So you guys are watching a show called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” expecting “internal logic”
I expect all writing to maintain an internal sense of logic, otherwise, it's piss poor writing. Icarium is right, this is about world building and the necessity of maintaining such a construct.
and are thrown off when it’s not spoon fed to the audience?
Who said anything about spoon feeding? If you honestly believe that minimalistic dialogue in service to a broader internalization of consistent flow is "spoon feeding", then I'd argue you never took an advanced writing course in college. It's one of the first things they teach about writing fiction in such courses.
Good writing is assuming that your audience has a brain. The Watcher’s Council severance package is a great explanation that you came up with yourself! Why can’t we assume things and make answers for such things ourselves?
Not it doesn't. That's not good writing, that's the inherent laziness of the author. If I have to conceptualize ideas in order to fulfill a logical narrative on my own, independent of the writer, then the writer has failed to fulfill their needs to construct a narrative flow. I am doing their job for them. In what way could this possibly be considered a good thing?
I wonder how you all feel about the Fang Gang living in the Hyperion.
Ah, but this was addressed on several occasions, was it not? There was an entire sub-arc about them living there.
Does anyone in this discussion watch Lost? Very curious.
Every single episode, including the entirety of the last season that was so abysmal it ruined the entire series. Why do you ask?
Also, show me that such explanations were never written. When your episode runs 2 minutes over stuff like this gets cut. 99% of the time an episode is over time, not under. Watch deleted scenes on commentaries: “We loved this scene, the performance was great but the movie/episode was going on too long and it wasn’t advancing the plot, so it had to go.” Writers aren’t editors, however they are consulted but they don’t edit. I guess they also didn’t expect some of the fan base to be so passionate over this.
Is it your contention that, somewhere, they exists five years worth of edited footage and writing that somehow alters the entire concept that the real world is unimportant to Buffy, and therefore, unworthy of the audience's attention? Cause that is a
huge suggestion to make. Quite frankly, it's a really silly suggestion.
When things are relevant on a show they are brought up, when they aren’t, they aren’t brought up. You can disagree all you want on that point but I'm not pulling it out of no where, it's fact.
It's not a fact, because such an assertion doesn't allow for the possibility that the writer
made a mistake. That is an argument that a writer is infallible and plot holes do not actually exist. This is provably false.
Showrunners know major plot points and where they want to take their show. Lost creators knew the final image of the entire series when they were writing the plot. Did they know how they got there? Nope. But they figured it out as the show progressed
Cuse and Lindelof knew
bupkiss.
So whomever assumes Joss knows every detail about what’s to come in his shows … that’s silly. Again, Lost viewers?
Whom, exactly, is suggesting "Joss Whedon knew every detail"? No one said anything even remotely like that. The assertion here is that the sixth season of Buffy was in stark contrast to the preconceived norm about the relation of real world events to Buffy that was established through the previous five years of television. this isn't about what he did or didn't know, rather, its about exactly what happened and why it was bad.
And why bring up Lost? The last season of that show was so bad, so comically plotted, and so mawkishly finished that Cuse and Lindelof have been in hiding ever since while they are torn to shreds amongst the community. Yeah, dudes, the skeletons
totally proved you knew what you were doing all along, right.
Do you consider Alfred Hitchcock rubbish? 'Cause that's his quote.
Hithcock did suspense, not drama. But of course, he did do an entire movie about
looking out a window... so yeah. I don't think the quotes work the way you think they do.
It’s too bad you were bored with the season but that doesn’t make it a boring season, and vice versa with me who liked it.
Whether or not something is boring is inherently subjective. Whether or not something is internally consistent is provable through contextualization. There is a difference. We can go in circles discussing "boring", we can, however, view the shows consistency to determine it's relative omissions.
Honestly, if real life is as interesting as you say, go to a crowded park and watch people for 41:37 (an episode length) without dozing off, having emotions to what is happening, and sympathizing or hating the stories in front of you. If that’s entertainment to you then I dunno what you think the art of TV shows exist for.
This is how I know the point passed you by. You seem to be laboring under the impression that the argument here is in regards to a suggestion that the show get bogged down in mundane details. And this couldn't be further from the truth.
