![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ah, it's late as per usual, but I just didn't have that much to say about this one 'cause it was boring as paint, like even the badness of it was dull and ho-hum, but I'll try to give some coherent thoughts.
You know how people like to try to sync up old movies to the Eagles' "Hotel California" to see if anything of significance clicks? That's how I feel every time I try to make sense of Season Eight. It's the Wizard of Oz; it's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?; it's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything- Julie Newmar... except that it's not. I'm fairly certain I could wank Season Eight into Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but that would require effort and I've promised all my effort into IDW's Spike series for better or for worse (not that anything could reach the level of "worse" that S8 has).
Angel wonders how anything that has happened in the story has been easy, and it seems like a lot of things were tremendously easy. Believing random voices from animals, abandoning what was left of his friends and his investigative agency, not to mention just walking out on Connor (and no, the fact that the story tries to pretend that Connor doesn't exist is not an excuse for such a blatant oversight in the development of Angel's character). After watching Gunn kill Connor in ATF, after being reunited with him, Angel was never going to let his son go again. I admit that Angel has listened to people in the past that maybe he shouldn't have or really didn't have a reason to believe (was Angelus ever as naive as Angel tends to be?), but even Angel would have a hard time believing that going to Paradise and leaving the whole world behind was really a good idea. Maybe the writers could have sold this idea to me, but, gosh darn it, they were so like busy like with Dracula and submarines and Japanese vampires and unimportant side characters and Mecha-Dawn and Riley and lesbian trysts and dreamscapes and Super Buffy and building up a villain without actually dealing with him that like they forgot to actually develop the story like totally. *hair twirl* ... I fucking hate this story. *spits*
They need to show WHY ANGEL IS ACTING THIS WAY! Hell, even tell us! Something happened before he landed out of the giant blue space vagina onto the Hollywood sign, and I'm interested in how he got from Point A (getting out of hell, reuniting with his son and developing a stronger bond with him, reopening his detective agency, somehow getting into the big blue space vagina) to Point B (being in a position to give up every single thing he's worked for to listen to an entity against his better judgment). He's not the totally alone, feeling worthless piece of manpire that was huddled in an alleyway that Whistler found in 1995/96. He's got things to lose and nothing really to gain besides Buffy's cooch. Is her genital region really worth losing his kid and dooming his friends? I would think not. He doesn't even know Buffy anymore, if he ever did to begin with. Maybe Super Buffy fits in with his ideal of who he thinks she is; maybe that made it easier.
I don't believe that Angel would truly believe in a "they're damned anyway so get some pleasure for yourself and save your lady fair" type of scenario. He's fought the impossible, unlived through it. Prophecies are never what they are supposed to be- they can be manipulated, changed. He saw that first hand in Prophecy Girl. He was so sure that the Master would kill Buffy, but there she was alive and kicking in those hideous clunky shoes of hers. There is no reason for him to just roll over like a dog for a dog.
Also, weird sidebar, why does Prom Night Dumpster Kitty give a speech that sounds suspiciously similar to Galadriel succumbing to the temptation of the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings?
Galadriel: In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!
Twilight: I will be more monstrous, more beautiful than anything she has ever fear or fantasized... The Queen is dead. Long live me!
There's also mention of the Seed coming from across the seas... Stealing from Tolkien now on top of the whole C.S. Lewis thing, Whedon? For shame.
