quick plug for something some friends are involved in:


Once More for Charity
A recital of the Buffy musical on 21st August 2004, with all monies raised going to the Sudan Emergency Appeal.

A few fic recs - I've only just had a chance to catch up.

Eggs, Vegetable Oil, Water by twinkledru
(LJ or silverlake links)
A lovely post-Chosen vignette of Buffy. Buffy considers her future. Also, there's cake.

Feline Repose by Venus Blue
What does an unemployed librarian do with his time?
If, like me, you prefer reading html pages to php, it's also available on silverlake.

Contrite Spirits by Lizbeth Marks
"Faith and Xander are waiting for a newly discovered Slayer at the Basilica Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre and find answers to questions they were afraid to ask."
a good Faith and Xander fic (note, not Faith/Xander). I love this Faith - it's a side we never see in the show but, when it's shown here it seems so, well, plausible.

fic rec: Forty (Tongue) Lashings and a Bit of Parley by tigerlady. Smutty fun with Captain Jack Sparrow and Anyanka. Amusingly enough, it also fits with canon for both Pirates of the Carribbean and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like canon matters in any way at all when someone is writing mild smut involving Cap'n Jack.

Ghost of the Robot split up. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm shocked. Shocked and stunned. Very stunned.*

Not really. Having seen them live, I can imagine trying to be a real rock band (rather like wanting to be a real boy) is quite hard when the majority of your audience insists on standing as woodenly as Boreanez and staring reverently at the lead singer. Their bassist was pretty damn good, mind.




*it's a Rutles thing.

Ask Bob! For Bob Knows the Secret Truths!

Just to point out that Bob's asnwers to my Angel season 5 questions were not entirely inaccurate, given the Butch and Sundance ending our boys got: see Bob's answers.

So a comparative test suggests that both the Magic 8-ball of 2003 and Bob are good tools for providing a spoiler-free hint of the future of your favourite tv series...

article rec: ak13 :: Dead ethics on how Angel forged a new morality on tv.

Behind the self-conscious mockery and bad special effects was one of the darkest and most adult drama series of the last five years, containing serious messages about redemption and 'doing the right thing'.

it's a wee little puppet man!

fic rec: Mortal Wounds by Treacle-A. Another WIP.

I'm so bad. I have no time for WIPs. Not in a judgemental sense, but in the sense that my life is already too crowded to invest hopes and expectations into WIPs. I should wait, save up the fic for when I am free to read it and it'll be all beautifully concluded. But, well, look at the promising Spuffy scenes! Go Spuffy!

You are Willow! Or, Type Five of the Enneagram's
personality structure: THE THINKER. You are
preceptive, analytic, eccentric and paranoid.


Which Buffy & Enneagram's 9 Personalities Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Also: liable to get addicted to things and want to destroy the world, only to be prevented by a big hug.

I'm still digesting the end of Angel. I liked it. I have enthused about it on email and got no response whatsoever so I have yet to dare read others' opinions in case I am all alone in my enjoyment of it. I'll wait another week before detailing why I thought it worked.

Meanwhile, I have just finished reading Astonishing X-Men #1. I am not leaping onto this comic as it's written by Whedon. Well, not entirely. I've been a fan of the X-Men since the mid-80s, only giving up on it all after the infamously title-sprawling Inferno storyline. Admittedly, I've not bothered with the movie, on the grounds that most movie adaptations of comic books suck. I mean, badly suck. It's weird as people who know little about comics always assume that they are just storyboards with dialogue which can therefore be lifted effortlessly to the screen. I'm literally afraid to see what they did to make my beloved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen into a movie. My return to the X-Men came when Grant Morrison started the New X-Men title. Not only was it a good writer but it was the core team (well, except for Angel and Iceman both of whom seem to have vanished from everyone's memories) plus Wolverine and Emma Frost. I read the entire Morrison run. I did try the Austen run but I didn't like it - poor dialogue plus uninspiring artwork. So when the word came that Whedon was taking over...well, the guys in the shop put me down Astonishing X-Men without even asking me. I had spent over a year asking "any news of Fray?", after all. So, is it worth it?

