#but what if joyce had a plot where she was in the same space as her kids again 🤔

[pinkeoni]

The one thing about Will returning to the Upside Down (which will happen, I’m certain of it) is how they plan to work around Joyce and Jonathan, but mostly Joyce. Cause do you really think that Joyce Byers would knowingly let her baby boy go back into that hell hole, even if he wanted to? Or that Jonathan would let him after he had to go coffin shopping for him?

Will is either gonna have to be really discreet about it, or Joyce and Jonathan are going in after him.

[imanes]

doing a lil august reading wrap up because apparently i read 13 (!!) books. in chronological order (bolded are those i recommend):

city of stairs by robert jackson bennett: quite the interesting read. i think the character work in this one is a standout, as well as the world building. the good thing is i have no idea where this trilogy is going so it's exciting. the audiobook for the second book arrives in 2 weeks on my shelves on libby so I'll be reading the sequel soon

braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer: this one took me a whole entire year to read and finish lol. no comment. or maybe one comment: i think i'd have found this book a lot more eye opening if i had read it three years ago so right book wrong time i guess? i do recommend it i just think it didn't impact me as much as i thought it would

the blighted worlds by megan e. o'keefe: this one hit me like a truck!! i was so obsessed. it's a sci-fi space opera with an element of horror and an interesting romance sub-plot. basically everything i love lmao. i really do recommend this book it might actually be my fave of the month

sanctuary by ilona andrews: i have to stay up to date on all things kate daniels-related to this spin off was high on my tbr. it was a lot of fun but it petered out toward the end

where the dark stands still by a.b. poranek: a bit of a let down not gonna lie. the gist of my opinion is that it felt underdeveloped and in turn i felt under-interested in whatever was going on

shadows of self by brandon sanderson: once again i am begging the protagonists of this series to stop being aggravating

the fractured dark by megan e. o'keefe: continuing my obsession with the devoured worlds trilogy... unfortunately i have to wait on my libby hold to get the audiobook of the next one (i read with my eyeballs and listen at the same time to help with concentration)

the right to sex - feminism in the 21st century by amia srinivasan: i read this book because i know of two people who broke up with their significant other (one of them resulting in a divorce) after reading this book so i had to know what srinivasan had cooked in there and yeah she did cook.

the way of kings by brandon sanderson: just part of my re-read in preparation of the release of wind and truth in December. this month we tackle (again) words of radiance teehee

just for the summer by abby jimenez: womp womp womp. idk what it is with romance authors these days they're in a competition with themselves to portray the healthiest love stories but this one teetered on the wrong side of boring one too many times and the volume to therapy-speech in this one was staggering.

the ex vows by joyce jessica: twas a cute poolside read, it's nothing revolutionary but it was pleasant enough and it didn't make me roll my eyes like just for the summer jdkjgsk at least the love interest had a personality and a life... i mean it's fiction so it's not a life but it appeared as if he contained multitudes or something

funny story by emily henry: I'll go ahead and say it nobody writes a contemporary romance quite like miss henry because she's got the secret recipe for the right balance between heartfelt feelings and amusing situations + her dialogues feel a lot more natural than most (though if i had to nitpick she always has this side character who's a fountain of wisdom and gives you life-changing monologues but i guess such people exist out there)

the thief by megan whalen turner: the megans are really out in full force because this is another book written by a megan that i loved so much. yes half of this book is a fairly episodic journey across made-up countries, yes i ate it up, yes the second half is worth the wait (if you were out of patience, which i wasn't, bc i was having fun) and yes the plot twists are chef's kiss. "gen's ambitions are his own" is the perfect summary. everand has all the audiobooks so you know what I'm gonna do... that's right... listen and read at the same time

as an aside the tandem reads i do with both books and audiobooks happen only when i like the narrators. if i find a narrator i like i stick to them like glue because they're few and far between as far as my picky ass is concerned. i never do romance audiobooks they're the worst...

[entelodontidae]

Stranger Things rewatch notes: S3 E1

Important or interesting stuff is in italics

——————————————-

Opening Scene: the Russian portal key

June 28th, 1984

We never figured out what the fuel is. I wonder if it is the same stuff in the demogorgon tanks later on.

Foreshadowing to the last episode with the Two Man key rule. Also Wargames reference and general Cold War movie trope.

Portal opening - signifying them as villains.

Machine breaks - signaling that they still haven’t figured everything out and that they have time.

One year later.

“A little more time could open closing doors.” GENUIS TRANSITION

Mike is holding a “Space Gamer” magazine, it was about TTRPGs!

God he’s so annoying in season three 😭

——————————————-

Starcourt Mall Introduction:

Lucas is wearing an ocean pacific T-shirt, just find it funny because Mike got an off-brand one in s4. Maybe he thought Lucas was cool and wanted to be more like him. Or, it’s just because it was a popular brand.

Day of the Dead. A really good movie choice given the… later happenings of s3 (zombies).

I love how Lucas and max and mike and Will are always paralleled, it’s so sweet

Gorgeous transition to Brimborne Steelworks. They must’ve used a drone.

——————————————-

Open the Door

I DO find it interesting how the first song is about opening closing doors and how this one is about opening closed doors.

Plus the fact that Mike and Will are consistently paralleled to all the other couples.

Oh Bob :(

——————————————-

Dustins’s

Gold leader returning to base in a gold car.

Sooooo many Stephen King references in this one scene (monkey symbols, toys moving on their own)

I’m just going to pretend that the whole Karen thing never happens, but I do find it absolutely hilarious that the cover of the book she’s reading looks like Billy.

——————————————-

Melvalds

Heart-to-heart.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I wonder if mike being the heart has anything at all to do with that or if I’m drawing dots that don’t exist

——————————————-

Dustins again

“The forever clock, very useful in an apocalypse.”

I can’t believe that Mike wouldn’t know what a ham radio is, he’s probably just trying to not be a nerd in front of El

——————————————-

I love how stranger things is just planted and grown in character and human experience, friendship and love. It’s the main thing that makes the show unique, makes it powerful.

I have to say, the cerebro scene has stuck with me ever since watching this show in 2019 on an airplane. It’s just, it feels like being a kid.

——————————————-

Joyce watching TV

“He had a couple sips of Chianti tonight and asked me to marry him.” Heard on TV playing Cheers

Hopper orders Chianti at Enzo’s

In S4, hopper says he was dreaming about Chianti. Maybe that line is foreshadowing

Poor Bob, man.

——————————————-

And the radio call paired with Billy’s crash ties it allll together and gets the plot going! It also raises questions;

Where is the base? Who is this guy (Alexi)? Why are they opening the gate? How will the kids stop it? Etc.

it’s a great opening episode because it introduces these things and leaves you with questions. Aghhhh I just adore this show

[jessicahambys]

finished binging the s4 pt.1 of stranger things. spoiler-heavy thoughts under the cut:

summed up:

we miss the byers - as family and as individual characters. where did they go. why have they disappeared from relevancy to the plot.

we hate forced stancy. this season and all the steve-obsessive fans are going to make a steve anti out of me. 

lumax is the correct ship of the season.

as a jonathan and byers family stan, what a trash season. even tho joyce has a subplot with murray and hopper and jonathan/will have their cali plot going, at the end of the day? absolutely no content. almost no emotional depth. the plots and development have been given to el and hopper in these sequences, joyce moves to further the plot while will is floudnering to be given sexuality plot and jonathan is there for background space. horrific. we have come so far from s1. 

on the romance spectrum, as a stoncy/jancy/stonathan shipper, also a garbage season. why have they decided that stancy should be a thing again? and why did they decide to do this with ZERO developmenet? like, steve having a thing for nancy still? cool, canon, acceptable given how they ended. on the other hand, NANCY having a thing for STEVE? wild. why?? no development given. last we saw them, she was incredibly unstatisfied with steve, incompatitable. she found solace and friendship and kinship with jonathan and was happy - last we left them in s3 jancy were in love and steve???? fully prepared to move on with robin before she came out to him. both of them had moved on (which makes the steve still being hung up on her less plaussible but fine, let’s consider that now that robin’s out he’s back to hung up on nancy okay fine.) 

BUT NOW??? NOW it makes sense that suddenly, jonathan is across the country so now nancy’s catching feels for steve again? even though NOTHING HAS HAPPENED BETWEEN THEM that makes this make sense??? like, literally nothing. they’ve had ZERO solo interactions of merit, no real conversations outside of things related to the plot, but okay, totally makes sense for nancy to stare and for random 3rd person parties to interject into their lives. which is another complaint - why are randos commenting on stancy??? why are they wanting them to get back together??? because (again) no legit interaction has occurred between these two all season - they’ve had NO real interaction since...s2? everything else has been plot or pining from afar by steve. like, omg eddie’s whole speech about true love because nancy jumped in after him??? uncalled for. she truly would have done the same for any of the party i believe bc she’s a gryffindor at heart. but it was giving v much that random lady in s1 who told nancy that love is what made jonathan beat up steve, implying it was love for nancy that made him do it. however, even as a jancy shipper i recognize that no, it was love for his family that made him beat the shit out of steve. same vibes. random third person who knows NOTHING (literally nothing) about the situation butting in with their own opinion on a single event and dubbing it the cause of romantic love even tho the actual circumastances are not that at all.

so i’m dumfounded by the sudden stancy shoving. truly, it’s like the writers expect us to root for it because the audience loves steve and is supposed to want steve to be happy. what makes him happy? nancy, so give him nancy on a silver platter bc even tho it makes no sense for her canon development thus far, we want steve to be happy so who tf cares.

which also, speaking on this situation of steve - this season felt like it catered to him in a way. like he’s been pining after nancy so we’ll have him DO NOTHING and have the girl give him a second glance out of nowehere to make him happy. he’s jealous of his friends new friend? guess what, that new friend is actually jealous of HIM and thinks HE’S the cool one here. he contributes virtually nothing to move the plot forward? still given as much screen time as they can justify because the fans love him. like, lieterally - think about it. he served no purpose to the plot. robin and nancy led the creele lead while eddie, dustin/max/lucas have been leading the upside down lead. steve is v much like jonathan in the respective group where they are both adding to the plot in no real way (steve was dragged to the upside down but that could have just as easily have been one of the others and had no real connection to the character of steve) - but the difference is the writers don’t give two shits about jonathan, but they like steve so they’re gonna give him stupid dumb lines to feed into the himbo vibes given to him by the fans and have him take his shirt off and have the girl he wants have lingering moments with him too and try to do SOMETHING with a character they originally planned to kill of in s1. he’s a pointless character with lots of screentime and it blows.

anyways, i never liked stancy but I tolerated it and shipped it in certain circumstances prior (see: stoncy - we love a monster hunting trio). this season just made me hate them. on the other hand, didn’t think i’d come into this season shipping ronance, and on some level i still don’t, but i would 1000000000% take nancy breaking up with jonathan for robin over returning to steve. new teen ship ranking: jancy, stoncy, stonathan, ronance - then stancy only when its a pre-stoncy situation. 

the season has also made a True lumax shipper out of me. i preferred them to the other alternative in their triangle of dustin/max, and i thought they were cute in s2 but lost them in s3 with the other drama bc they were very much sidelined to support mileven in s3, but s4??? s4 reignited my love for that dyanmic as well as my love for lucas and max as characters (i liked them prior but now i stan). how anyone can leave this season not loving lumax and lucas and max as ships and individual characters is beyond me. im flabbergasted at how byler and steve have taken over the tag when lumax were the true highlights. 

i also stan how songs are used in this show. i feel like that was missing in s3 after we had 2 seasons of should i stay or should i go used iconically. i am so happy to see songs return as a focal point with running up that hill. dear billy’s ending secene?? immaculate. 

i think they have good set up of byler with will coming out, but im still on the fence about reciprocated byler. will def has a crush on mike. i think mike also knows this?? like he lowkey Knows the same way he lowkey Knew will was gay in s3, he just hasn’t actually faced it, and I feel like it can go either way with him. 

i think my ideal kid ships are lumax and byler, but i also wouldn’t be oppossed to a trio with lucas/max/eleven?? where lucas and eleven are max’s bf and gf. idk that montage at the end of dear billy was v much lucas and eleven heavy and i was feeling it for max liking them both. 

in regards to the seperate plots, i liked the plots this season. i was not vibing with the hopper plot initially, like hopper/joyce/murray sequences were times when I felt I could take my eyes off the screen and listen while doing smth else initially. that changed as the demogorgon bit rolled in. by the end i was vibing with this plot.eleven’s plot had me invested because i was so curious as to what happened at the end in her memory. i was satisfied by what happened. the cali plot had no plot, but I will take my byers scraps where I can. meanwhile, the creel story was the most interesting. i was most intrigued by max’s trauma and experiences with henry (dear billy is my fave epiosde of this lot I think) and nancy and robin finding out about it was cool. i like theintersection between it and eleven’s plot. i think the hawkins crew had the most intriguing bits of that plot in the first four episodes, and then el had the most intriguing bit of that plot in the last few episodes. 

