From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #56 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, March 8 2000 Volume 02 : Number 056 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/comments3/7 ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/haiku ["Donald G. Keller" ] m/beethoven ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments3/7 [meredith ] Re: b/comments3/7 [allenw ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 20:12:10 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments3/7 Sorry I haven't been around much; and I really don't have much excuse. I've had this half-sheet full of notes about the last few digests and another viewing of "Who Are You?" for several days, and it's about time to regurgitate it. Let's start with a small mystery: what did Faith-as-Buffy order over the phone? Neither Deirdre or I could understand what she said at the end of the conversation besides "I'll take it." Anybody else do better? I thought at first she'd ordered something expensive and useless just to cause trouble, but the =most= plausible explanation is that it was her plane ticket; falling in line with this is the slightly odd "I've got time to kill" line and her checking the clock at Riley's. I thought at first she'd bought a ticket at the airport, but that doesn't make as much sense--she didn't have any money to speak of. (And whose passport was it?) The biggest mystery, perhaps, is =what= the hell happened between Faith-as-Buffy and Riley. I'm still puzzling over this; but I'm tending towards the opposite explanation from others here: maybe she =did= have an orgasm, =and that's exactly what freaked her out=. =Especially= when Riley then said "I love you," which is when she really lost it. The possibility that David mentioned--that the mind and the body were somewhat in dissonance, as Tara pointed out--may have had an effect (perhaps Buffy's body responded in ways that spun out of Faith's control?). Anyway...her faltering statement "What do you want from...her?" is very odd, especially to Riley, who had =no= idea what could be wrong. Did Faith feel manipulated by the situation? Out of control, certainly. She also says that it's "meaningless," and then insists "nothing" is wrong. And here's something to consider: she stays the night. And we don't really know what went on between them after the first scene ends; we see her getting up in daylight (8:25 a.m.). (Why did she need Riley's shirt, by the way?) They =did= just barely touch on the conflict between Buffy and Forrest; but Faith-as-Buffy didn't really say anything to change the situation (another lost opportunity for Faith to mess things up). Her statement about being a slayer, not a killer, is awfully interesting, though; is Buffy right after all, and Faith does feel remorse for killing several people? Or is she simply differentiating herself from Buffy, whom she believes, deep down, is a murderer? (More on this shortly.) Somewhere in between these two mysteries in "size" is: what was Faith's attitude towards Buffy's life? I have two possibilities in mind, which are not mutually exclusive: 1) she wanted to try out Buffy's life and see how she liked it (on =some= level, as Susan pointed out, she wants to =be= Buffy)--but that conflicts with the fact that she seems to have bought a plane ticket right off the bat; 2) she was simply trying not to blow her cover, and therefore tried to do what Buffy would do. (Thus her sudden realization that, oh yeah, she oughta go kill that vampire.) Was the thanks from the girl a defining moment? It did seem to take her by surprise. My surmise has always been that Faith wasn't a Slayer very long before coming to Sunnydale; Kendra was killed in May and Faith showed up that same October (roughly), so she only had a few months' experience. We =did= get the story of her being hugged by a priest, in "Faith, Hope, and Trick," but she also kind of shrugged it off. I think we maybe need more evidence to decide. But =something= persuaded her that she needed to leave the airport and go to the church; if it wasn't the thanks from the girl, what was it? Just a sense of Buffyesque duty? Seems dubious. Again, very interesting dialog with Riley outside the church: "I'm Buffy. I have to do this." (Falls under the "cover" rubric, I think.) "Don't tell me what to do" was in character for both Slayers. Then inside the church it was quite amusing to hear her say she was "the one and only" Slayer. And then Buffy-as-Faith shows up. Did anybody else get their loyalties a little confused in that fight? I got thrown off myself because they composed a shot almost =identical= to the one near the end of "Consequences" where Faith kills Mr. Trick and saves Buffy: the vampire threatening "Buffy" suddenly stiffens, turns to dust, and there's "Faith" staring