March 2003 posts
It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Rufus, 22:48:57 03/29/03 Sat
From: "LeoraRufus"
Date: Sat Mar 22, 2003 6:04 pm
Subject: It's all Connected....Lovecraft, Buffy, and Marvel.
Seems that people aren't understanding the phrase "It's all Connected". I went and found a WtP post to use as reference for this post. First the WtP post, and note again the date it was first posted.......
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From: "WilliamThePoet"
Posted at The Stakehouse:
Date: Mon Sep 30, 2002 1:20 pm
Subject: Older than the Old Ones . . .
orual wrote:
> Actually, we know that something older than the Old Ones is coming
> back. I am not enough of a Lovecraftian to know if that makes a
> difference.
Well . . . to go away from Lovecraft purely and go back to the wonderful
world of comics for a moment . . .
. . . the Old Ones and the Elder Gods show up in the Marvel universe as
well. The idea there is that prior to the rise of humanity, earth was kind
of a hellish place ruled by creatures we might call . . . demons. The Elder
Gods were the oldest of them, existing since the beginning of the universe,
so they're billions of years old. The Old Ones are later on the scene, but
they're the ones that usually get noticed more since the Elder Gods were
swept from the scene a long time ago . . . actually, they were removed by a
very powerful, godlike creature to allow humanity a chance to arise.
The only ONE of the Elder Gods allowed to remain on earth in the Marvel
universe was, interestingly enough, Gaea. A few of them, like Set and
Chthon, escaped through dimensional portals to . . . somewhere else.
The Old Ones, on the other hand, were very powerful demons who ruled the
earth before humanity arose but were johnny-come-latelies in terms of the
EGs. That's where Chthulu and some of the others come in -- really powerful
and a lot harder to handle than the run of the mill vamp or demon would be,
but not in the same class as the Elder Gods at all.
Oh, and the Elder Gods could sometimes be referred to as the Dark Gods in
Marvel.
In Buffyspeak, you might refer to them asHell Gods. . .
Many interesting possibilities . . . although whether or not they have
anything to do with what's coming up . . . *veg*
WilliamthePoet
. . . reminding you that the most important question in the Buffyverse is
often "Which is better, Marvel or DC?" and the most important statement for
the viewer is "things are more connected than they might appear to be."
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Both BTVS and Marvel use Lovecraftian themes but BTVS borrows a bit more from Marvel than Lovecraft. When Buffy first aired we got a short lesson on the history of the world by Giles. From Season one ep. 1.2: The Harvest
Giles: This world is older than any of you know. Contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons demons walked the Earth. They made it their home, their... their Hell. But in time they lost their purchase on this reality. The way was made for mortal animals, for, for man. All that remains of the old ones are vestiges, certain magicks, certain creatures...
The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the demon's soul. He bit another, and another, and so they walk the Earth, feeding... Killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of their kind. Waiting for the animals to die out, and the Old Ones to return.
This is very much a Lovecraft influenced history where the Old Ones are pushed out of this reality by a force stronger than themselves. But they have eternally tried to find their way back or at the very least find a way to have an influence in Earth's reality. There are a few ways to do this......one is the creation of a demon hybrid like the vampire, who is supposed to be waiting for the return of the Old Ones...who would have guessed they'd find MTV and other creature comforts distracting them from their reason for being, but what does one expect when you make a demon starting with a human?
The second way that the Old Ones or Hell Gods (in the Buffyverse, Hellgods) can break through to this reality would be to use a human as a vessel (think Cordy on ATS and Ben on BTVS). The point is that the Earth is something that the Old Ones and the Hell Gods may want but can't have because something is preventing them from getting back to the earth dimension.
I found a site where there is a comparrison between the Gods in Marvel and Lovecraft.......
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www.marvunapp.com
A frequent source of confusion/contention, even amongst the writers for the Appendix:
The Elder Gods of the Marvel Universe refers specifically to those being present during the formation of Earth (and are thus billions of years old), who apparently originated from Earth as well. These include Chthon, Gaea, and Set, among a few others. Most of these being degenerated into demons, and are considered Class One demons.
The vast majority of these Elder Gods/Demons were slain by Demogorge, the offspring of Gaea and the Demiurge, a powerful god-like force, which sought to cleanse the Earth to allow humanity to develop. Gaea alone was allowed to remain on Earth, while a few, such as Chthon and Set, managed to escape extra-dimensionally.
The Old Ones: Lovecraft's stories have a separate group of elder Gods, who represent pre-human demons that ruled the Earth in the distant past. Shuma-Gorath, Chthulu, etc. are in this class. Lovecraft's work has served as a basis for many storylines and characters in the work of REH and in the Marvel Universe as well. The term "Elder Gods" is often used to describe them in the Hyborian Era stories, and even in modern era stories. However, again, these are NOT the same classification of characters as the true Elder Gods. Lovecraft's history is NOT the same as the Marvel Universe's. In the MU, these beings are considered Class III demons, and are thought to have extra-dimensional origin. They may well be older than Earth, making them older than the true Elder Gods. However, some specific nomenclature is necessary to avoid confusion.
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BTVS may use elements of Lovecraft but they follow Marvel a bit more closely, this is clear in this season in ep 1, where there is a mention of Gaea......from the transcript of Buffy 7.1 Lessons:
Giles climbs the last bit and crouches beside Willow, both looking at the flower.
GILES: Yep, Paraguay. Where's it come from?
WILLOW: Paraguay.
GILES: You brought it through the earth.
WILLOW: It's all connected. The root system, the molecules ... the energy ... everything's connected.
GILES: You sound like Miss Harkness. (Marvel comics character who started in Fantastic Four as a governess to Reed Richards son Franklin. She went on to teach The Scarlet Witch the art of Witchcraft...she is a mix of the hag and benevolent witch...from The Monster Book by Golden, Bissette, and Sniegoski)
WILLOW: (smiles) She's taught me a lot.
GILES: Then why aren't you in your lesson?
WILLOW: (stops smiling) Sorry.
GILES: It's all right. I think she was just-
WILLOW: Afraid. (Giles looking concerned) Yeah. They all are. The coven is ... they're the most amazing women I've ever met. But there's this, this look that they get. Like I'm gonna turn them all into bangers and mash, or something. (Giles smiling) Which I'm not even really sure what that is.
GILES: They're cautious. I trust you understand that.
WILLOW: I don't have that much power, I don't think.
GILES: Everything is connected. You're connected to a great power, whether you feel it or not.
WILLOW: Well, you should just take it from me.
Willow gets up. The flower closes up and sinks back into the ground.
GILES: You know we can't.
Willow walks away from the tree with Giles following.
GILES: This isn't a, a hobby or an addiction. It's inside you now, this magic. You're responsible for it.
Giles catches up with Willow and they walk side-by-side.
WILLOW: Will they always be afraid of me?
GILES: Maybe. Can you handle it?
WILLOW: I deserve a lot worse. (they stop walking) I killed people, Giles.
GILES: I've not forgotten.
WILLOW: When you brought me here, I thought it was to kill me. Or to lock me in some mystical dungeon for all eternity, or ... with the torture. (frowns) Instead, you ... go all Dumbledore on me. (Giles smiling a little) I'm learning about magic, all about energy and Gaia (alternate spelling Gaea) and root systems...
GILES: Do you want to be punished?
WILLOW: (softly) I wanna be Willow.
GILES: You are. In the end, we all are who we are ... no matter how much we may appear to have changed.
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The use of this statement, it's all connected, seems to be the source of much confusion but if you look a bit into the history of the Marvel comic Universe of Gaea it may just make a bit more sense...again I found a site that explains the history of Gaea.......
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www.starnet-database.com
2,000,000,000 Years Ago
The Elder God Demiurge achieved consciousness after being formed and coalesced from the Earth's biosphere. As conditions on Earth became supportive towards life, and sensing the need for diversity, Demiurge split up into countless fragments, each of which formed into new organisms, such as Belathauzer, Chthon, Gaea, Set, Y'Garon, and others.
These creatures roamed the land masses, and may have had something to do with the shaping of Earth's continents. [Scientific theory.] The first single-celled organisms were formed on Earth. [Scientific theory.] Chthon began devoting himself to the study and manipulation of mystical energies, becoming Earth's first master of black magic. [Silver Surfer Annual #2] Gaea assigned herself as protector of the emerging life in Earth's seas.
Set spawned a number of offspring, among them Sligguth and Damballah. Set, realizing he could increase his own power by consuming the energy of his fellows, became the first being on Earth to commit murder. By consuming the life energies of a fellow Elder God, Set began down the path to degeneracy.
Other Elder Gods quickly began following Set's example, killing their fellow Elder Gods to gain their energies. Many of them began becoming corrupt and evil and began warring and feeding off each other.
After millions of years of existence, all the Elder Gods except for Gaea had degenerated.
Gaea began fearing that the Elder Gods' wars and petty battles with each other would destroy the evolving life on the planet. Gaea mated with a reincarnation of Demiurge and gave birth to Atum, who became dedicated to eradicating the Elder Gods' evil.
Forseeing the threat Atum was to his existence, Chthon inscribed all the mystical knowledge he had learned through the millennia on a parchment to be his touchstone with the Earth dimension. Atum indeed became a threat to the Elder Gods, as he began killing them for their evil and degradation, absorbing their energies into himself.
The energies he absorbed caused him to undergo a metamorphosis into the form of Demogorge the God-Eater, and many of the Elder Gods fell to him. Chthon, sensing the end was near, cast a spell which allowed him to escape into another dimension before Demogorge could slay him. Before he left, Chthon left the parchment containing his mystical knowledge behind. Set, witnessing what Chthon had done, replicated Chthon's spell and he and his offspring escaped.
[The most important thing to remember from the Marvel Universe and Gaea is this next bit of information]
Gaea was the only original Elder God permitted to exist on the planet, and she infused her godly essence into the Earth and into all living things.
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Willow is learning about magic and Gaea, but is missing out on the main thing about the importance of Gaea/Gaia, and that is that Gaea has infused her godly essence into not only the Earth itself, but into all living things. Everything is connected, every living thing, and the Earth. This may be something to remember for the last few eps of the season. Willow may fear the dark magic she feels powerless to handle, but she only has to remember that there is something else she can connect to and that is the source of the divine, Gaea....there is a spark of the divine in all.....and while thinking about that remember that the First as Warren called Spike, Sparky.
From Lessons:
VOICE: Of course she won't understand, Sparky.
It's Warren. He stops behind Spike and addresses him.
If you follow Marvel, Gaea is an Elder God, who basically has seniority over The Old Ones, and The First just may be another Elder God who was forced from this reality by that powerful force even older than the Old Ones, older than the Hell Gods (Elder Gods in Marvel), but Gaea is still on the earth connected to all things, protective of Mortals. The First and alternately whatever is behind Cordy's delicate condition on Angel may be powerful, but Gaea never left, and behind Gaea is something even more powerful than the Old Ones, or Hell Gods (Elder Gods). We have seen evidence of the evil trying to emerge in this reality in Angel, and we can see The First trying to do the same on Buffy, so where is the evidence of the other side or Gaea, or should I say her essence?
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Wouldn't that provide an answer... -- AngelVSAngelus, 00:46:53 03/30/03 Sun
to the long standing questions about the nature of magic in the Buffyverse? We've never gotten a concrete answer to whether, when a witch is performing magic or a ritual and verbally invokes a goddess, she's harnessing personal power or an exterior summoned force.
With what you suggest, the answer is that they're doing both simultaneously, that the exterior force is inside them.
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Wizard, 01:11:44 03/30/03 Sun
Hmm... I've never looked at it that way before... and you're right- BTVS, and by extension AtS, borrows heavily from Marvel in some ways. Or maybe its just the coincidence of two of the most prominent families in either 'universe' sharing the same name: Summers.
Anyway, to give your question a go...
In many ways, good isn't as noticable as evil. For example, we can observe many 'little goods' each day, but if we see even a little evil, that's what we tend to think about, unless we consciously remind ourselves of the good. The First is going out of its way to be noticable- its got the Bringers, the Turok-Han, ordinary demons, some vampires (there always are), and all sorts of other pleasant things. It wants to destroy the world.
Good (God, Allah, Gaea/Gaia, TPTB, what-have-you) will have its say too- it always has, and always will. However, by definition (as near as we can define it), good HAS to be very concerned about the help that it sends out. Why? It walks a line- humanity is up against forces it can't handle, and it needs help in order to survive, BUT, if it gives too much direct aid, humanity will become dependent upon it, and will stagnate. And I think that the Whedonverse has conclusively shown what happens to things that stagnate. Hence the line- not enough help, and humanity falls, but too much help, and humanity stagnates. Good will help, but humanity needs to do something to earn the help. What's the saying about how Gold helps those who help themselves? It's kinda like that. Evil is not concerned about the line- above all else, it's concerned with power.
Evil is willing to use its mortal agents however it has to in order to get what it wants. Think the First cries over Bringers? Did the Senior Partners get upset when Dru and Darla lunched on fifteen of their underlings? No- there will always be more servants where they came from. Good, on the other hand, is concerned with winning, but is also concerned with what happens to its servants. How do we know? Angel's epiphany. He could not fight evil with evil. He could do no true good by becoming what he fought. That occurred in S2 of Angel, which is (not so) coincidentally S5 of Buffy, which introduced Dawn, Ben, and Glory. In S5, Buffy was told "Death is your gift." Now that sounds horrible, but think about it- remember what happened to Buffy in S5. Riley left. Joyce died. Buffy had to raise a 14 year old girl all by herself. That's a lot for a person to deal with in a relatively short time, especially if that person is the Slayer, who already has a lot on her plate. By the time Buffy and Dawn were on the Tower, Buffy had become catatonic, and with help from Willow, snapped out of it to lead the Scoobies in what was arguably their most important battle to date.
Most important battle, I say? Think about it- S1) If the Master hadn't been stopped- well, we've all seen Doppelgangerland, and the world still existed, even though Sunnydale truly became "Sunnyhell." S2) The world would have been sucked into Hell, but the Scoobies weren't directly involved- the credit for that battle went to Buffy and Spike. S3) Giant invincible demonic snake, but like the Master rising- Sunnydale and surroundings would have been decimated, but the world would have survived. I should probably comment of the Zeppo, too, but we really don't know the details of that battle. S4) Adam was damn tough (and somewhat mishandled by ME, but don't get me started), but the Scoobies were able to defeat him... and paid the price in 'Restless.' They were able to stop the bad, but they had to pay for what they did. I would argue that in S5, Buffy 'paid' beforehand for what happened in "The Gift." How did she pay? Well, all the crap I mentioned earlier, plus all the good that she did in her life before that. And what did she pay for? Death, but death in a meaningful way- a death that could save the world AND her sister. Good knew that it might come down to a choice between Dawn and the world- the fact that the message came when it did and not from some angelic messenger appearing from on high proves that. If Spike was able to save Dawn, then "Death is your gift" would have just left Buffy scratching her head. As a reward for Buffy's deeds as a Slayer, and maybe for all the crap she'd endured right before this, they set it up so that the Slayer could have a third option, if she chose to take it. What happened in "The Gift" was in many ways as much a blessing as what happened in "Amends." Good acted directly there, earned by Angel making the right choice, and good acted here too, allowing Buffy to pay for the closing of the portal with her own life. But why did she have to die? Remember the line I spoke of earlier? The portal was a major thing, and could affect the entire universe. The amount of crap Buffy lived through prior to the opening of the portal was not enough to buy it's closing- but it was enough to buy a third option, and it was the right one, as observed by Buffy going to Heaven and being with her mother. It was the little spark of Gaea within her that allowed her to earn the third option, and that allowed her to choose it, to act.
To sum up- where's the presence of Gaea? It's there- it's just not advertising much. There's a little spark of the divine within all that exists, then while the demons may extinguish some of it, they will never be able to extinguish it all- the sparks will act to stop it, and because of that, the greater power will help them. If someone sees something bad, and asks why God doesn't do something about it, say "That's what we're here for- to help." We can't just sit on our asses and wait for divine aid- we need to do something for ourselves, and that aid will come, helping us climb those last few steps. But we need to start climbing the stairs on our own.
I hope I make sense- most of the other posters here could put it better than I.
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Too black-and-white (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Darby, 07:07:19 03/30/03 Sun
If there has been one mega-arc to both series, it's that Good and Evil are largely constructs that break down when you get close enough to them - that may be the irony of making the final Big Bad be Ultimate Evil when the Buffyverse has been established to not have such things.
Your statement about stagnation seems to come out of left field - when has such an issue been clearly addressed on the shows? Especially when the Buffyverse seems to have never been free of string-pullers.
One other little point - in the Buffyverse Heaven, you don't get to go be with your loved ones - Buffy "was loved" there, but was essentially alone. If she had been with Mom or other dead folk up there, the fact would have had to come out at some point - it's omission was purposeful, to keep the experience totally abstract, but that's what it wonds up being. No Buffy was happy but, interestingly enough, disconnected in that heavenly dimension - all of her "knowledge" was second-hand and questionable. After all, she "knew" that all of her friends were "all right," but I'm not certain that what we saw in Bargaining qualifies as any more than "still existing."
And, on the main topic, I believe that one of the most profound influences modern comics will have on the show is the revolutionary retcon, when all that is "known" about a situation is shown to be wrong, or the explanations all change. That, I think, is why the "First Evil" is the major villain here.
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Re: Too black-and-white (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Wizard, 17:36:17 03/30/03 Sun
I might concede your point that Buffy was alone in Heaven. After all, she didn't say that Joyce was there, only that she thought Joyce was there. Buffy did make Heaven seem abstract, but that may have stemmed from the shock of being ripped from it- perhaps her mind let herself forget much of the details, simply so that she could function. But, this being an ME show, we'll probably never know for certain.
I can see your point that ME hasn't clearly addressed stagnation, but they have definitely addressed it, more than once, and with the same result each time. You're right- the Buffyverse has never been free of string-pullers. But look at what happens to them.
S2) the Calderash people were manipulating the Scoobies, especially Buffy and Angel. This manipulation came from a stagnation- they weren't able to understand that Angel had changed, and that no matter what Angelus may have done, Angel was innocent of his crimes. Because of that, Jenny withheld some vital information from the Scoobies, Angelus came back, and as a result, Jenny and her uncle- her clan's representative- died (at Angelus' hands, even).
S3) the Mayor had been pulling the strings of the citizens of Sunnydale for one hundred years. In some ways, he was perhaps still stuck in the past. He took everything possible factor into account, except the most crucial: the very people he planned to consume. The Scoobies rallied them against him, and he was not ready for it. And gosh, we all know what happened to dear old Dick.
S4) the Initiative was a good idea: the government taking action to save its citizens from a terrible threat. Why did 40% of its men die in the end? Well, it had ten times the manpower of the Scoobies, the latest weaponry, an infinitely greater budget... and not even half a clue, which is what killed them. Adam played them like a guitar. He was counting on the fact that they were so hardwired by their own propaganda that they couldn't adapt to what he was really doing- and he was proven correct.
S5) aah- the Knights of Exposition- BYZANTIUM, sorry, the Knights of Byzantium :) They were so stagnant that they rode into battle with armour and horses and swords. While a bunch of knights chasing a Winnebago provided an awesome visual or two, that's all it did. The Knights didn't really pull strings, but they were stagnant. They were unable to see that the Key was a flesh and blood person with a soul. So, instead of working with the Scoobies to defeat the insane HellGod, they fought them. They were too stagnant to even declare a temporary truce, and what did it get them?
S7) and now, we come to the Watcher's Council. As many others have pointed out, Joss has perhaps done us a disservice by using the Council for plot purposes without further fleshing them out. But perhaps, that's the point. However much good they may have done, in BtVS they have consistently proven to be out of touch with the world. They continue to waste Slayers in a pointless and brutal 'tradition,' they resort to bullying and intimidation instead of making fair and equitable deals, and consistently try to manipulate people into doing what they want. Well, it finally cost them.
There is a definite trend, here. People that only fall back on what may have worked in the past, failing to recognize that times have changed and those old methods simply can't work anymore, end up dead. The message may be subtextual, but we see it often enough to get the point. Note the other traits these organizations share- arrogance, a belief in their own moral superiority, and the belief that what they are doing is right and anyone that can't see that is an idiot. That's sort of what I was getting at in my original post- Gaea wants her children to grow, not stagnate, because when they stagnate, that's when corruption sets in, and it's no longer a case of good vs. evil, but evil vs. evil.
