Buffy #22 review and spoilery specs

[moscow_watcher]

Plot: Kennedy is sent to Japan to evaluate Satsu's leadership. Together they catch a monster, who tried to abduct a fluffy vampire!kitten toy. Without second thoughts slayers take their trophy into their bedroom. At night the alien parasite toy gets into Satsu's body through her mouth. In the morning Satsu puts on a kimono and proclaims that she should turn into a normal girl who makes babies. Kennedy realises that the slayer is possessed; she fights with her and literally kicks the vampy kitten out of Satsu's body. Turns out Satsu had already revealed the new location of Buffy's castle to the toy who telepathically sent the coordinates to other vampy kittens. The corporation that produces evil kittens sends a shipload of them to Scotland. Space marines Slayers attack aliens vampy kittens and destroy the Alien Queen The Swell who belches misogynistic crap. To beat the monster, Satsu uses Korean submarine she "took back from vamps". Right before death The Swell tells that he works for Twilight. Back in Scotland Buffy watches Harmony-the-vampire-rights-spokeswoman, complaining on TV about evil slayers who kill fluffy toys. Buffy decides to "keep low profile" and "focus to be more than human, or the less-then is gonna win".

Steven DeKnight, what happened to you? You used to write the most brilliant ("Dead Things", "Seeing Red") and creepy ("Hellbound") episodes on BtVS and AtS. How come that you wrote a story with with "mwahaha, I'm evil!" villains, dubious metaphors, characters irrational behavior and enormous amount of squick?

No, I'm serious. Here's examples of dialogs:

"Mmm babies! We should make some like normal girls instead of running around hitting people!"
***
"We're nothing but a bunch of self-righteous little ovaries! "
***
"Get in her mouth, get in her --!"
***
"Eat their ****ing ovaries!"

Apparently it's supposed to sound funny. I read a suggestion that ludicrous dialogues are parodying anime subtitles. Maybe. Maybe not.
There is a great post by shadowcat67 where she talks about subjective and one objective analysis of text. One of the issues she discusses: has the writer failed if the plot and intent are not clear to the reader or audience. She says it much, much better than I could say it, so you may read it in her LJ.

Back to #22: the majority of reviewers saw vampy kittens as a reference to popular Japanese toys and The Swell as a homage to manga monsters. My first impression was that it's a parody/retelling/rip-off of Alien movies (Joss wrote a script to one of them 12 years ago). But the funniest interpretation I know goes back to "Kittens jihad" - shipper wars back in 2002, when Willow/Tara shippers, known as Kittens, unleashed a war against ME writers for killing off Tara and proclaimed that her death caused a great damage to gay and lesbian community. So, the issue about two lesbians overcoming a bunch of evil Kittens could also be a wink to the fandom by DeKnight who wrote the episode that featured Tara's death.

I don't want to recycle other reviewers' complaints about Buffy's unexplainable stupidity, although her decision to keep the submarine surpasses even her bank-robbing activities. I'm not sure I understand correctly DeKnight's metaphors and references. For example, I find dubious the idea of demonic possession manifested in the desire to wear national clothes and have children. But I can't understand if it's a clumsy plot device to signal us that something in wrong with Satsu, or a reference to some mangas, or an insight into Japanese culture I don't get.

I have to confess that after reading that issue I wanted to go and have a shower. It squicked me. The scene where vampy kittens break out of human bodies was particularly squicky. The plot about vampy kittens vaguely resemble Lynch's Shadow Puppets, but in Lynch' story little monsters are stuffed and they don't get into human bodies. They're reasonably creepy - evil but not repugnant. In The Swell we see a legion of vampy kittens who penetrate human bodies through mouths, suck them dry and then burst out ot cavity chests. I mean - how disturbing it is?

But I read other fans' responses and nobody seems disgusted. Maybe I'm just unaccustomed to to mangas? Does it often happens in mangas?

In any case, this is an issue I want to forget ASAP.

In other news, during recent Q&As Scott Allie admitted that "what's important for Season Eight is understanding how corruption/compromise has affected Buffy" so now we know for sure that bank-robbing and submarine-stealing was intended to spell: B-u-f-f-y I-s W-r-o-n-g.

