morgue - From The Morgue

New Mutants Linky

via Theron – if you read Marvel Comics in the 80s, this will be a bit surreal.

Interesting look at how a wholesome TV personality in Japan was undone by scandal, and what that reveals about sexism within the culture.

What happened after Sweden started putting Bechdel test results on films.

Some insights into the crazy US conspiracy thing that is the Sovereign Citizens Movement.

Via Angus Dingwall – “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” turns 15. Contentious claim there from the NY Mag that it was the first real internet meme – expect fierce warfare from “Mr T Ate My Balls” partisans.

Ima link to Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the Grammys because I’ve seen a lot of hiphop performed at awards shows and I always look forward to those performances and they always, always suck. Hiphop is the opposite of award shows. But Kendrick killed. Watch it.
The Hamilton performance is also very much worth your time.

The BBC has a great explainer on those gravitational waves and what the discovery means.

Hot sauce in her bag – how this Beyoncé lyric reveals a whole food culture. Great article!

Clay Shirky makes clear how social media has broken the structure of US politics and opened the way for Trump and Sanders.

Two links about academic publishing’s ongoing crisis: Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge, and “Get Me Off Your ****ing Mailing List” is an actual science paper accepted by a journal (profanity censored so I don’t set off workplace filters)

Investigative journalism from Buzzfeed would have been the setup for a joke about cat pictures a short time ago, but now some great work is coming out of the viral content giant. Here’s a glimpse of how they work, and maybe what the future of journalism looks like.

And the flip side of the same issue: how TMZ pursues its ruthless celebrity news journalism.

There’s no such thing as everlasting love (according to science” says The Atlantic. Interesting piece about one line of research into “love”. I appreciate anything that busts up the love mythology so prevalent in Western culture, but this article, like so much science reporting, skates over a lot of nuance that presumably exists. It reminds me of a forum post I wrote two decades ago declaring love is “a trick of the light” – I stand by that post, inasmuch as I remember what I said, but suffice it to say I have been steadily adding nuance to my understanding for twenty years since.

And finally… a ranking of all 118 sweaters seen on Twin Peaks. As my brother put it, “An intersection of obsessive, cult, and pointless that may be the most perfect snapshot of what the internet is all about.”

Reading comics with my grandfather

Heroine Linky

Maire shares her top ten heroines from YA fantasy, her top seven feminist villains, and her top seven feminist supporting characters.

Via Ben S, the history of the original run of Star Wars comics from Marvel. They have a goofy rep because of the green talking bunny rabbit alien, but they did some interesting stuff as they went along.

That Spinoff list of NZ non-fiction had very little Māori content in it. The site follows up with a Team Brown remix.

Smiling slaves and the real censorship in childrens’ books.

A search engine that digs up the appropriate screen captures to go with any Simpsons quote.

via Hannah Shaffer, Worst Draft: “”Worst Draft is a minimalist word processor that removes the two biggest roadblocks for writers: editing & distractions. Users will be unable to delete anything more than a few most recently typed words, and they will also be unable to access any other applications without first closing Worst Draft.”

via Jenni, Anil Dash writes against the internet wisdom that is “don’t read the comments”

via Debbie, the Melbourne Museum has a great computer animated video of the destruction of Pompeii.

via Fraser, the secret of the writing on Poe Dameron’s jacket in the new Star Wars film.

Just hanging

“Going viral” is such a weirdly unpleasant phrase for content spread on the internet. Like, the metaphor works of course – except for the bit of the metaphor that equates a funny youtube video with getting really sick. Ah well, I guess it won’t be too long before the association between “viral” and “sickness” becomes so obscure it becomes a pub quiz question.

(Of course there will be pub quiz nights in the future. They existed in the past as well. What do you think all those mysterious hooded strangers did to pass the time between handing out quests to brave adventurers?)