[alas-poor-cesario]

Fannish 50 - #1 The Body

I'm taking part in the Fannish 50 and originally wasn't going to cross post but why not.

This is the first of the 50 TV Episodes from "Older" Fandoms that Shaped Me as a Fan that I want to talk about because when I think of impactful TV episodes this is pretty much top of the list every single time. 

Massive Trigger Warnings For This: 

Death of a parent

CPR

Grief

Context for the Episode

Original Air Date: 27/02/2001 Season: 5 Episode: 16

The cold open of this episode picks up from where the last one left off. There's no recap at the start of this episode either. 

So at the end of the previous episode we see Buffy walk in the door and see that her Mam has got flowers and she calls for her, getting no response Buffy walks into the front room and finds her Mam on the couch with pale skin.

The Plot of the Episode

This episode is broken into 4 parts; (titles from the wiki)

The Daughter

The Sisters

The Family

The Body

The first thing we see after the credits is a flashback to Christmas at Buffy's house. Everyone is having fun, it's filled with joy and it's so important to have this at the start of the episode. Then, piece by piece we see Buffy coming to terms with it; her on the phone with the ambulance service, then Giles coming over and seeing "the body", her friends finding out and all of them dealing with it.

Impact on me

Act 1

Each act starts with a shot of the body on the floor which is powerful. It keeps reminding you of what's happened and confronting it. You're not allowed to forget what Buffy has and is seeing

Lack of music - it's haunting that normally you get background noise and songs in these episodes but here you have nothing. You're confronted with this absence and it makes you focus on everything going on the screen a lot more.

The opening shot with Christmas was put in so you wouldn't have Joss Whedon's name over the long shot of Sarah Michelle Geller reacting to seeing Joyce dead. 

Seeing Buffy and hearing her say Mom and then Mommy - the childlike aspect of it reminded me how young Buffy is and how long she's been dealing with this. She's been dealing with vampires and the Hellmouth and this responsibility but at the same time dealing with being a kid and having to go to school and do homework and having a life. She's just a scared kid here, and she's allowed to be.

Buffy doing CPR and the ribs cracking as she's doing it really got me the first time I watched this episode. I knew that it was the case it could happen but this made me confront the thoughts of having to do it and what it would be like if that happened to me. 

The fact that this is the one monster she can't defeat - death.

"she's cold" "the body is cold" "no, my mom"

This broke me a bit because it's something so small, but so powerful 

And for those who watched that episode and then went into a healthcare setting, then you've had this reminder, this thing in the back of your mind that these are not just "bodies" these are real people. These are people that mean the world to someone else. 

"we're not supposed to move the body"  and it sort of dawns on her there, when she uses the same phrasing as the person she was speaking to on the phone. That's the moment it hits her that this is real. That her mam is now a body, it's both her mam and not her mam anymore now that she's passed.

Act 2

The fake out bit with Dawn worked so well

The art class - we're looking at a woman's body and the negative space around that

We don't really see the bit where Buffy tells Dawn we see what the other students in the classroom would be able to 

we're watching the pain of others on the TV, we're onlookers

Also Dawn's conversation is something so teenager-y and normal and it's at times, we get a bit of humour with the "Annals of History" pronunciation but it's cut short

Everyone realises something has happened, but isn't sure what it is exactly

I had it when I saw my partner come into my work before Christmas. I instantly knew something had happened, just not what it was specifically.

And the final bit of this act is that we see the body that Dawn has drawn and that stings so badly having just seen her and Buffy talking.

Act 3

So Buffy, way back in Act 1, pulled down Joyce's skirt to cover her for when the paramedics /coroner got there and now we see Joyce's body and they're cutting the clothes off her. 

The silence when we see Xander and Willow just hits you. 

Willow not being able to choose an outfit is so relatable. Black being too somber, yellow being too happy, and she wants the blue jumper because Joyce liked it but she can't find it and that's what she's focusing on.

The fear of her not having grown up enough outfits for this when Willow is normally the character I imagine when I want to think of someone upbeat in Buffy.

This being the first time we see Tara and Willow kiss. It's absolutely magical in that they're there for each other in that moment, and it can't be swept under the rug with the here for the gay representation and then they're gone once ratings go up. 

The first proper boyfriend I had, he got together with me around the same time my Grandfather passed away and he was so supportive and amazing with me and then coincidentally my fiance got together with me around the time my uncle passed and having this in the episode? Showing that there's still relationships and happiness and we're seeing the comfort on screen? Beautiful.

Anya is the only one who can really ask these questions and she doesn't understand and that's heartbreaking. The others don't really understand her here but I think that's why it works so well. She's not human, she hasn't been around humans like this and had these experiences before and it's new to her and she doesn't understand.

They feel like she shouldn't be talking like that about it.

Xander and Willow here reminded me of what it was like when I lost my Granda and my best friends in the world were there for me and looking after me, and there's been moments where it isn't a family member but it's someone close to a friend of mine and it hurts so bad and then you have these little moments where you just make things normal when comforting each other.

Act 4

Dawn asks to see Joyce and it didn't occur to me that she hasn't seen her before this. She's been told by Buffy but it's abstract at this point, it's not real. Buffy saw her, Giles has even seen her but Dawn hasn't.

Giles is being protective over Buffy  here and filling out the forms and taking the role of a father. 

There's this reveal that Tara has done this before in this act and I love the way it's done. Buffy apologises and says she hasn't done this before, and Tara says that she has. It was when she was 17. She says yes and no to it being sudden, because even if you know it'll happen it still comes as a surprise. 

There's a vamp in the morgue and it attacks Dawn and life goes on, things are still as Normal as they can be considering what's happened.

And there's something about Dawn finally seeing Joyce, and asking where she went when Buffy says it's not her.

[avalonlights]

5 and 11 for the ask thing?

Thanks for the ask 💖💖💖

5. Favorite outfit?

Ooh! I loved Steve's soft yellow shirt. And Steve's lack of shirt. LMAO at Max snatching the binoculars. Speaking of Max, I love the way they used clothing to show how she was feeling. Big, baggy dark stuff in the beginning of the season to show she was closed off and hiding (Billy's clothes? 🤔) and then back to her normal colorful, blocky, interesting stuff when she reconnected with the group.

11. FREE SPACE! SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT TO SAY ABOUT ST4!

Heh. Anybody want my probably very stupid, unedited Notes-App-on-my-phone thought dump from right after I finished watching Friday night? No? Here it is anyway. xD

I still love mike (come at me lol), god that actor tries

NGL i cheered when eleven clotheslined angela lmao

What like… new happened... this season…… um

So billy wasn’t the blue-eyed monster. I'm...relieved? Maybe?

Was this like. A trailer for st4? Anybody?

Dear Billy was SO good. Like, they were so close. The emotional heart of this show resurfaced in this ep. for sure. On that hill at the cemetery. With the OG characters hugging. Wish it had stayed.

Max, holy shit. Carrying this season like her bro.

Also hell yeah Lucas, you gem. Lumax back again.

And Dustin. He is like. Main Character 2 in ST4? I don't object.

So Eddie is literally just billy 2.0. Like what the fuck??? I liked him but just couldn't help but think THIS COULD HAVE BEEN BILLY

Where the fuck is Neil??? He couldn’t live there without billy?? Hahaha. Also I could have sworn we all saw Will Chase at a reading for this season but maybe that was the Russian guard who knows.

Stop trying to make fetch Stancy happen. Fetch Stancy is not going to happen. Also Steve or Nancy is so going to die. That's my bet. Shit. Poor character assassinated Jonathan. Sorry bud.

This didn’t need… most of the new characters for this same plot. Um.

I finally understand why MBB and Noah in that at interview were like they should just start killing ppl Red Wedding style lol

Go Murray and Joyce I guess? Like even Joyce got sidelined lol

They're still just doing what they were doing last season haha

Billy in the upside down and 2yr time travel we’re RIGHT THERE. I have zero trust this will be touched on in pt. 2. 🤷‍♂️

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BILLY AFTER WATERGATE

lol watergate ilu dustin

Incredibly not a single spoiler for ST4 could have even phased me; I feel like literally nothing happened lol? Huh. Confusing.

Enjoyable I guess. Don't know what I was expecting?

[nileqt87]

How I’d write a Buffy/Angel spinoff!

I still say the best spinoff they could possibly ever make would be all the Chosen Slayers getting deactivated, then Buffy and a Shanshu'd Angel (IMO, this plot really would only work with Angel, because it actually matches his story arc, not Spike's, to want a human life and fatherhood) have a daughter who grows up not knowing the truth about her parents (and half-brother!) until it's forced to come out.

I would particularly note that the first thing that happens to newly-called Slayers is their prophetic dreams. If ever there was a way to start breaking secrets to this new heroine that also serves as flashback exposition featuring the old shows, this seems custom-built for it. It’s exposition for the audience that never saw the old shows as well as an introduction to a key Slayer ability, but most importantly, it’s personal family revelations that go far deeper than historical flashbacks of unrelated persons or monsters that mean nothing personal. These would be scandalous secrets for a baby Slayer, given Buffy was the rule-breaking Slayer who is most famous for having romantic relationships with the very creatures she’s supposed to slay. Angelus would be the worst family secret of all! This story has all the makings of an existential crisis before acceptance. That would also be a good place to drop in Connor’s history. Buffy never actually got to react to that bombshell either, so that would be an interesting drama with her, as well. Buffy and Angel both tended to feature heavily in prophetic dreams, so it also just feels right to continue that.

If there's some reason why David Boreanaz (who, let's face it, is really not getting younger and SEAL Team can't go on forever) can't or is unwilling to appear, one could have an explanation that Wolfram & Hart has had him trapped in a holding dimension for years as punishment.

You could even build an arc around that with Buffy or the daughter trying to find him. Basically, a kind way of explaining Angel's absence if necessary and Buffy unfortunately having to mirror her single mother (which was a fear of hers), despite it being no fault of Angel's. It would be yet more cruelty for him to miss out on yet another child growing up, which would be a dramatic plot point itself. It could actually become a story where he does matter quite a lot, despite initial absence or mystery.