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Quentin Collins, 02:21:23 03/30/03 Sun
Very well done.
I am not sure that the First can be viewed as simply another Elder God. If the Beljoxa's Eye can be taken at its word, it is much older than anything else in the universe.
Beljoxa's Eye: The First Evil has been and always will be. Since before the universe was born, long after there is nothing else, it will go on.
To me the closest thing in the Cthulu mythos that it resembles is Azathoth, "blind idiot god who sprawls at the center of Ultimate Chaos." The later less canonical Cthulu fiction written by Brian Lumley makes the similarity even more clear. He writes that "Azathoth will come again in his glory, and infinity will begin again." He also describes Azathoth as "an amorphous blight of nethermost, nuclear confusion from which all infinity radiates."
The First Evil also reminds me quite a bit of a malevolent variant of the Aristotelian god. Within the context of the Buffyverse it seems to be the first mover or first uncaused cause of Thomas Aquinas' cosmological proofs for God's existence.
I am not sure exactly if there is a close analog of the FE in the Marvelverse, but it seems that compared to the FE, Gaea, the PTB, or whatever else allowed mortal animals to thrive on earth, may be late arrivals.
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Rufus, 02:32:15 03/30/03 Sun
What we are dealing with is the First Evil, not the First of everything....I think there is something much older and maybe a bit more neutral than the First Evil.
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Quentin Collins, 22:38:39 03/31/03 Mon
The main reason that I view the FE as the first uncaused cause of the Buffyverse is that it seems there was not much of a balance for much of its history. The Old Ones seem to have dominated for a good long time before humankind came upon the scene. It seems as if there was no goodness or morality in the Buffyverse until humankind first created (or discovered depending on one's view of the nature of ethics) them. It seems that the Buffyverse has been gradually moving toward goodness. I believe that whatever powerful entities may be responsible for removing the Old Ones and possibly maintaining balance may have evolved from or may have somehow been their renegade offspring.
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- aliera, 05:13:57 03/30/03 Sun
I wasn't sure whether to post this under your response in sk's thread or here. You asked a question there about why the First may want Buffy alive...
Portal Opening?
We have a scarlet witch on deck also, oddly. But it makes me wonder...what about Dawn?
From:http://www.norse-man.net/Marvel/Char-C/chthon.htm
Role-Playing Notes:
Since Chthon is trapped, he must content himself with being a strategist working through proxies. He only acknowledges his fellow Elder Gods as equals, but he will converse with mortals of sufficient magical power to resist him.
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History:
Chthon is one of the major Elder Gods who first materialized in Earth's biosphere shortly before mankind appeared on Earth. He and his sister god Gaea were among those who inhabited the land masses of the Earth (as opposed to the sea or skies), and may have had something to do with forming certain geological patterns. When Gaea gave birth to the first of the newer gods, Chthon perceived that his sister's progeny would eventually supplant the Elder Gods. A scholar by nature, Chthon inscribed a parchment with the mystical knowledge of the world he had thus amassed. This parchment would later be known as the Darkhold. Chthon intended the Darkhold to be his touchstone with the Earthly dimension. As he surmised, Gaea's son Atum was a god-slayer, dedicated to the consumption and elimination of the evil which the Elder Gods had wrought in their degradation into demons. Chthon managed to escape to a nether dimension before Atum could slay him. When the Darkhold passed into the hands of intelligent beings at some later date, Chthon would have an indestructible medium through which to manipulate Earthly pawns as well as a talisman that could one day be turned into a dimensional portal for his return to Earth.
The Darkhold was first discovered by human sorcerers of pre-Cataclysmic Atlantis who managed to remove it from the doomed island-city before it sank. They founded a cult called the Darkholders and used the spells contained in the book to create vampires. The book passed through a succession of hands through the next millennia, including Babylonian savants, Egyptian priests, and Hebrew scholars. Who ever employed the knowledge contained within did so at the cost of the corruption of their soul. This earned the Darkhold the name "Book of Sins."
In the 6th century A.D., the parchments found their way to Britain where the sorceress Morgan Le Fey had them bound into book form for the first time. Morgan used the book to summon Chthon to the Earthly plane for the first time, but discovered Chthon was far too powerful to do her bidding. It took the sorcerous might of Morgan and her new band of Darkholders to repel Chthon from the mortal plane. A renegade Darkholder named Magnus stole the Darkhold, placed it in a tower and wove an intricate spell whereby no one of evil intent could enter. An apprentice sorcerer named Modred misguidedly entered the tower and had his soul corrupted by Chthon. Centuries later he would serve as Chthon's agent.
Eventually the Irish monk St. Brendan removed the Darkhold from the tower, believing it to be a temptation to evil, and scattered the various indestructible pages throughout Europe. In the 12th century, a corrupt Spanish monk named Aelfric used occult means to reassemble the scattered pages of the Darkhold. The parchments continued to pass through various hands, although few were skilled enough to employ the spells within to real effect. Transylvanian scholar Baron Gregor Russoff bound the parchments back into book form and used the blank pages he placed in the back as a diary for his occult experiments. The possession of the Darkhold triggered Russoff's hereditary tendency toward lycanthropy and turned him into a werewolf.
Russoff had inadvertently brought the Book close to where the Earthly essence of its demonic author had been imprisoned, Wundagore Mountain. Chthon made his second major bid to return to the Earthly plane, but was repulsed by the forces of the High Evolutionary and the spirit of the 6th century sorcerer Magnus. When Russoff died, an American named Miles Blackgar bought his estate and acquired the Darkhold. Aware of the danger inherent in the book, Russoff's son Jacob stole it and entrusted it to the care of Father Joaquez, a priest.
From there, it came into the temporary possession of Dracula, Lord of the Vampires, who was looking for a means to restore his flagging powers. The spirit of Morgan Le Fey also renewed her interest in the Darkhold, and gained as a mortal enemy the original Spider-Woman.. who had been befriended by the ghost of Morgan's former colIeague Magnus. Morgan once used her magic to simulate the aspect of Chthon in an attempt to defeat the Spider-Woman. When Modred the Mystic was released from suspended animation, Chthon commanded him to fetch the Darkhold so he could be released on Earth. In an elaborate scheme, Chthon took demonic possession of the mutant Scarlet Witch, who had been born atop Wundagore Mountain. The Avengers managed to dispossess the Scarlet Witch and imprison Chthon's earthly essence in Wundagore Mountain.
Finally, Dracula sought the Darkhold once more, realizing that the spell to destroy all vampires was contained therein. Earth's sorcerer supreme Doctor Strange managed to use the Darkhold to destroy all vampires on Earth and create a spell by which vampires could no longer exist on Earth. Due to his vast power, Strange was the only person to ever use the Darkhold without forfeiting. his soul to Chthon. The Darkhold is currently in the custody of Doctor Strange. Chthon is still in his nether dimension, patiently awaiting a fourth attempt to return to Earth.
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Rufus, 06:09:13 03/30/03 Sun
Chthon, sensing the end was near, cast a spell which allowed him to escape into another dimension before Demogorge could slay him. Before he left, Chthon left the parchment containing his mystical knowledge behind.
Question that may reflect upon BTVS....who upon being forced to leave somewhere leaves a way to find their way
back, unless they intend on attempting a return?
The First is non-corporeal, was that always the way or is that part of the price of being forced from this world?
And why is the dark magic so darned easy to fall back upon? Remember it's not just Willow who was into the stuff in a big way....Giles is also someone who understands darkness...and as a matter of fact, the Shadowmen used dark magic to create the Slayer. So, what's up with that?
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Re: It's all Connected....Buffy, Lovecraft, and Marvel (spoiler speculation for Buffy) -- Wizard, 15:34:24 03/31/03 Mon
I can't answer your question about the First, but I suspect an answer will come, if in the final episode.
As for your question of dark magic... think back to The Empire Strikes Back. A little conversation between Luke and Yoda about the nature of the Dark Side.
I hope I'm not misquoting:
Luke: Is the Dark Side more powerful?
Yoda: NO! Quicker, easier, more seductive it is.
I'm probably misquoting, but that's what I think the point is. It's easier to give in to anger than to overcome it, which is why the dark stuff is so easy to use.
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Makes me think about the vampire metaphor. -- Rufus, 16:30:51 03/31/03 Mon
Vampires are who they once were, but emotionally the inferior versions of what they once were (uless they were already evil). Vampires act out the thoughts that previously would have been censored and repressed by the conscience.
Transsexual villainy: Maggie, Frankenstein and the gender issues in S4 -- KdS, 03:31:22 03/30/03 Sun
Rah's brief comment (now archived) about being worried about gender issues in S4 gave me an excuse to post this, which I was saving for when Rob got around to doing S4. The gender issues in S4 don't become really apparent unless you've read Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein (very different from most of the films).
To avoid confusion in all the discussion below Frankenstein (italics) refers to the novel, Frankenstein (plain text) refers to the character Victor Frankenstein.
Frankenstein has become very interesting to feminist literary critics, firstly because MS was the daughter of the early feminist theorist Mary Woolstonecraft, but also because it examines so many male anxieties about women's character and the childbirth process. A scholarly edition I read a while ago included, for example, statements that "Frankenstein is what happens when a man tries to have a baby" and "Frankenstein is protrayed as a male hysteric." If you haven't read the book, the highly intelligent Creature (as opposed to the retarded Monster of the films) is morally a blank slate when first created, but is embittered to the point of murderous psychosis by the superstitious rejection of everyone who meets him. The pattern starts when Frankenstein, on first seeing the creature he creates, is seized with revulsion and drives it out into the streets (the neglectful unfeeling mother). Frankenstein's behaviour for the rest of the novel is a long sequence of self-centred cowardice that makes him the real villain - he allows an innocent woman to be wrongly convicted and executed for the Creature's crimes, he agrees to create a mate for the Creature but goes back on it, driving the Creature to its final vengeful attacks, he allows the deaths of his closest friend Clerval and his fiancee Elizabeth by failing to warn them about the Creature, through moral cowardice but also because he's so self-centred that he completely fails to recognise the threat to them. (The Branagh film broadly followed Shelley until the final portion, but made repeated and unpleasantly subtle changes to events to whitewash Frankenstein. For example, Judith was lynched by a mob instead of being legally tried and executed over a period of weeks while Frankenstein struggled with his underactive conscience.)
By contrast Maggie Walsh doesn't abandon her children Adam and Riley but instead tries to maintain an unhealthy level of control over them with scientific mind control techniques. The unemotional and logical character of her mind makes her less the evil controlling mother (who is usually seen as irrational and emotion-driven) than the evil controlling father. While Shelley is very conflicted in her attitude to science and technology (the novel is not an attack on science, but on the amoral pure scientist who refuses to confront his responsibility to shape the application of his discoveries), ME takes a far more traditional "things that man was not meant to know" view (Adam is driven to violence and destruction by his demon nature).
The contrast comes between the endings of the two stories. Adam has to be destroyed by a mix of masculine and feminine powers. The Creature on the other hand commits suicide after the death of his creator. Possible ideas of feminine self-sacrifice here?
What is interesting is that both Victor and Maggie invert the traditional gender stereotypes of villainy. Victor's shallowness, squeamishness, lack of forethought, emotional lability and moral cowardice are negative mental attributes which are usually considered feminine by misogynistic men. By contrast, Maggie's amoral logic, desire for cold control and unthinking technophilia are negative mental attributes which are usually considered masculine by one-sidedly anti-male feminists. In both the 19th and 20th centuries, MS and ME challenge sexual stereotypes of evil by creating villains who epitomise the most negative attributes traditionally associated with the opposite sex.
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great post --- very interesting -- ever think of.... -- seven, 07:58:30 03/30/03 Sun
"ME takes a far more traditional 'things that man was not meant to know' view (Adam is driven to violence and destruction by his own demon nature)"
This just made me think of Communism. Maggie Walsh was meticulous about everything concerning logic. What she didn't factor in was "demon nature", much like Carl Marx didn't factor in human nature to his communist society.
I don't know why i thought of that--it doesn't really fit with your gender issues essay, but i thought it was worth mentioning.
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Nature or nurture? -- Sophist, 08:10:16 03/30/03 Sun
Adam is driven to violence and destruction by his own demon nature
I didn't get that impression from S4 at all. My view was and is that Prof. Walsh programmed Adam to be as we saw him. She just lost control.
Carl Marx didn't factor in human nature to his communist society.
Marx was quite confident that it was capitalism which denied human nature and communism which allowed its full and proper development. That was the whole point of his theory of alienated labor. Marx may have been wrong about certain aspects of human nature, but to say that he "didn't factor it in" is incorrect.
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Probably 'didn't factor in correctly' would be better -- seven, 08:20:58 03/30/03 Sun
"Prof. Walsh programmed Adam to be as we saw him. She just lost control."
She never had control. She was blind to the fact that demons are not just animals that could be mixed and matched, they are mystical entities that carry over mystical qualities of inherent evil. From the moment Adam woke up, he was on a killing spree. Maggie did't lose control. She never had it.
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The 'design flaw' -- KdS, 08:26:21 03/30/03 Sun
I've always thoguht that that was the "design flaw" Adam claimed to have in Goodbye Iowa - that the demon part of him meant that he'd never cooperate with human soldiers. I personally thought that Maggie's abrupt death was a plot problem in S4 in that we never got to know exactly what her original plan for Adam had been. My impression was that she intended simply to create a race of super soldiers for her miltary paymasters and that she never had any plan to replace humanity. The fact that it is implied that killing Maggie was literally Adam's first conscious act suggests that he wasn't intended to turn out the way he did - if he'd been meant to be that randomly violent Maggie wouldn't have approached him in such a way.
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Re: The 'design flaw' (Spoilers GiD sort of) -- s'kat, 10:22:11 03/30/03 Sun
personally thought that Maggie's abrupt death was a plot problem in S4 in that we never got to know exactly what her original plan for Adam had been.
Actually there's a ton of evidence to back this up from writer interviews. My impression is that they had planned a very interesting season long arc with Riley/Walsh and Adam/Walsh. But Lindsey Crouse became unavailable and they had to nix it - hence the reason we got all those stand-alone episodes in S4 and the Adam/riley story jumped to the background. Shame. I think the whole Oedipal/Electra story they'd planned with Buffy/Riley and Walsh and Giles could have been amazing. I would love to have seen the planned story arc for Season 4, before Seth Green departed and Lindsey Crouse departed. I have a hunch the series may have been very different in some respects. Yep, goes to show you a key difference between tv and novels - in novel's the writer is king and in tv? seems to be a bit of a democracy, everyone effects the process. Be-little those actors roles at your own risk.
I think Walsh had meant Adam and Riley as a joint project.
Adam was meant as the prototype for a super-solider to harness the demonic energy - sort of the military's attempt to do what the shadowmen did with the first slayer. Actually it's very similar in some ways. Riley was meant as a new breed of solider, human, imbued with strength through medicine and controllable. This story btw harkens back to Go Fish and the high school coach's attempt to make a superswim team by placing fish dna in the boys blood streams. Instead he creates monsters. The examination of how humans wishes to improve upon nature yet can't quite cut it.
Loved the essay on Frankenstein by the way.
SK
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My understanding -- Sophist, 13:32:17 03/30/03 Sun
was that the design flaw was his refusal to obey orders. Or, looked at from a slightly different way, his ability to disobey orders. I saw him as a killer by design. Maggie approached him only because she thought he wasn't yet active. If she had known he was active, her approach would have been governed by her belief in her ability to control him.
I'm not aware of any textual support either way. This is just how I saw it. It's too bad the story couldn't have played out as orginally planned -- then we'd know.
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Oh goody! -- Deb, 11:07:06 03/30/03 Sun
First, KdS, very thoughtful, well written essay.
The contrast comes between the endings of the two stories. Adam has to be destroyed by a mix of masculine and feminine powers. The Creature on the other hand commits suicide after the death of his creator. Possible ideas of feminine self-sacrifice here?
Androgynous is most often used when discussing the combination of male and female gender *personality* traits, but has fallen out among *femininists* for the same reason hermaphrodite is not considered appropriate because of its biological associations. The English language lacks a truly workable word for a person with both strong feminine and strong male personality traits. For the sake of (fill in the blank) I'll use androgenous as the combination of female and male personaltiy attributes.
My questioning here is regarding your last line: "Feminine self-sacrificing?"? I don't see your argument to support this, and, yes, it is presented as a question. I just don't know where the question came from. The Creature's violent act of suicide falls within the masculine traits scoresheet. Or does it? Perhaps it, also, is caused by the very same thing that defeated Adam -- a combination of masculine and feminine power traits.
In both the 19th and 20th centuries, MS and ME challenge sexual stereotypes of evil by creating villains who epitomise the most negative attributes traditionally associated with the opposite sex.
Ah, now we have a word from the Buffyverse for the combination of gendered traits: demon.
Now for a discussion of Spike of season 4 and of Anya. This is your chance to leave now if you want.
Either one loves Spike or hates Spike, or so it seems. Both sides can rattle off reasons why they feel the way they do (To be perfectly honest with you, I don't enjoy hearing the 'it's his cheekbones, hot bod, hair, naked chest, blah, blah, blah' of many who just Looove Spike. Physical appearance alone is just eye candy.)
The Spike I first "knew" was learning how to use feminine traits negatively to gain power, and he was very good at it. But he began to change how he used these traits, or they changed him. (The mise en scene of the beginning of "The Inititive" is powerful. This dark, evil creature completely surrounded by white and who is zapped by the window of his cage, and all he can do is plaster himself against the back wall with a look of total confused horror on his face.) At first, all he expected was to be "taken care of" (given protection, money, etc. to survive), but when Buffy and the gang were faced with a fight, Spike always made it clear, at first, that he was with the opposing side (i.e. thumbs-up to Riley killing Buffy). Then, Spike started making it very clear that he didn't care who won, (Glory in the Magic Box), though for some reason unknown to himself, he had come to make sure Buffy didn't bite the big bullet. There is an argument that he did this so that he could kill her himself after the chip was removed from his head, but I don't think his tiny, shriveled heart was into it any more even at this point. Buffy, afterall, was the person who saw to it that he survived (feminine) though her *mission* would really have called for her to kill him (masculine). It was at this point that Buffy began to take on "mothering or nuturing" attributes. If she had remained totally within the ages old role of the Slayer, she had every right, perhaps obligation, to dust him even if he didn't directly effect negative outcomes. By season five, Spike has totally come over to Buffy's side. (To hell with the rest of them though still at this point.) Season Five, for Spike, is about learning to use feminine gender attributes in a positive manner.
I stress the word learning here, because the learning process is not one of constant progression, but one of two steps forward and one big leap off the path before finding the path again.
Backtracking now. I didn't see the Spike of season two and three until I bought the DVDs. He's one charged masculine villian then. (Though, knowing what I know now, he does show the power of Slayer's mother respect and even sees Joyce as the one *person* who really can understand him and he can trust her with his feelings. She has little marshmellows too.) Still, he was highly charged masculine power tripping otherwise. We learn in season five that as William he had already known, overly known, how to use masculine traits positively.
By the beginning of season six, Spike has evolved into a excellent example of an strongly androgenous person who is *demonized* by both the human world and the vampire world. Spike embodies everything that many people fear and hate about themselves: The total lack of power and freewill. The only way he can gain any power is to totally immerse himself with another for vicarious power, as he attempted in season six and failed at, or he can go get his soul back. Removing the chip alone would not change a thing at this point, because Spike has changed.
Season seven for Spike is about making decisions about when to use which gendered traits when and in what manner to use them. In the beginning of the season, he used them to punish himself. Lies gave a wonderful example of the use of feminine traits subduing masculine traits in that he gave Wood a "pass". (I'm attempting to be ambiguous here so that I don't spoil.) He didn't do it for Buffy. He did it for himself and because he could emphatize with Wood. If he had killed Wood, Season 2 Spike would be back. Not only did he not do it for Buffy, (Geez, double negatives!) he told Buffy he would do it if Wood gave him anymore grief. That is where he stood, and Buffy could either accept it (as she did) or not.
