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shipperx:
:
Wow. Despite my boredom with the 'plot' (not that there's all that much of one), I find that I have something to say about the current Buffy comics.
Or rather, I have something to say about 'Buffy' comics and the 'Angel and Faith' comics. Mainly it's an observation about the set-up and how that set-up is galling.
Let's see, in Buffyland, Buffy is getting all sorts of grief for breaking a MacGuffin. None of the grief is about her leaving her army in a clutch. No, her 'mistake' was in breaking an 11th hour plot device that Angel was about to steal. See, her making that choice (despite how necessary it was) was a very. bad. thing. Cause it... made rainbows not work properly or something (I'm not even kidding).
Meanwhile, over in "Angel and Faith," Angel is repeatedly told to 'forgive himself' because, despite all those slayer corpses, he 'meant well.' And anyone (isn't it always a woman in the A&F comics?) who dares to be upset about what he did is vengeance crazed, misguided, evil or wrong (and can be all four). A 'good woman' inevitably sees the angelic light, that they are wrong to judge him. They testify to seeing how nobly he suffers (while everyone around him praises him). The rightthink is illustrated by their telling him to 'forgive himself' because, after all, he meant well.
Don't feel bad, Angel. It's okay if you decided that it was your place to make decisions for Buffy, for you to decide that Slayers are 'acceptable' losses, for you to (in his own words) 'beat down' his ex and to undermine her authority and her confidence. He... meant well by doing all those things. None of that is actually a problem, see? His only 'real' mistake was getting a male authority figure killed. So that's the ONLY 'mistake' he will focus on in any way whatsoever. (Love ya, Giles. Buy why did it only become a tragedy when the big guy died?)
What we have here is a comic where when a woman makes a decision that puts an end to a catastrophe, she gets a shitload of grief for having made that choice. Whereas it's 'perfectly understandable' if a man actively undermines women so as to enact a protracted plan (that also ends up causing the deaths of literally hundreds of girls) for him to have the world as he wants it to be. And when his deliberate plan results in the exact same end point as the one Buffy is catching grief for...well, He needs to forgive himself. He meant toremake the world in his own image 'save' the world... and there's nothing extremely fucked up in his thinking he had the right to cut Buffy out of her own life's choices, to undermine her both personally and professionally, and to make any of those choices for alllll those female slayers, deciding that it was just 'okay' to knowingly sacrifice them for his plan.)
All of that would be infuriating enough. (It really would). But there's more. Let's look at a couple of other things the comics have seen fit to say and/or use:
The ONLY reason Buffy is angry with Angel...
Well, it isn't that Angel tried to dismantle her authority over a couple of years or that he deliberately tried to undermine her. Scott Allie tells us that Buffy 'understands' all of that and that she has no issues with it (Yeah, right. That's exactly the way that most women would react to that. Mm-hmm.) No, according to the 'Angel and Faith' comics -- and specifically according to Angel (and Willow for god's sake!) --the reason Buffy is perturbed with Angel is because when he tried to explain to her his grand plan for a new world order, she wouldn't shut up and listen! If she had just SHUT UP and LISTENED, she'd 'understand.'
And this is supposedly 'funny' because it is 'true'.
And now, let me get the latest bit of news straight. Whistler is P.O.'d with Angel for 'calling off' the Twilight plan at the last moment.
Er...um... HOW?!
And, excuse me but just a couple of issues ago wasn't Angel saying that Buffy would 'understand' his plan if she had just shut up and listened? He was referring to Season 8. He was referring to his 'explaining' to Buffy pre-spacefrak and in togaland. And let's go back to togaland sec. In Togaland he actively tried to convince Buffy not to go back to the world to-- y'know -- save it. He stood there making arguments about allowing the world to burn. Was that 'calling it off'? NO!
What actually happened? Buffy chose to say 'screw this' and went back to save the world. Angel, with his metaphorical tail tucked between his legs, followed her.
But now, not only does Angel not have to shoulder any blame for the shit that went down due to his plan (he just needs to forgive himself. Shit is reserved for Buffy), or for his own choices to undermine women. Now he gets 'credit' for 'calling off' the disastrous plan?
The 'decision' to come back and save the world, wasn't made when the woman chose to save the world. Nope. The 'decision' was only made when the man FOLLOWED HER.
Because we all know who has the real authority to make decisions,(Hint: a dick is involved.)
Isn't that basically the POV that Dark Horse comics have been pushing all along?
Anyone catching a pattern here?
