sundries

[rm]

Tonight Patty and I are having a stay-in date involving fondue and lots of Buffy.

We watched another episode last night.

So... is it just me or are lot of Buffy episodes semi-covertly concerned with rape? Jenny gets possessed by a demon against her will and then doesn't want her boyfriend touching her? And we've already mentioned the frat boy episode....

Meanwhile, Ethan... welcome to my department of mixed feelings. On one hand, I've totally known dudes like that (without the supernatural evil factor) and I love that he carries himself like someone who has done a lot of ballroom dance. On the other hand, I'm a bit put off by the level of cliche inherent in the "this is a queer character, but we won't say that explicitly" thing he has going on. On the other hand, again, I've known a lot of dudes who presented like that.

Okay, while I don't identify with Giles at all, I sort of am developing this deep, deep empathy for him. His life is not at all what he ever thought it would be, even as it's exactly what he's always know it would have to be. That's lonely, and Buffy is rally the only person who could understand that, but she's still a kid not matter what she's seen and done and he is ALONE.

Despite this deep empathy, I don't really get Giles. Is the meek librarian thing all an act or is he damaged by all sorts of stuff we don't really have a handle on yet? Weird guy.

I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT NOW I UNDERSTAND THE TORCHWOOD POODLE JOKE.

Magical tattoo as a plot device that's actually cool looking! Yay show. (Snake? Skull? Really, JKR?)

Willow telling people to get out of her library? Awesomecakes.

One of the things I really love int he show is the friendships between teachers and students. They are, perhaps, unrealistic, especially over here in 2010, but I certainly had teachers I ate lunch with and whose classrooms I hung out in and maybe they were doing their jobs and maybe we were really friends and maybe that was inappropriate, but I meant the world to me as a teenager and I recall these friendship as genuine and deep (and it's one of the reasons I get so so so angry when people make noise about Lupin's friendship with Harry in the third film being inappropriate and reading as a sexually inappropriate situation. Those sorts of friendships, which were not sexual, saved me life.)

Boa Sr has died. "She was the last member of one of ten distinct Great Andamanese tribes, the Bo." There are only 52 members of the Great Andamanese tribes remaining.

The men of Gallifrey One should not be sartorially dicksizing with me. They will lose.

Speaking of, apparently Patty & I are joining a friend and a friend of hers at the Plaza champagne bar soon so I have an excuse to wear the tux.

Oh crap, which reminds me. Gotta make (early) V-day restaurants reservations.

Comments

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

You must not have reached the episodes that talk about Giles' past and his journey on the way to becoming a Watcher...trust me, there is more to him. :-)

I definitely hear you on the rape-centric themes in the episodes. There will be more of them. Some of them are way more than a little disturbing, and I can't really gauge what Whedon's intent is when he centers the plot around rape and sexual power. I can't tell if it's his feminist commentary on it, perhaps trying to raise awareness in his viewers, or if he simply has a fixation on it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I can't tell if it's his feminist commentary on it, perhaps trying to raise awareness in his viewers, or if he simply has a fixation on it.

I'm glad to hear you say this, but I'm not sure how I feel about it either whether I'm figuring in his intent or not.

I used to date a man for whom I was the only woman he'd ever been involved with who had never been sexually assaulted. Something about the two ways to read that and the two ways to read Buffy are synching in my head in ways that are... well, interesting, I suppose, if not pleasant.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the rape thing. I know that Joss intended to create Buffy as a feminist icon, but in exploring a woman, especially a pretty, young woman, claiming power, it is impossible to ignore that a vast majority of the ways that women are oppressed are sexual. Besides flat-out sexual assault, other means of robbing a woman of her power are frequently accompanied by sexual insults or symbols. Female power is in most ways about refusing to be reduced to a solely sexual object; to portray it otherwise would be, I feel, unrealistic.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

The men of Gallifrey One should not be sartorially dicksizing with me. They will lose.

Yeah, but that was true anyway.

[rm.livejournal.com]

On Gallifrey Base or whatever it's called this week, Tony's all "you better dress well if you wanna play poker with me" and I'm like "wait 'til you see the tux" but of course Barnaby skips right by that and is all "you better have a waistcoat." And I'm like "seriously? seriously you want to play this game? Yeah, no."

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Giles. I think this is his first experience as a watcher with his own slayer and his knowledge is otherwise all from books. The Hellmouth is also a new experience for him and he is kind of like a kid in a candy shop at first--until he sees it destroy everyone he loves and everything around him. He is pretty alone in many ways and his character arc is pretty interesting.

♥ Willow.

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

I love Giles. When I was fulltime in the Buffy fandom (right before I discovered Who), Giles was who I wrote for (in almost every pairing configuration you can think of). He is . . . complicated but flies under the radar on purpose. He's far more interesting than he first appears. And damaged, yes, I think so. I think the Eyghon thing permanently fucked with his head. But I'm not sure we're supposed to 100% get him - Buffy doesn't.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Just out of left field it's the actor who plays Ethan, Robin Sachs, birthday today! He's actually been in quite a lot of stuff I've seen but under heavy make-up (Babylon 5 and Galaxy Quest).

