Angel. The Fall
The main complaints against Angel's arc I saw online boil down to two claims: a) Angel is out of character and b) to service Buffy's journey, Angel is destroyed.
Judging by Jeanty's Q&As, Angel's arc in season 8 is over. He won't be in #40. It's time to sum up his story. What the hell has happened to him?
( Angel, Joss way )
Judging by Jeanty's Q&As, Angel's arc in season 8 is over. He won't be in #40. It's time to sum up his story. What the hell has happened to him?
( Angel, Joss way )
"So, if Whistler knew about the outcome, why didn't he just say, "Hey, Angel, you know there is a seed in Sunnydale, tell Buffy to grab her scythe and go and break it"If breaking the Seed cuts off Earth from all the other dimensions, presumably that means the Powers That Be wouldn't be able to reach or influence Earth either. So in their opinion, breaking it would be a defeat for them; the last thing they'd want their champions to do ( ... )
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Thank you!
If breaking the Seed cuts off Earth from all the other dimensions, presumably that means the Powers That Be wouldn't be able to reach or influence Earth either. So in their opinion, breaking it would be a defeat for them; the last thing they'd want their champions to do.
Then again, not breaking it is even the bigger defeat, because Earth dies and there will be nothing to reach and influence. (I tried to build a logical explanation of PtB's position to argue Leyki's point, but it became too complicated so I focused on Willow's possible reaction. She is very strong - she could turn Angel into a frog, despite all his God-like powers. So she could be a crucial factor here.
Has anyone asked Scott or Jane if that was 'really' Whistler, or instead Twilight in disguise?I read all their interviews I see online, but, AFAIK, nobody asked them. My hands are itching to go to Jane's blog and ask directly. The only thing that stops me is the thought that maybe it will be the crucial plot point of Angel's arc in season 9 ( ... )
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Except, unlike the motivations for those incidents, this was not and never was about suffering general populace. People were starving and oppressed there. This was about a handful of superbeings who were amassing military weaponry in the modern world.
If you go back to the French or Russian revolution, both of whom did indeed spin out of control, they started from a not-insane premise. The de-evolution evolved over time as they lost sight of their goals. Twilight's goal were completely hinky and poorly supported to begin with. Had they wanted us to find them at all rational, then it was on the comics to lay the groundwork to make them rational. They never did. The height of their 'explanation' was a talking dog discussing prophecies. This is not something that's particularly believable nor a good set-up for character motivation. It's a talking dog and a prophecy in a fictional universe where darn near every ( ... )
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I assume you're talking about the goals that Angel and his human supporters thought they were fighting for here, rather than the deeper hidden plan of Twilight-the-Universe that Angel didn't know about?
"And now there's this prophecy, the biggest one the Powers have ever seen, so that's messing with the math, killing off timelines. Anyway, I've seen some of the futures. In some of them, right exactly at this point, you tell her what's going on. You work as a team, fight side by side. You lose the war side by side. Very romantic."
Angel thought he was saving the world (and building a better one). His followers thought they were defending humanity against evil magical and demonic powers. I don't see what's so hinky about that...
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I'm talking about Angel having a plan that the best way to deal with a problem like the Slayers was to make people hate them and to go to war with them. It makes sense if, like Voll, you actually think they're evil, but if your plan is to protect them (while you're destroying them to bring about Twilight...which... are kind of contradictory goals, but whatever) that creating seething masses of people hating the slayers is to unleash an untamable force against the folks your trying to protect.
I wrote a pretty big meta about how revolutions turn on themselves as part of my meta for the Hunger Games Trilogy : (link: http://shipperx.livejournal.com/577418.html it's in the part about Book III - Mockingjay) so I'm not unaware of the concept that this was supposedly aiming for. I'm just saying if this was what they were trying to express, they did not express it at all well. Robspierre, Marat, and Lenin believed their causes ( ... )
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This seems to be the biggest disconnect, because as far as I can see, Angel wasn't responsible for that at all. People hated Slayers because a self-selected group of superhuman killers who blow up Californian towns, steal guns from armouries, etc, would make anybody nervous. Humanity came up with reasons to hate and fear Slayers all by itself.
Sure, in the early part of the season Buffy found it easier to blame Twilight for all her problems than to accept that people might have a problem with her Slayer Army themselves. But Angel was trying to keep a lid on the anti-Slayer hysteria by diverting and delaying it - not whipping up the frenzy himself.
The seed had been here all along. Twilight only came into effect because Angel was stupid enough to buy its flimsey excuses.
Perhaps so - but if it hadn't been Angel, it might have been someone else. Like Roden, for example - do you think he would ( ... )
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We have no way of knowing that. That's another problem with the execution. We don't have a dependable timeline that actually relates to anything.
We were only shown Angel's decision to become Twilight in flashback and do not know when it was flashing back to. When the comics had started, the Slayers were already at war and there was already a mystery person involved. Which came first the chicken or the egg... we don't actually know.
