Reviews of 'Retreat' Parts 4 and 5
Stephen Tempest
******Review of 8.29**************
Another month, another Season 8 comic. And beware, for I have Kittens
of Doom ready to unleash on anyone who is mean to it! Just ask Emmie!
Anyway, here's the review.
The scenes of tension as everybody prepares for the inevitable attack
are nicely done, with the cutting between viewpoints and speakers but
the same conversation continuing - a standard 'Buffy' storytelling
device. It may be a little stretching disbelief to wonder how they
jumped straight from "a cat disappeared!" in the last episode to "The
US Army is about to invade China and attack us!"... but since they've
been attacked the same way every other time they were found, I suppose
it's a reasonable guess.
I'm sure that the pairings of Xander and Dawn, Oz and Bay, Giles and
Faith, Andrew and Satsu and Buffy and Willow is not meant to be a clue
to current and future romantic relationships. :-) The Andrew and Satsu
panel was particularly effective; he is using the standard military
euphemism ("we will lose people") because he thinks in narrative
terms; but Satsu is blunt and realistic. "Say it right," she reproves
him. "People will die." And then Willow's outburst sets the cap on the
scene. I was reminded of 'Empty Places', with the confrontation over
tactics in front of a crowd of [Potential] Slayers waiting for
leadership - but this time, both Willow is being far more assertive
and Buffy is being much more in control of the situation. She very
sensibly chooses not to have the argument in front of everybody else.
Also, Willow apparently has chopsticks in her hair. :-)
The next scene is one I have mixed feelings about from a pure
story-format perspective; I think Willow's emotional meltdown would
have worked perfectly on-screen, and it would perhaps have worked
better in comics if it made more dynamic use of the medium -
fragmented panels and so forth to show Willow's state of mind. As it
is, the simple narrative panel-by-panel approach made what should have
been a very powerful scene come across strangely flat. But quibbles
aside, I have no problems with the content. Last month, Willow had an
epiphany that her magic did not have to define her: she could choose a
normal life instead, start a family, escape the fate of turning into
Dark Willow and living for 200 years. But now she's confronted with
the fact that her choice to set aside her power may have doomed all of
them to death. She's helpless to protect them; and she's furious with
herself for what she now sees as the weakness of giving way to her
desire for normality. That, of course, resonates perfectly with Buffy
who's in much the same position herself. I'm not 100% sure, but I
think the final line "I thought I could have this... and I lost
everything" is Buffy, not Willow, lamenting the fact that her idyllic
retreat in the mountains has just collapsed around her. (And the
"everything" she's lost almost certainly includes her newly kindled
hopes of a relationship with Xander.)
I know a lot of people have commented on the 'stupidity' of the plan
to abandon their powers and hide. The fact that everything is about to
go horribly wrong for them as a result comes as a surprise to nobody
in the readership, I'm sure. However, it's worth pointing out the
situation they were in before: being hunted down by Twilight's allies
in the military and among the demon world, no hope of sympathy or help
from the general public. Every time they tried to fight, they were
defeated; their powers weren't actually helping them before at all.
And then they learned they were actively hindering them, by acting as
a beacon to Twilight. So in fact, they apparently had nothing to lose
by renouncing them, and maybe a chance to hide - either permanently,
or at least until they could regroup and replan. No, wars are not won
by evacuations - or retreats. But they certainly aren't won by dying
gloriously in battle against a superior foe because you were too
pig-headed to retreat, either. And if Twilight really were motivated
solely by the altruistic desire to prevent the Slayer Army from
disturbing the balance of the world and imposing tyranny over humanity
- well, their voluntary renunciation of their powers and retreat would
mean he's won all he set out to achieve, and has no further reason to
fight them. Huh. Maybe he's a big fat liar and hypocrite after all?
:-)
That's the tactics, now look at the symbolism. Season 8 has been an
exploration of what happened when Buffy and Xander created an army to
fight evil, and Willow chose to make bargains with mysterious serpent
goddesses to achieve almost godlike power herself. They did it for the
best motives, but at the same time sacrificed their chance at a normal
life. The 'Retreat' arc shows them what they were missing, and they
all realise it. Willow, who's perhaps moved furthest from humanity, is
affected most powerfully by the reminder. But now, of course, they're
seeing the price of that renunciation: a person without power can't
hurt other people (except with harsh language), but nor can they help
anyone (except with inspiring language). No, it's not exactly a subtle
message, but it's powerful. Reversing the Slayer spell and turning all
the Slayers back into normal girls does not seem to be the big answer
to the questions Season 8 is posing. The bad guys don't stop hating
you because you've put down your weapons.
Okay, back to the silly trivia questions. How does Willow actually
know, when she points at her eyes, that they aren't black? There
aren't any mirrors around. So I can only assume that she can
physically feel when her eyes change colour... Also, this scene
reminds us of the set-up from previous issues: that Bay has taught
both Oz and now Buffy & Co to "redirect their power into the Earth"...
this, of course, will be significant later.
More preparations, and Dawn's obviously-meaningful line that "You just
have to be strong in another way". She and Xander are obviously
geeking out over the military weaponry, and brush over the objections
of at least one of the Slayers to "taking up a gun". I assume that
it's specifically guns she objects to, since I can't imagine a Slayer
willing to join Buffy's organisation that wouldn't then be willing to
take up a stake, axe or sword. She's quite cute struggling under the
weight of the manpads (though, of course, there's also the horrible
symbolism of young women about to be crushed by the weight of modern
warfare and the burden of turning themselves into killers, blah blah.)
Also, I assume Jane Espenson read the word "manpads" somewhere, had a
giggling fit and decided she had to have Xander demonstrating one.
I did wonder what the "big thing" Andrew was whispering about would
be... I half-expected it to be a nuke, but it turns out to be nothing
so dramatic. This is something that the issue will do again on the
next page, when Buffy has her idea. When Buffy gets an idea it's
usually something that saves the day at the last minute - but again,
this time it turns out to be only a minor ruse that might buy a little
time. Seems to me that Jane enjoys raising our hopes that they're
going to pull out a secret weapon and save the day, only to crush them
again...
While not all the scenes in this issue work perfectly, I thought the
brief conversation between Buffy and Giles was note-perfect, both in
painting the picture of what's happening to them, and characterising
the two of them and their relationship.
More Dawn and Xander cuteness. It turns out that while Dawn's
knowledge of military weaponry is surprisingly extensive - although
perhaps not quite so surprising given how good at research she is -
she at least doesn't know how to operate their radar systems. Of
course, when Willow first installed them back in 'No Future For You'
Dawn was still too big to fit inside a building... I did like the
exchange about the radar noise being mistaken for incoming aircraft.
I'm not sure if the Slayer with long brown hair is supposed to be
someone we recognise or not? It's maybe possibly Kennedy, but I think
she shows up in a brief cameo later on instead.
Finally, the scene switches to even more cuteness when one of the
Slayers refers to Dawn and Xander as "mama and papa" and they smile at
each other. I'm going to assume for now that's because their being a
couple is now recognisable to other people, and not because Dawn is
actually pregnant. But you never know. :-)
Buffy's big idea: get Andrew to do some fake magic to maybe trick
Twilight into not attacking straight away. Not quite up there with
using Faith's dagger to lure the Mayor into a room full of explosives
or releasing the energy in the Scythe to turn every single Potential
into a Slayer. The inevitable yak joke was funny, though. Fandom needs
more yak jokes. Oh, and Buffy is still experiencing lurid
scarlet-tinted flashbacks of her sister kissing Xander. Awww.
And suddenly everybody appears to be wearing a Kevlar helmet.
Presumably they got a job lot on the black market when they bought all
those weapons too. Dawn and Xander still have total; respect for
Buffy, even though they're not sure they're going to win. Buffy is all
stoic and hiding her misery, which isn't helped by the fact that her
sister is now happy to kiss her would-be-boyfriend openly in front of
the entire army. Three Slayers using manpads fall over from the
recoil... I do hope that was one of Twilight's jets they shot down and
not a civilian airliner. :-) And the woman shouting "Tanks!" here is,
I think, Kennedy's cameo appearance. Anyone else agree?
