HonorH on April 14, 2008 6:10 pm | Link

I agree–to an extent. Shows have to have some internal logic and consistency, or I will stop trusting the storyteller. Want to sell me on something tough? Fine, but *sell me* on it, don’t just say, “Oh, by the way, that thing about all Wefts being good and all Warps being bad? Totally not true anymore!” Show me why a Weft might be an exception to being good and a Warp might be an exception to being bad. Better yet, shoehorn in some moral ambiguity from the beginning. Don’t just change things at random so I can’t tell what’s what from episode to episode.

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a_white_rain on April 14, 2008 6:31 pm | Link

I agree mostly. Some things shouldn’t be messed with. However? Most of the time, it… really doesn’t. And fandom calls it so much it’s losing all meaning to me.

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Yonmei on April 14, 2008 7:33 pm | Link

Like, y’know, “It’s not that I hate Rose, it’s just that the Whoniverse isn’t supposed to be so focused on one companion.” Or “It’ll destroy the moral structure of the Buffyverse if Spike is good without a soul.”

Yeah, I agree. With both opinions.

And no, I’m not “justifying my fannish opinions” by this. Those are my fannish opinions.

The Whoniverse isn’t supposed to be so focussed on one companion – it never has been, and it’s not the way the series works for very excellent reasons. Even though I like Rose quite a bit and adored her relationship with Nine.

And vampires are evil unless they’re ensouled. You can argue back and forth about what “evil” means, but: vampires have to drink blood taken from living humans to stay alive, and frequently kill the humans whose blood they take. Every vampire who’s lived at least five years is a serial killer with a victim count higher than David Shipman. A vampire who’s lived a century, as Spike has, is a serial killer whose numbers go into the concentration camp guard level.

Attempting to turn that around just because you fancy the idea that one of your serial killers could be good even though he doesn’t have a soul, and then you can have a romance between one of them and the heroine, is inconsistent, unstructured, and messy. Spike as good-without-a-soul makes no sense according to the basic nature of vampires as previously revealed to us, nor according to the basic nature of vampires as continues to be revealed to us. But it does let you (I’m addressing Joss) do glossy sex scenes with strong hints of BDSM and anal, so that your glossy blonde heroine can quit all that angsty stuff about being a hero and just be a proper heroine who has romance as her central plot. Yeah, it annoyed me.

And yeah: these are my fannish opinions. I own them. I resent having it dismissed as just “justifying” dislike for Spike or Rose. When a series has presented how vampires “work”, deciding that one vampire is just going to be an unexplained total exception because you want him to be available as a romance partner for the heroine, is lacking in artistic integrity. I don’t care if you don’t think TV shows have artistic integrity or not: I want a well-written show, not just single unrelated episodes where basic concepts change at random because the writer thinks that the heroine needs a romance.

Dr Who works as a show where Companions come and Companions go and the Doctor leaves them behind and never mentions them again, for the same reason as the Doctor regenerates at irregular-ish intervals: because this creates a virtually immortal show that can go on as long as the BBC is willing to pay for the sets and hire the writers. I like Dr Who too well to see it die when Billie Piper gets tired of coming back to be the returning Rose.

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Yonmei on April 14, 2008 8:37 pm | Link

That’s fine. You have your fannish opinions about the shows, and I have mine: you know what you think of as “limited and boring”, and I know what I think of as limited and boring.

What I objected to was your presumption that my fannish opinions were “pretentious” or were pretended – that I was claiming to think this as an excuse to dislike Rose or Spike.

Own your fannish opinions. You like Rose: you like Spike: you liked the way Buffy trended in sixth and seventh season, you like the way the Whoninverse seems to be trending now. You’re entitled.

And I’m entitled to think otherwise. Don’t decry my fannish opinions just because you don’t share them.

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Chenanceou on April 15, 2008 12:47 am | Link

Soul schmoul.
But I still don’t like Rose.:-p
I like you though.

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Yonmei on April 15, 2008 4:40 am | Link

A vampire is not a serial killer for about a million reasons, including that it’s not the same species and that it needs blood to survive.

Well, “not the same species” depends on what take on vampire mythology you have. Joss’s take was that a vampire is a dead human being animated by a demonic spirit. Sp same species.

Further, Joss’s take was that a vampire needs blood to survive, but doesn’t need to kill to survive – the amounts of blood we see Spike and Angel drinking are not quantities that would kill an adult human.

So vampires who kill as they take blood – which includes every vampire we saw except Angel when ensouled – are serial killers.

And yeah, I do think it’s pretentious to claim that the show should go your way because it’s “meant to be.”

