Twilight thoughts
I'm going to assume that what Giles says in Issue 34 is essentially correct, although some of his statements are flat-out wrong - for example, if we assume that the demon population of Los Angeles is typical, then it's absolutely ludicrous to assume that a single slayer can keep the world-wide population of vampires and demons under control. Even fifteen hundred slayers would be hard pressed to do so. What really keeps the vampire population under control has got to be primarily food supply, and secondarily intra-species conflict. Vampires, in other words, kill each other off a lot, either in competition for food or simply because they're quarrelsome.
But that's beside the point. Disregarding factual inaccuracies such as this, what we've got in #34 boils down to this:
The universe has a Slayer-to-vampire quotient. Calling it a balance is extremely misleading, because there's nothing balanced about it - it's more properly a ratio. When more than one slayer exists at a time, things start to go a little wonky, mystically speaking (There was some reference to this back in S7, in the Beljoxa's Eye subplot, though it was never adequately explained.) The more Slayers who exist simultaneously, apparently, the wonkier things get. Eventually, a mystical tipping point is reached which causes the destruction and rebirth of the universe and the simultaneous metamorphosis of one slayer (the oldest and presumably strongest) and one vampire (the one whose hair sticks up the most, I guess) into superhuman beings who can survive the destruction and spawn a new race. Which is great if you happen to be one of the new superbeings, but not so hot for the rest of us.
Now, this is really not a bad idea for a story at all. Quite a number of classic SF novels have been written around similar premises. And in fact, it's rather scarily close to a good deal of the underlying worldbuilding in the Barbverse.
(No, I'm serious. In the Barbverse, there's a mystic connection between slayers and vampires - the demon essence that the Shadow Men use to create Slayers comes from the same Old One which injected its essence into a human corpse to create the first vampire. It's this mystical connection/opposition which makes Slayer/vampire sex a source of tantric power, and which, in tandem with Dawn's Key nature, allows Buffy and Spike to close the Hellmouth at the climax :cough: of Necessary Evils. It's also explained in NE that the Balance is self-correcting: if one side gains too much power, then the random factors of the universe tend to align in ways which are conducive to reversing the situation. In POM Buffy and Spike both transform themselves and the nature of Slayers, and Buffy makes a mystical bargain, the nature of which cause the random factors of the universe to tend to align in ways which are conducive to her keeping it. Post-POM, their union eventually founds a new species of human/demon hybrids. And come to think about it, another later story has Angel taking on the aspect of a godlike being, albeit to stop Ragnarok rather than bring it on.
The main differences are that in my 'verse, there's no universe-destruction involved, mainly because I think the universe is, well, kind of huge, and I think it's extremely unlikely that anything we do on our little blue planet is going to affect much beyond our own solar system, if that. The new species isn't going to supplant humanity - on the contrary, thematically speaking, they represent the potential for synthesis and constructive engagement between the human and demon communities. And possibly most importantly, the changes Buffy, Angel and Spike undergo in my 'verse are the direct consequences of their own actions and choices, not something that simply happens to them. But it wouldn't be at all difficult for me to incorporate the basics of Twilight as something that's essentially already happened in my 'verse, just in a rather different way than anyone expected.)
ANYWAY. The whole idea of a new species making an old one 'obsolete' reflects, IMO, a fundamental ignorance about the way evolution works. Some of the most successful species on Earth are the oldest - ask the cockroach. But this is an old and honored SF trope - thought not one I am especially fond of or interested in. Told from the point of view of the humans, it's almost always a celebration of our innate paranoia and xenophobia. When told from the POV of the superhumans, it's almost always about fostering a sense of persecution and superiority. Fear the old or fear the new, it's always about fear, and how those who are different are dangerous.
But there is no denying that you can tell a good story around it. I don't think that the S8 comics are a particularly good story, for the following reasons:
1 It's an idiot plot; it wouldn't work if the characters didn't act like idiots. If the characters didn't withhold information from one another for flimsy or non-existent reasons, and if the writer didn't withhold information from the readers, the whole story would collapse like a card house in a wind tunnel. There are also quite a lot of plot holes which have been, so far, unaddressed.
