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After After the Fall
This is not a wrap up of After the Fall. Nor is it a continuation of the many rants I've ranted about After the Fall. It's got a few criticisms in there (cause I just can't help myself), but mostly this is a meditation on why I have gotten so negative about a work that actually isn't the worst piece of fiction ever written. It helped me to work this through and it might be of interest to some cause it has reflections on the status of an author tapped to continue a fictional universe created by someone else.
It’s finally over. #17 was a good way to wrap things off and had some good moments. It’s getting a well-deserved good reception.
But, alas, praising AtF is not my particular strength. As I’ve made clear in various rantings in my own comment sections and in other people’s comment sections, I’m not, to put it mildly, a fan of either Lynch or AtF. There’s no point in re-hashing all of that, and in any case at this point what is more mysterious to me is why I can only read Lynch’s stuff anymore in pure bashing mode. Because while I think I have real valid criticisms, it’s just not all that bad. I can see that. But my negative is pushed on so strong that even the good stuff irritates me because it’s one less stick I can use to bash the poor guy with.
So what the heck is my problem? Before getting to that, I do want to make three general criticisms, sort of a “needs improvement” section for Brian.
1. The book was too cluttered with characters. There was a lot of story to tell and character to develop and it just didn’t help to have to spend pages on so many characters, many of whom appear to be in the book for the sole purpose of giving something to the fans who said “I sure hope character X shows up.”
2. There’s too much telling and not enough showing. There are many reasons I don’t attempt fanfic, but the big one is I’d be all about the telling. But good writing is about the showing. Here we get explanations for how the dragon got its name, or why people are feeling what they’re feeling and so on. I know it can be shown cause other writers do a better job of showing rather than telling.
3. A series of minor annoyances: Lynch’s pet locutions show up in the dialogue of multiple characters (from most to least: Betta George, Connor, Gunn, Angel, Spike); dialogue is often out-of-character for the sake of squeezing in a joke; a lot of the characters’ sense of humor is shifted over towards Lynch’s sense of humor. (Though how hard is it to not just write in another voice, but with a different sense of humor?) There are places where he hits the characters’ voices well. Lynch is well away from the school of writing that says that if you give Spike enough ‘bloodies’ and ‘soddings’ you’ve captured his voice. But I just wanted to say once that while it’s often good, it’s not pitch perfect – and not all that close to pitch perfect either – at least not to my demanding ears.
OK. All of that would be forgiven in a heartbeat if I were on board with the project. And if I were on board with the project I could give a list of good things: an interesting plot, some effective emotional moments, moments of characterization that are insightful or at least engaging, a few good call backs to the series that gave things a bit of depth,. (A special shout out to two that show up in #17: Spike’s promise to kill Angel if he has to, calling back both Cordy and Wes of season 1; the improvement in Angel’s bedside manner when visiting friends who have harmed his son.)
But I really am not on board with the project. And I think unfortunately the fact that Brian is not the creator of this verse, and that AtF is not being closely supervised by the creator of the verse gives me more room to worry about and complain about choices Brian makes, because I react to him more like he’s another fan and less like he’s the creator of characters that I love.
The show has an active and on-going fandom because the ‘verse has so many different layers and meanings. And that means among other things that there’s lots of debate between fans who emphasize one set of meanings and fans who emphasize a different set of meanings. In my post about multiple motivations I point out that Buffy’s swan dive in The Gift can be read as heroic, or as suicidal, or as a glorious mix of the two. In a lot of the controversies that result, fans get particularly attached to one set of readings as against another. I like reading Buffy’s jump as a mix of motives, but I tend to accent the suicidal. I do that because I think the vision of heroism she was trying to live is actually dessicating, and I love reading her story as a commentary on a bad concept of how to be a hero. (To be clear: it’s not that she isn’t a hero – she is; it’s that she aspires to live by heroic standards that are inhuman and which must inevitably destroy her). So if Buffy got handed off to a writer who really hates the reading of Buffy’s jump as having at least a tinge of suicide to it, I’d find it really annoying. And incomplete. And less. Just as it would be less if I got a hold of the verse and overemphasized the stuff I care about, but at the expense of shedding the text of the multiple meanings it carries.