An even bigger shock than mom having Slayer superpowers and a world full of supernatural forces would be a reveal that dad is a 394+-year-old (depends on if you count hell--in a modern-day spinoff, Angel is rapidly approaching 400 years!) ex-vampire.

The most interesting and fitting story you could ever do with a maturing Buffy would be having her be a mother and trying to have a normal life.

This would also give Sarah Michelle Gellar a starring role that allows her to be age-appropriate, yet also having a younger generation that the original audience can still care about because she isn't completely divorced from the two previous shows in the way that an unrelated Slayer spinoff would be. It allows the core storylines of *both* shows to truly matter, far more than a Buffy Steele-Gunn offspring would.

---

Just a a few notes about my pitch for a continuation that works with the real ages of actors and their availability... I should also note that Xander (played by Nick, anyway--Kelly might work for a flashback) is a character who could never appear in live-action again, so maybe he could be used as another event that contributed to Buffy's retirement besides pregnancy.

If the Shanshu and conception were directly post-NFA, any offspring would be 16 years old right now. IMO, if there were any plans to give SMG a series with her in a major supporting role, this just means that the space for how long between NFA and the Shanshu or how long Bangel got to be with each other widens for however many years it would take to revive the franchise.

I strongly believe that the best option for the franchise would be a back-to-the-suburbs story exploring age-appropriate Buffy facing motherhood, rather than trying to turn Buffy into a war general surrounded by nothing but subordinates (horribly alienating future for her) with a lack of equals or a grounded setting à la the season 8 comics. If you want to introduce the Buffyverse to a new audience whom you can't expect to watch 24-year-old shows until they're interested enough by the revival, you're going to have to ground characters in a relatable reality.

As for how a new Slayer would be called after deactivation, I firmly believe the line is through Faith now anyway, so it would just take her dying for a minute à la Prophecy Girl for a new Slayer to be called. I would definitely want Faith in the show!

--- Facebook discussion

I feel like SMG's concern was less wanting to reprise the role entirely, but more concern that she'd be expected to play the same exact role in her 40s. This is giving her a role that fits a woman (and a mother in real life) who is in her 40s and is a major supporting role rather than he young lead whose story is being centered on.

As for the Angel situation, SMG might actually be more willing to return if she could beg DB to come back for perhaps an initially-limited role and the scenario is one I believe she'd actually support, as it fits with her preferences!

While it might seem that Buffy as a single mother retreads the original, Angel is obviously nothing like the Hank situation (not to mention Joyce and Hank being completely clueless), so the circumstances of the father would be quite different from Buffy's own situation, while also feeding into her own stated fears about her future.

This also brings up all the conversations in Bad Eggs, The Prom and the Chosen cookie dough analogy (children are mentioned again) to the forefront. Unlike with the other options, it was something that came up repeatedly. Admittedly, it was always by Angel due to his infertility and the human life he most desired; all of which ended up being an important part of *his* story.

However, a part of Bad Eggs that is woefully underrated is that Buffy was disappointed when Angel told her vampires can't have children. She immediately covers it up with a babble speech and then starts making excuses for why Slayers are unlikely to have that kind of future. Young Buffy did not disregard it because she didn't want children ever at all, but because the person whom she saw that future with was someone who couldn't have them.

Enter Nikki Wood, where Buffy learns that at least one Slayer was definitely a mother, which she was clearly surprised by.

That's another reason why I can see Buffy, if she got her hopes up with post-Shanshu Angel and conceived, would do anything to be a good mom by not being all about "the mission". She would never want her child to be raised without parents. And I think she'd be doubly sensitive to that, not just because of Nikki, but because of Hank leaving and Joyce dying.

Buffy also became surrogate mother to Dawn, who was made out of her (in a sense, she is her real mother), so Angel's situation with Connor actually had a direct mirror in Buffy's situation with Dawn.

But those conversations were also not just about wished-for children that couldn't be conceived, but also asking Buffy to think about what she wants for her future if she took out the belief that Slayers don't live long enough to have one.

This show would be the answer to what happens to a Slayer when she does live long enough to have the future she barely wanted to get her hopes up for before.

Buffy (ditto Angel) is the character for which this story actually has a ton of setup in the shows themselves. These characters talked about it! And the circumstances are really nothing like Joyce and Hank, even if the initial setup plays into both Buffy and Angel's worst nightmare scenarios about parenthood: being a single mother and not getting to raise the miracle child you thought you'd never have. That kind of bittersweet writing that shirks too-good-to-be-true wish-fulfillment is a cornerstone of what makes it a Buffyverse storyline. If the daughter's family lied to her about their history to keep her safe and protect her from knowing what goes bump in the night (making them the polar opposites of Hank and Joyce in regards to knowing all too well--especially Angel's experience of being the worst thing you could bump into at night, rather than utterly clueless), that would certainly be a conflict. Especially if she found out in a particularly shocking way (say, prophetic dreams). And if Angel (I'd like to imagine he has the company of ghost!Wesley and maybe Illyria and Spike) has been taken for punishment by Wolfram & Hart, it might really confuse her if she doesn't know that he didn't just leave or some other excuse Buffy covered it up with. Wolfram & Hart would also probably love the irony of Angel getting what he most desires (to be human and a father), only to punish him with it by wasting his remaining years separated from all that he loves.

[mccoys-killer-queen]

Cruel Summer (up until episode 7) rant:

they could’ve easily closed the entire story arc within this season (court case and Annabelle explained and all) if they wanted to, they just chose to stretch it out and make half the episodes filler episodes in order to keep viewers there and have an excuse to make a second season and profit more off of it

i saw a post recently where the op said “they were really overdramatic with the whole ‘Jeanette stole Kate’s life’ trope bc all she did was start hanging out with Kate’s friends and dating Kate’s boyfriend” and I totally agree 102%. 

as much as I like the show, they kinda tried a little hard to be the Stranger Things of the 90s

KATE AND MALLORY SHOULD’VE KISSED OH MY FUCKING GOD THE MOMENT AND THE ENERGY WAS THERE IT WOULD’VE BEEN P E R F E C T

I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Joyce more but :3) *cocks shotgun*

what doesn’t make sense to me is that up until this point, everyone took it as Kate was kidnapped, when it was very clear that she ran away then disappeared. What has Kate been telling everyone then? What was her story of the kidnapping then? How did she make it make sense? Why haven’t we heard about this?

I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Jamie more but :3) *loads bazooka*

I FUCKING HATE JAMIE HORNY LITTLE FUCK PRESSURING KATE INTO A PROMISE RING LIKE CALM THE FUCK DOWN DUDE YOU’RE 16 YOUR BALLS PROBABLY HAVEN’T EVEN DROPPED YET HOLY SHIT GO GET A SLURPEE AND MASTURBATE IN YOUR BEDROOM FFS

the relationship between Jeanette’s brother and Kate’s stepsister (I can’t even remember either of their names bc I swear they only say them twice in the whole show) comes out of nowhere bc they only interact twice in the entire show? and then they suddenly sleep together? 

Everyone in this show always always always ALWAYS looks like they’re about to cry and it’s really annoying 

KATE SHOULD’VE HIT JOYCE IT’S WHAT THAT CUNT DESERVES AND IT WOULD’VE GIVEN HER IMMENSE SATISFACTION AND CLOSURE

They should’ve conveyed Martin to be more of a creep bc honestly there’s not much evidence to give the viewer more of a warning. Like yeah I got the message that he’s infatuated with Kate but when he’s alone you’d never guess? I feel like they needed to have him doodling her name or kissing a photo of her or something like that

They’re still not clear on what he *did* to Kate while she was hostage- yeah we know he kept her in the basement and manipulated her with food and stuff but other than that... there’s just a lot of empty space there

Why tf did they only mention Annabelle 3 times and leave that so open ended ffs it felt so unnecessary

We needed more Angela

I hate these episodes where you only see Kate and no Jeanette and vice versa it just makes it go a lot slower (as mentioned before, they were obviously trying to D R A G it out on purpose)

what was the point of having Vince and his romantic subplot...? Just an excuse for freeform to go “look! we got gays! :D do we win yet?” like jesus they only mention it twice and it has no meaning to the show or the plot whatsoever (yet) and also seemed very unnecessary

this whole show seemed structured very badly with subplots and stuff not feeling real and being very sporadic and overdramatic at all times, not to mention the obvious dragging of the plot, and while I did like it and was interested I can sum it up as “trying too hard” 

THE ONLY REASON WHY I STARTED WATCHING THIS SHOW IN THE FIRST PLACE IS BECAUSE THE ADS WOULDN’T LEAVE THE FUCK ALONE HOLY SHIT THEY WERE ON EVERY FUCKING PLATFORM THAT I WAS ON AND IT WAS THE SAME AD OVER AND OVER AND OVER “YoU THinK oNe DAy i’LL jUst *POoF* bE PreTTy aND PopULaR” “i DiSaPPeaRed aND sHE ToOK mY PLAcE” AND EVERYTHING IN THE COMMERCIALS HAD ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL PLOT IT’S NOT TRYING TO ROPE PEOPLE IN BC THEY’RE FLASH FICTION, IT’S JUST BAD MARKETING

So Kate parents KNEW she ran away, did they NOT TELL ANYONE THAT?? Bc when you watch the news reports it sounds like they have no idea that she ran away

*huff* thanks for coming to my ted talk and we’ll see you in 45 years next week when the next season episode comes out and we get to bury Joyce next to Martin Harris

edit: it’s been brought to my attention that there’s still 3 more episodes left? I checked wikipedia not long ago and they only had up to 7 episodes listed, and based on the title of ep 7 it sounded (and seemed) liked a finale to me, so I corrected that. I also added #20

[ofstormsandwolves]

i finally got around to reading the faith oneshot and issue 23 of the buffy comics  so uh let’s talk about it?? 

(spoilers under cut):

Faith oneshot

Ok, so mostly I just really hate the council thanks to this. and, like, I’m totally cool with that, because it’s the council. But in a way the whole training Faith and then drugging her so she doesn’t remember feels worse than what Travers would do in tv canon. like, yes, there’s the cruciamentum, but this is a regular thing they do to Faith and probably countless other slayers. 

it’s also making me now question if they did the same to Buffy, because Faith was identified as a potential even though she was supposedly way down the list in terms of her chances of being called. so have they done the same thing to Buffy?

I don’t like that the council view anything outside of slaying as a ‘distraction’, including friends and hopes of a better life. it’s no surprise, and that was kinda the policy in the tv canon, but the fact that they are basically drugging the potentials to control them more is absolutely horrific.

Also I don’t trust that Raquel, and Wes clearly knows something shady about her which makes me wonder what exactly is the drug they’re giving the potentials. 

I’m also worried that Wes is apparently going along with whatever plan the council have set out. I know he has concerns, and it feels similar to Giles going through with the cruciamentum but so far in the main comics he hasn’t wavered and i really hope this doesn’t go on for ages...

it was interesting to get more backstory for Faith, though, and this was a good little oneshot to show us what’s been going on with her and how she was called etc. Though Wilkins working with the council is a red flag so huge it could probably be seen from space...

Buffy #23

So I both did and didn’t like this issue, because while everything made sense from a narrative stand point, the characters kinda bugged me at times, particularly Xander, Faith, and Wes. 

Also, Cordelia has apparently dropped off the face of the planet- maybe someone should check the hellmouth??

