(no subject)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_shadowstalker_/]

I apologize to the kindly mod who chastised my post, considering it consisted of a mere sentence of exasperation, as well as all of the people who flooded my inbox with single line responses of “No, why?”

 

Hamilton began her series without sex being a main focus.  Her characters had excellent motivations for each of their actions, and her dialogue was witty and unique.  Her vampires were expressed in a direction which was (relatively) undone and definitely never mainstream.  Sexuality was the element of the day, rather than raw sex.

 

Then something happened.  We might all quibble over when the switch happened, but her characters gradually lost their center, wildly spinning away from the center which made them so riveting initially.  And yet… she is still being published.  What book is she on now, fifteen? 

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer occasioned the same twist in focus around season six, when sex and sexuality seemed to become one and the same- it wasn’t Spike’s interest in Buffy which was the focus, but rather their spine-tingling, moral crushing sex.  It was the same with Willow- instead of being the cute fluffy girl who simply wished for a first kiss, she became an evil lesbian witch content for nothing less than to revenge her lover by punishing mankind.  Season seven, the actress who played Buffy, Sarah Michelle Gellar, backed out.  Two reasons were portrayed in the media: either she was dissatisfied with the direction the show was going and wanted to separate herself from it, or she was afraid of being forever typecast as the teenage vampire slayer.  Seven seasons, folks.

 

Ever feel as though Hamilton is thumbing her nose at Joss, that she has made the same mistakes (albeit, in my mind, on a whole ‘nother scale) and yet still manages to continue to be published?  Or maybe, it’s simply her way of celebrating the fact that Anita can’t wake up one morning, walk up to Hamilton’s computer, set fire to her post-it notes and threaten her life if she doesn’t stop writing such filth.

Comments

[zgirl714.livejournal.com]

I liked season six of Buffy. Though, I think you are missing a point about that season. When emotions and empathy was forgotten by the characters -- shit hit the fan. It sort of was a lesson to the characters that they needed to communicate with each other and empathize with each other instead of engaging in selfish acts (ex. forgetting love and sensual in favor of a brutal sexuality a la Buffy and Spike). LKH doesn't get that. She thinks that her unpleasent, selfish, and ignorant main character should be rewarded.

Though, they always planned on ending Buffy with season seven.

I can see what you're getting at, but its not a good analogy.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Also you have to remember with Season Six of Buffy, Joss had very little to do with it at that stage working mostly on Firefly and Angel at that time. I do believe he came back for both the final seasons of Angel and Buffy to wrap it up right in his eyes. Some fans blame Season Six's themes on I think it was the main director or the writer for that season...cannot remember which, who was going through some personal chaos and used the show as some sort therapy for her problems. Not sure about the accuracy of that but its one reason I have seen toted around various boards.

As for comparing LKH and Joss? I cannot see it, LKH relies too much on angst and emoness to convey emotion and development while Joss uses the whole spectrum of emotions and motives, he's got angst and emo, but he also has true drama and humor as well as some pretty snappy dialog to tie it all together.

[keepsake]

Marti Noxon. I will never forgive her for killing the Spike/Dawn tension. She cockblocked my OTP.

[keepsake]

I absolutely hated Dawn in the fifth and sixth seasons, but she began to grow on me in the seventh. And I think she could've been a lot cooler than she was on the show, which is why I prefer older, fanon Dawn. And I loved it when Dawn kicked Buffy's ass because Buffy's character has been going downhill since the fifth season.

IMO.

[keepsake]

To each his own. :)

[keepsake]

I loved her in Mysterious Skin... even though she was in it for like a total of seven seconds. Well, I have a major girlcrush on Michelle anyway, but that's neither here nor there.

[keepsake]

It was creepy, and disturbing. And also made of awesome.

Heh, Xena's a little too butch for my taste. I like pretty girls. Which is maybe why I hated Kennedy. She was a manly girl. Girls should be girly.

[keepsake]

Umm, maybe that came off a little wrong. That's opening up a whole other can of worms, anyway. How about this: For some reason I only girlcrush on girly girls. Is that any better?

*comforts*

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

*Pops up to second the awesomeness of Mysterious Skin. Read the book, too!

[keepsake]

It's definitely on my list. :)

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

And comics, he pens various X-Men books and is currently writing the comic series "Buffy; The Vampire Slayer" for Dark Horse comics which would cover the events that would have occured in Season Eight.