A nice little cameo of Faith putting on her helmet, and hesitating for
a while looking stricken - presumably thinking "God, I thought I was
through with this crap!" But as soon as Monroe's wolves show up she's
back to her usual sarcastic self. Isn't there a continuity error here,
though - I thought Monroe was killed in the flashback earlier, and it
was only his followers who carried on the fight? Unless the werewolf
that Bay killed was one of his followers rather than Monroe himself -
there were three in the group Oz was talking to. Nice irony in that
Monroe confirms that Oz, too, is losing something important to him.
Now the battle scenes. These have to be taken with a certain amount of
poetic licence, unfortunately - by the time the enemy forces really
got as close to the monastery as they're shown in these panels the
battle would be almost over, not to mention that real soldiers haven't
lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and charged on a battlefield since 1916,
and it didn't go very well then either. But we watch (or read) 'Buffy'
for the emotional impact and subtle meta-stories, not for the
documentary realism, don't we? :-)
Speaking of which, the soldiers appear to be wearing the kind of
uniform US soldiers wear in Iraq, nor are any of them ethnically
Chinese, hence my comments before about a US invasion of the People's
Republic of China. I'm going to have to assume that Twilight
'arranged' things either by blackmailing/enchanting the Chinese
authorities to allow this, or by teleporting the entire army into
Tibet... presumably from Iraq, where it was stationed ready and
waiting for Twilight's orders. (Rumsfeld and Cheney were in the pay of
Twilight? That would explain a lot...) For the record, the tanks just
seem to be generic tanks, but the attacking force does include at
least one Bradley IFV and a couple of HMMWVs so they're definitely
using US military hardware.
The secret weapon is revealed, and it's one of the torpedoes from the
submarine. Cute. A Mk-48 torpedo carries one-third of a ton of high
explosive in its warhead, so should be reasonably effective against
tanks... I suppose we have to assume that the rest of Twilight's force
pulled back at this point to regroup, otherwise - as I said - the
battle would already be over by this point.
Everybody goes 'crazy with happiness' - at the fact that they've just
killed humans, you'll notice - but Buffy doesn't share the joy.
They're still losing, And she and Willow then jointly come up with the
idea that perhaps will save the day after all. (OR WILL IT?)
And then we see that Bay has been wounded. Uh-oh. She and Oz had a
happy romantic relationship,and we all know what that means. (Well,
maybe not, Maybe she'll pull through, just to confound expectations).
Oz seems almost bewildered, pale and staring with shock; notice that
his line "Buffy. Help." is spoken flatly, with no exclamation marks or
large text to show emphasis. And now we get the big reveal of just
exactly what it was that Bay's magic-suppression techniques involved.
She thought they were calling on "the powers of the Earth" by their
traditional Tibetan names; Buffy, who has way more experience in these
things, realises that "The Earth is just the modern name for the local
crazy wrath goddesses" - and they haven't been giving their power to
some abstract Gaia force, they've been giving it to powerful and angry
supernatural entities. Oops. And also, uh-oh. (The impression I get is
that Bay didn't know exactly what she was dealing with but the others
took her on trust since her methods worked, rather than that she
deliberately lied to them - but the latter is certainly possible.)
Willow isn't too happy about the implications of this either, possibly
because she has even more, um, intimate knowledge of goddesses than
Buffy does these days. But it's interesting that she concentrates on
trying to patch Bay's wounds while it's Buffy who puzzles through
exactly where their magic has been going and what they can do about
it. Almost as if Willow is deliberately avoiding the subject - though
Buffy seems to do pretty well working it out herself. She's not just a
pretty face and stylish yet affordable boots. She's also switched into
total badass mode, which is always fun to watch. "I need to talk to
these goddesses."
Remati, also called Palden Lhamo, is a Tibetan Buddhist deity
sometimes associated with the Hindu goddess Kali, and is the divine
protector of Tibet and the Dalai Lamas. She was once an evil and
wicked spirit who killed and skinned alive (*koff*likeWillow*koff) her
own son, before meeting the Buddha and converting to the Law. She's
the blue one with three eyes.
Vajrayogini is a Tantric deity and Buddha, also called the 'wrathful
black one' and noted as representing the wild, fiery and untamed force
of enlightenment. She's usually drawn holding a large knife and a cup
filled with blood and wearing a necklace of human skulls, which Buffy
would probably say sounds less with the enlightened and more with the
wrathy. She's the red one.
Ekajari, also known by bizarre coincidence as Tara, was once the
goddess of heaven of the Tibetan Bon religion before being converted
to Buddhism. She's determined and fierce and tramples her enemies
underfoot. She's the pink one with a single pointed tooth.
Okay, hands up who thought that Buddhism was a gentle and peaceful
religion? Or a non-theistic one? :-)
Big dramatic confrontation between Buffy and Oz about Bay; Oz is -
naturally enough, but also symbolically - only concerned about his
wife's injury, not the big army that's about to kill them all. Big
picture/little picture, one of the season's themes. But Buffy and
Willow are working side by side to fix the problem, all personal
concerns forgotten. And then...
The three goddesses appear like the strands of a DNA molecule, then
burst into reality in all their glory. Are they here to save the day,
defeat Twilight and bring glorious victory for our heroes?
Well, we know that there is another issue in this arc (and at least
ten more after it), so this isn't the climax. And crazy
wrath-goddesses whose choice in clothes and accessories has a very
strong "human skull" motif are unlikely to be very sympathetic or
friendly, or good at telling friend from foe, or at going away when
they're no longer needed...
I read a review of one of Guy Gavriel Kay's novels once - I think it
was by Dave Langford - who noted that one of the clich�s of a certain
kind of fantasy fiction is when the heroes summon the Wild Hunt.
Everybody warns them that doing this is insanely dangerous, that the
Wild Hunt is powerful and old magic that can't be controlled by
mortals... but the heroes go ahead anyway, and of course the Hunt
defeats all their enemies and saves the day and they all live happily
ever after. Just once, the review said, it would be nice to see a book
where the Wild Hunt turned out to be exactly as dangerous as everybody
says, and summoning it destroys the good guys' army right alongside
the bad guys'. Kay's book did that. Will Espenson's?
There's another complication too, of course. Willow fed all her
insanely vast amounts of magical power into these goddesses. Will that
come back to haunt her in the next issue? And will it turn out to be a
weakness or a last-minute secret advantage?
Finally, a mention of the letters column, which amused me. We have a
long letter from a gay man criticising the narrow-mindedness of those
fans who complain about "the gay stuff" in Season 8, and complimenting
Scott and Joss on sticking to their guns; and then it's followed by...
a letter criticising Season 8 for "this Buffy lesbian stuff" which is
apparently spoiling it all. Hmm. (And Scott replies to the first
letter in an "Aww shucks, thanks" kind of way, and leaves the second
letter to speak for itself. He's a cruel, cruel man.) And another word
on the infamous Warren continuity error, in which I want to cheer
Scott for his summing up... and also for the illuminating remark that
"[Joss] knows he has a fan base that is more focused on this sort of
continuity than he is, but he follows his own vision nonetheless
[because he has a] keen sense of drama". Which we knew anyway, but now
it's in print. :-)
******************Review of 8.30************************
It's nice to see that Season 8 can still bring surprises. I think I've
worked out what's going on in that final scene, but now we'll all have
to wait two months to find out if it's the right guess...
Anyway, on with the review.
I was struck by the incongruity of the splash page with the big title
saying "Retreat" while Buffy is shouting "Advance!" I'm sure it's
deliberate, in that "Nothing is what it appears to be" kind of way.
Having all the characters wearing flak jackets and helmets makes it
really hard to tell them apart, which isn't Jeanty's strongest point
as an artist at the best of times. Buffy and Willow are always
recognisable, at least. Dawn is the one in the purple top standing
next to Xander. The three women in the centre are Faith in the blue
top, Kennedy (presumably) in the orange top and green trousers, and
then Willow. I assume it's Andrew and Giles at the far right, and
Giles (in green) has taken off his glasses. Presumably this is
something he'd rather not watch too closely?
Amy and Warren having a lovers' quarrel is always fun, and Jane hangs
a lantern on the whole "Your plan didn't even make sense" thing about
Warren trying to tempt Andrew over to the dark side. Incidentally, I
interpret her line "You are no The First" to be said with the same
emphasis as "You're no Jack Kennedy". (Though whether Amy "knew The
First, The First was a friend of hers", is open to question...)
