Where Does It Go From Here

[shipperx]

"Are you serious?"

That was the response I got to a post asking where do people honestly expect Joss to take his current 'plot twist'.

Well, yes, I was serious. I don't think this person quite understood the question that I was asking, but I was serious.

Just to get it out of the way, I don't have some outsized hatred of baby plots. Heck, looking back, I realize that one of the first fanfics I ever wrote was about a baby plot. (It was a X-Files Post-Requiem fanfic, Requiem being the episode where Scully announced that she was pregnant. Since Mulder was kidnapped by 'aliens' at the time and/or presumed dead, I created a plot where Scully investigated a case that had to do with alternate universes, and then she ended up in one... or rather her consciousness did. She found herself in a Scully-life where she had made different choices. Mulder was alive and around in that AU. And he needed her. The tension in the story was that Scully could have Mulder or she could have her baby pregnancy in the regular verse, but she couldn't have both. {She chose the baby.}) And one of my favorite shows is "Raising Hope".

There's nothing wrong with babies or mothers. But where this plot is concerned, I've got concerns (and not just because of the 'blackout drunk knockup'. Oh, I still have my concerns there as well, but that's not what I'm speaking about in this post.) The question I ponder is about the plot

---

Every story is about a character pursuing some compelling desire. TV, movies, and visual media must do this on a visible level -- a visible desire with visible obstacles. A character in film must pursue some visible objective that has a finish point that we can imagine... ~ Michael Hague

---

Pregnancy works relatively easily as a plot. Heck, the trimesters are an arc on their own - a beginning, middle, and end. And there's an obvious visible finish point... or rather a due date. You have a character become pregnant (I'm not going into the nature of this conception in this post, but I think Joss could've done better). You have natural conflict in that she clearly is going to have concerns, confusion, and conflicting desires. Can she even do this, becomes an obstacle. And at some point she will have to make some sort of decision. And we have a natural climax in birth.

But my question was... and then what?

Yeah, yeah, I've heard the answer of "it's about motherhood!" "It's about Buffy accepting motherhood!" "It's about Buffy growing up and being a mother!"

Okay, fine. That's a theme. That's not a plot. I'm asking what is the plot here?

You see the problem with a pregnancy plot is that when it's over, you've got a baby that the story has to deal with. And the problem with infants in stories is that they aren't great plot generators. An infant sleeps a lot, they eat, they smell like baby powder, but they're too young, too helpless, and too dependent (and non-verbal) to actually be a character. And unlike "Raising Hope" you can't even get good reaction shots in an illustrated comic (and it not look rather hopelessly manipulative.)

Infants are not by nature an easy fit for an action/adventure/gothic/horror/genre plot.

Now, excuse me as I digress a bit into observations gleaned from decades of experience in various soap fandoms. It's just...if any medium has more experience with baby plots, I can't think of one.

First off, if one thing is to be noted from soap fandoms, it's that people have very, very short fuses where baby endangerment is concerned. Maybe it's because soaps have a predominantly female audience. And Joss and Dark Horse can hope that comics have a different audience or that it won't be as visceral in cartoon form. But on soaps, there are many things that characters can overcome doing -- rape and murder among them -- the thing that has consistently generated the. most. ire. in every soap fandom I've ever observed, is child endangerment. That shit isn't forgiven. Ever. And it doesn't even have to be deliberate. And sexist and/or gender imbalanced as it may be, fans react worse to a female involved.

Heck, it doesn't even have to be a soap. I've seen some horrendous bashing of Game of Thrones Catelyn Stark for her not having returned immediately to her sons Bran and Rickon at Winterfell...even though her own father was dying (in the books), she was in the middle of a war, and (she believed) both her underage daughters were hostages of the enemy (only one actually was, though both were/are in danger), while on the other hand she quite rationally believed that her sons were safe at their holdfast with a ton of 100% loyal knights and servants caring for the boys at the fortress. So saying "hire daycare' doesn't actually work as great cover for some of the audience. Even less if the mother is single and knowingly placing herself in mortal danger on a regular basis. I'm not saying it's 'fair.' I'm just noting what reactions have tended to pop up over time. And if the infant is endangered in the process... whoo-boy. Fandom can get very upset (and angry).

