it makes the story less about free will and having to deal with the moral and practical consequences of your own choices, and more about fate screwing you over.

Oh well, at least now we can stop wondering when the big reveals that make sense of everything are coming and just enjoy it for what it is. Of course it's possible that he's only referring to the bank robbing specifically - which after all is just a symptom of the New And Improved Buffy - and that we'll get a more general backstory on how she (and Willow, and Giles, and Faith, and...) came to stop being whatever she'd been before. Which would be nice, but I do think that's grasping at straws. I'd love to get proven wrong about that, but it looks like after "Chosen", Buffy becoming a criminal with a Nietzsche complex is just the natural order of things. I especially like the point that if we’re just going to focus on the consequences of Buffy’s corruption, we’re missing the sense of how those consequences connect to the exercise of her agency running up to that big decision. It’s really hard to know how to judge or understand what unfolds if we don’t know how it came to be.

Anyway, because this all gives me massive cognitive dissonance – how to square what I had taken to be Joss’s greatest strength with an astonishing disregard of it – I’ve decided to go with plan B and hope that Allie is just misinterpreting what Joss is up to. He’s given us misleading answers on other subjects, and almost always they take the form of answering a specific question in a way that seems to generalize but really doesn’t. In particular, in answer to a question about whether Buffy knew that Cordelia was dead, Allie said we could assume that Buffy knows everything Andrew knows. But that’s belied by the opening scene of the season. Pressed in a follow up it became clear that Allie just wanted to say that Buffy knew that Cordelia was dead through Andrew. In this case, he seems to be tracked on the question of whether we’re going to skip back and have a straight-forward narration of what happened. But that’s not what I need here. What I need is a revelation or something that helps me see just how exactly it made sense for BtVS to become BtBR.

There is some other news in all of this. Having spent time reading Allie’s questions and answers it sure seems like there’s a clear pattern. When asked about something that isn’t going to happen, he tells us. Neither Robin will be back. Tara will not be back. There might be plans to do something with Kumiko but not for a very long time. Etc. When asked about other things that might happen, he replies that it would be spoilers to say. Now, maybe he does say it would be spoilers to say something was not going to happen. But he’s told us an awful lot about what’s not going to happen. Anyway, he was asked about whether Spike would be back and it would be spoilers for him to tell. If there were contracts on Intrade on the question of whether Spike was going to have an impact on the plot in season 8, I’d be buying heavily.

Whether that’s a good thing or not depends a great deal on whether Joss is still the sort of writer who knows that the statement that Buffy just “settled on crime” is not an answer but a big honking question that has to be addressed.

 

Note: I tried to put in LJ links but it's creating all sorts of problems.  Any advice on how to avoid that in the future?

 

Comments

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, I have to go with beer_good_foamy on this one - depressing, and not terribly surprising. I actually only just got issue #21, and read the comments from Allie in the back about not filling in the blanks, so I was curious how you in particular would take that, since you've been so set on that being revealed eventually. I'm glad you asked the question, although I'll agree with you that Allie's not the best source for clear, non-misleading answers.

My read of the situation is that they ("they" being Joss, Scott, and whoever else is involved) see BtBR as in fact very much in character. I mean, this is the same Buffy who stole weapons from the army ("Innocence") and blew up a public building ("Graduation Day"). (There's also her robbery with Faith, but I wouldn't blame you for arguing that that's not Buffy's personality; she was influenced by Faith there and wouldn't have done it otherwise.) We've also seen Buffy become harder and more brutally practical - in "The Gift" she couldn't face the impossible choices she had, but by "Lies My Parents Told Me," she's willing to sacrifice her sister. She's turned into an "end justifies the means" general.

I think the part where Joss and the fans diverge is that there's a huge leap from committing isolated crimes when it's the only way to defeat a Big Bad to adopting a life of crime to finance your operation. Surely they didn't just rob that one bank - with the amount of expensive equipment they have, they must need a regular source of income, not to mention we've now seen other Slayers (namely Satsu) stealing the actual equipment if it's useful to them. Buffy seems to have gone from "crime is occasionally a necessary evil" to "crime is a legitimate way of life" - but I don't think Joss realizes that we need to see how.

Also, re: Spike - have you seen that Brian Lynch announced a new Spike series? What does that do to your trading shares? lol

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

It's been mentioned several times that Joss decided to write Season 8 because he had a story he wanted to tell. Scott kind of confirms that here:

"I do think there's a story there... But I don't think that's a story that needs telling in Season Eight."

