The Farmstead

So, I have been very entertained by this MBTI meme. Partly because I was always entertained by it generally, partly because this time I finally worked out what the heck was going on with the functions aspect of the whole lark. This page says something about it, but the basic thing is that the personality types are all based on the different ways that the four lettered attributes interrelate. (The Wikipedia page on each type in general gives some info about this.)

But the interesting thing is that I was googling, and managed to find someone's blog where they explained the different functions (as the dominant part of people's personalities) through Buffy characters. Et voila:

http://anyankas.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-explaining-the-8-functions/

This person seems to have a nice blog and it is interesting (and if I know Wordpress they're going to get a pingback, so hi! I like your blog). But I am not sure I agree on their interpretations of the characters (and you act like you're shocked!). Their Buffy is an ESFP, based on the principles of horror stereotypes and Buffy's supposedly dominant Se (extroverted sensing, ie. uncanny awareness of the world around her). Now, I would never say that Buffy doesn't do extroverted sensing, but I think the thing that most occupies the way she goes through life is far more Fe (extroverted feeling ie. the desire to produce social harmony, as they have Joyce representing). Really, I think she has to be ENFJ (Fe-Ni–Se–Ti; driven towards social harmony based on gut instincts, increasingly supported by an awareness of the physical world and, god, finally, if really necessary, the application of rational judgement).

As for Spike... It has to be ISFP (Fi–Se-Ni–Te; driven by internal feelings based on sensory experience of the world around, increasingly supported by gut instincts and finally, when push comes to shove, sorting shit out.)

Anyway, these are the blogger's impressions of the other Buffy and Angel characters (they have Spike as ISTP - you just can't convince me Spike (Spike!!) is driven by rational judgements about situations. I'm not sure Spike has had a Ti thought in his life.):

http://anyankas.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-jungian-types/
http://anyankas.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/angel-the-series-jungian-types-2/

I think Dru has to be an ENFP, as they say, and Angelus as an ENTJ sort of makes sense... But then passion does (/should) rule us all according to him and Angel is a people person, whatever he says. I could see Angel in general as another ENFJ; he and Buffy (and without a soul) just disagree about what harmony means. Anyway, now I want to type everyone! I've only got to Xander, who I'm pretty sure is an introvert, and goal-oriented and feelingsy and sensingy, so - ISFJ (Si–Fe–Ti–Ne; driven to learn from/build on the past based on a will for social harmony, increasingly supported by rational interpretation and, under extreme duress, a sense of likely consequences). I dunno; I think it works???

Has there been a better thing on television in a long time? I really don't know because this is just so clever. I can't even sum it up, just...

OK, so we start with the industrial revolution, with all its dark satanic mills and dreams for the future - are we Blake dreaming of a world without industry (just cricket), or Caliban!Brunel dreaming of a world of noise and riches? No matter the answer we go through to the 50s (ish) anyway, getting noise and darkness and yet achievement, the Olympic rings wrought out of steel.

We then get to 'Second to the Right and Straight on till Morning': the NHS, children, fantasy literature and the moment between sleep and waking - still caught up in dreams and nightmares. Through jazz and the outfits this is also definitely pitched as a historical transition between the Industrial Revolution and the digital age pageant later. It's like an investigation of what the Industrial Revolution produced - the end of infant mortality as a fact of life (labour, if we imagine child labour, transforms into children being looked after in bed and at GOSH) plus the rise of literacy. Put these two together and the main threat to childhood shifts from actual death to fantasy figures, Voldemort like a pantomime grim reaper and Mary Poppins the image of childcare and education. Everything ends happily like a fairy tale; 'childhood' as a safe bubble away from work and threat is banishable even as a nightmare. But this is even undercut by the nurses doing folk dances, as if they're pretending to still live in the idyll. Which we know has gone.

This establishment of childhood and safety then inevitably spreads to produce Youth Culture as a whole in the digital age, which gets it's own celebration in 'Frankie and June Say Thanks, Tim'. (The whole ceremony is about handing over to the next generation; the narrative of the show is about how that happened with cultural authority.) But even that's shadowed by this tension between illusion and reality (all the dancing backdropped by fictional representations of life that is constructed media culture, embellishing on children's literature), and this sense of darkness. I can't catch all the lyrics in the chronological montage, but it's so heavy once you get past the romance:

( My sketched transcription... )

So even with this massive upheaval, from rural idyll through industrial pain through childhood's invention and welfare and Teh Yoof taking control; the shift in power from Top Hat Man to Multicultural Dancing Everyone, we're still caught up in this dark, fearful, shifting space between reality and illusion, dreams and hope and dissatisfaction. (The defiance in this section - And we don't care / I just think I'm free / We will be victorious - only comes to segue into uncertainty - Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me.)

... So, that's just how I read it (expressed very badly). But I can't help but think it's one of the most interesting national portraits I've seen in a long time. I like this bloke Boyle... :D

(God, I have do something today... Why haven't I done anything?)

I haven't really mentioned my love of this to anyone but shapinglight, I don't think, but then I saw that penny_lane_42 had posted her thoughts and they got me thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. And then I was going to comment on your post, Lirazel, but everything got long and tangential, so I'm here instead!

( The Hour thoughts, at ramble. )

All in all, I might well have to get the DVD.

In which I say more stuff!! I was a bit more upbeat this time - and hopefully more comprehensible...

17 minutes of me.

Stuff I talk about: Spike (yay), Angel (sorry), Buffy-Giles (yay), Spuffy (yay), S3 (...yeah).

I've been mulling over shipperx's post and here is where I've ended up.