ALSO i forgot about the art and i still don’t love it, everyone still feels a little too squishy-faced to me (also can we have buffy with straight hair again rather than curly/ wavy? mix it up a little?)

i need Ethan back to be an annoying jiminy cricket and sort Wes out. I get that Wes has been put in charge by Dorothy, but he knows the council aren’t always good, and it’s kinda frustrating to see him making the same mistakes as in tv canon (as in not listening to buffy or giles/ thinking he knows best when he doesn’t understand the whole situation)

i also get that the Xander stuff looks insane to Faith and Wes, and it’s totally in character for Faith to call Buffy and Kendra out for not dealing with it sooner but like... that also just made me sad that this is happening (i’ll come back to this point later)

Wes and Faith overruling Buffy/ Kendra and trying to leave without Giles is in character but also annoying so like... i have mixed feelings about this. It makes sense for the narrative, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

that little gollum demon thing is hilarious, particularly when Kendra takes him to Giles and he’s like ‘unfortunately i’m also here’. i hope he sticks around.

Morgan understanding that this isn’t her wish but Anya’s is amazing and makes me wonder if she’s gonna team up with Buffy and Giles and potentially hang about in Sunnydale for a bit.

I KNEW Anya wouldn’t give Willow that amulet for nothing. I thought it was to try and win them over so that she could convince Buffy that the Council/ Giles/ Wood are evil (as in, she could say how she’d helped them in the hellmouth/ with the amulet Willow had to bring back Xander etc.) but instead it’s to access other planes and bring across Dark!Willow from a different plane.

I liked the fact that Rose and Robin joined them for the fight against Xander, because they didn’t really have much to do this issue so it was nice to see them get in on the action (and also great to see Rose having Buffy’s back)

Vamp Xander telling Buffy that Dark!Willow is her fault really irked me. Again, it’s in character, it makes sense. But it really reminded me of Dawn saying in ‘same time same place’ about ‘is anybody going to blame Willow?’ because like... Buffy absolutely could have talked to Willow more, but Willow didn’t exactly want to talk, and it isn’t up to Buffy to babysit her friend.

Plus when Willow was asked about the amulet at the scooby meeting she started snapping at everyone so she’s not exactly little miss innocent in all of this, and she doesn’t seem all that interested in being there for Buffy as she struggles to deal with having another two slayers around. both of them have been wrapped up in the own things and neither of them have been great friends, but they share that blame.

Also this fits with the totally annoying trend of Willow and Xander blaming Buffy for things going wrong/ not taking responsibility for their part in things (for instance, them getting mad at her trying to leave again in ‘dead man’s party’ after they actively avoided her) because Xander’s immediate assumption is that Willow going dark is Buffy’s fault for ignoring her and not his fault for, you know, abducting Ms. Calendar or trying to kidnap Joyce and Buffy and having his minions attack Eric.

Also Vamp Xander reducing Buffy’s lack of confidence in her slaying abilities compared to Kendra and Faith to her competing in a ‘slayer pageant’. like it’s some cutesy little thing where the winner gets a pretty sash and some flowers, rather than, you know, a sacred calling that involves defending the world against the forces of darkness. of course, he’s a vamp, so he could just be being a jerk and human Xander wouldn’t say it, but it still sucked because it made Buffy’s concerns/ fears sound shallow and stupid.

and that brings me back to my point about this issue making me sad; it really got me thinking about the fact that Buffy doesn’t actually seem to have anything right now. Xander’s been vamped, she and Willow are technically friends but they’re both dealing with their own things and not really talking, Kendra and Faith are fellow slayers but Buffy feels like she’s not quite as good as them, Rose is nice and all but she’s Willow’s ex/ Kendra’s girlfriend. There’s Giles, but he’s her Watcher, there’s Robin, but she and him have been weird since the night at the hotel, Wes is being a jerk, and she can’t tell her mom or Eric. Seriously, what does Buffy have? She’s totally alone. her friends are either dead, distracted, or not really her friends.

so yeah, it was a good comic in terms of the plot moving on (plus maybe Dark!Willow can wipe out Vamp!Xander and we can move on to a new plot) but it kinda depressed me...

[baldrambo]

On Joyce Byers....

Joyce Byers is a bad ass.  So why is she handled with kid gloves by everyone?  This is a bit of a companion discussion to my Hopper post from a few weeks ago. Like my prior meta, I will discuss what I believe to be truths about Joyce and her arc, which don’t appear to be aligned with most analyses of her character that I’ve seen elsewhere. I will make 5 assertions and address each of them below the cut because (as per the norm) this got really long and I am not trying to clog up people’s dashboards.

Assertion 1: We have no canon evidence that Lonnie was physically abusive and making Joyce his victim does a disservice to her characterization

Assertion 2: What Bob represented to Joyce was more important to her arc than Bob himself (aka Bob/Joyce were not really a good match)

Assertion 3: Making fun of/being frustrated by Joyce’s magnet obsession misses the point of her arc in S3, which was about her pro-activity rather than reactivity

Assertion 4: Joyce inappropriately attempts to compartmentalize Hopper (aka Joyce needs to let Lonnie and Bob go if she’s to ever move on)

Assertion 5: Joyce is not a delicate cinnamon roll in need of our protection she is a BAMF and should be treated as such.

Assertion 1:

Our first introduction to Joyce is as a small, mousy, anxious, chain-smoking single mom who….can’t find her keys.  And not because she is is careless. She has literally SO much on her plate at any given moment that the location of her keys is trivial until it’s not.  She works long hours at a low-wage job to support her boys.  She really has no life outside of work, paying bills, and cleaning house.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  She is just barely scraping by. 

And yet we learn through flashbacks fairly quickly after Will’s disappearance that despite working long hours, despite the constant stress….she still manages to find time to parent her boys.  And not just be any old parent, mind you.  Joyce Byers is a good parent.  When Will is out in Castle Byers she doesn’t just barge in.  She respects his personal space, remembers a unique nerdy password, and waits for him to tell her that she can enter.  She then trusts his judgment when he says that he can handle watching Poltergeist. This is later juxtaposed by the scene in Nancy’s bedroom with Jonathan where Karen attempts to enter the bedroom after Nancy has had to lock it.  Jonathan looks at Nancy, a little shocked, and says “she doesn’t knock?” Which is weird to him, of course, because Joyce would always knock.  Now lets contrast Joyce, who is Mother of the Year, with Lonnie Byers who is a Grade A Piece of Shit™. He abandoned the family and hasn’t seen them in years.  And when he was around, he spent his time being a deadbeat, calling his son a faggot, and trying to force his boys into being “manlier” and more mainstream.

We first meet Lonnie in 1x2 when Jonathan drives out to Indianapolis to confirm that Will is in fact, not with his father.  When Lonnie’s girlfriend answers the door, Jonathan pushes past her and into the home, shouting for his brother.  Lonnie then comes in from outside, grabs Jonathan, and pushes him up against a wall.  Only then does he realize it’s his son.  Lonnie hadn’t seen Jonathan in so long that he almost didn’t recognize him, and initially thought him an intruder. Jonathan angrily shoves Lonnie back, who steps back and laughs. Notably, Jonathan does not appear to fear Lonnie and Lonnie makes no attempt to otherwise assert any other type of physical control over Jonathan. Lonnie talks to him like he’s an adult.

When Lonnie returns in 1x5 for Will’s funeral, he is an immediate negative influence who has Joyce up drinking all night, calls her crazy, and starts sniping at Jonathan about some stupid poster in his bedroom being inappropriate.  However, there is no real confrontation until Joyce finds the flyer in his belongings and realizes he is attempting to collect on Will’s “death.”  She screams at Lonnie and holds her ground when he shouts back.  She shoves him. She gets in his face and throws his bag at him.  And then little 5′2 Joyce Byers successfully throws a grown ass man out of her house.  He never raises a hand to her.

This is not a Lonnie Byers apology piece.  Lonnie Byers is a shitty dad, shitty partner, shitty person.  I think an entirely separate piece could be written on the emotional abuse of his boys (although in the 80′s Midwest much of that would be considered normal, but that’s another essay).  But there is nothing to suggest that Lonnie ever hit them, or Joyce.  If the Duffers wanted Lonnie to be physically abusive, they would make it obvious, no?

The most clear example of this? Neil Hargrove. When he enters Billy’s bedroom in 2x8, he has complete control.  Over Billy, his wife, the conversation.  He overtly strikes Billy, humiliates him, and it’s clear that Billy fears him.  Susan Hargrove also fears him, and she stands in the background for the entire confrontation, avoiding eye contact, saying nothing.  The only time she attempts to intercede is to diffuse the situation, diffuse Neil, when he commands that Billy apologize and quickly shuts up when it’s clear her efforts didn’t work.  She then exits the room, first allowing him to leave the room before her. The dynamics here are light years from Joyce/Lonnie/Jonathan.

Ok so.  Why am I bringing all of this up? Because, imo, turning Lonnie into a physical abuser cuts at the heart of Joyce’s characterization.  Joyce Byers is a fighter.  That’s what Bob loved about her.  “You fight back,” he told her, in a somewhat awestruck voice.  Joyce is not a Susan Hargrove. None of this is to suggest that Susan is to blame for what she has gone through, or that somehow Joyce is better for not being like her. I contrast them because the Duffer brothers do. Joyce will steamroll anyone and anything that gets in her way to protect her boys.  If she’s on a mission….if she is trying to save someone…watch out.  Making Lonnie a physical abuser so he can be a plot device, or because it makes it easier to hate and villainize him upsets the core of Joyce’s character. And it changes the entire show.

Assertion 2:

Much of Joyce’s inner strength shines through in S2.  When S2 begins, Joyce can’t leave Will’s side and still worries about him incessantly.  She’s overbearing and “struggles to function” whenever she is not with him.  She is forced to re-live the horrors of what her and her family went through every time she goes to Hawkins Lab and worse…she has to place her trust in the very same people who nearly ripped her family apart.  Yet, she doesn’t give up, she soldiers on for Jonathan and Will.  But so much like S1, S2 Joyce is helpless.  She is unable to control what is happening around her.  The events of S1-S2 make her reactionary, she gets dragged along by the plot instead of driving the plot.

But there is one bright spot of happiness for her…..Bob.  He is the exact opposite of Lonnie in every way.  He is kind, thoughtful, hardworking, honest, and trustworthy.  He put Joyce first, he tried to bond with and be a parent to Will and Jonathan. And he was willing to jump in to the fray when he had no idea what was going on to save her, save everyone despite being absolutely terrified.  Bob Newby. Superhero.

There are some early warning signs that perhaps….we as the audience are not supposed to view this as the perfect match? Jonathan, in particular, doesn’t seem to approve at all, in fact, it downright confuses him.  He confides in Will that he doesn’t understand what Joyce sees in him and later gets agitated when he learns that Bob has stayed the night.  Hopper, too, seems to struggle with it. And while a lot of that can probably be chalked up to the early signs of jealousy, his forced “I’m happy for you” appears to be at least somewhat tied to his inability to take her dating “Bob the Brain” seriously.  Why drop all these hints if it doesn’t mean anything?

It’s the conversation she has with Bob in 2x2 on Halloween that really cements Joyce’s arc and Bob’s central purpose.  While they’re dancing to Kenny Rogers, he starts prattling on about moving to Maine.  He’s in love with her, he knows being in Hawkins is hard for her.  So why not start over again and be a family? “We aren’t a normal family.” She tells Bob.  His response is simple: “It could be.” And that moment plants that seed for Joyce.  What if they COULD be a happy, nuclear family?  What if they COULD leave all that trauma behind them and finally find safety and security?  She starts thinking on it so much that by the end of S2 when Bob brings it up again, she’s all but ready. And the Duffers have confirmed, if Bob had survived she would have gone with him to Maine.

