zamolxis
Novice Witch
[Mo0:0]
Posts: 210
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Post by zamolxis on Jun 29, 2010 13:00:10 GMT -5
Wow, great post.
I have a single objection for it: time. Such development I think needs a lot of time to "conquer" the public or it was an extremely powerful mass-media attack against the slayers: reports on the slayers victims with twilight's mark, footage with bank robberies and rogue slayers on varies cities, stealing submarines, etc. And a free mind will ask "why now all this?" A media attack like this indicates a shift in power (it was a secret before, who kept it secret, it's out now, everybody knows it, why this reporter keeps insisting on the subject, who'll benefit upon these changes, why and why now)
Maybe I believe too much in humans, but without a spell or a bend or a mass-manipulation from Twilight, I can't accept that humans are going dumb so suddenly.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 29, 2010 13:01:57 GMT -5
I know that's what the story wants us to accept... I just don't buy it. The story fails to take into account too many variables of human behavior. I mean, organized religion is hugely influential in this country and elsewhere. Are all those people really accepting soulless, bloodsucking demons as something acceptable? Especially with the air of deviant sexuality thrown in? Why would government... from Homeland Security down to the local police... accept the sudden revelation of a whole class of beings who look just like us, live among us, and whose raison d'etre is to drain us of our blood? Have they really failed to make the connection with those decades' worth of mysterious corpses in alleyways with bite marks on their necks? And the media's bread-and-butter is not just accepting the status quo dictated by some blonde on a reality show, who has mysteriously become apparently as influential as Jesus Christ. It's to constantly ask "Is that really the true story? Is there another side to this?" Hell, these days the media is looking for "dissenting opinions" even in cases of empirically established fact. It's what they do. It's how they attract eyeballs. Not to mention the tons of skeptics and conspiracy theorists out there who dedicate themselves to looking for "the truth" behind every sensational news story, whether or not they'd know it when they found it. Finally, vampires are demons. They're evil. Their goal is usually not just to feed, but to terrorize, to hurt, to kill. A few may be content just to feed (like Harmony, or Cyn, or Sandy, the girl who drank from Riley). But those are the exceptions to the rule. What about vamps like Drusilla, or soulless Spike and Angelus, or the Master? Would they really be tamed by the words of a cute blonde on TV? Many vampires are going to go right on killing, Harmony be damned (again). And not all of them are going to have an Ash on hand to cover up the mess. Now, whenever the body of a vamp victim is found, everyone will recognize exactly what it is. And many of those victims will have families and friends, and law enforcement officials and politicians and media people calling for justice. This premise just doesn't work on its own merits. We could accept that the people of Sunnydale were mostly clueless and/or in denial about what was happening in their town. But on this scale, my suspension of disbelief has been completely broken. Yes, it would have helped if we'd seen more of the people who are supposedly questioning the "good vamps/bad Slayers" meme. I could accept it if the public was engaged in constant debate over this, with the result being that neither Buffy's army nor the Twilight group could count on any help from public opinion, and it all came down to who could amass the most power and influence. I assume Angel was able to gain the trust of the government and army by promising to destroy the demons and vampires as well as the Slayers. But "the Universe," by its very nature, would be capable of easily influencing masses of people the same way it influenced Angel, or the same way Jasmine influenced everyone who heard her. By depriving Buffy of her natural allies (the very people she's working to protect), it drives her to her physical and emotional extremes, sets up a mano-a-mano showdown between her and Twilight, and enables the Twilight event to happen. If this isn't what Joss had in mind, I'd certainly be happier if he pretended it was.
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Dorotea
Potential Slayer
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Posts: 145
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Post by Dorotea on Jun 29, 2010 13:29:01 GMT -5
I think Gepetto from #36 panel is an allusion that Angel is manipulated as the rest of the living creatures with him Except technically Angel is not a 'living' creature, unless he has been made one... which is a rather interesting supposition in itself. I thought when Meltzer answered with question ( what else can he be ?) to the question ( is Angel still a cursed vampire ?) rather hilarious... If he indeed can be manipulated by the Universe as all the living creatures - this would be interesting.