I had a wee taste of virality last week when my 200-word roleplaying game “Holding On” suddenly started getting shared around Facebook and Twitter by people in the roleplaying hobby community. And I’m being a bit silly by even using the v-word, because the community is small and the section of it that shared my game was a tiny subset of that – this Facebook post had eighty-plus shares, this tweet had around a hundred. I have no idea how many people actually saw it, but I scanned through many many comments, and I was contacted by a few people saying “hey, is this yours?” Very gratifying.

The game is a funny little thing. Two people play, and one of them is hanging over an abyss. The other is holding on to them so they don’t fall. It was intended to work as a metaphor for any situation where someone is slipping away forever, but primarily as a very literal representation of the subject matter: someone is hanging on with nothing below them but a very, very long fall.

This isn’t the first time I’ve played with this imagery. Many years ago I wrote a very short story called “Hanging Tough” in which some teenage guys are trying (and failing) to impress some teenage girls by, you guessed it, dangling themselves over an abyss. I intended this as a shorthand caricature of the kind of dumb risktaking engaged in by Those Foolish Youths – again, a metaphor, not something real. Somewhere in the back of my head was that scene in The Lost Boys where they hang on to the underside of a rail bridge and one by one lose their grip, dropping into the mist below. Of course, Kiefer and his gang could fly. Real people wouldn’t so easily take that sort of risk – even for Those Foolish Youths, this is surely a step too far.

And then those photos started coming out of Russia.

Oh heck. I can hardly even look at them.

Anyway. I’m not really going anywhere with this. I guess the takeaway is, hanging over an abyss is some potent stuff, and I’m pleased I made a game about it. That’s right, I have the lucrative “perilous dangling” subgenre all sewn up! Yay for me.

—

Those climber pics are from here. Rolling Stone talked to these climbers in 2014.

You can find the game Holding On, and some designer’s notes, at my Taleturn site. (Taleturn is where I put all my game/story/interactivity stuff. Check it out, and follow me on Twitter…)

And you can find the story “Hanging Tough” in the anthology Urban Driftwood, which is now available free in PDF from Dan Rabarts’s site.

CIA Linky

Via alastair g: a 1980 CIA research paper, by their Deception Research Program, on facts and folklore about deception [PDF link]

Here’s a reading list for me: the 100 best works of New Zealand non-fiction. Many of these I’d never even heard about!

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a new shortread following up his hugely impactful Case for Reparations. The immediate context is Bernie Sanders making statements ruling out consideration of reparations; the body of the piece is showing how reparations might actually be undertaken in a meaningful way. The true message, to my mind, is how already the entire content of Coates’s reparations article has been forgotten – that piece forcefully said that reparations is not just about long-dead slaves, but also about structural injustices inflicted on millions of living people. The cultural narrative about reparations is very locked up and it will take effort to shift it! Anyway, read Coates kicking tail: The Case for Considering Reparations.

At the bottom of Dangerous Minds’ piece on the dumped original soundtrack for The Exorcist is a great little video compiling interviews with people coming out of screenings. A marvellous few minutes!

An advice columnist is sent a scenario from a Seinfeld episode, and takes it seriously. Everyone seems to be taking this as a huge faux pas by the columnist, but that is silly. There is nothing wrong with this. Seinfeld was famously about the minutiae of modern manners; advice columnists are principally there as an entertaining diversion. It’s all good.

And finally, The Chickening:

Some Linky

It’s a new year, 2016, and it looks like the world could need some linky. So here are some.

Matthew Dentith, a theorist about conspiracy theorists, gives a fascinating analysis of how the Serial podcast deals with evidence in the Adnan Syed case, and how the Undisclosed podcast that looks at the same case approaches things in a very different way.

I missed this until after my final linky of last year year, but it’s Nate’s really good piece on what the 1977 Star Wars movie was actually about.

A system to give every room-sized space on earth its own address made up of three simple words. Interesting, although I’m not entirely convinced it’s exactly useful. (via Allen Varney)

What happened to the mince pie in America? (via d3vo, who understands the special place of the mince pie in NZ)

The Atlantic’s 50 best podcast episodes of 2015.

