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S8, canon, artwork etc.
I've had this sitting on my desktop for at least a week now, and I've been realising that if I don't post it now, I won't be able to until after my parents have left... so in 2+ weeks' time. And honestly I'd rather get it out of the way. I'll do my best to reply to comments, but be warned that I'll be slow! That is of course presuming that you find this interesting enough to comment on...
First of all - I love canon. I’ve analysed and defended pretty much *anything* on the show... AYW, Caleb, S3/4 Cordy, the AR - I determinedly look at the positive side of everything. Basically I feel very, very protective of my show and my characters - even Adam or Kennedy. I love the whole ‘verse, warts and all.
I don’t feel like that towards the comics. I’m curious where Joss is going, but I do not have that compunction to defend him or his story - because it doesn’t feel like my show. The change in format is too great. This post is my attempt at examining why. No spoilers.
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kindkit put it beautifully here:
I'm with you in general, but I have to say, I disagree about the canon issue. Yes, Joss Whedon is writing. But the show was never just Joss. It was Joss, plus the actors, the other writers, the directors, etc. Which is not to deny that Joss was very much the guiding hand (at least when he was around), but the show was the product of an ensemble of talents.
Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, the comic is not the show. It's a completely different format. There's no Sarah Michelle Gellar, no Tony Head, nobody interpreting Joss's (or another writer's) lines, supplementing them with body language, etc. [There is, of course, an artist, but that's not quite the same thing as a group of actors.] Because the format is so utterly different, I don't consider the comic to be canon, any more than I'd consider a film version of a play to be "canon" to the play (even if the playwright adapted the script--I'm thinking specifically of Tom Stoppard's film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I love but which is not the play). I don't consider the Harry Potter films canon, and I wouldn't even if JKR wrote them herself. Similarly, I don't consider Joss's interviews and commentary tracks to be canon--the things he says there may be what he meant, what he wanted the show to be, but I go by what I see onscreen.
The comic is, in my view, its own world, which will develop its own internal canon as it continues. When I write fic, I will write in either show canon or (perhaps) comics canon, but I won't treat them as the same.
There is quite simply not anywhere near the input that we got in the show itself. To quote JM:
But also, like a war, I guess I don't hang out with them because there is a lot of painful memories, because we'd work 12-15 hours a day, which is a lot longer than other TV shows, by the way. We worked a whole lot more than other TV shows, and we were always trying to find more elements, more special effects, more things to put on that brain because it was never good enough. We were always pushing for more, and I feel privileged to have gone through it with them, but at the same time, even watching it sometimes I get some painful memories. It was the best experience of my life, but it was not easy. And I'm proud of it, yeah.
So the input is vastly, vastly reduced. That straight off makes a big difference. One writer and one artist working on a scene is far removed from a whole crew of people, with actors re-shooting a scene numerous times, using different inflections, movements, wording. Look at the dailies for a start.
2) Then there’s the format. No movement, no sound, no music. It’s not the same. And this of course ties in with the whole likeness issue. To quotemoscow_watcher (original comment here):
Not to start the whole canon/not canon debate, but on a purely visceral level I don't perceive this drawed Buffy as the one who moved, talked, sang, laughed and cried onscreen. I can be a happy Spuffy shipper who reads and occasionally writes fanfiction and gets her Spuffy fix on fanfiction archives; and, at the same time, I can enjoy the adventures of these new and improved Buffy and Xander who remind me Nikita and Michael a lot.
There was the line ‘drawing the characters, not the actors’ that struck me again recently. It has bugged me since the first time I read it, but suddenly I realised why...
Every now and again someone asks what if they made a film or something, but used different actors - what would people think? Essentially this is what the comics do - they use different actors. And that is why it just doesn’t work for me. SMG is my Buffy! SMG gave Buffy her face, her voice, her mannerisms, her expressions. It is SMG’s Buffy who breaks my heart every time I watch ‘Prophecy Girl’ (“Giles I’m 16 years old... I-I don’t want to die!”), it’s SMG’s Buffy I cheer on in ‘Anne’, SMG’s Buffy that takes my breath away in ‘The Gift’ with her beautiful swan dive, SMG’s Buffy who kicks ass in ‘Chosen’.
Comic!Buffy is OK - but she’s no more my Buffy than Kirsty Swanson.
Tied in with this is the art work itself. I think I originally described it as ‘competent’ and that’s pretty much how I see it still. Having pondered the issue somewhat I think the artist in question is more of a craftsman than an artist. Maybe this is something inherent in working with other people’s stories, I don’t know. (For examples of stuff that really makes me excited about the art, here are pictures by Wendy Pini and Will Eisner.)
3) Then there is that fact that Buffy was *finished* after S7. The show wasn’t cancelled, it ended. Sunnydale was wiped off the map, and since Sunnydale and Buffy always went together, it really was the final, definitive ending.
Interestingly this is why I’m far more excited by the S6 comics of Angel. Poor AtS was cancelled and sent off to an early grave. Yes ‘Not Fade Away’ was the perfect ending, but we know they had a S6 planned and it *kills* me that we never got to see it. A comic will be a pale shadow of course, but still - we *should* have had a S6. (The WB are feelthy people. *spits* We will speak of them no more!)
But there was never going to be a S8.
So no, I’ll never consider the comics ‘show’ canon. Not even if S8 turns out to be utterly brilliant. It’ll be its own canon I think, since I’m sure there are people who’ll want to use it as a basis for fic etc. and that’s fine. But the show ended after S7.
First of all - I love canon. I’ve analysed and defended pretty much *anything* on the show... AYW, Caleb, S3/4 Cordy, the AR - I determinedly look at the positive side of everything. Basically I feel very, very protective of my show and my characters - even Adam or Kennedy. I love the whole ‘verse, warts and all.