Maybe it's hardwired into the human race, but babies in danger doesn't play well with an audience for long before generating fan resentment of both the storyteller and the characters. If Buffy is stuck with a baby and it's regularly endangered (as of course it would be) it's very small hop, skip, and jump to people pointing fingers about reckless endangerment and neglect.

There's actually a reason the soap trope "SORAS" (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome ) exists. It's because if any medium has discovered that there aren't many places to go with a very small child, it's soap operas. You've got the standard kidnapping, dangerous illness, and custody case plot and... well....once those have been cycled through it's off to the attic until they're a sullen teen, because, again, audiences don't tolerate the repeated endangerment of small children. It's repulsive.

There's a reason why most small children in plots are in comedies or romances. People don't like to contemplate tiny tots in danger. It's short fuse then boom.

So where do you go?

I find myself thinking of the Requiem situation with Dana Scully and the short sad story of little William Mulder.

The poor tyke was conceived because Chris Carter thought Requiem was the final episode of the series. Only it wasn't. So then he had to deal with an actual kid in the story, and... he tried. But it became untenable, and little William Mulder was eventually shipped off to an adoptive home (which I still resent on Scully's* behalf to this day!) But from an action/adventure/mystery/aliens format... I sort of understood how they reached that point. {*And Dr. Dana Scully was about a bazillion times more prepared for single motherhood than Buffy Summers is. She had her own home, a savings account, a good job as an instructor at the FBI Academy... and health insurance.}

Chris Carter tried to handle Scully's situation somewhat logically. He had Scully take a job as an instructor at the FBI academy. Problem was... it effectively sidelined Scully. And unlike the baby, Scully was a freaking star of the show. Something had to be done to place her back in the action. The tension of "you can't repeatedly endanger the baby" without pissing off the audience combined with the necessity of having Scully in the action and thus regularly endangered, ended up arriving at the truly tragic (for SCULLY!) outcome of her having to allow someone else to raise her child. (My heart still breaks for her. Oh Scully...)

Is this the fate we would wish on Buffy? Really? I still don't like it.

And I know people like to trot out Sarah Connor as poster child for action-adventure mom, but can we at least note that what we got was a single shot of Sarah while pregnant. Then we got John Connor as a sullen teen... in every incarnation! Have you ever seen a fill-in-the-gap reboot? Not even in a franchise that's been rebooted several times? Do we think that the failure to fill-in that gap is just 'one of those things' or because it presents significant story challenges? Because, again, there isn't much to be done storywise (or much that an audience will tolerate being done) to an infant and/or toddler.

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"Your hero must pursue some outer motivation. In other words, your hero must pursue some visible goal that has a clearly implied end point. It cannot be just a desire to be in a certain situation. It cannot be a desire for some inner quality like love or revenge or success or acceptance. It must be something we can see on screen that the hero actively pursues. In Raiders of the Lost Arc we see him pursue the arc and when he discovers it. And we see the serial killer she's trying to stop in Silence of the Lambs. It's visible to the viewer. It's not the only or the most important aspect of a script, but it is the one most likely to be missing in unsuccessful screenplays. This is the number one reason why most scripts are rejected. ~ Michael Hauge

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So, I'm back to the question, where exactly are people expecting this plot to go? Especially those who are insisting that all will be perfectly 'normal' (Really? In a genre comic called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?). That the purpose of this is some amorphous "it's about motherhood!" "it's about growing up by becoming a mother!"

Okay, again, that's the theme. But realistically, what plot are we talking about here? What plot can we reasonably expect Joss "love the pain" Whedon to pursue?

An infant is not in fact a plot.

In fact the reality of infants -- what they need -- is quite inconvenient to the requirements of a genre/action/gothic/horror plot. This is why I think Joss Whedon opted for Baby Plot #1 - "Kidnapping!" and Baby Plot #4 - "SORAS!" with Connor, because Mutant Enemy recognized very quickly that it's darn difficult to tell a genre/action/horror plot with an infant. It's not impossible. It takes a lot of effort. It's a challenge, and an even greater challenge in a serial format where it's not simply one plot but a constant cycle of them.

