(no subject)

[botias]

Seems like a lot of the conflict between what Spuffies wanted and what they got from the show comes from Spuffies wanting a fantasy and ME wanting to deliver something real, something true to their own experience of the world, and a morality tale besides.

The fantasy that the girl can tame the dangerous bad boy and turn him into a good family man (or at least tame him enough so that he doesn't eat her friends) is a tremendously popular one. It has sold billions of books and been the subject of countless films. And a pox on anyone who would knock it. It's a fantasy. But I honestly don't think it was right for BtVS.

I'd given up on TV for many years before BtVS lured me in. In the subsequent search for substitutes, what strikes me is how contrived other shows are. The writers seem like they are writing purely to entertain, and not to say something that is real and important to them and entertain. (I haven't even tried the shows that are just about saying something 'real and important'.) Even VM is kinda fluffy that way. Not to knock fluff, but... ya know? I wouldn't want to trade that for hot vampire romance.

Comments

[rahirah]

And this is exactly why many writers get all paranoid and defensive about being labeled a "fluff writer." There's an inherent assumption that "fluff" is intellectually and morally inferior to darkfic--indeed, that it it verges upon being intellectually and morally bankrupt--and that no one who writes it can possibly have anything real or important to say.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think just as much darkfic is fluff. Some people just happen to be entertained and gratified by tales of evil!Spike and vamp!Buffy killing and orgying their way around the globe, or by Spike and Buffy treating one another to endless heaping platefuls of steaming emotional torment (usually Buffy treating Spike, but that's by the by). I'm not equating emotional dysfunction, or evil doin's, or series' of unfortunate events with 'depth', though I suspect it happens pretty regularly.

Artists that are trying primarily to gratify (themselves and the reader) just seem like they are thicker on the ground than artists that are trying to reveal something about themselves and their journey and what they think is important. Artists that set out to do the latter and manage to be really entertaining at the same time seem even rarer. It seems like those are the works that move me the most and the best.

I like well-executed fluff, and I even very much prefer luv to dark or angst, but I don't like it when I feel like I'm being pandered to, or like the artist finds the work personally meaningless, they're just working the ol' gratification grinder 'cause it's a whole lot better than flipping burgers. That's what I'm finding in a lot of TV shows.

For ME to have had really depressed, self-hating Buffy taking up with a sexy, 'epic', charismatic guy who also happened to be immature, morally bankrupt, depressed, parasitic, alcoholic, yada yada, and then showing anything positive resulting... it would have been great fantasy, I would pay all kinds of money to see that movie of the week, but it was not true to ME's experience of the world, their notions of right and wrong, or their intent to reflect same in their show. That these things were really important to them is a big part of what made Buffy such a great TV to me.

[rahirah]

Well, it's just that you're defining fluff as any story which panders to the readers, regardless of emotional content. Whereas to me, fluff is a genre which focuses on depicting a positive emotional relationship, usually romantic and often in a domestic setting. Some people expand that definition to include any story with a happy ending. Such stories can pander to readers, but as you point out, so can unhappy stories. And that's at the root of the fluff/angst wars, the fact that some people conflate 'fluff' with 'stories that suck.'

There were (and still are) a lot of viewers who think that having an immature, morally bankrupt, depressed, parasitic, alcoholic, yada yada, guy go out and get a soul for the woman he loved was just as much a fantasy as any other method of redeeming a bad boy, and that ME was pandering to the screaming JM fangirls liek whoa by having Spike do so. In some respects it all boils down to which metaphor for change resonates most for a particular viwer--if any do.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I might be nit-picking, but I actually don't think there is much pandering in fan fiction. To me the word pandering implies some sort of space between the panderer and the panderee in which contempt may form. I think most all fan fiction writers write because they really like what they are writing about, and they really get off on it when other folks like it too. I do get a sense of pandering or at least disconnectedness from a lot of television writing.

Whereas to me, fluff is a genre which focuses on depicting a positive emotional relationship, usually romantic and often in a domestic setting.

This is probably the way everyone but me defines it. :( Probably I'm being bad in misusing the terminology, but really, evil and angst are not magical things that automatically denote 'meaty' quality fiction, nor do healthy relationships and domesticity denote fly-weight, badly crafted fiction. I think fiction is fluffy when it sacrifices truth for gratification to a large degree (everyone's mileage may vary of course), or says nothing more than: These are a few of my favorite things. But my goodness, what is wrong with that? Snobbery sucks man. Even Miss Manners will tell you as much.

I think ME was doing a certain amount of pandering to JM fangirls. There are sooo many times that it was OOC for Buffy not to stake his lean, delicious skinny ass. (Unless one wishes to speculate that she's been madly in love with him deep down for like ever, and who would ever wish to speculate that? *g*) Sometimes I feel almost dirty the way they pimp the poor guy.

You can argue that ME was being... optimistic by having Spike choose to change for the good. But I don't feel they were sacrificing truth for gratification. From what I understand, in RL bad boys make terrible partners, all that self-abuse doesn't happen from someone who is full o' love, and they don't often change, and the ones that do change don't until they reach rock bottom, and even then change doesn't come easy. ME was true to these things, while delivering a more of less positive outcome in that Spike not only chose to pull himself out his hole, he was also successful. The positive outcome feels much more satisfying, to me at least, because it doesn't feel... arbitrary, it feels real and earned.

For a bad boy to just decide to change for the girl he loves? Willow and Tara seemed like a pretty spot-on portrayal of how that works out in RL. As much as she loved and valued Tara, Willow was not able to make real change until she experienced real consequences. If there are any truths of human nature, this is one of them in my experience. I see this all the time in trying to inspire change in my children. It's unfortunate, because I hate being the bad guy (most of the time).

[rahirah]

I might be nit-picking, but I actually don't think there is much pandering in fan fiction. To me the word pandering implies some sort of space between the panderer and the panderee in which contempt may form.

In that sense, I'd agree with you. But there are plenty of fan writers who pander in the sense of writing what they know is popular and will get them lots of feedback, or in the sense of writing stories which don't demand anything of themselves or of their readers. That's what I thought you were getting at in your original post in saying that a great many S/B readers want a fantasy as opposed to Joss's harsh-yet-(implicitly)-far-better-for-them reality.

Probably I'm being bad in misusing the terminology,

I wouldn't say bad, but it's sometimes a little confusing. *g*

The rest of this got a little too long to post here!