So, about that Buffyverse worldbuilding
Mar. 17th, 2011 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupI've been complaining about Buffyverse worldbuilding since my first viewing of Prophecy Girl, if not earlier. Recently ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angearia called me on it and asked me just what I meant, and my response was so long I'm reposting it here for general edification. Or something.
First, to me "worldbuilding" means a couple of different things. It might be as small as setting details or as big as your central speculative premise. In settings with magic, it means that even if the source of your magic hasn't been defined or fully explained, any specific instance of magic will either A) make sense when put in the context of the larger magic use in the show, or B) have some internal mythlogic that "just makes sense."
The Buffyverse doesn't suggest any real structure to how its magic works. Or rather, magic seems to work in about a dozen different ways. (stormwreath has a really nice summary of magic in the Buffyverse, although he sees a lot more consistency in it than I do.) Tara and, in early S7, Giles say a little bit about the natural order and connecting with the earth, but clearly that's not always necessary. Sometimes the magic user calls on deities. Sometimes ingredients are used. Sometimes special phrasing is needed. Intent apparently isn't needed, or else we wouldn't have nearly so many spells go awry, and also Oz wouldn't have been able to participate in Angel's re-ensouling. And sometimes, like with Willow, you don't need anything but will.
So: no magical organizing principle in the Buffyverse. No consistent larger context in which to place any specific thing and make sense of it. No defined source of magic nor any explanation given for why some people would have more of a talent for it than others. No rules governing how it works nor - and this is the kicker for me - how it doesn't work. Without specific boundaries on what magic can do, it can do whatever the writers want it to do, which IMO strips it of most of storytelling power. To take any given magical scenario seriously, I pretty much have to ignore everything else I've ever seen on the show and accept whatever premises the story is working from at just that moment.
So much for option A: the magic in a specific instance makes sense in a larger context. On to option B: the magic in a specific instance, ah, "just makes sense."
Now, what "just makes sense" is going to vary a lot depending on the mythical currency of the culture you come from. In Western European culture, this currency includes the principle of three (wishes, guesses, whatever), the binding power of a contract, sympathetic magic (both "the part affects the whole" and "this thing is affected by this other somewhat like thing"; I gather that this principle is fairly universal, but I haven't read enough non-Western myth and fairy tales and such to say anything else), the significance of names, and other things that aren't coming to mind.
This is something Neil Gaiman is an absolutely master at, especially in Neverwhere. It's also something SPN generally does pretty well, since the writers are working directly from my culture's cultural currency: American urban legends and local mythology. I already half-know a lot of the stories SPN tells, even though I don't know the specifics. (OTOH, this makes it harder for the stories to feel fresh and puts even more of the load on long-term arcs and character work, especially between the leads, but that's a separate problem.)
For me, though, the very best kind of worldbuilding is one where the creator starts with a specific premise and works those implications out across the board. It's kind of like a really solid AU fic where some specific event is different and the author then explores the huge reach of the ripples of that one event. All the consequences are taken into account. (I said something toquinara once about wanting things to make sense, and she teasingly called me a monotheist. Which, yanno, I am. I expect the world to make sense on some level, even if it's not on one I understand. Fair warning. *g*)
All I've talked about here is magic in the Buffyverse, which is one of my major complaints, but evil and demons are two other topics I tend to grumble about a lot. The chip is another thing, not because its exact workings are not explained, but because they contradict themselves. (rahirah summarizes the contradictions here.) There's also the truly bizarre historical stuff (the Knights of Byzantium; the fact that every major mystical artifact in the world, of any culture, seems to be located in Sunnydale), the ret-conning (the origins of demons, Olaf's troll hammer suddenly becoming the hammer of a troll god, the surprise appearance of the Guardian), and the just plain sloppy phrasing (in particular the explanation for Glory's portal: Giles says it will be open "until the blood stops flowing," but that doesn't explain why some good bandages and a coagulant aid couldn't fix the problem, nor, more seriously, why Buffy's death could fix it, since Dawn is still bleeding after Buffy takes the swan dive).
Several folks have pointed out to me recently that BtVS isn't about monsters, but about the girl defeating them, and that the ironic dismissal of the monsters is part of the power of the story. I'm okay with that as long as the writers let ironic dismissal win the day, as in Prophecy Girl or Restless or The Zeppo. But often, as in Innocence or Becoming or The Gift, the monsters and the damage they do is real, and I can't take that seriously unless those monsters and their origins make sense to me. If they come across as fabrications so that the writers can artificially push the story where they want it go, that just feels like manipulation, and I resent my feelings being manipulated.
