Season 8: Time of Your Life (spoilers)

[snick_backup]

And we continue to pilfer old Buffyverse lore in our attempt to give our comic any kind of resonance or significance whatsoever. This time... Fray? Really? On the one hand, it's kind of neat, because Fray was much cooler, more cohesive, and more inventive than anything we've seen in Season 8. OTOH, well, Fray was much cooler, more cohesive, and... I'd rather we'd left it as an intriguing and coherent standalone, well out of this S8 mess.

However, I would like to know more of the story behind future!Willow - her untold history sounded far more interesting than anything we actually saw.

Is it just me, or is comic!Kennedy much prettier than actress!Kennedy? And she's not even all that annoying.

Anatomically speaking, Dawn makes a totally inadequate centaur. She looks like her torso could snap off at the spine at any moment.

Riley's the guy working with Twilight? (Or am I supposed to gather that he is Twilight?) Riley? My deep thinky analysis of this development: Whatever. It's stupid. (Also, if your idea of a big character reveal is to simply show a frame of the character, it'd help if I could recognize the character. I had to squint for a bit, and even then it would have taken longer if I hadn't remembered hearing that he'd shown up in the comics.)

Here is evidence that there is something wrong with this comic series: Xander is the best part. (Other than Faith/Giles, of which there is not enough.) He looks rather like himself, he sounds exactly like himself, and despite Buffy's occasional attempts he's the only character who's actually funny.

General conclusion: the longer this goes on, the farther it strays from anything I could ever accept as canon. Faith&Giles? Totally canon. The rest of this is rubbish.

Comments

[seapealsh.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you about Xander. He's the closest to the real character. And I like him in the comics. The whole Buffy/Satsu thing turned me off Buffy and I thought the Dawn/giant/centaur stuff was ridiculous. I do not consider it canon in the least, but I admit I read the comics religiously because I'm a sucker for all BTVS. If they still wrote the novels I'd be buying them.

[snickfic]

Oh, I could not stand the one tie-in novel I tried to read - in terms of pretty much every measure of storytelling, it was awful. I read about ten pages and I said, "All right, I'm going to go read fanfic now."

However, I noticed that they actually had a line of AU novels, which sound intriguing...

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

And you've just made me feel even more secure in my decision not to waste time/money on S8. I'm sticking with my pretty, pretty TV shows.

Although Faith/Giles does sound intriguing to me....

[snickfic]

Thus far, all the Faith&Giles (no overt shippiness, but...) was in the second trade volume, No Future For You - not coincidentally, the best volume in the series so far. There was also a standalone issue recently about them together. And then there's been some fanfic, although not nearly enough. I especially recommend sahiya's three lovely Faith/Giles pieces.

And yeah. I'm a huge fan - it's such a great dynamic.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I won't be reading it, but I'll definitely check out those fics.

Yeah, this might be weird, but I feel like Giles could understand Faith a whole lot more than he could Buffy. Maybe because Faith had her "dark age" in much the same way Giles did and then tried to move on from it, but Buffy always had to bear that "good girl" label and was still stuck up on that pedestal even when she made mistakes, which is not something Giles could identify with. Plus (and I don't know that I have any support for this on the show, but I have a gut feeling about it), Buffy's always been about shaking up the worldview, going for the grey areas right from the beginning. Giles has more of a black/white dynamic (though not nearly as much as I think a lot of us--myself included--portray him as having in fic) and I can see Faith adopting something similar post-incarceration.

But I could be totally wrong about all of that.

[snickfic]

I'm not sure I'd call Giles' view black/white, but I see what you're saying - he has rather set ideas about how the world functions. Giles believes more in structure and in actions guided by rules. All pretty ironic, considering his dark phase.

I have trouble seeing Faith ever buying into that, though. Giles was raised with that and eventually returned to it, but as far as I can tell Faith did whatever she had to do to survive, and I'd imagine she'd keep on doing that longterm. For Giles, rules and structure were like coming home; for Faith it'd be completely foreign.

