#ruckafangirl

[curator-on-ao3]

Hey, Curator. I wanted to do this by ask instead of by comment on AO3, because I have *so* much respect for your work on Autobigraphy of Kirsten Clancy. Your creation of Martian culture? Exquisite. Your depiction of a healthy relationship between two peers striving to be part of the same organization they love and also raise a family? Fantastic. Your depiction of grief and trauma? Amazing. So since my question feels a bit critical, I wanted to emphasize that I'm not trying to start an argument or score points - I genuinely, privately want to know.

I could say nice things about the story all day. But one thing in it that I felt disappointed by was the decision not to just challenge the moral attitude of Picard and the Romulan relocation effort, but to actively change the facts of it. I think the question of whether the Federation should be allowed to break up over saying a billion lives or more is a serious one, and one that deserved the argument between Picard and Clancy. Having a narrative that says "Well, nobody really died because the Romulans evacuated them using their own resources" seems to really gut the whole moral concept of the argument - as if to say Clancy can't win it on those terms so we have to change the facts, when frankly I think she *can* win it.

Do you mind me asking what your thoughts were behind making that change? Is it supposed to be the product of unreliable narration on Clancy's part, or are you describing a different universe?

Anyway, thank you again for a wonderful story.

Oh my goodness, @ruckafangirl, your praise for that story means so much to me — and the elements you mention are quite close to my heart. Thank you, thank you! ❤️

I welcome questions (I feel like it’s an author’s dream to be asked why they made writerly choices), though I must admit I was confused at first by yours. The narrative in that story is 100% in our universe with those millions of Romulan deaths happening. Clancy’s argument with Picard following the destruction of Mars and Utopia Planitia — and her view that the Federation can save either itself or the Romulans, and the Romulans should have the resources to save themselves — is meant to be in light of readers knowing that Clancy won the argument at the cost of the future of the Romulan relocation effort since the Romulans did not turn out to have (or use?) the resources to save themselves.

I went back to the story to try to figure out what could have given you the impression that the Romulans didn’t die. Because you’re exactly right that Clancy is an unreliable narrator. She doesn’t lie whole cloth, though, and she’s painfully aware that most of her life is documented via official records and logs. I therefore worked to make her omissions both visible and sensible (e.g., she only reveals the extent of her closeness with Edward Jellico in the acknowledgments because, as she explains, he didn’t want her to talk much about him in her book). I wonder, was it Clancy’s press conference following Picard’s TV appearance that suggested the Romulans didn’t die? Because the journalist’s question, “What is your response to Picard’s critique of Starfleet’s decision to cancel the Romulan rescue?” is a fair one. And Clancy’s answer, “Starfleet is proud to have successfully handed off the Romulan evacuation to the Romulan government, which ensured the safety of its people,” is truthful, yet glosses over what “its people” means. Not all people. Not most people. And what about that handoff would have been proud in any way? I attempted to show the unreliable nature of Clancy’s glib, soundbite-oriented, political theater press conference answers by immediately having Clancy reflect on her training for press conferences from both Admiral Brand and her mother. Clancy, per her explaination of that training, focuses her press conference answers on what she views as “relevant information” while knowingly avoiding mention of deeper, uncomfortable truths — including what she perceives as Picard’s erratic behavior and his need for a brain scan (begging the question: Does Clancy know about Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome diagnosis or are her instincts that good?). Clancy correctly believes that the Romulan government took over the relocation. She possibly incorrectly believes that Starfleet therefore has no responsibility for the relocation’s failures. So she doesn’t mention them.

I hope all this makes clear that I wholeheartedly agree with you, @ruckafangirl: the moral concept of Clancy’s showdown with Picard requires those Romulans to die. And they most definitely do.

Note because of the times we live in: The Romulans die due to canon consistency. Their deaths are not a statement on my personal beliefs, their deaths are a fact of the Trek universe.

[t-girl-breeder]

Under transfem supremacist communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a bit different compared to other forms of communism. Since trans women are naturally better and more revolutionary than their lessers, the dictatorship is only for trans women. We can’t trust the others with anything, because they always fuck it up.

The representative system under transfem supremacist communism is based on who is best fit to serve the government. The criteria for being chosen is usually who has the fattest cock and most virile balls (tested on counterrevolutionaries and TERFs during the time representatives are chosen), but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes there’s a really revolutionary girl, one who knows what’s best for transfems and knows how to make it happen. On those occasions, even if she doesn’t have the biggest botchbreaker and a 100% impregnation chance when she cums in a cunt, she will be chosen.

When a transfem is chosen to be a representative, she gets a large home and office in the district or county she lives in. This home is used for her affairs for governing, as well as having a large amount of room to hold the lessers she owns, or subby trans girls who she lives with. Due to the criteria of who gets picked, representatives usually have many of both. But even if they don’t, they will often be offered what amount to concubines, the most attractive of the lessers, only fit to be given to the best of the best of the betters of society.

Representatives also need to go to the capital somewhat often to decide matters on a nationwide level. The way most representatives travel is by train, usually bringing their most prized possessions with them- most likely their most beautiful lessers and their most subby transfems. When they get to the capital, after getting comfortable, they will go to the building where policy is discussed and decided on. They obviously decide on matters not unique to a transfem supremacist state, like public transportation and such. They also decide on matters such as “should 100 TERF urinals be built this year” or “should research be funded on new forms of estrogen that do things such as making the recipient stronger or more virile”- most of these measures are immediately voted on and passed.

When the legislation for the session is finished, the representatives, usually tired and pent up from so much hard work and from serving the state, go to a building nearby with the aforementioned “prized possessions”. Then, a massive orgy often breaks out. The possessions are passed around from representative to representative based on their tastes, with most of the possessions impregnated at the end, including the subby transfems- uterus transplants have obviously been massively funded and researched under a transfem supremacist government! At the end of the orgy, the representatives often trade the possessions between each other if they feel like it, usually if they are very attracted to a specific lesser or subby transfem (though subby transfems are worth much more than lessers).

Transfem supremacist communism is a system that works wonderfully for everyone that matters. Make it happen in your nation today!

(Shoutout to @ruckafangirl for the help!)

[tialovestelevision]

After Life

Dragon and I are doing this one as a dialogue! We’re going to watch this episode, pause after each scene, and talk about it. You get to read that! Aren’t you lucky?

{*\../*} : Hello again, all. ruckafangirl returning to sprinkle cheer, fire and lit crit on your Buffy watchalong. Aren’t we all excited to see how Buffy is coping with her PTSD from literally battering her way out of her own grave?  Anyone? .... Anyone?

T: I have to admit that I very much am not. I am, however, looking forward to being through this one and one step closer to the relative shelter from the misery of the beginning of this season that is “Once More, With Feeling.” Yes, I know that one’s depressing too, but at least they sing. If they sang all the misery, I’d enjoy it more.

{*\../*} : Except Alyson Hannigan, who will not sing. Not ever. Not if she can help it. Anyway, on with the show! We’re not getting any livelier (unlike Buffy).

T: That was awful. Anyway, Previously On. There’s the trauma.