All that said, I do not always hate Buffyverse worldbuilding; one thing I really enjoyed early on was all the different uses the writers had for Angel's vampirism. The moment where he kisses Buffy in "Angel" and her cross burns his chest? That was a perfect confluence of worldbuilding and theme. Angel being unable to resuscitate Buffy after she's drowned would have been another such moment, except that David Boreanaz is not exactly subtle about his breathing and anyway breathing is a semi-voluntary action. It was a nice thought, though. I also liked the bit in "The Dark Age" where Angel destroys Eyghon and in "I Only Have Eyes For You" when his being a vampire breaks the cycle of the haunting. Those are all places where the plot and the theme were direct outgrowths of worldbuilding that was already in place; the three worked in tandem, and nothing had to be invented on the spur of the moment. In non-Angel examples, the idea of Buffy and Dawn's blood being enough alike to allow a substitute was a very nice idea, although I wish they'd been a bit more explicit about how that worked.
One more extra-Buffyverse example of worldbuilding that works, and I'll call it quits. According to the Battlestar Galactica rules, the consciousness of a Cylon who dies in one body is downloaded into a new identical body. In an episode I watched recently, the Cylon half of a Cylon-human couple has deep personal reasons for wanting to get onto a Cylon ship. So, in a beautifully acted and truly affecting scene, she convinces her human spouse to shoot her dead. And he does.
If there is any such thing as a perfect scene, this was it. Long-term plot and three and a half seasons of character development led to this moment in which the human's - and our - whole intuition about how the world works comes smack against a bit of worldbuilding that has been hanging about since S1. The writers worked with the worldbuilding instead of against it. No manipulation. Just, yeah, perfect.
angearia called me on it and asked me just what I meant, and my response was so long I'm reposting it here for general edification. Or something.First, to me "worldbuilding" means a couple of different things. It might be as small as setting details or as big as your central speculative premise. In settings with magic, it means that even if the source of your magic hasn't been defined or fully explained, any specific instance of magic will either A) make sense when put in the context of the larger magic use in the show, or B) have some internal mythlogic that "just makes sense."
The Buffyverse doesn't suggest any real structure to how its magic works. Or rather, magic seems to work in about a dozen different ways. (
stormwreath has a really nice summary of magic in the Buffyverse, although he sees a lot more consistency in it than I do.) Tara and, in early S7, Giles say a little bit about the natural order and connecting with the earth, but clearly that's not always necessary. Sometimes the magic user calls on deities. Sometimes ingredients are used. Sometimes special phrasing is needed. Intent apparently isn't needed, or else we wouldn't have nearly so many spells go awry, and also Oz wouldn't have been able to participate in Angel's re-ensouling. And sometimes, like with Willow, you don't need anything but will.So: no magical organizing principle in the Buffyverse. No consistent larger context in which to place any specific thing and make sense of it. No defined source of magic nor any explanation given for why some people would have more of a talent for it than others. No rules governing how it works nor - and this is the kicker for me - how it doesn't work. Without specific boundaries on what magic can do, it can do whatever the writers want it to do, which IMO strips it of most of storytelling power. To take any given magical scenario seriously, I pretty much have to ignore everything else I've ever seen on the show and accept whatever premises the story is working from at just that moment.
So much for option A: the magic in a specific instance makes sense in a larger context. On to option B: the magic in a specific instance, ah, "just makes sense."
Now, what "just makes sense" is going to vary a lot depending on the mythical currency of the culture you come from. In Western European culture, this currency includes the principle of three (wishes, guesses, whatever), the binding power of a contract, sympathetic magic (both "the part affects the whole" and "this thing is affected by this other somewhat like thing"; I gather that this principle is fairly universal, but I haven't read enough non-Western myth and fairy tales and such to say anything else), the significance of names, and other things that aren't coming to mind.
This is something Neil Gaiman is an absolutely master at, especially in Neverwhere. It's also something SPN generally does pretty well, since the writers are working directly from my culture's cultural currency: American urban legends and local mythology. I already half-know a lot of the stories SPN tells, even though I don't know the specifics. (OTOH, this makes it harder for the stories to feel fresh and puts even more of the load on long-term arcs and character work, especially between the leads, but that's a separate problem.)