So I guess I see them meeting somewhere in the middle. By "Chosen" I think Giles is heartily weary of the fight and of his role as the maker of hard decisions, while Faith is still working her way back from murder and betrayal. He can give her acceptance, forgiveness, and his personal experience in recovering from one's demons, and she can give him someone to care about and chance to mend one of his own past mistakes.

Plus I just love the idea of their bumbling attempts at emotional intimacy - they're both so hungry for it, but they both have real trouble expressing it or (especially Faith) accepting it from other people.

So I see them as very much a post-series couple; I can't see any of this coming out, say, in S3. And the last part of S7 was too hectic for anything to develop.

Yeesh, that was...very long.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I knew that what came out of my fingers wouldn't match up with what's in my head. And since there are only a few Faith-centric episodes post her incarceration (and since I haven't seen what Joss does with her in the comics), I don't have a really clear vision of who she's become, so I was more going with my gut here, and I didn't phrase things very well.

I have trouble seeing Faith ever buying into that, though...For Giles, rules and structure were like coming home; for Faith it'd be completely foreign. Oh, you're absolutely right about that. I think...maybe? that what I'm thinking of is that both of them have a "I've been through the darkness and back" sort of mentality. One of my favorite Faith lines ever is in "Dirty Girls" when she asks Buffy, "Are you the bad Slayer now?" And then she follows it up with, "Am I the good Slayer now?" But that latter question is a surprise to her, like it's something she's never considered, something she never thought possible. I don't know that Buffy would ever label good/bad that way because I don't think that's really the way she thinks.

But I think Faith clearly saw herself and Buffy that way. Buffy's going to continue to play around in the darkness without fully committing herself to it (and dude, I could write a paper on how this is a metaphor for having one foot in the semiotic a la Kristeva or Cixous with the male/female dichotomy), which is what she's done from the beginning with her relationship with Angel up to the end where she throws out all the rules and completely rewrites Slayer lore in the process.

As I imagine Faith post-"Chosen" (and, again, I have no idea of the comics, so Joss probably took her in a completely different direction), I imagine her needing to cling to the ideas of good as far as Slaying and big-decision-making goes a little bit more so that she doesn't fall over the edge again--while still being a bit of a wild child in her personal life.

Ugh. I don't know if any of that makes sense at all. Probably not. I guess what I'm focusing on is more their approach to the supernatural world and not their lives or personality at all.

By "Chosen" I think Giles is heartily weary of the fight and of his role as the maker of hard decisions, while Faith is still working her way back from murder and betrayal. He can give her acceptance, forgiveness, and his personal experience in recovering from one's demons, and she can give him someone to care about and chance to mend one of his own past mistakes.

Plus I just love the idea of their bumbling attempts at emotional intimacy - they're both so hungry for it, but they both have real trouble expressing it or (especially Faith) accepting it from other people. I love this. I think you're absolutely right on all of it.

Also, you're very right about the post-series thing.

And you thought yours was long!

[snickfic]

(and dude, I could write a paper on how this is a metaphor for having one foot in the semiotic a la Kristeva or Cixous with the male/female dichotomy)

*pleads total ignorance*

As I imagine Faith post-"Chosen" (and, again, I have no idea of the comics, so Joss probably took her in a completely different direction), I imagine her needing to cling to the ideas of good as far as Slaying and big-decision-making goes a little bit more so that she doesn't fall over the edge again--while still being a bit of a wild child in her personal life.

Ah, now I think I see what you're saying, and I totally agree. That makes lots of sense. Yes. An "err on the side of caution" mentality because she feels, rightly or wrongly, that her capacity for moral decisionmaking is wonky. Buffy has the luxury of starting from someplace good and dipping her toe in the darkness when she feels like it, and Faith doesn't. She's trying to feel out 'good' as she goes. Yeah?

(Incidentally, this is why I can't ship Spike/Faith, even though I like them so well individually: they're just too much alike for their own good. Giles and Faith have complimentary damage, but I think Spike and Faith have much the same kind of damage and by the end of the series are in roughly similar places. I think they'd be as likely to drag each other down as pull one another forward.)

I think I need to think about that some more.