Twilight is ruthless and clinical, the military officer - who's
wearing an obviously-US uniform - clearly disagrees with his plan and
isn't afraid to say so, but also doesn't contradict him. I wonder if
this is General Voll? (In the last Dark Horse Q&As I got the
impression they hadn't specifically intended him to be Voll, but
there's no reason he couldn't be if you know what I mean.) By the way,
while this soldier is in American uniform and the vehicles they're
using are US Army issue, the rifles the soldiers are carrying are
AK-47s not M-16s. So they're not actually US Army, it would seem.
Dawn's helpful advice on the tactical disadvantages of being a giant
was a nice bit of continuity - and her worry about how she looked back
then was funny. (So was Xander's unconvincing denial). It's
interesting that now even Buffy is shouting angrily "It sucks to be
weak", after her temptation to lay down her strength willingly in the
last few issues.
It was a bit difficult keeping track of the continuity and identity of
the people here, but as far as I can work out, the people turning over
the jeep are, from left to right, Willow, Kennedy, Buffy, and an
unknown Slayer. Xander and Dawn come and help turn the jeep over, but
then go off again. The pink-trousered unknown Slayer is the one who
asks "Where?" at the bottom of this page, but she doesn't get into the
jeep because she's not shown again. Kennedy, in green trousers,
doesn't appear in this picture, but on subsequent pages she's the one
driving the jeep.
Bay seems to be still alive for the moment. Her remarks about "They
shouldn't have come here." and "We gave them everything" are
mysterious and portentous; I assume she's talking about the goddesses
because she's realised what she'll later explain - that they've
forgotten how to tell goodies from baddies.
An interesting symbolic moment is that Buffy saves Willow's life (or
at least saves her from being badly injured) yet again, despite only
having normal human strength and reactions. The link between these two
characters is definitely an important part of the season.
A nice little Twilight interlude - Warren complaining about why he's
the only one of the three not to have binoculars is a wonderfully
ironic callback to 'Seeing Red'.
The goddesses start attacking the Slayers as well as the humans, to
the great surprise of - well, just about none of the readership. But
Buffy is shocked and horrified, and Willow can't believe it either.
"We didn't bring help. We brought death." is, of course, a line that
can be interpreted a whole lot of ways, and not just about the
'Retreat' plot arc.
It's interesting that the two people who are the first to realise that
the goddesses are the enemy, pretty much simultaneously with each
other, are Buffy and Dawn. Dawn shows good sense in immediately taking
charge of the situation and warning the Slayers to fall back, and
Xander follows her lead in a practical and supportive fashion.
Bay (who's still alive!) gives us some important exposition about the
goddesses - it's not that they're deliberately cheating on the deal,
but that they've been away from the Earth so long, they can no longer
tell humans apart or recognise friend from foe. That's probably saying
something symbolic about the Slayers too. Faith, characteristically,
is the one to spell out what that means: they're screwed.
And it turns out that Buffy was going to rescue Riley. First
unexpected twist of the episode. Notice that Kennedy doesn't recognise
him; she at first assumes that he's just "a prisoner". Dawn also
assumes that, even though she presumably does recognise him. Buffy now
reveals that Riley was her man on the inside, spying on Twilight. I'm
going to withhold judgement on that until we get some more story; I'm
not convinced yet whether Riley is an agent, double agent, triple
agent or quadruple agent...
I do wonder what information he's been able to provide Buffy so far,
since it doesn't seemed to have helped her much... It's possible that
it was too dangerous for him to contact her much before; but now she
was forced to blow his cover since otherwise he would have died on the
battlefield.
I wonder what fans of 'As You Were' will have to say about this
further meeting between Buffy and Riley. :-)
No 'Buffy' episode is complete without relationship angst, and so here
it is. Buffy gets all emotional at seeing Xander is still alive and
hugs him, rather too warmly. Xander apparently enjoyed it; he has a
seriously bemused look on his face afterwards. Dawn is not at all
happy with her sister,as you'd expect.
Oh, and fans of the lesser-seen Slayers can score two points if they
noticed Leah standing there in this scene.
I did like the ambiguity of Twilight's "He was working for her the
whole time" comment followed by Warren's inquiry - classic Buffy
humour, and of course it does leave the whole question of who's side
Riley is actually on still open. It was also funny the way Warren and
Amy completely ignored Twilight to have yet another quarrel, and
Twilight just gave up and left them. For a vastly powerful
supervillain manipulating people like puppets all over the world,
Twilight does seem oddly unassertive with the people he spends most of
his time with.
Now we have a pretty powerful emotional scene. Riley tells Buffy that
only a miracle can save them. She's at her last ebb; no weapons, no
friends, no hope. But this time, she doesn't despair. The next
double-page spread is an object lesson in why we should be cheering
for her, not Twilight.
He's quite happy to let his own men die ("They're mortal" - does that
imply he isn't?); his plan is more important than the lives of his
followers. Notice that the fleeing crowd includes both human soldiers
and Slayers, now mixed together indiscriminately. Buffy, though,
chooses to accept that they've lost the battle, but that the important
thing now is to save as many lives as possible. In what's obviously a
spur-of-the-moment act of compassion, she tells the Slayers to rescue
the enemy wounded too. It's characteristic of her - but such a
contrast to the ruthless Buffy we saw back in 'Time Of Your Life'.
Just as in 'Becoming', being stripped of all else lays bear the truth
of who she really is.
Riley calls her an "amazing woman". Oz, though, points out that all
the Slayers who are risking their own lives for the same cause are
equally amazing.
At the top of this page, Buffy has given the Scythe to another Slayer
to hold. I'm going to assume that it's Satsu, based partly on her skin
colour and partly because I can't imagine Buffy trusting many other
people to hold the Scythe. (Satsu, in fact, has been shown holding the
Scythe in both 'The Long Way Home' and 'Wolves At The Gate'; as far as
I can remember, she's the only Slayer apart from Buffy to have done so
all season. Not counting Fray, who had her own Scythe.)
What happens next seems to go like this: One of the enemy soldiers is
about to shoot Buffy. Satsu notices this, pushes Buffy to safety and
shoots the soldier with her pistol. Buffy falls into the hand of one
of the goddesses - Remati, the divine protector of Tibet - who stares
at her, looking as if she's about to eat her. Buffy is horrified. Then
Remati drops Buffy from a great height - around 14 or 15 metres by the
look of it - and it certainly looks as if she wouldn't survive the
fall.
Then cut to the double page spread and the caption "Five hours later".
The battle's over, and the Slayers lost. The survivors are being taken
prisoner, and I wonder what Twilight plans to do with them. I can see
Dawn and Willow and Giles in the group, so we know they at least
survived for now. Buffy is buried in a snowdrift. The snow covering
her eyes is particularly creepy - I assume it could happen naturally,
with snow setting in the hollows of her face but drifting off the
curves, but it looks a lot like the coins covering the eyes of a
corpse. Incidentally, presumably everyone else assumes that Buffy is
now dead?
But she wakes up, and looks nauseous. She's alone. She closes her
eyes... and when she opens them again, she's suspended in mid-air a
couple of hundred metres over the temple.
Now there's a twist I didn't expect. :-)
At first I thought she died (again), and now she's a ghost. But after
thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that the goddesses kept
their part of the bargain after all. They've returned the power they
were offered... but they've returned it ALL to Buffy. When Remati
picked Buffy up and stared at her so closely, she presumably finally
managed to recognise her as the mortal whose anger summoned her to
this plane. So she gave Buffy back all the power the three goddesses
had been offered since they were last summoned.
And so Buffy can now fly, because that was one of Willow's powers.
Presumably Buffy is now the most powerful witch in the western
hemisphere, as well as being a Slayer again. (Remember 'The Long Way
Home', when Willow used magic through Buffy's eyes? Foreshadowing...)
And possibly Buffy is also now a werewolf. It's an open question
whether Slayer power is additive; does Buffy now have the cumulative
strength of all the however-many dozens or hundreds of Slayers there
were in the monastery? Or are we back to the situation of 'Welcome To
The Hellmouth', with only one Slayer in all the world? Either way,
it's looking like the people who wanted the spell in 'Chosen' to be
reversed just got their wish. (As have the people who preferred it
when Willow wasn't a witch, just a hacker...) Things just got really
interesting...