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Hellbound Hyperion
Bad Ass Wicca
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Posts: 2,268
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Post by Hellbound Hyperion on Jun 29, 2010 13:32:46 GMT -5
Andrew, I think the idea is that the people who directly oppose Slayers - who are "othering" them - now make up the majority of the populace. I haven't seen anything to suggest that this sudden shift in popularity for vampires has completely put humanity under its thrall.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 29, 2010 13:56:11 GMT -5
Andrew, I think the idea is that the people who directly oppose Slayers - who are "othering" them - now make up the majority of the populace. I haven't seen anything to suggest that this sudden shift in popularity for vampires has completely put humanity under its thrall. My point is that this status quo makes no sense without magical interference. Whether humanity qualifies as being "under thrall" is debatable, but I think the sheer illogic of the situation argues for strong supernatural influence. (Which is a preferable explanation to just plain bad writing, IMO.) I can see why humanity would be mistrustful of the Slayer army, but by the very same tokens they should be horrified by the vampires. The Slayers are a group of human girls with ties of families, friends, and society. Their "offenses" consist of: * Bringing about the destruction of Sunnydale -- after making sure it was evacuated -- in order to prevent a world-destroying invasion of super-vamps. The authorities are certainly well aware of these circumstances; * Robbing a bank (which the general public probably doesn't even know about); * A renegade splinter group took over an Italian town and ejected its inhabitants -- with no response at all from the authorities; * A solitary Slayer attacked Harmony on her TV show. And the vampires are admittedly, openly evil and soulless creatures with no ties to human society except as prey and food. Their crimes consist of: * Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of bloody murders and torturings across the globe over the last 5,000 years, at least some of which are doubtless continuing today. Makes no sense, no matter how I slice it.
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Post by wenxina on Jun 29, 2010 14:09:49 GMT -5
I'm going to respond in general to both zamolxis and Andrew here. As for the time argument, there is merit to that. However, the one thing that crises do better than making headlines is unifying people. For a crass and exploitative example, see the US post-9/11. The sequence of events from that moment on is still dizzying to me... and I was still on the other side of the world at that point. The crisis at hand here is the existence of the ubermensch, the Slayers. Suddenly, the world at large is made aware of an army (use the term "sorority", or "sisterhood (same thing, yeah yeah)", or "support group", and the response would probably have been less extreme) of superpowered beings. And then you have reports of these beings (I'm using beings to make the point of "otherness") taking what they want, doing what they want, living above and outside the law (c'mon, Buffy violated at least 5 laws about carrying arms everyday of high school). Then you have the term "terrorist". Voll described them as such in #1. Blowing up a shipment of seemingly harmless plushies... terrorists indeed. And, from an academic POV, some people may view Slayers as being racist (see vampire, kill vampire) and practicing a form of genocide. There are nuances, but hey, even some fans miss those nuances, so are we expecting an ignorant public to understand them?
If there was a spell of some sort involved, I'm not opposed to the idea. It really doesn't bother me one way or the other. And this of course is based on my skewed perspective of humanity as not being as nice or civilized as we like to think we are.
But onto addressing other matters. Re: police... I think it was Snyder who put it this way: "The police of Sunnydale are deeply stupid". That can also speak about most people in positions of power. Although, with the revelation that the Mayor was evil, a lot of it can be handwaved away. But what about post-S3? Those parents saw the Mayor become a HUGE snake. Probably saw the vampires approaching. I'm sure some of those parents were cops, doctors, EMTs, etc. They sure as hell never put two and two together (5?). What I'm saying is, why do we expect the people that populate that world to actually act differently now? Sunnydale may be small, but they ain't no hill folk (no offense, hillbillies). And if you're going to accept that Sunnydale as a stupid hick town, how do you explain LA? And while we're on the topic of LA, let me just make an observation: why isn't anyone getting down on Willingham for his current plotpoint of people wanting to be sired by Angel? I mean, LA at large went through hell and saw demons and vampires for what they were, and now they want to be vampires? Personally, I think the answer is quite simple. We fixate on the most pressing issues. In Willingham's run, the plot is the least of our issues with each issue. Rather, the OOC characterization is usually what we fixate on.