{*\../*} : Buffy makes PTSD face to wrap up. We resume with the town still on fire and demons fleeing, and Anya speaking uncomfortable truth. Willow is engaging in rationalization a lot.

T: That whole conversation was uncomfortable. Nobody involved actually has any real idea where Buffy was or what’s happened since then, other than that she had to claw her way out of her own grave. Which, y’know, would break pretty much anybody. I’d say she needs years of therapy, except who would actually believe the story. “I sacrificed my life to keep from letting the world be destroyed, then my friends raised me from the dead, but they didn’t think to dig me up so I had to claw my way out of my casket, and now I have to say that acute claustrophobia is the least of my problems.”

{*\../*} : “I was dead before and I didn’t have these problems, doctor. I mean, just for a few minutes that time instead of months.” Willow is REALLY invested in the whole hell-dimension theory, I suspect because it’s the only way she can justify pulling her big-ass violation of the rules of nature, and the way that she seems to be panicking over the idea that Buffy might not get over it makes me think of her lack of forethought when she put the book in front of Dawn in “Forever.” For a smart girl, she doesn’t engage in a lot of following things to their logical conclusions.

T: To be fair, the Hellmouth isn’t going anywhere, and it had been three months since the last apocalypse (“It has been X months since the last apocalypse” being a sign Anya needs to get for the Magic Box), and the living Slayer and bearer of the line is in jail somewhere in southern California for various high crimes and misdemeanors. I suppose they could have broken Faith out of jail, but I don’t think Willow would do that on account of those times Faith tried to murder her.

{*\../*} : Personally, I’d be more down with breaking out Faith than trying to bring Buffy back from, you know, the dead. But I’m conservative that way. Anyway, while they’re wandering the streets and experiencing justified existential dread, we cut to Dawn taking Buffy back to the house and talking to her like she’s a wounded puppy. Which, to be fair, she did just talk her out of jumping off a collapsing Glory-scaffold-thing.

T: About to hit play again, but I’ll note that the place I most want to go after I’ve been raised from the dead is the site of years of emotional abuse and neglect. Dawn says they’re home and okay now, then opening sequence. No Tara.

{*\../*} : Yes. Okay. That is definitely why we have ominous dark outside lighting instead of, say, a cheery kitchen scene. Everything is going to be juuuuust fine. Pay no attention to Buffy’s “Fire bad, tree pretty” face.

T: So Buffy does a walkthrough of the house, noticing all the things that have changed and kind of listening to Dawn but not really acknowledging her except to ask questions. Walking out of rooms while Dawn’s speaking, not looking at her, stuff like that.

{*\../*} : Points to the director for the fact that she keeps actually walking out of the frame - we stay with Dawn while she does that, which really sells how jarring it is, and she keeps walking into dark rooms with Dawn trailing after her and turning on lights. Also, Buffy is still wearing the clothes she was buried in and that’s really, really creepy the longer it goes unremarked.

T: Might I point out how bizarre it is that, in late 2001, it’s “obvious” that the run-of-the-mill Macbook belongs to Willow? Or that it’s “computer stuff?” That’s weird, right? Like… a relic of the fact that TV doesn’t actually understand how people use tech.

{*\../*} : Comes of being made by people who’re a decade plus behind the characters they’re trying to write. Quick cut, and now Dawn has Buffy in fresh clothes and is washing her in a very mother-washing-her-child way that’s honestly wigging me out. I think it must be wigging Dawn out, too, because she trips right into a classic bit of teenager too-trueness. “Knew you were under that dirt somewhere.” Awkward pause. Buffy says nothing. Awkward mother-referencing joke. Still nothing. And now we’re bringing attention to the fact that her knuckles are still laid open from punching her way out of her coffin.

T: Great makeup job there, by the way. Dawn decides to deal with Buffy’s shirt before getting to the blood, which seems like the wrong priorities from both a first aid perspective and a fashion perspective. It’s a white shirt. It is at this point that I realize that newly resurrected silent Buffy may actually be more traumatic for Dawn to interact with than talkative but in all the wrong ways constant reminder of dead sister robot Buffy, and from Dawn’s expressions around the robot in “Bargaining,” that’s saying a lot.

{*\../*} : Speaking of the robot, Spike has now arrived downstairs and is shouting for Dawn. “It’s just Spike,” she says, which makes me queasy. The fact that he’s ranting about how he could just kill her (graphically) for scaring him does not help. Interesting that she’s still working up to the explanation when Buffy comes downstairs, and he only mistakes her for the robot for about half a second.

T: I think Spike would join you in being made queasy by “It’s just Spike.” And.. yeah. I think we’re supposed to draw from that the idea that it comes from how much he thinks about her, but a better explanation, to my mind, comes right out of “The Gift.” “It has to be blood.” Of course Spike would know the difference between a robot and a person almost at a glance.

{*\../*} : Thought given the amount of time he spent obsessing about both robot and non-robot Buffy, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could give you a short volume of on-sight differences. And isn’t that just a happy thought?

T: He can get into their house whenever he wants. Let’s press on, on that thought.

T: Spike is the one who she asks how long she was gone. Given his obsession with her, he’d know. He also knows how her hands got that way, given personal - is it “personal” if you’re not technically a person? - experience. In an odd way, I can see why he’s the one she wants to talk to. She doesn’t know how long she’s been dead, and there’s one very important thing about Spike - he is dead. He doesn’t grow. He doesn’t change.

{*\../*} : The director and the camerawork here - not to mention James Marsters’s acting work here, which is brilliant and given lots of closeups to work with - are really trying hard to sell me on this moment of connection. Given the whole death/undeath/rebirth parallels, they’re almost succeeding. Except that he’s a soulless monster and having him count the number of days she’s been dead does not, does not, does not make me feel better about this connection they’re displaying. If anything, it’s selling the broken state of Buffy for me even harder than her non-interactions with Dawn.

T: It is successfully making me sympathize with both characters involved. Spike is a monster, which is something the scripts often seem to forget, but he has free will and his feelings are at least some close approximation of real, if broken in ways that make things like real love and compassion impossible He’s been hurting, a lot, for months, and has rebuilt his being around the restrictions of his life to continue to survive. Well, to keep the “un” in his “undead.” Buffy, meanwhile, is so urgent for connection that this single shared experience between her and an actual, real soulless mass-mudering monster is valuable to her. I don’t think this is HEALTHY in any sense, but the writers and performers are selling me that the feelings of these characters exist.

{*\../*} : And in bursts Willow at the head of the group. Her first question is “Is she here?” which is interesting. Not “Is she okay?” or “Have you seen her?” but “Is she here?” Let’s see how this goes.

T: Spike walking out as the others approach.

{*\../*} : That is a great touch, isn’t it? And so, so busted. The whole two-couple crew. Bust-ed. The flood of questions and Dawn’s counter-interrogation are just starting to get rolling when Buffy breaks out with a rousing ‘I’m okay, you brought me back, everything is going to be fine’ riff that has no credibility whatsoever. Points to Sarah for selling Buff’s snowjob here, and to the other actors for selling how bad their characters want it to be true. The camera shot of the four of them all staring at her is particularly grim.