One of the things I LOVE about Buffy is how complex all of the characters are. In many ways, Giles reminds me a bit of both Sirius and Lupin (not as meek as Lupin nor as cocky as Sirius).

I actually think pretty much everyone on Buffy is broken in someway. Some more so than others. Those that don't start out terribly so, become that way over time. Yes, they have weird problems, but it was also nice to see that people don't revert back to some default state at the end of every ep. Their choices and pasts come back to haunt them.

I love Willow yelling at both Angel and Giles and them being all meek. I can get that way about kitchens. (And even though I'm a librarian, I've yet to actually keep a proper book collection and so haven't needed to yell that at anyone. ;-p)

[stephl.livejournal.com]

I actually think pretty much everyone on Buffy is broken in someway.

Oh my god, yes. And the show doesn't actually dwell on it, like This Is [for instance] Willow's Trauma And We Will Obsess Over It. The show just kind of takes it as a given that everyone is broken and then keeps on going.

That's one of the things that I really love about it.

[gement.livejournal.com]

My feeling on Giles, since you seem interested in discussing larger character things at the risk of later spoilers, is that you've seen the worst of the preexisting damage with Eyghon. My other feeling on Giles is that All Of These Things Are True.

He really does like tea, and quiet, and tweed, and research. He also used to be in a terrible band in high school, as many young people have been, and got into heavy drugs in college with other crazy people, and that was true too. He has a job that means being a secret agent and being really handy with either a fire axe or a piece of chalk and a sprig of nightshade, and that's true too.

He has a fuller life than most fictional characters get. This is true of a number of people on Buffy.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Yes. All of this.

Also, everyone on BtVS is damaged or becomes damaged by the stuff they deal with. It shapes them in unexpected ways.

N.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

I am on board with not getting Giles but liking him a lot. I really think that Anthony Stewart Head was the most talented person in the cast. There were quite a few characters (Xander and Cordelia, and later Anya and Tara) who rarely were given direction as characters, but while Giles was often in that situation you had the sense that there WAS something there.

And it's amazing to watch Willow come into her own.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Giles is damaged. Everyone on Buffy is a bit... off... and yeah, Giles is frustrated in a way I didn't get back when I was kid and ID'd with Buffy, Willow and Xander (in various weird ways. I considered Angel to be my Imaginary Friend 'cause he wouldn't judge me).

Joss has a thing about consent (dunno if you were into Dollhouse, I hated it), which I know affected the way I view rape and consent issues today, which is a good thing, seeing as I view rape as a crime against humanity.
Free will and body/mind integrity are possibly the Themes in BtVS.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have not seen Dollhouse. I have meant to mainline it at some point, but I have less momentum about it now. I suspect it will interest me in a tangental way relatd to an interest I have in a minor plot point in A.I., bu who knows when I'll get to it.

[kproche.livejournal.com]

The men of Gallifrey One should not be sartorially dicksizing with me. They will lose.

Yeah; that thread has me kind of scratching my head and asking "huh?"

Given that my collection of over-the-top formal wear is huge (a side effect of participating and reigning in the Imperial Court System), I'm fairly certain that you and I could dress rings around most of those bozos fellows.

Of course, I'm planning to wear a sailor suit Friday nignt :-)

[rm.livejournal.com]

There are so many things in this comment that make me adore you. (OMG, I had no idea you did the Imperial Court thing. It is all clear now!)

Other than the tux, I wasn't planning on bringing my other suits, just cosplay stuff, but now I'm feeling so spiteful because of that thread, I may have to for the dead dog party or something.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Ok... you know, I never really thought Ethan was made camp because he's queer, I thought it was the Campy British Villain trope happening, or that thing where British characters on American shows are what Americans think British people ought to be like rather than being what British people are actually like (which much as I love Buffy, it does that a lot). Maybe that was ungenerous of me. Or overgenerous of me, depending on your viewpoint.

Giles sort of settles as a character better in later seasons IMHO as he gets better at balancing the two sides of his personality (or maybe as the writers do). He's never not Giles, but he does keep the badass a little closer to the surface.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Ok... you know, I never really thought Ethan was made camp because he's queer, I thought it was the Campy British Villain trope happening, or that thing where British characters on American shows are what Americans think British people ought to be like rather than being what British people are actually like (which much as I love Buffy, it does that a lot). Maybe that was ungenerous of me. Or overgenerous of me, depending on your viewpoint.

I agree with you that (even as an American) lots of aspects of the British feel way off in the show.