I wonder how Joss plans to resolve the situation. To make a spell that takes away all slayer power? To banish slayers from Earth dimension? To put them under government control? Or maybe Joss wants to end the season with Buffy and Scoobies arrested, while the world is succumbing to vampire rule? If vampires become a metaphor for media, this is pretty topical. :)

I'd love to finish my ramblings ans specs with a sentence without a question mark, but I'm afraid I don't have coherent conclusion. So, the last question: could anybody identify the green monster on Kennedy's t-shirt?

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

But I read other fans' responses and nobody seems disgusted. Maybe I'm just unaccustomed to to mangas? Does it often happens in mangas?

I have no idea if it had anything to do with manga, but frankly, I thought it was too silly to squick me. Like you, it mainly made me think of the Alien series, and while that's a pretty creepy concept, it's also become a little too commonplace to be creepy in and of itself.

now we know for sure that bank-robbing and submarine-stealing was intended to spell: B-u-f-f-y I-s W-r-o-n-g.

I never understood the people who were (and in some cases still are) arguing that Buffy's doing everything right; as far as I can tell, it's been pretty obvious since #8 at least that she's doing a bunch of things that always equal raising the Big Red Flag of Wrong in the Jossverse. I don't think it's supposed to be as simple as her simply being "wrong", though; it's supposed to look like a difficult situation where none of the alternatives really is 100% completely simple and good - which makes it all the more unfortunate that they've apparently decided not to show us any of the decisions that led her to this point, or exactly what the current situation is with "everyone" hating the Slayers, etc. Show us why Buffy does what she does as opposed to doing something else, and she might look more justified.

I wonder how Joss plans to resolve the situation.

I'm still pretty convinced there's some sort of epiphany coming. And I'm still pretty convinced that the longer we have to wait and the more they screw up in the meantime, the more eye-rolling it will cause. But we'll see.

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Show us why Buffy does what she does as opposed to doing something else, and she might look more justified.

Apparently, Joss thinks he already did it. Buffy robbed the bank to buy a radar. Which didn't prevent the destruction of the castle several issues later.

I'm still pretty convinced there's some sort of epiphany coming. And I'm still pretty convinced that the longer we have to wait and the more they screw up in the meantime, the more eye-rolling it will cause. But we'll see.

If the seasonal arc will end with Buffy's realisation that it's wrong to rob banks, that will be a bit disappointing, to put it mildly. :)

I'm trying to fugure out what kind of consequences Joss could prepare for Buffy. Taking away her slayer powers for a while could be an interesting option. Especially in a world ruled by vampires.

[rahirah]

I don't know if it's so much feeling that Buffy is right as... well, like in S7. We were apparently supposed to see many of her leadership decisions as wrong. But the backlash that the writers devised against this (kicking her out of her own house, having Faith's plan blow up [literally]) was so over the top and muddled that the whole thing came off as "Buffy is Buffy, and therefore right, even when she's wrong."

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, your reasoning echoes in Buffy and Willow's dialogue in issue 11:

Willow: Not killing humans is what separates us from the bad guys.
Buffy: No, not being bad is what separates us from the bad guys.

It's unclear how we should react on Buffy's words. After all, she *did* kill humans - the knights of Byzantium were human, Spike's chip worked on them. But, ultimately, Buffy was right to kill them, because it was self-defence.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hope that one clumsy storyline (the s7 one) doesn't necessarily mean every future storyline needs to be equally clumsy. However, I think part of my problem with the story is that I just don't buy that Joss would let Buffy crash and burn completely. He's gone on record so many times saying that he created Buffy for a very specific purpose; she's the Hero. She shall overcome. I'd love a good Buffy-turns-dark story (I don't think this is quite it; IMO, it's too clumsy and too dependent on having Buffy do things just for the sake of seeming dark). But still, it's one of the most interesting things about the comic. However, the problem is that while I like that Joss lets Buffy stumble, he hasn't convinced me that he could let her fall so far she can't get up. Which means that when he starts telegraphing his punches as early as in #2, the first thing I start wondering is "OK, Buffy's going dark, when's the big epiphany coming?" And the longer it takes and the blinder he has to write Buffy to maintain the arc, the more annoyed I get. Whether that's my fault or Whedon's, I leave up to the reader.

But what I was referring to specifically was the amount of fans who seem(ed) to not notice that he's had Buffy checking every box on the Whedonverse Darkness Arc checklist. A story about power corrupting only works if the readers can see that the character with power is being corrupted; otherwise, it's all rather pointless. Whether that's the reader's fault or Whedon's, I leave up to... well, me. ;-)

*isn't sure if that made any sense, but it's late*