In the case of AtF, my problem is that I was vested in an interpretation of Angel and especially the final episode, NFA, that Brian just doesn’t share. I think of Angel as Angelus cursed by a soul; rather than as Angel cursed by a demon. On my reading, Angel is a mask. What’s noble about Angel is that he picks the mask of what he wants to be, despite the fact that his deepest self, his Angelus self is not redeemable. Angel can’t escape Angelus, and that’s his tragedy. Season 5 is the last big epic chapter of Angel’s tragedy. Suffering tends to bring out the Angelus in him, and at the end of season 4 we got the mother of all Angelus-like moves from Angel when he sold out to Wolfram and Hart and mind wiped his friends in order to spare his son from a truly tragic fate. It’s so classic: the good intentions that come from the Angel side of the man; with the truly reprehensible methods coming from the Angelus side of the man. By the time Angel realizes how far he has fallen, his only way back out is to take a series of actions which arguably just compound the original sin: he kills an innocent man, orders the cold-blooded execution of another, and leads his team into a suicidal mission that by his own reckoning cannot have any meaningful impact on the world. It’s really dark, and really bleak, and incredibly great because as horrifying as Angel can be, he can also be amazing. His capacity for good and evil is epic, and that’s what makes him so compelling. A modern call back to the grand characters of literature and myth.
Well, there are a lot of fans who’d rather read Angel as a good guy who sometimes gets possessed by this evil guy named Angelus; and who makes a few mistakes but is basically a hero; that what he does is heroic because he does what heroes do; and that the compelling part of Angel’s story is that for all the good he tries to do in the world he (a) is never going to forgive himself for the stuff Angelus did, even though he should and (b) is the victim of an epically bad run of luck, what with having his son kidnapped, and then going bad and all that. This reading typically comes with a lot of justification about what people are permitted to do when they are being pounded on by fate and/or what they are justified in doing in the cause of fighting evil.
Although I strongly prefer my reading to this other one, I think the real brilliance of AtS in general and NFA in particular is that both readings are there. It’s that same dizzying dissonance you get when you think about Buffy’s jump. It’s so true to the human condition where we can be the as noble as angels or as vile as beasts, often at the same time; and true to a human condition where our finite perspective shapes what we see. Is this someone we like? We see the good. Is it someone we don’t? We see the bad. (This whole dissertation is because I’m in the mode of not liking Lynch and therefore seeing the bad. I can see it’s a finite perspective, but it’s my finite perspective and I’m stuck with it.)
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candleanfeather keeps using the word “polysemic” to describe the ‘verse: it has multiple meanings. That’s its essential feature.
But part of the fun is arguing with others in favor of our own meanings and against theirs. And my problem with AtF is that Lynch seems to emphasize the set of meanings that I’d like to treat as secondary. And worse, unlike all the other fans I get to argue with on a level footing, he gets the keys to the kingdom and gets to write the “canonical” continuation of the show in a way that canonizes the meaning I don’t like and marginalizes (at best) the meaning I find most compelling. That’s why I move from justifiable criticisms (like the ones listed above, or the general one that he’s depriving the ‘verse of its multiple meanings and layers) to a generic stance of just not liking anything about the work at all. I’m a sore loser. It’s bad enough that meanings are being stripped away; unforgiveable that the ones being stripped away are the ones I am invested in.
There is an utterly related phenomenon having to do with how Lynch writes my favorite character Spike. Spike is a character who can be read in highly divergent ways – he’s easily the most polarizing character in the ‘verse. Lynch actually likes Spike. I have no doubt about that. But he’s only got a Spike with some of Spike’s layers and meanings; and the ones he’s dropped are the ones I’m particularly attached to. In fanfic it’s a given that you are going to get these sorts of partial meanings and interpretations of a character. They are often quite delightful, all these different Spikes. But none of them have the status of being a “canonical” continuation of the character. And it’s enraging to see some guy who doesn’t seem to have any loftier artistic vision than the typical fan get the right to install his finite readings of my favorite character into canon.
So I think this is what drives my rejection of AtF. Brian doesn’t see things the way I do, and I don’t see why he should have more standing than any other fan to legislate his perspective into “canon”. With Joss, it’s different. I might not always agree with Joss’s choices. But (a) they are his characters and (b) he delivers work that is capable of multiple readings. Just check out the fierce debates about whether or not Buffy the Bank Robber is a completely organic development in the saga of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or (more importantly) whether or not it’s a good evolution for her, or an understandable one, or one that’s not a good evolution but understandable, or one that is flat out repulsive. Whatever you want to say on behalf of AtF (and there ARE things to be said on its behalf), it hasn’t generated anything like the dispute about interpretation that season 8 generates. That’s because it’s not as polysemic as an authentically Jossian work.