Having your consent taken away is not the conclusion to a story. It's a pernicious misunderstanding of rape that continually paints it at the end point of a narrative where someone goes out/gets drunk/wears a short skirt, when actually it by definition cannot be something you ask for (even) as a consequence of your actions. (Trying) to rape, on the other hand, is (though just look at the way agency on that side of the equation is so often elided away in reporting of rape). That's why, as much as I hate it, I can accept the AR as being part of Spike's story in S6 - that's where he ends up after a whole season of getting gradually more screwed up (and, yes, it's fair to say that Buffy did have a part in that but this does not mean she's responsible for her own victimisation - because being victimised is a forced removal of responsibility and agency - and that's all I'm going to say about the AR so I apologise if that doesn't make immediate sense to you).

As it is, in S8, with Buffy (and Angel?) we have no agent, apparently. (Distorted base urges =/= an agent.) And so, for the last four(? five? fifteen?) issues we have either been shown a story that belongs to/is about somebody we don't know and can't see (unless it's Angel, but things seem to be saying he was still deceived?), where the plot's cogs (mummy and baby universe etc.) slotting into place and porny sideshows are more important than character arcs, or where, if this is still is 'Buffy's story', having your consent taken away can supposedly be (a consequential/conclusive) part of a narrative. I like none of these options.

[And now I vanish for the day!]

Though various flips and wriggles across cyberspace (/my DW netork), I came across this post, where someone I don't know quoted somebody else I don't know saying the line:

"[A]ll literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction."

On the one hand, this is a very nice sentiment and, you know, in the context of the qualifying definition Michael Chabon provides, true. On the other, however, I find myself yet again amused/annoyed that apparently the Greeks were actually divinely inspired in the verve and originality of their literature. Or maybe this guy is just a really big fan of Catullus or something, but, if we play the averages, I suspect he might probably hang with the crowd that thinks Terence's Menander 'translations' were completely unchanged in their move to Latin and Ennius' tragedies just copied the oldies despite making drastic changes even in the fragments we have.

But none of those are major parts of the Western textual canon! you might say. The Aeneid is just making a big point, because everybody's heard of it! Apart from the fact that every fifth century tragedian was essentially writing fanfic too, and, oh yes, yet again we see Homer as The Original Source Text Of All Texts Ever. Because, you know, the Muse actually came down and told Homer what to say: 'he' was completely free of all outside influences - it was only when the Aeneid came along that the fanfic began. Uh huh.

...

I'm not even sure why I'm ranting about this. I love Homer and all his cleverdick ways (and he, whoever he was/were-in-the-plural-creators, really was a clever bastard), but, for heaven's sake, if everything from the Aeneid onwards is fanfic, then the Iliad and the Odyssey bloody were too.

IN OTHER NEWS: What do you think my fic says about my id?

As a tangent to angearia's post on Buffy and Forgiveness I've been trying to formulate how I actually see Spuffy in S7. Thankfully, Tara pretty much had it nailed in Entropy, with one or two minor adjustments:

Things fall apart. They fall apart so hard. You can't ever put them back the way they were. You know, it takes time. You can't just [rely on each other because no one else is quite so dependable ] and expect... There's just so much to work through. Trust has to be built again, on both sides. You have to learn if you're even the same people you were, if you can fit in each other's lives. It's a long, important process, and [you can't just skip it, because otherwise all you're doing is shagging through the mistrust until one of you gets shot, which isn't a long-term solution].

I don't think I have anything insightful to add to that, really, so my meta's basically stalled before it's begun. But, just for a bit of personal colour, I'll say I'm optimistically cynical, so I don't think they had finished negotiating the process by the end of Chosen, but at the same time I think it would have been perfectly feasible for them to make it into a stable, only-new-issues-plz relationship by the end of a (hypothetical) season that came after. The immediate things I see that they had left to fix, after all, are relatively simple: for a start they needed to normalise their sleepy cuddles into something that wasn't coloured by 'the world might be ending - there's no need to visualise the future', and then they needed to make headway into the scary realm of actively attempting leisure activities, rather than 'I need to sit in the quiet - do you need to sit in the quiet? - let's sit in the quiet'.

Not that I'm trying to knock sitting in the quiet, I hasten to add, but it's a difference of planning to spend time with someone because they are someone and spending time with someone without planning partly because they aren't everybody else. 'I can be alone with you here' says something important, but it's a lack-of-negative rather than a positive. And while clearly Buffy and Spike were seeking out each other's company by the end of S7 (which is a step up), they equally weren't making plans and only negotiated things (like where Buffy was sleeping in Chosen) as and when it was necessary to do so. Short-term stuff =/= putting all their issues behind them. (And oh, hell, did I just argue that what Buffy and Spike needed to do was agree they were 'going steady'??)

So, yeah, that's where I am, I think. S7 Spuffy: means to an end, the conclusion of which we were so rudely deprived of. Still my favourite Spuffy season though. ;)

ETA: Off for pizza (yay pizza!).

So, last week shapinglight was chatting about the new E4 programme Misfits. I'm not sure this deserves the 'meta' tag I've given it, but is much more reflective on the premise rather than an actual plot review.

( I just watched Episode 2... )

It was going to happen sooner or later... Yes, I spent the evening writing Dollhouse meta. Quite long Dollhouse meta, that may or may not make sense and has a rather general feminist chat as it's opening. And it doesn't cover nearly as much as I would like to one day.

Unfortuately it has spoilers for pretty much all the first series (apologies to shapinglight, whose comments are part of what made me want to write this; I'm sorry you can't read it yet - er, if you would even want to, that is...). I'm very sorry my style is so bombastic - feel free to comment with snark, rants, queries and any other form of communication.

So!

( Ready to Rinse and Spit: 'Dollhouse' and Cultural Narratives. )