So anyway, Angel gets possessed by Twilight because we're operating on Back to the Future psychics here (oh, I wish that was the case. I sorta want Spike's spaceship to secretly have the heart of a DeLorean and go 88 miles per hour so that he could go far away into the past and stop Joss Whedon from making this disaster of a comic... now that would be an awesome story). Twilight is a dimension and an entity that needed to be born through Bangel sex, but it was already in existence because it talked to Angel. Is this supposed to be like when Jasmine possessed Cordelia to be born through her or does Whedon just not give a shit about the remotest chance of plausibility within sci-fi/horror/fantasy? Twilight needs the Seed to be its soul, but it seems to be functioning pretty well without it... besides the crazyflakes, so why does it need a soul? Is it going to be magically good or have some kind of moral boundaries? What kind of soul is the Seed? Why do I feel like this is another "unimportant" plot point that won't be addressed? *sigh*
I take a sick pleasure in the fact that my least favourite Buffy-decision of turning all the Potentials into full Slayers has come back to bite her in the ass, but I'm a Sadist, so it's to be expected. "Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change." :D
While Angel is getting all Linda Blair'ed by Twilight, there's some exposition doing on down in Sunnyhell. The Master has been enslaved to the Seed for 800 years, which makes total sense since the Seed was in the Hellmouth and the Master was only in California for about 70-odd-years before Buffy finally dusted him and he was trapped in the Old Spanish Mission several blocks away from Sunnydale High which makes him the ideal candidate to guard this mystically precious object. *insert eyeroll here* Also, did everyone just forget that the Master has "grown past" human features because HE'S A WHEDONVERSE VAMPIRE. For fuck's sake, there've been other vampires like look like the Master... some that even have cloven hooves for feet. HOOVES FOR FEET! Eyes made of wood! (Scratch that last part; I had a Space Ghost flashback.) Did Joss yet again forget that he made his vampires age into hideousness to show their "descent into evil" or did he just drop that idea for convenience's sake like all the other metaphors his vampires were supposed to stand for? *sighs again* Also, didn't the Master want to bring about the Apocalypse with the Hellmouth? That kind of negates the whole "Protect the Seed/Save the World" storyline.
Joss/Allie just love to point out the absolute idiocy of their own storylines, don't they? Gotta love that breakin'-the-fourth-wall-goodness. It's just a wink and nod to the audience that says "We know this makes no sense. Aren't we just precious? Look! Self-deprecating humor! We're so clever!"
Dawn's head makes a "KROOM" noise when it smashes into the rocks after she's attacked by demons. Dawn's got a diesel engine in her head just like Buffy's knees are made of wood (MADE OF WOOD! *needs to stop these Space Ghost flashbacks*). Also, Dawn's apparently fat now. The skinniest character on the show is supposed to weigh a ton. Way to be a hero, Xander; I miss the days when the writers didn't know what to do with you so they constantly had you shoveling food in your face because you didn't have any lines. Can we replace this Xander with fanfic!Xander? I like fanfic!Xander; he's always much more pleasant than canon!Xander.
Spike's face when Willow accidentally sets his sleeve on fire is actually pretty funny. Jeanty should probably stick to drawing in that simple style rather than the other. I feel like he suffers from the same problem Chris Cross does- "I can't figure out a gesture for Spike so... let's put a cigarette in his mouth!" or "Female character needs a gesture! She can be flipping her hair!" Spike really, really shouldn't be smoking in a cavern; it can suck the limited air supply for the humans... Not that I would mind if most of the characters suffocated at this point. I'd actually like Angel, the Master, and Spike to just go away on the Steampunk ship, find Drusilla, resurrect Luke, Lawson, Penn, and Darla, and then grab Connor, and go be awesome together. It's an Aurelius family reunion! :D
Am I the only one who finds it poetic that Faith is the one actually out there fighting the fight, taking care of the mess that Buffy made, while Buffy herself is being fairly ineffectual? Just me? Okay.
Giles yet again spends this issue not making any sense. Remember back in the GiGi arc when Giles starts talking about finding a weapon that could stop a Slayer? Yeah, apparently way back then was when he knew the Seed was real (even though a few panels before in this current issue he's talking about he never believed the Seed to be real). It's once again "I thought this would happen, but I didn't bother to warn you or give you vital information. Accept my non-apology for allowing you to walk into another trap" on Giles's part. Suddenly there's a "Twilight Prophecy" that he knew about all along, which would have been a very important plot element at any point in time before TWO ISSUES LEFT OF THIS SERIES! Buffy is all, "Woe is me. People died because of me and my idiocy (which is totally not my fault now because I have Giles telling me that it's part of this prophecy)... so feel bad that I has a sad!" Fucking hell, why do I even bother with this dreck?
One of my major problems with the set up for the last few issues is the sporadic violence- massive hoards of demons but just enough break in the violence to have seventy pages of exposition and dialogue. No. Not ever. It's like "MICHAEL BAY EXPLOSIONS!" and then "Sophia Coppola serenity" and then "Matt Damon exposition" followed by more Michael Bay and a little bit Diablo Cody because they can't annoy me enough.