But here’s the thing: what if someone else besides Bob had planted the idea in her head? Would she have wanted it any less?  Or consider, was it really Bob himself that drove her desire, or was it always lying dormant there waiting to be activated?  If she had started dating Hopper after S1 instead and HE had been the one to make the suggestion, would she have desired it any less?  Did she really love Bob himself, or the idea of him?

It’s easy to romanticize Bob because he seemed perfect, he represented the happy ending that Joyce wants, that WE WANT for her, but here’s the thing.  There is no perfect guy.  You can’t move a few states away and leave behind Demogorgons and another dimension that nearly killed your son.  That stays with you wherever you go, and you have to face it and deal with it.  You can’t run away from trauma, and Joyce has to realize this.  Joyce is chasing a mirage. Perhaps Bob was kind of a mirage, too. 

Assertion 3:.

The Joyce we see at the end of s2 seems….like she’s going to be okay.  She has her boys, Hopper’s friendship.  She’s lost Bob but the Gate is closed now, everyone is safe (or so everyone thinks).  But then there’s S3 Joyce.  She’s lonely, isolated, sad, discontent, and restless.  The kids are trying to move on from the events of S1-S2.  But she’s unable to.  She’s unable to move on from Bob, from her fear that her boys could still be in danger, from the feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong again and she won’t be able to stop it. 

So Joyce preemptively reshapes her arc.  She decides she is going to put her own house on the market.  Bob may not be coming with her but goddammit she is going to move anyway and find safety somewhere else.  When she notices the magnets fall off the fridge she is not going to wait and see what happens, SHE is going to go research magnets and solenoids and weird science stuff she doesn’t understand and SHE is going to figure it out and SHE is going bring it to Hopper before shit hits the fan.  And when they call the military, SHE is not going to wait around for them to show up and save her kids.  She’s going to take action herself.

Thus, Joyce is driving much of the plot in S3, rather than being dragged along by the plot as she was in S1-S2.  She is not focusing all of her time and energy on Will and his safety, and reacting to where he is and what he’s doing, she is able to focus on Hopper, El, the Party, the bigger picture.  Will kept her focus narrowed, magnets expanded them.

And perhaps most significantly, the magnet obsession is what ultimately saved the day.  Joyce is the hero of S3.  Think about who saved the day in S1-S2.  Who were the heroes?  El and Hopper.  In S1, El sacrificed herself to kill the Demogorgon and save the Party and Hopper resuscitated Will.  In S2, El and Hopper closed the Gate.  In S3, who saved the day? El?  She had no power.  She wasn’t even the one fighting the Meat Flayer. Hopper?  He was trapped on the platform.  Who closed the Gate and killed the “Meat Flayer?”  Joyce.  By herself. This ended the threat, this stopped the “Meat Flayer,” this saved El and the Party.

I think it’s easy to miss all of this due to the tonal shift in S3, which added some silliness to the plot lines that didn’t exist in S1-S2.  On the surface, obsessing about magnets instead of your son seems ridiculous.  But this shift gave Joyce’s character a chance to breathe, a chance to grapple with her own feelings, what she wants, it gave her a chance to just be Joyce instead of Mom™.  So S3 is about her, instead of what is happening to her. 

And i think, ultimately, this tonal shift in S3 is what allowed that to happen.  If the circumstances in S3 were the same as S1-S2, then the Duffers wouldn’t have had this freedom.  If we want to see Joyce grow as a character, there has to be time and energy spent on her away from her kids and away from the same closed loop of S1-S2. Which brings me to my next point.

Assertion 4:

Jopper.  You can’t expect me to write this long ass meta on Joyce Byers and not talk about Hopper, right?

In early S3 there is obviously a marked shift in her relationship with Hopper.  There are no longer secrets (El) or other relationships (Bob) that they can use to hold each other at arm’s length anymore.  There are no other adults in town now who understand what they’ve been through.  Joyce is effectively co-parenting El with Hopper and it’s clear that he not only asks her for advice often but that they spend a lot of time together.  This did not happen between 1 and 2.  It’s made fairly clear upfront that Hopper is hopelessly in love with her, but what of Joyce?  She’s more difficult to read.  And this is due in large part to the fact that she is more complicated than Hopper and her feelings are more complicated than his.

I am not here to argue about whether I think Joyce loves Hopper.  This entire analysis is based on the assumption that she does because I think the Duffers and Winona have given us more than enough to go on to draw that conclusion.  What I AM here to argue, however, is that Joyce is still grappling with what she wants and (inappropriately so) is attempting to compartmentalize Hopper.

Adult relationships are complicated and particularly for a character like Joyce, who has been to Hell and back a few times, there is added complexity that has to be dealt with and worked through.  She’s been in prior relationships before.  She knows what it’s like to be in love and she’s felt the pain and grief that comes along with it.  She’s been divorced already, had a spouse that abandoned her, children  to prioritize over her own love life, and trauma stemming both from the events of 1983-1985 and separate from it.  Joyce, especially, is fresh off the train of losing a love interest who she got close to very quickly.  You can imagine her hesitation about leaping forwards again with someone else who could die.

There’s your backdrop for Joyce in S3.  Throw a healthy dollop of she has feelings for Hopper and then point blank ask her: “What do you want, Joyce?”  She could probably tell you that she wants to feel safe again.  That she wants to be free of the pain and grief of losing Bob and what happened in S1-S2.  If you really can get her to open up (or if you are a mind reader like Murray) you would also find out that she is still holding onto that desire to have a normal, happy family which includes a “nice guy to settle down with.”  The thing about Hopper is that he fulfills all of this for her, just messily.  Joyce is still looking for that coloring book of life to be filled in by an artist (Bob). Hopper fills it in like a 3 year old with disorganized scribbles that cover the picture but can’t quite stay in the lines.  Lonnie is easy: he never even filled in the lines to begin with.

Hopper shares personality traits with both Bob and Lonnie.  Like Bob, he makes her feel safe, she can trust him, she knows he cares about her, feels more than friendship for her.  But he’s also brash and loud and argumentative and after spending a decade of her life screaming with Lonnie….she doesn’t want that again.  He probably at times DOES “remind her of a bad relationship,” but Hopper is not Lonnie.  He respects her, treats her like an equal, trusts her judgment. But she can’t escape the constant comparisons.

And what I’ve seen from a lot of the fandom are the same attempts to shove Hopper into the “Lonnie” box or the “Bob” box that Joyce keeps trying to do.  S1-S2 Hopper is in the “Bob” box.  We like S1-S2 Hopper. But S3 Hopper, man.  He is in the “Lonnie” box.  He yells and stamps his feet.  This Hopper isn’t “good enough” for Joyce.

But here’s my radical proposition: Hopper IS good enough for Joyce if he is who she wants.  And he is what she wants.  But she needs to let Lonnie and Bob go first.

Lonnie and Bob still have a hold on her and if she is going to be able to take that leap forward with Hopper she needs to put their ghosts to rest.  She couldn’t save Bob, but maybe she can save Hopper.  Maybe Hopper isn’t perfect and has a temper, but that is ok because he loves her and respects her unlike Lonnie. I think if we see Joyce work through this in S4 and join her on her journey of making the decision to be with Hop and making that choice FOR HERSELF rather than the plot or some other force making that decision for her, the payout is gonna be huge.

Assertion 5:

Finally, I wanted to touch on the common theme of this whole analysis: that despite this inner strength, despite the growth and change her character has undergone, she is still largely handled by the ST fandom with kid gloves.  Like she is someone that can’t take care of herself, and who we need to step in and defend and protect against….the world.  Here are a few examples I’ve seen over and over:

1) Mischaracterizing S3 Hopper as an “abuser” that Joyce needs “protection” from, much like she needed “protection” from Lonnie. 

2) Attempting to turn Jonathan into her protector/her keeper.  

3) Defending her when she is in the wrong because she is Mom™ (see i.e. standing Hopper up for their date and being non-apologetic about it.)

4) Analyzing “what is best for Joyce” without thinking about her canon feelings or what SHE wants

As I dissected above, Joyce never needed protection from Lonnie. She doesn’t need protection from Hopper. Or anyone.  She doesn’t need Jonathan stepping in for her and she does not need us the fandom, to decide FOR her what she wants and what she can and cannot do.  All this does is, ultimately, build her arc around men and strip her of her agency as a character.

All the canon evidence suggests that she is a bad ass.  She curb stomps assholes on the regular and saves the day, multiple times.  So why is it next to impossible to find any discussion of Joyce that doesn’t involve complaints of what man (Duffer or otherwise) is wronging her at any moment?  Is it because it’s just easier to pidgeonhole characters, particularly female characters, into villain/oppressor and “the good guy?”  Because if we open her up into complexity outside of being our cinnamon roll mom we worry she could disappoint us? Because we cannot accept that a good female character doesn’t need protection?  What happens if Joyce is just a complex person who is both mom and badass? Focused on her kids and herself? Deserving of her own life and respect for her autonomy? Is both selfish and selfless?

Joyce, imo, has one of the most compelling arcs on the entire show.  We are introduced to her as a Mom who is barely holding it together already and then loses her son, sending her into a spiral that her inner strength alone carries her through.  After nearly losing her kid again, she loses her boyfriend horrifically, and just when she thinks they may have finally escaped it all permanently she has to single-handedly close the Gate, torching the only other man she loves in the process. So she packs her shit up and moves her family away from the danger.  She goes from the most reactive character on the show to, perhaps, the most proactive one.  

She may not have “powers,” she may not be able to effectively wield a gun, but she can knee an asshole in the crotch and that makes her a hero to me. I say let her be everything she is, allow her to explore her own wants even if they are imperfect, let her make mistakes and stand up for and protect herself, and let her be her own person outside of the character arcs of other male characters.

Andddddd end scene.

[pinkeoni]

Will is the Most Powerful Source of Energy

(aka me finding a way to tie Will into the Russia plot)

So the cover for the lab is the United States Department of Energy, who is basically in charge of nuclear energy and weapons. We see the lab try to breed kids into weapons with their psionic powers. Eleven demonstrates this ability pretty well.

But what if they were also breeding them as a source of energy? After all, we are shown in season 4 that they test their ability to control lights, not to mention that one of their other covers is Hawkins Power and Light.

Also in the puzzle game, which granted isn’t canon but may hold some potential easter eggs for the show, there’s a lab worker who explains they are trying to explore new forms of energy. The name of that chapter is “Strange Science: Let There Be Light”

Okay so here’s where I try to find a way to to connect Will Byers to all of this.

Will is responsible for giving power to the lights in the Upside Down, I’m pretty confident in this. Nancy’s dialogue in 4x07 points to this, when she says “Will found a way. Will. He found a way to speak to Joyce through the lights.” She uses Will’s name twice here for emphasis, and following this is when they discover the light particles that they can use to communicate, the one’s that “feel good.” (Also the music track they use here is the same as the one as when Will is talking to Joyce through the Christmas lights for the first time) Not to mention this is the same season where Will is constantly being bathed in light.

So Will can power the lights, but more than that whatever magic he used to power the lights stayed there in the UD for years, almost like an inifinite battery. Will’s energy could possibly be even more powerful than nuclear energy.

At the time the show takes place the still would’ve been in the Cold War with Russia, which was basically a nuclear arms race that the show incorporates through it’s supernatural themes.

I think Russia’s motivation is pretty simple, they want power.