The problem here is one own inconsistent writing. Plain and simple. Season six of Buffy was chock full of moments that violated previously established concepts of the shows internal logic. The logic was intertwined with a nullification of the real worlds importance in regards to Buffy's life as a chosen one. The examples presented are not representative of what
should have been done, merely points about what would have had to have happened before in order to strengthen the story when it first happened.
As an aside, I'd argue that anyone who thinks that life in motion is so boring as to make one fall asleep is either overly cynical or suffering from some sort of depression.
Also, an inconsistency to me is Buffy taking 4 episodes to fight an Ubervamp while Dawn dusts 3 in five minutes, not making sure we evenly distribute equal details on every character.
That's not an inconsistency, that's a plot hole.
This isn't some mathematical argument about uneven character development (though one could make an argument about uneven character development through the Buffyverse if they wanted to), it's about a lack of organic setting and internal logical inconsistency. This stuff could have been established sans characterization, by the way. I mean, there are literally thousands of things they could have done to more firmly establish the kind of things we are talking about that don't involve character details. these were merely the first things that sprung to mind.
Thought: isn’t life inconsistent?
No. You are born, you live, you die. You have to breath oxygen, eat, obey the laws of gravity, and so forth. There are rules to life that are inviolate. That's the point.
Aren’t plot lines dropped in life? Aren‘t things brought up that never have been before just so someone can get something from you? It’s not a neat little pile like you want from the story of season 6, it’s messy. Like season 6. Maybe season 6 is more like life than you think.
Not at all. See, if someone passes through my life, they don't
cease to exist the way characters on a television show do. Which is perhaps the main reason why Season six's attempt to portray "life" as the big bad was so stilted. The dictum of television reality requires a finality that is rare in comparison to real life.
If you grappled with this the entire season and still are, it’s not a wonder you hate the season. If you can’t get past that you’re really missing out, man.
I hate the season for a slew of reasons; I'm not "missing" anything.
See, you seem to be arguing an overwrought concept of artistic license. By your construct, it is impossible for a writer to make a mistake or to have left out necessary information because, by definition, all crucial information
has been included. Anything that appears to be necessary, but not included, simply needs to be synthesized in a meta fashion by the viewer themselves, but is not argued to be missing because good writing forces the audience to perform this task.
This is.... nonsensical fan wanking to be blunt about it. If one has to perform mental jumping jacks in order to actually have what you are viewing
make sense... it's probably a good bet that what you are watching probably wasn't particularly well written.
Joss Whedon makes mistakes people. It happens.
No, TV is
constructed reality. If you are watching Battle Star Galactica and suddenly, Jimmy McNulty shows up.... it makes NO SENSE.
That is the point.
I can not, for the life of me, figure out why this most basic point isn't getting through to you. When I say "the real world", I do NOT mean the world you and I inhabit. I am speaking of the "real world" as it relates to Buffy. I.e., finances, the court systems, the government, so on and so forth. Things that clearly exist in her world, but are never presented as necessary to the story line.
Created worlds, like the Buffyverse, are still subject to the laws of logic. They are just subject to the laws of logic that they create, hence the term "internal logic". They spent five years telling us one thing, then switching it around for a year. This was a violation of its own created logic and spawned numerous problems for the show. THAT.... is the problem.
Reality causes cognitive dissonance for writers who have deadlines, producers to answer to, families, rewrites, rewrites, rewrites.
The term cognitive dissonance doesn't fit in that sentence. What you just described isn't a reaction to holding two different thought processes, its just called being busy.
I honestly get it but it makes me sad that you guys dislike this season over … this. I’m trying to tell you why it is this way. It sounds simple in theory but I’m trying to present the factors of the practise that make the theory not work.
But that's not what you did. You just argued that writers are not to be held accountable for violating some of the most basic tenets of fictional writing if you don't want them to be. And that the writing is not considered bad for doing this.
With all due respect, you don't seem to have grasped the concept of constructed reality at all. Furthermore, you seem to be arguing that meta analysis somehow supersedes previously established concepts.
In other words, I am glad you think my Giles idea is good, but the fact I needed to come up with it in the first place is an indictment of bad writing, not evidence of how well it was done.
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Breaking the rules you have established yourself in order to get the plot from Point A to Point B is bad writing, pure and simple.
Precisely! Sacrificing internal consistency in setting to serve plot movement is bad story structure.