Which leads me to the actual point: Why is no one asking for the flipside? Because at the moment, they're stuck in a much bigger story. We're talking one of socio-geo-political interest. It's not the rest of the world commenting on the US foreign policy. It's the entire world questioning their own policies, trying to fix the problem that is a global Slayer Army. A single unified army spread all over the world. Now, that's kinda scary. There's no way they know that the army they fear is only something like 500 (and dropping) girls. The hot topic at the moment is "Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they here?" And the media needs to cover these things to stay relevant. It's been what? A year since all hell broke loose for the Slayers? A year may seem like a long time, but objectively speaking, we're talking of a very compressed time frame here. A year post-9/11, we were still talking about Osama. And pardon me for being cynical, but I also don't remember a lot of articles asking why he did what he did in the spirit of pure journalistic spirit. Every story has a bias. Even the ones that sought to depict the man behind the mayhem made him look like a monster (for the record, I think he is a monster, but whatevs). Oh... and I don't think Buffy's PR reps were around to hand out statements from her. They were being attacked, on the run, and who were the journalists going to talk to? Slayers not enlisted in the army? Slayers enlisted who were forthcoming? This isn't just a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" issue. We're talking about coming forth when A) you might be vilified for the rest of your life, B) killed, or C) charged with multiple charges that I'm sure could be leveled against the Slayers.
And let's talk about the possibility that the government is feeding the media anti-Slayer material. Why not? Vilify your opponent. Make them the "other". Vampires can be coddled for now... they're just "animals" anyway. That was the military stance on HSTs back in S4. Beasts to be tempered. They were playing with forces they didn't understand. But that's what the human race does. We don't understand a fraction of what there is to understand about how chemicals affect us and the world, but that doesn't stop us from creating new ones every day. To assume that the government would learn from their mistake is to assume that humans as a whole, learn from them. And yet, our historical record would indicate otherwise.
As for skeptics and conspiracy theorists... well, they don't necessarily have to be making things better for the Slayers, do they? I mean, right off the top of my head, I could spin up some story about how the Amazons were real, and Slayers are the descendants of these women, and all those abductions that happen on a daily basis, well, they aren't being trafficked by cartels or anything quite as mundane. It's the Slayers that are taking them. Raising the girls to be like them (no doubt feeding them some steroid mixture), and using the boys for procreative and servant purposes. Suddenly, Slayers are the new ETs.
As for the nature of vampires, they've also been known to cooperate for a greater purpose before. In a small-scale way, they band together in feeding groups. In a larger context, they will follow a messiah if it suits their purposes. Like Adam. They aren't just popular now. Popularity is fun. But, what sweetens the deal is that Slayers are being vilified and persecuted. It's having your cake and eating it too. Sure, there'll be vampires who like Ash, think that Harmony's an idiot and will do things their own way. But it's really not that hard to hide a body or ten. And not counting corpses, but people go missing every day. Without a trace. Just poof. Not necessarily the work of vampires. Maybe it's the Slayers...
I'm not saying that your points don't have any merit. I wouldn't bother responding at length if they didn't. I'm just saying that there are a lot of ways to get around certain issues. And it's really not asking more of us to wonder about the what ifs. Not more than previously anyway. The only thing that's changed is the sense of scale, but that doesn't change the mechanics of the world.
But, if Joss wants to add a spell, then he adds a spell. Personally, I feel like that would whitewash humanity at large, and that's a get out of jail free card I don't think we (or they) deserve.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 29, 2010 14:35:56 GMT -5
I just can't see applying the cluelessness of the Sunnydale residents to the world at large. No matter how we argue this point-by-point, if I step back and look at the big picture of this season, I just can't imagine humanity reacting in this way to this situation. I just can't.
Any of the negatives that apply to perception of the Slayers should apply x100 to the vampires. Bottom line: there's no way to whitewash what vampires are, and what they have been, and what they've done, for millennia. Any public debate about something this major would expose that as a major point for discussion. How has Harmony countered the history of her kind? How is she explaining away the incidents of murder that are undoubtedly still going on now?
When you have a whole society engaged in debate on something like this, every possible viewpoint will come to light. This kind of consensus on something with so many very valid points and counterpoints is just not believable.
Harmony went on the Colbert Report and openly admitted to being evil, and openly admitted that vampires kill people (using the excuse that they have to to survive).
Unpopular Slayers, I can accept. Buffy hasn't exactly been a PR whiz here. But popular vampires -- to the point that no loud voices of opposition seem to be making themselves heard at all -- just doesn't work. At best, public opinion should be deeply fractured and skepticism should be tremendously high, based on the amount of evidence supporting such skepticism.
I'm not a big advocate of the notion that humanity, taken as a whole, is particularly logical or rational. But I just can't see the logical premises that would lead to the conclusion that we've been presented with.
