genius, endings, fans, moving on

[truepenny]

but first, for the librarians among us
Found via Bookslut: Librarian Pick-Up Lines. My personal favorite? My budget just got cut, buy me a drink. Runner-up: I can do the neatest thing with a full set of the OED.

okay, on with the show
Slayage has a link to a Zap2It story that seems trustworthy: Sarah Michelle Gellar is leaving Buffy after this season. And in the interview with Joss Whedon I linked to a while back, they ask him if this is the last season of Buffy, and he says, God, I hope so.

To which I say: good on you. Good on both y'all.

Not because I'm tired of Buffy, but precisely because I'm not. See, once upon a time, I loved The X-Files. It wasn't as brilliant a show as BtVS, but it was innovative and quirky, frequently frightening in a way BtVS almost never is, and I loved Scully. Really, I loved Scully in a way that I think I don't love anybody on BtVS, although I love the collective Slayerettes, and am invested in them, far more than I loved anything about The X-Files. But Scully was special. I still miss her.

But Chris Carter couldn't understand that he had to quit while he was ahead. And so The X-Files dragged on, through the misery of Season 8 and the unspeakable nightmare that was Season 9. (Horrible tests! Random women! Dark secrets!) We were a fairly hard-core group of fans (me, heres_luck, MH, and a couple RL friends), and we had to stop watching. We simply could not abide the travesty that the show had become. We watched the series finale out of a sense of (tragically misplaced) loyalty, and were, all five of us, screaming at the television for the acutely painful lameness of every word that came out of the characters' mouths. We won't go into the intense lameness of the plot, or the vomit-worthy final scene. Let's just draw a veil over the carnage and move on.

My point is that Chris Carter didn't know when to give up; he kept pushing the show on into new seasons, when the evidence was rising around his ears that his stars were tired, his writers were tired, and he had nothing more to say. Nothing.

Carter was a man with one really good idea, an idea which powered the first three to five seasons of The X-Files. The subsequent deterioration of the show--and his inability to launch anything else that wasn't automatic crap--suggests that that one good idea was all he had to offer. Or perhaps that he got swept into the money-making machine and didn't have the cojones to refuse to play. That happens a lot in f&sf publishing and is responsible for a lot of the worst books you never want to read.

Joss Whedon, I would argue, is a genius. BtVS is a show that has taken its initial idea and spun it, first one way, then the other, turned it upside down and shaken it ... in 7 seasons, we haven't come to the bottom of the Buffyverse. The power of the storytelling isn't dependent on externally imposed parameters of the universe. For me, The X-Files started to lose cohesion as soon as they said, Yes, there are aliens. The first three seasons are amazing because of the constant up-in-the-air ambiguity, the unresolved war between Scully's science and Mulder's belief. Once the show came down heavily and with finality on Mulder's side, *sigh* The End Was--well, sadly Not Nigh. But it should have been. Carter never really had the sense to see the story was over. Whedon does, bless his geeky socks.

Not, mind you, that I wouldn't just about sell my soul for a Faith-centric spin-off. But that's 'cause I'm a fan, and I don't have to worry about coming up with new stories.

It's one of the things I most dread: that I'll become a published novelist, there will start being pressure to continue a series I don't have anything more to say in, and *I* won't have the guts to say no. Because I've read so many stories just run into the ground and it's stupid and wasteful and ass-backwards to the way things are supposed to be.

Fans are greedy. That's part of being a fan. We always want more: more Buffy, more Miles Vorkosigan, more Wizard of Oz books, more Sherlock Holmes ... Human beings are hungry for stories, and we get addicted to stories that we really like. That's what the endless series of romance novels are all about; they're feeding an addiction for a particular flavor of story, which the romance publishing industry has figured out how to divorce from individual authors and characters.

In f/sf, it sometimes works that way (Star Trek novels, TSR novels, etc.), and sometimes not. The media franchises seem to me relatively harmless, although nothing I want to spend my time on. It's when the addiction latches onto a particular story that things start to crumble. It seems sad and ironic and typical of the human condition that fans' love for a story can destroy it. I'm not going to give examples, because I'm feeling strangely unlike a vindictive bitch this morning, but I imagine most people can supply their own.