There is an argument here also that Spike's *path* is not one of the Hero, which is linear, but that of the Heroine, which is circly or tornadoy. OK. When you drain a sink, the water swirls around and around before going down the drain. If the water were on a Hero's Journey, it would all attempt to get into the drain via the most direct route. If water did that, it would never drain. It would remain in the sink forever, and the house would eventually smell like a sewer.
Ok, Anya. . . . I'll save Anya for later. I need a break.
Toodles.
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Great post -- Rahael, 12:27:36 03/30/03 Sun
The gender issues in S4 is one of the reasons I liked that season, contrary to prevailing opinion. I was given pause by the commentary (in ways outlined by Tim), but decided that the season should speak for itself, rather than an offhand comment repeated by Joss of someone else's opinion, and especially because he said that he himself had never seen it there. So not intentional.
And I found it interesting how Walsh could at once exhibit traits not normally linked to women, and yet could still be a 'mother' figure. Just another interesting thought to the discussion surrounding Lies my parents told me.
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PS: Another Initiative source -- KdS, 15:07:26 03/30/03 Sun
The concept of S4 also owes something to George Romero's film Day of the Dead. This film, which takes place after the flesh-eating zombie apocalypse of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, is mainly set in a secret bunker where a group of soldiers and scientists are trying to train or tame zombies using various conditioning techniques. Initially their motives seem to be altruistic but it subsequently turns out that they also have hopes of using trained zombies against their human enemies. The final revelation is that the scientists are using the rank-and-file soldiers as food for their captive zombies, as a result of which a mentally unstable soldier breaches the security keeping the zombies restrained, causing a bloody battle in which most of the living and undead characters die horribly.
Finale Speculation (with a few WKCS spoilers)...oh, Fray spoilers as well -- dub, 10:20:11 03/30/03 Sun
I think I'd better get this idea I have out there before there are any spoilers floating around about the final episode of Buffy, 'cuz if any of it's right, I won't be able to say, "I knew that was gonna happen!" ;o)
All along I've figured that the Buffy finale will play into the Fray canon by having Buffy seal the Hellmouth (possibly with her body) and bring an end to vampires on Earth. This morning I've been daydreaming about how this could happen.
Maybe at the last moment, when confronted with the actual teeth of the Hellmouth, something that Buffy said earlier about it swallowing her whole, and how it would "choke on her" will come to pass. Buffy will act alone, and yet not at all alone, as occurred in Primeval. Instead of a joining of the four Scoobies, Willow is now empowered enough and has enough practical experience to imbue Buffy with the collective powers of everyone present at the Hellmouth, all the Slayerettes, Faith (a Slayer), Dawn (the Key), Xander, Anya, Giles, Andrew, Spike and Angel as well.
In the final big woo-hoo, the Slayerettes would be drained of their potential Slayerness, as would Faith. Dawn might be drained of her Keyness. AND Spike and Angel might be drained of their Vampireness, IOW, SHANSHU for both of them! All of this power would be funnelled into one being, Buffy, allowing her to do what she was born to do and seal the Hellmouth.
When the dust settles we're left with a Hellmouth that will remain closed for hundreds of years, and a whole bunch of normal human beings, some of whom used to be more than human, and two who used to be vampires.
Now that they're both humans with human souls, Angel and Spike don't really despise each other any more, so Angel offers Spike a job at AI. I think from Fray it's just the vampires that get wiped out, so there should still be lots of rogue demons in LA that need taking care of. If not, there's sure as hell lots of rogue humans!
This would mean a completely different AtS (if it's even renewed) and would allow for all sorts of new interminglings, plus loads of Spike-lovers would become instant AtS fans, and boost its ratings. In addition, ME would not longer have to fret about signs of obvious aging in its immortal vampires.
Okay, that's it. I can relax now. OTOH, now I've gotta worry that this will come back to smack me in the head when absolutely none of it has anything to do with the finale, LOL!
;o)
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Re: Finale Speculation (with a few WKCS spoilers)...oh, Fray spoilers as well -- Dariel, 11:07:33 03/30/03 Sun
This sounds like reasonable speculation to me. I believe JW is talking about a new paradigm for AtS, so it would fit. Angel having to deal with his new humanity would certainly be interesting, and throwing Spike into the mix would be even better. The new "Odd Couple"!
I have to say, though, I hope it doesn't go quite like this. Doesn't seem really fair for everyone else to end up with that (relatively) normal life, while Buffy ends up as a cork! I know she's the hero and is supposed to do these things, but I'd like to see her rewarded for all of her struggles here on earth. Especially when so much of it has been about dealing with the difficulties of living.
I'm sure you know that you shouldn't be embarrassed if none of your spec comes to pass. Second-guessing ME and company is well nigh impossible!
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Re: speculation (Spoilers for FRAY) -- Robert, 12:09:42 03/30/03 Sun
>>> Re: Finale Speculation (with a few WKCS spoilers)...oh, Fray spoilers as well.
I don't have my Fray comic books with me, but I believe that Urkonn told Melaka Fray that a slayer in the early 21st century banished all magic, demons and vampires from our existance. Thus, until demons and vampires (called lurks) returned, no slayers were called. Melaka was the first new slayer (and her calling was flawed) in several centuries.
Urkonn is a demon who has taken on the role of guiding and training Melaka, because the council of watchers degenerated into a useless cult of suicidal idiots. However, we don't know whether Urkonn is good or evil ( or merely has his own agenda). He could be lying to Melaka. Also, it is not clear that he really knows what happened centuries before. Consequently, I consider Urkonn to be an unreliable narrator, until I know otherwise.
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Re: speculation (Spoilers for FRAY) -- leslie, 12:40:19 03/30/03 Sun
"Urkonn is a demon who has taken on the role of guiding and training Melaka, because the council of watchers degenerated into a useless cult of suicidal idiots."
This would be the Countil of Watchers that we just saw blown to smithereens earlier this season? Even though Giles and Wesley survive, why would the Council resurrect itself if there was no magic or vampires to battle? Something tells me that the television Buffyverse and the print Buffyverse have parted ways.
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Re: speculation (Spoilers for FRAY) -- Dochawk, 13:17:05 03/30/03 Sun
I am no longer spoiled, but Fray's final publication has been delayed and many people speculate its because it spoils too much about the final battle (the last issue of Fray is now scheduled for the day after the Buffy finale). But I have been spoiled about one thing, which I won't mention, but it makes a definite connection between Buffy and Fray. In addition, in the final story of Tales of the Slayer, which is a story about Maleka Fray - it shows a trail of slayers which includes Buffy, Nikki and Maleka (I can't remember if Faith was in that or not). That story was written by Joss.
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Interesting... -- dub, 15:36:27 03/31/03 Mon
The delay in the final issue of Fray may be to allow Joss to do some retrofitting to that part of the canon, IOW, it might be revealed to Melaka that the original story she was told about the "blonde slayer" closing the Hellmouth and disappearing wasn't precisely accurate, and that way Joss is free to end BtVS just about anyway he wants.
;o)
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Re: parting of ways (Spoilers for FRAY) -- Robert, 14:26:58 03/30/03 Sun
>>> This would be the Countil of Watchers that we just saw blown to smithereens earlier this season?
Yes, and no. Mostly no.
>>> Something tells me that the television Buffyverse and the print Buffyverse have parted ways.
I don't think so. The Council organization has been destroyed, and thus much of the rich history of it. My guess is that a sufficient number of watchers still exist, scattered throughout the world. It is these watchers who (I am guessing) re-constituted the council.
The problem is that this new council doesn't have the continuity of a centuries-old organization to guide it. Also, it has no purpose.
>>> Even though Giles and Wesley survive, why would the Council resurrect itself if there was no magic or vampires to battle?
Good point! I don't think that either Giles or Wesley had any hand in re-constituting the council. After all, the council of watchers has not helped them to discharge their responsibility to humanity for the past 4 or 5 years. Why should they want to re-create it?
I believe that it would be the wandering watchers, who gathered together, and re-built an organization. "Why?", you asked. Because, they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. These are people who were indoctrinated and trained as watchers from very early ages. Their lives revolved around the council. There fealty was directed primarily toward the council. They want their old comfortable lives back.
That is why they would re-constitute the council. With the old leadership gone, the new council is rudderless. Also, the council by itself isn't enough to provide a purpose. With the magic, vampires and demons gone, the council (and thus the watchers in it) has no purpose. Thus, they descend into a whacked-out cult.
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Easiest answer possible (spoiler for Fray) -- Rufus, 18:15:05 03/30/03 Sun
The Watchers feared that the monsters would be back and wanted to be prepared.
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Re: speculation (Spoilers for FRAY) -- Corwin of Amber, 16:47:24 03/30/03 Sun
Bureacracies often exist long after their reason for existance has gone. Look at NATO - that alliance was specifically made to combat Soviet aggression in western europe. The Soviet Union hasn't existed for over a decade, and yet NATO is still there.
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Re: speculation (Spoilers for FRAY)<spoiler for title of last Buffy episode> -- Rufus, 17:57:11 03/30/03 Sun
the council of watchers degenerated into a useless cult of suicidal idiots.
You may want to ask yourself why did the Watchers degenerate in such a way, and listen to the words that the Watcher said before he torched himself....
From Fray issue one:
Watcher: You.....are the Chosen...I am not worthy to come before you..you will save us...you will protect us. End the scourge...you will cleanse us all......you will cleanse us with fire....
So, when did the Quentin Travers school of bad attitude towards Slayers end? Considering how the Watchers have spoken of Slayers like they were tools, posessions to use when convenient, then discard later...what the hell happend to have this nutbar come before Melaka speaking like she were precious? One thing to think about is that the title of the very last Buffy epsisode is "Chosen".
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What Urkonn tells Melaka about the fate of the last Slayer called (Spoilers for FRAY) -- Rufus, 18:11:26 03/30/03 Sun
From Fray issue three....
Melaka asks what happened to the demons....
Urkonn: They left! All right? The demons, most of them, found more hospitable dimens......places, and left the earth to the mortals, for the most part.
Some remained, hidden away. Some bred within the human community, their power weakened throughout generations. Some assimilated...and some...infected.
It is not known when they first appeared...but the vampire were a plague. The elders of several villages met, calling for action. They invoked the strongest and most dangerous magicks they could summon, to create a power that could fight the vampires...A power that lived...in the body of a girl. (matches the Shamens in Get it Done)
The history lesson continued...
Urkonn: She fought, and died and was succeeded by another, and annother, throughout time....always one.....always a woman. A warrior. They were trained, sought out and guided by Watchers, descendants of the Shamans who created the First Slayer.
Urkonn tells Melaka what happened in the time the last Slayer was called before her...
Urkonn: What we know is this .....there was a battle. A Slayer possibly with some mystical allies, faced and apocalyptic army of demons...and then it was done.....they were all gone...all demons...all magicks, bannished from this earthly dimension..........
He then tells what he knows of the last Slayer......
Urkonn: I do not know if she lived. But, the demons being gone, she was the last to be called. The line continued...There were girls with the power, but they were never called, never trained. Which may be why you have no memories of your heritage. The Council of Watchers fell to ruin. Held together only by fanatics and fools. Those that believed the demons would return...you met your Watcher yesterday.
Melaka: You mean that guy that one that set himself on Fire?
Urkonn: Centuries of useless obsessive waiting, makes a human...
Melaka: Okay. I'm supposed to fight the coming onslaught of Lurks and I'm being taught by a Sarcastic goat-thing whose idea of training is throwing scrap metal at me because the actual good guys all went crazy waiting for the monsters to come back????
Urkonn: Yes.
Melaka: Just checking.
Urkonn: Do not discount the Watchers completely.
Melaka: Right, cause if we need someone to light themselves on fire...
Urkonn: They're insane I grant......but they were also right. The monsters did come back.
Whatever the last Slayer called did, the monsters the magic was gone, but not forever, it just bought humanity time.
If anyone wants to be superspoiled, read Fray because there are things in that comic (written by Joss Whedon) that are going to factor into the Buffy series..very soon.
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Aha! I knew it!! (Spoilers for FRAY) -- dub, 18:37:10 03/30/03 Sun
Urkonn: What we know is this .....there was a battle. A Slayer possibly with some mystical allies, faced and apocalyptic army of demons...and then it was done.....they were all gone...all demons...all magicks, bannished from this earthly dimension..........
"Mystical allies." That's my theory about Willow and the Slayerettes, and Dawn, Faith, Spike, Angel, etc, etc...
;o)
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Question, wouldn't the last Slayer called be... (Fray discussion) -- Ixchel, 18:49:13 03/30/03 Sun
_Faith_? So what does that mean?
Honestly, I hope that Buffy isn't the last Slayer referred to in Fray, because I think AtS wouldn't be as interesting with a human Angel and no vampires/demons/magic (JMHO). And Wisewoman is right, no Lorne? How horrible!
And I've begun to hold out hope for a Dawn spin-off (with some of the other characters). Maybe I'm alone in this, but I think I could like "Dawn the Vampire Slayer".
Ixchel
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Re: Question, wouldn't the last Slayer called be... (Fray discussion) -- Rufus, 19:04:30 03/30/03 Sun
What did the Shadowmen call Buffy in "Get it Done"? Remember it you may hear that term again.
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IIRC, they called her... (BtVS Fray influenced speculation) -- Ixchel, 23:10:16 03/30/03 Sun
The Hellmouth's last guardian. Which, I gather, doesn't mean the last Slayer called. Well then, I hope Faith isn't the last Slayer called. I'd miss the vampires, magic and demons (oh my!). Thanks, Rufus.
Ixchel
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Who thought a show about a vampire slayer was going to be this enthralling -- lunasea, 19:30:40 03/30/03 Sun
Who knows what ME has in mind for a human Angel. What Greenwalt has said about next season has me more than entrigued.
I think as Joss says good bye to Buffy, couldn't make the Fire fly, and looses his writing staff, he feels like he is without his super powers. I can see him trying to make his way in a world without them.
I think this show may be very interesting. THe WB is just waiting to see how the audience reacts to the set up later this season before they renew.
It is coming from Joss. I won't just dismiss it.
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Re: Who thought a show about a vampire slayer was going to be this enthralling -- dub ;o), 17:40:50 03/31/03 Mon
I think as Joss says good bye to Buffy, couldn't make the Fire fly, and looses his writing staff, he feels like he is without his super powers. I can see him trying to make his way in a world without them.
Okay, for the record, as this was discussed at length just recently, that's "loses his writing staff..." (unless he's setting them loose?) but good point. I've always thought that the progress of BtVS has in many ways reflected the progress of its creator through the labyrinth of Hollywood-TV-Land.
The chance to see Angel and/or Spike cope with being "nothing more than" human, while simultaneously trying to make an honest living would certainly be enough to keep me watching.
;o)
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I did that on purpose :-P -- lunasea, 18:38:53 03/31/03 Mon
It will be more than just an honest living though. I like how Greenwalt described it and if it doesn't happen, I hope they at least let us know what they were going to do.
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I still think my spec on Faith is accurate... -- Briar, 01:03:17 03/31/03 Mon
That Faith is no longer a "true" Slayer, or if she has any of the power left after her rogue turn, the First Slayer will choose to strip her of it.
I was watching "Dracula" today in reruns, and when you think about it - Drac doesn't go running to LA to se the "Slayer" does he? He goes to Sunnydale.
Granted that is before Buffy's "The Gift" death leap of faith - but I still think that Buffy being so closely tied to The First Slayer/Primeval is telling us that Faith is out of the line up in Slayer power.
And the Frey canon says NOTHING about Vampires with souls not being exempt.~w~
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Re: I still think my spec on Faith is accurate... -- lunasea, 08:42:05 03/31/03 Mon
I think Drac went after Buffy rather than Faith, because Faith never saw being a Slayer as having something forced on her. It isn't something she wanted to get rid of. Buffy had that extreme power and darkness because she felt raped. She could channel that to fight the demons and forces of darkness. Buffy was strongest prior to S5 when she hated being Slayer. S5, her strength, after the conjoining spell comes from somewhere else. That is why there isn't a name for what she is.
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Also, Buffy was around longer and was currently active -- Finn Mac Cool, 13:00:24 03/31/03 Mon
Could be Dracula simply never heard of Faith for these reasons.
Or, if you take most of his movies seriously, Drac has a thing for blondes.
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Re: Fray canon on vampires -- Robert, 19:54:26 03/31/03 Mon
>>> And the Frey canon says NOTHING about Vampires with souls not being exempt.~w~
Actually, Fray canon says very little about vampires. Recall that all we know of the 21st century apocalypse is what Urkonn tells Melaka. As I stated in my posting above, I suspect Urkonn to be an unreliable narrator, until I know otherwise. What does this mean?
It means, that some part of, or everything, Urkonn told Melaka could have been wrong or a lie, without violating any canon and without retconning. Not everything that characters say (in the shows or the comic books) is to be believed.
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Oh-oh, wait a minute! -- dub ;o), 17:01:53 03/30/03 Sun
If closing the Hellmouth means no more demons at all (not just vampires) then what about...Clem? *gulp* *shudder* *sniff*
And Lorne??
WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
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Dry your eyes.....;) (spoilery comment) -- Rufus, 18:13:07 03/30/03 Sun
Maybe Clem ends up the Guardian of a Kitten dimension.
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Sorry, but....Fray spoilers -- Sofdog, 12:59:04 03/31/03 Mon
The exact text in "Fray" states that ALL magic was removed from the world. Not just vampires and Slayers. Everything. So there can't be any demons left wandering about, Willow can't still be a witch. It's all over.
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Okay. What that means for another season of AtS *Spoilery Speculation Only* -- dub ;o), 15:48:43 03/31/03 Mon
Right. So, unless there is some error or deliberate mislead in the story told in Fray this means no vampires, no demons, no witches, no magick at all.
Where does that leave Angel: The Series? Without Lorne, for one thing. Is that why he finally got into the credits this season? Same sort of thing as happened to Amber Benson when Tara was done away with?
It also means major changes for Cordy, Connor, and above all Angel. It's either Shanshu or gone, as far as I can see.
In the event that any of the BtVS cast make the leap to AtS it would mean changes for them as well (except for Xander). Dawn would no longer be the Key; Willow would no longer be a witch; Giles and Andrew would no longer be capable of magick or demon-summoning; Anya would no longer be at risk of a hit ordered by D'Hoffryn; and Spike, well, same as Angel, it's either Shanshu or dust.
This is really starting to intrigue me. Hey, maybe we'll end up with just Wesley, Fred, Gunn, and Gwen Raiden? Oh, oh! Would Gwen still be Electro-Girl? Is that a magick thing, or a physiological-type (!) thing?
Hmmmmm.
;o)
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What are we to believe? (Spoilers for Fray) -- Robert, 20:04:44 03/31/03 Mon
You bring up some interesting points here.
>>> So, unless there is some error or deliberate mislead in the story told in Fray this means no vampires, no demons, no witches, no magick at all.
First, I don't know that we can believe everything that Urkonn told Melaka. Urkonn is a demon after all, with unclear motivations and agenda.
>>> Would Gwen still be Electro-Girl? Is that a magick thing, or a physiological-type (!) thing?
Now this is interesting. I have always considered the treatment of science, technology, and magic on BtVS and AtS to be different aspects of the same thing. So maybe more than just magic would be lost.
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Re: What are we to believe? (Spoilers for Fray) -- Rufus, 21:05:29 03/31/03 Mon
Well, if all the magic was gone nothing is said that there isn't a way for it to come back.....like the vampires somehow did. I see the situation as the eternal fight for control of the earth got slanted in favor of humans but that doesn't mean that it was impossible for the other side to find a way to come back, as we can see in Fray.
Goofy the Vampire Slayer -- lunasea, 10:46:52 03/30/03 Sun
I know there are several people out there that are looking for Buffy references outside of the Buffyverse and one of them showed up this weekend on Disney's House of Mouse. My kids liked it so much that they must have told me about it 20 times.
Donald Duck got hit on the head. He is transported to a world where everything is Goofy (not the adjective, the character). He turns on TV to get away from it all (you can imagine how much this place would annoy Donald). The very first show...
"The battle against evil continues...on Goofy the Vampire Slayer."