This is very much like all of humanity suddenly deciding that crack cocaine is perfectly okay and everyone should use it, but that everyone should stop eating fruits and vegetables because sometimes you get a spoiled one.
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Post by wenxina on Jun 29, 2010 15:03:37 GMT -5
See previous post to previous post stating how the Colbert Report is satirical. The whole Harmony short can be taken as tongue in cheek.
As for debate... well, one, fairly new topic. Not that much to debate about, and calling a new minority group evil is like saying "Evil evil [insert minority group here]". It's regarded as tasteless. Same could be said about what's happening to the Slayers, but hey, what is humanity if lacking in good ol' irony at times. Also, if they believed the balance of power to be shifted in favor of Slayers, technically, they aren't a minority (not in terms of power anyway). Also, since I don't buy that people actually understand the evil that vampires represent (not just evil like I stole the last Hot Pocket with the extra special sauce, even though your name was on it, but evil in the I will sire you and feed your mother's uterus to you for jollies kind of way). Harmony's "confession" on the Colbert Report was satirical. In other words, there is no word out there about the evilness of vampires. So, debating the issue would be pointless, quite literally. Also, barring even a hypothetical pro-Slayer stance... we're talking about arguing for the side of the Nazis here. Slayer=Nazi, as far as we know. It's so textual it's stated right on the page. The current conflict isn't just about shunning unpopular Slayers. It's escalated to the point of persecution. Like the Salem Witch Hunts/Trials.
I don't think we're not supposed to be outraged since we, the readers, know that Slayers are the basically the cosmic balancers of evil. But the world of the Buffyverse is inhabited with people who haven't been privy to that information. And let's not forget the single most forceful driving factor in a lot of what people do: fear. Fear drove the persecution of innocent people during the witch hunts. Fear of being overthrown made King Herod kill a bunch of baby boys. And fear... not very rational... at least in the response part.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 29, 2010 15:39:16 GMT -5
If vampires are as big a deal as they seem to be, then it follows that people will have done some digging. It's crowdsourcing. Get any topic being talked about that much, and fairly quickly history and information will start coming to light. There's just no way you won't get people talking about their brother, who was found dead with mysterious neck wounds three years ago... and then a hundred other people with similar stories, and then cops going through their backlog of unsolved cases, and then concerned parents seeing their children go off to get their necks bitten for recreational purposes, and then preachers starting to rail against soulless bloodsuckers, and then politicians taking them on. "Americans" as depicted in this story seem to consist of 300 million liberal white 20-something thrill seekers who all think exactly alike.
It just doesn't compute for me. It obviously does for you, which is certainly good as it enables you to enjoy the story much more than I do. I wish I could make myself see it the way you do, but it just isn't working for me.
I just can't see this as anything other than the opposite of basic human nature. To me, this story hand-waves way too much in awkwardly hammering in a frankly unnecessary plot point.
This issue forces me to deduct a full letter grade from my assessment of season 8, unless we get some better explanation. Which shouldn't be too hard in a world where virtually anything can happen -- I'd just like the basic premise of logical cause and effect to be respected, and for human nature to be presented in a more genuine and less plot-convenient manner.
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Maggie
Innocent Bystander
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Posts: 48
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Post by Maggie on Jun 29, 2010 15:57:39 GMT -5
See previous post to previous post stating how the Colbert Report is satirical. The whole Harmony short can be taken as tongue in cheek. This just doesn't work for me. If you mean that we're supposed to think it's all just a joke external to the main text, it doesn't work because it's in the line of in text things like the Larry King interview. If you mean that we're supposed to think that Harmony is joking about the evil nature of vamires and that Colbert is in on the joke, it just doesn't read that way. Colbert is plainly uncomfortable about her 'joke' about eating Barbara Walters. But more importantly, the whole interview presupposes that this new view of vampires is occuring in a world that used to have the traditional view of vampires. And if that is the case, it really does not make sense that the world turned on a dime because of one incident on TV and a handful of interviews with Harmony. Especially if one of those interviews is the one she gives to Colbert. I totally buy the anti-slayer stuff. That's plausibly built up and is actually what's driving the story in the main. But the pro-vampire thing just doesn't work. It requires that the public to be intensely stupid -- so much so that it doesn't even work as satire. So I'm with Andrew, really hoping that it turns out that magic is somehow driving this event.