I'm not trying to say that loving a story and wanting more of it is a bad thing. Because it's not. And some authors (Terry Pratchett springs to mind here) can continue to give their readers more story indefinitely and still have new things to say, new things that they're excited about. It's when the fans turn into a Roman mob a la Coriolanus and the popularity of the story becomes the deciding factor instead of the integrity of the story, that's when people start becoming Chris Carters. (And can I just say how deeply it disturbs me that my fingers keep trying to type "Christ Carter"?)

There's a point where you have to let go of a story, have to admit that you have nothing new to say. Joss Whedon can see that point when he hits it, and Sarah Michelle Gellar's decision, while made for her own reasons, gives him a wall at his back. I don't want to see BtVS turn into the shambling zombie that The X-Files did, so, while I'm sad, this is still good news.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, the first time I heard Terry Pratchett speak was just after Mort came out, and even then he was complaining that he really wanted to do a big serious science-fiction novel and wasn't getting any support for the idea because it wouldn't have Rincewind in it. He's several times talked about winding up Discworld, and this last few books I think he might actually do it this time.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

In that case, I am even more amazed at the high and consistent quality of the Discworld books. He's been sneaking more and more serious content in under the humor anyway (Feet of Clay, as a random example, is a profoundly melancholy book, except for all the bits that make me giggle insanely), which is why I cited him as somebody who's managing to have his cake and eat it, too.

Personally, I'd love to see him do a non-Discworld, non-parody book. But then, I am not a Discworld capital-F-Fan. I just think Terry Pratchett's a genius.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitly. Buffy is good, very good. It's good to stop while you're ahead, and it's not even like there no Joss-vampirism left - there's always Angel. And, a Faith-centric show would be very very nice indeed.

Good sensible Joss.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd love to see him do a non-Discworld, non-parody book. But then, I am not a Discworld capital-F-Fan. I just think Terry Pratchett's a genius.

I used to be active on alt.fan.pratchett, but mostly for the social life.

Have you read, and if so what did you think of, the Johnny Maxwell books ?

I really liked Feet of Clay but it was the last Discworld book I really liked, either they are getting repetitive or I am growing out of them; that said, I enjoyed The Last Hero in a self-indulgent sort of way, and I've not yet read the most recent two.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that Buffy is ending because I believe, very strongly, that stories should have ends. Buffy has always reminded me more of Sandman more than of other TV shows (though this may be partly because when I started watching Buffy I wasn't watching other TV shows), and part of the comic's strength was always that there was an overarching story with a planned end. It worked. It works for Buffy.

I think it was pretty hard, although possible, to argue against aliens as of S2 in XF, what with the corpses melting into green goo. I wish they hadn't done it that early, if at all; if they had to do it, I wish they had focused on human complicity, since the series' strength was never action-adventure but the horrible guilt and burden of human history and compromise with atrocity.

I rather liked that last scene because it brought it back to the Oedipal tale at the heart of XF, not in the usual Freudian sense, but in the sense that the heroes were dedicated to uncovering truth, and it's that dedication that doomed them and arguably the people they were trying to save.

The increasingly strong and increasingly bizarre religious metaphors I could have done without. Also the horrible things they did to my beloved Scully in the last two seasons. But I still want the S6 and S7 DVDs.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I've seen just enough Buffy to know that at some point in the future, when I have real disposable income, I'm going to watch it from the start - I'm picky about seeing things and reading things in order.

Do you read Laurell Hamilton ? She's someone whose books I cannot put down despite the amazing number of things I hate about them.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Yes! I'm actually quite an Anita fan, though I do prefer the earlier books to the later books. Those books are quite addictive, though I've gotten a bit annoyed with them of late.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I think I like it most of all when he gets in a dead serious message under the humor and satire. All of Pratchett's books have a strength to them because of that, a strength that general satire/humor books (Piers Anthony's Xanth books come to mind) lack.

I'd love to see something serious by him - he's such a talented writer. It's apparent even from the Discworld books that humor isn't all he's good at.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I love the Johnny Maxwell books. I only wish I'd been able to get my hands on them when I was twelve, instead of inhaling them with delight in my mid-twenties.