T: Tara’s expression. She and Anya have the highest emotional intelligence in the cast. And we see them both - and hear Anya - know that something is very, very wrong.

{*\../*} : Xander and Anya come out and find Spike crying - the camera is very subtle, so you don’t see him full on, but that’s clearly what’s happening - and he and Xander have a set-to. Xander trying to call him on the obsession thing is fair, if ill-timed, but he counter-attacks with some very pointed observations about why Willow locked him out (in case they had to put Buffy down) that Xander is clearly in deep denial about. What I find fascinating about that little scene is how Xander’s line about Spike seeing Buffy being “the happiest moment of your existence” runs right past the obvious problem - it isn’t that he’s wrong, it’s that using Spike’s happiness as a barometer for their actions is a very clear sign that they’ve gone ‘round the bend. Spike isn’t unhappy she’s back, and he’ll take the consequences he can see coming, but he’s self-aware enough at this point to know that his standard for okay isn’t what sane humans ought to be aspiring to.

T: I’ll remind you that this is the guy who once spent an inordinate amount of time and money on the building blocks for an invincible demon capable of burning people up at long range using their human feelings as fuel in order to impress his girlfriend. When Spike is the one with a sense of consequences, everything has gone wrong.

{*\../*} : So now we get a lightly intercut scene of Buffy sitting alone in her room - fully dressed when she said she was going to sleep - and staring into space while Willow and Tara talk. Willow starts off selling the ‘everything is okay’ pitch like she wants herself to believe it, but Tara isn’t having any of that. “This is the room where you don’t have to be brave” is a wonderfully romantic line, I have to say.

T: Willow asks if having hoped that Buffy would thank her makes her a terrible person. Tara doesn’t answer, instead basically saying to give Buffy time. The answer is, to a degree, yes - it is prioritizing her own feeling of value over the needs of someone who, even if she was right about everything, would be suffering from unspeakable trauma. But that’s kind of a mundane sort of bad person, well within human norms.

{*\../*} : And the kind of bad you get to admit to your girlfriend in the dark. That’s kinda part of the point of having a girlfriend, after all. But it does set up an interesting question for later - is Willow worried Buffy hasn’t thanked her because she feels on some level that she did something wrong and she needs the reassurance, or because she feels like she did something heroic for her friend that proves she’s special and isn’t getting an positive feedback for it?

T: Pretty sure both.

{*\../*} : Also, is it just me or does the way Alyson inflicts “intense” when she’s describing the resurrection spell have a slightly creepy/sexual vibe to it?

T: You’d have to be REALLY into snakes to talk about a situation in which you coughed up a snake in that tone.

{*\../*} : Cut back to Buffy, staring at pictures of her with her friends like a semi-dead person, and then all the pictures go to creepy skulls for a moment. She shuts her eyes, opens them again, pictures are back to normal. Cut to black for commercial while we all get tense on cue.

{*\../*} : Creepy monologue Buffy is throwing things at Tara and Willow and berating them for being unclean in some fairly impressively ugly language. Willow’s eyes get huge and betrayed, and then she leaps out of bed and turns on the light. No Buffy in the room. O-kay, that’s genuinely creepy, I gotta give it that.

T: No, that was actually scary. Well done. What the Buffy-apparition is accusing Willow if is stuff Willow actually did in preparation for the ritual - she summoned that deer that was apparently pure and innocent - so, in this universe, probably not something I’d use the word “hart” to describe - and cut its throat to drain its blood into the Urn of Osiris. She got blood all over her hands in the process. And she never told any of her friends about it - even Tara. Looks like SOMEBODY was watching, though.

{*\../*} : Interesting that it’s addressing Willow and Tara in the collective ‘you,’ you - the plural of “bitches” gives that away. Is Tara being held culpable because the apparition is nasty, because she worked the magic with Willow, or because she hasn’t asked and is somehow complicit? Regardless of which it is, she looks spooked (also really cute, but spooked). There’s no glass, so they know it wasn’t “real.”

T: Two theories: Either the apparition wasn’t watching, but does know what’s required for the spell, in which case either it can sense magical talent or Xander and Anya are going to have a very unpleasant visitor quite soon, or the fact that Tara has the tools at her disposal to know - she’s a witch, she knows what books Willow went through, things of that sort - makes her not knowing not really an excuse for her involvement.

{*\../*} : Watching Tara and Willow work the problem together is cool right up until the moment when Tara asks if Willow knows what the apparition was talking about and Willow straight-up lies to her face. Not even all that well. Chalk one for ‘guilty conscience.’

T: At least they have the right initial plan - call Xander. It takes the house rattling at them to get them there, but Xander and Anya are almost certainly in some sort of danger here.

{*\../*} : Meanwhile, over at the Harris residence, Anya can’t sleep and is trying to get Xander to play word games with her. Xander is either the world’s heaviest sleeper or ignoring her on purpose. Heaviest sleeper, apparently, but the phone knocks him right out of it.

T: She deserves so much better than him. And that was amazingly creepy as hell.

{*\../*} : Anya doing the Joker laugh and cutting her cheeks with a knife? Eeep! No sleep for me ever, ever again.

T: We know where he got those scars now. Crime lords shouldn’t be involved in resurrections.

{*\../*} : I love that the next scene is the four perpetrators discussing the situation out in a brightly lit outdoor space with a maximum of ‘normal.’ Like they’re actively trying to hide from whatever’s haunting them by being as suburban cookout as possible without the actual cookout.

T: I adore Anya, but I don’t think I’d want her around on a bad day.

{*\../*} : Truth is uncomfortable and pointy. Also, is it just me or does everyone in that little circle radiate massive discomfort the moment Buffy walks in to ask what needs killing? Either they’ve all got guilty consciences, they’re trying to wrap her in cotton because they think she might break or both.

T: With an additional side order of “she’s strong and fast enough that, if she is broken in a way that leads to violence, we’ll all be dead before we notice.” Anyway, they think it’s a haunting, but not a normal haunting because it can be in more than one place. Anya’s theory - and she has personal experience - is that something hitchhiked back from the afterlife with Buffy. They’re going with that.

{*\../*} : Xander tells Buffy that having her back is “so, so important” and something clicks sharply for me. For all the talk about Buffy being trapped in a hell dimension, the resurrection spell is absolutely a product of Willow and Xander being pathologically unable to accept Buffy’s death, isn’t it? And on some level, they both know it, because they’re both radiating guilt and covering like mad.

T: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, they have all sorts of justifications, but the fact that their favorite one to go to is personal - “We can’t leave our friend suffering” - gives that away. If they weren’t doing it out of personal need, they’d be gravitating toward “It has been three months since the last apocalypse.”

{*\../*} : Research time! Dawn is reading over Willow’s shoulder. Five types of demon and counting. And Buffy cannot be out of the room with her friends fast enough. Cue creepy Dawn eyes while she’s making a lot of noise about how safe she’ll be with the others.

T: Did Dawn’s eyes go creepy before she started talking or after she finished? Her back was to the camera the whole time.

