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

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Dark Horse webcomic that accompanies this issue, also written by DeKnight?
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=218201811


Yes, I saw it but shrugged it off as a joke.

I don't know how obvous it would be to someone who doesn't have English as their first language but trust me: the dialogue is definitely a parody of badly-subtitled anime.

The dialogue sounded very weird to my foreign ears (or, rather, eyes) but, to me, the whole story was extremely baffling.

The whole issue, to me, is similar; it's gloriously over-the-top, cartoony parody.

Maybe fans who have some manga experience enjoy the parody on its stereotypes. I get that manga and anime are very popular today - some of my friends, former BtVS fans, switched to anime and mangas. But I couldn't get into it.

The excessive violence, giant monsters, etc are also stereotypical.

Obviously I read the cultural references wrong and the similarities to Alien movies weren't intended.

If the theme of the season is "Empowering these women has led to some of them using their power unwisely" I don't think offering the solution "And therefore it was a mistake to empower these women, and we should make them helpless again" would send a good message...

But Joss could steer around this message by showing that de-empowering *all* slayers is equally wrong and clueless humanity succumb to Twilight's evil PR tricks. It could be a great set-up for season 9: Buffy-the-outcast-ex-slayer trying to fight vamps without her slayer power.