An alternate cut of Inside Out that just has the normal-life stuff. This could be kinda harrowing. Haven’t watched.

Texts from Superheroes (via Ben S)

Regular readers will know that I usually finish the linky with one “and finally” link that is… a little bit weird. Well… this week I have more weirdness to go around. So:

And finally, The Wizard of Oz, in alphabetical order

And finally, via my darling Cal who told me I had to put this in the linky: What did we get stuck in our rectums last year

And finally, via Angus, seadope.com

And finally, via Angus, a dating website for people who are secretly lizards.

And finally, via Pearce, what you get when Tim Allen’s Home Improvement character is the voice of Chewbacca.

And finally, via d3vo, Bushes of Love: extended

And finally, via Steve H, just trust me and read this one: whatever happened to television’s most famous couples?

Wee Beastie 2015 Omnibus

On Facebook I share random snippets from life with our Wee Long-leggedy Beastie. Here’s the 2015 collection.

(Old omnibus editions: 2013 part 1; 2013 part 2; 2014)

Jan 13:

Wee Beastie has been in bed for over 90 minutes. And her voice comes ringing out from her bedroom: “Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it gooooo…”

Jan 14:

WB: I’m trying to decide whether I’ll be a paleontologist when I grow up or whether I’ll be like you.
Me: Well, you could be me, but also a paleontologist!
WB: Nope. I’d be like you. Boring daddy.
Me: Boring daddy!!
WB: Yes, I’ll be boring daddy. Just doing what you do.

Jan 16:

Wee Beastie is setting up a house for her toys.
WB: Keep passing me things dad!
Me: I’ve already given you all the furniture.
WB: But I still need all the cars.
Me: Cars?
WB: You know, those mechanical driving things? Let’s go!

Jan 16:

The Wee Beastie continues to be uninterested in actually going to sleep:
WB: DAD!
Cal: My darling, you should be asleep!
*pause*
WB: I AM ASLEEP!

Jan 17:
Via Cal:

waiting for the paddington movie to start.

Jan 19:

Playing Snakes & Ladders with the Wee Beastie. She calls rolling the dice “wiggling”. And she keeps predicting the number she’s about to roll! It’s uncanny. “I hope I get a four! Yay now I’m wiggling! It’s a four!”

Jan 19:
Via Cal:

My Wee Beastie writes me beautiful cards, with a nod to the existential. As dictated to Morgan Davie

Jan 20:

Summertime! Wee Beastie and Mae the dog.

Jan 27:

Wee Beastie and I have invented a new dessert. WB calls it “Chocolate Mixup”. Take some banana and mash it up, then mix in some crumbled weetbix. Melt some chocolate and mix that in too. And then add a few tiny marshmallows. Spoon into greased tiny muffin tray and chuck into the freezer until they hold together!
They are pretty nom. Well done Wee Beastie.

Jan 30:

Wee Beastie: There’s only one way to hide bread from a dog.
*dramatic pause*
Wee Beastie: Eat it up!
*devours the bread*

Feb 2:

Wee Beastie just asked why we don’t fall off the Earth, because it’s a ball and we’re on the bottom of the ball. She listened carefully as I explained gravity as clearly as I could. Then I told her she asks great questions. Her reply:
“It’s because I have three brains. They are called Charley, Sue and Amelia. Now what if a kid flies out into space and eats the moon?”

Feb 13:

Wee Beastie has been figuring out death for the last month or two. It pops up at random times, like today, without warning:
WB: Dad, make Mikey say “I love you too much for you to die out”
(Mikey is one of her cuddly friends)
Me: What was that Wee Beastie?
WB: Make Mikey say “I love you too much for you to die out “. You know how you die and get put in the ground? Like Poppa? He died. Like that.
Me: “I love you very much and I don’t want you to die.”
WB: “Oh, it’s okay. It’s a long time.”
Me: “It won’t happen for a long time?”
WB: “No it will be a hundred years.”
Me: “Oh. Now I feel a bit better.”
WB: Okay. Dad can I watch a DVD?
This is how it goes. Kids are always thinking.