Well, yes. Both from an X-Men point of view and from a Whedon perspective. His dialogue leaps off the page. It's hard not to see Angel's brooding posturing in Whedon's Cyclops, or Spike's refusal to conform to the superhero stereotype ("no amulets. No bracelets, broaches, beads, pendants, pins, or rings") in Wolverine's mutterings about tights. Emma Frost's bitchiness is so season 1 & 2 Cordy that it made me laugh out loud. And I needn't say anything about Henry McCoy's tweed suit and glasses...This is Whedon on top form, back to one of the things which inspired Buffy and it's fun.

My latte sister, the distressingly multi-talented Kalima, has started to write up the Buffy fiction we outlined back in the summer of 2002. It's a WIP, which I don't normally rec, but on the other hand it's lovely and funny and she's taken the snippet I wrote and turned it into something with much more depth and wit. So go read Time Travel for Pedestrians and give her warm fluffy strokes of feedback.

At one point this was called Hot Kinky Vamp Action despite the fact it was a proposal we were working on for 'proper' publication. On account of us being 'proper' writers by day. Well, by night on account of writing not paying enough to buy pins and us therefore having the equivilent of DMP day jobs to pay the actual bills. Maybe that's why we both love season 6? We can relate to Buffy's realisation that her calling is never going to get her a bank loan but she just can't give it up. Plus, obviously, all that hot sex with Spike. HKVA did not have any actual HKVA due to the restrictions of the Buffy books' range. When we discussed reviving the project as fanfic, the first thing to be brought back was the sex. My calling means my nights are being spent patrolling the graveyards of prose, slaying bad grammar and trying to avert the apocalypse (i.e. get a novel in by the deadline) so Kelly is writing this herself. Please read - it's going to be a beauty.

You are an Elementalist. Your magic stems from the
forces of nature. You might be a forest
nuturing Druid, a storm-creating Weather-Wizard
or any of the many Elementals, but one thing is
sure-- your bond with nature is strong. You can
rely heavily on nature to support yourself
aesthetically or physically for it lends you
both comfort and strength. Your instincts
rarely fail you. You are vibrantly passionate
but are sometimes carried away by your own
emotions.


Which Magical Order Are You In?
brought to you by Quizilla

Fic rec: Hers to Remember by cousinjean {via All About Spike}

I've just organised an LJ syn feed for this blog. Simply click here and then click on add to friends to get my blog pumped straight to your friends list.

New fanfic uploaded: Kali Dances

This was started back in December 2003 and was then called Pure Shores, based solely on the opening scene. It's only just been finished off, with all this Kali business popping up. I mention some songs in the author's note, although none are actually quoted in the text. Here are some extracts of the lyrics which I hope reveal where this fiction came from.

• Madonna Ray of Light
  
  Zephyr in the sky at night I wonder
  Do my tears of mourning sink beneath the sun
  She's got herself a universe gone quickly
  For the call of thunder threatens everyone
  ...
  Faster than the speeding light she's flying
  Trying to remember where it all began
  She's got herself a little piece of heaven
  Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one
  
  This was one of those 'ooh' moments when I heard the song just after watching Chosen.




• All Saints Pure Shores
  
  Many faces I have seen
  Many places I have been
  Walked the deserts, swam the shores
  (Coming closer to you)
  Many faces I have know
  Many way in which I've grown
  Moving closer on my own
  (Coming closer to you)
  
  full lyrics here




• PJ Harvey Down by the Water
  
  That blue eyed girl, she said "No more"
  That blue eyed girl, became blue eyed whore
  Down by the water, I took her hand
  Just like my daughter, I'll see her again
  
  less pleasant, and probably tied to the whole Angel/Dru/Spike stuff.




• Moloko The Time is Now
  
  You're the first thing
  And the last thing on my mind
  In your arms I feel
  Sunshine
  ...
  On a promise
  A day dream yet to come
  Time is upon us
  Oh but the night is young
  ...
  And the atmosphere is charged.
  In you I trust.
  And I feel no fear as I
  Do as I must.
  
  There is no good reason to include this, I just did




• Kula Shaker Temple of Everlasting Light
  
  Will I ever see the pleasure that will never end
  Hidden in the misty forest that desire send
  Mesmerised like fireflys falling through a flame
  If I wait I'll be too late to holler out your name
  If I wait another day to travel to the east
  Time may prey on me, dance upon me with it's feet
  Hidden in the temple they are building to the sun
  
  pretty obvious in terms of influence on the story.