Goofy was dressed up more like Dracula, than Buffy. There were other shows, like Goofeld and I Love Goofy, but the only one that got a lead in was Goofy the Vampire Slayer.
My kids were rolling on the floor. I figured some might find this helpful and others would just find the idea amusing.
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Re: Goofy the Vampire Slayer -- Cheryl, 14:47:26 03/30/03 Sun
"The battle against evil continues...on Goofy the Vampire Slayer."
Goofy was dressed up more like Dracula, than Buffy. There were other shows, like Goofeld and I Love Goofy, but the only one that got a lead in was Goofy the Vampire Slayer.
LOL. Thanks for sharing. I love hearing Buffy mentioned in other shows or mediums. Like the Friends episode where Phoebe's sister (Ursilla? Which, don't you think, is very close to Drusilla?) was in a porn flick titled something like Phoebe the Vampire Layer.
Might make a fun game to come up with all of the Buffy references people have seen on tv, in publications, etc. Especially since on Buffy they make so many references to other pop culture icons.
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Actually, her full name's 'Ursilla Buffay', so it was 'Buffay the Vampire Layer'. -- Finn Mac Cool, 15:09:22 03/30/03 Sun
Which also lead to a great Friends moment when Phoebe walks in on her twin sister's porn tape being played, and says, "Oh my God! What am I doing!?"
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Thanks, I knew I didn't have it quite right. -- Cheryl, 17:55:17 03/30/03 Sun
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There is actually a porn called 'Muffy the Vampire Layer.' I believe it's on Vivid label.;) -- Briar Rose, 01:41:04 03/31/03 Mon
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buffy references (more like reviews) -- anom, 22:19:50 03/30/03 Sun
"Might make a fun game to come up with all of the Buffy references people have seen on tv, in publications, etc. Especially since on Buffy they make so many references to other pop culture icons."
Here's a couple, from the Village Voice--actually more like reviews. Well, OK, that's 'cause they are reviews. The current issue has a write-up of the OMWF CD, under the title "Slay Miserables" (the Master of Pun Fu is not impressed w/that one). And a few weeks before that, I found a very odd compare-&-contrast article, "The Axers of Evil" (even less impressed!). You might think I got the link wrong when the page 1st comes up, but scroll down--it compares BtVS Season 7 with ABC's Profiles from the Front Lines, a DoD-approved series on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. BTW, I ran across the 2nd one while taking the subway to meet SugarTherapy & her mom. She had a copy of...um, help me out here, ST, which magazine was it?...w/SMG on the cover & an interview inside on "Life After Buffy" (I probably didn't get the article title right either). The 3 of us had lunch & a fine time talking about auditions & Angel & Broadway & Buffy. N.Y. posters who didn't come (meaning all those who aren't me), you really missed out! I'll expect better from you when ST returns in Sept. to start college!
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Some recent refs -- KdS, 03:07:27 03/31/03 Mon
Jasper Fforde's novels The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book both feature cameos from a secret service vampire hunter and exorcist named Spike, who proves to be a vampire himself using drugs to control his bloodlust. In the second book, he acquires a small blonde offstage girlfriend who also kills things professionally. The second book also features a scene between Spike and the heroine in a church which can be easily seen as an oblique parody of the climax of Becoming II. On the other hand there are also hints in the books that Fforde's Spike is a West Indian Rastafarian, which may tie in with Spike's colonial resonances ;-)
Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time contains a number of strong resonances with Buffy in the characterisation of Susan, especially the description of the death of the Auditor on p.215.
M John Harrison's much praised novel Light includes a somewhat derogatory reference to a character hoping for something better on TV than Buffy reruns, although since the character in question is a psychotic multiple murderer one can question whether the author shares his opinion.
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That was 'Seventeen' magazine. -- Darby, who, um, noticed it picking up the Sunday paper., 07:39:31 03/31/03 Mon
It had SMG & red background on the cover with a "Life After Buffy" blurb. So, was the article interesting? It would probably take a really good article to get me to buy Seventeen!
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other buffy referances -- smith, 09:12:20 03/31/03 Mon
There are two other ones that I have seen. On the Drew Carey Show, Lewis calls himself a deacon in the Church of Buffy the vampire slayer. And on Will and Grace Jake says that Buffy is his life.
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From 'Fox Trot' the comic strip -- Finn Mac Cool, 12:57:36 03/31/03 Mon
The 10 year old, Jason, is watching TV, when his sister, Paige, sees that he's watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Jason, who's at that age when he doesn't want to give the impression that he likes girls, quickly switches it off. Then, to taunt him, Paige starts chanting "Jason likes Buffy! Jason likes Buffy!" To which he replies: "I don't like her! I like the vampires! I'm not weird!"
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My fave -- ponygirl, 13:26:37 03/31/03 Mon
From the movie Orange County, this very pseudo-intellectual guy is trying to impress a girl at a party, he goes through all of the very pretentious sounding writing he's doing then concludes with "I have an idea for a tv show. It's about vampires, though really it's a metaphor for the re-unification of Germany. But it's funny."
I've seen at least three references to Buffy on Will & Grace, so I'd guess that there are some fans on the writing staff. Nice to see evidence of good taste on other shows!
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'Kryptonite. Silver bullet. Buffy. What's it gonna take to keep you in the grave?' -- Ixchel, 23:40:56 03/31/03 Mon
Crichton to Scorpius - Farscape
You have to love a show where the main character is a BtVS fan.
Ixchel
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Not exactly an on-screen reference, but . . . -- Cheryl, 17:11:41 03/31/03 Mon
The character of Chief Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker III on Enterprise was originally nicknamed Spike, but they changed it to Trip because they didn't want two Spike's on the same network.
Giles' Season 7 Very Secret Diary (spoilers through 7.17, AtS 4.12) -- HonorH (being really bad), 21:31:12 03/30/03 Sun
Note: this is not for the faint of heart. Some of you may, in fact, consider this nothing but pure character assassination against Giles. If so, sorry, don't mean to offend. It's all in fun. If the mere mention of slash squicks you, you'd best stay away, though there's nothing graphic in here. And if I haven't scared you off by now, feel free to read.
***
Day 1: Stopped the world from ending with some help from Xander. Go, me. Unfortunately, mood ruined by snotty email from Wesley:
Dear Rupert,
How are you? I'm doing well. Have told the Good Guys to sod off and am now shagging Hot Chick. You?
All my love,
Wesley
Berk. How is he getting shagged while I'm not?
Day 5: Willow improving rapidly. Has stopped blowing out power in my villa. Good thing, as villa is rather drafty.
Still not getting shagged.
Day 15: Willow rather hot, actually. Unfortunately gay, and have feeling would turn me into bangers and mash if I tried anything, so still not getting any.
Bugger.
Day 90: Willow finally leaving, thank heaven. Was getting sick of having to help her re-dye her hair whenever roots started showing. Apparently, apocalypse brewing in Sunnydale. Any excuse to get her out of here.
Day 91: Peace and quiet ruined by yet another email from Wesley:
Dear Rupert,
Have changed my mind on Good Guys and rescued Angel from latest predicament. I'm off to find Cordelia now. Still shagging Hot Chick. Hope you're doing well!
Hugs and Kisses,
Wesley
Tried to grope Miss Harkness and now have bunny ears. Bugger!
Day 100: Bunny ears gone. First Evil rising. Maybe old Robson knows something.
Note to self: look up Olivia while in London.
Day 105: Nearly got beheaded by Bringer while at Robson's place. V. unnerving. Watchers now blown to smithereens, and dammit, Olivia's got new Orgasm Friend. Not getting any this week.
Day 107: Headed to Sunnydale with small herd of teenage girls. Annabel, 15, has ramrod up arse, and Molly, 16, sounds like she came to London via the Bronx. At least Kennedy, 19, seems nice. Keeps asking about Willow. V. thoughtful girl.
Day 108: In Sunnydale. Things not improved significantly. Annabel dead. Buffy got stuffing beaten out of her by Neanderthal vampire. Also suspect Kennedy might be gay.
Still not getting shagged, dammit.
Day 109: Anya seems frustrated. Perhaps would be open to a friendly tryst once we've consulted Beljoxa's Eye.
Later: Bad news from Eye. Anya's mood now spoiled. Still not getting shagged. Think I'll leave again.
Day 109: Yet another irritating missive from Wesley:
Dear Rupert,
You'll be glad to know I'm definitely back among the White Hats. Sadly, no longer shagging Hot Chick. Have best idea ever for solving current crisis: bring back Angelus.
With Great Affection,
Wesley
If this is how his mind works when he's not getting shagged, think it would be best to find Hot Chick and pay her off.
Day . . . I've forgotten, bugger it all. Must start counting again. Found new Potential. Either my Cantonese is rusty, or she wants to eat my shoes. V. tired, and still not getting shagged.
Day 2: New email from Wesley:
Dear Rupert,
The situation here is appalling. The sun's been blotted out, and Angelus escaped and killed Hot Chick I'd been shagging. Can you send Slayer to help?
Love,
Wesley
Sent off email saying Slayer has apocalypse of her own to handle and not to bother her with his little problems. Berk.
Day 4: Back in Sunnydale. Taking Potentials out for camping trip. Cannot help but notice some of them quite smoking. Must not touch.
Day 5: Not touching them makes me evil? Badly confused now.
Day 6: Have begun noticing that Dawn is getting quite hot. Must get shagged, and soon.
Day 7: Everyone has date but me. Situation not pleasing. I feel a pout coming on. Wonder if I could spring Ethan Rayne from prison?
Day 10: Back in Sunnydale. Spike behaving appallingly. On brighter side, Wood has promised to shag me if I let him kill Spike. What the hell. What's the worst that could happen?
Later: Spike not dead. Buffy pissed. Wood reneged on promise as Spike still alive. Situation v. depressing. Think I'll have myself a bourbon and try not to think about the fact that I'm still not getting shagged.
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The following entry.... -- cjl, 21:40:14 03/30/03 Sun
Day 11: Joss Whedon finally returned my phone calls. Promised me two-hour TV movie on BBC when this whole nasty business with the First is done with. His Royal American Genius refused to put a female associate/love interest in the script, but we're negotiating...
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LMAO....Great !! -- s'kat, 23:14:56 03/30/03 Sun
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I love it! -- ponygirl, 12:36:10 03/31/03 Mon
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:-) lol 'Still not king' style -- lakrids, 15:39:57 03/31/03 Mon
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How about this entry? -- Scroll, 17:19:16 03/31/03 Mon
Day 12: Got another email from Wesley.
Dear Rupert,
I've helped Faith break out of prison. She was quite anxious after being in jail for three years, so we shagged a bit before going hunting for Angelus. Willow kindly helped restore Angel's soul, but the happiness clause is still there. Unfortunately. Otherwise we could shag. Oh, and Faith was in a coma again but she's better now. Sending her with Willow to Sunnydale. Perhaps Faith will be able to help you out? I can tell from your emails that you've been... under some pressure lately.
All my love,
Wesley
Faith is coming. And so am I. Finally!
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My turn -- lunasea, 19:07:35 03/31/03 Mon
Day... whatever, too sodding drunk to notice and I think one of the potentials hid my glasses
Heard that this infernal machine could be used to find hot babes. Found several interesting places, web sites I believe they call them, that are devoted to Buffy. My is she ever popular. Spike too. I can't believe what people want them to do. I can't believe what they *have* actually done. Luckily I can't find my glasses or they would get all steamed up and from what I hear, I wipe them too often. Some of these sites actually have pictures. I know I didn't pose for any of these, but there I was.
Seems there are plenty of willing shag partners on the net and they seem to know an awful lot about me. I can't decide if that is flattering or scary. If they want to shag me so badly, why don't they get their asses to Sunnydale where they can actually do it? Why do they spend so much time talking about it and thinking about it? The house is so crowded, would anyone actually notice if a few nubile young women showed up to make me more pleasant? I highly doubt it.
So any one that is shagworthy, get your asses to Sunnydale. The world you save could be your own.
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LOL lunasea -- Random, 22:00:13 03/31/03 Mon
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ROFL. Who needs alter-egos? -- Caira, 00:15:47 04/01/03 Tue
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I'd like to state for the record that I am in no way responsible for this. -- Honorificus (Still The Queen AND The Prettiest), 09:28:55 04/01/03 Tue
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Uh-huh. So you're telling us the HonorH does what she pleases in spite of you? Who's the boss here? -- Random, 10:27:46 04/01/03 Tue
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Well . . . *occasionally*, I'm not paying attention to her! -- Honorificus (Who Rules All She Sees), 11:03:05 04/01/03 Tue
Hard to believe, I'm sure, but every so often, her life gets too boring for me to contemplate and I have to take a break. It's at those times that she gets into real trouble. Then I've got to bail her out, blah, blah, blah, you know the drill. After all, *someone's* got to look out for the two of us. At least, until I'm finally free of her.
So there!
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Looking forward to the HonorH vs. Honorificus sequel to 'Orpheus'.... -- cjl, 11:26:30 04/01/03 Tue
Willow, Spike and Angel (vague spoilers LMPTM) -- lunasea, 09:27:53 03/31/03 Mon
Just something real quick I wanted to jot down.
Spike/William: Confuses his mothers approval and affection for love. When she turns on him he thinks she doesn't love him. This scars him for his unlife. Unconditional love equals unconditional approval to him and when people approve of him, he confuses it with love. His problem is that Mommy never said an unkind word to him (when she was human), so he doesn't know how to take it. She raised a wuss who can't handle rejection.
Angel(us)/Liam: Confuses his father's disapproval for lack of love. When his father is constantly putting him down in word and glance, he thinks his father doesn't care. This scars him for life and unlife. Unconditional love equals some sort of approval. When people withdraw from him, he thinks they don't love him any more (see Buffy in Enemies and perhaps even now as well as Cordy in AN). His problem is that Daddy never said a kind word to him, so he doesn't know how to show kindness to others. His father raised a man who doesn't know what it means to be one.
Spike and Angel are flip sides of the same coin. Both have trouble mixing love and disapproval. Spike thinks love means lots of affection. He doesn't know how to show those he loves disapproval. Angel thinks love means not disapproving, so he witholds it from those he loves until it explodes.
Willow: Doesn't have either side of the equation. Her mother showed neither affection or disapproval. Spike had his mother's affection to latch onto. Angel had his father's disapproval to react against. Willow has nothing. She thinks love means that your life revolves around your beloved, like Spike does. Spike thinks that because his mother's and his lives did revolve around each other and that is his role model. Willow thinks this because she felt unloved by her mother because she wasn't important at all. It is an anti-role modle. When Tara died, she acted like someone is supposed to when her life revolves around the deceased does. She flipped out.
Spike is trying to be the person his mom was. Angel and Willow are trying not to be the person their parents were.
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Thank you, Lunasea! This got me thinking! -- DL, 11:29:57 03/31/03 Mon
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You're welcome. I hope you will share what you are thinking about later -- lunasea, 12:29:30 03/31/03 Mon
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Re: Truly excellent insights, lunasea! Thanks for this! -- Liv, 13:48:43 03/31/03 Mon
Angel season 5? -- goose, 16:28:00 03/31/03 Mon
I was reading an interview with David Greenwalt somewhere and he was saying that if Angel continues for a fifth season there will be some major changes including a regular cast member from the Buffyverse. Has anybody else heard anymore on this?
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Rumor has it... (Rumor in post) -- Doug, 18:31:23 03/31/03 Mon
...that James Marsters has been asked to appear on some episodes of AtS next year; I think it was recurring, not regular though. There was also talk of two other possibilities showing up for a few other episodes next year, but I didn't catch who.
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Re: Rumor has it... (Rumor in post) -- 110v3w1110w, 21:20:33 03/31/03 Mon
*prays its alyson hannigan* there just has to be a spin off with willow in it or she has to be on angel
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Re: Rumor has it... (Rumor in post)Spoiler for Angel Season 5 -- bl, 03:09:25 04/01/03 Tue
James says he's been asked to go to Angel next season. I've also read there are negotiations with AH to bring Willow over as well.
They need to bring Xander as well. IMO
There are gonna be some departures on Angel. I vote for Gunn and Gwen to go off into the sunset together.
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Re: Rumor has it... (Rumor in post) -- boadie, 06:39:25 04/01/03 Tue
are you sure about this? i heard somewhere that they were going to kill spike off in the finale.
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what JM said,mega spoilers for 7.22 and beyond that are really just speculation) -- lunasea, 08:21:17 04/01/03 Tue
JM said it at the Pasadena Convention. He didn't say he would be a regular. He said that he was asked by Joss to go over and he said yes. Could be a re-occuring guest star. He wasn't specific.
Personally, I think 2 former (based on Greenwalt saying that next year's locale would involve lots of windows and light) vampires with a soul would be overwhelming to the other characters and Spike is best in low doses. JM also said that he didn't want to be a leading man. Too much work.
NB said that he is looking for a sit-com. Sit-coms are actors dreams. They keep pretty normal hours (no more 14 hour days) and very little location work. CC would like one also, being a new mom. We will have to see what happens with Cordy. NB also said that there is no arc for Xander this season. He just does what is necessary. Interesting seeing as earlier this season he said that he wouldn't go over to AtS, because he didn't want to give up leading man status for second banana.
JM said the finale would be "tragic" in regards to Spike and Buffy. He didn't say he would die. He also said there would be no Spuffy sex.
He isn't a writer. Writers are notorious for lying. Is JM? Who knows?
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Not notorious for lying, but notorious for being wrong. -- Finn Mac Cool, 08:27:32 04/01/03 Tue
In Season 4, he said that, after he achieved his regular status, he expected Spike's body count to grow quite a bit. In Season 5, he was pretty confidant his character would move over to Angel to be a villain. And, in Season 6, he didn't know until the last possible moment that Spike went to Africa to get a soul.
James Marsters isn't the most trustworthy source of info when it comes to future events.
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An Interview is just another role -- lunasea, 08:54:35 04/01/03 Tue
Actors say what they are told to say. It is in their contracts. It is partly designed to get the audience to watch and partly designed to mislead people (especially spoiler whores). Nothing they say can be taken as gospel.
I do believe that Joss wants to use a different paradigm for AtS and that will need network support. The network won't support it until it knows how the audience feels about it. We won't know how to feel about it until the final 5 episodes which will set it up. I do think that the hints Greenwalt, DB and others are giving about S5 are legit. If they aren't, the network won't know how to gage audience approval.
Even with Spike, I will watch. Joss has some very loyal fans.
As for 7.22, I don't believe much of anything I have read. It is all nice and vague any way. Vague tends to be more "true" but not how you think it will happen. I believe that a certain casting spoiler WILL happen, but it will happen in a way that no one will expect.
An aside: If Angel shanshus, it will be on his show. If vamps in general shanshu or go bye-bye, Angel will do this before that. It he doesn't it would take away from either his or Buffy's story.
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Re: Not notorious for lying, but notorious for being wrong. -- leslie, 10:55:06 04/01/03 Tue
He may not be very good at predicting plot developments, but if he can't remember whether his employers have offered him work or not, then he really does need a rest.
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Re: what JM said,mega spoilers for 7.22 and beyond that are really just speculation) -- KKC, 09:26:36 04/01/03 Tue
Let's say for argument's sake that Spike is fated to die in the last episode of Buffy. What's to stop the character from appearing in episodes of Angel later? Darla died (twice) and Julie Benz continued to make recurring appearances. Lilah died and the actor playing her appeared in the episode immediately following. There's nothing to say that Spike won't appear later on in the context of flashbacks or ghostly/otherworldly manifestations. Or Masters may appear as a completely different character.
I'll probably get shot for saying this... But standard soap opera rules apply to the Buffyverse characters. Death is not final. Pregnancy occurs without explanation. Everybody sleeps with everybody. Everybody is unexplainably pretty and doesn't ever appear to go to the gym. :)
-KKC, who was tired of April 1 jokes by 8:30 in the morning. Haven't we disrespected the traditional new year celebration enough already?
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Ok...here's what was said, (Rumors with Spoiler...vague) -- sk, 10:19:47 04/01/03 Tue
I've been lurking on non-spoiler boards for a while.
www.bigbad.net, www.morethanspike.com, the Bronze Beta boards, they tend to distribute postings from B C & S, which is a spoiler board and Angel's soul.