At this point in time, post s4, I don’t think that Russia is after Will Byers specifically, but they are after powerful energy. I think this extends to El to, if they heard about a girl who could rip holes in space and time they would most definitely be after her too. If Russia had similar goals as the US in the real Cold War then it’s a safe venture that they have similar goals in the show as well— they want to be able to harness whatever supernatural and psionic energy they can that would give them more power.

Once there’s a power reveal in season 5, there’s a chance that Russia might go after Will. None of the characters would be expecting Will to have powers (unless Owens knows something) but especially Will, so there’s a chance that whatever power reveal we get could be messy and public, and could leak to Russia intel.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes from Stephen King’s “On Writing” 03: How to Write

Now that King has laid out the tools before us, he sits down and tells us exactly how he goes about his craft. He acknowledges that everyone writes differently, and that how he writes may not jive with you, and that is okay. He is just walking us through what he does, and you can take what you want and leave what you don’t.

How to Summon Your Muse

“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.”

Read a Lot and Write a Lot

“We read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.”

Man, I probably can’t even count how many times I’ve seen this piece of advice. But the fact that I’ve seen it this much means that it must be right, I guess. In particular, King advises us to read bad books, as the bad stuff is usually more glaring than the good, and we can learn from that. 

He also says that reading bad things can provide us positive inspiration.

“Most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?”

Certainly, I have to agree with him.I remember the first time I was deflowered with bad fiction.

King also advises us to read good books, because we can learn about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling. 

On Finding Time to Read

It’s not that we don’t want to read, it’s that we just don’t have the time to read when we’re working and have other obligations and also want to write. So how do we find the time to read? King says:

“The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.”

Especially with the advent of e-books, it is easier now than ever to have a book on hand at all times. Read in waiting rooms, in transit, in the checkout line, on the treadmill, and the bathroom. Read when you have an hour to yourself on Sunday. Just read when you can. 

On the Importance of Reading

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease  and intimacy with the process of writing. ... Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mindset, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen.”

This makes a lot of sense. From personal experience, even though English is my native language and I love reading and writing, I stopped reading English for leisure when I moved to Japan. I poured all of my free time into learning Japanese, and I consumed only written Japanese media for about three years. When I went to pick up a pen again, it felt like a foreign object in my hand. My prose was clunky, the words were stop and start, and I was forgetting words. Especially since I spend a good 90% of my day in Japanese now, I make it a point to come home and read in English every night, and I have seen an improvement. 

How Much to Write?

Okay, so we know that we have to “read a lot” and “write a lot,” but let’s quantify that. (This is the specificity that I really love in this book.) 

King prefaces this section by making it clear that all authors work at different paces. James Joyce sometimes wrote just seven words a day. There was this dude Anthony Trollope who wrote for 2.5 hours every morning before work and stopped even if he was mid-sentence when time was up. If he finished writing a book before the 2.5 hours was finished, he would close that manuscript and start writing the next one. What a machine.

Also, just how many works must a person write to become a Real Writer? Harper Lee only wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. (I know a sequel has been released since King’s book was published, but don’t we all want to forget that sequel exists anyways?) This guy John Creasey wrote five hundred novels under ten different names. 

So how long your works are and how many works you have is your choice. You do you. But if you’re good at it and you love it, don’t put down that pen! 

Writing Schedule

King writes in the morning, takes naps in the afternoon, and spends time with his family in the evenings. That sounds like a dream come true to most of us that are still working a 9-5 and writing on the side. But that’s what he does now. 

To put things more concretely, he says that he has a strict 2,000 minimum that he must write every single day. Even if it’s like pulling teeth, even if it takes longer than he hoped, he does not stop until he has 2,000 new words on the page. 

King also believes that the first draft of a book, even a long one, should take no more than three months to write. (Personally I feel that could be difficult for everyone to do unless they have the ability to commit a certain amount of time everyday to writing no matter what.)

How to Keep Good Writing Habits

King gives us this advice.

Have a “writing room.” For King, this was the cramped laundry room while he wrote Carrie and Salem’s Lot. He isn’t telling you to add a room onto your house. Just have a space that is yours and free of distractions. Have a space that is designated for writing and nothing else, and make sure you can close the door to it. 

Set a daily writing goal for yourself. Even if it’s as low as 100 at first, that’s fine. Just write every day no matter what. He says you can take one day off a week at first. But only at first. 

Eliminate all possible distractions while writing. No phone, no TV, don’t even have the windows open (unless your view is boring). You can have music on if it helps filter out the outside world. 

Have a schedule. Dedicate a certain time before or after work that will be “writing time.” Let’s say mine is 8 pm to 10 pm every day.

Don’t wait for the muse. In King’s words, “Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.” Sidenote: King’s muse doesn’t match muse stereotypes lol.

“I think we’re actually talking about creative sleep. Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. You schedule -in at about the same time everyday, out when your word goal is on paper - exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go. In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. You can train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.”

The above quote put a lot of things into perspective for me. I had never thought of writing like dreaming, but really, that is what it is. I have a desk that was meant for writing, but is actually for everything now. Eating, chatting with friends, surfing the web, and writing. It is very far from distraction-free. I also just write “when I feel like it,” which means that sometimes I have months-long or years-long dry spells. And that’s nothing but a shame. 

So now I’m looking at getting another smaller, simpler desk to put in my bedroom, upon which I’ll put a tablet with no internet connection and a wireless keyboard. Maybe a notepad. Maybe. I’m not much of a note-taker. But I’ll put that in my bedroom, which really has just a bed and clothes, not even a clock, and I’ll push myself to write more every day, right there, from 8 pm to 10 pm. 

Source: King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Hodder, 2012.

[kyndaris]

Time is an Egg

Following on from Alan Wake, I was ecstatic to see Quantum Break available on Steam. I’m not sure when they first became available but I was definitely going to buy it on sale. It didn’t matter that I had never owned an Xbox, I was now able to finally play a console exclusive that had interested me for years. With its time travel concept and two actors from the Animorphs franchise, I was eager to see where the journey would take me. Plus, Remedy was also trying to push the fold when it came to video by inserting a television show between major plot points. To many, it might have seemed like an overly long cutscene except with real actors. Akin, perhaps, to old full motion video. I, for one, was just excited to see if Remedy could manage to pull it off the perfect blend between video games and other forms of media.

In Quantum Break, players are put into the shoes of one Jack Joyce. After six years, he has returned to his hometown of Riverport after receiving a message from an old friend: Paul Serene. I loved the environmental storytelling as I navigated the university to meet my friend. The conversation with Amy Ferrero as well as the the posters decrying the aggressive purchasing of land from the shady Monarch company, all served to highlight an ongoing struggle between corporations and the history and culture of hardworking individuals.

It was not long before Jack arrived at the Physics Research Centre, where Paul Serene had set up his Project Promenade and the time machine hidden beneath. Unlike its depiction in other forms of media, time travel in Quantum Break is regarded as a loop. There are no branching timelines or alternate worlds being created. A person cannot go back in time to change the past. In addition, a person can only go as far back as when the time machine was first activated. So, there would be no visiting of dinosaurs or killing Hitler.

Quantum Break sticks to its guns that the past is immutable as it has already happened. But it also implies that when Paul travels to the future and witnesses the End of Time that this fact cannot be changed. Why? Because the event now lies in Paul’s past and defines his entire character arc.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After Jack helps Paul in his less than legal demonstration, something goes wrong and time begins to fracture. He is joined by his brother and men from Monarch. They attempt to escape and in so doing, Jack discovers that he is imbued with time powers. He takes advantage of this, but cannot stop his brother from being crushed (or at least, that is what he thinks happens). From there, Jack is set on the path of stopping his old friend and restoring time.

On the way, he is joined by Beth Wilder and either Amy Ferrero or Nick Masters (depending on your choice when playing as Paul Serene during the first junction point). Speaking of these Junction Points, while they provide choice to the player, the end result is the same. The final confrontation between Jack and Paul is predetermined. None of the changes made to the game changed this fact. Whether the player chose a Hardline or PR approach, whether they trusted Hatch or Amaral - it did not matter. 

I suppose that made sense from the rules of the world and how the narrative set up the concept of time travel. Instead of spiralling into infinite worlds and alternate timelines, Quantum Break continued its spiel that time was a loop and that a character’s desire to change it would have only perpetuated the event that they were trying to stop. This was particularly evident when Beth was sent into the future and tried to kill Paul Serene during the End of Time. Or how despite warning the proper authorities, 9/11 still occurred.

It also meant that the ending for Quantum Break remained open-ended. The majority of the game is set in the year 2016. Paul, having seen the End of Time, knew that the catastrophic event would occur in 2021. However, as the events of Quantum Break unfold, it is clear that Paul’s estimate of the breaking of space-time as most people understood it, was happening much more quickly than predicted. So, when Jack was able to use the Countermeasure and stop the stutters, I waited for the other shoe to drop.

Sure enough, Quantum Break teased that there was more to the ending that met the eye. First of all, the interview styled questions that peppered the game were revealed to be at the end. Martin Hatch, who was shot in the eye, was back. Jack looked like he was seemingly joining up with Monarch. The ambiguous ending, thus, clearly hinted at a sequel and that Jack might have been the actual cause for the End of Time.

I also have a theory that Beth Wilder might actually still be alive despite being killed by Paul. How could she not have become chronon-active after being exposed to the Countermeasure in Ground Zero? 

Gameplay-wise, I very much enjoyed the aspect of controlling time. I was quite young when Blinx came out. But seeing that I owned a PlayStation, I never got to enjoy a romp with the cat that could control time. This time, I could stop enemies for a select few seconds as I peppered the air around them with bullets and then duck to cover by running as quick as the Flash. I loved these new ways to tackle combat as they presented something different than the usual third-person over-the-shoulder action that I was used to.

What disappointed me, though, about the game was streaming the live-action episodes. Always, I encountered buffering issues with the show stopping and starting. It didn’t matter how good my internet speed was, the connection with Remedy’s servers refused to work as I had hoped. 

The Quantum Ripples also proved disappointing because they only added a line or two of dialogue between characters. It never seemed to serve a greater purpose other than to appear as a fun Easter Egg.

I also dearly wanted Brooke Nevin and Shawn Ashmore to share a scene together. Alas, that never happened. At least in my playthrough of the game. The actors that played cousins in the Animorphs series never got to share a scene together. 

Gripes aside, I very much enjoyed the time I spent playing Quantum Break. The concept behind the narrative proved to just as intriguing when I was playing it as it had been in the trailer. While many mediums have explored time travel, this one was a much more interesting take on the premise. 

I also liked the ability to control time.There was no reversal and making different choices like in Life is Strange, but as a game mechanic, it definitely opened up new ways to navigate the environment and approach combat situations. Unfortunately, the choice of weapons at Jack’s disposal was less than imaginative.

[apricops]

More Buffyposting

Here’s miscellaneous notes over -- yeesh, about a season and a half. I kinda put this off for a while.

Thoughts from the last 4-5 episodes of season 4:

The whole “aloof and uncaring psychologist” trope is kind of dumb but at least in Maggie Walsh’s case -- and I don’t know if this was intentional -- it actually makes sense and is thematically fitting. She wasn’t in the “help people and give them therapy” branch of psychology, she was in the “understand people in order to effectively break and control them to make more effective soldiers” school of psychology.

Superstar feels like the meta-gloves are coming off and Joss is really starting to realize how fun it is to just fuck with the audience.

No wait, that point was probably the fake Spike-and-Buffy marriage in Something Blue.