{*\../*} : Pretty clearly deliberate ambiguity. “I miss Giles,” Buffy says, and Willow jumps to being a poor substitute in the research department. But that’s not what Buffy’s talking about at all - she’s barely looking at the book in her hand. Sarah’s reading of that line gives me a very deep “I miss my father figure who could make my world make sense” feeling.

T: Yeah. The line was actually pretty heartbreaking. They haven’t noticed, have they? That Buffy is only talking when she’s saying something really important. It’s almost never the words coming out of her mouth, but she’s always communicating something - it’s never small talk or an obvious statement.

{*\../*} : They are aggressively busy trying to will her and themselves to be okay, and don’t seem to be able or willing to see her straight.

T: This episode is one of our more uncomfortable looks at who Buffy’s friends are, but I can’t say it’s taking them out of character.

{*\../*} : More on that in analysis later. To patrol with Buffy! Or not. We get one shot of Buffy with an angel tomb in the background and then we’re back to Anya delivering coffee and possessed Dawn delivering more judgement. “You stupid children, did you think the blood wouldn’t reach you? I smell the death on you.” I am... uncomfortably in agreement with that line, and the actors are selling the heck out of guilty terror. Well, except for Michelle, who’s just killing it as the vengeful possessing apparition breathing fire at them.

T: I think she actually does a better job as the apparition than Sarah, though she’s helped by the fact that her voice makes its vocal effect a ton creepier. Also, pretty sure the ante for the episode just went up… even after Dawn collapses, things are still on fire.

{*\../*} : “Evil things have plans. They have things to do.” Aaaand we cut to Spike damaging his hand punching the wall. Then laughing hysterically.

T: Is that a barber chair? Did Spike buy a barber chair? Well… he’s Spike. Did Spike steal a barber chair? He’s still got the chip. He couldn’t even eat the barber. Did Spike steal a barber chair from a demon barber?

{*\../*} : Spike’s crypt makes a hella creepy set, I gotta say. And here’s Buffy standing in his front room. And they’re comparing notes about their damaged hands while Spike makes creepy knife innuendo and remarks on Willow's power level. Funny but not funny. He drops the act. Now he’s talking about his feeling of failure for letting Dawn be taken and Buffy die. James is selling the hell out of Spike’s obsession here. “Every night I save you.” For 147 days. Damn.

T: James Marsters never forgets he’s playing a monster. The writers do, but he doesn’t. Even at his most sympathetic, his most pseudo-heroic, like he is here… he’s a monster. This is obsession, and your heart breaks for him.

{*\../*} : But there’s Buffy, knowing exactly what he is, sitting and staring at him. Same vaguely empty look, but she seems more comfortable with him by far than with her friends. Not healthy....

T: So Xander and Tara are talking, which I will note hardly ever happens - Tara and Xander are in rooms together really often, but they rarely address each other. Xander asks Tara about whether this is a consequence of the spell, and whether anyone knew. “Anyone” has an awfully specific meaning here. Tara is having none of it.

{*\../*} : “Willow is a talented witch and she would never do anything to hurt anyone,” bursts out Tara, in a glaringly suspiciously specific denial. Xander’s “I know, I know, huh? Backing up quickly, hands in the air” is not delivered in the voice of someone unaware that they’re both up to their eyeballs in a certain river in Egypt.

T: Pretty sure Xander crossed a line by accusing Willow, even if the accusation is accurate, in Tara’s mind. Of course, if Willow knew this - or something similar - could happen, she was crossing a line by not telling them. These people need to either trust each other more or not work incredibly dangerous magic together.

{*\../*} : Willow interrupts their moment with putting the plot together, so now we’re contemplating the prospect of having actually created a demon as the price of their spell. Which leads to Dawn panicking about the prospect of them undoing it. The line that jumps out at me is “you can’t just mess with people’s lives this way.” Something to come back to. Meanwhile, these people are still terrible at information security and now the demon knows the only way it can avoid dissolving over time is to kill Buffy.

T: Well… I’m not sure the CIA has protocols for noncorporeal, invisible, possessing demons. But they probably should, given that they’re basically demon hunters. … Does the CIA have protocols for noncorporeal, invisible, possessing demons?

{*\../*} : If they didn’t before ‘01, I imagine they do now.

T: They’d better not tell me. I don’t have protocols.

{*\../*} : Back to the house for some creepy white creature following Buffy off the stairs. With the lights off, because she’s walking around the house in the dark.

T: The demon was more menacing as both an invisible apparition that occasionally possessed someone and a mobile floor bump than that special effect. I don’t believe that special effect can kill Buffy. I don’t believe that special effect can kill George the Most Fragile Fly Ever.

{*\../*} : They need protocols. Also, the scene of Dawn and Anya and Xander driving to the house kills the shit out of what tension the show had going. Having to sit through Tara and Willow doing a revolving solidifying spell doesn’t help.

T: The fight isn’t very good either. Sarah’s obviously acting around a green screen, and they don’t really give her much to go on, while the special effect is terrible. The solidifying spell gives us… an old woman thing with white hair. Buffy beheads it. This episode’s climax didn’t.

{*\../*} : And now we’re getting a shiny happy sunny morning with Dawn coming out the door and cheerful music. Why am I more disturbed by this than I was by the monster? Oh, right, because there’s six and change more minutes of episode to go and Joss Whedon hates my happiness. Buffy made lunch for Dawn. Very cute.

T: And, unlike the robot, she didn’t mass produce lunch.

{*\../*} : The gag about repeating history in summer school is pretty funny. And Buffy’s crack about charging money for everyone who asks her if she’s okay is also amusing. But then Dawn rolls out with the “everyone will be better when they can see you being happy. It’s all they want,” line and I want to hide under the couch. Buffy’s face is downright haunted, too.

T: Yeah. No pressure to hide your trauma here, Buffy. None at all. Certainly not piling more on top of the preexisting pressure that comes from you being a destined (to die) hero and a battlefield commander. Nope. Nothin’ to see here.

{*\../*} : Buffy goes to tell them something. Then she tells them about being in a hell dimension, and thanks them, and she’s not looking at them. Then she does look at them, and her face is just killing me. How can they not see she’s lying through her teeth? She ducks out early and finds Spike in the alley. Then she says the most telling line in the episode about their relationship: “I can be alone with you here.”

T: Spike owes her a nickel. But he also knows that she’s lying. She says he can’t do anything for her. That she was happy, wherever she was. “I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn’t mean anything. Nothing had form. But I was still me, you know? And I was warm. And I was loved. And I was finished. Complete. I don’t understand theology or dimensions, any of it, really. But I think I was in heaven. And now I’m not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out, by my friends. Everything is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch, this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I’ve lost.” Then she gets up, tells Spike they can never know, and walks away. Fade to black.

{*\../*} : James Marsters acts the hell out of Spike’s reactions while she’s talking. What he does with his face is just amazing. Then she leaves him standing in his over-bright shadow.

T: I have to say… that was better than I expected it to be. Still grim as fuck, but… an honest sort of grim, maybe? It has something to say. I’m not sure what all it’s saying, but it means it.