In other words: yes it's interesting and important, yes it would make a good comic book; but it's not part of the story Joss is writing. Because - the conclusion I'm coming to - Joss wants to tell one particular story and he's not letting himself get distracted too much by the million and one other possible stories in the Buffyverse.

Of course that's disappointing to the people who are hungry to know everything about 'Buffy', or to see their favourite characters get a namecheck. And it's confusing to those poor souls who need everything spelled out in a linear fashion with lots of exposition. But on the other hand, if he did try to cover every question and every story, we'd still be waiting for the end of Season 8 a hundred years from now.

As for the specific question, since I never saw Buffy's bank robbery as especially out of character for her - just exaggerated - I'm not particulaly bothered by Scott's words. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a story about what happens after Buffy became powerful, and the supernatural became public. All I really need to know about why Buffy made her decision is already there in Scott's words: "she looked at her growing army of Slayers and tried to think of a way to finance it all".

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I simply cannot believe that Buffy's identity is not going to be addressed by Joss. The story is telling us that Buffy is confused and questioning herself right from the get-go.

"Everybody calls me 'ma'am' these days."

"There's even three of me."

"More with the 'what the hell am I doing?'" She questions her actions.

"It's not all that different, though." Yet in order to move forward, her coping mechanism is to pretend nothing has really changed => "stuck in the past".

"Their first victims. Gotta get 'em past it." While Buffy is confused about who she is and what she's doing, in this area we finally see certainty. She must lead the slayers she 'chose'. She's "gotta".

"How do we turn into twelve-year-olds all of a sudden? Every time we talk?" Buffy is reverting to an immature state when it comes to her personal relationships. She's in denial. Which incidentally is also a reference to the last time Buffy said this about immaturity amongst siblings:

ANGEL
(mumbling) You know, I started it. The whole having a soul. Before it was all the cool new thing.

BUFFY
Oh, my God. Are you 12?

"Suck it up, Summers. You're a big girl now." Shut up and deal. It's time to move forward and stay on the course Buffy has already chosen even though it's proving harder than she realized.

I think this shows us very clearly where Buffy is at right now and why she might do the things she's done. It's not the apocalypse that's motivating her to steal (as she's done in the past), but the girls she's chosen and feels a responsibility for. Buffy must provide for her 'children'. She will steal if she has to in order to give them what they need. A corrupt mother trying to save her world, her "race of slayers" at all costs.

And here lies the cognitive dissonance we see in Buffy and why she's even more distanced from others. Buffy is incredibly moral. Buffy needs to provide for the girls lives she's irrevocably changed. She must provide for them because she is responsible for them. Stealing is wrong. But Buffy has bent this rule in the past in order to serve a greater purpose. So she tells herself that it was a victimless crime, but underneath she's beginning to understand that by acting "less-than" she's created a deck of cards rather than a fortress of strength. Twilight attacks her morality because that is where Buffy is most weak.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

I think that Buffy believes it's for the greater good, and therefore, all ramifications behind those actions are irrelevant. Like jumping through the portal with no guarantee of her coming back. Or making all of the potentials slayers with no plan on what the crap to do with them. Going to the vineyard and into the Hellmouth. It's the big picture that matters to Buffy. I don't agree with it, but that's what I think is happening. She's become hardened over time. Her decisions essentially boil down to "what's the best way to fight evil?" And if that best way is robbing banks for the general greater good (though she hasn't been doing that for all of s8, apparently), then it's okay to do. A far cry from AYW, and a huge disservice to not explain. And I'm just speculating, clearly :P Or talking out of my ass. Whichever works.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

the statement that Buffy just “settled on crime” is not an answer but a big honking question

Pretty much sums it up, yeah. :-) In fact, it's exactly the sort of questions they used to love to explore when they used to have a show.

Forgive me if I repeat some of what I said over at my own entry, but what I don't get is why they would think it's so unthinkable to give an explanation for it. I don't think anyone... or OK, I don't think a majority are asking for a detailed description of the events of every single day between "Chosen" and "The Long Way Home", but surely when we're talking about rather radical shifts in the characters' actions which are driving the entire season arc - Buffy's corruption, Giles' estrangement, Willow's affair with Saga Vasuki, etc - it has to be important to at least offer a few solid hints of how they got there? Sure we can always come up with fanwanks, but at the end of the day, that's all they are and like you say, everyone's explanation will be different.