Sidebar: it’s worth noting that Joss made a remark in one of the recent interviews about Dollhouse that the show can be read as a feminist text AND as a misogynistic text and that it’s intentional that it should have both meanings. If I heard that right, it explains a lot – not least of which is that the question of whether The Chosen was sufficiently feminist in its meaning really is an intentionally open question. In any case, like I said, the key characteristic of the ‘verse is that it’s meant to be polysemic. (I love that word. I’ve tried to say it at least once every few days since Candleanfeather sprang it on me).
A final word is that Brian compounds the problem for me by interacting with us “fans” on the internet. He spends a LOT of time on-line soaking up feedback. He visibly desires and seeks out positive strokes. And he gets quite prickly and sometimes even nasty if the feedback he gets is not so friendly. I think what happens is that Brian wants the status of being the creator, but a lot of fans like me are reacting to him as though he is just one of many other fans. He claims a certain infallibility for himself since he’s the writer, but he’s not a writer playing in his own ‘verse – he’s playing in a ‘verse that we’ve all been invited to play in and which we have been playing in for some time. He has a right, obviously, to tell the story he wants to tell. But when he gets snippy and huffy in response to people who don’t’ see the characters the same way he does, well, it just exacerbates my feeling that I don’t like the guy or his work. And it’s too bad – since people I respect obviously find much to appreciate in AtF. Maybe someday, when I have more distance, I will too.
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I do recall seeing debates about whether Spike would really have turned Angel, but when it comes to the comics (both season 8 and ATF), I only really see what shows up in my flist.
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There haven't been many AtF debates and if there have been, it's occurred mostly on the IDW discussion board. Most of the topics of discussion have revolved around whether the dialogue/action was in character, the art which yo-yo'd from atrociously slapped together to amazingly beautiful towards the end, and the baffling structure of the story.
Actually, the most vocal and impassioned discussions revolved around art issues and the odd placement of First Night. Most other posts that I've followed since the beginning were singing the comics praises. But no deep thought here. No ambiguity of interpretation.
The biggest topics of discussion have been complaints over likenesses, story structure and lack of character arcs for all involved.
The problem is that After the Fall wasn't asking a question the way Season 8 did. Season 8 asks what are the consequences of Chosen, was the Slayer Spell the right thing to do, are the Slayers making a difference in the world for the better. After the Fall's main goal is to answer a question - what happens after Not Fade Away. In this regard, the interpretation of the story is incredibly simplistic. Lynch doesn't ask questions through the story, he answers them.
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Angel's being turned human still feels like a wasted opportunity to me considering we were being told the story through Angel's viewpoint. The closest we got to self-reflection on his state was in the early issues when he tells Wes that W&H thinks they've changed him, but they're wrong. That in itself exemplifies the over-simplification of the narrative to me. That Angel (and perhaps Lynch) actually thinks that human!Angel and souledvampire!Angel are exactly the same except the latter possesses only physical limitations.
Gunn's arc remains the most satisfying to me, followed by Connor's growth and Illyria's confused state. And I know Lynch hates being asked where Joss' hand touched the piece, but it seems clear that vampire!Gunn and Connor being a lead came from Joss. Sadly, one of the few prospective storylines from Season 6 that never got incorporated into AtF was the interaction between Wes and Illyria - that Wes would be forced to choose between Illyria and Fred somehow after becoming even closer to Illyria. This role seems to have been inherited by Spike, when all I really wanted was to see more Angel/Spike interaction continue and we finally got that in a satisfying degree in #17. Wes and Lorne are sadly left to do little, while Nina fades in and out of obscurity making me wonder why they bothered to include her...again, until her scene in #17.
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Well... yeah. It never claimed to be asking questions. It was basically a resolution to a "cliffhanger" ending that Joss didn't believe was really a cliffhanger at all. Fans wanted to know what happened next, and Brian gave us the answers. To some extent it raises the question of whether Angel was right to do this - was it worth it? - and the answer probably varies depending on your view. But it wasn't intended to be anything more than a limited-run series, so it's not going to explore the depth of issues that you'd see in a TV series, or even the season 8 comics, which at this point are sprawling on into infinity.
I guess I just don't understand getting upset about it. It was specifically intended to be a certain thing, which may not be the deep, meaningful text you wanted, but you can't really fault the comic for doing what it set out to do. If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's not a failing of Brian Lynch that his vision doesn't match yours.
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Bwah! I'll go ahead and add the "duh" to that statement for you. ;)
It never claimed to be asking questions.
Well, see that's the problem for me here. By wearing the canon cap, it claims to be on the same level as the series.
If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's not a failing of Brian Lynch that his vision doesn't match yours.