--
Stephen
thezeppo7628
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Since I've been asked:
>
> ******Review of 8.29**************
>
> Another month, another Season 8 comic. And beware, for I have Kittens
> of Doom ready to unleash on anyone who is mean to it! Just ask Emmie!
>
> Anyway, here's the review.
Thanks for posting. I really enjoy reading your reviews and have
noticed their absence recently.
>
> Finally, the scene switches to even more cuteness when one of the
> Slayers refers to Dawn and Xander as "mama and papa" and they smile at
> each other. I'm going to assume for now that's because their being a
> couple is now recognisable to other people, and not because Dawn is
> actually pregnant. But you never know. :-)
Eww! As if this relationship weren't creepy enough already,:-)
>
> Speaking of which, the soldiers appear to be wearing the kind of
> uniform US soldiers wear in Iraq, nor are any of them ethnically
> Chinese, hence my comments before about a US invasion of the People's
> Republic of China. I'm going to have to assume that Twilight
> 'arranged' things either by blackmailing/enchanting the Chinese
> authorities to allow this, or by teleporting the entire army into
> Tibet... presumably from Iraq, where it was stationed ready and
> waiting for Twilight's orders. (Rumsfeld and Cheney were in the pay of
> Twilight? That would explain a lot...) For the record, the tanks just
> seem to be generic tanks, but the attacking force does include at
> least one Bradley IFV and a couple of HMMWVs so they're definitely
> using US military hardware.
Yes, this aspect of the story is very weak. Furthermore, the whole
idea of the slayer army takng up arms and fighting a traditional war
isn't working for me at all.
>
> Remati, also called Palden Lhamo, is a Tibetan Buddhist deity
> sometimes associated with the Hindu goddess Kali, and is the divine
> protector of Tibet and the Dalai Lamas. She was once an evil and
> wicked spirit who killed and skinned alive (*koff*likeWillow*koff) her
> own son, before meeting the Buddha and converting to the Law. She's
> the blue one with three eyes.
>
> Vajrayogini is a Tantric deity and Buddha, also called the 'wrathful
> black one' and noted as representing the wild, fiery and untamed force
> of enlightenment. She's usually drawn holding a large knife and a cup
> filled with blood and wearing a necklace of human skulls, which Buffy
> would probably say sounds less with the enlightened and more with the
> wrathy. She's the red one.
>
> Ekajari, also known by bizarre coincidence as Tara, was once the
> goddess of heaven of the Tibetan Bon religion before being converted
> to Buddhism. She's determined and fierce and tramples her enemies
> underfoot. She's the pink one with a single pointed tooth.
>
> Okay, hands up who thought that Buddhism was a gentle and peaceful
> religion? Or a non-theistic one? :-)
Wow! Thanks for the background info. I thought that Espenson just
made these characters up.
>
>
>
> I was struck by the incongruity of the splash page with the big title
> saying "Retreat" while Buffy is shouting "Advance!" I'm sure it's
> deliberate, in that "Nothing is what it appears to be" kind of way.
Like the rest of this arc, Buffy and Xander's order to "advance and
occupy new territory" didn't make a lot of sense to me. I thought
the slayers were defending themselves from their enemies, not taking over
China.
>
> What happens next seems to go like this: One of the enemy soldiers is
> about to shoot Buffy. Satsu notices this, pushes Buffy to safety and
> shoots the soldier with her pistol. Buffy falls into the hand of one
> of the goddesses - Remati, the divine protector of Tibet - who stares
> at her, looking as if she's about to eat her. Buffy is horrified. Then
> Remati drops Buffy from a great height - around 14 or 15 metres by the
> look of it - and it certainly looks as if she wouldn't survive the
> fall.
Especially since Jeanty drew her as a skeleton breaking apart upon
impact with the ground. I suspect he did this on purpose, which made
her reserection on the next page seem even more surprising and powerful.
>
> At first I thought she died (again), and now she's a ghost. But after
> thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that the goddesses kept
> their part of the bargain after all. They've returned the power they
> were offered... but they've returned it ALL to Buffy. When Remati
> picked Buffy up and stared at her so closely, she presumably finally
> managed to recognise her as the mortal whose anger summoned her to
> this plane. So she gave Buffy back all the power the three goddesses
> had been offered since they were last summoned.
An interesting theory, and one which I wouldn't mind being accurate.
However,IMO, Jo Chen's cover for #31 may indicate that something
different has occured. That is, if the cover actually has anything to
do with the story. :-)
Michael Ikeda
news:thezeppo7628-5AA9...@news.telus.net:
> In article <05l9f5dtkl5u9cbfu...@4ax.com>,
> Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Since I've been asked:
>>
>> ******Review of 8.29**************
>>
>>
>> Remati, also called Palden Lhamo, is a Tibetan Buddhist deity
>> sometimes associated with the Hindu goddess Kali, and is the
>> divine protector of Tibet and the Dalai Lamas. She was once an
>> evil and wicked spirit who killed and skinned alive
>> (*koff*likeWillow*koff) her own son, before meeting the Buddha
>> and converting to the Law. She's the blue one with three eyes.
>>
>> Vajrayogini is a Tantric deity and Buddha, also called the
>> 'wrathful black one' and noted as representing the wild, fiery
>> and untamed force of enlightenment. She's usually drawn holding
>> a large knife and a cup filled with blood and wearing a
>> necklace of human skulls, which Buffy would probably say sounds
>> less with the enlightened and more with the wrathy. She's the
>> red one.
>>
>> Ekajari, also known by bizarre coincidence as Tara, was once
>> the goddess of heaven of the Tibetan Bon religion before being
>> converted to Buddhism. She's determined and fierce and tramples
>> her enemies underfoot. She's the pink one with a single pointed
>> tooth.
>>
>> Okay, hands up who thought that Buddhism was a gentle and
>> peaceful religion? Or a non-theistic one? :-)
>
>
>
> Wow! Thanks for the background info. I thought that Espenson
> just made these characters up.
>
A couple of additional notes on the Tibetan goddesses...
According to "Dictionary of Ancient Deities" (Patricia Turner and
Charles Russell Coulter, Oxford University Press, 2001):
1) A similarly named (although apparently distinct) deity called
Vajrajogini is identified with both Kali and one of the fierce
aspects of the Tibetan Buddhist goddess Tara.
2) The Hindu goddess Tara is often depicted as an aspect of Kali
(As Stephen mentions, Palden Lhamo is also associated with Kali).
So there's somewhat of a linkage between the names of all THREE
goddesses and some version of the goddess Tara.
--
Michael Ikeda mmi...@erols.com
"Telling a statistician not to use sampling is like telling an
astronomer they can't say there is a moon and stars"
Lynne Billard, past president American Statistical Association
dogs...@yahoo.com.invalid
> Since I've been asked:
Woohoo!
>
> ******Review of 8.29**************
>
> The scenes of tension as everybody prepares for the inevitable attack
> are nicely done, with the cutting between viewpoints and speakers but
> the same conversation continuing - a standard 'Buffy' storytelling
> device. It may be a little stretching disbelief to wonder how they
> jumped straight from "a cat disappeared!" in the last episode to "The
> US Army is about to invade China and attack us!"... but since they've
> been attacked the same way every other time they were found, I suppose
> it's a reasonable guess.
So reasonable as to hardly count as a guess at all. As Willow said in
the last issue, "If Amy has found us, Twilight has found us." It's not
much of a leap for them to decide an attack is imminent. The part that
struck me as a leap at first was connecting Amy, specifically, to a
suspiciously disappearing cat. But on reflection, she is the only
magic-user on Twilight's payroll whose name they know, and she has a
history of turning into small mammals.
(But how imminent was the attack? I don't recall any indication of how
much time passed between #28 and #29. It could have been several days.)
> I'm sure that the pairings of Xander and Dawn, Oz and Bay, Giles and
> Faith, Andrew and Satsu and Buffy and Willow is not meant to be a clue
> to current and future romantic relationships. :-)
Yuck. I don't even want to *joke* about Andrew/Satsu....
Having skipped replying to the last review, I'll talk about the
Buffy-Xander-Dawn triangle here. Neither pairing feels entirely right
to me. Not horrible, not off-putting, but not quite to my taste. While
Xander once had a crush on Buffy, they have been firmly settled into a
just-friends mode since at least S3; and while Dawn had a childhood
crush on Xander, he's always seen her as a friend and pseudo-sister.