Feb 14:
Via Cal:

wee beastie and her best friend

Feb 20:

So yesterday just before dinnertime the Wee Beastie fell at a playground. It was a pretty big one, well over my head, two metres plus.
I have two thoughts:
(1) Man, that sure is a special kind of stomach lurch when you watch your child fall. Not keen to feel that again any time soon.
(2) Kids are obviously made of rubber or something. Only injury is a few face scratches.

Feb 20:

Wee Beastie pulls a blanket over her curled-up body.
WB (muffled): I’m a blanket!
Me: Oh, look at that blanket on the couch. That looks comfy. Maybe I’ll lie down on it.
WB (muffled): No, no, pick up the blanket and put it somewhere soft!
Me: Hmm, maybe I’ll put this blanket on the big bed.
I scoop up the blanket complete with lump of child, and put it on the big bed. I smooth it out.
WB (muffled): Now lie down on it!
Me: Ahh, now I’ll have a rest.
I lie on the bed next to the blanket and carefully drop my arm over it.
Me: What a comfy blanket.
WB (muffled, quiet): And the blanket was very happy.
Being a dad is pretty choice some days.

Mar 10:

Wee Beastie: Do you know why they are called Girl Guide biscuits?
Me: No, why?
WB: Because there are girls who sell them, and they are for guides, which means when you are guarding something. You have them when you are a guard.
Me: What kinds of things do they guard?
WB: Oh you know. When there are dragons that want to take the jewels on a necklace. And so you have a Girl Guide biscuit so you don’t get hungry while you do the guarding.

April 2:

My birthday card: “Dear Dad, You’ve been the best Dad in the whole world. Love from Wee Beastie and mummy and Mae. And have a nice time however old you are.”

April 8:

Wee Beastie currently taking surveillance-type photos of toys she intends to kidnap. This game is weird.

April 15:

Wee Beastie dancing around the back garden singing about how much she loves playing “cheerio fetch” with Mae the dog, and playing cheerio fetch at the same time. (Cheerio fetch is a game she made up where you throw pieces of cocktail sausage, and the dog runs to eat them, that’s the whole game.)

April 18:

Wee Beastie was looking up at the hills that frame the Hutt Valley.
WB: I want to go right up a mountain.
Me: And what would you do when you got to the top?
WB: I would grab hold of a cloud and hold it tightly against my tummy.
Me: And what would you do with it?
WB: I would run back down to the bottom and carry it home and put it in a birdcage and then I’d hang the birdcage from a tree in the garden and then whenever we wanted things to be wet we could go and stand under it.

April 25::

Portrait of Cal Greaney by the Wee Beastie.

May 7:

At a beachside park after rain, Wee Beastie sees a rainbow. It comes down just over the trees, on the beach!
WB: You know that there is always a treasure at the ends of a rainbow.
Me: Is there?
WB: Yes! The rainbow always puts a treasure at the end. We’ll go and find it! Come on!
The rainbow disappears as we walk towards the trees.
WB: Quickly dad! We need to find the treasure first! Can I run ahead to the beach and search for it?
Me: Sure.
She runs down to the beach. I wonder how long it will take before she gives up the search, but about thirty seconds later she skips back.
WB: Found the treasure!
She has a small bouncy ball with stripes. The stripes are in all the colours of the rainbow.
WB: The rainbow found a ball and put rainbow colours on it!
She is delighted. And so am I.

May 13:

Wee Beastie busily turning her dolls into elephants.

May 15:

Wee Beastie decided to start a mammoth tidy-up/cleaning/vaccuuming session and has just spent last ninety minutes encouraging me to keep up with her. It’s upside-down day everybody!

May 28:

Wee Beastie: I drew a picture of you when you were a baby and only had seven teeth, four on top and three on the bottom.