And, no, the little darlings really don't store on the back in a rucksack while the hero dashes into fight after fight. And no, a single parent can't continue dashing straight into the jaws of mortal danger into fight after fight after fight, when they are the sole parent of. an. infant and when there is any available alternative (such as a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 10th alternative Slayer... or the odd vampire with a soul). It would begin to appear to be feckless if it happens too regularly. Again the serial nature of the format begins to be a hurdle.

And it's not going to change much because small children need stability and security and... these are antithetical to the needs of plot...which are conflict and movement. It's not impossible but it's not easy. And it's particularly challenging in serials. This is why after cycling through the kidnapping/illness/ custody fight tropes, soap kids get stuffed in the attic and SORASed.

Babies work fine in something like a situation comedy. Situation comedies have a certain stability. It's a situation comedy after all. And you don't have that pesky "serial endangerment of the infant."

On Modern Family, a big deal would be baby Lily with gum in her hair. And on "Raising Hope" the conflicts are things as tiny as "Hope has a cold!" or "Hope bit a kid at daycare!" There's the security of "well, the Chances (or the Pritchetts) are wacky... but not a damn thing will happen to that baby. It's safe."

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" cannot exist storywise as 'safe' and, honestly, does anyone anywhere think that Joss wants it to?!

So what's he going to do with a 'normal' baby (if it even is a 'normal' baby)? How will Joss Whedon -- of all people -- handle a story of motherhood?

Is this not the guy who had Darla stake herself to give birth?

Who had Cordelia possessed and rendered brain dead?

Who had Buffy jump off a tower for her sister/daughter Dawn?

Is this or is this not the guy who takes every happy moment, rips it bleeding from your chest and stomps on it right before your eyes?

---

There is an absolute critical rule when it comes to developing growth for your character, when it comes to developing theme in your script, and that is that you can never let the deeper levels of meaning interfere with the story. That is the mistake many writers make. You want so desperately to say something deep, meaningful, symbolic, and universal that you lose sight of your job. And that job is storyteller. The deeper meaning grows out of the plot, it does not supplant it. It does not substitute for it.

I know you're thinking 'That Michael Hauge. He's an anal retentive structuralist and I don't want that.' But let me give a really strong admonition. Stories exist first and foremost on the level of plot. Yes, we go deeper. Yes, we develop character, theme, and meaning. But none of that can happen without the visible journey taking place. The deeper levels grow out of that visible plot. The plot is first and foremost what is going to generate interest and emotion in the reader.

This is a very difficult thing to internalize and accept.

The reason it's difficult is because it's not why we go to the movies, watch TV shows, or read a book. And, most of the time, it's not why we write. You see, I know what you want. You want to write stories that not only touch people but touch them deeply, say something about the human condition, reveal something important to you (...) when you finish a movie or book you talk about the characters, you talk about the originality, you talk about the depth. And since that's what we talk about and that's what we strive for, the difficulty is to avoid going there first, meaning thinking that you can skip over the level of plot and structure and just get into character. It does not work. (I say that as an absolute, but certainly there are exceptions. However, they are rare.) By and large you have to make something happen before you change the reader's lives. Once you have your plot, then you can go deeper. And that is what we strive to do...~Michael Hauge

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So saying 'it's about motherhood' or 'growing up' isn't an answer. Every Buffy story is supposedly about growing up. I'm asking what's that plot, under Whedon, going to look like.

Possibilities? If it's a negative, expect yet one more refrain of the song of Cordelia "body is hijacked and it destroys mom!" Or remember Darla "It's about sacrifice" or Buffy off a tower "It's about sacrifice" or even the line used in this issue about loving something means letting it go.

What are the odds of Joss going the long haul with a perfectly ordinary child, and with Buffy trying to raise an ordinary infant. How does he do that without sidelining Buffy from the action, because he cannot permanently sideline Buffy from the action because the series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So how does he keep her in the action and not court the 'reckless endangerment" and/or neglected baby in the attic syndrome (because the Xander/Dawn or nanny situation actually won't cover a single parent going out and endangering herself nightly.) How many times is the superhero story about the villain seeking to hurt the superhero through who they love. A Buffy baby is begging for a hostage of fortune. So how does Joss do that and not incur backlash. People tend to take baby endangerment seriously... even in soap operas where diamonds freeze the world and people's brains are erased with curling irons.