But that's not the real reason. After all, I don't think it's
impossible for friendship to turn into love in real life, so it
shouldn't be impossible in the Buffyverse either.[*] The reasons have
more to do with my personal preferences than logic. Part of it is risk
aversion: I like the core Scoobies as a group more than any one romantic
pair among them, so I don't want them to start hooking up and risk
disrupting the group when the relationship fails. And part of it is
fear that a romance will somehow cheapen the previous friendship, as if
acts that seem noble coming from a friend would seem more
self-interested if they were coming from a potential lover instead. This
is of course completely illogical, but I can't help feeling it. Maybe
I'm just extra-defensive on this question because I think fiction of all
sorts tends to overvalue sex and romance at the expense of friendship.
With the possible Buffy-Xander romance, there's another factor. I'm
always annoyed when fans assume that Buffy's only chance for love is
with one of the guys she knew when she was a teenager. Usually that guy
is Angel or Spike, but it would apply to Xander too. So on the whole
I'd prefer Xander-Dawn to Xander-Buffy. Admittedly, it's still a little
creepy that Xander's known her since she was little, but at least
they're now a 25ish man and a 19-year-old woman, rather than the
20-year-old guy and 14-year-old girl they were when Dawn was introduced.
(Mind you, while I prefer X-D, I wouldn't object to a brief, confusing,
sexy but uncomfortable X-B hookup, as long as they resumed being friends
afterwards. Just to, you know, stir things up and complicate the
friendship/love dichotomy.)
[*]Note that not everything that's possible in the Buffyverse is
possible in real life, but everything that's possible in real life IS
possible in the Buffyverse. Philosophically speaking, doesn't that make
real life a subset of the Buffyverse?
One final detail on this subject: I'm convinced that the kiss Buffy saw
was Dawn and Xander's first full-on romantic kiss. Or at least it was
just a few minutes after the first one. Xander and Dawn may have been
drifting into a relationship, but it didn't actually start until now. I
just think that Buffy having a shot with Xander, and losing out to Dawn
only because she decided to postpone saying something until after she
talked to Willow, would be perfectly in the spirit of Buffyverse love.
> The Andrew and Satsu
> panel was particularly effective; he is using the standard military
> euphemism ("we will lose people") because he thinks in narrative
> terms; but Satsu is blunt and realistic. "Say it right," she reproves
> him. "People will die." And then Willow's outburst sets the cap on the
> scene. I was reminded of 'Empty Places', with the confrontation over
> tactics in front of a crowd of [Potential] Slayers waiting for
> leadership - but this time, both Willow is being far more assertive
> and Buffy is being much more in control of the situation. She very
> sensibly chooses not to have the argument in front of everybody else.
As we've see throughout S8, Buffy has come a long way as a leader.
(Though she still doesn't love the role, and it's probably not good for
her emotionally -- see her conversation with Faith a couple of issues
ago.) But it would be interesting to see how she handled another
situation more like the one in Empty Places, when she suffers a major
defeat and lost her self-confidence and the confidence of her followers.
> Also, Willow apparently has chopsticks in her hair. :-)
I find that an attractive look for women, the hair pulled up in a casual
knot or bun with chopsticks/pens/stilettos stuck through it. Attractive
in movies or comics, that is; in real life I would start to wonder about
its practicality, which would make it somewhat less attractive.
> The next scene is one I have mixed feelings about from a pure
> story-format perspective; I think Willow's emotional meltdown would
> have worked perfectly on-screen, and it would perhaps have worked
> better in comics if it made more dynamic use of the medium -
> fragmented panels and so forth to show Willow's state of mind. As it
> is, the simple narrative panel-by-panel approach made what should have
> been a very powerful scene come across strangely flat. But quibbles
> aside, I have no problems with the content.
This section worked better for me than for you, but the bit with the
baby struck a doubly discordant note: I can't see Oz being frightened
for the baby just because Willow is a little pissed off, nor did his
asking Bay to pass the baby seem like a reason for Willow to *think* he
was frightened for the baby. Was her "Don't protect the baby" shout
directed at Bay instead of Oz? Even then it would feel off -- the
drawing doesn't make Bay look worried either. The best I can do is to
assume that Willow was overreacting to Oz accidentally looking like he
was protecting the baby. It's a weird and unsuccessful moment that
doesn't really fit in a generally good scene.
> Last month, Willow had an
> epiphany that her magic did not have to define her: she could choose a
> normal life instead, start a family, escape the fate of turning into
> Dark Willow and living for 200 years. But now she's confronted with
> the fact that her choice to set aside her power may have doomed all of
> them to death. She's helpless to protect them; and she's furious with
> herself for what she now sees as the weakness of giving way to her
> desire for normality. That, of course, resonates perfectly with Buffy
> who's in much the same position herself. I'm not 100% sure, but I
> think the final line "I thought I could have this... and I lost
> everything" is Buffy, not Willow, lamenting the fact that her idyllic
> retreat in the mountains has just collapsed around her.
I agree -- while the speech bubble could be pointing toward either head,
I think those were Buffy's words.
> I know a lot of people have commented on the 'stupidity' of the plan
> to abandon their powers and hide.
Maybe stupid, maybe just desperate, but either way, an awkward fit with
long-standing BTVS themes. But unlike some fans, I've been taking this
as a sign that abandoning their powers is just a development in the
middle of a long story that would end with Buffy and friends empowered
again, rather than a sign of, for example, dumb writing.
> Also, I assume Jane Espenson read the word "manpads" somewhere, had a
> giggling fit and decided she had to have Xander demonstrating one.
An assumption so likely as to hardly count as an assumption at all....
> I did like the
> exchange about the radar noise being mistaken for incoming aircraft.
> I'm not sure if the Slayer with long brown hair is supposed to be
> someone we recognise or not? It's maybe possibly Kennedy, but I think
> she shows up in a brief cameo later on instead.
I think it's just a generic Slayer, possibly one of the former
psychic-alert Wiccans. Which reminds me -- it was really, *really*
stupid of Team Buffy not to have posted sentries any further out than
the front steps of the temple. Oh, well, I guess this fits well with
the larger unreality of two shoulder-to-shoulder forces fighting at a
range of twenty meters.
> Buffy's big idea: get Andrew to do some fake magic to maybe trick
> Twilight into not attacking straight away. Not quite up there with
> using Faith's dagger to lure the Mayor into a room full of explosives
> or releasing the energy in the Scythe to turn every single Potential
> into a Slayer. The inevitable yak joke was funny, though. Fandom needs
> more yak jokes.
There have been plenty of yak jokes in Retreat, and not a clunker among
them. Go yaks!
> And the woman shouting "Tanks!" here is,
> I think, Kennedy's cameo appearance. Anyone else agree?
I thought so at first, but now that you sent me back to look again, I
think it might be Bay. She has braids similar to those we see on Bay
elsewhere in the issue.
> A nice little cameo of Faith putting on her helmet, and hesitating for
> a while looking stricken - presumably thinking "God, I thought I was
> through with this crap!" But as soon as Monroe's wolves show up she's
> back to her usual sarcastic self. Isn't there a continuity error here,
> though - I thought Monroe was killed in the flashback earlier, and it
> was only his followers who carried on the fight? Unless the werewolf
> that Bay killed was one of his followers rather than Monroe himself -
> there were three in the group Oz was talking to.
Either that or Bay just wounded and chased him off, instead of killing
him. But I too thought Monroe was dead when that issue (#27?) first
came out. I was amused by Dawn's reaction to the full Monroe-monty.
> Speaking of which, the soldiers appear to be wearing the kind of
> uniform US soldiers wear in Iraq, nor are any of them ethnically
> Chinese, hence my comments before about a US invasion of the People's
> Republic of China. I'm going to have to assume that Twilight
> 'arranged' things either by blackmailing/enchanting the Chinese
> authorities to allow this, or by teleporting the entire army into
> Tibet... presumably from Iraq, where it was stationed ready and
> waiting for Twilight's orders.
More likely, IMO, Twilight has the same sort of covert arrangement with
the Chinese government that he does with the US military. Why an
American military force instead of Chinese? Because Twilight's Chinese
contacts are in the Party, rather than the PLA, and they prefer to keep
their military in the dark about it. See, there's a rational
explanation for everything! (Or it could be a joint US-Chinese force,
but the Chinese troops all happen to be around the other side of the
temple.)