2. The pacing is very poor. Too much time is devoted to characters and subplots which contribute nothing substantial to the story
3. Characterization is weak, in that motivation has been needlessly obscured or neglected far too often. In some cases, (Angel, most notably) characters' motives are a complete mystery. Yes, one can fanwank everything. I don't think that one should have to fanwank that much in order for the characters' behavior to make sense.
4. Continuity is weak. Joss has often said that he doesn't care about continuity, so this is to be expected. I have nothing against retcons; done well, they can be pretty damn awesome and shed new light on an old story. But the ones in S8 have been sloppy and often pointless, and not nearly enough thought was put into reconciling the Twilight mythos with pre-existing Slayer lore. (Anyone remember Whistler telling Buffy that the Powers never saw her and Angel falling in love coming?)
5. Thematically, it's dicey. Joss has a history of subtext that severely undercuts his ostensibly feminist text, and dear ghod, it is out in spades here. Women taking control of their own lives and power destroys the world, boys n' girls!
But I don't think the basic idea is all that cracked out. It could have been a good story, if Joss had gotten himself a good editor. But it's not in any way a new or revolutionary story. It's been done and done again, for better or worse, in Childhood's End and The X-Men and Slan and More Than Human and hundreds of others. Now, possibly Joss may have a brilliant twist coming up, but I'm not holding my breath. I suspect that Shadowkat's theory is correct: At some point Buffy will come to her senses, use the scythe to banish all magic and demons from the world, probably killing Dawn in the process and unleashing the backlash that re-powers Willow. Spike will make a token appearance to confirm that he's not nearly as special as Angel, and be shuffled off-stage as quickly as posible afterwards. Buffy and Angel will have a tearful parting of some sort that returns them to the same old status quo.
But no matter how fantastic the last six issues may be, it won't save the previous thirty-four. What makes me sad is not who Buffy is or is not having sex with. It's that Joss had a chance to tell a really interesting story about the effects that a Slayer army would have on the world, and the outing of vampires and magic... and instead, he chose to use those as poorly-explored window dressing on a story about the universe forcing Buffy and Angel to have destiny sex.
But that's beside the point. Disregarding factual inaccuracies such as this, what we've got in #34 boils down to this:
The universe has a Slayer-to-vampire quotient. Calling it a balance is extremely misleading, because there's nothing balanced about it - it's more properly a ratio. When more than one slayer exists at a time, things start to go a little wonky, mystically speaking (There was some reference to this back in S7, in the Beljoxa's Eye subplot, though it was never adequately explained.) The more Slayers who exist simultaneously, apparently, the wonkier things get. Eventually, a mystical tipping point is reached which causes the destruction and rebirth of the universe and the simultaneous metamorphosis of one slayer (the oldest and presumably strongest) and one vampire (the one whose hair sticks up the most, I guess) into superhuman beings who can survive the destruction and spawn a new race. Which is great if you happen to be one of the new superbeings, but not so hot for the rest of us.
Now, this is really not a bad idea for a story at all. Quite a number of classic SF novels have been written around similar premises. And in fact, it's rather scarily close to a good deal of the underlying worldbuilding in the Barbverse.
(No, I'm serious. In the Barbverse, there's a mystic connection between slayers and vampires - the demon essence that the Shadow Men use to create Slayers comes from the same Old One which injected its essence into a human corpse to create the first vampire. It's this mystical connection/opposition which makes Slayer/vampire sex a source of tantric power, and which, in tandem with Dawn's Key nature, allows Buffy and Spike to close the Hellmouth at the climax :cough: of Necessary Evils. It's also explained in NE that the Balance is self-correcting: if one side gains too much power, then the random factors of the universe tend to align in ways which are conducive to reversing the situation. In POM Buffy and Spike both transform themselves and the nature of Slayers, and Buffy makes a mystical bargain, the nature of which cause the random factors of the universe to tend to align in ways which are conducive to her keeping it. Post-POM, their union eventually founds a new species of human/demon hybrids. And come to think about it, another later story has Angel taking on the aspect of a godlike being, albeit to stop Ragnarok rather than bring it on.