Whistler, the emissary of the Powers who dragged Angel out of his filthy, rat-eating back-alley misery and set him on the path to becoming a Champion and earning redemptionOr Whistler, the guy who introduced him to the one girl in all the world that would cause him to lose his soul and try to resurrect Acathla. And is it even ( ... )
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We know that because in the very first issue of the very first comic we hear the all too human General Voll getting his rant on about Slayer terrorists not jibing with American interests following a charismatic leader who reduced her home town into a crater. He's being listened to respectfully (ie as if he's talking sense) by people who are not part of the Twilight organisation. We know it because the same representative of humanity explains how Slayers are possessed by a demonic force that will ultimately lead to them wanting to remake the world in their image. We also know it because Willow points out to Buffy that the bank job will have made her enemies amongst the rich and powerful who see her as a threat to their possessions. In that context when Angel confirms it to be the case in #33 the least fanwanky interpretation is to accept that he's telling the truth about the government's role in all this.
The issue with Twilight is... the world was in no immediate danger.As far as Angel knew it was. ( ... )
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And is it even really Whistler?
Seriously, does it matter at this point? Angel thought it was Whistler. Whether Whistler was the emissary of the Powers That Be or of Twilight, he was still a supernatural force here to persuade Angel to follow his plan in order to save the world (or make it into a better one.) The big contrast of S8 is the supernatural versus humanity.
Hell, most people around now would choose a hundred and fifty years from now.
Most people probably would, yes. Buffy, for instance. However, as I remarked above, Angel is immortal. He's not getting any older. Why should we expect him to see these things the exact same way as us?
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I don't read aycheb's posts any longer. I told her as much last week when I decided that was the course that I would follow, and I told her why in the confersation that convinced me to do that. But that was in someone else's journal and I have no reason to bring it to Moscow's.
As to the comics, I get that you guys like them and in the many interpretations of stuff that have come out of the comics, you guys have one that work for you and that satisfies you. I'm glad someone enjoys the comics. Someone should.
I, however, note the fact that I can go around LJ and a few forums like Buffy Forums and find a whole host of other theories and interpretations with people who sincerely believe that they have them figured out also (while noting that almost everyone's theories have a tendency to morph from one issue to the next with entirely different fanwanks given the month, the state of the comics, and, at times, I suspect the phase of the moon). All of these people believe their interpretation ( ... )
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I don't have a fixed theory about how it all works; untl the season is over, how can I? But it doesn't stop me speculating and theorising, and even changing my mind as new information comes in or other people suggest different readings of things. And I read the comics because I enjoy them, not because someone makes me do it. :-)
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Nah. Nothing hinky in saying that Angel was doing what he thought would replace the world with a different world but that he didn't actually expect there to be harm to the world being replaced. Maybe. Meanwhile in Q&As say that he didn't know what he had to do to cause it to happen, that he didn't know what would happen if Twilight came about, and of course he wasn't particularly moved to do much when he did see it happening until Buffy said she'd leave him there. That's on top of their also saying that Angel was actually covertly working at helping the slayers, though we aren't shown these covert attempts, despite the fact that such actions would be in direct opposition to his stated goal of 'bringing Buffy low' so as to create the Twilight... that he apparently didn't know what it was exactly. But he made it less bad from the ( ... )
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Angel was actually covertly working at helping the slayers, though we aren't shown these covert attemptsWell, we are; but it's subtle because they were going for the deliberate mislead. But the most obvious example is this one from 'A Beautiful Sunset ( ... )
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Alternative 1: The Seed is successfully defended. The Powers continue to influence Earth. Victory for them.
Alternative 2: Twilight captures the Seed and takes it to the new universe. The Earth is destroyed. However, the Powers can presumably move into the new Universe and start influencing that one - why wouldn't they? They lose the battle, but not the war.
Alternative 3: The Seed is broken. Compete defeat for the Powers.
viscerally, something inside me resists these panels.
Well, I think we're definitely supposed to object to Angel's attitude, and to believe he's in the wrong. The trouble is, a lot of people seem to be reacting as "Oh, Angel would never do that!" while I'm thinking "Yeah, he probably would - I'm pretty sure I would too in his place - but he gets over his first reaction ( ... )
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Actually, what I'm saying is that if Angel did that on such incredibly unconvincing and illogical evidence, he's a moron.
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Impossible. Gigi and Roden are Gods. Their powers are unlimited.
Alternative 2: Twilight captures the Seed and takes it to the new universe. The Earth is destroyed. However, the Powers can presumably move into the new Universe and start influencing that one - why wouldn't they? They lose the battle, but not the war.
If they can influence any reality, why bother about one replacing another? Pure nostalgia? Old connections? :)
Alternative 3: The Seed is broken. Compete defeat for the Powers.
Actualy, it will be interesting to see if PtB will stay. It was an awfully convenient writer's crutch, hard to replace. :)
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