HEre's some of the feedback from Pasadena Con, which had Marsters, Brendan, Hallett, and Leary:
From the folks who went to the thing, on the www.bigbad.net/morethanspike - these boards track where their favorite actors are going and religiously watch both shows, they are rare in the sense that they seem to love DB and JM and don't bash any of the characters. From these boards I get rumors on both, even though they center on Spike and JM. ;-) :
1.He (Marsters) said that there are plans to move his character over to Angel next season and mentioned that he'd been having meetings about non-Buffy projects when Joss had contacted him to offer him a stint on Angel which I get the impression put everything else on hold.
(Oh an interesting tidbit - on S6:
As for the future of Spuffy he didn't give out any spoilers but talked about how he wasn't sure that the characters should be together in view of the AR side of things. He reiterated how much he hated doing that scene and how he'd never taken on the role of a rapist as he had such issues with violence to women on screen and how he'd gone home from the set the day they filmed that scene in tears. He talked about how the scene had been based on the experiences of one of the female writers who'd tried to force herself on an ex to try and restart a relationship. He then commented that he didn't think that the writers had fully thought through how much more charged the scenario becomes when it is a man being the aggressor which I thought was a really interesting comment.)
He said he was happy to have fewer naked scenes this season and at one point almost felt like begging the writers not to make him take his shirt off again.
Poster II: (I can't remember the name)
He mentioned the AtS plans as "being in talks," and when someone asked "Has 'Angel' been renewed, then?" he seemed a bit disconcerted by the question, and clearly didn't know anything about that subject. Someone mentioned that he should have his own series, and he said (as he's said before), "You know, everyone has said that to me, except one person. Joss."
Poster III:
From Buffy Cross and Stake
James Marsters in ANGEL next Season !
2003 - 03 - 31
James Marsters just announced he will be joining the cast of Angel next season. I was at Grand Slam convention in Pasadena. During James Marsters Q and A, he said that the spinoff idea is still up in the air and may end up happening or might not. But he said that he was recently asked by Joss Whedon to join the cast of Angel next season. He has agreed, and he believes that Angel is definetly going to be renewed for a 5th season. This sounds like terrific information to me. What does everyone else think ?
I'll write a fuller report later with all the details. Right now, here are the things I can remember. 1) JM did say that he will be on Angel next year. He doesn't appear to know that Angel hasn't been renewed. Someone asked and he said "Uh..." as in "I have no idea what you are talking about." He said that a few weeks ago he was looking into other projects when Joss told him he wanted him on Angel. JM agreed.
There was never, ever any discussion of a spin-off with JM as a lead. He pointed out he doesn't want to be a lead, it's too much work, and he likes playing the second banana. Two weeks ago, JW announced that there is no spin-off. JL said it, then NB and JM confirmed it. When asked James said "Yeah, it's called Angel."
Oh and TV Guide: States 1: Only Charmed, Seventh Heaven, Gilmore girls, Everwood, and Smallville have been definitely renewed. WB won't make a decision on Angel until May, arguably it's best show. (TV Guide's words).
Another poster on B C & S reposted on bigbad:
Right now Whedon and company are doing everything in their power to get a 5th season of Angel b/c you need 5 seasons to get good deals on distribution rights.
Big bad board has a renew Angel campaign as well as numerous others. So is a good tracking/non-spoilery place to get info. Angel Soul board is too spoilery for me.
Now, I know a little something about performance deals and contracts and actors. Actors may lie about plots and story arcs on series - they are contracted to do that, but they do not lie about what they will do next -not to their fans, it's uh counter-productive to their careers. These people aren't dumb. And no one, believe me, is more aware of his fans importance to his career than Marsters. They will also NOT lie about contractual negotiations - gets them into all sorts of legal difficulties. Nor will they release info that hasn't been okayed. Marsters is exceedingly careful about what he says regarding ME, the guy depends on ME for his livilihood. He doesn't have a ton of movie roles lined up. Of course it is possible this is similar to the ED thing, she was in talks with ME but got a better deal elsewhere. Same with the DB and Superman rumor. Also the DB and Batman rumor. But I've read enough on Marsters to know he doesn't lie to convention fans about his future career plans. Or his contract. He was contracted to play in episodes of both Ats S1-2 and Btvs S4- 5. He appeared in both, two episodes of Ats S1 (In the Dark) and S5 (Darla), so no lie. He renewed his contract in S5 and did S6-8 Btvs. They took a while to see which he fit in with best. He's dismissed as rumors other ideas they've thrown at him in the past. Such as the spin-off. The rumor he was going to be in a movie called Cacophany (sp?). So logically?
It's unlikely he's lying. That does not spoil the finale
in any way, because as others have noted - Darla died on Btvs only to be reborn on Ats.
With this information in place?
Make up your own mind.
As for spec for end of the season? I think WtP and Rufus made the best guesses and it's not leading towards a death for Spike at this point. That would probably go against the show's whole theme about fighting every day to deal with what you've done as emphasized in Orpheus. He may die, but only to be reborn. Those of us who have managed to stay relatively unspoiled, hard as it is when you go online, really don't know at this point. And if you do know - because 7.22 spoilers are out?? Save it for the Spiler trollops board. I don't want to know. I got minorly spoiled just getting this info.
Hope that clarifies things.
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Thanks -- goose, 14:59:53 04/01/03 Tue
I too have been trying really hard to stay away from spoilers, and didn't want to risk the spoiler boards.
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Thought regarding S5 AtS and possible BtVS cast appearances... -- Ixchel, 18:14:36 04/01/03 Tue
There is the point that _any_ BtVS cast appearances on S5 AtS (short of, perhaps, as a regular) could simply be flashbacks of some kind. As such these wouldn't have any bearing on BtVS 7.22.
Is it absolutely decided there won't be a spin-off? Sadness, if this is true. I was hoping for another show with a female central character.
Ixchel
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This from E-Online regarding Angel renewal -- sk, 20:40:54 04/01/03 Tue
Angel (WB): "For me, this feels closer to the end than it ever has," says Charisma Carpenter (who, by the way, just had a baby boy). One reason to hope for renewal? During a recent Buffy set visit, James Marsters said this when asked if he would consider going to Angel next year: "I think I am, yeah." (More on that in this week's chat.) Odds of survival: 5 to 1.
Marsters also said all hopes for a spin-off had halted right now. ME is putting all their energy into getting Angel renewed. Go vote on EOnline! for Angel's renewal.
This is the sixth confirmation I've found.
My analysis of 'Players' is up -- Masquerade, 18:51:08 03/31/03 Mon
Here.
I had a slight intrusion of Real Life this weekend (yes, occassionally I have one. Sometimes on purpose!), so I had to chose which show to do the first update on. I picked AtS just 'coz there's a new ep coming our way on Weds. But I'll have my "Lies" analysis up ASAP.
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Re: My analysis of 'Players' is up -- Jay, 21:10:12 03/31/03 Mon
I'm going to take a brief moment to add something here. In your analysis you wrote...
Wesley's translation of the symbols Angel draws are gibberish. When "Cordelia" sees that their efforts aren't succeeding, she pretends to join in their research, if only to make sure that they don't succeed. It is likely, however, that the gang's efforts aren't meant to succeed.
In this recreation and translation effort, Wesley translated one of Angel's efforts as "strangling poultry." This is an obvious masturbation reference. "Choking the chicken" for anyone who hasn't caught on. While this doesn't point out when Angel and company catch onto Cordy, at this point, they are more than definitely onto her.
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a mixed bag of comments -- anom, 23:13:56 03/31/03 Mon
"I had a slight intrusion of Real Life this weekend...."
I hope it was the good kind of RL intrusion.
"Gunn realizes that if no one has ever touched Gwen's bare skin, then she is a virgin."
Anyone else have a flashback to the full-body condom scene in the 3rd (2nd?) Naked Gun movie?
More seriously, I wonder if Gwen's ostentatiously provocative wardrobe is something she feels comfortable wearing because she knows nothing too intimate can happen...even if she wanted it to. In another way, it's almost an act of defiance in the face of her literal inability to have sex. She seems understandably ambivalent about getting intimate w/Gunn, & I don't think it's just because she's worried about his safety.
"Gwen is receptive, but afraid for his safety. He tells her she knows how to revive him if anything happens."
Hmmm...but does she know how to turn off the device if she needs to? Can she even reach it in the middle of her back? I can visualize a rather comic scene of Gwen trying to reach the switch--well, comic except for Gunn's life depending on it. He seemed pretty cavalier about the possibility, didn't he?
"It is biologically impossible for female vampires to become pregnant."
It must be even more impossible for male vampires to become pregnant! (Sorry, it just struck me. Hey, I said this was a mixed bag.)
"...this entity's identity."
An aside to my fellow word nerds: this juxtaposition made me wonder if entity & identity are related. I checked m-w.com, & they're not--entity comes from the Latin for "to be" (the present participle), & identity is "probably from Latin identidem repeatedly, contraction of idem et idem, literally, same and same."
"He tells the others that Angelus didn't kill Lilah--he found her already dead. Angel assumes the Beast killed her. This makes some sense, since the weapon used to kill her was made from the Beast's bones. However, Angelus never saw the Beast."
But he may have smelled the knife, even if he didn't see it, & recognized the Beast's scent.
"Lilah's copy had information on the Beast, and possibly his Master, information that no other copy of the Compendium had."
Well, none other in this dimension.
"She tells Gunn she needs his help rescuing 'a kidnapped girl'...."
One thing that bothered me in this ep was that Gunn--suave, quick-thinking Gunn--would believe Morimoto would have a kidnapped girl out in the open at his party, even under heavy guard. Hell, even I suspected she was really his daughter. Wish the writers had come up w/something more convincing.
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Re: a mixed bag of comments -- Danielle, 06:30:55 04/01/03 Tue
One thing that bothered me in this ep was that Gunn--suave, quick-thinking Gunn--would believe Morimoto would have a kidnapped girl out in the open at his party, even under heavy guard. Hell, even I suspected she was really his daughter. Wish the writers had come up w/something more convincing.
This episode seemed to give a lot of attention to Gunn's love of martial arts movies. And a minor trend in some martial arts films is for kidnap victims to be treated very well, like honored guests rather than prisoners. For one, it shows that the villain has some sense of honor. There's even a saying somewhere about treating your enemies as well as you would want to be treated in similar circumstances.
Secondly, there's a sense of arrogance there. It's like the villain's saying, "I'm so confident that there's no way you can save the hostage, I'm going to put them in plain sight."
And, if you think about it, getting to a hostage locked in a room somewhere is probably easier. You sneak in, sneak out. The hostage being in plain sight means your rescue attempt has to be in plain sight too, and is that much more dangerous.
Anyway, I'm so used to seeing things like this in such movies, I wasn't suspicious of it. I understand why Gunn believed the girl was a hostage.
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hmm...*very* interesting! -- anom, 14:42:16 04/01/03 Tue
Some very good points, Danielle. From the (admittedly limited) perspective of not following the martial arts movie genre much, I'd give them a +, a -, and a +/-, in this order:
"For one, it shows that the villain has some sense of honor. There's even a saying somewhere about treating your enemies as well as you would want to be treated in similar circumstances."
OK, but that could be done in some luxurious but locked room. I'm not sure it means letting them come to your parties.
"It's like the villain's saying, 'I'm so confident that there's no way you can save the hostage, I'm going to put them in plain sight.'"
This makes sense, at least in that context of the captor's showing off his power.
"And, if you think about it, getting to a hostage locked in a room somewhere is probably easier. You sneak in, sneak out. The hostage being in plain sight means your rescue attempt has to be in plain sight too, and is that much more dangerous."
True, but another mixed bag. If they're hidden, you have to find where they are, which takes a lot more time & can expose you to discovery as you go around looking for them. There are likely to be more guards between you & them. And you may not be able to find them.
But your point may be supported by the 6 ninja types who came after Gunn. I may not watch many martial arts movies, but I used to take aikido, & I enjoyed recognizing a lot of his stick-vs.-sword moves from jo-kata!
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Re: hmm...*very* interesting! (Spoilers, Players) -- Rahael, 15:19:43 04/01/03 Tue
Okay, I haven't read the wildfeed, because I want to savour all this Angelly goodness without knowing every other detail, when it airs, but was there any visual linking to Guise will be Guise? Where a member of AI who isn't all that secure about his role in the team gets the girl, gets to be cool...and there's a girl in a party about to be sacrificed? And there's this whole surprise thing about her virginity, or you know, the lack of it.
I may be way off, because all I know about Players is about one or two plot details, and random comments in this thread.
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well...(nonspecific spoilers) -- anom, 19:51:02 04/01/03 Tue
An insecure member of the team gets to show how cool he already is, & appears to get the girl (we just see the beginning, in a situation where something could go wrong). And somebody's guise is revealed. And while it's never specified, the girl at the party is very likely a virgin...but something about her isn't as we're led to believe it to be.
Vague enough? @>)
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Re: a mixed bag of comments -- Rob, 07:44:56 04/01/03 Tue
"Anyone else have a flashback to the full-body condom scene in the 3rd (2nd?) Naked Gun movie?"
LOL! And just in the interest of being completely anal to details, it was the first Naked Gun. ;o)
"Hmmm...but does she know how to turn off the device if she needs to? Can she even reach it in the middle of her back?"
Hmmmm, good point!
Rob
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Great comments anom! -- CW, 08:20:26 04/01/03 Tue
Lot's of interesting and amusing bits.
I wondered if anyone else thought of Apple computers when the acronym Lisa was brought up. The Lisa was Apple's first stab at what is now the Mac. It was the first 'consumer' computer with a point-and-click style operating system instead of the old fashion text-line entry. I put the word 'consumer' in quotes because Apple's target market for the computer was definitely large corporations. The Lisa was grossly overpriced (too expensive for individuals workers instead of coporations) and contained a number of quirks designed solely to keep the purchaser tied to Apple forever. Added to that, the official advertising campaign seemed to stress that the Lisa was a tool to help office workers have lots of time to goof off, rather than a tool to help them produce more. The Lisa was soon immensely discounted. The remainder of Apple's stock was converted and sold off as strangely packaged Mac's soon after that cheaper computer hit the market. That marketing disaster makes me wonder about the future success of Gwen's LISA.
I am a little confused by the message Gwen's clothing was supposed to be sending. Politics aside, women have to understand than wearing significantly less clothing than rest of the girls in the area is more than a tiny bit provocative to the menfolk. Gwen knows she's really after the LISA when she goes to the hotel. So why at this moment is she wearing less than every other time we've seen her. Has she already decided she wants Gunn for more than a partner in crime, and wants him to be thinking along those lines? It seems a strange outfit to choose to say, "Hey, let's do something noble, and go rescue a little girl." On the otherhand as with some creatures in nature, Gwen's bright, flashy outfits in general might simply be an indication that she's so dangerous that it doesn't matter how much she stands out. Perhaps, she wears this stuff because she knows it makes no difference in her case.
Re Cordy's slinky maternity outfit, as well as Rachel's maternity high-fashion last year on Friends. I hope it was comfortable, because it looked ridiculous!
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LISA is also: -- KdS, 08:30:48 04/01/03 Tue
The database Library and Information Science Abstracts... but I don't think that was meant as a reference ;-)
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Re: a mixed bag of comments -- lunasea, 09:50:15 04/01/03 Tue
I liked your post
More seriously, I wonder if Gwen's ostentatiously provocative wardrobe is something she feels comfortable wearing because she knows nothing too intimate can happen...even if she wanted it to. In another way, it's almost an act of defiance in the face of her literal inability to have sex.
Maybe it is even more than that. Gwenn is hot. Men (and women) can look, but they can't touch. It is her revenge on a world that she can't touch. It isn't revenge if the world doesn't want to touch her. She makes people want her and then they have to endure the same thing she does.
As for the comment about the Beast killing Lilah, want to bet that is how Angel figured out Cordy was evil? It also was an incredibly touching moment between Angel and Wesley. I like how the Buzz reviewed it.
"The highlight of this scene, however, was the exchange between Wes and Angel. Spoken mostly with expression rather than word, Angel tells Wes that Angelus didn't kill Lilah and apologizes for what Angelus did to her after her death. He tells Wes he's sorry for his loss. What passed here was an acknowledgement of the depth of Wes' feelings for Lilah; that she was more that simply someone he slept with, that the emotions are deep and raw. Angel is allowing Wes his grief and his dignity in loving Lilah. There are some moments that just stand out in a show. This was one of them."
I agree about the daughter. Pretty transparent. Then again, there were so many great moments in this show, I will let is slide.
The Hollywood Waltz - Part I, Sunrise, Logically Enough -- Celebaelin, 20:12:50 03/31/03 Mon
It's taking far too long to write this to post it in one go, the series could be over by then (not in the UK of course) so here's the first, rather brief, installment. Maybe having got things started I'll be able to get the others out relatively quickly. Wish me luck, I might need it.
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon and the heavens."
Anaxagoras 459BC
From a very early stage in my viewing I have seen what I believed to be a great deal of Sun imagery within BtVS, whether this is genuine or a reflection of a previous personal interest of mine you will doubtless decide for yourself. Am I observing synchronicity in action or the deliberate exercise of the storytellers art of being all things to all people? I suspect the former but that does not, of course, make that view an incontestable truth.
In a bid to answer this question for myself I decided, with some prompting from RanRahBit and FP, to make a short study of the Sun themes and images which predominate in culture and mythology, in commenting on the mythology I will briefly indicate what I regard as 'Buffologically relevant' parallels as they occur. I feel I should add a disclaimer at this point as I will in part be referring to currently practised religions. I do not intend to malign, or indeed to laud, any particular form of worship but merely to give a perfunctory account of how the aspects of the various deities mentioned might fit my premise.
As, at least nominally, a Christian I think some justification of my inclusion of the Christian God within the category of Sun deities is called for before I upset too many people too quickly. Firstly, "Fiat Lux" Vulgate Genesis 1:3 ie "Let there be light" and the obvious implication of the Sun as the planet's source of light. Secondly there is a mosaic of Christ as Apollo Helios beneath the high altar of St. Peters in Rome the continued presence of which I will not attempt to analyse if there is not a tacit acceptance of the association with the power, warmth and light of the Sun. Thirdly the portrayal of the majority of Holy figures from church history as having halos of light, ie golden discs, around their heads, an interesting choice of imagery (although I have heard it suggested that this is a literal representation of the glamour of the Saints - and of Irish Celtic heros incidentally). The Sun aspect could obviously be explained as coming under the auspices of the Creator of All Things, I hope this is sufficient for you, kind reader, to at least bear with me for the moment.
Perhaps one of the most common functions commonly attributed to the Sun is that of providing 'life giving rays', presumably this originates in the phototropism of plants and the co-incidence that isn't of the Summer being the growing season (BtVS parallels in character growth and development, the Summers family name, the effect of sunlight on vampires). This theme is not as common as I would have expected in the mythologies I have looked at but it does, unsurprisingly, seem to be a theme in traditional wisdom. Deities with aspects of Sun and Fertility are found in the Celtic Cerunos the consort of the Goddess, the Aztec deities Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the giver of maize corn to mankind and more remotely in the duality between Huitzilopochtli (Sun) and Tlaloc (Rain, Fertility), the Norse Freyr (Peace and Fertility) is closely linked with the Sun seen as his servant Skirnir and the Hindu Shiva (in this case the Sun aspect appears through associations with Surya and the Fertility aspect is implied through the worship of the Shivalinga).