June 9:

Wee Beastie has made a picture of how we should spend the afternoon. It includes:
Gardening
Going to Percy’s Reserve
Writing words on the whiteboard
Blowing bubbles
Drawing pictures
Buying mummy a new dress
Doing her hair
Make Randall a birthday present
Take pictures with a camera
Draw some faces
Pick up Mae the dog
Bake Randall a tiny birthday cake

June 12:

Wee beastie sickness hits day eight. (Best day so far.)

June 17:

Wee Beastie excited by postcard from Paris from Alasdair Sinclair

June 20:

For reasons I still don’t understand, Wee Beastie took home a Power Rangers DVD from the library this week. She’s really into it. She calls them the “Nature Rangers”, also for reasons I don’t understand. She also enjoys spotting the Sky Tower when it pops up in the background. And I find it quite entertaining too! As WB DVD choices go, this one is a solid success.

June 20:

Ella Munro is wanting more warm fuzzies and kids and pets in her FB stream. So here’s the Wee Beastie and Mae the Dog.

July 3:

Grinning Wee Beastie cavorts around the room to Lorde. Abruptly stops, turns off music mid-track and comes over to me with serious face.
WB: Daddy. I’m so happy because one of my dreams came true.
Me: One of your dreams came true?
WB: One of my wishes. I danced just how I wanted. Every time I looked down at my feet they were going to just the right places!
Me: That’s fantastic.
WB: I’m so happy right now.
She runs back to turn the music on again and resumes.

July 3:

Walking dog with Wee Beastie a couple days ago, suddenly realise she has stopped skipping about and is hovering extremely close to me.
Me: What’s up?
WB: There’s a man behind me dressed as a killer.
I turn. There’s a slender, unassuming young man wearing a camo-pattern jacket. He overtakes us.
Me: I don’t think you need to worry.
WB: You’re right, you’re right. Because he’s only half dressed as a killer, right, okay.
She starts skipping again.

July 10:

“Nurse, would you please blow my nose for me?”
Playing doctors with a sick Wee Beastie. Stupid cold has taken up all her first week of holidays. Bother.

July 21:

Thanks to some DVDs inherited from James H. Liu, the Wee Beastie has discovered Pokemon and has immediately become a Team Rocket apologist. It’s Randall Boggs all over again. (Which was Scarface Claw all over again.)

August 3:

Wee Beastie has scraped her knee.
WB: There’s blood! I need a bandage, so no-one will know.
Me: What do you mean?
WB: If you have blood then you need to cover it up so no-one knows there is blood.
Me: Why do you need to do that? Why don’t you want people to know?
WB: Because if people see you have blood they’ll be sad. And you don’t want to make people sad.

August 6:

WB just told me we’re playing “Doctor Roctor, Rock Doctor”. I’m Doctor Roctor.

August 6:

Wee Beastie getting changed:
“Aren’t these undies beautiful? These undies are as beautiful as a slug!”

August 14:

Wee Beastie at play:
“Down that way is the Wheelwoods. It is a very scary no-good forest. There are pumpkins that drive, and bash you in the face.”

August 19:

“Why did the pink paper cross the green road? To meet the purple dog! Good one right dad?” – Wee Beastie joke time

Sept 28:

Two Wee Beastie-isms:
(1) This weekend, Grandma asks WB to greet her aunt & uncle as they come to the door. WB replies: “Sorry Grandma, I’m not really into that.”
(2) Today, WB goes past a display of gift balloons, and says: “Look, that balloon has Spider-Man’s face on it! I used to like Spider-Man, but that’s not my style any more.”
Is my child a four-year-old hipster?

Oct 11:

Colouring in together with a Youtube Taylor Swift playlist on the TV. Leave room for 90 seconds to take a call from Cal. By the time I return Wee Beastie has taken off all her clothes and is dancing like a naked happy lunatic to Nicki Minaj.