To me, it's a devaluation of an issue that I thought was at the heart of the show: that we are free to choose our own actions, that there are always choices to make even if there's not always a good choice to make, but that those actions always have consequences. By saying that it's irrelevant how Buffy become a morally corrupt criminal with Übermensch tendencies, yet having the fact that she is one be an important plot point, they're essentially saying that the choices we make are irrelevant. If Buffy becoming corrupt is beyond her control, if it's just something that happened to her, they've robbed Buffy of her free will.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Scott Allie appears to have very little to do with writing the comics, he just gets to watch the process but I don’t think he’s wrong to say that how Buffy arrived at her current state needs any more explaining than we’ve already had. I think part of the problem is a difference in perception of just how compromised she is right now. Scott describes it as “a little corrupt.” Most of the people commenting here seem to want to see it her as a hopelessly compromised Godfather type figure. Personally I’m with Allie on this.

All those examples of earlier rule-bending made sense in the wake of an on-coming apocalypse. Was there a big apocalypse that demanded that Buffy form her own band of vigilantes into an army?

In The Chain the Slayer army averted an apocalyptic invasion of the human world by Yamanh’s demon hordes. This time they didn’t have an amulet and while they might have defeated Yamanh’s army in hand to hand combat the losses would have been enormous. Buffy does have some legitimate sources of funding (she says so in the first issue of TOYL) but if they weren’t enough to acquire the level of technological re-enforcement she needed in this emergency I don’t believe the Buffy we’ve known would balk at stealing from the rich to save the lives of her poor Slayers (and ultimately those of the rich as well).

The world has changed. In A Beautiful Sunset Buffy, while questioning whether they are doing any good, points out that while they have been fighting more demons it just seems that there are more demons to fight and even speculates that this might be a reaction to the existence of multiple Slayers. As I see the old order may have been corrupt and based on the effective enslavement of one girl in every genration but it had reached some kind of equilibrium (where demons went about their business and the human population tolerated the death rates and pretended the problem just didn’t exist). Now we have the balance shifting. Giant demon attacks are frequent enough to keep Buffy busy 24/7 in After These Messages. Some of that may be due to being able to finally see what’s going on worldwide but either way the problem is order of magnitudes greater than it used to be when all she had to deal with was Sunnydale. Vampires are commandeering subs, the war is escalating and Twilight is playing both sides against the middle but it’s that very middle which may be the determining factor. It’s not just the plain people of Tokyo getting trampled and turned it’s the so-called crack elements, the slug things and the talking trees. These are magical creatures but not demons as such, a new factor that Twilight may not have reckoned with his plans to wipe out magic, babies and bathwater both. Also replace the word magic with aggression and he begins to sound like the Alliance.

But I digress (and overrun the word limit on comments). My main point is that not only was there a major apocalypse but also a constant onslaught of minor ones, which require more than the old hand to hand tactics to keep at bay. TBC

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

If it's in the public interest, why couldn't they finance it?

Because as they’re showing with the current arc the ‘public’ and certainly those with access to the money such armament requires aren’t necessarily going to be presented with an accurate picture of the situation. Twilight has powerful allies in the military and (it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to conclude) in the media. Even before he became a player the world Buffy knows was manipulated into complacency by Wolfram and Hart et al. I do think taking matters into her own hands was short sighted of Buffy and that will be addressed but it’s hardly out of character. It took a very public message of support in The Prom for her to even contemplate recruiting the other members of her High school class to her cause. These were people she met everyday, people she knew the names of. She's never approached the citizens or authorities of Sunnydale for assistance. With reason given their record of either institutionalizing her or accusing her of murder or being an unfit guardian for Dawn.


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

Buffy is less obsessed with Faith than Faith is with Buffy (which is part of the problem but they never came to blows over breaking human *property* laws. Buffy never returned the items she liberated from the Sport’s Goods store and only seemed to worry about it because she got caught. When she talks about human laws being respected the laws that she’s talking about are the ones relating to murder. Faith killed Finch and the hapless vulcanologist. Warren killed Katrina. Giles was going to use Faith to kill Gigi and yet people seem to think he’s the person who should be offering moral guidance to Buffy.

As I read this isn’t Buffy’s version of Angel’s beige arc or Faith’s fall and rise. It’s more like S7 where a pre-exiting flaw is being exposed by a change in circumstances. Then it was her Slayer isolationist crap as it impacted on her attitude to those around her, friends and family. Here it’s in part her long-standing distrust and disconnection from the very people she’s protecting. It’s also a quality that has been regarded as one of her great strengths – her loyalty and protectiveness towards those she regards as family who now include all the new Slayers working for her.

[rahirah]

I think what's important for Season Eight is understanding how corruption/compromise has affected Buffy, rather than how she came to be a little corrupt.

Um, NO, Mr. Allie, I think not. How someone becomes corrupt is almost always more revealing of character than what they do once they are corrupt (which tend to be depressingly similar.)