 There’s a nice thematic patter to the last third-ish of the season. Adam is, quite literally, amorally taking the “good parts” of different people/things stitched together with the chaff thrown away, and he works with everyone in order to get what he wants. Meanwhile, Buffy’s busy dealing with a treadmill of old acquaintances giving her headaches and feeling weighed down with her friends. Then the penultimate episode flips it: the holistic whole (figuratively and literally) is better than the stripped-down, “streamlined” version because of the human spirit and stuff.

And then I was like “wow, the big bad is dead and everything’s wrapped up nicely, so what the hell is the season finale going to be?” to which Joss cackled and said “what won’t it be?” because wow 45 minute dream sequence.

Season 5:

The show used to have a reliable pattern of heavy depressing episode -> light funny episode -> plot episode but that kind of goes out the window at the halfway point.

Thankfully the BuffyBot episode was basically “hey listen, shit got way real and it’s going to stay real, so here’s 45 minutes of absurd low-stakes shenanigans as a palate cleanser.”

Speaking of, my gf has to pause pretty much every time Spike comes onscreen because inevitably he’ll say something funny and I’ll start laughing too much to keep watching. It’s interesting comparing him to Angel because Spike’s had to pretty much grow a sense of morals starting from less than nothing.

Spike learning how to be a values-haver had a nice setup-and-payoff where Buffy refused to congratulate him for not drinking the blood of unconscious bystanders because he was clearly just doing it because Buffy was nearby and he wanted to put on a nice face for her. Then when he’s captured by Glory, he’s on his own, and he does the right thing at his own expense. Buffy’s “I won’t forget that” shows how she’s begrudgingly realized that Spike is growing a moral backbone without thinking it makes her need to humor his crush.

Completely obvious and planned by the writers of course but Joyce’s death being of mundane natural causes made it hit so much harder because I was fully expecting Brian to reveal himself, twirling a Snidely Whiplash mustache and going “nyehehe, I killed your mom!” and then Buffy could stab him and get catharsis but instead that didn’t happen.

Also my mom dying just 3 months ago made that episode hit a lot harder and the way it bounces back and forth between reality and false hopes is painfully accurate, your mind is just trying to be everywhere at once.

It was a bit cheeky of them to do this, but she show even sort of called attention to itself, by having the art class talk all about the use of negative space to highlight details while the episode itself was full of moments of quiet and inaction to highlight Joyce’s death.

Also, the song Giles was listening to after hearing about Joyce’s death was the same song that was playing when they poiked.

Speedrunning the show really highlights how Buffy’s been forced to grow up really fucking fast. Almost in response, Giles has a pre-serious-half midlife crisis.

I like how Giles buying a magic shop solves a lot of story shoe-leather problems (having a new base of operations, having access to important texts and resources, giving Giles something to do) while also fitting perfectly into Giles’s aforementioned mid-life crisis.

Misc:

“So, if crosses and holy water are the go-to things that repels vampires, does that mean they had pretty much free reign for most of human civilization until a couple thousand years ago, and then they still had free reign over everywhere but Europe? Or is it just a religious significance thing? Could you get the same effects with a gohei or an omkara?” gf: “Maybe it’s a belief thing, like it’s more in their heads. No, wait, that one vampire drank holy water and exploded.” me: “does the tabletop RPG mention anything about it?” gf: “it’s literally never explained or elaborated upon.”

[ifeveristoday]

you are the vessel and she’s the life

Okay. When I first read issue #3, I did not like it. The art continues to be amazing, the colors glorious and they add to the atmosphere of the Hellmouth world - but I felt at first read, this was a weaker installment for the non-movement of the plot. If Hellmouth was a longer arc, I would have less issues because Jordie & Jeremy are developing Buffy and Angel, and giving the space for the audience to learn more about them, just as other characters are being brought into the spotlight for the namesake comics. I want to learn more about Kendra, Jenny, Fred, Gunn, et al. But it’s also a valid criticism that Buffy was missing from her story, long before Hellmouth began.

To compare Buffy (the intellectual property) to another cultural juggernaut for a minute - Star Wars. The reboots, the prequels, the ever-expanding universe - it’s all Star Wars, no matter what fans may feel about certain portions of it. But I see a lot of the same argument leveled at the Boom!verse that I do about Star Wars - ‘it doesn’t feel like ________________’, or  ‘that’s not my Buffy.’ I’ve certainly done my fair share of completely ignoring/complaining about the Dark Horse ‘canonically approved’ verse, so I get it. And I think just by the nature of a reboot, there are so many expectations, especially when you use the same characters. And IMO, Jordie and co. have been doing an admirable job of balancing their version of Sunnydale vs. memories/nostalgia of the TV canon. 

The point is to remake something for a new audience while respecting the source for the ‘original’ (whatever that means) fans. And it’s such a rich world with many characters to play with, and lots of different ways to explore themes that the show didn’t, or botched/dismissed. It’s a daunting experience to adapt, I’m sure - and I’ve been enjoying reading what Jordie has been doing with character development and the emotional beats of a story. The characters do feel like they exist in 2019.

However, with this issue, I felt like there was retread/not enough of a building on the momentum that Issues 1 and 2 had, along with a last-minute feel of a brand new original character, and some in-jokes that didn’t really add anything. This was my first reaction. Then I read it again, and with the other Hellmouth issues.

Major spoilers underneath the cut.

Back to my earlier point about Buffy being missing from her story - we still don’t know very much about Buffy’s backstory but that was never the point of her character, she was always very much in the now. The earlier issues had her in full Slayer mode with little intervals of an awkward, uncertain teenager! Buffy, and the last time she gets to hang out and do teenager things, Xander gets turned. And we didn’t really see the fallout in terms of Buffy’s feelings about it - but we did get very much appreciated insight into Willow and Xander’s characters. 

Then Buffy flings herself into the Hellmouth, after feeling estranged from Willow and dealing with a lot of unspoken guilt/shame. Oh no, not like TV Canon Buffy at all. 

However, the break from the Scoobies and entering the Hellmouth brought out Buffy Summers in all her confused, messy, intense bravery. Here was the girl who quipped malapropisms, made up sassy nicknames and leaped into the fray, fists first. And here was the girl who’s self-aware that her impetuousness and desire to save people also hurts the people she loves because she pushes them away - both out of necessity and because it’s her job. It’s a common refrain throughout the run of the series, emphasized by Giles and repeated by Buffy - she has to do this, and often alone - she’s the first responder in the apocalypse.

Heroine complex, man.

And then she meets LA’s finest, the dark knight, Mr. Hunchy Shoulders Guy - Angel. I’ve said it before, Bryan Edward Hill’s decision to have Angel meet Buffy cold, with an already established backstory of his own and then Jordie carrying that over into the Hellmouth event really changes the Buffy and Angel dynamic in the Boom!verse. A welcome change, and then when the portents/prophecies kick in, Angel dismisses them completely. His no-nonsense, I’m just here to do a job and then I’m out mode is amusing to me, because obviously, this is going to end up in romantic comedy land, just with a higher body count and lots of blood.

Buffy and Angel in TV canon never really got that light-hearted, getting-to-know-you phase because there was always the pall of forbidden love/gothic angst/and willful misunderstandings on both parties, never mind the interference/concerns and complaints from the people who loved them.

In Hellmouth, not only do Buffy and Angel get developed as characters, so does their budding ‘work’ friends relationship. Their banter is just delightful to read, and they get to be vulnerable/honest (to a point) with each other, that they haven’t been able to do so with their respective friends. And as they’re fighting demons and tracking down Drusilla, it creates an understandably sudden bond that most likely wouldn’t have happened above ground. They’re the only ones who can stop the forces of evil and cover each other’s backs.

Except for the undead elephant in the room, that has been in the room since Angel first appeared in Sunnydale -

Angel is a vampire. Angel witnessed Drusilla attacking Xander -- and did nothing to stop it.

And he knew it was Drusilla and Spike.

That lie comes back to majorly haunt his ass in Issue #3. Drusilla gleefully tells Buffy that he saw the whole thing, and also he has this whole other name, Angelus, which Buffy completely mishears and then rounds on Angel, asking him pointedly if they need a moment, or can she do the job she’s here for.

The revelation that Angel didn’t stop Xander’s turning naturally pings Buffy’s anger defenses and she tells him actually, no, we’re not friends, you don’t know me (even though I vented my guts out to you and you know I’m a slayer and you give weird pep talks to try to make me feel better -- Issues 1 & 2) - and I think besides the fact that Angel stood by and did nothing, it’s also that he didn’t tell her. Angel not telling Buffy important things, lying by omission basically, breaks their fragile alliance. 

But it’s not until the second lie.

Something that has been driving me nuts since the first issue is that Angel hasn’t revealed his Vampire self to Buffy. There’s different levels to the relationships Angel has cultivated so far in the Boom!verse - with Fred and Gunn, he’s an ally (reluctant on Gunn’s part) and a friend (Fred) and he’s upfront with them that he’s a vampire. But with Buffy, who is going to be a major part of his life (if any of the previous portents and prophecies are to go by), he holds off/and hides his vampire self. And the question is why? Buffy already has a friend who has a Vampire side, but Xander’s a special case because he can still pass as human. 

And it’s humanity that pops up in this issue - I knew it was coming, due to Boom’s wildly spoilery summaries/previews, but the way it was delivered?

Auggie - I know he has a full demon name but I’m not typing it out - and I think his name is also derived from Augury which means an omen/sign of what will happen in the future, seemed out of place to me. I mean, okay having a hell hut in the middle of the Hellmouth is whimsical and not completely out of the realm of the Buffyverse tone, and demons just trying to demon with no ambition to destroy the world is always nice to see - I just felt the introduction of him was too McGuffiny. There already was a figure who could see into the future (two of them, if you count Fee Fee from Angel’s first issue, except she disappeared into the plot hole where women characters go in that issue) and the initial one who set Angel on this path: Lilith. 

Having Angel strike up a random conversation with an essentially magic demon eight ball when he could have been searching for Buffy or Drusilla felt like an unwelcome departure from the main story. Yes, the revelation that Angel could achieve humanity through some terrible ritual is important, but also - do you believe a demon who’s making a stew out of unidentifiable parts in the middle of the Hellmouth and just casually drops that information? 

Read the room, Angel. It’s probably a trap.

Back to the A-story, Buffy thinks the Cthulu shape-shifter demon is back when she sees the vision of the guys in her life attacking the women - Giles and Jenny, Eric and Joyce, and Xander and Willow.Just as the Demon Joyce taunted her about her absence causing more havoc than help, the Demon men call her out Greek Chorus style - Giles says, “Sunnydale burns, Sacrifice.” Xander tells her, “But we can stop all this. The mother awaits you.”Eric says, “Come. End this suffering.”

Buffy accuses Dru of orchestrating this, and she laughs and tells her, “This is the hellmouth. Adapt, won’t you? It’s adapted to you....these are your people. This your nightmare.”

Buffy denies it coming true, and Dru tells her that it may yet come true - and she’s left Sunnydale defenseless. A slayer without her friends. There are fouler things than beasts, above. There are men.

Who have become the puppets of the unseen Hellmother.

So Drusilla was a red herring, a pawn in the game of Evil Chess. And this bums me out because Dru as a tangible villain/opponent is more interesting to me than another shadowy doom voice from the ether. Hellmother? Really?

This is where the reboot kind of loses me - Buffy’s greatest villains have been the ones who were personal to her, not as in just wanting to kill her, but an active part of her life. Dru (and by extension, Spike) in the Boom!verse would qualify because of what she did to Xander and threatening her mother. Dru being the front of a disembodied voice (that probably will take form in the next two issues) is a letdown. It’s the First Evil again.