I don’t feel like that towards the comics. I’m curious where Joss is going, but I do not have that compunction to defend him or his story - because it doesn’t feel like my show. The change in format is too great. This post is my attempt at examining why. No spoilers.
1)
kindkit put it beautifully here:I'm with you in general, but I have to say, I disagree about the canon issue. Yes, Joss Whedon is writing. But the show was never just Joss. It was Joss, plus the actors, the other writers, the directors, etc. Which is not to deny that Joss was very much the guiding hand (at least when he was around), but the show was the product of an ensemble of talents.
Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, the comic is not the show. It's a completely different format. There's no Sarah Michelle Gellar, no Tony Head, nobody interpreting Joss's (or another writer's) lines, supplementing them with body language, etc. [There is, of course, an artist, but that's not quite the same thing as a group of actors.] Because the format is so utterly different, I don't consider the comic to be canon, any more than I'd consider a film version of a play to be "canon" to the play (even if the playwright adapted the script--I'm thinking specifically of Tom Stoppard's film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I love but which is not the play). I don't consider the Harry Potter films canon, and I wouldn't even if JKR wrote them herself. Similarly, I don't consider Joss's interviews and commentary tracks to be canon--the things he says there may be what he meant, what he wanted the show to be, but I go by what I see onscreen.
The comic is, in my view, its own world, which will develop its own internal canon as it continues. When I write fic, I will write in either show canon or (perhaps) comics canon, but I won't treat them as the same.
There is quite simply not anywhere near the input that we got in the show itself. To quote JM:
But also, like a war, I guess I don't hang out with them because there is a lot of painful memories, because we'd work 12-15 hours a day, which is a lot longer than other TV shows, by the way. We worked a whole lot more than other TV shows, and we were always trying to find more elements, more special effects, more things to put on that brain because it was never good enough. We were always pushing for more, and I feel privileged to have gone through it with them, but at the same time, even watching it sometimes I get some painful memories. It was the best experience of my life, but it was not easy. And I'm proud of it, yeah.
So the input is vastly, vastly reduced. That straight off makes a big difference. One writer and one artist working on a scene is far removed from a whole crew of people, with actors re-shooting a scene numerous times, using different inflections, movements, wording. Look at the dailies for a start.
2) Then there’s the format. No movement, no sound, no music. It’s not the same. And this of course ties in with the whole likeness issue. To quote
moscow_watcher (original comment here):Not to start the whole canon/not canon debate, but on a purely visceral level I don't perceive this drawed Buffy as the one who moved, talked, sang, laughed and cried onscreen. I can be a happy Spuffy shipper who reads and occasionally writes fanfiction and gets her Spuffy fix on fanfiction archives; and, at the same time, I can enjoy the adventures of these new and improved Buffy and Xander who remind me Nikita and Michael a lot.
There was the line ‘drawing the characters, not the actors’ that struck me again recently. It has bugged me since the first time I read it, but suddenly I realised why...
Every now and again someone asks what if they made a film or something, but used different actors - what would people think? Essentially this is what the comics do - they use different actors. And that is why it just doesn’t work for me. SMG is my Buffy! SMG gave Buffy her face, her voice, her mannerisms, her expressions. It is SMG’s Buffy who breaks my heart every time I watch ‘Prophecy Girl’ (“Giles I’m 16 years old... I-I don’t want to die!”), it’s SMG’s Buffy I cheer on in ‘Anne’, SMG’s Buffy that takes my breath away in ‘The Gift’ with her beautiful swan dive, SMG’s Buffy who kicks ass in ‘Chosen’.
Comic!Buffy is OK - but she’s no more my Buffy than Kirsty Swanson.
Tied in with this is the art work itself. I think I originally described it as ‘competent’ and that’s pretty much how I see it still. Having pondered the issue somewhat I think the artist in question is more of a craftsman than an artist. Maybe this is something inherent in working with other people’s stories, I don’t know. (For examples of stuff that really makes me excited about the art, here are pictures by Wendy Pini and Will Eisner.)
3) Then there is that fact that Buffy was *finished* after S7. The show wasn’t cancelled, it ended. Sunnydale was wiped off the map, and since Sunnydale and Buffy always went together, it really was the final, definitive ending.
Interestingly this is why I’m far more excited by the S6 comics of Angel. Poor AtS was cancelled and sent off to an early grave. Yes ‘Not Fade Away’ was the perfect ending, but we know they had a S6 planned and it *kills* me that we never got to see it. A comic will be a pale shadow of course, but still - we *should* have had a S6. (The WB are feelthy people. *spits* We will speak of them no more!)
But there was never going to be a S8.
So no, I’ll never consider the comics ‘show’ canon. Not even if S8 turns out to be utterly brilliant. It’ll be its own canon I think, since I’m sure there are people who’ll want to use it as a basis for fic etc. and that’s fine. But the show ended after S7.
no subject
Now see I'm really odd in that aspect - because ultimately I want Buffy to end up with Spike, absolutely. I want her to be happy, and I think she'd be happiest with Spike.
I think it's hard for me to imagine anywhere Spike's story can go that won't ultimately just upset me.
But - Spike's story can go pretty much anywhere and I'll be happy. Ultimately he's in the same fix as Angel - he's immortal. If he gets together with Buffy he'll watch her die. So I'm happy for Spike to be on his own, to fight alongside Angel, to go to Buffy... as long as the ride is good, I'm there.
I think it's objectively possibly the worst episode of the series.
*boggles* I have a great fondness for that ep! It's lovely. :)