He was slated to write the script for the Wonder Woman Film but the project was delayed and he was let go as the main writer.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I heard it was more of a mutual thing, they were going one way, he another funding was an issue. He was glad that this news came sooner than later at least that was the impression I got from his statment.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/12385

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I watched Buffy. I thought they went wrong with the introduction of Dawn, then destroyed whatever credibility they had left (with me, at least) with the appalling bait-n-switch ending of The Gift (Buffy =/= Dawn). Willow's "magic addiction" was an appallingly bad ABC Afterschool Special of a plotline that trampled continuity in the dust at least as badly as anything LKH has ever done (to drag this back on topic).

The Anita Blake books stop after the first few in my world.
Buffy ends with season four. (I tend to regard fans of the later seasons of Buffy the same way I regard fans of current LKH--I just don't get it. Clearly they see something worthwhile there, but....)

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Not quite, I suppose. But I think you underestimate the depths of my loathing for most of the last three seasons. Dawn, the deus ex machina bait n' switch of The Gift, magic addiction, how it became the Spike n' Buffy show....

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

I was always sad Spike didn't hook up with Willow. I was so sure it'd happen, when he came back during 3rd.

But then, I didn't watch it after 3, because Lesbian!Wiccan Willow so pissed me off, Buffy shouldn't have been with Spike (I should have been, damn it :/), and, uh, lost interest. Definitely was pissed about the non-Spike/Willow though.

(And I hated Dawn too. Even if the concept was interesting.)

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have to add; Lesbian!Willow didn't bother me so much as the Lesbian!Wiccan Willow part did. Because after the whole Oz thing, she just happens to find a fellow witch/Wiccan (or at least Joss' rather weak understanding of one) and then she's all lesbian. W. T. F.

Plus, all fanfiction after this era just seriously pisses me off with "Oh Willow, why would you notice a hot guy, you're a lesbian!" For gods' sakes. The girl lost her virginity to a guy, dated said guy, obviously cared deeply about said guy. I'm firmly in the "Willow is BISEXUAL" camp, and it drove me bonkers that once she dated Tara, apparently she had no more interest in men. (Or did Kennedy count?)

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing my pet peeve. =] Why didn't they make her bisexual? Why did they throw away three seasons worth of characterisation and make her purely lesbian? The only reason I can think of is that they wanted to be all enlightened and have a gay character, and a bisexual one just wasn't cool enough.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

In my opinion? Because they were pandering to a very vocal subset of the fans. Apparently Tara being killed (and Seth Green hadn't left the show, Joss has said it would have been Oz who died) was viewed as Just More Of The Same Old Bigotry Against Lesbian Characters or some such nonsense.

Never mind that Joss torments ALL his characters. This Could Not Stand! So I think Joss decided to appease them--and apparently being bisexual was also unacceptable to these fans--with subtleties like, "Hello? Gay now!" and the introduction of (gag) Kennedy.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Willow isn't really in the habit of alluding to her affection for anyone being physical, at least not to the best of my recollection. She's kind of private about that sort of thing, she'd rather talk about the emotional part. And even so I didn't see anything especially platonic in her relationship with Oz, and let's not get started on the whole disaster with Xander. ;)

I respect your opinion and everything, but to me, it'll always be a retcon, and a clumsy one.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

I think that argument is reaching pretty far. Season six of Buffy really wasn't just about sex. Buffy was faced with the situation of being forcibly removed from heaven, having no mother to fall back on, no money, a sister to raise, Spike's romantic interest in her, as well as her duties as a Slayer. Spike sort of represented the darker side of her sexual desires, and just as Willow dabbled in black magic, Buffy began her 'relationship' with Spike. Anita and LKH's stuff never offers that kind of depth and desperation. I don't think there's enough similarities here for an argument, the only thing Joss and LKH have in common is vampires.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

that's definitely true as well...there was a whole layer of numbness surrounding Buffy, and it seemed like Spike challenged it at every turn.

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

Buffy and Spike did have a heavy sexual charge and really hot sex scenes, but Joss, unlike LKH *cough*Micah*cough*, wasn't afraid to say that their relationship was a fundamentally unhealthy one, and Buffy broke it off. I think that's pretty telling.

The wangst of season six was quite neutralized by season seven, where the Willow gets a new girlfriend and Buffy and Spike build an actual emotional, non-sexual relationship.