Oct 14:

Wee Beastie has taken two of her Pony toys on a car journey.
WB: Dad can you talk for this pony?
Me: Okay, sure.
We both assume pony voices
WB: “We are going to have a great birthday party today!”
Me: “Yes we are!”
WB: “And then we’ll find the surprise!”
Me: “Ooh, what’s the surprise?”
WB: “You don’t know what it is.”
Me: “Can you tell me?”
WB: “Okay, do you think you are real?”
Me: “Of course I’m real, I’m a real pony.”
WB: “No you’re not.”
Me: “What do you mean?”
WB: “You’re not real. You can’t talk.”
Me: “Then what am I doing now?”
WB: “That’s Giant Daddy talking, not you. You’re just a toy.”
Me: “What?”
WB: “You’re a toy, you’re not real.”
Me: “But we’re talking!”
WB: “No, I’m a toy too. We’re both toys, we’re not real at all.”
Me: “But… but…”
WB: “Are you scared?”
Me: “Yes!”
WB: “You’re really really a toy. You’re not real.”
Me: “But that’s impossible! The implications are too horrible to contemplate!”
WB: “I know.”
Wee Beastie drops out of pony voice and says softly, to herself:
WB: But the pony didn’t know it was just a trick.
(This was a few days ago, so this won’t be as word-for-word accurate as these usually are. But it won’t be too far off. There was also a whole song she made up that I wish I could share because it was amazing.)

Oct 30:

Wee Beastie has found my copy of Heroquest. Let the monstrous tea parties commence!

Oct 31:

Halloween open for business! At Wee Beastie’s grandparents’ house.

Nov 7:

Wee Beastie, contemplating death & dying:
“I think when people die, they come out of their bodies and they jump into the wind. And then they become part of the wind.”
(This was a few months ago; a visit to the cemetery yesterday reminded me.)

Nov 11:

Just overheard Wee Beastie in the next room: “Fear is the enemy! If we just believe in ourselves, we might just beat them, those lousy power rangers!” Apparently she’s giving inspirational speeches to the bad guys. Again.

Nov 13:

Wee Beastie’s epic My Little Pony game now has pony figures spread all over living room and kitchen. There’s a zombie pony causing mass panic, and it turns out some ponies are secretly Power Rangers. So we’re shaping up for a major Power Ponies vs Zombie Pony showdown. Better get back to it.
[in comments an hour later] Well, if you’re wondering how the showdown went, you’ll be pleased to hear the Sylvanian Families had a lovely picnic. 4yo children don’t hold with any of that modern plot continuity nonsense.

Nov 16:

Continuing her habit of renaming things*, Wee Beastie has today told me about “Monster Hide” (Monster High), a story about monsters who are really good at hiding. Works for me.
* She calls Power Rangers “Nature Rangers” and, inexplicably, is insistent that Lego Friends is called “Eema Girls”

Nov 29:

Proper summer vibe at our place, and it feels like Pearl Jam weather. I throw on Ten. Wee Beastie dances about. “This is pretty good music, dad. It’s really monstery.”

Dec 3:

Me: okay Wee Beastie, by the time I am out of the shower you’ll be dressed for kindy, right?
WB: Yes dad!
Instead, this.

Dec 11:

[via Cal] About to start decorating the tree. This could take some time…..

Dec 11:

[Via Cal] Done! Very happy!

Dec 20:

[via Cal] She’s five!

Dec 23:

Last day of kindy was Monday. The Wee Beastie was excited, of course. It was a special day. Moera Kindergarten is a treasure and we’ve been privileged to be part of the community there.

Dec 24:

[via Cal] sprinkling reindeer food

Jan 1, 2016:

Serious discussion

—

Happy New Year from us all!

Butts Linky

An extensive, illustrated guide to the butts of Middle-earth (via Theron, who was just trying to share the pain.)

Via Lew:

Philip K Dick Stories Adapted as Vintage Radio Plays https://t.co/SQ93tQOlwJ Now on our list of 700 Free AudioBooks https://t.co/nP8qYiFJnJ

— Open Culture (@openculture) December 17, 2015

The Radicalization of Luke Skywalker: A Jedi’s Path To Jihad – via Ivan

Scarfolk makes a leap at viral fame with these Star Wars Medical Instruments. (Update a day later: seems to be working out for them so far, this is everywhere.)

d3vo found this interesting Cosmo article on a 20-something woman who invited all the people she had crushes on into a Facebook group called “my crushes”. (If I was still tutoring social psychology I’d definitely build a lesson around this.)