{*\../*} : The writers seem to have really committed to the idea that they’re telling the story of a fated heroine who wrapped up her fate, got her eternal reward and then got dragged out of it and back to the hard ugliness of life by her needy, well-intentioned friends. And if that’s not a metaphor for depression mixed with toxic friendship, I’m not sure what is.

T: Also, for the situation the show itself is in. It was pretty much cancelled before UPN picked it up for this season and the next, and I think it had said what it had to say at the start. Seasons 1, 3, and 5, in particular, basically handled Buffy’s journey.

{*\../*} : So running themes to watch in the forthcoming 19 episodes: life after purpose, coping with hiding your trauma and depression from your friends, seeking unhealthy outlets for your emotions with people you can be alone while you’re with... anything else?

T: Dawn. I think Dawn is someone to keep an eye on going forward. She never knew Joyce the Abuser - the monks wouldn’t have let her - so to her experience of the world she’s lost her (quite excellent) mother, her sister, then her sister has come back to life. If they don’t do a lot with that, they’ll have failed badly as writers.

{*\../*} : So, solid marks as an episode and good set-up for the season. For as great an hour of serial television as you can have in an action show without an action climax, I sure didn’t enjoy it much.

T: Yeah. That’s the thing with this season, isn’t it? When it’s bad, it’s bad. When it’s good, it’s about depression and misery. Either way, it’s not actually enjoyable to watch. You can tell enjoyable stories about depression - I’m told Zoe Quinn did a bang-up job of it - but the people writing Buffy, at least so far, seem incapable of it. “This was good but wasn’t fun” is not as uncommon an issue as I’d like it to be in either Buffy or Angel, and this episode is pretty much the pinnacle thereof. Maybe it needed a great action scene… that would at least have given something fun to remember after.

{*\../*} : I could have done without the car scene and the spinny camera spell, too. Speaking of the spell, Willow’s glowy light and dark eyes moment when she said “Solid” gave me chills, and not the good kind.

T: There’s a good kind?

{*\../*} : Not in front of the readers, honey.

T: Hai. Anyway, yeah, the car scene in particular killed the pacing of what climax there was, and the spinny camera made me kind of regret the popcorn we were eating as we watched this. Willow’s eyes going black started in the episode with the bag of knives, though I think this is the first time it’s happened without her eating evil.

{*\../*} : That’s surely not going to end badly for everyone involved, right? Right?

T: Nah. It’ll be fine. Anyway, I think we’ve said what there is to say about this one. We’ll have  to do this again for an episode that’s, y’know… good? Okay, this one was good. Worth our watch?

{*\../*} : Not crushingly sad. That’d be a good start. Anyway, I now return you to your regularly scheduled Tia-viewing. See you around, everyone!

[tialovestelevision]

Carpe Noctem

Hello, gentle readers. I’m Tia’s dragon - I write under ruckafangirl here on tumblr, on the rare occasions I actually write anything for tumblr - and I’m going to be covering a couple of episodes for my princess while she’s in the back recovering from an overdose of gloom and misery brought on by too much grimdark. Let’s all try to get along and do our best while we sort out the seething mess that is this episode, shall we?

1. We open on the Hyperion and a jumpscare from Fred and minor social friction with Cordy. I really feel for Fred here - she’s artlessly trying for some bonding with the group particularly Cordy (the only other woman in the group) and failing at it because Pylea. There’s an interesting structural echo here - in an episode about boundaries and unwelcome intrusions, we start with Fred scaring Cordy with questionably welcome nearness. We’ll come back to that in a bit.

2. In spite of Fred’s musing about how deep Angel’s reading habits are, he’s reading the local paper’s community section and getting hyped about a Charlton Heston double feature. The thud with which it lands is notable. Fred, however, is excited. Great little subtle bit of acting from David here - the way in which he proceeds to bother everyone else about leaving has the subtle effect of suggesting he’s uncomfortable with going alone with Fred but wants the company enough to go along with her coming anyway. He also continues Angel’s habit of talking too much when he’s trying to cover for social awkwardness.

3. Switching scenes to a hot (I think? I don't really get male attractiveness) guy in bed with a couple of women who are ready to take a break from the sex we’re supposed to believe they’ve been having. Also, that’s a terrible way to treat a martini. For which he is duly punished by the realization that he has to go by way of melting everything inside his skin with a mystical incantation. Fun touch here: the vibe between the women and the guy (them hesitant for more but overall willing, him pushing) would form a nice mirror image to Angel and Fred in the previous scene if the supporting cast they hired to do this bit were better at their jobs. As it is, the corny dialogue and mediocre acting mean you have to really look for it.

4. Wes is suffering through Fred’s replay of the evening with Angel. I particularly like her observation about the popcorn - active consent in food sharing, she’s into it. Also traditional masculinity props like walking on the street side and holding doors for her. Put a pin in that, because we’re coming back to it at the end. “You know that awkward kind of quiet?” Why yes, Fred, yes he does. Now.

5. Cordy now wants to a Talk with Angel about Fred’s crush. Which is a bit that reads a little weirdly, because the script obviously wants us to treat this as an Important Moment, but David is sitting there with a look on his face that says “I know all this already and urgently don’t want to admit it to myself.” His delivery of the line “it was just a movie” on the heels of his awkwardness in the earlier scene particularly sells the idea that this is a guy who’s perfectly aware that Fred is crushing on him and is urgently trying to pretend otherwise so he doesn’t have to deal with the social awkwardness of his latest protectee’s feelings. Then Cordy launches into a list of his virtues and defects, and the scene switches tones very abruptly into a “smile, smile, object” gag that seems to be primarily about Angel feeling vulnerable about his inability to have sex. More awkward silence. Hey, look, Cordy is stomping all over his boundaries by literally walking him into the room with Fred! Yet more awkward silence. Hey, saved by the bodies hitting the floor! Angel is avoiding conflict by throwing himself at his work.

6. Hey, look, more unwelcome social contact - Gavin following Lilah around and showing off how impressive he is. She doesn’t care for him and plans to make his life more difficult. Possibly Angel. Possibly both.

7. Mooooore awkward silence during the briefing. Followed by leaving Fred standing by herself, talking to herself. Because Cordy is happy to make a big show of worrying about Fred’s feelings when she sees the possibility of something bad happening with Angel, but proactively engaging the shut-in? Nah. Too much work.

8. Cordy brings up professional/personal boundaries and drops the idea in mid-sentence to go hit on buff guys. O...kay? Where are you going with this, script? Now Angel is fast-talking his way past Phil, who is obviously not overly endowed in the brains department (stereotypes about men at gyms much, show?). More Cordy hitting on gym guys and collecting their home numbers under false pretenses. Which they are buying because apparently they don’t have two brain cells to rub between them. Meanwhile, Angel has picked up on someone watching the pilates class from a retirement community because... he’s good at identifying creepy voyeuristic behavior during the night? Awkward symbolism is awkward.