So yeah, Buffy may be learning about 'motherhood' through this plot, but that hardly rules out the possibility of mystical pregnancy (good or ill, it would get the baby out of the way. Who knows, maybe she's carrying River Song). Or we could see Connor Part II (which now that I think about it... is an earlier incarnation of River Song). Or it could be the woeful sad tale of little William Mulder. What I don't think is that this will end with an single mom struggling to raise an ordinary 'normal' baby so that everyone has their warm, squishy bright spot of normal in the story.

Because while it may be possible to write a baby story in an action plot (and it not be the ending point of the story See: D'Argo Crichton for 'baby as happy ending' to an action story) , do I honestly have a great deal of faith that something that delicate can be told by the crew that cannot even manage to stage a conception without raising tasteless questions (I mean, say what you will about babies in action, but I'm looking around and while Farscape left paternity in question for a while, they managed to do so without a hint of even the possibility of dubcon. And while William Mulder was conceived off screen, again it came without blowing enough smoke that it left fans debating dubcon.) Dark Horse and Joss didn't manage to even do that. Because it had to be more angsty (as if a surprise pregnancy for an unmarried, broke, overwhelmed, soon to be homeless woman who is running from the police and hated by many of her former associates wasn't enough to make it angsty.)

With Joss being Joss, why do people think this is going to end in Buffy attending 'Mommy and me' classes and constructing cribs and mobiles? 'Cause if we're giving odds on outcomes, that one is far, far lower on the list of Joss-likely outcomes than other more tragic, more angsty, more mystical, more supernatural, or more twisted than that.

Comments

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Iiiinteresting post.

Maybe it's hardwired into the human race, but babies in danger doesn't play well with an audience for long before generating fan resentment of both the storyteller and the characters. If Buffy is stuck with a baby and it's regularly endangered (as of course it would be) it's very small hop, skip, and jump to people pointing fingers about reckless endangerment and neglect.

Right. And Joss has neatly avoided this complication two times by making the child ~already fated to be in danger. Both Dawn and Connor were being hunted down because they were the Key and the ~impossible child of two vampires -- so Buffy and Angel weren't dragging them into danger, but rather running into danger to protect them.

Which then makes me wonder if there's going to be some mystical element to this baby, as you yourself have been speculating, because how else to frame Buffy as ~the protector~ rather than the mother recklessly endangering her child?

I agree with you that expecting a more pure domestic scenario doesn't really make sense. And again I feel like the mysterious conception won't be fully dismissed. There was too much attention in the first issue asking ~who's the one~ and Joss isn't known for letting a mystery lie. He loves -- LOVES -- yanking back the curtain for the shocking reveal, twisting expectations and showing his hand. That's the whole point of holding back his hand, the exciting ~ah ha~ moment when he reveals it. I mean, it's a basic Whedonverse pattern -- obscuring the basic ~what~ of the story in order to shock the audience with the surprise of it all.

It's almost like a power game for the storyteller, reeling us in, playing on our natural susceptibility, then tricking us completely and, often enough, making the audience grateful for the surprise. (Except for those who get tired of the move.)

I vastly prefer TVD's moves though where they show us the ~what~ and then twist it inside out and turn it into a whole new ~what~, using unreliable narrator to constantly shift and alter expectations.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I agree with you that expecting a more pure domestic scenario doesn't really make sense. And again I feel like the mysterious conception won't be fully dismissed. There was too much attention in the first issue asking ~who's the one~ and Joss isn't known for letting a mystery lie

True. He presented it as a mystery, daring us to ask. So, yeah, there was intent there (and I really don't think it's going to be any of the 'likely' suspects. They're all red herrings. This is why mystic pregnancy is still high on my list of "maybes")

It's almost like a power game for the storyteller
I kept trying to remember why this was teasing some memory in me then I realized it had to do with a book I recently read. The writer had more than once instance in the book where he kept strategic information from the reader only to spring it in "see, isni't my protagonist smart?" fashion later (which makes it sound more obnoxious than it was. It's just that it was noticeable that he was doing this). Of course the protagonist had a plan that the audience didn't know. The writer deliberately witheld information from the reader!