Sunrise as a time of renewal is another common theme both culturally and mythologically. The somewhat chirpy idea that 'things will look different' is no less common, and often no less true, for all its' platitudinous connotations. Certainly Jung recounts his own numinous experiences of sunrise and uses that very word to describe the nature of archetypes. They have an inherent spiritual nature, using the archetype of sunrise we see echoes of rebirth, renewal and the triumph of light over darkness. References to the Sun occur regularly in Jung's writings, whether as an account of his own studies and findings or as his own comment but it is always the symbolism that dictates the interpretation and never the scientific fact of the astrological fusion reactor, the realities of which were in any case unknown at the time of writing of much of Jung's work (The approach of Sunrise has been used in BtVS as a threat to vampires, symbolising an end to the dangers of the night. It has also been used as a device to illustrate Angel's self-destructive longing for redemption and re-birth in the light of the rising Sun). There are several examples of the dawn (Obviously a quick word about Dawn Summers is not out of place in this context. Dawn is blatantly Buffy's renewal, her genetically identical daughter) being considered as a time of re-birth of the Sun in mythology, usually this is as an accompaniment to a myth of the Sun's passage through the underworld during the night (which again is symbolised in Angel's desire for release from his undead state). The Egyptian deities Ra (or Re), also represented as the scarab god Khepra, represent this aspect of the Sun, as does the Mayan Ahau Kin, the Mesopotamian Shamash, Freyr as Skirnir in his journey to the underworld to woo Gerd (Freyr's bride) and the Aztec gods Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli "the lord of the star of the dawn", sometimes mentioned as a symbol of death and resurrection and Huitzilopochtli who was born each morning from the womb of Coatlicue, goddess of earth. I would tentatively add any creator god to this list because of my premise that the Sun is the source of creation and such associations are often made, if only by the very act of creation, so the Inca Viracocha, the Hindu Brahma, the African Ewe tribe's Liza and the Judeo-Christian Jaweh could all be added to this list.
This would seem to be a good stage at which to raise the comparisons between certain sunset deities and the roles they fulfill as gods of essentially undeath. The usual perception is that the legends of vampires being injured by sunlight comes from the photosensitivity of the skin of porphyria sufferers, I have already mentioned the dawn as end of the nights' fears, but there is this reverse aspect of sunset and the Sun as the god of death, most often in this aspect the Sun travels through, or even presides over, the land of the dead (the underworld) during the night (Angel and Spike just slip right in here as if this niche had been made for them). Mythological examples are Ahau Kin, who becomes the Jaguar God of Death during his overnight journey, The Aztec Tezcatlipoca god of death, evil, power, the summer sun, thieves, war and weather, the Celtic Balor an ancient Sun god later characterised as a Formorian (ie a bad guy), the Egyptian gods Auf the Ram-Headed aspect of Ra in the Underworld, Seker a god of death and light whose Hawks head is reminiscent of Horus' Falcon head and was carried in a boat in rituals (however Seker was a god of death rather than life, of artisans of the necropolis rather than of Pharoes) and Set aka Seth, Sutekh the principle god of undeath, sterility, destruction, drought, evil, storms, black magic, thunder, the desert and general nastiness (who in a various stories is both paired with, and rival to, Horus).
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The Hollywood Waltz - Part II, The Snake-Eyed Warrior -- Celebaelin, 02:37:16 04/01/03 Tue
Well, Snakes, Eyes and Warriors anyway.
Snakes? Yes, snakes, they're a common theme for Sun gods world-wide and there doesn't really seem to be a good reason for that except perhaps the phallic imagery. Certainly the Sun goddesses are not associated with snakes so the idea that the imagery occurs universally because of a need for cautionary tales about snakes being dangerous, poisonous animals doesn't hold up. Sometimes snakes are symbols for Sun gods, often, but not necessarily, Sun gods with clearly identifiable fertility aspects. Examples of this mythological phenomenon are found in the Egyptian gods Ra, Horus (both via the Uraeus symbol) and Set, the Celtic gods Belenos and Cerunos (Cerunos is actually an anglicised form of the Roman name Cernnunos as given to the otherwise unnamed god consort of the goddess, often associated with Pan, Priapus and even Dionysus), the Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva, and the aztec gods Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca. But it doesn't end there, many of the Sun gods also had snake or snake-like enemies, I give you the Mesopotamian Marduk (Tiamat), the Egyptian gods Menthu (Nik), Horus (Typhon and Set) and Ra (Apep), the Greek Apollo (Python) and again the Celtic Belenos (unnamed snake-limbed giant). In the Buffyverse snakes aren't that common, probably because of the obvious phallic imagery, but we do find the mayor (now THAT is a big snake) and maybe the DMP demon, kind of, -ish, OK, OK, a phallus but not a snake - how ironic!
The Sun as the eye of a god is moderately common, the all seeing eye of the Sun god surveying the deeds of humans as he passes overhead. Sun gods are often more involved with the mortal realm than others because of what they see in their daily journey and the idea of the watcher in the sky protecting his people below is also encountered quite often. The use of the word watcher is not too far removed from what I have found in 'non-Buffocentric' source material although without the BtVS slant 'watch' and 'watching' are more likely to occur. This has connotations as regards the all seeing eye of the masons, the illuminati, or, as you might be forgiven for styling them, the Watchers Council. This does raise a question about who the WC are watching over, Giles is Buffy's Watcher, but the WC clearly see themselves as having greater power and greater responsibility. From their pov any single Slayer is merely the (temporary) instrument or device through which they manifest their power, in a sense the Slayer is the avatar of the WC. The epithet "The Eye of (Name)" for the Sun has been applied to many deities, to whit the Hindu gods Varuna and Mitras (referring to the aspect as Surya in both these instances), Ra, Horus (subsequent to Ra) and Apollo (as Apollo Helios). Similarly we find Balor of the Flaming Eye and the first common reference to a female Sun deity, the indication that the Japanese goddess Amaterasu was born from the left eye of the primeval being Izanagi. All these forms provide for the interpretation of the Sun as watcher as does the Pawnee Shakuru (who also, like Horus and Seker has associations with birds of prey). The Sun as all seeing eye and therefore an oracle is represented in mythology as the Delphic Oracle of Apollo and in BtVS as the Eye of Beljoxa [with thanks to Darby]).
The concept of the terrible eye or third eye is also often found in association with Sun gods, the right eye, (or central third eye Ureaus), of Ra the power of which is eventually handed over to Horus (who looses one eye in battle with Set but takes up the cobra symbol, the Uraeus, to cover his wound), the Flaming or Evil Eye of Balor and the fearsome third eye of Shiva. In some cultures this is definitively associated with lightning, in others the precise nature of the destruction is unspecified but reduction to ashes is to be expected. Curiously this is not what happens to humans who are struck by lightning, but it is what happens to trees that suffer that fate.
It is a short step from all seeing eye to benevolent protector and a few deities make this step notably Horus, the Sumerian/Akkadian Utu aka Shamash, Samas, the Egyptian god Montu and goddess Nut (who protects the world from the darkness outside it and all the demonic creatures that dwell in that darkness), Vishnu, Marduk and Cerunos. The parallels with Buffy as protector seem fairly straightforward, particularly with regard to Nut since this does not require any acceptance of gender switching, although the form that Nut's protection takes does not seem to be that of warrior protectress. The symbolism of horns as protection, encircling if you will, is a recurrent theme, within the temple of Apollo at Delos there was a famous altar built entirely from stag horns, the ram headed aspects of Ra, the ram-headed snakes of Cerunos, the horns of the horned god and the bulls of Shiva and Marduk (but the symbolism lacks a certain Bufficity).
There is a certain amount of cross-over between the warrior aspects of Sun deities and the common thread of death and destruction, as alluded to in the sunset-inspired aspects touched upon in Part I. I will make a distinction based on the absence of a specific god of death delineation and infer that the war god is a protection aspect whereas the death or underworld representations are destruction aspects. In BtVS, apart from the various warriors for, and champions of, good of no uncertain ability there's also Xanders 'soldier guy', who has saved the day from time to time. Many Sun gods were warriors without being war gods but the following definitely have the war god aspect Menthu, the Haitian Ku, the Mesopotamian Inanna (perhaps the best match yet for Buffy, Inanna is the goddess of fertility, heaven, life, light, love and war), the Norse Freyr (god of fruit, rain, peace, pleasure, prosperity, sunshine, war), Utu, the Armenian Vahagn, Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca and a much earlier Aztec Sun deity Tonatiuh.
If you're not bored rigid by the lists yet, and heaven help me I'm not (eventually some speculative interpretations will emerge) part three will follow, all you have to do is figure out whether it's an April Fools joke or not.
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Fascinating posts. Please post III. & Note on Snakes in Btvs -- shadowkat, 07:35:30 04/01/03 Tue
In the Buffyverse snakes aren't that common, probably because of the obvious phallic imagery, but we do find the mayor (now THAT is a big snake) and maybe the DMP demon, kind of, -ish, OK, OK, a phallus but not a snake - how ironic!
Not sure if you're being sarcastic here, but just in case you aren't. Snakes are very common in Btvs.
1. We get the snake demon that is created by Glory in the episode Shadow S5. In that episode the snake is used by Glory to hunt down the key. It can see the key. Once it does, it rushes back to her.
2. In Season 3, we get the huge snake like monster that the Mayor has created a shrine for and is feeding babies to - in Band Candy. The snake comes out of the gutter to eat the children. Buffy destroys it with fire. Just as she later
destroys the Mayor.
3. We have the snakes appear in I Only Have Eyes For You S2, they attack Cordelia in the neck, along with others in the school cafeteria - a ghostly manifestation?
4. In DMP, that creature that erupted from the woman's head was supposed to be an eel according to interviews, but the phallus also has the snake like connotation.
5. We also have Willow shown with snakes - once in Tough Love when she tries to use a snake to grab Glory's ankle and once in Bargaining Part I, where she literally vomits a snake during her incantation.
The writers appear to use snakes repeatedly in their writing, and everytime they do, the effect is somewhat silly. I think it may be partly phallic, but it could also
represent the image of the snake mythologically which is the concept of the unconscious self awakening.
One more thing to add? Have you thought of analyzing the sun metaphors in Angel? They are even more prevalent this season. Assuming you've seen it. IF not, ignore me.
Fascinating post. Thanks
SK
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Snakes in Btvs -- Celebaelin, 08:26:31 04/01/03 Tue
You're right of course, I'm particularly humbled by forgetting Band Candy and Becoming Part I. But still, not so many snakes that everyone is saying "What's with the snakes?" Part III approacheth..eth..eth
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How about Machida from Reptile Boy? -- CW, 08:52:22 04/01/03 Tue
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Snakes from the perspective of ancient man -- lunasea, 09:23:22 04/01/03 Tue
It has been a while since I did a paper on snakes, so I don't have all the references and gods names (I really stink on names) any more. Sorry if this is so sketchy. I might be able to find the paper if anyone is really interested.
First thing I learned when interpreting ancient mythology was to remove my modern perspective. It is our current scientific understanding which messes up things like what Nirvana means. It is our current belief about anatomy/physiology that misunderstands much of the Old Testament (ex: why Eve was made from Adam's rib or what "The words of God are written on the Heart" mean) There is a collective unconscious which give rise to the archetypes, but the form those take is dependant on various things.
Snakes are an interesting symbol. Snakes are a unique creature. When looking at the symbolism behind them, you have to look at them as ancient cultures did.
1) Since snakes shed their skins, many thought them to be immortal
2) This shedding of skin was also symbolic of transformations that occur with man, including the soul shedding the body/skin in death
3)To further the death symbolism, some snakes are deadly and since they live underground they were believed to be part of the underworld
4) Since they also lived above ground, they were seen as mediators between the underworld/death and earth/living - later this also became heaven & earth, good & evil, male & female
5) Since snakes descended to the belly of Mother Earth, they were believed to be guardians of hidden riches - from material wealth to the secret knowledge of Mother Earth (Snakes guarded the Book of Thoth)
6) The phallic nature of snakes coupled with the creation myths that went with them have led snakes to be equated with sex.
Snake symbols abound:
- The caduceus (the symbol for medicine) is 2 snakes coiled around the Tree of Life (another universal symbol that is interesting; it was turned into the cross by Christians)
- The Ouroboros or world snake is a snake eating its tail coiled around the World Egg
- The Yin-Yang evolved from 2 snakes eating each others tail
-EVERY religion (including Christianity) has dieties that take the form of snakes
The Buffyverse probably doesn't use snakes so much because our modern scientific understanding of them takes away all the richness that our ancestors saw them having.
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The caduceus -- Darby, 11:54:42 04/01/03 Tue
The caduceus is a fancied-up version of a worm-removal device that has been employed virtually as far back as records go and still are used today against what gets translated in Biblical passages as "fiery serpents" - actually a nasty roundworm called Dracunculus. For a very long time, it was one of the few effective treatments that doctors could provide. It also didn't add a second "snake" until, if I'm remembering this right, the Romans (although it could be Greece). This also presents another problem in talking about "snakes" and the ancients - an awful lot of the time, snakes aren't even being discussed, but rather some other cylindrical animal, so applying generalities like skin-shedding, venom, and even habitat (there's a derivation of the term "sea serpent," not too surprisingly) to the ancient's "knowledge" of snakes is also applying modern sensibilities to them. I'm not saying the connections don't exist in some cases, but sometimes it seems that the connections are based upon assumptions and translations that may not be valid.
And are you seriously suggesting that the origin of the Christian cross is something other than the obvious, because an older symbol also is shaped like a "t"?
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Re: The caduceus -- lunasea, 12:55:35 04/01/03 Tue
And are you seriously suggesting that the origin of the Christian cross is something other than the obvious, because an older symbol also is shaped like a "t"?
In a word, yes. The DEATH of Jesus isn't what Christianity is about (or has become about). The LIFE and RESURRECTION are. Why is the main identifying symbol the cross or crucifix?
On top of that Christianity is well-known for planting itself on top of the local religions. "You have that story or symbol? It is just like X." Makes the transition easier. There is plenty of paganism "hidden" and not-so hidden in Christianity. Are you going to contest this?
Many of these symbols do have mundane existances. They transcend that. A tree. What a beautiful thing. Probably one of the richest symbols there are. How many myths involve trees? How many tree-like symbols are there in various mythologies. I often wonder if all those "cool" people with Celtic Knots tatooted on them have the remotest clue what they have permanently etched onto their bodies.
Something as mundane as a worm-removal device wouldn't excite our imaginations for millenia. That symbol touches us somewhere inside. When we talk about mythology, isn't that what we are talking about? I was just trying to give a bit about that ancient man's insides to see what it was touching.
Whenever we are talking interpreting ancient anything it is hypothesis. Saying the caduceus is a worm removal device is yet another hypothesis. Symbols work because they aren't consciously designed. They are the unconscious speaking to other unconsciouses. When the conscious gets involved, they loose their potency.
Another interesting symbol, if we are talking about the sun, is the svastika and the various wheels of various things (was that general enough)
Then to bring this all back to Buffy, how many of these symbols are deliberate and how many are unconsciously put there? A lot is deliberate, but in a lot of ways, I see the entire show as only being able to come from an atheist. A theist would express many of these ideas through his/her faith. An atheist doesn't have that outlet. His/her transcendent function works in other ways. I think Marti is correct in her assessment that the psychological underpinnings of the show are Joss exploration of being exceptional. I wonder what his dreams are like. Is that what we see every week? Is Joss so self aware that his unconscious can give him these and then his conscious can break them down and build them up into what we watch?
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Darby re: the cross -- KdS, 13:02:36 04/01/03 Tue
I'm willing to be corrected by a more expert church historian, but my understanding of early Christianity is that the cross didn't start being used as a, or the Christian symbol until some generations after the life of Jesus (for details from one very reliable religious information website see http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_symb.htm). Given this gap, I think it's quite reasonable to consider explanations for its adoption beyond the obvious one. (See also lunasea's post below for more suggestions.)
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Re: Darby re: the cross -- lunasea, 14:17:48 04/01/03 Tue
Early Christians had to hide. The Apostles were martyred and after Rome burned in 64AD, Nero blamed it on the Christians and persecuted them ruthlessly.
One of the early symbols Christians used to identify themselves was the fish. The origins of it aren't completely clear. There are plenty of fish references in the Bible as well as one of the important miracles involves fish. There is also the theory that IXTHUS was an early Christian acronym.("Jesus Christ,Saviour, of God the son, saviour", spelled out in Greek)
You are correct about the cross. It really doesn't gain favor with Christian circles until Constantine. The New Testament does not say that Jesus was nailed to a cross, but rather a xulon (It tends to mean tree) or stauros (which means stake). Constantine saw a vision of a cross along with the words en toutw nika (by this conquer), which is why he "converted" to Christianity (there is evidence that it may have only been in name)
My favorite source for things historical about Jesus is the Jesus Seminar. Really nice guys (mostly guys any way) to clueless women who just want to learn more (that would be me). They could turn on each other though. It was a bit disconcerting to see people yell at each other in multiple dead language.
The cross in various forms is very important to: Bacchus/Janus, Tammuz, Osiris, and Krishna. It is a great symbol to discuss. There are some incredibly interesting archeological crosses, including the Callanish Standing Stones which were believed to be erected around 2000 BCE. The Vestal Virgins wore cross suspended from their necklaces.
I'm going to stop before I keep going. The cross was one of the symbols I had to research once upon a time.
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Re: Snakes from the perspective of ancient man -- Resh, 12:36:03 04/01/03 Tue
Lunasea: "-EVERY religion (including Christianity) has dieties that take the form of snakes"
You might want to be a little more careful with such broad over-generalizations. Most Polynesian religions don't feature any dieties in the form of snakes, primarily because many populated Pacific islands didn't have snakes until Western colonizers brought them in the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries. Hawai'i is one of the few places on earth that still has no snakes and people here take very seriously the effort to keep out the brown tree snake, which was recently introduced on Guam and has nearly eradicated that island's entire bird population.
I get your point that modern investigators should be conscious of not imposing presentist assumptions on ancient knowledge, but it seems to me that your phrase "ancient man" (perhaps unwittingly) collapses an extremely diverse assorment of humans and their cultures into a rather limiting aggregate whose perspective then can be catagorized as singular ("the" perspective). Not your intention, I presume, but troubling nonetheless.
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Re: Snakes from the perspective of ancient man -- lunasea, 13:26:56 04/01/03 Tue
Maybe I should amend that to perspective of ancient man in the mythological systems brought up.
What is fascinating when looking at things like Polynesian systems is what symbols they do use to "replace" (bad word choice, I know) the things that they don't have experience with.
Another interesting thing is to look at the various flood naratives and see how societies that didn't have such floods expressed things.
For me, when various goddesses from various systems are just equated, it rubs me wrong. There is a common "energy" (for lack of a better word), but the expression tells us a lot about the society the particular arose in. There is legitimacy in equating Sumer-Babylonian and Judaism, seeing as Judiasm evolves from it. From these differences, we can see how society evolving affects the mythology. When we start equating Greek and Sumer-Babylonian something inside of me doesn't like that. Equating Buffy with ancient goddesses that were born in violent societies that struggled for survival, yuck.
I can see how my statement rubbed you wrong. I offer my humble appologies.
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Re: Snakes from the perspective of ancient man -- Darby, 14:24:49 04/01/03 Tue
We have incredibly different world views here.
I really don't understand how, on the one hand, you invoke some "collective unconscious" to "explain" symbols that really don't need to be explained, or at least not in universals that really aren't, pulling them under some (to me) extremely artificial unification system, but are irritated when others do that with symbols that happen to be goddesses.
The Tree of Life is particularly pertinent to the snake, too, in that folks see snakes where they weren't - it's just an extremely common body types in a wide range of animals - and trees too, especially if all you need is a trunk and the barest suggestion of branches. The problem with looking for patterns is that the act itself powerfully presupposes that they exist. Sorry, this presses my postmodernist button very strongly.
I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it. - Ashleigh Brilliant.
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Let me explain it this way -- lunasea, 14:44:12 04/01/03 Tue
All of these symbols are the forms that archetypes take. Archetypes aren't the symbols themselves. Archetypes are the psychic counterpart to instinct. It is an energy that drives us.
We have an instinct to be nurtured and to nurture others. This takes form as mother and child. We have an instinct to be protected and to protect others. This takes form as father and child. There is a psychic pull towards wholeness that takes many forms, including circles. There is a process that is life which takes many forms including wheels and the path of the sun. (that is the simple version)
At their base, things have these instincts in common. That is one thing. I agree, support and applaud essays that take symbols back to these instinct. That is where the archetypes and commonalities are.
But, when we are talking about the various incarnations of the goddess/mother, we are looking at societies that have little in common with today. Of course Kali is a dark mother. It was a dark time. Not evil, but survival was a constant struggle. Out of that struggle, Kali was born. Struggle today? Please. Where to find the biggest SUV isn't a struggle. We are using powerful symbols for weanie problems.
The tree of life is a fascinating symbol. One of my favorite stories is Shel Silversteins "The Giving Tree." It explains many of the facets of this symbol.