9. Creepy Marcus Roscoe is creepy. Though the business card thing doesn’t make Angel seem any less creepy. He’s pouring on the charm, but there’s something hard under that. There’s a lot of nice detective work in this scene - Angel picking up things that don’t quite fit in their context and trying to find a model that works for them - and the chemistry between the actor they have playing Marcus and Angel is pretty good. Angel’s arrogance about the body-swap spell is played pretty nicely - he’s counting on being a vampire to protect him and it doesn’t.

10. David does an interesting job of playing Marcus here - the way he’s trying to get used to the new body and enjoying it at the same time, the way he really creepily looks Cordy up and down. The gap between what he’s saying and what Cordy’s reading him as saying because she knows Angel and thinks of him a certain way resonates with the earlier conversation between Angel and Cordy about Fred - what’s actually being said and what each person thinks is being said by the other are very different, and both people are drawing their conclusions based on what they want to believe. You can actually see Cordy pick up a vibe from him and dismiss it because “that’s not what Angel could possibly mean.”

11. So we get some fun watching Marcus trip over his lack of knowledge, but he’s back on his creepy track in short order with a not-very-clever pass at Cordy. We’re paying off the conversations about workplace and personal boundaries here, though admittedly not very subtly. They do an interesting play on traditional excuses for workplace harassment here - Marcus-as-Angel says something totally inappropriate and Cordy immediately assumes he’s making fun of her for the pending Fred conversation because (again) she categorizes him as “safe” in her head. There’s also a pretty funny gag using Marcus’s unfamiliarity with the situation and Fred’s nickname to give him the impression Angel is gay (Angel’s clothes help) that mostly steers clear of being played for homophobia, so that’s nice. It would be nicer if we ever actually got any queer representation in Angel which is SET IN LA, but you know, whatever.

12. Meanwhile, Angel wakes up in Marcus’s body and we have some sight-gags about the infirmities of age. He calls the hotel and Marcus-as-Angel gives him some shit and says some lovely misogynistic crap about Cordelia that makes us all want to punch him. Aaand now the health-care worker is walking Angel back to his room and giving us a quick fill-in about Marcus’s streak of body-stealing. Nice fridge horror moment there.

13. So, Marcus tore the office apart and then fell asleep in a chair? Logic is a bit lacking. And now Cordy’s holding out on the casefile until he has the talk. With Fred. Who he presumes Wesley must be because English and making tea equals gay? Ugh. It builds heat for the villain effectively, but there’s something uncomfortable about the show going there with Wes’s “questionable masculinity” when Buffy played with it so often in a pejorative way. Put a pin in that while I try to reduce my blood pressure.... the actors at least play it well.

14. And now Gunn’s back and Marcus is adding being a racist prick and rude to delivery-people to his resume of awful. Everyone thinks it’s weird that Angel is eating (and whose food is he eating, by the way?) but nobody seems to be paying it any attention. We find out that the women in that first Marcus-related scene were paid escorts, which brings back the work/personal boundary idea again and also makes it a lot more uncomfortable (and raises my opinion of the actresses and scripting in the scene) in retrospect. Issues of performance, boundaries and expectation at play there - Marcus is paying for sex and expecting a lot more of it than is normally implicit in the transaction, but playing off his borrowed physique and male privilege to run right over that boundary. Speaking of boundaries, Marcus’s smokescreen about privacy points to the way that private investigation steps all over those and Gunn is echoing Cordelia’s earlier workplace-related creepiness with wanting to interview the escorts. What’s funny when talking about physically fit men comes off not funny at all when talking about women in a traditionally vulnerable trade. Bad Gunn! Bad! And Wesley is getting in on the badness, too. Thank you, Cordy, for at least pointing that out. Aaand Marcus is creepy. They’re now leaving him alone in the hotel. That ain’t gonna go well.

15. Angel in distress. Cute baby. Evidence being shredded. Yeah, not going well. And now we’re about to have our first scene with Marcus-as-Angel and Fred, which is enough to make my skin try to crawl off on its own. Drama is drama, but do we really have to play the vulnerability of the traumatized woman whose coding is “Southern,” “young” and “romantically innocent” for cheap chills? That’s obviously the point of the episode, but it’s frankly not a good scripting decision.

16. A couple of things from this scene are worth calling out. First, Marcus uses the same pick-up line on Fred as he did on Cordy. Cordy reads it as a joke because she sees Angel as safe and a buddy. Fred takes it with flustered excitement because she reads Angel as safe and chivalrous. When Lilah comes into the scene, it breaks the tension a little, but knowing Fred is upstairs and about to go out with this man who she thinks is safe and isn’t is terrifying.

17. About the Lilah scene: Marcus is a creeper with a one-note schtick. Also, watching Lilah trying to read what’s going on is fascinating. Quick cut to Angel having a heart attack in Marcus’s body instead of that, which is annoying, but at least Lilah’s still there when we get back. The transition to sex here is a little strange - are we meant to think that Lilah is really buying this as Angel? - but I’m honestly just so relieved that this is killing time that we might spend seeing Fred get creeped on that I don’t care. But hey, them doing it in the office after she’s done him a favor to get back at her workplace rival at least makes the shredding of personal and professional boundaries really, really blatant. Aaand there’s Fred. Thank you, creepy Marcus-man, for averting that shit with your crappiness. But now you know you’re a vampire, so that’s going to lead to other creepiness.

18. Cordy makes a cheap prostitute joke. Boo, Cordy. And now Fred is having emotional pain, and I’m meant to sympathize, but I’m still too busy with relief. Nice callback to having different conversations here, though - Cordy thinks Fred is broken up about one thing, and she’s actually talking about something totally different.

19. Now Marcus is out cruising the town looking for blood? Sex? Both? We get a weird nightclub scene which is played without dialogue, entirely on stereotypes, and now a woman is being saved from murder by Marcus discovering Angel’s other superpowers. This plays very nicely with pointing out just how terrifying Angel’s powers set is when he isn’t driving it. Put pin number three in that thought while we go to the reveal!

20. Wes puts it all together finally after some unpleasant alpha-male commentary from Gunn and a gag about Buffy and Angel from Cordy. Dramatic rush to the retirement community to save Angel-as-Marcus from Marcus-as-Angel’s attempt to secure his spot in the undead body forever. This is an okay sequence, playing interestingly on the fear of patricide, but it wouldn’t really work if David didn’t do such a fantastic job of playing Marcus as a bad Angelus rip-off. It has a nice feel-good payoff of friends being the key to saving you and Wesley gets a good moment, but mainly it feels like we’re wrapping up the show in a couple minutes because we’re running out of runtime. Pacing is not this show’s friend. Hey, look, it’s the hero walk from the opening sequence!