Giles and Buffy have this awkward goodbye that is more irky than Tabula Rasa's little temper tantrum she had. I don't know if Giles will bite the dust so that he and Ethan can have big gay British sex in the clouds, but there it is. I don't know what he's up to or what he's going to do, and I don't care at this point because at this juncture he might as well be planning to kill the whole Slayer line and end this madness.
Xander doesn't give a crap that Amy, Warren, and the General have escaped because he's focused on Dawn, which is all right I guess, little picture and all (plus we gotta get some chick shirtless in this issue). There's talk of the corruption caused by the temptation of power, blah blah blah, these characters will never learn.
While Willow is getting super-juiced by the Seed, Twilight shows up in Angel's body to give Buffy a punch in the face and to bitchslap Spike. And Buffy's really surprised? After everything that's just happened she's shocked? Sweet Christ, the Master has given her less of a reason to be suspicious than Angel/Angelus.
Let's take a gander at our Seedy-Egg scorecard:
Angel: "Protect the Seed!"
Angel-possessed-by-Twilight: "Must. take. Seed. 'cause. it. be. Twilight's. soul. "
The Master: "Protect the Seed!"
Buffy: "Protect the Seed while being completely pointless in my own book!"
Spike: "Protect the Seed! And snark about Angel!"
Willow: "Protect the Seed!... Wait, no, let's do the opposite of the thing my Snake Prophet told me to do and risk breaking the Seed to use its power to 'heal' the world! ...Ooooh, nummy shiny Power!"
The General: "Destroy the Seed!"
Xander: "Joss wants you to believe that I'll try to destroy the Seed so everyone can be normal like poor powerless me!"
Dawn: "I got a head injury which magically traveled to my side!"
Twilight sums up my feelings perfectly- "This is @#$%@!" Insert your own expletive there. I'm going with "This is bullshit!"
And just a little A/N: Just because I don't like S8 does not mean that I am trying to twist a knife into anyone's heart. I'm not "misinterpreting" this text mess because I don't agree that it's the greatest story ever told; I've just interpreted the story differently. I don't actually enjoy disliking things, despite what my lengthy rantings might imply. Joss Whedon has stomped all over my heart (around Issue #11 and before), and I'm sick and tired of trying to defend his bullshit. I did it all through high school, and I'm done with trying.
You know how people like to try to sync up old movies to the Eagles' "Hotel California" to see if anything of significance clicks? That's how I feel every time I try to make sense of Season Eight. It's the Wizard of Oz; it's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?; it's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything- Julie Newmar... except that it's not. I'm fairly certain I could wank Season Eight into Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but that would require effort and I've promised all my effort into IDW's Spike series for better or for worse (not that anything could reach the level of "worse" that S8 has).
Angel wonders how anything that has happened in the story has been easy, and it seems like a lot of things were tremendously easy. Believing random voices from animals, abandoning what was left of his friends and his investigative agency, not to mention just walking out on Connor (and no, the fact that the story tries to pretend that Connor doesn't exist is not an excuse for such a blatant oversight in the development of Angel's character). After watching Gunn kill Connor in ATF, after being reunited with him, Angel was never going to let his son go again. I admit that Angel has listened to people in the past that maybe he shouldn't have or really didn't have a reason to believe (was Angelus ever as naive as Angel tends to be?), but even Angel would have a hard time believing that going to Paradise and leaving the whole world behind was really a good idea. Maybe the writers could have sold this idea to me, but, gosh darn it, they were so like busy like with Dracula and submarines and Japanese vampires and unimportant side characters and Mecha-Dawn and Riley and lesbian trysts and dreamscapes and Super Buffy and building up a villain without actually dealing with him that like they forgot to actually develop the story like totally. *hair twirl* ... I fucking hate this story. *spits*
They need to show WHY ANGEL IS ACTING THIS WAY! Hell, even tell us! Something happened before he landed out of the giant blue space vagina onto the Hollywood sign, and I'm interested in how he got from Point A (getting out of hell, reuniting with his son and developing a stronger bond with him, reopening his detective agency, somehow getting into the big blue space vagina) to Point B (being in a position to give up every single thing he's worked for to listen to an entity against his better judgment). He's not the totally alone, feeling worthless piece of manpire that was huddled in an alleyway that Whistler found in 1995/96. He's got things to lose and nothing really to gain besides Buffy's cooch. Is her genital region really worth losing his kid and dooming his friends? I would think not. He doesn't even know Buffy anymore, if he ever did to begin with. Maybe Super Buffy fits in with his ideal of who he thinks she is; maybe that made it easier.