I don't like all Discworld books equally, but The Fifth Elephant and Night Watch were both really good in that particular funny-surface, serious-deep-structure way. I also got a tremendous kick out of The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, although it's a retread of the Bromeliad in a lot of ways and Witches Abroad in others. But Maurice himself is a shining delight.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I tried Laurell Hamilton, but was driven to screaming fits of rage by the awful ineptness of the prose. And since I have no tolerance for bad prose, I only got a couple pages in; nothing else about the story had time to make an impression.

Buffy is wonderful (she says with perfect impartiality). Particularly, I think it's really good for book-geeks, because watching it is so extraordinarily like reading a novel. The same kinds of analysis work. And, looping slightly back to Pratchett, the show is always a mix of humor and seriousness, with serious things it's trying to talk about under the extraordinary brilliant demented goofiness of the dialogue.

Yes, I'm a fan. I don't want a 12-step program.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I asked him why he could write such serious books for kids while his books for adults were so silly, and he said that children can take more depth and seriousness without being embarrassed. Which leads me to think that he underestimates adults, probably from hanging out on a.f.p...

I love the Johnny books, but they're the only things of his I can get through without gritting my teeth.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I rather liked that last scene

WHICH last scene? The last scene of the finale with the terrible mushy Mully/Sculder debacle?

I'm sorry. See, when Chris Carter said Mulder and Scully would never have a romantic relationship, I was a trusting little fool and believed him. So I've always felt enormously and personally betrayed by his choice to revoke that promise, and cannot get past it to even partial objectivity on the subject.

One of the things about BtVS that I've always thought was structurally brilliant was the fact that the writers know where the season's story arc is going, more or less, before they start to write. It saves them from that desperate flailing pointlessness that starts to afflict The X-Files after a while, and it means that the season finale really provides a sense of closure, even if there are things about which one really wants to know What Happens Next.

And yes, stories need to have ends. That's what makes them stories.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh, and talking about things being finished when they're finished, did you see, as I saw this morning on diony's lj, that Jill Paton Walsh is writing more Wimsey books?

Not only do I not want more Wimsey books, but JPW is useless at mysteries and doesn't understand Peter and Harriet. And, and, to make it even worse, I really love JPW's own writing, which will be neglected so that she can knit more mis-shapen cats out of Sayers cast off hairs.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. I always find myself with the urge to go through the Anita books with a pencil and edit. The earlier ones are fun, though. The later ones have lots of gratuitous sex and superpowers. :makes face:

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Yes, that last scene. They're fucked, they're alone, they have nothing but a truth they didn't want to know, they've given up everything they ever had and it didn't do them any good.

I liked that.

Ah, see, I'm a shipper to the core. I didn't think the problem was the M/S romance; I thought the problem was the endless contrived deferral of it, when actually going with it and trying to do real adult things with it would have worked better. I also thought that it really needed to happen, because the entire thematic set-up of the show was M&S vs. the world, the only place they could find "truth" was in each other and sometimes not even that.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"Awful ineptness of the prose" is about right. I think that most people have books which they enjoyed as a teenager but have mentally edited since so that they remember them as much better written, better characterised and so on; Hamilton is the only author for whom I find myself doing that at a sentence-by-sentence level, and I wish I could understand how she makes me do it. I also have serious problems with how appallingly emotionally blind Anita is, and the degree of sledgehammer to the head it takes to make her examine her assumptions on anything. On the other hand, I like the world, I like the creatures, I more or less like the plotting, though I think she hit a peak at about Bloody Bones and Killing Dance and went downhill since, Narcissus in Chains was a very welcome reversal of the trend towards very bitty plotting. I really hope that some of the things I'm seeing and liking in the last few books are things that Hamilton deliberately means for Anita to be missing, rather than just sloppiness, because there are, I think, interesting shapes to what isn't being said.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

To quote Michael Swanwick, "I have nothing against gratuitous sex. In novels, either." Swanwick's a raving Luddite but I'd agree with him on this one, if Hamilton could actually write sex that didn't feel like it came out of a Harlequin romance. The superpowers do not bug me so much in general, save that it no longer seems possible for even the most minor of characters to take any form of injury without her healing it by the end of the book; unless characters start to really no-kidding die again, I may yet lose patience with the series.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, heres_luck and I had this whole AU thing worked out, where Scully and Mulder sleep with each other in S3, and it turns out to be a terrible terrible mistake. And they're still partners and they have to keep dealing with each other and they have to work out a real relationship that's not about the romantic/sexual love.

