Molly Ringle

Joss Whedon must have heard some of us complaining about the way he rampantly abuses and kills off characters, because he has just filmed a comedy! (There are a zillion news links you can find about this fast-breaking story. That's just one.)

It's Much Ado About Nothing--yes, the one by Shakespeare--and is apparently set in basically modern day, and stars Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof as Beatrice and Benedick. Yay! We finally get to see Fred and Wesley (as it were) acquire the romantic happy ending they, uh...well, I don't want to be spoilerish, but the end of the Angel series involved a lot of tears and "NOOOO" on many of our parts.

This time, of course, Joss didn't write the material himself; he used Shakespeare's. But he chose a Shakespeare *comedy*, at least, rather than a tragedy. True, it's "comedy noir," as he points out--that bit about "Let's pretend Hero is dead!" is pretty dark. But it ends up all right, and that's more than we can say about practically all the relationships we cared about in the Buffyverse. So thank you for this, Joss. It looks delicious and fun and I can't wait to see it, and it's good to say "Squee!" about a Whedon project again without feeling some dread that it's gonna hurt.

I should start by saying this ramble comes from someone who hasn't read the whole series yet. I only just started book 3 (Eclipse), and the fact that I picked it up at all after the many annoyances I found in book 2 (New Moon) is at least one compliment I can pay Stephenie Meyer. I do want to know, at least on the surface, in a soap-opera way, what happens with these characters. There's also the desire to obtain the whole picture so I can ridicule it, or at least critique it, better. I admit that. But both desires are there for me, conflicting and warring and sparkling absurdly in the sunlight. I haven't had such a bipolar reaction of being compelled to read more and wanting to smack the author and the characters every other chapter since discovering Thomas Hardy about ten years ago.

As I've recently discussed on Facebook and elsewhere with dirae, kenshi, and others, the "vampiric death = sex" metaphor shines glaringly clear the more you read of the Twilight series. (And it was immediately and almost hilariously obvious in the film, with Robert Pattinson using all his considerable James Dean angst to convey vampire-Edward's difficulty in keeping his hands, teeth, and other body parts off that jailbait girl-crush of his.)

But Edward's way of dealing with it is the dull, mildly religious-conservative route: abstinence only. In some ways I find it refreshing, I suppose; a book for teens that's free of sex, drugs, or swear words. On the other hand...is that really the teen life any of us knew?

When Joss Whedon introduced his teenage heroine (Buffy Summers) to a "nice" vampire (Angel), and later a not so nice one (Spike)--well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer yet (which everyone should), but much more dramatic things happened. Believe me, the subtext of "vampires=sex," and the correlating "sex can equal death," rapidly became text. Buffy's interactions with Angel and Spike illustrated it loud and clear, and with about fifty times as much fascination, humor, and heartbreak as the chilly Cullens have inspired in me so far.

Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite veered other directions with their vampire series. Rice's vampires were, she claimed, chaste, but please; every scene was about how sensually obsessed they were with each other. Brite just went ahead and made her vampires all promiscuous lovers, having them use sex to draw in mortal victims as well. You want a really sharp, horrifying picture of the "vampire sex as death" thing, even involving teenagers, go read Brite's Lost Souls.

For that matter, going back farther, anyone over the age of about 16 who reads Bram Stoker's Dracula can clearly see the Victorian horror of female sexuality inherent in the story. Demure young women get forced to taste blood, and they turn into red-lipped, heaving-bosomed seductresses whom one must stake and decapitate as soon as possible. Yet there's a thrill in it too--everyone knows that Dracula and his she-vampires are considered sexy and alluring, at least in the lives they've taken on outside the book. Within the book itself they're not exactly painted in the most flattering terms. But the fact remains, Stoker isn't afraid to let more bad things happen to more good people than Meyer seems to be. When Stoker writes about his vampire sneaking into a young lady's bedchamber, that vampire isn't there to "watch her sleep." He's there to bite her neck, feed her his blood from his bare chest, and Make Her His.

Speaking of watching her sleep: again, anyone over about 16 who reads the Twilight books is a bit troubled by the stalker-like, semi-pedophiliac nature of Edward Cullen. For whatever reason, it hasn't occurred to young teens on the whole, but a man sneaking into your bedroom night after night, without your knowledge, just to watch you sleep, is scary, not romantic. Call the freaking cops if this is happening to you. Furthermore, we adults immediately find it weird that 100-year-old immortals would want to attend high school over and over, instead of, say, college at least. But you know who finds the scenario just perfect? High school girls, that's who. And that's part of the allure of the Twilight series as a whole: we are entirely locked into Bella's first-person, impulsive, obsessive, honest, female-adolescent point of view. Even when she annoys the hell out of me, I find it weirdly interesting to read what is, in effect, her diary. I just wonder if the books might not benefit from the point of view of an actual adult once in a while too.

