After After the Fall

[maggie2]

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.)  

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.

Comments

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. I use "Joss" as a shorthand for Joss or people hired by Joss who (big caveat) are able to write with the same polysemia. (Is polysemia a word? with the same multiplicity in meanings). That said, I also think AtS was more uneven that BtVS. Bottom line, though: enough layers in AtS to generate controversy about how to understaned the show or the characters; and I don't see what there is to chew on with AtF. So either Joss just made a poor hiring decision, or there was less oversight, or Joss has just accidentally created complex works all those other times and this time wasn't so lucky -- but however it happened, this just doesn't feel "Jossian" to me. Of course if we suddenly get buckets of meta showing how all this really is a rich and interesting stew, then yay. Mrs. Underhill is the best reader of Angel I know. And she does have interesting things to say about the comics. But not the same meticulous, detailed, rich stuff she can come up with for random episodes of AtS.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think the simple fact that it's a comic changes how the story comes across. The show had actors interpreting scripts and giving performances. While comics have artists, it's still not the same thing. And even fanfic allows us into characters heads to a degree that comics don't have the space to. Comics tend to have a relatively small chunk of text to actually analyze, and we don't have performances to analyze with them. All that, I think, changes the whole feel of it (which is why I cannot feel that either the AtS or the BtVS continuations are 'canon'. They're just interesting 'what ifs' despite Joss's involvement. It's just not the same thing, so generally I don't worty about them much. That said, I enjoy AtF more of the two series. But, even then, neither feels like the shows to me.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the loss when we switch from TV to comics.

And I can see why people might like AtF more than season 8. It depends on what matters to you. I can't enjoy the good things about AtF as much as I'd like because Lynch has gored my ox -- the lens with which I watched the show just isn't there. It never was the only lens. But my lens was part of the mix. No more.

Season 8 is harder to judge because it's not finished and because Joss has switched narrative technique. We don't know how many of the jarring aspects of the in media res technique will get smoothed over when the full narrative is laid out before us. But so far, I don't see that anyone's oxes are gored. Did you think Buffy was a feminist icon? You can still read her that way. Did you see her as someone with a bit of a dark side that needed cashing out? It's still there. The arguments about season 8 (by those who are still engaged by them) are very similar to the arguments people have about the show itself. That's what I mean by it being polysemic. Or as Joss would say, we all get to bring our own subtext, our own interpretive lenses. Now, maybe someone can write a post and say, here's the ways that season 8 chopped off my interpretation at the knees. Then they'd have a complaint parallel to the one I'm making about AtF. Where AtS had room for me and people who see the show in many other ways, AtF does NOT have room for me. Sniff, sniff.

That it's all comics eases the blow. I'll get over it. Since these are quasi-canonical at best, nothing is really rocked in my Buffyworld. I just don't get to sit back and enjoy the Spike/Angel comic world the way others do cause the gored ox thing makes it hard for me to much like it. The fact that Brian can be snotty on line to people who don't see things his way doesn't help much.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

That's what I mean by it being polysemic. Or as Joss would say, we all get to bring our own subtext, our own interpretive lenses.

I think, though, that this is a source of a great deal of the Joss cynicism that you see around on LJ. It's one part exhaustion and one part cognitive dissonance.

A lot of fans invested in their ox during the course of the show. Then Joss or Marti would come along in an interview and tell us that our ox was actualy a mule. We'd look at the show and go --nuh-uh! That's an ox! I know it's an ox. It looks like and ox. It acts like an ox. I know what oxes look like. And that's definitely an ox. And Fury or Joss or Marti would give an interview where they'd say, well it might look like an ox and act like an ox, but no it's not and you're sort of crazy for thinking it is one. It's a mule and you should see that it's a mule. And then Jane E and RRK and SdK would do interviews and they'd admit that it looked like an ox to them, too. But Joss and Marti and Fury would give a stompy "It's a MULE! We'll prove it to you." And then we'd watch the rest of the season, and it would still look like an ox. Eventually they'd have a plot twist to show "mule" and we'd still be left feeling "But I saw an ox, and this just looks like an ox in a mule costume." Repeat this scenario often enough and it reached a point where, honestly, I don't know what an ox looks like to Joss or whether mules just look like oxes to me. I don't know how to read his text, or at least I can never trust that my reading of his text truly supported because there have been so, so, so many times when what I read as ox he insisted was a mule... or a zebra... and maybe one time it was a purple elephant. And after a while (around Season 7) as an exhausted fan, I swore to stop trying to read anything into anything with Joss. If he wanted me to see mule, even if I still saw an ox, I'd say, okay. Whatever. I'm tired and I give up. It's an mule even if it still looked like an ox to me.