[silverusagi]

Hell, I wouldn't put it past Joss to kill the baby. Especially in a comic book.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't know that Joss has Martin cahones.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

why do people think this is going to end in Buffy attending 'Mommy and me' classes and constructing cribs and mobiles?

People really think this? It will either be an angelic/demonic sower of magic and be dealt with in that manner or it will be a source of pain for the character in some way. Assuming the kid's human and not a starbaby, Buffy will either lose it or give it up (possibly to Dawn/Xander or Willow). Someone they can take out of action without affecting the story. Gets rid of the baby and it will be painful, which is something Joss has convinced himself fans get off on.

Why did they SORAS Connor? They knew not what to do with a baby. Joss couldn't even think of something to do with Giles, now he's got a plotline for an infant? Nope.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

People really think this?

Yes, there are people who insist that this is absolutely, without question where it's going. Not only where it's going, but the only place it could go.

Right.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

"If you love something, let it go" says everything about where this is going.

Oh, and thanks for your elaborate post! Yay! For well constructed and supported views. :)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does sort of reek of foreshadow, doesn't it.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Still reading, but had to comment on this:

And I know people like to trot out Sarah Connor as poster child for action-adventure mom, but can we at least note that what we got was a single shot of Sarah while pregnant. Then we got John Connor as a sullen teen... in every incarnation!

Um, in "Terminator 2," he was in foster care at age what, 14, while she was in the crazy house. Not exactly a happy pappy childhood.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Anyway, great post.

I've thought about it (some more), and I think Buffy will probably end up having to have an abortion cause the egg implanted in her fallopian tube or something. Or, she'll have to let the baby go in some shape or form. Maybe not in the, "let my enemy take my baby to a hell dimension, so that the evil lawyers won't dissect it" go, but go in some form or fashion.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yes. There was that part. I remembered it but it was a lot to explain. :)

[beloved-77.livejournal.com]

Excellent points. An audience can take angst and tragedy when it involves adults, but angst and tragedy around a child tend to hit harder.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I just keep remembering an era of "All My Chidren" that generated extreme hatred of several characters because of the way a baby was handled (creating the board catchphrase "Babies are not purses!" and "Bitch stole Ace's (stuffed) cow!" (heh. Yes, outraged was stoked by stealing a tots favorite stuffed animal.). People don't want to see babies hurt, endangered, or neglected. It's playing with dynamite. You can do it briefly for the drama, but if you go to that well much... the audience will feel manipulated. And an audience that feels manipulated gets pissed.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Does Jasmine also count as a SORAS baby? I'd say mega-yes. So that's 3-for-3 in the Jossverse*.

Nifty points. Carry on.

*According to the Firefly comic extension, Zoe was pregnant with Wash's child when he died. I don't think the story went any farther than showing her in maternity wear, though. Can't say if there will be more to it.

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Jasmine also count as a SORAS baby

Joss ups the ante every time. First it was Connor, then Jasmine who started acting before her birth, then Kitty Twilight who was a scheming adult long before her conception...

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Excellent post all around. I remember an odd SORAS moment on the ABC TGIF show "Boy Meets World." The main character, Corey, had a devilishly handsome yet dim-witted older brother, Eric (provider of much comic relief), and a much younger and annoying sister, Morgan. For a whole season, Morgan never appeared and was never mentioned. People thought she had gone the way of the eldest Cunningham brother, but much later, she appeared down the stairs, looking much older (though possibly played by the same actress), with the statement, "That was the longest time-out ever." Whereas Eric fit into the plot because he was a teenager and going to the same high school as Corey, Morgan never did, so I think they "attic"'d her until it was feasible to make her a less annoying side character again.