> Big dramatic confrontation between Buffy and Oz about Bay; Oz is -
> naturally enough, but also symbolically - only concerned about his
> wife's injury, not the big army that's about to kill them all. Big
> picture/little picture, one of the season's themes.
I'm reminded of Prophecy Girl, when Xander is too worried about Buffy
getting killed to wrap his mind around the danger that the world as a
whole faces. Oz has been sticking to the role of genial host and
advisor, as well as friend of Willow; he doesn't seem to be one of
Buffy's lieutenants the way the other former Scoobies are. (It's a
little disappointing that Oz and Kennedy aren't trying to get to know
each other better, but I guess there isn't time or page-space for that.)
Figures that the ONE TIME I'm not expecting Remati, Vajrayogini and
Ekajari to show up, that's when they appear!
> ******************Review of 8.30************************
> Having all the characters wearing flak jackets and helmets makes it
> really hard to tell them apart, which isn't Jeanty's strongest point
> as an artist at the best of times.
I had the same trouble. Jeanty did an annoyingly poor job with Giles'
hands and arms in the panel where he's handing out rifles, too. But on
the plus side, I liked his Tibetan killer goddesses. (Generally I'm in
the pro-Jeanty camp -- a camp that sometimes seems to consist of me and
Jeanty's mother.)
> Buffy and Willow are always
> recognisable, at least. Dawn is the one in the purple top standing
> next to Xander. The three women in the centre are Faith in the blue
> top, Kennedy (presumably) in the orange top and green trousers, and
> then Willow. I assume it's Andrew and Giles at the far right, and
> Giles (in green) has taken off his glasses. Presumably this is
> something he'd rather not watch too closely?
In #29 we saw Giles firing his rocket launcher sans glasses. Maybe,
after all these years, we're learning that he's farsighted.
> Amy and Warren having a lovers' quarrel is always fun, and Jane hangs
> a lantern on the whole "Your plan didn't even make sense" thing about
> Warren trying to tempt Andrew over to the dark side. Incidentally, I
> interpret her line "You are no The First" to be said with the same
> emphasis as "You're no Jack Kennedy". (Though whether Amy "knew The
> First, The First was a friend of hers", is open to question...)
At first I wondered if that "no" was a typo (or penno) for "not," but
your interpretation sounds better. Including the "The" as if it was The
First's first name reminded of Andrew addressing it as "The First" (or
"Jonathan-slash-The First") in Get It Done.
> Twilight is ruthless and clinical, the military officer - who's
> wearing an obviously-US uniform -
Albeit an inaccurate one. As I understand it, any US service member of
any rank wears combat dress whenever approaching anywhere vaguely near a
battlefield. Google any picture of a US general in Iraq or Afghanistan
for an illustration. (Also, while Googling that myself I just learned
that the green dress uniform is being phased out in favor of blue. But
this general might have been too busy with Twilight to get his new
uniforms.)
> clearly disagrees with his plan and
> isn't afraid to say so, but also doesn't contradict him. I wonder if
> this is General Voll?
Doesn't look like him, IMO, but growing a mustache can change a man's
whole appearance.
> By the way,
> while this soldier is in American uniform and the vehicles they're
> using are US Army issue, the rifles the soldiers are carrying are
> AK-47s not M-16s. So they're not actually US Army, it would seem.
Maybe these are the Chinese troops in a joint Chinese-American force?
And, umm, they're wearing American helmets? Okay, okay, Jeanty is just
being inconsistent. I'm as shocked as you are! (I think the Slayers
also switch between Kalashnikov-style rifles and ones without the wooden
stocks in #29, but maybe they just always had a mix of weapons.) On a
similar note, this issue prominently features a jeep apparently copied
from M*A*S*H reruns, instead of a more modern HMMWV.
> Bay seems to be still alive for the moment. Her remarks about "They
> shouldn't have come here." and "We gave them everything" are
> mysterious and portentous; I assume she's talking about the goddesses
> because she's realised what she'll later explain - that they've
> forgotten how to tell goodies from baddies.
An alternate theory is that Bay misunderstood those old scrolls and the
goddesses were just never that inclined to distinguish goodies from
baddies in the first place.
> A nice little Twilight interlude - Warren complaining about why he's
> the only one of the three not to have binoculars is a wonderfully
> ironic callback to 'Seeing Red'.
Hadn't thought of that myself, but now that you point it out the irony
is delicious. No doubt Twilight considers Warren a disposable tool much
as Warren thought of Jonathan in late S6. And it couldn't happen to a
more deserving fellow.
> And it turns out that Buffy was going to rescue Riley. First
> unexpected twist of the episode. Notice that Kennedy doesn't recognise
> him; she at first assumes that he's just "a prisoner". Dawn also
> assumes that, even though she presumably does recognise him. Buffy now
> reveals that Riley was her man on the inside, spying on Twilight. I'm
> going to withhold judgement on that until we get some more story; I'm
> not convinced yet whether Riley is an agent, double agent, triple
> agent or quadruple agent...
I already expected Riley to be revealed as Buffy's spy. First, I just
couldn't imagine Joss making Riley a bad guy (or allowing the other
writers to do it). And then in #27 he seemed to be subtly undermining
the search for Buffy's new hideout, which I thought was a dead giveaway.
But now that we've had the revelation, it seems strange that they spent
so much time on it without getting any important plot points from Riley.
Will he contribute something later? Was it just an elaborate means of
bringing Riley onto Buffy's team? Or will triple-agent Riley later be
revealed as a quadruple agent with a backflip and 180-degree spin?
Someone on your Livejournal speculated that Twilight might know Riley
was betraying him because he, Twilight, is actually Future Riley
traveling back in time. I guess that's possible; but then again, so is
Future Xander, Future Giles, Future Angel or Spike (that costume would
keep out direct sunlight, you'll notice), and pretty much anyone else
with a male physique and a light-skinned neck. Twilight's lack of clear
surprise here isn't enough to make me lean towards the Future Riley
theory yet.
BTW, I wonder if Riley is still married....
> No 'Buffy' episode is complete without relationship angst, and so here
> it is. Buffy gets all emotional at seeing Xander is still alive and
> hugs him, rather too warmly. Xander apparently enjoyed it; he has a
> seriously bemused look on his face afterwards. Dawn is not at all
> happy with her sister,as you'd expect.
Hugging Xander is one thing, but the way Buffy keeps holding on to him
afterwards must look a little inappropriate to Dawn now.
> Now we have a pretty powerful emotional scene. Riley tells Buffy that
> only a miracle can save them. She's at her last ebb; no weapons, no
> friends, no hope. But this time, she doesn't despair. The next
> double-page spread is an object lesson in why we should be cheering
> for her, not Twilight.
>
> He's quite happy to let his own men die ("They're mortal" - does that
> imply he isn't?); his plan is more important than the lives of his
> followers.
As for this:
> The goddesses start attacking the Slayers as well as the humans,
and later this:
> Notice that the fleeing crowd includes both human soldiers
> and Slayers,
Hey now, Mr. Twilight, some of us consider Slayers to be human too. ;)
> But she wakes up, and looks nauseous. She's alone. She closes her
> eyes... and when she opens them again, she's suspended in mid-air a
> couple of hundred metres over the temple.
>
> Now there's a twist I didn't expect. :-)
>
> At first I thought she died (again), and now she's a ghost. But after
> thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that the goddesses kept
> their part of the bargain after all. They've returned the power they
> were offered... but they've returned it ALL to Buffy. When Remati
> picked Buffy up and stared at her so closely, she presumably finally
> managed to recognise her as the mortal whose anger summoned her to
> this plane. So she gave Buffy back all the power the three goddesses
> had been offered since they were last summoned.
My first thought was also that Buffy had died. It's a natural
conclusion when you see someone fall to the ground from such a height
and then later float up into the sky. And Buffy does have a known
history of dying. But that didn't feel right this time -- when Buffy
has died in the past, in Prophecy Girl and The Gift, it was in the
context of a story about her facing her personal calling as a Slayer,
which hasn't really been the focus lately. And when she floats up in
the last panel, she doesn't see her own body down below, as would be
traditional for a ghost. So I started looking for other explanations,
but they were even less satisfactory (I think I recall "she's being
summoned by the Powers That Be" and "Twilight is snatching her" in
there). Your theory is the first one that feels right. So right that
I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it. Oh, well.