An excellent mashup of Britney Spears & the Twin Peaks theme

Via Siobhann and Morag near-simultaneously, What if Disney Princesses were Tardigrades?

Via Pearce: a linguist discusses the distinctive and bodacious way Bill & Ted use language.

And finally, via theremina, whatever this is

Watching Buffy: s03e22 “Graduation Day, part two”

Angel drinks from Buffy.

The decision is hers. She offers herself to him, and when he protests, she forces herself inside his defences to where he can no longer resist. She surrenders to him, and trusts that he will be able to stop before he kills her. She makes the choice, she spills the blood, she carries it. It’s her name in the title. Her show.

The bite is sex. Graphic. Intense. We see him penetrate her. She gasps. It’s been inevitable that this moment would come, since Angel came into frame in the very first episode. Her show opposite the vampire. The only question is how they managed to put it off so long. The blood sacrifice mirrors the end of season two, but the surrender mirrors the mid-point, when Buffy and Angel had sex. A direct line from there, the show’s definitive moment, to here. The culmination of their relationship. Buffy has given Angel everything, and trusted him with everything. There is nowhere else they can go. At the end of it all they will stand in the rain, and we will see on Buffy’s face every moment of her internal journey as she comes to understand that they are done. This is the end of Buffy and Angel, which is to say, the end of the show as it was.

It’s also the end of high school, of course. At the end of The Prom essay I suggested the show had been deceiving us. High school wasn’t hell, it had been heaven all along. I wasn’t just trolling there (though, yes, I was definitely trolling). I was also hinting at how, for most of us, high school gets reconfigured in our memories into a lovely glowing place of nostalgia, with all the crappy bits ironed out. And I was genuinely saying that “high school is hell” doesn’t really describe what happened in the show we’ve been watching for three seasons, where yes bad things happened, and the scale of that badness was enhanced with fangs and mantis women and evil zookeepers, but ultimately everything at the school seemed pretty… normal. In fact, most of the weirdness and badness happened outside of school. School was almost like a refuge from the badness. In this episode, it goes further – the Mayor transforms into a demon, and the young men and women of Sunnydale High transform into warriors. Their parents flee, leaving them to stand on their own two feet against the horrific face of the adult world. They go into battle – into war – and they go united. Some of them don’t make it through, some faces we have known fall to darkness, but they do not hesitate and together they are victorious. The class of ’99, triumphant.

The show was never about high school being hell because it was never about high school at all. It happened in hallways and lunchrooms and, very occasionally, in classrooms, but the show wasn’t interested in what being in high school meant. It only ever cared about how it felt to be young, staring out at the world and discovering it was unkind, and then having to figure out how to survive. High school was just another challenge, a set of indignities to be confronted, a structure that colluded against you. High school was a monster. And in this show, monsters are metaphors. High school wasn’t hell, life was hell, and the show was about how to survive: with love for our friends, and with an understanding that we will suffer.

Across these first three seasons I remember saying to people, “the world would be a better place if everyone watched Buffy.” I remember they would raise an eyebrow at me, or both eyebrows sometimes. It was just a provocative way of saying what I really meant: this weird little show seems to be about vampires, but really it’s about how you get hurt, but love gets you through. That seemed a good thing for people to hear.

There were some rough years in the 90s for my friends. Not so much for me, I made most every dodge roll along the way, but close friends were having horrible times, life-changing times, dealing with trauma and abuse and loss or forced into no-win choices or dead end paths and having to live with it, live through it. No mystery to this pattern, we were in our late teens, then our early twenties, when stuff gets real no matter who you are, same as it ever was. But I remember those times, picking our way through the cultural forest, and while there was plenty of music that seemed to get it, there was precious little else that seemed to know what it was like.