I also have someone say "Instant karma's gonna get you" which is from, erm, Instant Karma by John Lennon.

"It's an ancient sacred text, not a magic 8 ball."
(Wes, To Shanshu in L.A.)

Back in December 2002, I used the public 8 ball to predict the end of Buffy with startling correctness. Buffy did get better, the outlook for Spike was not good and it was too soon to tell if Spike would Shanshu.

The magic 8-ball site is not behaving this year, so instead I took my test to Bob.

I asked "will Spike become a real boy?"
Bob said "as I see it, yes"
(see screen grab)

"will Angel season 5 get any better?"
"Most likely"
(see screen grab)

"will Spike die?"
"better not tell you now"
(see screen grab)

"will Angel be the vampire to shanshu?"
"my reply is no"
(see screen grab)

"is it the end of the world as we know it?"
"you may rely on it"
(see screen grab)

Now to wait to compare Bob's accuracy against the 8-ball's...

Best referral to this blog so far:

+buffy +spike +sex +spank

That's my kind of surfer...

It's my boys. I haven't had this many big, strapping men at my bedside since that night with the varsity lacrosse team.
Fred, Hole in the World

I mentioned before that Angel is a boyz show to Buffy’s grrls. When I was writing that I couldn't immediately find any good articles delineating what I meant.

It’s relatively easy to suggest Buffy is a result of the riotgrrl movements of the early 90s. The series depicts female characters who transcend the cultural gender roles imposed upon them. Each stereotype is shaded with unexpected subtleties and nuances. The popular cheerleader admits that she is lonely in her airbrushed, shallow bubble. The petite blonde girl slays monsters. The geeky girl smashes a demon in the face with a fire extinguisher. The last image seems obvious now, having seen Willow’s multiple transmogrifications, but the first time I saw it, back in 1998, I yelled with delight. The outcast girl wasn’t going to be victimised and rescued by heroes: she was going to fight. There’s no question that all the female characters are punished at some point for their refusal to conform to cliché, and that sometimes the show itself tries a little too hard (I still have issues with Beauty and the Beasts all this time later). It’s also quite easy to google up a lot of stuff about Buffy and feminism.

So why is there relatively little on Angel and constructions of masculinity? Why do I refer to it as a boyz show?

It’s not just that it is named after the male lead, just as Buffy was named after the female lead, although that does play into the notion of male/female series. It’s not even that there are always more male regulars than there are women (again, the opposite of the XX-heavy Buffy). It’s that the series toys with male gender definition. Angel himself is always seeking a role, a title through which he can define himself. It almost doesn’t matter what that role is, so long as it’s clearcut. He doesn’t care if he’s a hero, a villain, a father, a human or a champion, just so long as he can have definition. The male characters start off with clearly defined roles. Wesley was a Watcher: stripped of that he loses his way and tries to be something else (Rogue Demon Hunter). Joining forces with Angel enables him to have a position, a definition. Likewise Gunn knew what he was, until Alanna destroyed his security. He currently admits that he loves being a suit because it gives him an identity – it makes him someone, a person with a role and function in life.

In contrast to the Buffy women, the boyz of Angel struggle when their function is made fluid. Cordelia, a character whose role underwent radical overhauls whilst she was at Sunnydale, accepts the shifting pattern of her identity and moves onwards, secure in herself. Spike likewise accepts that he is both William and Spike, champion and villain. Angel doesn’t. Each time he encounters someone with a similar role as his own, he feels diminished, threatened. It’s there in his dislike of Groo (the stereotype of a hero) and his problem with Spike as illustrated in Soul Purpose (although obviously they have a much deeper problem of just disliking each other intensely). It's with his issues with Holtz and Connor's relationship. It’s in his “I did it first. The whole ‘having a soul thing',” whine at Buffy.