21. Now we get Angel and Fred talking in the garden. At least Fred already has all the facts because Cordelia got there first, and Angel is self-aware enough to be glad of that. Aaand now Fred’s sharing her pain. Which is promptly interrupted by the news that Buffy’s alive, and I’d be a lot happier about that if it weren’t being played to make me feel for Fred’s competitive heartbreak. Aaaand credits. Done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Analysis: Yes. Yes it was. To start with the pure technical question of this as an hour of television - what the hell happened with their sense of pacing? The writing’s not terrible (its use of symbolism and theme is actually decent) and the actors give it their all, but it rambles along with all the tension coming from our fear of what might happen to Fred and/or Angel in Marcus’s body and then fails to have a climax worth mentioning. Its comedy is only funny in a wince inducing way, the drama falls flat and it doesn’t even really commit to the horror premise of our female characters being in danger from a misogynistic creep in Angel’s body - it brings in Lilah and then the random woman in the bar to take those hits instead, as if somehow that’s more acceptable (one of them’s an evil lawyer and the other is cheating on her boyfriend with a hot guy, they CLEARLY have it coming /sarcasm). We’re left with some mild workplace harassment of Cordy, a wince-worthy scene with Marcus-as-Angel and Wes that hinges on stereotypes about gay men and heartbreak from Fred (our designated Innocent Female Victim) that we’re supposed to care about while being relieved that her ‘virtue’ was protected. Ugh. Not a good show.

But we should pick up those three pins from earlier for a minute and at least talk about the premise itself.

A) Angel is depicted by Fred as a chivalrous model for men, which is why she has feelings about him. Cordy says similar things about him, then complicates it by pointing out all the ways he doesn’t fit it (history of violence, lack of sexual availability, etc).

B) Wes’s masculinity versus Angel’s is a running thing in the story - Marcus reads him as “less manly” and therefore gay, Gunn makes jokes about Angel reclaiming the desk sexually, we’re expected to read something slighting about Wes into Fred talking to Wes about Angel at such length.

C) Marcus-as-Angel is a lesson in how scary power is when it’s being driven by someone without restraint, yes, but it’s also about what Marcus does with that power - he beats up other men and assaults women. Pay attention to what he says to Angel in their last scene together - “You don’t deserve that body,” he says, as if Angel’s unwillingness to assert his physical and sexual prowess is a sin.

So what we’ve got here, a step or two down, is a contrast of two archetypes of masculinity with a nod to a third: the competitive, pumped-up, strength-flaunting sexual predator and the chivalric, chaste knight who rushes about saving women from monsters and relies on his friends, plus nerdy English guys who make tea and whose masculinity is questioned. Everything the writers show us is designed to show off how icky the first is and engage our admiration for the second, while making snide jokes about Wesley. On one level, that’s actually really problematic - chivalric concepts of masculinity are almost always tied up in ideas about “worthy” women (writers, I’m looking at you and the way you set Lilah up for sexual assault here), and they’re frequently a cover for a lot of implicit sexual violence. But let’s credit the writers with actually having one good point, whether they mean to or not, and jump off from “are there any men who aren’t dogs” (thanks Cordelia) to try reading this as a critique of toxic masculinity. Because what’s good about Angel, in this reading, isn’t his strength or his good looks or his cool car - it’s his geeky love of old movies, his willingness to admit his weakness in the conversation with Fred at the end, his reliance on his friends, his willingness to use his power (metaphor for male privilege much?) to help others without expecting thanks. What’s bad about him is his macho posturing (it gets him into trouble in the first place), his lack of communication (avoiding talking with Fred, his going off without talking to Cordy because he’s being snippy about her talking to the gym boys) and his insecurity about his sexual problems. In other words, it’s the ways he’s still tied up with the same conventional hyper-masculinity that Marcus is willing to kill people to embody again (and that we're making fun of Wesley for not measuring up to, but let's stay on point). Which brings me back to the hallway scene and David playing Marcus as Angel when he’s stalking Angel in Marcus’s body, and how reminiscent that is of Angelus.

Because the dirty secret of Buffy Season 3 and a lot of Angel is this: Angelus is predatory masculinity - the same predatory masculinity that Marcus hams up playing at - embodied. We meet him for the first time as a metaphor for a boyfriend turned abusive in Innocence, and from the first scene when he’s callous to Buffy after her first sexual experience, he’s playing on every social trope we have for a man who mistreats women. He’s manipulative, cruel, obsessed with conquest, basically the whole list. So we take as our hero, in Angel, a chivalric man from another time who’s walking around with all this dark ugliness of masculinity just one moment of orgasm away from ... wait a minute. Oh dear.

Now we’re back to being problematic again, aren’t we?

I could do six more paragraphs on the way that the series privileges certain kinds of pain (and certain people’s pain) over others, but I think I’ve taxed y’all’s patience long enough. Thanks for hanging with me today, and I’ll see you all around the web.

[tialovestelevision]

