FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON

[upupa_epops]

Old news: lj is dead. Everyone is crazy busy, or they have other reasons not to be here. No one has time to read those huge meta posts we used to write once upon a time. But maybe we can all find ten minutes to do this:

FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON!

Comments

[angearia]

The beauty of this approach to language is how it opens up characters to demonstrate both humor and humility. It's playful self-deprecation which offsets the darker aspects of these characters who can be so incredibly arrogant and self-possessed. It softens them, humanizes them. Not only do these characters laugh in the face of death, but they laugh at themselves, at their ignorance and foibles and invite their loved ones to laugh at them, too. Hell, they even invite strangers to laugh at them.

How many times does Buffy play the goofball to people she's just met? And she does this, deliberately playing up her silliness in a way that goes so far beyond simply playing the ditz. Buffy does this as a way of humanizing herself -- and to see how often she works at making herself seem fallible demonstrates her need to be seen as human, not as the hard stone she fears being the Slayer will make of her.

This humor helps Buffy find distance from what she fears about herself, what she fears others perceive her as. It's a mask she dons as much as the way her Slayer BAMF is a mask which ~rises~ to the surface when she calls it from within.

Self-deprecation becomes a means of finding balance. Of bringing human fallibity to Slayer strength for Buffy. Of bringing youthful play to Giles' stodgy intellectualism. They are more than their archetypes, more than the roles perform, the roles they fill. This humor is how they fill these roles, how they demonstrate the self-awareness of their types and how they chafe against them, wishing to be more. To be both unique and the same as others, separate and together, but not flat and empty as the roles that threaten to overwhelmingly define them.

This playfulness brings balance and dimension to the characters themselves and the tonality of the show, as the humor offsets the dire, the comedy offsets the tragedy.

"I think this line's mostly filler" is what brings the humanity to the Whedonverse. I'd argue that these moments aren't there simply because of "why the fuck not" but rather these moments exist because they're necessary to bring a holistic sense of the human experience to the story. It's the small moments that make us human, after all.

[upupa_epops]

I'd say "why the fuck not" is a good expression, in a sense that they could literally be ANYTHING. It doesn't matter if Giles says "Well it's so shiny", or one of twenty other possible silly sentences. I didn't mean it as anything bad :).

See, I find it difficult to actually find meaning behind the Whedon language, because I love the sound of it so much that every time I try to think thinky thoughts, I get distracted by ALL THE SHINY (also, in case you ever wondered, one SHOULDN'T translate trailers to Disney movies while in the middle of a Buffy rewatch). So thank you so much for the insight <3333.

[angearia]

Oh sure! Just that for me, "why the fuck not" carries this heavy connotation of doing it simply because it can be done, that it lacks purpose, or that it's simply to push and test boundaries. Like, there are some developments in the Buffy comics where it seems like the writers just went with the most outrageous thing they could imagine simply because they could now that they didn't have a budget.

With language, isn't there always this freedom to have characters say anything? I mean, in terms of simply choosing the words? I totally agree about how so many other silly things could've been said, right. Just, I find so much purpose and effect in how Whedon language works, in how "that's so shiny" works with the lines that came before it to bring Giles' humor to an otherwise stodgy info drop about the blah-blah plot device blah. It's a clever way to humanize the plot mechanics. So in that sense, these words carry a lot of purpose, especially because Whedon cares fuck all about plot (HAHA) and simply uses plot as a means of exploring character.

SORRY I tend to approach meta from a stance of 'interesting, but how do I disagree with this?' so that's no doubt why my reply seemed like I was set on being contrary. ;-)

This is like one of my FAVORITE SUBJECTS and I could go on. Most of the fic I've written for the Buffyverse very deliberately works to capture this balance of humor/drama, the balance between serious straightforward speech and self-deprecating humor. And how these moods shift and bleed together to create the genre melange that is any BtVS. Which is quite perfect as a process when you think about it, as it's not simply the camera and the lighting and the framing of the shots that makes it seem like HORROR or SCI-FI but it's the very language itself that shares this trait of complex identity.

[red_satin_doll]

This is like one of my FAVORITE SUBJECTS and I could go on. Most of the fic I've written for the Buffyverse very deliberately works to capture this balance of humor/drama, the balance between serious straightforward speech and self-deprecating humor. And how these moods shift and bleed together to create the genre melange that is any BtVS. Which is quite perfect as a process when you think about it, as it's not simply the camera and the lighting and the framing of the shots that makes it seem like HORROR or SCI-FI but it's the very language itself that shares this trait of complex identity.

Oh please, Do go on! I love your thinky-thoughts! And thank you for rec'ing this "thon" on your LJ, I'd have missed it otherwise.

In regards to the actual subject at hand - that very balance of humor/drama has been on my mind quite a lot lately. It can be difficult to explain to people (perhaps even to myself) because there's nothing I can really compare BtVS to (I don't want TVD, f.ex.). "Him" is a good example, I think; it's not a popular episode, but it makes me laugh. It takes everyone's fears, guilt, insecurities, and turns them inside out to humorous effect:
Contrast "I guess a Slayer is just a killer after all" with "Ooh, kill! Slayer means killer! I can kill Principle Wood!"
Willow and Anya squabbling the way they did in S5; Willow's dismissive "You'd kill for a chocolate bar!" just one episode after Anya killed ten frat boys, and then gleefully going off to turn RJ into a girl.

Their entire universe is turned on it's head but certain things remain constant: Xander and Spike put aside their differences & team up to help the women they love, their family, as they've done so many times before (I'm thinking of Normal Again specifically); Anya is still as blunt as ever, esp re: sexuality "His physical presence has a PENIS." And most importantly, Buffy's sisterly love for Dawn trumps even a "love spell" and she will risk her own life to save her sister's. The entire episode if rife with such reversals. And some won't even make sense until later in the season - the rift between Buffy and Dawn and Dawn's fears of "not being chosen"; the girl Dawn fighting in the alley as a proto-Potential, attacking Buffy verbally and physically (resisting Buffy's authority) foreshadowing EP

Or to use another example, Clem in Seeing Red: "She's a nice girl but, hey, issues" to Spike who is agonizing over what he's just done to her. It's funny and it's horrible all at once, and the pain is sharpened in the contrast with the improbably humor. We laugh and cover our mouths all at once because we feel we shouldn't laugh.

Beer Bad: the imagery of Cave!Buffy, the pure physical comedy played to the hilt by Sarah - powerful in her "primal" state, aggressive, willful; the setting of the burning building, etc is almost exactly reproduced in Bargaining, Pt 2 but to entirely different effect. Instead of a spell this time she's dazed, in shock, frightened, almost catatonic, but in each instance the instinct to protect rises to the surface and overrules everything else, including her own fears. Again, it's in the contrasts that I think much of the heart of the Buffyverse lies. It's a remarkably unsentimental show.

[fray_adjacent12]

I love what you say about Buffy using humor to humanize herself. A great example is when Maggie Walsh says, "I thought you were a myth," to which Buffy responds, "Well, you were myth-taken." And then immediately looks embarrassed that she made a bad pun to The Lady In Charge. It's a great example of the depth of character that SMG brings to what could easily be read as throwaway lines.

[angearia]

Oh that's a perfect example! And I love SMG's delivery in that scene.