The question I want answered is when does Buffy stop "growing up" and just start acting like an adult. Though many people believe the contrary, I believe that people should grow up before they have a child. Be they 25, 35, or however old. Human nature and behavior has taught me that this is sometimes not the case. And people can say what they will about Angel's maturity level, but he generally acted like an adult- he had bills and employees to pay, he wanted a college fund for Connor, he was thinking about sports Connor could play after sunset. He was making plans and trying his damnedest to be responsible for that child. I actually really loved the episode with Angel trying to make money, Fred and Lorne being in danger, and Cordie having to be the one to make a decision about what to do with the baby when her friends were in danger. It felt like a family dealing with a crisis in the horror genre in an engaging way. I actually think that the show could have continued with baby Connor like that (and I like the idea that Brian Lynch came up with in one of the IDW comics that there's an alternate universe where Angel got too over-protective of Connor after foiling Wesley's kidnap attempt and pushed all his friends away. However, somehow unsouled, chipped Spike found his way to L.A, re-friended Angel, and was actually trusted enough to protect Connor- "My Two Vampire Dads" is a favourite subject of mine).

However, Ats was still allowing all the characters to have arcs unrelated to the baby (though still interacting with the baby), I don't trust the BtVS comics to do that. Everything is going to become about the child because it's a cheap plot device that will try to make the audience forget that there's no actual plot. And now a word from Mr. Plinkett, from his Avatar review, which I think applies to the way the comics have developed... “For all the time and money spent to make this movie 3-dimensional, the plot and characters were still stuck in one dimension.”

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Lots of Whedon's 'plots' come from old X-Men comics, and those are riddled with SORAS babies. Its just that the multiple offspring of Jean Grey and Scott Summers have to be sent into the future to save them/come from alternative universes and/or get one parent as clone/alt version.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the X-Men, but Season 8 was a veritable pastiche of shoutouts to other franchises.

[rahirah]

How to mix children with action-adventure plots is actually something I've given a good deal of thought to, since I did have my AU Buffy become a mother. Granted, I have the advantage of working in print, which means I can blithely skip over the year that Buffy took off to take care of the new baby and Faith was the main Slayer if I want to.

But in general - impossible, no; hard, hell yes. And it very much depends on what your goal is. I wanted to write about Buffy being an imperfect but overall successful parent. So before I saddled her with offspring, I took care to set it up so that she does have resources to fall back on. At the point in her life where my Buffy first becomes pregnant, she has a house, a job with flexible hours, and a husband (who also has a job with even more flexible hours and can help with slaying) as well as colleagues whom she can call on in an emergency.

When it comes to writing stories which involved the children, I took a leaf from the early seasons of BtVS, and picked a unifying theme: instead of "High school is hell," it was "Raising the little monsters." I'd take a standard kid story - say, the one about your kid biting another kid at school - and give it a supernatural twist. The kid's biting because the kid is a vampire. There are other things you can do as well, the simplest being just shuffle the kids offstage when the action starts. It also helps, when you do want the kids endangered, to hang a lantern on the endangerment. Buffy angsts her head off about the fact that just by being who she is, she's ensured that her children will never have the normal life she craved for so long. And above all else, make the children fully realized characters as soon as they're old enough to make that practical, because there's nothing better to make the audience start seeing them as actors in their own right rather than just objects to be imperiled. Write stuff from the kids' POV, where you can draw from the tradition of kids' adventure stories where it's their job to save the day.

Do I think Joss is going to do anything remotely similar to this? I really doubt it. Judging by his track record so far, Joss is not interested in telling stories about his characters building functional if somewhat disturbing families. Even if, right now, the intention is to make Buffy a mother over the long term, I will bet a quarter that the writers will get bored of working around a baby, because it IS hard, and they have a track record of just vanishing Buffy's real-world problems whenever they get tired of them.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

That sums up perfectly how you do a story with kids and I agree that Joss is not going to do it.

I think apart from the dubcon conception I hate this scenario so much because I know it could be good in the right hands and will be horrible in theirs.

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

I agree practically on all points.
Except a couple of details.

This is why I think Joss Whedon opted for Baby Plot #1 - "Kidnapping!" and Baby Plot #4 - "SORAS!" with Connor, because Mutant Enemy recognized very quickly that it's darn difficult to tell a genre/action/horror plot with an infant.

As far as I know, Joss always plots seasonal arcs from the ending. So I think Joss introduced the whole Connor storyline in season 3 only to make Connor send Angel to (underwater) hell in the season 3 finale.

And while William Mulder was conceived off screen, again it came without blowing enough smoke that it left fans debating dubcon.) Dark Horse and Joss didn't manage to even do that.