(Yes, I hear Meyer's writing a new one from Edward's point of view. But he's not exactly your usual adult, so we'll see...)

On a note unrelated to sex and death, but still related to realism in the teen world, there aren't nearly enough cell phones or computers in Meyer's books. The kids mostly call each other on land lines and pass each other handwritten notes. It's almost as if...gosh, as if the author is someone my age who's remembering how things were back when she was in high school. I still don't text-message, so I feel her reluctance to fake it in fiction. On the other hand, teens are eating this series up despite the anachronism. Goes to show, there's no predicting what will fly and what will crash in the world of fandom.

All the same, vampires have been done to (sexy) death. Guess I'll have to try my hand at making Greek gods, fairy folk, ghosts, or selkies the next hip thing instead.

All righty, I'm hooked! Sometimes takes me a full season to see how they round things out and maximize the drama, but I do get there if the show's worthy, and I call the new Doctor Who worthy. ( spoilers )

It was a real treat to get a glimpse of David Tennant at the end there! I was fond of Nine and his loverly accent, but I got over my minor parting sadness when Ten-Nant arrived and ran his tongue around his new teeth. Let's face it, he is totally my type, what with the wide eyes and untamed hair. Lest you need convincing of this being my type, let's review a photographic sampling of just a few of the many Boys I Have Obsessed Over In My Lifetime:
The Monkees
Robert Smith of the Cure
Elijah Wood
Toby Stephens, especially as Mr. Rochester
And of course my husband.

Yeah. No hope for me. Bring on the Ten!

(Included below are sort of general spoilers for the whole Buffy series, just so you know.)

The linguist in me wants to dwell for a moment on why Angel lost his Irish accent over time, while Spike never lost his English one.

First, let's get the obvious answer out of the way: David Boreanaz's Irish accent is reeeally shaky, whereas James Marsters' accent kicks ass. But let's pretend that's not the actual reason...

When adults lose their native accents and acquire another, it's often a semi-conscious effort, based in the desire to blend into a new group and leave behind their old one. Angel, upon regaining his soul, clearly wants to escape his past as Angelus, in which he still used his native Irish brogue. He moved to America decades before the show's beginning (if I understand correctly), so blending in as an American would have been the obvious choice. In contrast, Spike seems to have roamed the world more freely before showing up in Sunnydale, and anyway doesn't care about blending in; in fact, to judge from his fashion sense, he wants to stand out. He proudly uses Brit slang even among the American kids who aren't as likely to understand it.

I think the explanation lies mostly in their personality differences rather than amount of time spent in America. Namely, Angel is drastically different from Angelus, while souled Spike (or chipped Spike) is really not that different from evil Spike.

And that's something I wished Buffy (the character) had acknowledged a little more. I mean, jeez, Angelus has pretty much zilch going for him in the "good" column, but Spike all along, despite the tough talk and exterior, is the true softie, the "fool for love." Even in his first episode, he's partially defined by his tenderness toward Dru ("You two reek of humanity," a Big Baddie tells them disparagingly later on), and is troubled and seemingly conflicted by his discovery that Buffy is "a Slayer with friends and family." Angelus's reaction to Buffy's friends and family? More like, "Whee! More people to psychologically torture and kill!" Buffy would have done well to remember that it was Spike, still unchipped, who helped her save the world against Angelus.

So, really, it's no wonder Angel wants to distance himself from his other persona: that guy is a scary dude. But the distance between bad Spike and good Spike is short enough that ol' William can stretch across it and still be, more or less, himself. In all his cheekiness. Thus, while Spike turns more and more to the good side, he doesn't start sounding any less English.

But note: when Angel reverts to Angelus in the present day, he doesn't revert to Irish. Why not? Guess we're back to "Angel spent a lot of time in America" and "Boreanaz really didn't want to do the accent."

Enough about linguistics. The real question is: why, in God's name, did Angel's hair have to be so bad in the 1800s? William the Bloody gets a cute floppy wavy 'do, and Angelus gets Frankenstein Hair? Could nothing have been done about that, I ask you?