I want Mulder and Scully to love each other, but I don't want them to be in love. I tend to find that makes their relationship trite and cliched (and implausible--holy cats, Mr. D.C. in the Dysfunctionality Pageant is so not capable of being in an adult relationship with anybody, much less my beloved, neurotic Scully and her Daddy Issues). Whereas the friendship, partnership, trust that's there in the early seasons is something ... I don't know, but it's something that really mattered to me, and that I valued. There was that wonderful sense of them trying to keep their relationship alive, having to make it up as they went along, every day being a new negotiation, a new venture into a land with no map, where the language spoken had no dictionary and no received grammar. And once it went all Mulder + Scully 4EVA, that sense of treacherous inarticulate newness got buried under the old familiar routines and roles of romantic love.

And the baby thing? Lame. Lame like the lamest of all possible lame things. I hated that plot line. It made me want to hurt people.

Okay. Not actually over the X-Files love. I'd forgotten how much I cared about this show back when I could stand to watch it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

*incoherent noises of fury*
*tears hair*
*rends garments*
*rages in the streets*

*deep, calming breath*
No, I hadn't heard that. Thanks for the warning.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Also, was so distracted with impotent wrath that I forgot to say how much I like this image: ... so that she can knit more mis-shapen cats out of Sayers cast off hairs. Because that's just beautiful.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Baby thing never should have happened.

Okay, my big XF theses:

On UST (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=melymbrosia&itemid=40620)


On the MSR (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=melymbrosia&itemid=31569)

On what I liked about the damned finale (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=melymbrosia&itemid=115941)

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I have nothing against gratuitous sex either, except when it suddenly seems like that's all there is to the book.

Word

[cofax7]

But Scully was special. I still miss her

Wordy word, mcword. With sprinkles on top.

I found myself descending into bitterness during season 8, and for my own sake I had to stop watching. I saw three episodes of season 9 (oh my poor Gunmen!) and the finale, and I'm glad I didn't see anymore.

Carter should have listened to the characters, should have paid attention to the arc of his own story. Instead he drained it dry and then propped it up for the diehards to gawk at. He never knew where he was going, and that's something I can't forgive.

But I should note that a lot of people continued to find value in the last two seasons. I just didn't happen to be one of them, and it wasn't because I didn't like the new characters. I felt cheated by the story and my favorite character had become unrecognizeable.

So, I'm glad I won't have to find out if Joss meant to make an eighth season of Buffy. Because seven seasons is enough, and if you ask infinitemonkeys, she'll tell you all about how really 110 episodes should be enough for any television show, and after five seasons the writers get stale and the characters start stagnating.

I want another season of Farscape, not because I can't live without the show (I lasted for 36 years without it, after all), but because I want to see the end of the story. I don't think that's too much to ask. ::sigh::

Fans are greedy. That's part of being a fan.

So, yeah. Absolutely.

Although I'd contest your view of the media franchises as harmless, particularly the Trek ones. I know the Star Wars novels have actual forward momentum, but the Trek ones don't. The characters are frozen in place from novel to novel, like the characters in Law and Order. Nothing changes, no movement, no overarching story. Nothing learned. Which is why the only Trek novels I can bear to read are Diane Duane's, since she went merrily AU and the things that happen in those novels actually matter.

Re: Word

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Which is why the only Trek novels I can bear to read are Diane Duane's, since she went merrily AU and the things that happen in those novels actually matter.

Have you tried John M. Ford's ? They might appeal on similar grounds.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Well, if that's not what one bought the book for in the first place, I can see your point.