The side effect of the men being turned into malevolent goons - okay, that is scary, but are we talking the Pack/Billy scary? (aka not very good episodes of either show because they either pulled punches or handwaved consequences)

Buffy teams up with Drusilla, which was unexpected, but at this point in the game, Buffy doesn’t have that many options. Her friend is missing (and it’s telling that even though she was hurt by the knowledge Angel did nothing to prevent Xander’s turning, she still refers to him as a friend to Drusilla. It might not be true forgiveness, but she was willing to move on, just for the sake of finding him and working to stop this mess.) And she keeps on reminding herself, these demons are not her friends, and are not real.

Which brings us to the final act - in more ways than one. Angel gets ambushed by a bunch of orc looking vampires, and finally goes Not Today, Satan on them.

And of course Buffy spots him on a mound of corpses, in full vamp face.

As much as I’m disappointed with the way Angel’s vampirism is revealed, it had to happen, and I have to admit, those last pages and panels are incredibly vivid and affecting.

Angel’s outstretched human hands covered in blood?

Buffy’s disbelief and then hardened look of disgust and her, “Don’t touch me.”

Goddammit.

Jordie and Jeremy have specific repetitions that I find interesting in terms of character development and where I think the plot is going -

Friends - the potential loss of them, the making of them, who to trust and how personal actions always have a consequence in relation to friends - Buffy is down on herself because she pushes people away and tried to lone wolf and it always, always blows up in her face, so this new thing with Angel is Buffy trying something new - trusting the other person so she can trust herself (because even though Willow and Xander are helpful and her besties, Buffy still can’t fully trust them with the fighting of evil because of her Slayer nature and belief that it’s her sole responsibility. She’s never had friends like that before. Angel has an equivalent strength to hers and already knows the evil game.)

So this issue blowing up all those tentative friend bridges? 

Fucking painful. Because now it feels like Buffy was right - she can’t trust Angel, he’s not a friend, because why would he lie? Why didn’t he stop Drusilla? They clearly have a history. Has he been in on this from the beginning?

Buffy is alone, again.

And Angel? Who the fuck knows. Buffy has become important to him in a short amount of time, and it still needs to be addressed why he did nothing to save Xander. He was already on the saving gig, and was it because he knew Spike and Dru that he let it pass out of...familial bonds?  That still doesn’t jibe with what he’s atoning for now. 

As always, thanks to @jenny-calendar for being there for me to figure out all these fiddly parts. I still think this is the weakest issue of Hellmouth, and I’m not as confident as I was before in thinking it’ll be wrapped up neatly in the last two issues - but I hope this doesn’t signal the end of crossovers, and that the relationship wherever it goes, continues to develop over both of their lines. But I dislike it less on reread.

And Buffy better make an appearance in Ring of Fire, damn it.

AND WHERE IS CAMAZOTZ?

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Yeah so Stranger Things 3 was painfully bad

Yeah yeah big negative post about ST3 coming up. Just... holy shit, my expectations weren’t exactly high but jesus I didn’t think it’d be this bad. Wow. Mindboggling to think it was made by the same dudes who made season 1, it feels like a different show. Some of the worst writing I’ve seen in a long while, parts of season 3. This got very long because it was very bad so it’s under the cut. Starting with the few positives and then away we go...

Of course there were bright spots, I thought what we got of Jancy was generally good (just wish there had been more of it. Just like... more lines between them, a few moments could’ve gone on longer...like after the awesome hospital fight scene jesus just let them fucking desperately embrace and profess their love for each other, it was awesome how they relentlessly kept going at the monster to save the other but can we please just have a few more seconds for a comfort moment after?) I liked how they handled the fight btw, apart from the Oliver Twist comment yeah yeah heat of the moment but still felt OOC with that loa a blow. Nancy and Karen scene was nice and um... well Max and El bonding was nice. And um... Mr Clarke! And I kind of dig Murray.

My main issues with it:

- The product placement. Jesus Christ. Okay, ST has always been a show with noticeable product placement. But it’s gone from things like a Coke can prominently on display on a table in s1 (El crushing it with her mind) to literally having a straight up ad for Coca Cola in the middle of a tense scene. That’s the big offender that made me go wow you’re really doing this to yourselves huh, there are many others ofc (everything at the mall ofc, Slurpees being in hyperfocus for a bit, and a lengthy talk about Burger King. These smaller things one by one wasn’t the worst but all combined jesus it was too much, all added together and then bam the Coke commercial was wow... Congrats on the like 80 sponsorship deals and esp the new ST themed arcade hall by Coca Cola hope it was worth completely selling out for.

- Relatedly, the original fucking song. Holy christ talk about jumping the shark. That was the oddest, cringiest, weirdest shit I’ve seen in a long time. Gaten’s a great singer don’t get me wrong, but there’s a time and place for it and an original song stuffed into the middle of the tense climax of the season is not it Duffers. Just a blatant cash cow, hoping to bring in more money via the song.

- Robin. Sorry but holy cow what a Mary Sue. Hey here’s this super cool girl who’s cool™ and funny™ and super smart™ and NOT Nancy (like they seriously for real said in a scene, they actually for real had to pit Robin and Nancy against each other for no reason). And she conveniently has these specific skills needed for the plot (which she gets involved with for no real motivation other than having nothing better to do, lazy writing). Said skills were so over the top unrealistic it completely sucked me out of it. To start with, this random girl in small town Indiana in 1985 speaking French, Spanish and Italian um... does Hawkins High have the most amazing language department or what? Very un-american in that case... and okay then, her knowing those languages wouldn’t help jackshit with understanding Russian. Russian is a notoriously difficult language to learn and it is not related to the Romance languages at all, Robin knowing those languages and oh, having “a good ear” bc she’s in band (?!??! what?!) wouldn’t help her at all. Having the alphabets on the wall and listening to strange words in a foreign language she has no understanding of would never work. No way for her to understand what is she’s hearing, what letters are in the words just, nothing. It’s completely ridiculous. The good thing is she’s a lesbian, crushing Stobin that made me LOL. Btw, I don’t get what age they were writing her as? She’s still in school but later says she and Steve was in the same class, and she knows who Nancy is but Nancy, who is still in school, doesn’t know her even though presumably they’d be in the same year at little Hawkins High? Was it just sloppy writing or what?

- Too. Much. Plotting. What happened to “this season is about the characters” um there was just so much plot stuff and action sequences and barely any character driven moments at all. Those intimate moments that made s1 amazing. Generally regarding plots felt the Russian plot was messy and not well-written also what happened to the US government as the big bad? Unless they’re setting up a big Cold War thing for s4. And felt the zombie thing was wasted, could’ve been used differently like I’d have thought it’d be used like the MF spreading it’s influence over vaster areas and being harder to keep track of etc.

- Too little Will. Will’s whole thing with feeling left out etc was just dropped halfway through it felt very undercooked. His arc was just dropped wtf.

- NO BYERS FAMILY INTERACTIONS WTF. The sequence in the first episode when Jancy has overslept and Joyce wipes the lipstick off Jonathan was cute (but could’ve been even cuter I’d have preferred a short fluffy Jancy moment here just as they wake up before they realize they overslept, bc we didn’t get much pure fluff, and then it’d been awesome if Joyce would’ve just called Nancy into the house to mess with them). But like... that’s kind of it. For the Byers family. Talking to each other in the whole season. When they partnered Jancy with the kids many thought awesome we’ll get Byers bros talking and teaming up (and Nancy and Mike) but there was just nothing. Not even a family hug after the battle at the mall, just Joyce hugging Will, with all this tightknit little family has been through you telling me Jonathan wouldn’t join in?

- No Will and El bonding wtf? SUCH a wasted opportunity. They’ve built this unique awesome connection over s1 and s2 and now in s3 would finally be able to bond normally for real and... nothing.

- Turning Hopper back into an even bigger jerk than he was at the start of the show, neglecting all his character development. What was the point of the whole El and Hopper thing they devoted so much time to in s2 if Hopper’s back at it with the yelling and all now? And jeez his constant whining to Joyce about every man she interacts with holy christ that got annoying. Generally Hopper was such an annoying asshole this season I was so tired of him by the time he “died”.

- TOO MANY CHARACTERS. Jeez, I know I’m on about it all the time but jesus christ there is way way too many characters in this for 8 episodes which hurts the narrative and screentime for interesting characters is just... yeah.

- Speaking of screentime, did we really need that many identical generic fight scenes between Hopper and the Russian guy? Jesus Christ it’s so boring watching fight scenes like that, so repetitive (compare to the hospital fight scene which was dynamic and awesome). Also regarding screentime did we really need to devote so incredibly much of it to Steve and Robin being comedic relief while drugged? Yeah yeah mix light and dark and all that but jesus christ at that point in the narrative shit has hit the fan lean into the dark.

- Totally expected of course but still, the furthering of Steve Memeington. My god they actually had him literally call himself daddy... christ.

- The Billy and Karen/all the other middle age women remains gross and bad in a billion ways. Also completely pointless for the plot, they could’ve come up with any other way to get Billy to the factory. And what did it give Karen in development? Just the realization that yeah I’m tired of my husband but I’m not leaving my family and I’ll stick with him just ‘cause? Okay but did we need her almost sleeping with a kid a year older than her daughter for that? Icky. Also the editing of the scene where Billy hits her was so weird. Also that was weird as fuck.

- The ending. Okay christ my main gripe with this is because of a point above: No Byers family interaction at all! Joyce and Hopper talk briefly about her thinking about moving once or twice but she never talks about it with her kids... obviously she did in the timegap but we need to see that to build to the thing. Having no Byers interactions the whole season and then just oop we’re moving is so weird. I’m also not sure if Joyce’s motivation for moving (her bad memories of Hawkins) would be enough. For sure an argument for it, but an argument against is the one Hopper presents to her (and though he’s not around still there’s still a support system around them there, especially for her kids which she loves above all). Speaking of her loving her kids above all, she knows they love their friends/girlfriend/boyfriend to bits, have walked through fire with them and are each others support system as mentioned, would Joyce really just uproot them from that? There’s also some purely practical things that stuck out to me immediately: the timeskip for the epilogue makes it so they move when the schoolyear is already well under way and Jonathan has started senior year, feel bad for Jonathan there in a number of ways. Also, how the hell did Joyce manage to sell her house and what did it fetch? Her rundown house on the outskirts of a now infamous town with an incredibly bad rep? Even if the buyer bought it for the land the land doesn’t look special, just find it hard to believe she could get much for it. And where did they move? Where did she find a place? And work? Did she have something lined up or? I guess we’ll see.

- Oh and speaking of work, that was another thing that was just dropped, the mall killing downtown and the protests just fell out of the story. But, with what happened to the mall wouldn’t business come back to downtown (possibly reason for Joyce to want to stay if Melvald’s going out of business was another reason to move).

- Sorry but Mileven took way too much space.

- Again, no Jonathan and Will actual brothers bonding. But a whole lot of Steve and Dustin meme fanservice wank.

- Erica is just the sassy black girl trope non stop the whole season and nothing else and it’s so grating and... I was gonna say disappointing but I had no faith in the Duffers regarding this. Just because a bit character becomes a meme doesn’t mean they need to become a main. *cough* Steve *cough cough* Sorry.

- Last but not least, the woobiefication of Billy. Uggggghhhh. Disgusting. And having Max cry over him WTF?!?!?!?!?! staaaaaaahp.