For me, though, the very best kind of worldbuilding is one where the creator starts with a specific premise and works those implications out across the board. It's kind of like a really solid AU fic where some specific event is different and the author then explores the huge reach of the ripples of that one event. All the consequences are taken into account. (I said something to
quinara once about wanting things to make sense, and she teasingly called me a monotheist. Which, yanno, I am. I expect the world to make sense on some level, even if it's not on one I understand. Fair warning. *g*)All I've talked about here is magic in the Buffyverse, which is one of my major complaints, but evil and demons are two other topics I tend to grumble about a lot. The chip is another thing, not because its exact workings are not explained, but because they contradict themselves. (
rahirah summarizes the contradictions here.) There's also the truly bizarre historical stuff (the Knights of Byzantium; the fact that every major mystical artifact in the world, of any culture, seems to be located in Sunnydale), the ret-conning (the origins of demons, Olaf's troll hammer suddenly becoming the hammer of a troll god, the surprise appearance of the Guardian), and the just plain sloppy phrasing (in particular the explanation for Glory's portal: Giles says it will be open "until the blood stops flowing," but that doesn't explain why some good bandages and a coagulant aid couldn't fix the problem, nor, more seriously, why Buffy's death could fix it, since Dawn is still bleeding after Buffy takes the swan dive).Several folks have pointed out to me recently that BtVS isn't about monsters, but about the girl defeating them, and that the ironic dismissal of the monsters is part of the power of the story. I'm okay with that as long as the writers let ironic dismissal win the day, as in Prophecy Girl or Restless or The Zeppo. But often, as in Innocence or Becoming or The Gift, the monsters and the damage they do is real, and I can't take that seriously unless those monsters and their origins make sense to me. If they come across as fabrications so that the writers can artificially push the story where they want it go, that just feels like manipulation, and I resent my feelings being manipulated.
All that said, I do not always hate Buffyverse worldbuilding; one thing I really enjoyed early on was all the different uses the writers had for Angel's vampirism. The moment where he kisses Buffy in "Angel" and her cross burns his chest? That was a perfect confluence of worldbuilding and theme. Angel being unable to resuscitate Buffy after she's drowned would have been another such moment, except that David Boreanaz is not exactly subtle about his breathing and anyway breathing is a semi-voluntary action. It was a nice thought, though. I also liked the bit in "The Dark Age" where Angel destroys Eyghon and in "I Only Have Eyes For You" when his being a vampire breaks the cycle of the haunting. Those are all places where the plot and the theme were direct outgrowths of worldbuilding that was already in place; the three worked in tandem, and nothing had to be invented on the spur of the moment. In non-Angel examples, the idea of Buffy and Dawn's blood being enough alike to allow a substitute was a very nice idea, although I wish they'd been a bit more explicit about how that worked.
One more extra-Buffyverse example of worldbuilding that works, and I'll call it quits. According to the Battlestar Galactica rules, the consciousness of a Cylon who dies in one body is downloaded into a new identical body. In an episode I watched recently, the Cylon half of a Cylon-human couple has deep personal reasons for wanting to get onto a Cylon ship. So, in a beautifully acted and truly affecting scene, she convinces her human spouse to shoot her dead. And he does.
If there is any such thing as a perfect scene, this was it. Long-term plot and three and a half seasons of character development led to this moment in which the human's - and our - whole intuition about how the world works comes smack against a bit of worldbuilding that has been hanging about since S1. The writers worked with the worldbuilding instead of against it. No manipulation. Just, yeah, perfect.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:41 pm (UTC)Thankfully, it tends to rank fairly low on my list of storytelling priorities...
(On the other hand, AtLA has utterly brilliant worldbuilding. I'll just leave that thought there.)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:46 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think this is the sticking point for me. I like the magic not making sense. However, in other worldbuilding aspects it does bother me and like you say, the MacGuffin may or may not go boom.
The magic as an example of poor worldbuilding doesn't resonate as strongly for me because that's not my problem with the worldbuilding.
I also think extensive worldbuilding can become bulky and debilitating to a series. The mythos becomes its own monster -- that's part of my problem with Season 3 & 4 of BSG. The mythos began to suffocate.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:48 pm (UTC)And there, in one sentence, you say something I spent at least half this post trying to articulate.
Not that the finales don't try to create them, but they have a tendency to go a bit flat, because in the end it's usually about the McGuffins.
Exactly. *nods*
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:55 pm (UTC)I also think extensive worldbuilding can become bulky and debilitating to a series.
Hmm - I don't know BSG, but I tend to feel like fantasy and sci-fi worldbuilding at its most extreme is just about making an alternative 'real life', where the laws are as finite as they are in a straight drama. It's a different sort of animal, but I'm not sure I'd think of it being necessarily debilitating.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:06 pm (UTC)That's how I feel about BSG.
To me, worldbuilding exists to serve the characters. I mean, that's my personal belief about stories. The characters are the most important part and the worldbuilding exists to serve the characters' story.
It's always a balancing act, right? But I'll take a story that cares more about characters than worldbuilding over vice versa. Consistency in characterization is more essential to me. I mean, looking at fictional worldbuilding and thinking "this doesn't make complete sense" isn't gonna jar for me. Because the real world? Never makes perfect sense. Things not adding up perfectly in stories -- well, if it adds up too perfectly it breaks my suspension of disbelief.
I guess I'm trying to say that the way magic works in the Buffyverse -- where there are no set rules, where there is no one right way -- that is worldbuilding to me because that's how I see the world. Same deal with the function of the soul.