I think they tried to avoid a possibility of interpreting the situation as dubcon. They show Buffy fully capable - dancing on the table, juggling, carrying Andrew on her shoulders. I think amnesia is a plot necessity here - because the whole seasonal intrigue will be built around the identity of the father.

That's just my impression, I may be wrong, of course.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

They show Buffy fully capable - dancing on the table
Dancing on a table with cops does not scream capable. It screams, "That lady is so drunk she doesn't realize what she's doing." Seriously, who offers cops a table dance? Does she want to go to jail for solicitation? Apparently, she has nothing to fear because the cops in SF must not care about their pensions to dance on a table with a skimpily dressed young woman in this age of cellphones and YouTube. Also, Buffy was so impaired she ripped the door off Riley's van. As to carrying Andrew, I've seen drunk frat boys too impaired to drive or make life-altering decisions carry out a perfectly coordinated game of football. It does not mean that they are safe to do anything else.

[erimthar.livejournal.com]

Excellent post. This reflects the way I feel about it exactly.

Joss and his crew have always realized before that babies don't work in action-adventure stories. This is why they introduced the Buffy-as-mother-figure theme by giving her a teenage sister instead of a baby sister, and it's why they had to hook Connor up with SORAS after a few episodes of him being awkwardly underfoot as an infant. I imagine they'll do something with this storyline that doesn't involve Buffy raising a baby.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Thanks. And I agree.

[shapinglight]

Great post, which the people who should read it (the ones who think that Buffy figthing vampires with a baby strapped to her back is 'cute' rather than child abuse) will probably ignore altogether.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Lord, I don't know why that image annoys me so, but it annoys me.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

babies in danger doesn't play well with an audience for long before generating fan resentment (...) it's very small hop, skip, and jump to people pointing fingers about reckless endangerment and neglect.

Clearly, you're right. Good point. :)

Although as rahirah says, Joss is more likely to hang a lantern on the problem to show he's aware of the issue, than to decide he can't use such a story element at all.


While I agree with a lot of what you say, I part company when you complain that Buffy's baby wouldn't be a plot. I don't think it's meant to be, any more than Sunnydale High School in Season 1 - 3 was "a plot". It's a setting element.

My assumption - which may be wrong, I'm not vehemently insisting that this is the only possible storyline - is that Joss is now interested in writing stories against the background of Buffy being a mother; just as earlier he wrote stories about her being a schoolgirl or a college student or a minimum wage worker.

So in some stories, the baby will be part of the plot, yes: and doubtless it'll put in danger, and Buffy will beat herself up about that. Just as in the early seasons, sometimes the school was endangered by vampires attacking Parent-Teacher Night or the swimming coach mutating the swim team. And maybe on some of those occasions Buffy will have to go into a fight carrying her baby, for added dramatic tension: but I doubt she'd do it regularly if she has any choice.

At other times there'll be a sub-plot involving the baby in some way, just as the early seasons had sub-plots about detention or science projects or school trips. Sometimes the baby will be a way to introduce new characters or setting elements. And a lot of the time, I think it'll just be there as a setting element, off-screen apart from a few panels at the start or end of the story. Some of these sub-plots and new characters and incidents might be scary or sad or whatever: but I see no reason to assume others won't be cute or happy or funny. BtVS really isn't that consistently bleak and depressing, Even in s6. :)

So that's the real difference between a comics baby and a real baby, or for that matter a baby in a live-action TV show. Real babies (or babies being played by actors who are, themselves, real babies) need constant 24/7 care and attention. Fictional babies only need a handwave to assure the readers that such things are being taken care of, somehow, off-screen.

Even real parents sometimes give themselves a break from parenting by asking, say, the baby's grandparents to look after it for a while: in BtVS, there's no reason why we shouldn't assume that Buffy is devoting all her time between issues to looking after the baby - and the unusual, emergency situations where she needs help are, not by coincidence, the things we read about in the actual comic.

So that's why I think the storyline could work. (And again, I'm not insisting it's the only one that could possibly work). The baby wouldn't be consigned to the Attic or to a foundling hospital, but it would be mostly off-camera apart from when it wasn't. Nor would the show have to turn into Buffy The Bootee Knitter, being all about the baby all the time.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

is that Joss is now interested in writing stories against the background of Buffy being a mother; just as earlier he wrote stories about her being a schoolgirl or a college student or a minimum wage worker.