I think it’s just annoying to claim that people who want the show to be internally consistent, who object to sudden glaring inconsistencies in basic premises, are “pretentious” and unfannish.

Your opinions are no more “true to the show” than mine.

Your opinions are no more true to the show than mine.

I think that’s the problem. You seem to be arguing that your opinions are superior – are more fannish. They aren’t. Neither are mine. Your objections that my opinions aren’t any better than yours are missing the point: I am not claiming superior fannishness, I am objecting to your claiming superior fannishness!

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Yonmei on April 16, 2008 8:16 am | Link

Um, a dead human animated by a demonic spirit is not a human. At best it’s a human/demon hybrid.

Impossible to argue that it’s a different species, though. “Vampires as different species” is a wholly different take on the vampire mythos from the “Any human can become a vampire” take.

The term “serial killer” comes with a host of psychological connotations which vampires do not share.

Since when?

Sure, they could let the human live, but why would they?

For the same reason any vampire who genuinely is of a different species to the one whose blood it is consuming will: a corpse can’t provide any more blood. Vampire bats don’t kill: humans who sustain themselves on the blood of animals do so because you can get animal protein without killing the animal.

Humans don’t hack off a limb and let cows go

Humans keep and rear cows and sheep and make use of them as food without killing them.

why would vampires, when they consider themselves a superior species?

If vampires genuinely were of a different species to humans, they probably wouldn’t kill – unless genuinely necessary for survival. See above. #

Not to mention that the human would probably run screaming to the police and start trouble for the vampire.

Certainly, if it was assault. There is no reason to assume that a vampire species would deal with humans in such a way – though evil individuals among vampires certainly might.

The argument that vampires kill their victims to prevent the victims from causing trouble with the police is further argument that vampires are intrinsically evil. They have the option of persuading a human to give them a pint of blood: rather than do so, they kill.

I’m not saying vampires shouldn’t be stopped, but they’re predators, not serial killers.

No, predator again implies a different species, or at least a subspecies that needs to kill to feed. (Barbara Hambly’s take on vampires says they need the spiritual energy they get when they kill a human to stay mentally alive: Joss could have gone that way, but chose not to.) Joss Whedon’s vampires are demonically-possessed humans who kill because they want to, not because they need to. They are not predators: they are serial killers.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of comprehension for one them to be driven by love to decide to stop killing

Not at all. An evil person who decides to reform out of love is one of the classic tropes of literature: of course, genuine reform implies genuine repentance for the evil deeds of the past.

, and I don’t think you can hold it against him for doing what came naturally before that.

Killing people by the thousand because it felt “natural”? Of course I can. Joss Whedon’s vampires don’t need to kill: it feels “natural” to them because they are evil.

Angel’s reform is convincing because Angel spends about a century sunk in misery for what he did as a vampire: he doesn’t just stop the killing, he’s appalled by the killing he used to do.

Spike’s reform is unconvincing because there’s nil evidence that he regrets the mass murders of the past. (At least, not on Buffy – I haven’t seen the last season of Angel.)

My entire post is a reaction against people who are claiming that their opinions make them superior

So you’re reacting by claiming that your opinions are superior?

Spike is evil. That’s my fannish opinion. I don’t justify my fannish opinion by claiming Spike is evil: I justify that Spike is evil by fannish analysis of the source material. You can justify it the other way, too – but it’s not as if it’s unusual to believe that serial killers, and/or killing without need – for enjoyment, for cruelty’s sake – is intrinsically evil. This applies across species lines, so even if you could justify the argument that Joss’s vampires are meant to be a different species, they are still evil.

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Yonmei on April 16, 2008 1:43 pm | Link

Gee, I didn’t realize that “demon” was the same species as “human.” *rolls eyes*

Well, I suppose that’s one way of disposing of the fact that vampires, in Joss Whedon’s take, are all demonically-possessed humans – just roll your eyes at it.

Yes, I’d totally be willing to give a pint of my blood to a stranger in a dark alley. How silly of them to assume I wouldn’t.

How silly of you to assume that a vampire would be constrained to only approaching strangers and only in dark alleys. (Or rather, how unread of you. There are any amount of vampire fictions which provide other means of vampires to get blood.) I used to regularly give up a pint of my blood to strangers every three months or so.

I’ve been having this argument for the past five years, and I’m sick of it. You can continue banging your head against the wall if you’d like, but I’m done.

OK.

’m claiming that it’s wrong for either side to claim that their opinions are more “true” to what the text is “meant to be.”

It’s not what you said in the original post: but I accept it’s what you meant. OK.

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