Give me perfect sense and I'll believe it's too good to be true.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:15 pm (UTC)But I DO need it to not explicitly contradict itself. If there's NO logical explanation I can come up with, then that throws me out of the story. It's the sloppiness that gets me - especially because, as a writer, I have to wonder, is it really THAT HARD to remember what you said before? I don't think it is. I think Joss is just lazy about the details.
Also, WORD on that Helo/Sharon scene being utterly perfect. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:26 pm (UTC)a) The hand-waving about what a soul actually means. Who has one? Does Clem? Does Anya when she's a vengeance demon? If demons don't have souls, does anything separate the good ones from the bad ones or is it each demon's individual choice? In addition to the moral quandaries the soul brings up in relation to good demons like Clem, I think a clearer definition also would have shut up some of the S7 Spuffy haters. I would really have liked a conversation between Buffy and Dawn or Xander about why she trusts Spike with his soul. It's not because he is bound to be a good person or because he can't do awful things or because he didn't know the difference btw right and wrong before but because the soul gives him a maturity/impulse control that would stop him from acting on his more violent, vampiric instincts, like rape (or however you view the soul; obviously mileage will vary).
b) I agree with everything you said about the magic, but the part that bothers me the most is how it gets turned into a scapegoat for Darth Willow. They don't set up any rules for it from the get-go, and that way they can take advantage of it to give a truly crappy character arc.
c) This is more of an AtS problem, but what the heck are the PTB and why should I give a crap? Why do they exist in LA and not in Sunnydale? I'm glad that they're not in Sunnydale b/c they're awful, but what is up with such a big discrepancy in the Buffyverse? And what is with Whistler in BtVS S2?
d) The Guardian.
e) The chip.
I'm sure there are others, but those are the specific problems that jump to mind.
Helo/Athena! <3
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:30 pm (UTC)Heh. I was thinking that the whole time I was watching the show...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:30 pm (UTC)It's the sloppiness that gets me - especially because, as a writer, I have to wonder, is it really THAT HARD to remember what you said before? I don't think it is.
I might resent it a little less if it didn't feel the writers were regularly flaunting how little they care about consistency here (which is weird, considering how detail-oriented they are about so many other things in this show).
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:33 pm (UTC)YES. Ohymgoodness, yes. The PTB drive me crazy, and are one of two reasons I'd give for arguing that the Ats mythos is actually separate from the BtVS mythos. (The other reason has to do with all the neutral and semi-neutral demons in LA and the whole demon culture there.) And yes, Whistler. Ugh.
And yes to all the soul issues, although frankly I've become so disheartened by the whole mess that I've just quit thinking about it. It isn't worth my mental energy.
Yes to everything here, really. It's all badness.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:39 pm (UTC)I have problems with the obvious contrivance of Buffy's back injury, but I don't have problems with Spike snapping out of his desperate need to be loved and acknowledged --"I'm gonna make you feel it" (Seeing Red) = "torture her till she likes me again" (Lovers Walk) -- this need is then compounded by his confusion over relationship boundaries and the dysfunctional history he's had with Buffy up through AYW. His characterization makes sense to me.
I also don't have problems with Buffy's emotional reaction and her hesitation in violently kicking Spike off because ever since the end of "As You Were" she'd been avoiding physical contact, avoiding hitting him, and trying to use her words to reach him, trying to establish healthy boundaries through verbal communication, actively working to countermand the dysfunctional boundaries established through years of physical dominance games that eventually exploded in "Smashed" and boiled over into a sexual power struggle.
If you're talking about the soul, though, and how that mythos forced the AR, then we're on opposing sides: what works as a bad example to you of mythos suffocating characters does the inverse for me.
Of course, we're venturing into controversial ground here with SR/AR. I'm not sure if Snick was looking to host this sort of discussion.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:42 pm (UTC)And I'd be fine with the limits being specific - this particular character's not strong enough for a certain spell or certain spells are morally wrong (like Tara's opposition to raising the dead). But when Willow is superwitch and can do anything she wants with the blink of an eye, it gets fairly ridiculous.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:44 pm (UTC)YES! That drives me crazy about Joss. It's like he's proud of the inconsistencies, which just baffles me. It's like he thinks he's a superior writer for focusing on the big picture stuff rather than the details.
News flash, Joss: Superior writers can do both at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, not so much. Especially as I see the whole AR question as having to do with characterization rather than worldbuilding of any kind, not that I'm exactly the On-Topic Police usually, but I think I'm going to make an exception here.
I'll say something upthread to
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:49 pm (UTC)Yeah! What she says, Joss!
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Date: 2011-03-17 11:55 pm (UTC)As for demon culture, I'm more inclined to chalk the gray area concerning demons to better world-building in AtS than to a different mythological premise overall.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:58 pm (UTC)As for the demons, though, you're right, they're pretty easy to integrate into the BtVS side of things, especially if you're dealing with something after "Chosen."