at her. I forgot for a moment who was who. Some have opined that Faith-as-Buffy's frenzied "you're nothing...disgusting...murderous bitch" was Faith talking about herself; but I don't think so. First of all, she =really= freaked because she thought for sure that Buffy-as-Faith was long gone to England, and here the latter was, having to be dealt with again. As I hinted above, Faith believes, deep in her unconscious (as her dreams showed), that the murderous Buffy from "Graduation Day" is the =real= Buffy, and that she is in serious danger of her life whenever Buffy (or reasonable facsimile) is around. Buffy, on the other hand (as =her= dream showed), believes Faith to be her bond-sister in Slayerness, and holds out the faint hope of her rehabilitation. And so, in her words about sparring with Riley, she "holds back a little." (Which is another reason Faith is always able to escape.) How did Willow's "homemade" switching-device work? We really didn't see it at the fight scene. It seems to me that both of them, on being returned to their own bodies, were a little more dazed than they were at the first switch; was it because of the homemade nature of the device? I've got a little note here that says "Shared dreams--not!" Which I think was to remind me, besides reiterating what the dreams say about their differing perceptions of one another, to note this: if they =were= sharing dreams, Buffy would have been having dreams about Faith, and would have known (as she did about Drusilla in "Innocence") that Faith was about to reappear on the scene. Just a few more small things. The song that starts playing halfway through the scene with Spike is my favorite song from the new Cure album =Bloodflowers=. The nurse from the Council looked really familiar to me; I'm wondering if she also played the (present-time) teacher who was shot in "I Only Have Eyes for You." Speaking of the Council...are they =all= utterly inept? Even Giles, if you go back to the very beginning of the series, seemed a little bumbling and at sea. (Though he picked up fairly quickly.) It was kind of depressing how easily Buffy-as-Faith managed to foil them. (And a little repetitive of Faith's escape in "Consequences.") But it was a nice joke to have Buffy[-as-Faith] worried about her driving ("I can do this!"). We =know= how bad a driver Buffy is. (And note that later it was Giles driving the van.) They also didn't do anything with Faith's knife. Where is it? By the way, re Adam, there sure is a lot of Frankenstein imagery going on, =especially= the riff with the small kid (the banned scene from the original movie). And the parallel between Adam and Faith is cemented by the "dark and stormy night" feel of the hospital after her first dream. ("Dark and stormy night" as an opening line? Thunder, lightning and rain? Change and renewal? =Macbeth-=?) Prediction: Adam gets dismembered by season's end. Gayle: since you know superheroes better than I do, can you talk a bit about the "superhero monomyth," especially as Buffy follows it? For example, her birth is pretty much normal (which the hero in Campbell's monomyth is not). One more thing for this go-round: I was glad that Gayle reprinted the Petrie interview (loved the line about Joss Whedon reading both scripts and giving Petrie a job), and though I winced as I got to the "spoiler" spot, it didn't tell me that much I hadn't guessed already. I'm comfortable with the same level of spoilers as Gayle is, that is to say; I encourage anyone to speak up if that level is too high. There's =that= piece of paper dealt with; on to some more "trivial" matters. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 20:16:02 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/haiku I wrote a "haiku" the other day. Why the quote marks? Well, here it is: "???" "!!!!!" "..." Yeah, I know, it's more concrete poetry than haiku; but I was inordinately pleased with it, because to me it's clearly the "archetype" if you will of the kind of conversation I have with more cynical acquaintances about my enthusiasms. Still, since the people I showed it to had the kind of reaction the last line indicates (self-reference a specialty), I decided to try and write a =real= haiku that conveyed the same "message": "Isn't she a freak?" "Kristeen Young is the greatest!" "Whatever you say..." Then,the next night while trying to go to sleep, I came up with a few more: "What =are= you watching?" "=Buffy the Vampire Slayer=!" "I'm sorry I asked..." "It's madrigals now?" "Gesualdo! What dissonance!" "Makes my stomach hurt..." "What's that awful noise? "=Lemminkainen in Tuonela=!" "It sure sounds like it..." Yes, I know that the name of the Sibelius piece has one syllable too many (for the record Gesualdo only has three syllables in Italian), but I cheated because that conversation is from life; my ex (who knows her =Kalevala= and that Tuonela is the Finnish Hell) said exactly that one time when I played the piece. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 20:17:25 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: m/beethoven David: When you go to the library you have to take potluck sometimes. So I got Richard Goode doing the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" and the nameless one in between (#21-23, opp. 53-4 & 57); Louis Lortie (a pianist I don't know; but they library has what appears to be his complete Beethoven cycle) doing both Op. 27 fantasias (#13-14, the latter of course the "Moonlight") plus the "Pastoral" (#15); and #28-29 (opp. 101 & 106), the latter the "Hammerklavier." And Alfred Brendel from his most recent cycle (I have an entire earlier cycle on cutout LPs in storage) doing the last three (#30-32, opp. 109-111). I find that I basically don't like the middle-period ones that much, though as always I admire Beethoven's consistent rhythmic energy; the major exception is the "Moonlight." Gayle: Too bad you never got to know the rest of the "Moonlight"; the first movement of course is a brilliant conception (kind of proto-minimalism, in a way); the second is one of those halting German dances (minuets) Beethoven is so fond of (which late quartet has the "alla danza tedesca" movement?); the third finishes the sonata with a typical =furioso= flourish. Like the 5th Symphony, the rest of the piece continues the classic first movement in strong fashion. I find, still, that I like the late sonatas the best, especially the very last, with another craggy minor-key first movement and then the long, serene major-key variations finale (memorably described by Thomas Mann in =Doktor Faustus=). ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 20:47:15 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: b/comments3/7 Hi! Don posted (enough to knock me out of my stupor and actually say something about last week's episode :): >Let's start with a small mystery: what did Faith-as-Buffy order over >the phone? Neither Deirdre or I could understand what she said at >the end of the conversation besides "I'll take it." Anybody else do >better? I don't know why or how, but I knew from the first that she was ordering a plane ticket with Joyce's credit card. It made perfect sense even before she went to the airport. Since Faith has such contempt for Buffy's boring life, it naturally follows that she'd want to get out of there as quickly as possible. I'm still not sure what she said at the end of the conversation, though... >(And whose passport was it?) Buffy's, of course. She must've found it when she was going through Buffy's room. >The biggest mystery, perhaps, is =what= the hell happened between >Faith-as-Buffy and Riley. I have no clue what happened there. I'm hoping something later on down the line will come up to help shed some light... >Anyway...her faltering statement "What do you want from...her?" >is very odd, especially to Riley, who had =no= idea what could be >wrong. Did Faith feel manipulated by the situation? Out of control, >certainly. She also says that it's "meaningless," and then insists >"nothing" is wrong. ... but also consider that Faith is usually the one who is using sex as a tool to get what she wants. The idea of sex as part of love is obviously completely alien to her, as her reaction when Riley says "I love you" suggests. One would also guess that she had herself been used for sex on a few occasions in her past. When she said "what do you want from her" it made perfect sense to me. Also, I figured she was starting to say "What do you want from *me*", then realized Riley thought he had been with Buffy so that became "her" after the hesitation. >Was the thanks from the girl a defining moment? Definitely. I think it's the crux of everything that happens with her for the rest of the episode. >But =something= persuaded her that she needed to leave the airport and go >to the church; if it wasn't the thanks from the girl, what was it? Just a >sense of Buffyesque duty? Seems dubious. The thanks, definitely. It flicked a switch within Faith and I have a feeling we haven't seen the end of the repercussions. >Then >inside the church it was quite amusing to hear her say she was "the one >and only" Slayer. Well, of course. As far as she knew at that point, Buffy had been taken care of and she was indeed the only one around. >Just a few more small things. The song that starts playing halfway through >the scene with Spike is my favorite song from the new Cure album >=Bloodflowers=. I heard this album for the first time the other day (Don: at Chuck's house planning ectofest, mark your calendar for September 2 :). Quintessential Cure -- good stuff. >Speaking of the Council...are they =all= utterly