> And so Buffy can now fly, because that was one of Willow's powers.
> Presumably Buffy is now the most powerful witch in the western
> hemisphere, as well as being a Slayer again. (Remember 'The Long Way
> Home', when Willow used magic through Buffy's eyes? Foreshadowing...)
> And possibly Buffy is also now a werewolf. It's an open question
> whether Slayer power is additive; does Buffy now have the cumulative
> strength of all the however-many dozens or hundreds of Slayers there
> were in the monastery? Or are we back to the situation of 'Welcome To
> The Hellmouth', with only one Slayer in all the world? Either way,
> it's looking like the people who wanted the spell in 'Chosen' to be
> reversed just got their wish. (As have the people who preferred it
> when Willow wasn't a witch, just a hacker...) Things just got really
> interesting...
Interesting indeed. It would feel weird, even upsetting, if all the
other Slayers never got their powers back, and even more if Willow never
did. It wouldn't fit with BTVS's usual themes of empowering people. So
it's hard to imagine Joss will actually take that route. There's just
one thing keeps a sliver of doubt active in my mind: this could be a way
to get from S8's Slayer army to Fray's history of the last Slayer
banishing demonkind and herself with them sometime in the 21st century.
It's also hard to imagine Buffy flying around like Superman for very
long. But there have been at least two scenes of Buffy feeling
uncomfortable while Willow makes her fly, haven't there. Foreshadowing?
Whew. Now I just have to catch up on AOQ's Dollhouse reviews and I'll
be all set!
--Chris
dogs...@yahoo.com.invalid
thezeppo7628 <thezep...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> Like the rest of this arc, Buffy and Xander's order to "advance and
> occupy new territory" didn't make a lot of sense to me. I thought
> the slayers were defending themselves from their enemies, not taking over
> China.
I figured it was to force Twilight's army to keep retreating. If they
left territory undefended, then the enemy fleeing the goddesses could
circle around into that territory instead of moving further away from
the temple. But that's just speculation. The only real hint we get is
the comment about not wanting to trade positions with the enemy, which I
agree is not very clear.
--Chris
grinningdemon
>Having skipped replying to the last review, I'll talk about the
>Buffy-Xander-Dawn triangle here. Neither pairing feels entirely right
>to me. Not horrible, not off-putting, but not quite to my taste. While
>Xander once had a crush on Buffy, they have been firmly settled into a
>just-friends mode since at least S3; and while Dawn had a childhood
>crush on Xander, he's always seen her as a friend and pseudo-sister.
>But that's not the real reason. After all, I don't think it's
>impossible for friendship to turn into love in real life, so it
>shouldn't be impossible in the Buffyverse either.[*] The reasons have
>more to do with my personal preferences than logic. Part of it is risk
>aversion: I like the core Scoobies as a group more than any one romantic
>pair among them, so I don't want them to start hooking up and risk
>disrupting the group when the relationship fails. And part of it is
>fear that a romance will somehow cheapen the previous friendship, as if
>acts that seem noble coming from a friend would seem more
>self-interested if they were coming from a potential lover instead. This
>is of course completely illogical, but I can't help feeling it. Maybe
>I'm just extra-defensive on this question because I think fiction of all
>sorts tends to overvalue sex and romance at the expense of friendship.
>
>With the possible Buffy-Xander romance, there's another factor. I'm
>always annoyed when fans assume that Buffy's only chance for love is
>with one of the guys she knew when she was a teenager. Usually that guy
>is Angel or Spike, but it would apply to Xander too.
That's a valid point if you were talking about a real person, but it
wouldn't be particularly satisfying for fans of the character to see
her end up with someone brand new this late in the game.
Personally, I've always wanted to see Buffy and Xander end up together
eventually for just the reason you point out...of all the guys we've
seen her with (more or less), he's the only one she could really have
a future with...he knows her better than anyone and knows how to
handle himself in her world...furthermore, he's the only one of her
inner circle who has never really turned on her.
The only problem I see with them getting together is the same problem
with any relationship in the Whedonverse...they are all doomed to end
horribly one way or other...so it could really only happen at the very
end.
So on the whole
>I'd prefer Xander-Dawn to Xander-Buffy. Admittedly, it's still a little
>creepy that Xander's known her since she was little, but at least
>they're now a 25ish man and a 19-year-old woman, rather than the
>20-year-old guy and 14-year-old girl they were when Dawn was introduced.
Even though they've been building up to it for a while now,
Xander-Dawn still seems a little forced to me (though not as forced as
Buffy-Satsu seemed)...it just seems strange at this point though I
guess part of the reason I think that is because I still can't help
but think of these characters in terms of the actors who played them
on the show...and the age difference between Michelle T and Nick
Brenon is significantly greater than the age difference between the
characters.
>(Mind you, while I prefer X-D, I wouldn't object to a brief, confusing,
>sexy but uncomfortable X-B hookup, as long as they resumed being friends
>afterwards. Just to, you know, stir things up and complicate the
>friendship/love dichotomy.)
I think playing up the triangle for a while could be interesting...you
mention above that Xander and Buffy just kind of settled into
friendship mode somewhere along the way, and I agree, but I always got
the feeling that was more because Xander just kind of accepted he
didn't have a shot with her...it would be interesting to see them turn
it around and have her pining for him for a while like he did for her
early on...just so long as they don't make a huge deal out of it.
>There have been plenty of yak jokes in Retreat, and not a clunker among
>them. Go yaks!
Yaks are always fun...but I still kind of miss the Scottish
castle...to me, it really suited the tone of the book to have a
permanent base like that and particularly one that fit so well with
the traditional horror movie vibe...it also seemed to help establishe
the grander scale of the comic vs. the show.
>I already expected Riley to be revealed as Buffy's spy. First, I just
>couldn't imagine Joss making Riley a bad guy (or allowing the other
>writers to do it). And then in #27 he seemed to be subtly undermining
>the search for Buffy's new hideout, which I thought was a dead giveaway.
>But now that we've had the revelation, it seems strange that they spent
>so much time on it without getting any important plot points from Riley.
>Will he contribute something later? Was it just an elaborate means of
>bringing Riley onto Buffy's team? Or will triple-agent Riley later be
>revealed as a quadruple agent with a backflip and 180-degree spin?
I didn't really see this twist coming though, in hindsight, I probably
should have...Joss always resisted letting Riley get turned into one
of the baddies.
>Someone on your Livejournal speculated that Twilight might know Riley
>was betraying him because he, Twilight, is actually Future Riley
>traveling back in time. I guess that's possible; but then again, so is
>Future Xander, Future Giles, Future Angel or Spike (that costume would
>keep out direct sunlight, you'll notice), and pretty much anyone else
>with a male physique and a light-skinned neck. Twilight's lack of clear
>surprise here isn't enough to make me lean towards the Future Riley
>theory yet.
If it is a future version of a familar character, I would think Xander
is the most likely suspect...given the earlier comments about Buffy
being betrayed by the one she trusts most (or something like
that)...and it seems even more likely now that she's feeling all
romantic about him...the only other possibility I can see in this
range is that Twilight is somehow Buffy herself (thus, she is
betraying herself).
>BTW, I wonder if Riley is still married....
Me too...but, if they didn't ditch Kennedy, I doubt they'd just ignore
Riley's wife...it's bound to come up.
>> No 'Buffy' episode is complete without relationship angst, and so here
>> it is. Buffy gets all emotional at seeing Xander is still alive and
>> hugs him, rather too warmly. Xander apparently enjoyed it; he has a
>> seriously bemused look on his face afterwards. Dawn is not at all
>> happy with her sister,as you'd expect.
>
>Hugging Xander is one thing, but the way Buffy keeps holding on to him
>afterwards must look a little inappropriate to Dawn now.
Yeah, seems like there's going to be some awkward moments coming up
between the Summers sisters.
>My first thought was also that Buffy had died. It's a natural
>conclusion when you see someone fall to the ground from such a height
>and then later float up into the sky. And Buffy does have a known
>history of dying.
Which is precisely why I never thought for a moment she died
here...it's too obvious and they've played that card one too many
times already...if she dies again, I suspect it will be at the very
end...and permanent.