Men make choices. Men have the authority. Men have the right to authority and to make choices (it's such a noble burden for the dude). And it's perfectly okay that he does so for women--for everyone-- without their consent. Even if a guy is wrong, he's still 'the decider', the one in charge of making choices. So what if his grand deliberate plan was catastrophic. He meant well.
On the other hand, God help you, woman, if you make a choice that doesn't turn out perfectly. It wasn't your place to make a choice! If you did, and there's collateral damage, you deserve ALL the blame.
And if any woman has any problem with any of the above scenario. Well, they're just bitter shippers whose ship is thwarted. It doesn't have anything to do with the comic uncriticially presenting a story where a guy is free to undermine a woman, to make choices FOR her, a story where that man decides the deaths of hundreds of girls is an 'acceptable sacrifice' for his plan , and any woman (and it's always women) who holds that against him is a crazed harpy or misguided and needs to understand how noble his authoritative intentions were. The comics have consistently used this behavior and never, ever indicate that the sexism underpinning it is IN ANY WAY PROBLEMATIC! There's no push back to it. None.
It's become a story where a decision isn't made until THE GUY makes it.
A story where every issue some character is trotted on stage to explain how, actually, despite what was shown, Angel is blameless while the blowback for 'last season' lands on the female character who took the only choice available at the time to avert a catastrophe... but that choice has some downsides so -- damn her!
She... shouldn't have made a choice? No matter how dire the situation?
And the comics are now at least floating the idea that perhaps the 'problem' (no rainbows, y'all!) is that Angel and Whistler's man-plan didn't go alllll the way through. Damn you, woman, should've shut your yap and let the men do the thinking!
Anyone seeing what's wrong with this picture?
And it's made all the worse by the fact that Buffy is packaged and sold as a 'feminist icon'.
Now, I'm pretty sure that the writers and Dark Horse are blind to this anti-woman subtext. But that doesn't change the fact that it's an ongoing theme and subtext. Good effing grief, make it stop! Why are the Buffy/Angel comics so damn hostile to women?
:
Wow. Despite my boredom with the 'plot' (not that there's all that much of one), I find that I have something to say about the current Buffy comics.
Or rather, I have something to say about 'Buffy' comics and the 'Angel and Faith' comics. Mainly it's an observation about the set-up and how that set-up is galling.
Let's see, in Buffyland, Buffy is getting all sorts of grief for breaking a MacGuffin. None of the grief is about her leaving her army in a clutch. No, her 'mistake' was in breaking an 11th hour plot device that Angel was about to steal. See, her making that choice (despite how necessary it was) was a very. bad. thing. Cause it... made rainbows not work properly or something (I'm not even kidding).
Meanwhile, over in "Angel and Faith," Angel is repeatedly told to 'forgive himself' because, despite all those slayer corpses, he 'meant well.' And anyone (isn't it always a woman in the A&F comics?) who dares to be upset about what he did is vengeance crazed, misguided, evil or wrong (and can be all four). A 'good woman' inevitably sees the angelic light, that they are wrong to judge him. They testify to seeing how nobly he suffers (while everyone around him praises him). The rightthink is illustrated by their telling him to 'forgive himself' because, after all, he meant well.
Don't feel bad, Angel. It's okay if you decided that it was your place to make decisions for Buffy, for you to decide that Slayers are 'acceptable' losses, for you to (in his own words) 'beat down' his ex and to undermine her authority and her confidence. He... meant well by doing all those things. None of that is actually a problem, see? His only 'real' mistake was getting a male authority figure killed. So that's the ONLY 'mistake' he will focus on in any way whatsoever. (Love ya, Giles. Buy why did it only become a tragedy when the big guy died?)
What we have here is a comic where when a woman makes a decision that puts an end to a catastrophe, she gets a shitload of grief for having made that choice. Whereas it's 'perfectly understandable' if a man actively undermines women so as to enact a protracted plan (that also ends up causing the deaths of literally hundreds of girls) for him to have the world as he wants it to be. And when his deliberate plan results in the exact same end point as the one Buffy is catching grief for...well, He needs to forgive himself. He meant to
All of that would be infuriating enough. (It really would). But there's more. Let's look at a couple of other things the comics have seen fit to say and/or use:
The ONLY reason Buffy is angry with Angel...
Well, it isn't that Angel tried to dismantle her authority over a couple of years or that he deliberately tried to undermine her. Scott Allie tells us that Buffy 'understands' all of that and that she has no issues with it (Yeah, right. That's exactly the way that most women would react to that. Mm-hmm.) No, according to the 'Angel and Faith' comics -- and specifically according to Angel (and Willow for god's sake!) --the reason Buffy is perturbed with Angel is because when he tried to explain to her his grand plan for a new world order, she wouldn't shut up and listen! If she had just SHUT UP and LISTENED, she'd 'understand.'