On Buffy and Faith

My girlfriend (@ruckafangirl - follow her!) asked me to write a bit about the relationship between Buffy and Faith after the two-parter I just finished reviewing. I can do that. I'll be doing a followup post after Angel's crossover story. I don't think it's a stretch to call Faith the most significant relationship in Buffy's life - more important than Joyce or Willow or Angel or Riley or even Giles. They have, thus far, drifted through one another's lives only briefly, but the way they've touched each other has changed them both to the core. They are sisters, lovers, twins, enemies... they switch bodies, and there is no discomfort, because they know each other in a way neither of them has ever known someone else, with the possible exception of Buffy and Kendra. To every generation, there is but one... but they are two. And one. From what we see, neither of them has any formal martial arts training before they are Called, no real experience in combat. I absolutely think Faith's been in some scuffles, but the sorts kids who get in trouble get into - drive a fist into a nose or slam a face agianst a table and it's done. Buffy's athletic experience, meanwhile, is cheerleading - a physically demanding activity, and dangerous, but it's not combat. Seriously, though, cheerleading IS dangerous. Like, on par with major contact sports dangerous. The work cheerleaders do is underappreciated and vastly undercompensated, and you should get on Google after you read this and learn about the way the major sports leagues treat their cheerleaders because it's a travesty. The point I was getting at: To be the Slayer isn't just to get a stack of physical gifts. It's not just strength and stamina and reflexes and speed and resistance to magic and illness. The Slayer, when Called, is changed on a mental and spiritual level. She learns martial arts - not at the point of being a grandmaster; if that was the case, they wouldn't need to train, but at quite a high level - from the Call. She gains the ability to sense vampires and dark magic. The Calling infects her dreams, turning them from a safe way to rest between days normal and traumatic alike and into terrifying prophecies of death and destruction and oncoming evil and apocalypse. As a champion of Good, the Slayer's mind is opened to the worst of Evil. There is no one else who understands the Slayer. How could they? From childhood - and a fourteen-year-old is a child, if one starting to grasp at adulthood - she is drenched in blood and the stench of the grave, her sleep interrupted by demons to the point that it is safer for her to be awake fighting them than to close her eyes. She knows what vampire dust, what grave soil, what demon ichor looks like, smells like, tastes like. She is Called, and she never knows safety again. How much must it have hurt, then, for Buffy to have met Kendra, made friends with her, found a sister in spirit and experience, only to have her killed? The episode where Kendra dies sells that as being a tragedy because of the lost chance for Buffy to take time away from being a Slayer, but she loses a sister there. Angel and Drusilla and Xander and Joyce strip her of the few people who she really relies on, really trusts, the people who understand the most about her, and that story is one of the most difficult in the series to watch. But when Buffy died, the Slayer line passed from her to Kendra, so Kendra's death passed it from her to Faith. And in Faith, Buffy found a second sister. One who could speak to parts of her that she didn't know existed. The lust between them is obvious - moreso from Faith than from Buffy, though that seems to be more from Buffy's straight-laced nature than from a serious difference in level of feeling. Then comes the Deputy Mayor's death. The death of a man who was on his way to offer help to them in stopping the next apocalypse. It is an accidental killing, an innocent caught in the crossfire of war, no more Faith's fault than the death of a young man killed by a vampire while Buffy was fighting the Master would be Buffy's. But... everything changes then. Faith's reaction to that is more immediately devastating, but no one reacts well. They are failed by the Council and by Buffy's friends, manipulated by the Mayor, and they betray each other. Faith's betrayal of Buffy's is deeper and more primal, but Buffy fails to stand by Faith, fails basic tests of empathy with Faith, and helps - with a huge, huge, HUGE assist from Wesley, who was the worst actor in the situation - drive her into the Mayor's arms. So by the time of the two-parter, Faith has tried to kill Buffy, and Buffy has tried to kill Faith. Faith has poisoned Buffy's boyfriend, and Buffy has killed the one real parent Faith ever had. They are sisters, and they are lovers, and they have done these things to each other. Could their hatred for one another be anything but all-consuming? Evil Angel told us about the power of passion in the well-intended but badly-assembled episode where he murdered Jenny. It's a running theme in the setting - passion steals Angel's soul, passion kills Jenny, passion saves Angel and kills him, passion and the urgent need to feel even its echoes brings people into reach of the burrowing demon. And Buffy and Faith's most passionate relationships are with each other. So of course, when Faith awakens, Adam is forgotten. Faith touches Buffy's soul; Adam is merely an unstoppable murder machine. But it's more than that. In season 3, it's clear how much each of them has that the other wants. Buffy craves the simplicity that Faith seems to live life with, the honesty. Want, take, have. The ability to have her power be something other than a burden. And Faith? She wants the mother, who she never sees the abuse from. The good Watcher who cares for his charge. The loyal friends. The ability, even for a moment, to relax, knowing that there are others around who will actually care for her. Here, for a brief time, they get those things. Well, Faith does, anyway - what Buffy gets is a huge pile of the consequences of the things Faith does, plus a reminder of how bull-headedly always wrong the Council is. Seriously, the last decent choice they made was hiring Ripper. Anyway, Faith gets the friends and the mother and the Watcher and the boyfriend, but all she can do is run, because that's all she's ever really known how to do, and getting those things doesn't change the life she's lived or the trauma she carries. She could trust the Mayor only becaue she knew exactly how he was using her; that Riley and Giles and Joyce and Willow didn't want things from her meant she couldn't trust them. But they are still the Slayer, still drawn as moths to the same flame. They are still sisters and lovers and cannot disentangle themselves from one another. It is their nature. Until one of them is dead, they'll never be free of each other. Even then, I expect the memory of the dead will haunt the living.

[curator-on-ao3]

@ruckafangirl, I couldn’t stop thinking about your question and my answer, as well as my tags:

So I changed Clancy’s answer to the version in the tags.

I think you were right and Clancy’s response to the journalist could have been more clear that the Romulans did, indeed, die … if I was correct in guessing that’s what gave the impression that the Romulans didn’t die. (If I wasn’t correct on that, I certainly want to know.)

Thanks again for checking in on this!

Hey, Curator. I wanted to do this by ask instead of by comment on AO3, because I have *so* much respect for your work on Autobigraphy of Kirsten Clancy. Your creation of Martian culture? Exquisite. Your depiction of a healthy relationship between two peers striving to be part of the same organization they love and also raise a family? Fantastic. Your depiction of grief and trauma? Amazing. So since my question feels a bit critical, I wanted to emphasize that I'm not trying to start an argument or score points - I genuinely, privately want to know.

I could say nice things about the story all day. But one thing in it that I felt disappointed by was the decision not to just challenge the moral attitude of Picard and the Romulan relocation effort, but to actively change the facts of it. I think the question of whether the Federation should be allowed to break up over saying a billion lives or more is a serious one, and one that deserved the argument between Picard and Clancy. Having a narrative that says "Well, nobody really died because the Romulans evacuated them using their own resources" seems to really gut the whole moral concept of the argument - as if to say Clancy can't win it on those terms so we have to change the facts, when frankly I think she *can* win it.

Do you mind me asking what your thoughts were behind making that change? Is it supposed to be the product of unreliable narration on Clancy's part, or are you describing a different universe?

Anyway, thank you again for a wonderful story.

Oh my goodness, @ruckafangirl, your praise for that story means so much to me — and the elements you mention are quite close to my heart. Thank you, thank you! ❤️

I welcome questions (I feel like it’s an author’s dream to be asked why they made writerly choices), though I must admit I was confused at first by yours. The narrative in that story is 100% in our universe with those millions of Romulan deaths happening. Clancy’s argument with Picard following the destruction of Mars and Utopia Planitia — and her view that the Federation can save either itself or the Romulans, and the Romulans should have the resources to save themselves — is meant to be in light of readers knowing that Clancy won the argument at the cost of the future of the Romulan relocation effort since the Romulans did not turn out to have (or use?) the resources to save themselves.

I went back to the story to try to figure out what could have given you the impression that the Romulans didn’t die. Because you’re exactly right that Clancy is an unreliable narrator. She doesn’t lie whole cloth, though, and she’s painfully aware that most of her life is documented via official records and logs. I therefore worked to make her omissions both visible and sensible (e.g., she only reveals the extent of her closeness with Edward Jellico in the acknowledgments because, as she explains, he didn’t want her to talk much about him in her book). I wonder, was it Clancy’s press conference following Picard’s TV appearance that suggested the Romulans didn’t die? Because the journalist’s question, “What is your response to Picard’s critique of Starfleet’s decision to cancel the Romulan rescue?” is a fair one. And Clancy’s answer, “Starfleet is proud to have successfully handed off the Romulan evacuation to the Romulan government, which ensured the safety of its people,” is truthful, yet glosses over what “its people” means. Not all people. Not most people. And what about that handoff would have been proud in any way? I attempted to show the unreliable nature of Clancy’s glib, soundbite-oriented, political theater press conference answers by immediately having Clancy reflect on her training for press conferences from both Admiral Brand and her mother. Clancy, per her explaination of that training, focuses her press conference answers on what she views as “relevant information” while knowingly avoiding mention of deeper, uncomfortable truths — including what she perceives as Picard’s erratic behavior and his need for a brain scan (begging the question: Does Clancy know about Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome diagnosis or are her instincts that good?). Clancy correctly believes that the Romulan government took over the relocation. She possibly incorrectly believes that Starfleet therefore has no responsibility for the relocation’s failures. So she doesn’t mention them.

I hope all this makes clear that I wholeheartedly agree with you, @ruckafangirl: the moral concept of Clancy’s showdown with Picard requires those Romulans to die. And they most definitely do.

Note because of the times we live in: The Romulans die due to canon consistency. Their deaths are not a statement on my personal beliefs, their deaths are a fact of the Trek universe.