But that didn't feel right this time -- when Buffy
>has died in the past, in Prophecy Girl and The Gift, it was in the
>context of a story about her facing her personal calling as a Slayer,
>which hasn't really been the focus lately. And when she floats up in
>the last panel, she doesn't see her own body down below, as would be
>traditional for a ghost. So I started looking for other explanations,
>but they were even less satisfactory (I think I recall "she's being
>summoned by the Powers That Be" and "Twilight is snatching her" in
>there). Your theory is the first one that feels right. So right that
>I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it. Oh, well.
Seems the most likely theory to me as well...and could also fit with
the possibility that Twilight is somehow future Buffy.
>Interesting indeed. It would feel weird, even upsetting, if all the
>other Slayers never got their powers back, and even more if Willow never
>did. It wouldn't fit with BTVS's usual themes of empowering people. So
>it's hard to imagine Joss will actually take that route. There's just
>one thing keeps a sliver of doubt active in my mind: this could be a way
>to get from S8's Slayer army to Fray's history of the last Slayer
>banishing demonkind and herself with them sometime in the 21st century.
>
>It's also hard to imagine Buffy flying around like Superman for very
>long. But there have been at least two scenes of Buffy feeling
>uncomfortable while Willow makes her fly, haven't there. Foreshadowing?
I think everyone will get their powers back to normal more or less
before long...Buffy being truly SUPER powered doesn't really suit the
character anymore than her losing all of her powers did...it could be
fun in the short term but I can't see it lasting.
dogs...@yahoo.com.invalid
grinningdemon <grinni...@austin.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >With the possible Buffy-Xander romance, there's another factor. I'm
> >always annoyed when fans assume that Buffy's only chance for love is
> >with one of the guys she knew when she was a teenager. Usually that guy
> >is Angel or Spike, but it would apply to Xander too.
>
> That's a valid point if you were talking about a real person, but it
> wouldn't be particularly satisfying for fans of the character to see
> her end up with someone brand new this late in the game.
And I can understand feeling that way. Not because any of the existing
characters feel like Mr. Right, but because someone brand new would be a
stranger. If it happened, I'd probably be the first one to cry "Wait a
minute! Who's this new guy? Just what are his intentions regarding my
daugh-- er, favorite Slayer? How can Buffy fall in love with someone I
barely know?" So I'll admit that hooking Buffy up with a new character
would be difficult to accomplish in a fan-pleasing way. There are no
perfect options here.
Really, for the time being I'm happy to keep Buffy single. The journey
is more interesting than the destination and all that. The thing I
liked best about the ending of Chosen was that it left Buffy on a note
of open-ended hope for the future, rather than tying her down to one
particular future, romantically or otherwise. The problem with this is
that it can't continue forever. As time passes (in-story), that
open-endedness will gradually turn into another specific ending, one
where Buffy remains single for life.
> Personally, I've always wanted to see Buffy and Xander end up together
> eventually for just the reason you point out...of all the guys we've
> seen her with (more or less), he's the only one she could really have
> a future with...he knows her better than anyone and knows how to
> handle himself in her world...furthermore, he's the only one of her
> inner circle who has never really turned on her.
If I had to pick one of the three main choices on offer, I'd pick
Xander, for the reasons you give here. I've often thought that someone
who's familiar with the world of Slayage but still fully engaged in the
daylight world, like Xander (or Riley or Robin Wood), is what Buffy
really needs. Story-wise, another point in favor of B-X is that they've
never really been together romantically before, so it wouldn't be a
return to something they've already done as it would be with Angel or
Spike. However, Buffy and Xander's non-romantic friendship means a lot
to me, and I'm not sure I would want to give it up even for some B-X
lovin'.
> >BTW, I wonder if Riley is still married....
>
> Me too...but, if they didn't ditch Kennedy, I doubt they'd just ignore
> Riley's wife...it's bound to come up.
I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that Sam Finn was killed in the
line of duty, say a year or two ago, and Riley is just getting to the
point where he can think about someone else. Not because I expect Joss
to put Riley and Buffy back together again, but simply because he loves
to find ways to make Buffy's life more complicated.
--Chris
David Milligan
<dogs...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:dogsquid-B9AC0E...@news.eternal-september.org...
Maybe the Immortal got too boring for her - no real monster
in her man.
Ben Morrow
Quoth "David Milligan" <david...@yahoo.com>:
>
> Maybe the Immortal got too boring for her - no real monster
> in her man.
Um, have you been reading the comics? The Immortal was a fake-out,
designed by Andrew.
Ben
grinningdemon
>In article <dcljf5htu5mtg6stp...@4ax.com>,
> grinningdemon <grinni...@austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> >
>> >With the possible Buffy-Xander romance, there's another factor. I'm
>> >always annoyed when fans assume that Buffy's only chance for love is
>> >with one of the guys she knew when she was a teenager. Usually that guy
>> >is Angel or Spike, but it would apply to Xander too.
>>
>> That's a valid point if you were talking about a real person, but it
>> wouldn't be particularly satisfying for fans of the character to see
>> her end up with someone brand new this late in the game.
>
>And I can understand feeling that way. Not because any of the existing
>characters feel like Mr. Right, but because someone brand new would be a
>stranger. If it happened, I'd probably be the first one to cry "Wait a
>minute! Who's this new guy? Just what are his intentions regarding my
>daugh-- er, favorite Slayer? How can Buffy fall in love with someone I
>barely know?" So I'll admit that hooking Buffy up with a new character
>would be difficult to accomplish in a fan-pleasing way. There are no
>perfect options here.
Fair enough.
>Really, for the time being I'm happy to keep Buffy single. The journey
>is more interesting than the destination and all that. The thing I
>liked best about the ending of Chosen was that it left Buffy on a note
>of open-ended hope for the future, rather than tying her down to one
>particular future, romantically or otherwise. The problem with this is
>that it can't continue forever. As time passes (in-story), that
>open-endedness will gradually turn into another specific ending, one
>where Buffy remains single for life.
I'm happy with Buffy single for the time being as well, if for no
other reason than Buffy and Xander could never stay together in the
Whedonverse unless it happened at the end, but that's kind of
impractical...pretty much since the beginning of the show, Buffy has
always been heading towards or away from a specific love interest...be
it Angel, Riley, Spike, Satsu, or now Xander...she has rarely ever
truly been on her own in that sense.
>> Personally, I've always wanted to see Buffy and Xander end up together
>> eventually for just the reason you point out...of all the guys we've
>> seen her with (more or less), he's the only one she could really have
>> a future with...he knows her better than anyone and knows how to
>> handle himself in her world...furthermore, he's the only one of her
>> inner circle who has never really turned on her.
>
>If I had to pick one of the three main choices on offer, I'd pick
>Xander, for the reasons you give here. I've often thought that someone
>who's familiar with the world of Slayage but still fully engaged in the
>daylight world, like Xander (or Riley or Robin Wood), is what Buffy
>really needs. Story-wise, another point in favor of B-X is that they've
>never really been together romantically before, so it wouldn't be a
>return to something they've already done as it would be with Angel or
>Spike. However, Buffy and Xander's non-romantic friendship means a lot
>to me, and I'm not sure I would want to give it up even for some B-X
>lovin'.
The problem with Riley and, to a lesser extent, Robin is that they
aren't just familiar with buffy's world...they practically think of
themselves as slayers too...which constantly gets them into trouble (a
little like Lois Lane with Superman)...Xander isn't like that because
he's more practical with these things...as I said above, he knows how
to handle himself in her world...at least that's how I see it.
>> >BTW, I wonder if Riley is still married....
>>
>> Me too...but, if they didn't ditch Kennedy, I doubt they'd just ignore
>> Riley's wife...it's bound to come up.
>
>I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that Sam Finn was killed in the
>line of duty, say a year or two ago, and Riley is just getting to the
>point where he can think about someone else. Not because I expect Joss
>to put Riley and Buffy back together again, but simply because he loves
>to find ways to make Buffy's life more complicated.
It's possible, but Joss doesn't usually just throw away characters
like that...my guess is Sam is still in the picture in some way,
shape, or form...we'll see how it goes...I really don't care either
way, but I do hope Buffy and Riley don't get back together...I never
really liked him much.