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Post by wenxina on Jun 29, 2010 16:42:02 GMT -5
Maggie: I'm saying that the entire Colbert Report short is meant to be read as satire, yes. Kinda like watching a segment of the show. And so yes, Colbert is in on the joke, but doesn't necessarily act like it. Mostly because his character is supposed to be a "well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot" (according to Colbert). And hey, if you want real-world realism... satire is used to poke fun at certain groups of people. If you accept Harmony's appearance on the Colbert Report to be satire, then it's fair to say that they are poking fun at the people who are either anti-vampire, or at least wary about them. Again, I don't really care if the universe is driving the mania to further Its own agenda or anything. If that's the case, so be it. However, in the spirit of keeping things consistent in the 'verse, the public is intensely stupid. Been that way all this time, and I really don't see the impetus to change that to reflect a more natural (natural to whom? Us?) reaction. I guess that's largely the crux of my argument. To boil it down: people are stupid. Or rather, people in the Buffyverse are stupid. Not all of them, but in general. And so, just as we just accepted that no one questioned the giant snake or the fang bites or whatever, at least not on screen, why has that changed now? There's no world-building here. The world already exists. Things went south for the Slayers over the course of a year. It wasn't at the turn of a dime. That one incident was the turning point. Then add in stolen submarines, blowing up freighters, evicting a village, and whatnot and you arrive at terrorists. Then factor in interviews and magazine stories with Harmony, and more than likely, other vampires who've "narrowly escaped death at the hands of a Slayer", and suddenly you get racist, genocidal terrorists. Oh wait, they have superpowers too? Superpowered, racist, genocidal terrorists, organized into an army, divided into "cells" (that's army intel)... The more info the public gets about Slayers, the more "other" they become. So yeah, the anti-Slayer stuff was built up quite plausibly, as you said. I guess all I'm saying is that in keeping with the general in-joke of the 'verse that people are stupid, the pro-vamp thing isn't that hard to believe, using in-'verse logic. It's not any more wacky than what was asked of us before. And so far, things line up quite well... despite the clumsy execution of most of the "Predators and Prey" arc.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 29, 2010 17:40:28 GMT -5
I could accept that the people of Sunnydale are willfully blind and in denial about what's going on in their midst -- it's less work to simply not believe, especially when people like Snyder and Wilkins are providing their convenient "biker gangs on PCP" explanations. Living right there on the hellmouth, they could become so used to rationalizing stuff away that it becomes second nature. I can't buy the idea that just about everyone in the world, except those characters we know by name, are so "intensely stupid" that they would completely ignore 5,000 years of evidence, and the evidence of their own experience, in order to come unanimously to a 100% erroneous conclusion. Because, cynicism aside, people just aren't really that stupid. We'd never have survived this long if we were. If you're going to have a series set in what's supposed to be "the real world, except with magic and monsters," then people have to act like real people in most respects. They shouldn't all talk backwards, they shouldn't wear their socks on their hands, and they shouldn't unanimously accept that their predators are their friends. I think this is one example of something that works on a TV episode, but not in a comic. The cluelessness of the Sunnydalites wasn't that hard to accept because we didn't have as much time to think about it before some bit of action distracted us. And it was never really a major plot point, like it is here. It's all really moot now, though. Presumably humanity is now a bit disenchanted with the demons who are presently slaughtering them by the thousands... except for those lucky enough to be defended by a contingent of evil, racist, fascist, Nazi Slayers.
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Post by wenxina on Jun 29, 2010 17:46:19 GMT -5
except for those lucky enough to be defended by a contingent of evil, racist, fascist, Nazi Slayers. Would be ironic to have Simone having to defend the helpless by killing the demons, all whilst bitching about it.