So in some stories, the baby will be part of the plot, yes: and doubtless it'll put in danger, and Buffy will beat herself up about that.

What I'm questioning is how effectively this can be done in a genre comic or serial. There are significant challenges to pulling that off, and, honestly, given Joss's track record with pregnancy and Season 8's gap between whatever it was they intended and the way in which it came actually off in execution, I'm wondering whether they are capable of pulling such a thing off. This has potential for major trainwreck.

Or as Rahirah suggested, they may discover this is all hard and stuff and stuff it away (as has frequently happened with Buffy's money issues.)

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Great post. The thing is going to be a trainwreck in the hands it's currently in for all those reasons.

[nmcil12.livejournal.com]

Add my own "Great Posts"

The thing that I find most disturbing is that what comes across for me is that the reality of what a horrific thing this actually is for a woman does not come across in any of the PR from the Dark Horse people. And what Joss Whedon thinks, I don't know - if there is commentary from him I wish someone would post it at the larger boards. This is a horrible premise that they have put out there from the perspective of women almost in every respect. Can you imagine what a mother would feel when she has to tell her child that he was conceived from a sexual encounter while his mother was so drunk she can even remember who their father is. What In The World Are They Thinking?

The only way that I see out of this is with the mystical birth or monster sex vessel pregnancy which brings the friggin Great Space Frak down to its earthly manifestation. My way out speculation is that Buffy has been once again manipulated and is used by an outside force to fulfill their own agenda. If it is tied in with FDW and the Frayverse time-lines, Buffy sending this child into the future, is also a possible resolution and connection of both time-lines.

With Willow being the character that gives that "if you love a thing set it free" and the lines about Buffy and Willow being so close and sharing the same dreamspace I can see where this works for both. With Willow and her love of magic, going back into the time of FDW and trying to fix this timeline and destruction of The Seed works and for Buffy, sending a mystical birth that could be the new bloodline for Malaka Fray and Harth also works.

Whatever happens, Joss Whedon has set a very difficult story to explore - if not handled properly, they could lose a lot of readers and fans. And if they want to go on auto destruct for a great many fans, all they have to do is make this connect to an Angel baby. I don't really expect that, but after what was done in BS8 and the lovers reunion and Great Space Frak, anything is possible.

Once again, fine post and analysis.

[shakatany.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the BtVS comics nor any comics since I was 15 (decades ago). At that time Sue Storm of "The Fantastic Four" had a baby and they dumped him on a witchy woman named Agatha Harkness. Buffy could dump her offspring on her aunt Darlene/Arlene; this is assuming the kid will ever get to be born.

Shakatany

[tennyo-elf.livejournal.com]

Great post! I really loved the in depth storytelling questions you raised and pondered.

I've come to the idea that the pregnancy will probably be the setting/plot for the season, perhaps the birth will come at the end. Buffy could miscarry when she loses her arm, but I don't think she will. In fact I think the arm losing is to highlight the dangers of bringing a child into the world when you are a slayer.

But yes, if the baby is to survive and it's going to be a character, we have to deal with the child as an infant. That is a big question I still wonder myself. I've been thinking about the line Willow told Buffy "If you love something, let it go" could well mean that Buffy decides to give away the baby at the end. I've also thought that with Allie's comments on season 10, that 'it'll be a whole new landscape' could mean Buffy is flung into another dimension and lost (the reverse of Conor, oddly). Or even that we'll have a huge time skip in which season 10 will deal with Buffy as an older woman, her child as the main character, and of course the other characters...though that'll mean the end of the series for good (which I think is a good thing. They could always continue telling stories about the Buffyverse using other characters, or even continue the story with Buffy's kid as the main).

But, yeah, this is hard and difficult. Any way you hash it, we'll probably get a SORAS, stuffed in the attic, or some other drivel. Though I'm going to stay optimistic and think that perhaps Joss is going to do what we least expect and actually do something positive for Buffy just this once (since, you know, he's done nothing else but give her pain, being nice would be radical for him).