I actually *do* like it. As I was saying to Maggie in a post below, After the Fall is very satisfying to me on the initial read. It's action packed and has interesting character moments. The problem is that when I put on my thinking cap and try to peel back layers, all I get is the equivalent of a murky blank slate.
After the Fall entertains and makes me feel intensely. Season 8 entertains (me, at least) and makes me feel (not quite as intensely on the initial read, but later on even more so) and it makes me think deeply about the story long after the punches, kicks and tears have become a mundane part of the narrative landscape. I find them both to be very good and that each carries the strength the other story lacks. Though, to be fair to Season 8, I might feel differently once the in media res has revealed all.
I'm not that upset over it, just slowly accepting my disappointment that After the Fall doesn't attempt multiple layers of meaning. It's a good story and satisfying, but it pales in comparison to what's come before on AtS. Lynch sang a great cover of a classic song, but he didn't surpass the original and never fully overcame its derivative and self-indulgent nature. He answered questions raised by the TV series, rather than raising more of his own in his narrative. So in this regard, I view it as very good but not equal to the narrative and literary story of AtS. Limited ambition of meaning.
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I think that cap is still a little up for debate. I'd say it falls somewhere between canon and non-canon (if you can have a middle ground for a binary state, lol) - it's (partly) Joss' ideas and been given Joss' blessing, but it's never been given the same status as season 8. Wasn't Joss' final word on the subject, "If you want it to be canon, it is. If you don't, ignore it"?
The fact is, it isn't Joss writing it, but it is someone who's a fairly known quantity in the Buffyverse. If you know the quality of Lynch's Spike series (which were also enjoyable but didn't provoke much debate), but you expected ATF to be different simply because it had a whiff of canon, then that seems like an unrealistic expectation to me.
(And btw, when I say "you," I don't necessarily mean you specifically. I realize a lot of my previous response was directed more at Maggie's original post, but it happened to be your response I was replying to.)
As I was saying to Maggie in a post below, After the Fall is very satisfying to me on the initial read. It's action packed and has interesting character moments. The problem is that when I put on my thinking cap and try to peel back layers, all I get is the equivalent of a murky blank slate.
Yeah, and I guess my point is about being able to separate those two things in terms of quality. Maggie and I clearly have a different approach here - I don't think a show (or comic, or whatever) has to require detailed analysis in order to be good. If it's entertaining AND it provokes discussion, well, that's just a bonus. Whereas Maggie's view of ATF seems to be that she is unable to enjoy it unless it provokes discussion. If you're reading something that's not intended to be more than an action-packed story with some interesting character moments, that can only lead to disappointment.
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If it's entertaining AND it provokes discussion, well, that's just a bonus.
I think that's why After the Fall is so enjoyable for many people who don't bother to analyze the underlying meaning. But for those of us who learned to appreciate AtS and BtVS for being able to read more deeply into it, AtF just falls short. A huge part of why I'm still a fan of the 'verse after 10 years (my god!) is that there are layers that keep you coming back for more. After the Fall fell short and I'm disappointed. But live and learn. I won't be expecting as much for the later comics (probably won't be viewing them as canon either) and I'll initially enjoy them but won't bother going too deeply into thought-mode.
But I can understand for Maggie how going into this she brought her 'verse viewing cap. It's part of what makes it the Buffyverse to her. And to find her own viewpoint denied has got to be bitter and frustrating.
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I just can't help comparing After the Fall with season 8. IMO, they BOTH fall short (which isn't surprising, considering that BtVS and AtS are very rare in being both entertaining and polysemic), and if I have to choose, I'd choose entertaining over polysemic every time. It would be nice if more things offered both, but I am far, far from the point where I would expect it, even from a BtVS or AtS comic continuation.
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Not quite. My specific lack of my enjoyment is that my side of the debates has been cut out of the picture. The point about the debates is just that in true canon, there ARE debates because everyone's view of the story has a place in the story. You could see Angel as a big honking hero OR you could see Angel as much greyer. It was a big tent, and that's part of why the show was so great. This is sub-canon to me cause it's cutting out fans like me, who want to argue about Angel being grey and who want to make a big deal about Spike's getting of the soul. AtF a small tent. And I've been kicked out. And yeah, am grumpy about it.
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So, if Lynch had written your interpretation, to the exclusion of all others, you'd be happy with it?
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On season 8, Aycheb drivers me crazy. She sees things very differently than I do. But I am very grateful that she's still in the tent. It reminds me that life is bigger than just the stuff I see. So, it'd be fun to be in a verse created in my own image, but not nearly so challenging or engaging in the long run. And not at all good for the people who got booted.