Angel is about the quest for a male identity in a feminine world. The most disruptive and chaotic influences to enter their worlds are women. It is a woman that made Angel, even down to renaming Liam Angelus. It is the same woman who makes him a father, forcing him into a definition connected with another instead of a solo one. It is another woman, Faith, who was responsible for Wesley’s expulsion from the Watcher’s Council and who eventually restores his belief in himself as a Watcher in deed if not in official title. It is a woman who plots Angel Investigations' downfall and turns Wesley into Wes. It is apparently Cordelia who births Jasmine, causing the final collapse of Connor. There are male antagonists, Lindsey and Holtz, but these help provide definition through adversary not destroy it through complicity.

I used to see all this as a parallel and complementary aspect between Buffy and Angel, hence my use of ‘boyz’ to suggest something of modern male identity formation (i.e. taking something from gay notions of gender identity and sexuality). It is only with the destruction of yet another grrl who was one of the boyz that I am starting to wonder if there is something more reactionary at work.

Meanwhile, this is a new project started up by someone I know: So Buffy, What do we do now?

Boyz on Top?

BIG SPOILER FOR ANGEL SEASON 5 - look away! look away!

The following is my initial thoughts on Hole in the World and Shells. In the interests of fairness, I rewatched them and found some positive things to say. Those are posted down the bottom. I also want to put in contextualising links but it's gone 1am and I have work tomorrow. And can't find a good Looking for Mr Goodbar page anywhere.

---

I got Hole in the World and Shells last week. And...well, underwhelmed is a good word. To have one female member of the regular cast posessed by a godlike demon bent on being born into this world is an accident, to have two looks like carelessness.

Actually, it looks suspiciously like at the very least sexism, if not downright misogyny. I've always enjoyed the idea that Angel is the boyz[1] show to Buffy's grrls: I like that element of it. But with this treatment of Fred I can't help but feel we're seeing a Looking for Mr Goodbar tendancy becoming utterly ascendent. A woman can be a virgin, a mother or a whore but are punished if trying to be anything else (or even just a combination of those). Women's ability to give birth is to be feared. Women are Up To No Good. Look at the role call of recurring female characters in Angel:

• Cordelia
  early attempt to be cheerful and sexual being ends in insemination by demon spawn. Goes through happy phase in which she settles into her place as platonic companion to the champion(s). Falls in love. Love never consumated (actually, what with Doyle as well, she manages that one twice). Comes back and spawns: spawn is a big problem. Effectively dies.



• Darla
  early attempt to be cheerful whore ends in death and effective insemination by demon (the Master). Returns human, comes to terms with humanity only to be taken by evil again. Comes back and spawns: spawn is big problem. Dies.



• Lilah
  even ignoring that her name echoes both D'Lilah (the wicked woman who caused Samson's downfall) and Lilith (Adam's first wife in some versions of the Bible) ....she takes delight in sexual power play. Evil. Starts to fall in love. Killed.



• Justine
  named after S&M slave in de Sade's novel (see here). Settles into place as companion of someone she sees as hero. Falls in love. Never consumated. Is punished and abandoned. Victimised but likes it.



• Fred
  Victimised but doesn't like it. 'Handsome man saved [her] from the bad guys'. Goes through happy phase in which she settles into her place as platonic companion to the champion(s). Her presence in amongst all those boyz causes lots of infighting and jealousy. Falls in love. Love never consumated. Gives metaphorical birth to big problem. Dies.



• Eve
  named after Biblical woman who caused the fall from Eden. Sexual and loves it. Evil. Currently awaiting punishment.

Even Kate gets a rough deal and vanishes when they don't know what to do with her. And it's pretty apparent that wolf-girl's sexual frenzy nearly kills muppet-Angel.

Ah, but it balances Buffy, you say? Yes, if you were to take the two shows in isolation. But Buffy was about overthrowing the notion that empowered women cannot be happy: that the sexual women of the horror film will be punished with death. Buffy, both series and character, does that.

Yes, Buffy's sex life causes problems and it isn't all lovely (of course, I argue that season 6 is showing that a woman's sexual desires can be dark too), but ultimately she has the power and symbolically gives birth, via Willow's neat mojo, to other empowered women. Admittedly with a rather naff montage but still, the point is that the women are not punished. Despite Giles' threat to spank Willow. Are the men disempowered? A little, except Buffy (character) needs them with balls, hence her request for the old Spike and her inclusion of Giles and Wood. And even Andrew is enabled.