And then along came this show that made a promise and kept it: real threats; real emotions; real laughter. Buffy and Willow and Xander finding their own path through life, bonding over deeply nerdy jokes, and facing the hardest of hard times. Getting deeply hurt, over and over again. Each time, getting better. Reaching out to each other and getting better. None of our troubles could be stopped by putting on a cute outfit and shoving a stake through its heart, but the rest? Nerdy jokes, and love – those we could do. That was us at our best.

This show understood. It was listening too, and there we were, on the screen. At our best. Getting through.

Other notes:
* Oddly, right at the start Buffy leaves Faith’s knife on the rooftop, but later on she has it back and it becomes crucial in the endgame. It isn’t exactly a continuity error, but it’s a clumsy and unnecessary storytelling gap.
* Seth Green’s deadpan delivery almost swallows this gag completely: Willow: “He’s delirious. He thought I was Buffy.” Oz: “You too, huh?” I also liked his whip-quick timing when he suggested attacking the mayor with hummus.
* The Faith we have seen so far has been, by any reasonable standard, unforgiveable. The first thing Buffy does is forgive her.
* The Mayor continues to be much more an abstract representation of the adult world than any realistic part of it – hospital staff don’t recognize him and let him walk away after he attempts to kill Buffy, and his motivations seem to end at “turn into a big snake”. It doesn’t matter. His plan to do his whole speech before turning into a snake is another stupendously good joke in a series that has been full of them.
* Buffy calls the Mayor “Dick”. They worked very hard to get that word in there.
* Cordy is back in her strongest role, truthtelling, and it’s like she was never treated crappily by Xander. Also the resolution of the simmering tension between her and Wesley is hilarious and, to my knowledge, unique.
* Xander is also used effectively here as a strong supporter with some special military knowhow. He also recapitulates his strongest material from the last three seasons, being sceptical of Angel, and is given a moment at the end where he tells Buffy that Angel’s okay, and it feels like resolution there as well.
* Respect to Larry, from dumb jock bully to gay jock hero, who dies in action here – though we don’t see it, it was in the shooting script and is (eventually) confirmed onscreen. Harmony does get a moment where she is shown falling victim to a vampire; the show made sure not to miss that one out.
* That long hold where we see Buffy and Angel lock eyes for the last time… Sarah Michelle Gellar uses her uncanny ability to show us every note of Buffy’s thought process, telling us a whole story in her expression, while David Boreanaz… doesn’t do this. How is this guy going to carry a show by himself?

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That’s it, for now. After three seasons of Watching Buffy, I’m tapped out. Will there be more? Maybe, one day, if I feel like I have more to say. For now, though – thanks to all my readers. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride.

Creepy Linky

Archive.org has a whole mess of Warren Publishing mags up for download, including loads of issues of Creepy! (Also, it would be timely to note, the Famous Monsters of Filmland Star Wars special from 1977.

Speaking of, the best thing about new Star Wars is probably Carrie Fisher doing media. This breakfast TV interview is hilarious.

Via Andrew S: MTV’s Liquid Television stuff is being put up online

Dante’s Hell, depicted in Lego

A Lego colour chart

Harmontown, a webcomic about loving a podcast too hard.

Rebel Without A Pause: Killer Mike and the return of the politically engaged rapper

Why do we fall for con games? Because stories.

Via Pearce: check out the amazing “heist” clause that is alleged to be in the contract for that hateful rich guy’s $8 million purchase of that Wu-Tang album.

Judy Garland doing blackface two years before Wizard of Oz.

The linguistic secrets of youtube videos.

Via d3vo: this article claims that in the 60s a Scotsman didn’t eat for a year

Via Svend, wiki’s article on habitual be: “In one experiment, children were shown drawings of Elmo eating cookies while Cookie Monster looked on. Both black and white subjects agreed that Elmo is eating cookies, but the black children said that Cookie Monster be eating cookies.”

And finally, wrestling is serious business.