I don't believe that Angel would truly believe in a "they're damned anyway so get some pleasure for yourself and save your lady fair" type of scenario. He's fought the impossible, unlived through it. Prophecies are never what they are supposed to be- they can be manipulated, changed. He saw that first hand in Prophecy Girl. He was so sure that the Master would kill Buffy, but there she was alive and kicking in those hideous clunky shoes of hers. There is no reason for him to just roll over like a dog for a dog.
Also, weird sidebar, why does Prom Night Dumpster Kitty give a speech that sounds suspiciously similar to Galadriel succumbing to the temptation of the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings?
Galadriel: In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!
Twilight: I will be more monstrous, more beautiful than anything she has ever fear or fantasized... The Queen is dead. Long live me!
There's also mention of the Seed coming from across the seas... Stealing from Tolkien now on top of the whole C.S. Lewis thing, Whedon? For shame.
So anyway, Angel gets possessed by Twilight because we're operating on Back to the Future psychics here (oh, I wish that was the case. I sorta want Spike's spaceship to secretly have the heart of a DeLorean and go 88 miles per hour so that he could go far away into the past and stop Joss Whedon from making this disaster of a comic... now that would be an awesome story). Twilight is a dimension and an entity that needed to be born through Bangel sex, but it was already in existence because it talked to Angel. Is this supposed to be like when Jasmine possessed Cordelia to be born through her or does Whedon just not give a shit about the remotest chance of plausibility within sci-fi/horror/fantasy? Twilight needs the Seed to be its soul, but it seems to be functioning pretty well without it... besides the crazyflakes, so why does it need a soul? Is it going to be magically good or have some kind of moral boundaries? What kind of soul is the Seed? Why do I feel like this is another "unimportant" plot point that won't be addressed? *sigh*
I take a sick pleasure in the fact that my least favourite Buffy-decision of turning all the Potentials into full Slayers has come back to bite her in the ass, but I'm a Sadist, so it's to be expected. "Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change." :D
While Angel is getting all Linda Blair'ed by Twilight, there's some exposition doing on down in Sunnyhell. The Master has been enslaved to the Seed for 800 years, which makes total sense since the Seed was in the Hellmouth and the Master was only in California for about 70-odd-years before Buffy finally dusted him and he was trapped in the Old Spanish Mission several blocks away from Sunnydale High which makes him the ideal candidate to guard this mystically precious object. *insert eyeroll here* Also, did everyone just forget that the Master has "grown past" human features because HE'S A WHEDONVERSE VAMPIRE. For fuck's sake, there've been other vampires like look like the Master... some that even have cloven hooves for feet. HOOVES FOR FEET! Eyes made of wood! (Scratch that last part; I had a Space Ghost flashback.) Did Joss yet again forget that he made his vampires age into hideousness to show their "descent into evil" or did he just drop that idea for convenience's sake like all the other metaphors his vampires were supposed to stand for? *sighs again* Also, didn't the Master want to bring about the Apocalypse with the Hellmouth? That kind of negates the whole "Protect the Seed/Save the World" storyline.
Joss/Allie just love to point out the absolute idiocy of their own storylines, don't they? Gotta love that breakin'-the-fourth-wall-goodness. It's just a wink and nod to the audience that says "We know this makes no sense. Aren't we just precious? Look! Self-deprecating humor! We're so clever!"
Dawn's head makes a "KROOM" noise when it smashes into the rocks after she's attacked by demons. Dawn's got a diesel engine in her head just like Buffy's knees are made of wood (MADE OF WOOD! *needs to stop these Space Ghost flashbacks*). Also, Dawn's apparently fat now. The skinniest character on the show is supposed to weigh a ton. Way to be a hero, Xander; I miss the days when the writers didn't know what to do with you so they constantly had you shoveling food in your face because you didn't have any lines. Can we replace this Xander with fanfic!Xander? I like fanfic!Xander; he's always much more pleasant than canon!Xander.