The sex was signficant to the plot, but I did think it was a bit overdone in Narcissus in Chains. I can live with that given that it killed, tore apart, incinerated, and scattered to the four winds the ashes of the bloody stupid romance-novel-cliche-shaped relationship stuff she's been doing since the third or fourth book. I'm deferring judgement until I see whether she either tries to pull those relationships back towards that shape again or continues with that much gratuitous sex in Cerulean Sins, but with luck she'll just keep her urge to write about such things in the Merry Gentry books, and I won't read them, and all concerned will be happier thereby.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I like your analyses, and my rational mind can go there with you. My objection is one of those gut-level emotional things that can't be argued with. But truly (as people were saying to me about Faramir) I appreciate being shown an argument for how this thing that makes me froth at the mouth is actually not so much a bad thing, or has stuff in it that is valuable.

Also, those posts made me remember my mad crazy Doggett love from S8. And that's good. Because my love for Doggett was all-consuming and made me forgiving of some truly craptastic episodes. I so very badly wanted the damn show to forget Mulder already! and go ahead and let the relationship between Doggett and Scully unfold and blossom in all its prickly dysfunctional weird-ass gender-subversive glory. Also sans sprog-arc.

And I still think "Invocation" was one of the best X-Files episodes, for particular values of "best," that we ever got. Although that's probably just my biases showing through.

Anyway, thank you for the pointers and for the interpretive framework that allows both show and analysis to be functional. It helps.

Re: Word

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Okay, fair enough. Media franchises not so much with the fluffy and harmless. And your point makes sense to me. The Star Wars novelizations seem to be linear enough that a story can be told, but with all those people writing all those Star Trek novels, there's no way there can be any development without going AU.

Carter should have listened to the characters, should have paid attention to the arc of his own story. Instead he drained it dry and then propped it up for the diehards to gawk at. He never knew where he was going, and that's something I can't forgive.

Your view pretty much matches up with mine, although, as I think melymbrosia and I have been getting into upthread, I'm fully willing to admit that my utter loathing for late X-Files has partially to do with particular things the show did that I could not abide. Also, truthfully, because the damn show turned into crap. The quality of the writing just went downhill like a hippopotamus luge-team.

But, yes, Carter never seemed to understand what it was he had in his hands, never seemed to grasp fully what it was he'd wrought. And that's both infuriating and sad.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

:nods:

I haven't been able to go near the Merry Gentry books. Lets hope she gets it all out there and manages to salvage Anita.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I read the first one, and it had everything I dislike about Anita and none of the compensating virtues. Fortunately my brother liked it, so it was not a complete waste of the twenty-five cents the hardback cost me.

The only real problem I have with the Merry books as things is their slowing the Anita books down to biennial.

Re: Word

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the Diane Duane Star Trek novels. And I liked the Star Wars novels for the same reasons - because they moved, they mattered. It gets to a point where reading about something that doesn't affect anything gets...stale.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you didn't feel imposed upon by the links to huge-ass arguments. It occurred to me belatedly that it might be too obnoxious.

The only other person I know who likes "Invocation" is also a huge Doggett fan. I don't think it's horrible, but I think it does stupid *and unnecessary* things to Scully's characterization, and mostly it just bored me.

My biggest problem with the Doggett-Scully relationship was that it was rushed into this forced and unrealistic peace, whereas it made much more sense with Scully's character and also the two actors had much more chemistry when Scully was bristling with distrust towards him.

Er, how was it gender-subversive?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Er, how was it gender-subversive?

Well, maybe it wasn't. But what I liked about it (and I totally agree with you about the stupid over-rushed detente) was that here's Doggett, this guy with the military training and the kind of low-key macho swagger (I loved him more every time he said "May we come in?" after he was already in the house) and the chip on his shoulder and all the rest of it ... and when Scully tells him what to do, he does it. The subway episode (sorry, cannot for love nor money remember X-Files ep titles) was stupid in a lot of ways, but it does have that great moment where the chauvinist jerk says something like, Why are we doing what she says? and Doggett just says, She's the boss. I was completely charmed by his willingness to accept Scully's authority and by how absolutely unthreatened he was by the fact that she was smarter than him. To me, Doggett (as played by the incomparable Robert Patrick--i.e., I don't know how much of what I love was what RP did with the character as opposed to what the character was in and of himself) was a much more interesting character than Mulder. Now, they did stupid stupid things with him and clearly never cared about him the way they did about Mulder, but that was their fault, not his.