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nmcil
Common Vampire
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Post by nmcil on Jun 29, 2010 18:08:46 GMT -5
In the next issue, it'll probably get even weirder. I mean, look, Angel is taking advice from a bird. A bird who can talk...then again, we've had people taking advice from talking hamburgers And that turned out to be bad advice as well, since Sahjan was frakking around with the prophecy to save his own skin. Although I guess we can't know 100% if Angel taking this advice of rallying Buffy's enemies was bad or not just yet. Have a look for yourself. Those are frames from the VHS version. His knee and his tunic are so close to the same color that it's difficult to see them for what they are at a glance. (That, and the American Life League like to kick up dirt about Disney for pretty much the same reasons Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck open their mouths.) It's Rule 34, I tell ya. It's infected comic books! First place I thought of was NY - and I know it's far fetched, but I also thought of Olympian Gods and Messengers
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Maggie
Innocent Bystander
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Posts: 48
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Post by Maggie on Jun 29, 2010 18:26:51 GMT -5
Maggie: I'm saying that the entire Colbert Report short is meant to be read as satire, yes. Kinda like watching a segment of the show. And so yes, Colbert is in on the joke, but doesn't necessarily act like it. Mostly because his character is supposed to be a "well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot" (according to Colbert). And hey, if you want real-world realism... satire is used to poke fun at certain groups of people. If you accept Harmony's appearance on the Colbert Report to be satire, then it's fair to say that they are poking fun at the people who are either anti-vampire, or at least wary about them. I just don't think it reads that way. Colbert somehow is meant to embody an anti-vampire person. Fine. What beliefs of his are being mocked? That it's evil for vampires to kill people for food? I just flat can't conceive of a world where the average person would think it's good or morally neutral to go around killing people for food. Or is it that vampires actually do (or have) killed people for food? Harmony, the vampire, says that they do, or at least that they have -- it's just not that bad. In which case, how are we mocking stupid anti-vampire people when the vampire herself says they are exactly right? And how does the last 'joke' play? Colbert, who is supposed to embody/satirize an anti-vampire person, tries to pass off what Harmony is implying about eating Barbara Walters to get her job as a joke. But an anti-vampire person wouldn't think it was a joke and would be alarmed by it and wouldn't say she was just kidding. So that reads to me as a real reaction -- not satire any more. Dunno. However we're supposed to parse it, by the time you have to work *really* hard to see how it's supposed to work it's plain that the premise really is unsound. It is just really counter to reason to believe that over night *everyone* would decide that vampires are just misunderstood folk who used to eat people because they had to, but now they can choose not to eat people, but they still might if they want to get their jobs and that is just fine. And Andrew's argument about the experience effect is also very powerful here. Lots of people get killed by vampires. That's why Buffy's job as a vampire slayer is plausibly viewed as heroic. Well, anybody who's had a friend who was killed by a vampire isn't going to buy the new vampire's are cuddly line -- and then you get friends of friends and so on. The degrees of separation argument means that most people would not be very far away from an actual death-by-vampire incident in the social web. And those people aren't just going to nod when Colbert/Anderson/King/Olberman try to snow them with the idea that vampires are cool. So I continue to hope that we'll learn that there is magic at work on this. For me to enjoy the comics if it's revealed that this is just something that happened, I will have to bracket this part of the story and pretend it's not there in order to enter into and appreciate the rest of the comics. Or as Andrew said, the comics as a whole drop at least a whole grade on this point.
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The Girl In Question
Ensouled Vampire
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Post by The Girl In Question on Jun 29, 2010 19:11:43 GMT -5
It seems like a lot of people here have more faith in humanity in general than I do, lol. I'm not saying that I think all people are really dumb, but uh...a lot of people are (not all, or even most, but a lot). And Maggie, I gotta agree with Wenxina on the Colbert thing. I percieved it as he did when I read it. Having said all that, I'm still hoping that an enchantment spell had a part in making everyone thinking vampires are cool. I also don't really buy that enough people believe that to the point where it's a popular opinion. Then again, I could buy that all those rabid, obsessive (not-so-normal) Twilight fans and just plain stupid people would believe that...I guess I'm kind of torn between believing that and not believing that.