Hope for LKH getting a 'season seven'?

[keepsake]

Hope she doesn't get a Kennedy.

[keepsake]

Yeah. I guess she's already got like, seven Kennedys, really. Ugh. :(

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

Aw, come on, it's not Kennedy's fault she had no plot relevance whatsoever/little character development. It was all about Willow going, 'Whee! Look at me! I'm over Tara, yayz!'

...Aw, damn. That actually looks pretty bad, on second thought. -.-;

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Uhm... but I liked Kennedy.

(*cowers*)

Well, I did. ^_^;; I mean, it's possible that I liked her mostly because she wasn't Tara. Not being Tara, now there's a major requirement for me to like someone... ;)

[dwg.livejournal.com]

You're not alone! I liked Kennedy too. Hell, I was confused on the whole, "everyone hates Kennedy" thing for a very long time.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I started reading LKH when Guilty Pleasures was first released. The only 'Buffy:The Vampire Slayer' that was on my radar was the original film, which was a teen flick when I was in my teens (God, am I that old?). I read 4 or 5 of the books, which had pulp/ comic art covers. One day I was in my local import bookshop and the covers were all changed. I bitched about this to the guy I know in the shop. He told me it was that they were trying to appeal to the Buffy market.

I failed to see any similarity. See, to me, Buffy largely dealt with teenage themes. Buffy was born to be a slayer; Anita had an inhererent gift for raising zombies and chose to be a vampire slayer. Buffy is the only slayer; Anita is one of many. Buffy slaps the vampires around a lot; Anita couldn't survive that so she just shot them. I used to maintain that if Buffy went up against Anita, Anita would just shoot her in the head and walk away.

I am absolutely failing to see the parallels, personally.

I would also point out to you that if this was the case, LKH would be taking sideswipes at him in print, in her blog, in her interviews, and not one of those would be subtle. Besides which, LKH likes to think of herself as a very important author first and foremost, and Joss Whedon writes TV shows, movie scripts and comic books. It's a different kind of media.

This comparison always bugs me, I think because it ignores the many differences between the characters and their situations and inflates a few commonalities. It's too far a stretch for me, I'm afraid :/

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Well, see, the similarity is there are women in both roles, and the women do stuff with the supernatural.

*sigh*

But then, when a friend's novel was published, it was billed as "If you liked The Time Traveller's Wife, you'll love Touch", and my brain just went O.o? Because the only have in common that there are female protagonists and people born with inate gifts they can't control.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

See, I'm going to go with the "NOOO!!!" argument being spread around here (and not just because Joss is my master) simply because Joss has said - repeatedly - that happy people are boring. Which is why he goes and tries to fuck up as many of the characters as he possibly can, utterly rip them to shreds and see if they ultimately become a better or worse person. I'm not 100% in on this, because I believe that happy people can be interesting given the right circumstances/motivations.

OTOH, LKH has come out saying that all she wants is happy naked people and sex is the way to heal all wounds. She's not interested in exploring ways to make people tick and relate to others and the world at large. And that is...I can hardly wrap my head around how someone could possibly not want to do any of those things in their writing. She's got this huge opportunity, it's stupid not to take it and run with it.

I'm kinda with pandaemonaeum here in that if she were thumbing her nose at Joss, it would be as subtle as a sledgehammer. Though, I think it'd be interesting to get Joss's opinion on LKH, her books and crazy antics. That would be an interesting discussion.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Now I'm having a bizarre fantasy involving a panel discussion on Characters That Need To Die and Joss being pro-death and LKH trying to defend her bayyyybeez.

I'd sell my soul for such an event.

[cryice.livejournal.com]

This might be off topic, but after reading the comments I don't think I'm too far off.
There are a number of crossover stories out there mixing the two verses, the dominant line being - characters from the Buffyverse putting the smack down on characters from the Anitaverse. I dislike Anita immensely so actually enjoy reading some of them. But it goes over the top, the telling thing though, is that most of these stories are set during or after NIC which I think is when Anita hit rock bottom and started digging. For Buffy they seem to be post season five. It's like fans of both verses picked the better parts and decided to forget that the latter parts existed.
Now I can understand wanting to forget Anita's later books, but I don't think it compares to Buffy season 6 or 7. They may not have been up to par with the first 4 but they sure as hell don't suck as badly as the later Anita books do.