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The function of narrative and art -- Rahael, 15:05:45 04/01/03 Tue
Saying that dark times give rise to dark metaphors/legends/religious archetypes is a pretty functionalist way of looking at narrative and myth, and one which I resist. When I look at past societies, I do not say "why would they need this, what did this story provide for them, why did this story make their society function better". Instead I think, how does this narrative let me into their culture? what does this tell me about the way they see their world, and what *disjunctures* are there between the stories they tell and how they live? What do these disjunctures tell me about them? And, what if, perish the thought, these stories exist because they are wonderful to listen to, wonderful to write and read and see? That our imagination just responds to them no matter how 'dark' or 'light' our worlds are and our struggles are?
Stories are wonderful, they are essential to life. But to approach them as telling us something about *material* conditions is rather reductive. Especially when one story continues to hold power over cultures throughout changing economic times, through changing social times, through chaos or stability. It's not that the story gives society a way to function. It's *telling* the story. It's *listening* to it. It's making and performing art through stories that have resonances for us that societies and cultures want and need.
Kali the dark mother does not work just because a society is dark or struggling. That seems to me to say something more about our attitude to what she represents than what any culture in the past may see in her. THere is no fixed truth in a huge mythic figure. Instead, like the round communion wafer, a simple image holds a multitude of truths, even in one war torn country. Even in a Europe torn apart by religious strife, they turned to one book....
Even a character in a tv show, just on one internet board seems to hold all sorts of different meanings and emotional resonances. The longer a story lasts in a cultural imagination, the more it's sure to be malleable, changeable, dynamic and unstatic in meaning. Kali didn't just arise in one society and then stay that away. Like all narratives she arises again and again, reinterpreted, with new resonances in new contexts. The whole of the Indian subcontinent is not one society. Not now, not in the last century, and certainly not if taken as a whole over past centuries.
So why assume that one figure in a story has a fixed meaning for a culture (which one cannot even generalise about even in one single moment in time) over long stretches of time? Why assume that they lived in a dark age at all? AIt seems profoundly ahistorical....
PS I'm sitting with Darby in the postmodernist corner ;)
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Re: The function of narrative and art -- Darby, 16:31:56 04/01/03 Tue
Thanks, Rah, I had nothing, um, useful to contribute.
Would it surprise you that I agree with you but come at it from the other side, the reductionist? I'm thinking (gasp!) that the changing story serves a purpose in its changing form, that it's adapting - if it doesn't, and it no longer has a place, it fades away. But certain stories that tap into basic human nature may make with the slipperiness but will always have a place with some tweaks. Archetypes by a somewhat different route - I take my epigenetics minus the psychic interpretations.
I used to go out with someone who would look at nature and be in awe at the majesty of Creation; I would see a near-infinite sequence of tiny events that rolled in no particular direction to get to that single point and feel how incredible that was. But I think that the basic feelings we had about a summer day in the forest were pretty much the same. Did that make any kind of relevant sense? I don't have your talent for describing a personal experience in a way that perfectly crystallizes a theme or feeling under discussion.
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LOL! -- Rahael, 16:55:17 04/01/03 Tue
Doesn't surprise me!
And the awe and the majesty of creation? You put it very well - I often see both perspectives....just like walking in a space, both social and physical that has been shaped by tiny, and big historical events. And, yet, beautiful as a whole too, even without that context. The ancient walls that whisper.
Literature within its social context, reflecting, resonating and arguing with its time - awe inspiring when seen in that perspective as well as simply read and enjoyed on its own.
As for the reductionist perspective, it might get too close (whisper it!) to the meme debate. Ahh! happy days!
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Re: The Meme Debate -- AngelVSAngelus, 22:09:05 04/01/03 Tue
Would you mind elaborating on what the meme debate is?
I recently read alot of stuff about memetics and the theory of information infection, inspired, oddly enough, by a videogame that introduced me to the idea (hey, sometimes they're just as viable and valid pop cultural sources of information and inspiration as Buffy!). I don't think I fully grasped the idea, though, and fear that I may have been taking the idea of survival-minded information-creatures spreading by societal paradigm and communication a little too literally for the cool factor of visualizing the whole process (connecting neurons, little guys that hop from brain to brain)
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Re: The Meme Debate -- Rahael, 02:27:37 04/03/03 Thu
There was a really really long running heated debate about memes a while back on the board. When I get a moment, I'll try and track it down in the archives for you...
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The Meme Debate - Day One -- Darby, 07:31:35 04/03/03 Thu
It all started in the thread here:
http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/sep02_p11.html#41
It started on the nature of magic, veered into the nature of addiction, then careened into the nature of culture propagation, where it growled and wheezed and sucked the life out of everybody while I couldn't keep my keyboardy mouth shut. It's kind of the prototypical ATPo thread. Except, you know, for the lack of philosophy.
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Memes, genetics and Culture vs the Apparatus of State -- Celebaelin, 03:14:53 04/04/03 Fri
...and lists of three! But only to this extent. Oh rats that's four, oh well.
I've looked at the meme debate, which was held before I got webbed up at home, and I'm a little bit uncomfortable with the some of the comparisons to genetics that were drawn. In the case of genetics a given allele is present at a locus or it isn't and that seems to be the way that culture is being considered, culture A replaces culture B in region X like throwing a switch, bang, culture B is history, literally. I don't suppose that that is what was intended but that is the impression that I got and needless to say I don't think it works like that. Going back to genetics, what I consider a closer analogy can be found, a given gene may be present in multiple copies allowing for variation in alleles to occur at the different loci so the 'culturotype' (I'm making a reference to genotype) of region X is not AA or BB or even AB (which I suppose would equate to a transitional period in that scheme of logic) but AA BB (and possibly CC DD EE etc. as well). I mustn't get carried away with the techno-babble here b/c I'm a prokaryote geneticist in as much as I'm a geneticist at all (more of a genetic engineer, yesterday I couldn't even spell engineer now I are one).
Anyway my concept of the process is that the memes associated with the spreading culture can be transferred to the existing population of the region without necessarily displacing the memes associated with the previous culture. Lets call the memes associated with the expanding military/political/economic entity MCA and those associated with the existing culture that it has encountered MCB. Whilst part of the process of conquest (in some form) is the 'insertion' of MCA into the region this does not preclude the 'inoculation' of the expanding culture with MCB. We see this all the time with the Romans and their worship, what's the easiest way of preventing a religious war? Say yes to all religions (but keep the power separate). Add to this an equivalent concept to the idea that a unit of inheritance need not necessarily be as large as an entire gene (like dropping the odd French word into a conversation but not actually speaking in French all the time, or at all, n'est ce pas!) and we might be approaching a common concept.
I've actually got a visible hourglass symbol on my forehead and a "Please wait..." message at eye-level while I'm trying to decide whether or not cultures do "evolve" in a sense comparable to the way in which species evolve. Living creatures evolve, the selection pressures are identifiable and their affects are mediated through reproductive success, but my current thinking is that cultures are chosen not externally imposed (although I'm still conducting an internal debate). As an example the Normans had to 'subvert' the Arthurian legend because the story raised powerful nationalistic feelings, they altered it slightly in their manipulation (Lancelot is a French invention with no mythical precedent) but in the end it is still the same collection of ancient Celtic myth flavoured with post-Roman history. A Dark-Age legend that, at least notionally, is as familiar to most English speakers today as it was to the people of pre-Norman Britain (who didn't speak English as we know it today of course). There is no necessity to make a choice between Arthur and Gilgamesh or David or George Washington for that matter. They all have their place and their stories communicate something of the realities of human nature the world we inhabit.
In imminent danger of rambling now, best not witter on.
C
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Re: Memes, genetics and Culture vs the Apparatus of State -- Darby, 05:19:06 04/04/03 Fri
It's okay, we can discuss this, nobody else is reading this far down anyway...
The point I was trying to make is that, conceptually, there are processes at work in the spread and change of cultures that could be compared to biological selection, especially changes on the population level. It's one of those suggestions that falls apart immediately if one looks for precise analogies at every turn, but just the investigation that sees, "Okay, there's a fair comparison here, but this really doesn't work the same way" is, I think, valuable. We originally got bogged down in the Lamarckian aspect of culture "inheritance," but that wouldn't bother someone working in plasmids so much, I would suspect, right?
I still thinks the basic premise holds up - the fun comes in deciding what qualifies as a "meme / gene" - is it a language ("French") or particular aspects that can be applied to language (say, "gendered nouns")? Nationalistic hero stories or plot details of such stories ( Joseph Campbell becomes a descriptive geneticist!)? Personally, I think that language is a multi-gene trait, but then the discussion gets way too bogged down in teeny-tiny things.
If selection happens, what are the pressures? That too is another button-pushing area, since "adaptive" becomes synonymous in folks' heads with "better" (a Lamarckian concept we're having much more trouble discarding), and often the subversion of one culture by another is rife with evil acts. But, of course, cultures don't really "replace" one another, they blend and evolve the way that other colliding systems, including gene pools, do. Or do they?
Did that make any more sense? Hey, I'm snowed out of class today, I gotta talk confusingly at somebody!
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Re: Memes, genetics and Culture vs the Apparatus of State -- lunasea, 06:19:55 04/04/03 Fri
The problem with Memes and culture for me is that a chromosome is fairly simple and there are a few basic rules is follows. We are only dealing with four nucleotides.
When we get into looking at culture from this perspective we are looking at genetics to the 1,000 power. All that complexity tends to break down the rules.
It could very well be an accurate model, but what value would such an unweildy model have? A model's value tends to be in simplifying "reality."
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Re: Memes, genetics and Culture vs the Apparatus of State -- Darby, 07:44:39 04/04/03 Fri
Okay, you have to find whoever taught you that genetics is simple and hit them upside the head. You can't reduce it to nucleotides, any more than you can reduce what we're doing here to a sequence of ones and zeroes. It isn't untrue, but it doesn't come close to representing the complexities involved.
Are you a simple product of your genes? Is your culture a simple product of the memes you've picked up? Those questions invoke equal complexity, but there are aspects of the processes for both that may work in very similar ways.
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Re: Memes, genetics and Culture vs the Apparatus of State -- lunasea, 09:46:53 04/04/03 Fri
Okay, you have to find whoever taught you that genetics is simple and hit them upside the head. You can't reduce it to nucleotides, any more than you can reduce what we're doing here to a sequence of ones and zeroes. It isn't untrue, but it doesn't come close to representing the complexities involved.
Studied at the Johns Hopkins University.
Ever read Eclid's The Elements? All those theorems come from 5 postulates and 5 common notations, 10 rudimentary concepts.
Are you a simple product of your genes?
Genetics isn't the study of "me." It is the study of my genes and their inheritance. Genetics is but one part of the study of "me." It involves karyotypes and statistics. In its simplest form it involves Punnett squares. In it most complicated, it involves math majors.
That is why I get wary when people start to compare genetics to other things. I can run a karyotype. I can actually see the individual nucleotides and map out our genetic code (well, I can't any more. I dropped that major sophomore year) This is a physical thing that has physical expressions. It doesn't involve my mind.
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Re: The Meme Debate -- Celebaelin, 08:11:00 04/04/03 Fri
A meme as I understand it is almost exactly the opposite side of the coin from an archetype. An archetype requires that the psyche of an individual (human, for human archetypes anyway - whoa, let's not get into that) be involved. A meme can exist in isolation, like a virus but without any physical form, just a disembodied idea floating around waiting for somebody to catch hold of it, mentally speaking, and 'have' it. I guess whenever you interpret, or read between the lines, or have a new idea,it's meme time. When you aquire only the knowledge delineated by another no new 'meme contagion event' is occuring.
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Re: The Meme Debate -- Darby, 09:36:55 04/04/03 Fri
Is there really any such thing as a new idea, or are they just mutations of existing ideas?
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Re: The Meme Debate -- Celebaelin, 13:45:03 04/04/03 Fri
Mutations are new. At least they can be, not that they necessarily are.
Oh, and yes, plasmids (everything from the 'new' genetic construct through to product purification in fact) vaguely self-satisfied smile, stares off into space dreaming of SCP, photosynthetic water crackers, artificial natural fibres, etc. etc. etc..
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Re: The Meme Debate -- Darby, 15:58:21 04/04/03 Fri
Well, there's new and there's new - how often is a mutation effect (the few that have any real effect) just a variation on the "old" effect, and how often is something really new at work? Ideas work the same way - most changes are nothing uniquely new.
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Oh come on -- Celebaelin, 16:48:44 04/04/03 Fri
The whole principle of evolution is based on sequential small changes which over time lead to a re-modelling of form and function. To discount a non-lethal point mutation because it isn't sufficiently different to the 'parental' gene is surely missing the ahahaha point entirely?
I once tried to get a barrister to commit himself to an opinion (never easy when no money is changing hands, no offence like!) regarding genetic copyright (thinking that somebody ought to have a framework before the software lawyers muscle in with their legislative Toetectors on and start making a nonsense of the technicalities). He was quite evasive but compared it to musical copyright in his perception. That is inadequate IMNSHO as changes in a single amino acid residue can potentially affect substrate specificity, reaction rate (ie turnover number), position of equilibrium (ie activity), multimeric status (and thence co-operativity if present) and as such the biological and/or commercial implication could be immense. A change in an enzyme's activation energy for example, particularly if, as an extreme example, it totally abolished ATP demand would radically alter the efficiency of the pathway(s) involved (and/or the costs of a related manufacturing process). Now, given the length of time that evolution has been acting on the genetic material this kind of minor change leading to an uncoupling of an enzymic step from energy demands is unlikely not to have already occured (and persisted) in nature if it yields a viable organism. However in principle it does remain possible, for instance if the population number and/or reproduction rate is low. As a matter of interest under US law you can copyright a gene which has been demonstrated to occur in nature, ie find it and copyright it, under UK law you would have to demonstrate that it is a novel sequence eg the extremely lucrative 'ideal' fat emulsifier. Retaining broad enzyme specificity may be advantageous to the organism (or it may not) but it is in all probability going to be merely an inefficiency from the standpoint of an in vessel pharmaceutical production process.
In terms of obvious phenotypical changes non-detrimental mutations (that don't involve substantial deletions) are quite tricky to spot with re-sequencing to entire (plasmid) genome but cumulatively over time, well, E. coli 'equals' E. lephant. That was meant originally from the molecular biology standpoint but I think it applies equally well to evolution, it's just a matter of time!
C
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Re the last paragraph of the above post... -- Celebaelin, 17:08:29 04/04/03 Fri
reads as nonsense. How I read through it prior to approval I have no idea.
In terms of obvious phenotypical changes non-detrimental mutations (that don't involve substantial deletions) are quite tricky to spot without re-sequencing the entire (plasmid) genome. Mutations are brought about by DNA Polymerase once in roughly every 1014 base additions (the resultant organisms are not GMOs, they're natural) but most of them are non-viable or have no effect. Some do have a (usually minor) effect cumulatively over time, well, E. coli 'equals' E. lephant. That comment was meant originally from the molecular biology standpoint but I think it applies equally well to evolution, it's just a matter of time! I would maintain that the use of specific site-directed mutagenisis does generate a new genetic form (a GMO), the Environmental Protection Act (1994) agrees (or I agree with it, whichever).
C
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I don't want to hijack this wonderful thread -- lunasea, 19:23:49 04/01/03 Tue
I just wanted to give some stuff that may explain why sun gods are linked with snakes. I didn't want it to get this involved, though it has been interesting to find out the perspectives of my fellow posters and where they are coming from.
I have to say that "postmodern" has always been one of my favorite terms. It is like pre-board. How is something "postmodern"? Modern is "of, relating to or characteristic of a period extending fom a relevant remote past to the present time." How does one go post this? Do you have a time machine?
I was just giving my perspective. I will not say that my positions are universal. Not sure if we can get at the universal position. I will say that my positions are valid to my existance and they approach things that are effective for what I want. They also every now and then are interesting to others (though I'm never sure what is interesting and what is drivel, so I toss it all out there)
My approach to things does tend to be pretty functional. I have an incredible imagination and get lost in my own stories. What I like better than the *telling* and *listening* is *writing* it. I like when *MY* unconscious speaks to me. Sophia is pretty entertaining.
Back to the interesting thread.
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Great stuff, Celebaelin -- Random, 10:22:36 04/01/03 Tue
Wonderful, Celebaelin
The Pytho[n] of Greek myth bears further reflection. He guarded the sacred stone omphalos, literally "navel" -- a twofold fertility and natal image -- until Apollo killed him. The spot was sacred, incidentally, because of the myth that Zeus sent two eagles to ascertain the centre of the world...which, not surprisingly, was located by the Greeks smackdab in their own territory, at Delphi. Apollo decided to establish a temple there and had to slay the location's guardian. Upon doing so, he (after paying penance for killing Pytho) established the famous temple of Delphi and its oracular high priestess, the Pythia, named after Pytho (which, ironically, led to the name adjective Pythian being associated with Apollo, Pytho's slayer.) It is significant that the oracle of Delphi was always female. It is equally significant that, for all her oracular power, she was a hysteric (feminists watchword), her prophetical ravings being transcribed by other priests and priestesses and then interpreted into understandable, if ambiguous, language. In any event, knowledge lay in the hands of a woman...and this same knowledge was encapsulated in insanity. Make what you will of that.
Further notes:
Tiamat is a fascinating serpent/dragon figure in her own right, the embodiment primeval, undulating chaos. She also represents the ocean, which must have seemed as close to overpowering, chaotic force as the ancient Mesopotamian's could possibly know. Tiamat's slaying by Marduk provides a profound understanding of ancient psychology when we understand that she was, despite being primeval chaos, an impediment to the creation of the universe. She represented fertility in only the most horrific way, giving birth to deformed, monstrous creatures as primal as herself (it's an interesting though, in light of modern understanding of the role of the ocean in evolution)
I am also reminded of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the famous feathered serpent -- perhaps the most benevolent serpent diety around. He often formed a counterpart to Tezcatlipoca. Like many snake figures, he too was associated with fertility. In one famous myth, he engaged in a losing power-struggle with Tezcatlipoca, who was, in general, the dominant and most destructive god of MesoAmerican myth. Quetzalcoatl lost went the auto-de-fe route. He was then reborn as the planet Venus.
Interesting stuff. Can't wait for more.
~Random
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re: April Fool metaphors -- MsGiles, 10:27:10 04/01/03 Tue
Ah .. the April Fool .. The Fool, the Trickster, Loki, Anansi, Brer Rabbit, the Bringer of Change, the Lord of Misrule, S6 Spike. April: Easter, Eostre, Goddess of the Dawn, Goddess of sacrifice and resurrection, of fertility, eggs and Easter Bunnies. Buffy, the Sacrifice to the Dawn, the means that life continues, that ensures the rising of the sun, the growth of crops, the turning of the great cycle. Buffy and Spike: together the Sacrifice and the Trickster, the eternal April Fool motif of Winter's death and Summers rising. The mourners gather round the tomb and Osiris/Christ/Buffy/Persephone/Eurydice/Enki metaphorically rises, points at them, and says: HaHa had you that time!
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Or even Beltane -- Celebaelin, 11:37:03 04/01/03 Tue
Beltane is strictly the vernal equinox I think (March 21st) but the essence of it is that traditionally this was considered as the start of the new year (Beltane has the root Bel as in Belenos, god of the Sun). The version I heard was that the Christians and the Pagans co-existed but laughed at each other for celebrating at the wrong time. April Fools day, Easter (the original movable feast), Mayday (May 1st often now thought of as Beltane), they're all wrong apparently - so I've heard anyway, the joke might be on me.
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Vernal Equinox? -- MsGiles, 01:56:20 04/02/03 Wed
Hmm. March 20 is the vernal equinox this year. Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Early Egyptians built the Great Sphinx so that it points directly toward the rising Sun on the day of the vernal equinox. (according to factmonster.com)
Apparently the Romans celebrated the start of spring on April 1 at one stage. The Hindu festival of Holi, which involves throwing coloured water and high jinks, is towards the end of March, March 18 this year. The Japanese festival Sakura Matsuri covers the end of March, start of April, but this is the peaceful Cherry Blossom festival, very aesthetic and not at all prankish as far as I can see!