Of course, by that point, Joss was saying 'whatever' and saying "okay, since so many people are seeing oxes when I'm saying mule, I'll stop saying it's not an ox. If you want to fill in this blank space (and I'll leave some for you) and see an ox, that's okay. And if other groups wants a mules and purple elephants, that's okay too."

And I'd wonder, "Yeah, but you're the author, what is it to you."

At the end of the day I no longer knew. First because I'd long since lost the ability to distinguish oxes from Joss's mules and also because at some point Joss decided to stop distinguishing between them and decided fans could bring their own farm animal. ... at which point, I rather threw up my hands into the air and thought -- fine. If I have to work that hard, I can write my own fanfic. >;)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Funny post, thanks.

I do really and well and truly get the problem on this. As a latecomer on DVD, I didn't have to live through the parade of writers saying mule, mule, mule about what is obviously an ox, but I know that they've said crap like that. I honestly and truly don't know what to make of it -- especially in season 6 when they apparently all sounded so earnest about it. It's just... that the readings in the opposite direction so often look so carefully done.

Am deleting an excessively long reply on this. I assume you're talking about (season 6 is about having sex with a bad boy and we know that never turns out well; and Spike must be evil since he has no soul and we'll prove it to you in SR). It's weird and I get that they all looked real earnest in their claims about what they thought they were doing. But the stuff that would make season 6 look much more ox-like to me isn't in there by accident. You don't accidentally show a shockingly brutal scene of your heroine doing something to her lover that could not possibly have been filmed if the hero had been doing it to his lover. Or if you do, and you still expect your audience to think that this is a story about bad evil boyfriends, you are just intensely stupid. But if you're intensely stupid how did you cough up a series that gets lots of serious people to spend a lot of time thinking about it seriously? I don't really want to go out on a limb and say that someone in charge is lying about intention, but this show and makes it cross my mind as a possibility.

Season 6 might be the one place where they really meant it, bizarre though that is. But this reading against text and against the surface is built in from the start. This is a show where one of the main themes is that things are not always what they seem. It's there from the start, not just creeping in later when things get wobbly. The idea of the show, Joss tells us, is what if the small blonde girl in the opening scene doesn't get eaten by the monster, but instead kicks its ass. That's reverse expectation for sure. That's what he told us. But the opening scene of the show isn't of Buffy not getting eaten by the monster. It's of Darla. So the small blonde girl isn't the munchee, as the horror genre conventions would dictate; nor is she the vampire slayer that the show's title and Joss's mission statement would lead you to expect. She's the monster herself. And more, she's the monster who is the former lover of the lover that the vampire slayer is going to take. So Joss tells us that he wants to cut against our expectations; and then he cuts against the expectations we would have formed based on his claim that he's going to cut against our expectations. I dunno. I tend to take that as official license to find meaning in the text on our own -- you know, to grow up as Joss keeps telling us and stop looking to authority figures (or storytellers) to tell us what to think of things. The guys an existentialist. I find it hard to believe that's not exactly what he's been up to since the beginning.

(And it's so not normal for me to think wacky things like this. This is the only show that has pulled this kind of reaction out of me.) So you know what? If it's just an accident and the folks at ME are just majorly incompetent at laying down the straight-forward message of the week that we're supposed to take home it's a lovely accident. And I kind of would rather attend to that than to the yahoos who happened to be around when that bizarre accident spilled onto our screens.

And that got long again. I think what you think about 30% of the time. 30% of the time I think what I just said. And 40% of the time I decide it's too complicated to figure it out and I curse the friend who insisted that I watch the show in the first place.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of Joss' reaction to people reading the Buffy/Faith subtext. He literally said "nuh uh" and told them they were reading lesbian subtext where none existed. The fans directed him to their detailed analysis of Season 3 episodes and he came back later to apologize. Admitting he was wrong and was completely blind to the subtext he'd written. But awesomely enough, he admitted it. It was on a recent NPR interview I just listened to this evening.