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Post by wenxina on Jun 29, 2010 19:47:58 GMT -5
Maggie: Just reread the piece, and it's not my favorite piece... but, this is how I read it. Harmony is playing up the "evil"... the mockery is in the part where the "universally accepted truth" is that she's nice, but she's playing evil here, just to be "Look at me, I'm so evil. Really... don't you buy it? Do I seem evil to you?" In other words, it's like someone that everyone knows is the sweetest person in the world acting like a bitca, just because there's a rumor floating about that she's really sociopathic. That's how I read it. As for the experience effect, how many people know for a fact that their loved ones were killed by a vampire? Before Harmony, vampires pretty much kept a low pro, unless they wanted a massacre. And even then, which is more logical? I saw a vampire killing someone? Or some crazy person with a messed up face? If we want to argue a realistic reaction here, as in model their reactions after ours, I'm going to say the latter. Say a dead body turns up in the mortician's office, and they rule that the person was killed by a wild animal. Would you disbelieve them in place for the more supernatural explanation of "vampire attack"? And hey, if the Colbert short is supposed to be taken at face value, then you should just consider the world at large covered in a thick layer of magic dust, since the people are worshipping beings that admit to killing people for snacks and giggles. I'm gonna hold off on debating this further... today's been a day of long posts and my internet is acting wonky.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 29, 2010 19:57:11 GMT -5
It's not really a question of "faith in humanity" -- believe me, I have very little. It's just a matter of not letting my cynicism warp my view of reality. If there's anything humans are very, very good at, it's going ballistic with terror over threats in their midst. I can accept that a misinformation campaign, coupled with some very questionable choices by Buffy and other Slayers, would make people vilify Slayers. But just knowing what vampires do for sustenance, and knowing that they have no souls and identify as "evil," would be more than enough to accomplish the same for vampires.
What we have here is a whole class of people who have to drink blood to survive. Harmony admitted as much to Colbert, and she wasn't joking. If it's not offered voluntarily, they have to take it by force. In fact many of them, even now, would have it no other way. And since they have no souls, they're not even capable of caring about the sanctity of human life... not yours, and not that of your neighbors, your family, your children. When Harmony was on TV slamming the Slayers for blowing up the Vampy Cat freighter, she was concerned about the cute stuffed animals... not the supposedly human crew members of the ship. It didn't even occur to her to even pretend to care about them.
We've seen some truly diabolical vampires over the course of the show. A great many of them would sooner set fire to Harmony than turn themselves into lap dogs on her say-so.
Simone's gang is one group of rogue Slayers, who apparently haven't even killed any humans. Yet there must be dozens of vampire gangs around the world still doing so. Unless Harmony's show has Jasmine-like reach, she's probably barely even known outside North America or the English-speaking world.
I really hope they give us the magical explanation. I'd see it not as a cop-out, but as a plausible explanation fully in keeping with the history of the Buffyverse. These kinds of spells are bizarrely common. We've seen spells cast that change the entire world's perception to one degree or another, by the Order of Dagon, and Jasmine, and Wolfram & Hart (in "Home" and AtF) and even Jonathan.
This is one case where the magical explanation is far easier to believe than the mundane one.
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Dorotea
Potential Slayer
[Mo0:0]
Posts: 145
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Post by Dorotea on Jun 30, 2010 0:18:59 GMT -5
I tend to agree with wenxina here. Human mentality is easily manipulated - and the media is an excellent tool for doing this. If we take it as canonically established fact that Initiative was government sponsored organization this technically means that the government is involved in the long-running cover-up preventing the public from freaking out after finding out about vampires. Taking into account that Drerxalcorp seems to have even more resources than the Initiative and that there are demons involved in the Twilight operations... possibly with behavior modification chips in them... it sounds pretty much like conspiracy of a grand scale. In such a case assumption that the Drerxalcorp is organizing and funding world-wide anti-Slayer pro-vampire media campaign is a pretty solid assumption.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 30, 2010 7:33:49 GMT -5
I tend to agree with wenxina here. Human mentality is easily manipulated - and the media is an excellent tool for doing this. I don't see it as plausible, though, that humanity is that easily or that universally manipulable. Even on the simplest matters, getting the bulk of humanity all on the same page about something is like herding soap bubbles on a windy day. On a topic like this... where you have to convince people that their common-sense assumptions are completely wrong... it would be much harder. Except with magic. Really, magic is part and parcel of the Buffyverse story. It's not a cheat or a betrayal of the story to have something like this attributable to magic. It's much better than having to put it down to disingenuous hand-waving and plot-hammering. If we take it as canonically established fact that Initiative was government sponsored organization this technically means that the government is involved in the long-running cover-up preventing the public from freaking out after finding out about vampires. Many governments would be involved, though... Slayers and vampires are worldwide phenomena. Also, given a) the level of mistrust in government and b) the fact that the Buffyverse government has not been very good at this sort of thing (which is why the Slayers exist in the first place), I just can't see it. "Don't worry about those bloodsucking soulless demons down the block... the government says it's okay!" wouldn't get you too far, I don't think.
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