Spike's face when Willow accidentally sets his sleeve on fire is actually pretty funny. Jeanty should probably stick to drawing in that simple style rather than the other. I feel like he suffers from the same problem Chris Cross does- "I can't figure out a gesture for Spike so... let's put a cigarette in his mouth!" or "Female character needs a gesture! She can be flipping her hair!" Spike really, really shouldn't be smoking in a cavern; it can suck the limited air supply for the humans... Not that I would mind if most of the characters suffocated at this point. I'd actually like Angel, the Master, and Spike to just go away on the Steampunk ship, find Drusilla, resurrect Luke, Lawson, Penn, and Darla, and then grab Connor, and go be awesome together. It's an Aurelius family reunion! :D
Am I the only one who finds it poetic that Faith is the one actually out there fighting the fight, taking care of the mess that Buffy made, while Buffy herself is being fairly ineffectual? Just me? Okay.
Giles yet again spends this issue not making any sense. Remember back in the GiGi arc when Giles starts talking about finding a weapon that could stop a Slayer? Yeah, apparently way back then was when he knew the Seed was real (even though a few panels before in this current issue he's talking about he never believed the Seed to be real). It's once again "I thought this would happen, but I didn't bother to warn you or give you vital information. Accept my non-apology for allowing you to walk into another trap" on Giles's part. Suddenly there's a "Twilight Prophecy" that he knew about all along, which would have been a very important plot element at any point in time before TWO ISSUES LEFT OF THIS SERIES! Buffy is all, "Woe is me. People died because of me and my idiocy (which is totally not my fault now because I have Giles telling me that it's part of this prophecy)... so feel bad that I has a sad!" Fucking hell, why do I even bother with this dreck?
One of my major problems with the set up for the last few issues is the sporadic violence- massive hoards of demons but just enough break in the violence to have seventy pages of exposition and dialogue. No. Not ever. It's like "MICHAEL BAY EXPLOSIONS!" and then "Sophia Coppola serenity" and then "Matt Damon exposition" followed by more Michael Bay and a little bit Diablo Cody because they can't annoy me enough.
Giles and Buffy have this awkward goodbye that is more irky than Tabula Rasa's little temper tantrum she had. I don't know if Giles will bite the dust so that he and Ethan can have big gay British sex in the clouds, but there it is. I don't know what he's up to or what he's going to do, and I don't care at this point because at this juncture he might as well be planning to kill the whole Slayer line and end this madness.
Xander doesn't give a crap that Amy, Warren, and the General have escaped because he's focused on Dawn, which is all right I guess, little picture and all (plus we gotta get some chick shirtless in this issue). There's talk of the corruption caused by the temptation of power, blah blah blah, these characters will never learn.
While Willow is getting super-juiced by the Seed, Twilight shows up in Angel's body to give Buffy a punch in the face and to bitchslap Spike. And Buffy's really surprised? After everything that's just happened she's shocked? Sweet Christ, the Master has given her less of a reason to be suspicious than Angel/Angelus.
Let's take a gander at our Seedy-Egg scorecard:
Angel: "Protect the Seed!"
Angel-possessed-by-Twilight: "Must. take. Seed. 'cause. it. be. Twilight's. soul. "
The Master: "Protect the Seed!"
Buffy: "Protect the Seed while being completely pointless in my own book!"
Spike: "Protect the Seed! And snark about Angel!"
Willow: "Protect the Seed!... Wait, no, let's do the opposite of the thing my Snake Prophet told me to do and risk breaking the Seed to use its power to 'heal' the world! ...Ooooh, nummy shiny Power!"
The General: "Destroy the Seed!"
Xander: "Joss wants you to believe that I'll try to destroy the Seed so everyone can be normal like poor powerless me!"
Dawn: "I got a head injury which magically traveled to my side!"
Twilight sums up my feelings perfectly- "This is @#$%@!" Insert your own expletive there. I'm going with "This is bullshit!"
And just a little A/N: Just because I don't like S8 does not mean that I am trying to twist a knife into anyone's heart. I'm not "misinterpreting" this text mess because I don't agree that it's the greatest story ever told; I've just interpreted the story differently. I don't actually enjoy disliking things, despite what my lengthy rantings might imply. Joss Whedon has stomped all over my heart (around Issue #11 and before), and I'm sick and tired of trying to defend his bullshit. I did it all through high school, and I'm done with trying.