I look, however, at Ethan and I see an exercise in queering the villain extremely overtly because unlike the other villains he's not more subtlely queered by being a vampire. Therefore, we get this and whether it's about being non-masculine or liking men (or a combination), I find it off-putting even if I feel like the scripts to some extent and the performance (which is very forceful) winds up twisting the trope jsut enough to make me befuddled and interested instead of annoyed.

[alterjess.livejournal.com]

Joss has always been obsessed with showing off his feminist cred, so he writes about rape a lot. Sometimes he even does it well.

(And in spite of some massive problems in the latter seasons in this regard, I think Buffy is easily his most successfully feminist show overall, if only because the premise of turning horror movie cliches inside out gave him so much to work with. Once you add the "high school is hell" metaphor into that, practically every trope you reach for is going to touch on sexuality and power in some way or another.)

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Really enjoying your thoughts on Buffy--I love seeing it anew through your eyes.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

wait what was the poodle joke in reference to? i haven't seen early buffy in like... my god, a decade.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Spike refers to Drusilla as "poodle" in the Halloween episode.

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

Is the meek librarian thing all an act or is he damaged by all sorts of stuff we don't really have a handle on yet?

Maybe this will help you warm up to Giles, but YES. That is exactly what's going on with him!

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

I came in relatively late to Buffy myself (though it was still on the air) and was very involved in online discussions. I'm really enjoying seeing it new again through your eyes.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

So... is it just me or are lot of Buffy episodes semi-covertly concerned with rape?

Yes. But, you know, there are two things: 1. Buffy is an action show, 2. Buffy is explicitly an allegory for high school/young women. When you have to deal with some form of violence pretty much every single week (because: action show) and that violence needs to relate somehow to the actual lives of suburban teenage girls, you're going to end up with a lot of rape metaphors, just because sexual assault is a much more real and prevalent form of violence for that group of people than, say, being mugged or gang violence. And in general, I think they deal with it pretty well; they're really consistent in saying rape is a horrible thing, the people who do it are awful, there's not an excuse, etc. There is an awful attempt at actual rape late in the series, but that aside, I feel BtVS does it pretty well.

One of the things I really love int he show is the friendships between teachers and students.

Hahahaha, apparently in the early seasons the director kept having to tell Buffy and Giles to stand further apart and be calmer in their interactions, or else one of the students was going to report them for having an inappropriate relationship. But BtVS is ALL ABOUT the "choosing your own family" thing and they generally do it pretty well.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Cannot WAIT to talk Buffy with you but I will need Patty to remind me what happened in what order so I don't give you massive spoilers.

[trillian42.livejournal.com]

Please tell me I'm not the only one whose first thought with that last link was "Face of Boe?"

[rm.livejournal.com]

You're the only one who said it. I'm sure other people were thinking it.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

I've always seen Giles as having been so damaged by the his experiences with Eyghon that he when he ran back to the watchers he convinced himself that theirs was the only way to deal with the magical/demonic world. Underneath though, was the man who rejected their idiocy in the first place and still saw the flaws in their rhetoric and tautology; his internal conflict drove him further towards the world that hadn't caused disaster for him despite the fact that it repelled his nature. That's where the see-sawing that you see in the character comes in.

You will see him develop over the next 5 seasons, along with the other characters. I will tell you that at least one point in the series he is the scariest mo-fo you have ever seen and at others, so incredibly tough it will blow your mind. It's awesome. Enjoy:-)

[itcamefromjapan.livejournal.com]

The men of Gallifrey One should not be sartorially dicksizing with me. They will lose.
Hahaha. Nobody should be sartorially dicksizing (or otherwise) with you.

Meanwhile, I can't stop nodding along to your Buffy thoughts. I'm new(-ish; started last year but haven't had time to get past S4 yet) to the show as well, and everyone else I know has been watching for years, so it's interesting to see your take as someone else who isn't finished. A lot of the things you've picked up on have been ringing true for me.

Giles has undoubtedly become my favorite. That shouldn't surprise me, because he's the sort of character (at least superficially, in the "snarky librarian/butler/sidekick" sense) I always love, but somehow I wasn't expecting to love him to the extent that I do. I haven't quite been able to pinpoint why that is yet. I mean, I identify with him a bit, but I identify with most of them a bit, and I identify with Willow more - and I adore Willow, but in the end she's still probably second to Giles. The loneliness is an interesting point, though, and I think that's part of it, as well as his relationship with Buffy.

One of the things I really love int he show is the friendships between teachers and students.
THIS. Because, yeah, that's an odd dynamic, and one that doesn't always come across in the best light, but I've had those friendships (and I graduated from high school two years ago, BTW, so this was quite recently), and they can be pretty incredible.

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

would you be very nice and explain the Poodle Joke? cause I didn't know that there was anything else to know, Please?

[rm.livejournal.com]

At one point the James Marsters character in Buffy affectionately refers to his love interest as "Poodle," thus making the Marsters character in Torchwood thinking a poodle is hot, much funnier.