The main differences are that in my 'verse, there's no universe-destruction involved, mainly because I think the universe is, well, kind of huge, and I think it's extremely unlikely that anything we do on our little blue planet is going to affect much beyond our own solar system, if that. The new species isn't going to supplant humanity - on the contrary, thematically speaking, they represent the potential for synthesis and constructive engagement between the human and demon communities. And possibly most importantly, the changes Buffy, Angel and Spike undergo in my 'verse are the direct consequences of their own actions and choices, not something that simply happens to them. But it wouldn't be at all difficult for me to incorporate the basics of Twilight as something that's essentially already happened in my 'verse, just in a rather different way than anyone expected.)
ANYWAY. The whole idea of a new species making an old one 'obsolete' reflects, IMO, a fundamental ignorance about the way evolution works. Some of the most successful species on Earth are the oldest - ask the cockroach. But this is an old and honored SF trope - thought not one I am especially fond of or interested in. Told from the point of view of the humans, it's almost always a celebration of our innate paranoia and xenophobia. When told from the POV of the superhumans, it's almost always about fostering a sense of persecution and superiority. Fear the old or fear the new, it's always about fear, and how those who are different are dangerous.
But there is no denying that you can tell a good story around it. I don't think that the S8 comics are a particularly good story, for the following reasons:
1 It's an idiot plot; it wouldn't work if the characters didn't act like idiots. If the characters didn't withhold information from one another for flimsy or non-existent reasons, and if the writer didn't withhold information from the readers, the whole story would collapse like a card house in a wind tunnel. There are also quite a lot of plot holes which have been, so far, unaddressed.
2. The pacing is very poor. Too much time is devoted to characters and subplots which contribute nothing substantial to the story
3. Characterization is weak, in that motivation has been needlessly obscured or neglected far too often. In some cases, (Angel, most notably) characters' motives are a complete mystery. Yes, one can fanwank everything. I don't think that one should have to fanwank that much in order for the characters' behavior to make sense.
4. Continuity is weak. Joss has often said that he doesn't care about continuity, so this is to be expected. I have nothing against retcons; done well, they can be pretty damn awesome and shed new light on an old story. But the ones in S8 have been sloppy and often pointless, and not nearly enough thought was put into reconciling the Twilight mythos with pre-existing Slayer lore. (Anyone remember Whistler telling Buffy that the Powers never saw her and Angel falling in love coming?)
5. Thematically, it's dicey. Joss has a history of subtext that severely undercuts his ostensibly feminist text, and dear ghod, it is out in spades here. Women taking control of their own lives and power destroys the world, boys n' girls!
But I don't think the basic idea is all that cracked out. It could have been a good story, if Joss had gotten himself a good editor. But it's not in any way a new or revolutionary story. It's been done and done again, for better or worse, in Childhood's End and The X-Men and Slan and More Than Human and hundreds of others. Now, possibly Joss may have a brilliant twist coming up, but I'm not holding my breath. I suspect that Shadowkat's theory is correct: At some point Buffy will come to her senses, use the scythe to banish all magic and demons from the world, probably killing Dawn in the process and unleashing the backlash that re-powers Willow. Spike will make a token appearance to confirm that he's not nearly as special as Angel, and be shuffled off-stage as quickly as posible afterwards. Buffy and Angel will have a tearful parting of some sort that returns them to the same old status quo.
But no matter how fantastic the last six issues may be, it won't save the previous thirty-four. What makes me sad is not who Buffy is or is not having sex with. It's that Joss had a chance to tell a really interesting story about the effects that a Slayer army would have on the world, and the outing of vampires and magic... and instead, he chose to use those as poorly-explored window dressing on a story about the universe forcing Buffy and Angel to have destiny sex.