However Beltane is the the start of solar summer, and is on May 1, also Walpurgisnacht and the late Roman Floralia. Walpurgisnacht derives its name from Walburga, Abbess of Heidenheim near Eichstatt, who became identified as a protector against witchcraft and sorcery. On the eve of May 1, in Germany, it's traditional to repel evil spirits by making as much noise as possible (especially boys). In Bavaria it's called Freinacht, and they remove garden gates etc in April Fool style.
May Day in England used to involve lots of sex and the phallic maypole '...The children of May marriages were often called Jackson, Hodson or Robinson since they were the children of the Jack in the Green, Hod (a woodland sprite) or Robin Goodfellow (or Robin Hood, another form of the Green Man)....'(Waverly Fitzgerald)
The Celtic start of spring festival, Imbolc or Oimelc, sacred to Brigid, a goddess of regeneration and abundance, is on Feb 1.
I still like the idea that the great cosmic cycle of death and regeneration was the original April fools joke!
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& there's purim, anyone mention purim? (3/18 this gregorian year) -- anom, 23:12:51 04/02/03 Wed
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Not that I found, do tell. -- Celebaelin, 23:43:47 04/02/03 Wed
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Re: Vernal Equinox? -- Celebaelin, 23:42:35 04/02/03 Wed
As I said I'm familiar with the idea that Beltane is May 1st, and it's perfectly possible that this was always the case but it seems fairly arbitrary to me. After the vernal equinox the days are longer than the nights, light has triumphed. It is an identifiable annual solar event and it seems logical to me that this would be 'The Druids' Choice'. I could easily be wrong but since the Romans killed all the Druids there is an enforced break in tradition and a loss of much Druidic knowledge and ritual. There is a stone age chamber on Anglesea (the island off the Welsh coast which the Druids withdrew to but which the Romans attacked) which has the recession of Venus (a forty year cycle) marked on one of the uprights at the entrance, this cycle was not to science until roughly the mid 1700s and the records of the markings pre-date that. It is precisely this kind of astrological knowledge that the Romans feared, and why they had to act. Don't forget they burnt the Library at Alexandria as well so a few 'barbarian' sky watchers wouldn't mean much to them. My guess is that all this astronomical stuff was a big deal to the Druids and that they called the shots about when the religious ceremonies were held. This is of course only speculation.
In support of the May 1st suggestion we have, well, just about everybody else. This is what I found during the research, the quotes might not agree on much but they all agree about the date for Beltane Mayday Beltane (you nearly always get nice weather for it too).
I've included some other bits and pieces of interest FYI.
"The god-name Belenos is directly linked to Apollo in Romano-Celtic inscriptions. He was the god of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum in the eastern Alps, but was also known in Britain, Italy, southern Gaul and Ireland where he was associated with the myth of Balor of the Flaming Eye who was the earlier Sun God deposed by Lugh, one of the powerful Tuatha de Danaan."
"The word bel means "bright" or "brilliant" and is found in various place names associated with his cult. The Celtic ceremony of Beltane, also known popularly as May Day, marked the beginning of the Celtic summer. Ceremonies of regeneration, purification with spring water and the ritual lighting of the Bale-Fire are still connected to this day with Beltane."
"Belenos, later known as Beli Mawr (the Great), was the Celtic God of the Sun, representing the curative powers of the Sun's heat. His festival of Beltane, when bonfires were lit to welcome in the Summer and encourage the Sun's warmth, was held on May 1st, and is remembered in today's May Day festivities. His symbols were the horse (as shown, for example, by the clay horse figurine offerings at Belenos' Sainte-Sabine shrine in Burgundy), and also the Wheel (as illustrated on the famous Gundestrup Cauldron). Perhaps, like Apollo, whom he became identified with, Belenos was thought to ride the Sun across the sky in a horse-drawn chariot. Indeed, a Celtic model horse and wagon, carrying a gilded sun-disc, has been found at Trundholm in Denmark. Sometimes he is illustrated riding a single horse, throwing thunder-bolts (hence an occasional identification with Jupiter) and using his symbolic radiating wheel as a shield, as he tramples the chthonic forces of a snake-limbed giant. This personification is similar to the classic depiction of the Archangel St. Michael defeating the Devil."
"It has been suggested the Welsh form of his name, Beli Mawr, lived on into Arthurian romance as King Pellinore of Listinoire."
"It is thought by some scholars that the festival Beltane has a connection with him, and is phonetically derived from his name. As with many Celtic gods, the name of Belenos becomes denuded into pseudo historical figures with the passing of the centuries. Geoffrey of Monmouth mentions a King Bellin, who rules in Britain and establishes a castle near to the Thames in London. Bellin has a brother called Brennius, and is also the son of Lud and Lleffellys, who rule Britain and France after his death. It has even been suggested that characters in the later Arthurian cycle such as Balin and Balan in Malory's The Morte De Arthur, are derived from Belenos."
"A Solar deity, he can be seen as a Celtic equivalent of Apollo, and there are various traces of his cult in Britain. In Irish mythology he was Bile, a powerful god of the underworld."
C
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Forgot Glory's snake-demon in S5 *nt* -- Corwin of Amber, 10:33:58 04/01/03 Tue
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The Hollywood Waltz - Part III, Triads as Personification of World Perception -- Celebaelin, 16:12:19 04/01/03 Tue
Firstly I'm going to re-iterate what I've said about Re-Birth/Life/Death the cycle of nature. I've already mentioned the connotations of death and the underworld associated with Sun deities and the sunset in Part I but, at the risk of over emphasising this aspect, the associations with the concept of re-birth are not as prevalent as I would have expected. Only the Egyptian and Aztec mythologies specifically detail the re-birth of the Sun and whilst Shiva is the destroyer, a concept which is intimately cyclicly linked with a following creation in Hindu thought there is no mention of a daily re-incarnation of the Sun or any idea of a solar nekyia as relates to Shiva or his aspect as Surya.
A cultural if not mythological reference that has been popular on the board recently is that of the Dark Night of the Soul, this clearly has significance as regards Sun imagery but is covered more thoroughly in previous posts than I can hope to do justice to here. I'll call it another tick on the Buffy Sun imagery checklist though.
Before moving on to the reason all this got started, the notion of triple aspects, it is only proper that I point out that all the cultures not mentioned in what follows obviously do not have discernable (by me anyway) Sun deity triads. I've found Sun gods or closely related forms such as Sky or Light gods in thirty separate cultures and only the handful mentioned could be considered to have triadic potential even. The fact remains however that this handful contains most of the early civilisations as viewed from a conventional contemporary perspective rather than, say, a Gaian outlook.
A quick word about the primary and/or lone Sun gods, there is a certain commonality between Marduk, Apollo, Horus and Huitzilopochtli (in the last case the prediction of the eagle devouring a snake being seen in the place where the faithful were to found his city is the uniting myth). It has been suggested by more reliable sources than myself that Apollo was not Greek in origin and I suspect that these gods have a common origin, probably in Marduk, and that the idea has been embraced by other more pluralistic pantheons. The myths of Sun deities from certain cultures seem to me to 'comment' on the beliefs regarding Sun deities from other cultures in a way that makes me suspect that the correlations are not inherent and archetypal but sociological on a grand scale. This is not to deny the existence of archetypes but rather to suggest that religions are, by their nature communicated through archetypal images constructed out of words and/or depictions of the deity whereas archetypes are by definition internal. The question as concerns archetypes is not 'Do the mythologies share a common root?' but rather 'Why have a Sun deity?' Triple aspects are not restricted to Sun deities as RanRahBit's post on the Kali aspect of Parvati/Kali/Gauri shows which seems to confirm that triads themselves may be an archetype. OTOH do I ignore the existence of Uma, automatically equating her with Gauri because I find the co-ordination of the triad internally satisfying, is this in fact what we mean by the term archetype?. In the absence of the catch-all figure of Parvati would I feel the need to include Uma as a separate goddess to Gauri to re-constitute the triad? Whilst pre-occupied with the direction of this post I am certain the answer is 'Yes I would', in theory at least, but in truth I need more time to mull this over as to whether a forced interpretation of this and other potential triads is justified or in some way desirable or psychologically 'necessary'. In BtVS the portrayal of triads as separate characters is fairly scant, Xander, Giles, Angel(us) springs to mind but the Gaian witches did not attain their traditional triumvirate as per Macbeth, surely a 'missed' opportunity. There's the Troika, but that's hardly encouraging as a shining beacon of triadic potency, the Order of Taraka Assassins in What's My Line and probably others but nothing monumental, nothing 24 point bold upper case triadic. Aspects within one person are another question but it's a matter of interpretation ultimately however strongly you feel it internally.
"Triads of gods appear very early, at the primitive level. The archaic triads in the religions of antiquity and of the East are too numerous to be mentioned here. Arrangement in triads is an archetype in the history of religion, which in all probability formed the basis of the Christian Trinity" - C. G. Jung, A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity.
Jung suggested that the male trinity cast a shadow which necessitated a fourth term to achieve completeness, citing the Gnostics as a historical example to demonstrate this otherwise unspoken need. His movement towards a consistent emphasis on quarternary symbolism is somewhat at odds with my own perception but latterly he modified his thought, dividing his square into two triangles and shifting towards the idea that his addition of the 'fourth' figure, the Virgin Mary, to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (seemingly confirmed by the Pope's declaration of the doctrine of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin in 1950) did not recognise the triadic nature of the Virgin Mother who Outlives her son in the mortal realm. The Maiden, Woman, Crone aspects seem so clear to me that I find it difficult to envisage a counter-argument to the concept that this is in fact two triads, one male, one female. As a brief aside as regards Jung's quarternary theme I've often found it difficult to distinguish between Intuition and Feeling in the sense intended by CGJ, but maybe that's just me.
The most literal triadic form seen in Sun deities is that of Dawn/Day/Sunset, I'll cite the Canaanite Shahar aka Shachar god of dawn, Moloch god of the sun (also associated with Neregal and The Archangel Michael) and Shalim god of dusk, sunset. I note with some interest the existence of Shapshu goddess of the sun aka Shapash Sun goddess, the Torch of the Gods (cw the nearby Sumerian/Akkadian god Shamash aka Utu, Samas) but will resist the temptation to call this a female triad for the Canaanites (OTOH Marduk, Utu and Shamash for the Mesopotamians you could twist my arm on). The Egyptians have Khepra, Horus and Atum (Auf only after sunset) and you could easily construct a female triad of, say, Methurt, Nut and Nephthys but without the same sort of documentary confirmation.
The male Sun triad as Youth/Man/Sorcerer is seen in the Celtic Lugh, Cerunos and Balor. The god Belenos or Beli Mawr "Beli the Great" in Welsh has been associated with all three of these aspects but I would be more likely to use Belenos interchangeably with the heroic Lugh aka Lug, Luchta than the demonic Balor but that is probably just prejudice due to the ancient Balor's bad press. The Egyptians were again in on the act with this triad represented as Horus, Ra and (in my estimation) Set. The Celtic triad can also be seen as Hunter/Sower/Reaper (hurrah!) as can the Aztec Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Huitzilopochtli (in his duality with Tlaloc and Tezcatlipoca. The Youth/Father/Greybeard form of the triad (as a direct parallel to Maiden/Mother/Crone) doesn't seem to fit the observations but perhaps this is because I have pre-conceptions about what a Greybeard should be like, if I remove what is potentially my own bias then any of the above could be applied to that form.
Now I'm going to get right down to it and suggest that an idealised (if that's the right word) form of the Sun triad would be Warrior/Watcher/Wounded King. Warriors and Watchers we have already discussed but the Wounded King is a story from Celtic mythology which seems to have resonances in many other cultures. The Wounded King is, on the surface, a cautionary tale of sterility brought on by a wound to the genitals incurred during a stag hunt. Medically if a male's sperm enters his own bloodstream because it is non-self genetically it raises antibodies to sperm which act against sperm in the testes in a quasi auto-immune manner leading to sterility. So, on that level to be avoided at virtually any cost, but the story takes on greater significance if the Wounded King is symbolic of his tribe and his land, the fate of the people hangs in the balance. This is the origin of the story of Arthur and Guinivere at its' most primitive, the King must lead in all things, even reproduction, for the vitality of the tribe, its' land and its' animals is reflected in his potency and without that the land is dying. There is also the symbolism of the pains of old age that accompany the accumulated wisdom. I have already mentioned the eye wound that Horus covers with the Uraeus, the Evil Eye of Balor results from a wound inflicted by magic smoke from the fire of his Druid father, the defeat and castration of Set by Horus and Shiva's submission to Kali are all symbolic of the wounding of the Sun King, as are any stories involving the connotations of undeath discussed earlier. The final triadic forms are rather individual yet seem related in form in some uncertain manner beyond their three-fold nature. There is the Hindu Trimurti of Creator/Preserver/Destroyer, the Christian Catholic Trinity of Son/Father/Holy Ghost and the rather benevolent Inca triad of Son/Father/Creator Manco Capac, Inti and Viracocha.
I hope those of you who have got this far have found this as interesting and informative to read as I found it in researching it, if that is not too grandiose a term for the scratching at the surface that I have done. It has certainly put a few things in a clearer focus in my mind, not least of all what I mean by an archetype. Anom and aleria may recognise some of the thoughts here, assuming they wade through it, my thanks to them both for contributing to my perception.
C
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Quick observation until I have more time.. -- Random, 17:01:42 04/01/03 Tue
Excellent again, Celebaelin.... Insofar as triads go, how about Giles/Buffy/Faith and, later, Wesley/Buffy/Faith? Very complex, very individualistic associations. What d you think?
~Random
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Oh my -- Celebaelin, 18:05:34 04/01/03 Tue
I don't mean to trivialise but all I can think about is along the lines of HonorH's "Giles' Secret Diary" Thread. Not a great fan of dodgy homoerotic fanfic (they're all gay you know, bah, stuff and nonsense) but the images you've just conjured up...deep breath, slightly worried expression.
I don't really know what you're proposing these putative triads to be representative of, or whether the presence of a watcher or a male is central to your point. Is it in fact something about sexual naivtee, or lack of it, that you're driving at? I'm far more comfortable when triads of consistent gender are proposed. How about Kennedy/Faith/Buffy?
In the pub earlier (yes, I had a break) an aquaintance, and I'm not entirely sure what prompted her, was talking about Jung's fourth term wrt the Trinity and wondering how he could have put that foreward. I suggested that it was in keeping with his ideas on the single anima figure for the polygamous male and the multiple animus figures for the monogamous female. I disagree with the forth term being a solution in the way that Jung saw it (Part III above) but suppose it is the female element of the double triad that actually demonstrates the principle of three in one and each of the male elements is separate, they are described separately when all is said and done.
There's something unpleasant lingering at the edges of my conscious thought about the Dark of the Sun or some such but I hesitate to chase it up in case it turns out to be as offensive as I suspect it is.
As Zaphod Beeblebrox said "If there's anything round here more important than my ego I want it caught and shot now!"
I'm gonna post this as I stubornly refuse to chicken out of giving an answer and this is the best I've got. You'll have to tell me what you meant now.
C
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Re: The Hollywood Waltz - Part III, Triads as Personification of World Perception -- aliera, 18:34:57 04/01/03 Tue
For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.
-- "Parable of Cervantes and Don Quixote" from El Hacedor
hey! you invoked and gosh you're welcome, I hadn't realized. The wading isn't of the longness but the density (the density of fudge not sludge no worries!) I was hoping to print this today and put it on the top of the pile closest to hand for tonight but I've been a little under the weather (the true flu my mom says) and my brain is of the density of sludge today. (And then I got involved in trying to find a pressure point to shift a oppositional situation into something better.) Really unfortunate, considering. It's just all so large isn't it? Overwhelming. No. Exciting.
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
-- Afterword to El hacedor, 1960
The thing is you made *me* realize something. And that's that I've been focused on exploration of the female this last year and although I'm very much a dilettante a dabbler I've apparently put a toe in only half the pond and that's no good, so I thank you.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-- "Poema de los Dones," from El Hacedor
(Did you come across Georges Dumezil?) And what do *you* think about all this? Does any of it echo in for you? That's what I'd like to know. The answer to the Fisher King is in asking the right question. Or so they say. I'm pretty amazed with what you've done. ;-)
Fíriel's Song
En kárielto eldain Isil, hildin Úr-anar.
Toi írimar. Ilyain antalto annar lestanen
Ilúvatáren. Ilu vanya, fanya, eari,
i-mar, ar ilqa ímen. Írima ye Númenor.
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Re: The Hollywood Waltz - Part III, Triads as Personification of World Perception -- Celebaelin, 20:49:02 04/01/03 Tue
Hi,
Did you come across Georges Dumezil?
Just this second!
Indo-European languages my foot! What a silly idea, I don't know, these philologists - they'll say anything to make an impact, the more outlandish the better. Common mythologies from India to England indeed, what will they think of next?
Or, the straight answer, yeah, that's pretty much what I think too. Considering the little that I do know I'm prompted to think that the communication of ideas happens a lot faster than may be readily apparent. I regard the commonalities that I've seen as tell-tale signs of cultural exchange, a kind of notional fluidity that combines disparate societal entities into a single interwoven body, a corpus perhaps. A body of knowledge that particular sub-groups can draw on for their individual cultural identity and perspective. Now that may sound like hogwash but if I put it in the context of my belief that, at least in part, religion originated as a tool of government, even at the tribal level and whatever else it may be it retains that purpose to some extent does it start to make more sense? The combination of church and state is a powerful one in the minds of those who are not cynical about their faith and if possible the pretexts should be questioned.
But enough of that, I might pull a mental muscle - talk about pyramid training!
C
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For an understanding of Jung and triads/quads -- lunasea, 19:50:43 04/01/03 Tue
I really recommend an exploration of Gematria, Jewish numerology. It has been a while (sorry I can't be more help), but Jung was quite familiar with it. It is key in understanding the Kabbalah.
The difference between Intuition and Feeling is that Feeling is a rational function and Intuition is an irrational. Rational functions order the world and Irrational perceive it. Irrational functions require objective stimuli, which owe their existence to physical and not to mental causes.
All four functions are vital in determining the orientations the consciousness obtains to experience: sensation tells you something exists. Thinking tells you what it is. Feeling tells you whether it is agreeable. Intuition tells you whence it coms and where it is going.
The transcendent function and mythology rise to compensate for imbalances in these four functions. I tend to test as a true freak, balanced, in these and the orientations (extro and introvert). It makes me a rather interesting person with a freakish perspective. Drove some people nuts. I'm sure it does here too.
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Re: For an understanding of Jung and triads/quads -- Celebaelin, 20:58:57 04/01/03 Tue
Thanks for the recommendation, is that with a hard 'G'?
I still don't really have a grip on the difference between Intuition and Feeling but I keep re-reading your post in the hope that something will seep in sometime soon.
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Inuition and feeling -- lunasea, 07:45:49 04/03/03 Thu
The following in NOT, I repeat NOT official Jungian thought. It is actually what precipitated my rather nasty break-up with them.
First, there is actually no such "thing" as the conscious or unconscious. It is just a label driven by perception. The brain doesn't divide things into "this is conscious" and "this is unconscious." A memory is just a neural pathway. When it is triggered, it starts a chain reaction.
Myers-Briggs pairs up the various psychological functions. What intrigued me was why the functions were paired the way they were and why I was so even in them. Thinking was an easy function to understand. So was sensation. Intuition and Feeling were more intangible.
Then it hit me, thinking and feeling are related because feeling is unconscious thinking. Intuition is unconscious sensation. When we feel somethings we are unaware of why we do. I've had many such feelings. When we intuit something, we are unaware of why we do. I have had many such intuitions.
In my need/drive/obsession to understand myself, I have looked at these feelings and the things the transcendant function has sent me. Every strong feeling I have had, I can go back and actually see the logic that led to it. I did think them through, it was just at some point I was unable for whatever reason to deal with a conclusion, so I unconsciously continued to think. Feeling is thinking without being aware of the process/logic you are using. It is just the conclusions.
Intuition is the same in regards to sensation. We are bombarded by so much stimuli that we aren't aware of it all. Things that take place in intuition are caused by stimuli that we aren't aware of.
Just my own theory.
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Aha, as in the film... -- Celebaelin, 03:08:00 04/03/03 Thu
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