And this is supposedly 'funny' because it is 'true'.
And now, let me get the latest bit of news straight. Whistler is P.O.'d with Angel for 'calling off' the Twilight plan at the last moment.
Er...um... HOW?!
And, excuse me but just a couple of issues ago wasn't Angel saying that Buffy would 'understand' his plan if she had just shut up and listened? He was referring to Season 8. He was referring to his 'explaining' to Buffy pre-spacefrak and in togaland. And let's go back to togaland sec. In Togaland he actively tried to convince Buffy not to go back to the world to-- y'know -- save it. He stood there making arguments about allowing the world to burn. Was that 'calling it off'? NO!
What actually happened? Buffy chose to say 'screw this' and went back to save the world. Angel, with his metaphorical tail tucked between his legs, followed her.
But now, not only does Angel not have to shoulder any blame for the shit that went down due to his plan (he just needs to forgive himself. Shit is reserved for Buffy), or for his own choices
The 'decision' to come back and save the world, wasn't made when the woman chose to save the world. Nope. The 'decision' was only made when the man FOLLOWED HER.
Because we all know who has the real authority to make decisions,
Isn't that basically the POV that Dark Horse comics have been pushing all along?
- Angel's long plan was to undermine Buffy's authority and to make decisions for her. It's for the little woman's own good after all. Nothing to worry her pretty head about.
- Buffy 'understands' that Angel was making decisions for her. It's okay. She can't be mad about that.
- Any female character (and thus far it's all been female characters) who does hold a grudge about any of it is crazy, evil, or misguided and needs to learn a lesson. From Angel. And they need to recoginze that Angel was both benevolent and heroic in his assuming all authority. After all isn't it noble (and for the best) for him to make choices for all these women?
- Actually, Angel was more than heroic in just intention. He was actually the 'hero' because by calling things off...
by following the woman actually calling the plan crazed megalomania. After all no decision is made until the alpha male makes it. - The only Season 8 Angel mistake that he -- and his comic -- legitimizes was his killing a male authority figure (And he was possessed for that one. And any other one he's ever shown around. Don't feel bad, Angel.)
- Oh, and lets not forget that it's okay that Buffy was roofied and had her body LITERALLY stolen from her by a doofus 'for her own good'... and she wasn't upset about that either because Andrew gave her Barbie's Ikea Dreamhouse!
Anyone catching a pattern here?
Men make choices. Men have the authority. Men have the right to authority and to make choices (it's such a noble burden for the dude). And it's perfectly okay that he does so for women--for everyone-- without their consent. Even if a guy is wrong, he's still 'the decider', the one in charge of making choices. So what if his grand deliberate plan was catastrophic. He meant well.
On the other hand, God help you, woman, if you make a choice that doesn't turn out perfectly. It wasn't your place to make a choice! If you did, and there's collateral damage, you deserve ALL the blame.
And if any woman has any problem with any of the above scenario. Well, they're just bitter shippers whose ship is thwarted. It doesn't have anything to do with the comic uncriticially presenting a story where a guy is free to undermine a woman, to make choices FOR her, a story where that man decides the deaths of hundreds of girls is an 'acceptable sacrifice' for his plan , and any woman (and it's always women) who holds that against him is a crazed harpy or misguided and needs to understand how noble his authoritative intentions were. The comics have consistently used this behavior and never, ever indicate that the sexism underpinning it is IN ANY WAY PROBLEMATIC! There's no push back to it. None.
It's become a story where a decision isn't made until THE GUY makes it.
A story where every issue some character is trotted on stage to explain how, actually, despite what was shown, Angel is blameless while the blowback for 'last season' lands on the female character who took the only choice available at the time to avert a catastrophe... but that choice has some downsides so -- damn her!
She... shouldn't have made a choice? No matter how dire the situation?
And the comics are now at least floating the idea that perhaps the 'problem' (no rainbows, y'all!) is that Angel and Whistler's man-plan didn't go alllll the way through. Damn you, woman, should've shut your yap and let the men do the thinking!
Anyone seeing what's wrong with this picture?
And it's made all the worse by the fact that Buffy is packaged and sold as a 'feminist icon'.
Now, I'm pretty sure that the writers and Dark Horse are blind to this anti-woman subtext. But that doesn't change the fact that it's an ongoing theme and subtext. Good effing grief, make it stop! Why are the Buffy/Angel comics so damn hostile to women?