So Angel (series) does provide a countertune to Buffy (series) but it does it by using the same old cliches. It's adding to the culture which tells women they can't be sexual without punishment. That with power comes death. That their ability to reproduce is dangerous and to be feared. It, at a subtextual level, undoes all the work Buffy set about achieving.

I'm giving serious thought to not watching the rest of the series. I'm only sticking with it for Spike. He might not do a lot, but he's seen A Nightmare Before Christmas! [2] Awww, bless.

---

So I watched these two episodes again, to see if I were being unfair. To be honest, I still find them indicative on something wrong but I'll hang on to the bitter end. Six more episodes of Spike, plus the satisafaction of having seen every single episode of Buffy and Angel are keeping me engaged.

So, five positive things to set against my annoyance:

• Gunn singing 'three little maids'. utterly adorable.


• the whole workplace meme about the spacemen and the cavemen, especially the Angel/Spike fight over it. Such little boys. I'm also curious why Fred says "of course the cavemen win".


• Angel calling Spike a champion.


• Wes's decision at the end. Of course, this is another chance for him to redeem himself as a Watcher as well an indicator of the depths of his Fred obsession.


• ok, kalima has discussed the use of 'five' in this season, for example that the core A-team is five: Angel, Spike, Wes, Gunn and Fred. So I couldn't help but notice there were five crystals embedded in the casket. One was purple (time), two are blue and two are white. The old demon took the purple one and has time-manipulating powers. You could wonder if the two blue ones are intended for, say, two humans and the two white ones are intended for two, say, vampires with souls. And if said crystals provide each with special powers. With six episodes to go, that means one per transform and then a 2 part finale.

I am, naturally, way off on that. I mean, I thought season 7 of Buffy was going to be the entire planet, gaia-like, as the Big Bad.

---

[1]maybe I'm not googling right, but I can't find anything that outlines the idea that Angel is a boyz show. I will have to expand this idea later.
[2]I have a theory about that. But I'll write it up as fanfic, I think.

Something old. So old it pre-dates the written word.
(Tara, Buffy 5.08, Shadow)

I'm alway so behind on this blog. In fairness, this is because my alter ego* is frighteningly busy and so writing up my Buffy/Angel thoughts coherently is a low priority.

So anyway, a passing note before I write up my diatribe about Hole in the World/ Shells...

I'm just watching some of season 5 of Buffy again on tape. Apart from far too many growls of lust for Spike (how has he aged as quickly as he has? how?), I snorted with laughter when Tara works out Glory is "older than the written word" and therefore they won't find anything in the books. I'm not mentioning Hole in the World. I'm not. Not at all. No.

Oh, and I've added haloscan comment linsk now, as the old place vanished.

*actually, this is my alter-ego to an alter-ego that somehow got conflabulated into my RL world. Stupid online personalities...

a pyschotic vampire slayer...i'm still trying to get my head round it...

...which suggests Spike never got the full story on Faith.

Was anyone surprised at the revelation the crazy in Damage was a Slayer? It's one of those things which I suspect everyone wondered back when Chosen aired. The whole Faith story arc suggests that the Council had procedures for dealing with rogue Slayers, so we all knew Faith wasn't a one-off. It had to occur to people that Buffy's method of creating a Slayer army would cause a lot of unstable young girls to get an awful lot of physical power. Thank god, Angel is around to pick up the strands: dark Slayers always work better in the gritty urbanity of the LA series.

Despite the suspect effects (Xander's blinding was a believable mutilation so late in a series, Spike's injuries...less so...) and some bad bad stuff from Andrew, I really like this episode. It's partially the recursion: Andrew taking away Dana in a way Wesley never managed way back in Consequences. The moment when he reveals that Buffy no longer trusts Angel makes all the "vampyre" stuff worth it. The final conversation with Angel and Spike really works, reminds us both of their similarities and differences. The final lines, for some reason, brought a tear to my eye.

I'm just an undead gal trying to make it in the big city...

Harm's Way makes me think of Miss Match for some reason. I suspect it's Mercedes McNab's pastishe of Alicia Silverstone.