inept? Even Giles, if you >go back to the very beginning of the series, seemed a little bumbling and >at sea. (Though he picked up fairly quickly.) It was kind of depressing >how easily Buffy-as-Faith managed to foil them. Please keep in mind that the Council is the organization that produced Wesley. Case closed. :) +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 22:44:04 -0600 (EST) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/comments3/7 Good to hear from you, Don! On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > Let's start with a small mystery: what did Faith-as-Buffy order over > the phone? Neither Deirdre or I could understand what she said at > the end of the conversation besides "I'll take it." Anybody else do > better? I thought at first she'd ordered something expensive and > useless just to cause trouble, but the =most= plausible explanation > is that it was her plane ticket; falling in line with this is the > slightly odd "I've got time to kill" line and her checking the clock > at Riley's. I thought at first she'd bought a ticket at the airport, > but that doesn't make as much sense--she didn't have any money to > speak of. (And whose passport was it?) Her passport. And I heard her ordering the ticket over the phone, quite clearly. > > The biggest mystery, perhaps, is =what= the hell happened between > Faith-as-Buffy and Riley. I'm still puzzling over this; but I'm > tending towards the opposite explanation from others here: maybe she =did= > have an orgasm, =and that's exactly what freaked her out=. =Especially= I think orgasms are pretty much old hat to Faith; what she had was tenderness and love, with or without the Big O (and by the way, subtext aside, does anyone else think that maybe Willow intercepted Faith-as-Buffy's orgasm, by linking to Buffy's body while Riley was doing likewise?) > Anyway...her faltering statement "What do you want from...her?" > is very odd, especially to Riley, who had =no= idea what could be > wrong. Did Faith feel manipulated by the situation? Out of control, > certainly. She also says that it's "meaningless," and then insists > "nothing" is wrong. I saw the "her" as a momentary slip in her act (though it could have been spell-related), and both the "meaningless" and "nothing" comments as a combination of denial ("no, this isn't affecting me") and guilt/envy ("it means nothing because he loves Buffy, not me") > They =did= just barely touch on the conflict between Buffy and > Forrest; but Faith-as-Buffy didn't really say anything to change the > situation (another lost opportunity for Faith to mess things up). > Her statement about being a slayer, not a killer, is awfully > interesting, though; is Buffy right after all, and Faith does feel > remorse for killing several people? Or is she simply differentiating > herself from Buffy, whom she believes, deep down, is a murderer? Remorse (is remorse, of course, of course, and no-one likes feeling remorse, of course, unless of course that sense of remorse is inside Angel's head! Sorry. :-) ) > But =something= persuaded her that she needed to leave the airport and go > to the church; if it wasn't the thanks from the girl, what was it? Just a > sense of Buffyesque duty? Seems dubious. I thought it was fairly straightforward: Faith starts out just covering herself, tries out Buffy's life, finds it's much more satisfying and rewarding than her own, and decides to keep it. And not just out of selfish motives, but because she wants to be a better person (ok, I suppose that's still kinda selfish). > > Again, very interesting dialog with Riley outside the church: "I'm > Buffy. I have to do this." (Falls under the "cover" rubric, I > think.) Can't agree. She didn't *have* to blow her cover and go there in the first place. I saw it as accepting the responsibilities that came with being Buffy, albeit in a schizoid (sp?) way. > Some have opined that Faith-as-Buffy's frenzied "you're > nothing...disgusting...murderous bitch" was Faith talking about > herself; but I don't think so. As you might guess by now, I disagree. Strongly. Why would Faith call Buffy "nothing"? And wasn't "slut" or "whore" in there too? Maybe Faith was just venting her self-loathing, or maybe she had snapped and really thought she was Buffy, but I have no doubt she was talking to Faith. > How did Willow's "homemade" switching-device work? We really didn't see it > at the fight scene. It seems to me that both of them, on being returned to I was disappointed that, after all that build up, we never actually saw whatever Willow experienced in the 'nether realm'. Made her and Tara showing up with the magic fix-it kind of anticlimactic (though one certainly can't say that about the spell-casting!) - -Allen W. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #56 ****************************