#insect reflection

[herinsectreflection]

To Live So Close To The Spotlight (The Zeppo)

I have, in essays past, referred to Xander Harris as one of the most controversial characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After spending more time in the current fandom landscape, I need to correct that statement. He’s simply one of the most disliked characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A lot of people hate him, and given his appearances up until now, it’s not entirely difficult to see why. Xander is an archetypical example of what I will call the Mild Nerd Guy; a trope born out of the 1980s and its Revenge Of The Nerds-led championing of geek culture. A trope that unfortunately came to dominate genre television throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

This is a character who is defined in opposition to more typical Dashing Action Hero archetypes. Where the Action Hero is strong and muscle-bound, the Mild Nerd Guy is physically weedy. He is often shy and lacking in self-confidence. He will appear creepy when he means to be charming – but in an innocent way that encourages us to feel sympathy with this helplessly befuddled young man. He has interests coded as “nerdy” – comic books, science, maths, Dungeons and Dragons. He will be unsuccessful with women, and more often than not will concentrate all his sexual energy onto a single desired target: a popular and attractive woman. This woman will - at least at the beginning of the story – neglects his silent pining in favour of clearly undeserving Bad Boys and Popular Jocks. This is where you get is your Scott Pilgrims, your Ross Gellers, your Tom Hansens, your Every Character Anthony Michael Hall Ever Played… and yes, your Xander Harrises. 

In essence, the Mild Nerd Guy is an alternate model of masculinity, one that certain types of men (shy, nerdy, physically weak) may relate to more than the Dashing Action Hero archetype. Unfortunately, while the trope often presents these men as more respectful towards women than their counterparts, the reality is that female autonomy is a secondary concern in both cases. These are competing models that men can use to Earn Women. Neither is actually concerned with the desires and goals of the women involved at all. 

The Mild Nerd Guy has obvious parallels to the sociological concept of the Nice Guy, a term that most in feminist circles should be comfortably au fait with by now. The Nice Guy feels deserving of the attentions of women solely because of his lack of overt hostility towards them, and resents them when this “niceness” is not immediately rewarded with sexual favours. While the two concepts should not be conflated – one is a writing trope while the other is a social phenomenon – they are inextricably linked. Media informs the way we interact with the world, and the world informs the way we interact with media. Male entitlement engorges itself with stories of men winning women through inaction - the implication being that men deserve the attentions of women by default, and should be upset when it is not automatically bestowed upon them.

Meanwhile, women who have firsthand experience of this entitlement and the behaviour it encourages will naturally be fed up with it, and will bring that frustration into their consumption of media. They will take one look at a Scott Pilgrim or Xander Harris and be immediately, justifiably repulsed. While the more fantastical crimes of Angel or Spike can be easily forgiven, everyday crimes cannot. Most women have never met a serial killer. We’ve all met a creepy nerd. 

This is not a criticism of viewers who have reacted in that way. The common accusation of Xander being a “Nice Guy” I believe an inaccurate read on his character and a misuse of a term meant for the analysis of reality and not fiction. However, I can’t blame anyone who makes that instinctive leap. In fact I would say that bringing one’s own experiences to the consumption of media is the only correct way to watch television. And yet, I can’t count myself truly among that crowd. Despite my distaste for the simpering entitlement this trope has encouraged in male nerd circles, and despite the times I have been disgusted by a line Nicholas Brendon has been made to deliver thus far, I can’t say that I don’t like Xander. In fact, I would say I like Xander, and this episode is a big reason why.

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[oxytocxins]

small dialogues

[myfairynuffstuff]

Makoto Fujii (b.1984) - Playing on the Clouds. 2013. Oil.

[pie-bean]

The scarab beetle is probably my favorite bug in the game. I love the glossy silver body and how the legs are copper, green and purple.

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Det speglar i mitt öga (Nina Hedenius, 1992)  

[rabbitcruiser]

Muncho Lake, BC (No. 3)

Muncho Lake Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada, located on the Alaska Highway as it transits the northernmost Canadian Rockies west of Fort Nelson. The park is part of the larger Muskwa-Kechika Management Area.[2] It is named after Muncho Lake, which is in the park and is both the name of the lake and of the community located there.

Folded mountains, geological formations, are visible above the road in the southern part of the park.

Source: Wikipedia

[textless]

[junebugtwin]

Taylor Hebert but dragon???

[botherbug]

Anon request! Luna moth stimboard!

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X   X   X

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i always associate luna moths with lady of shallot! so u have to get my nonsense with ur request! mahahaha (evil laughter)

[yumispacesposts]

[yeesiine]

[herinsectreflection]

But You're Just A Girl (Helpless)

The test that Buffy undergoes in this episode – in which she is stripped of her powers, locked inside a house, and forced to fight a mentally unstable vampire – is named in the script as The Cruciamentum. Giles describes it as “an archaic exercise in cruelty”, and it’s difficult to think of a description that could be more accurate.

The word Cruciamentum is an invented declension that roughly translates from Latin as “result of torture”. Quentin Travers – making his first appearance here as the Head of the Watcher’s Council – defends the practice as a necessary rite of passage, meant to make a Slayer stronger, but this reasoning falls apart under scrutiny The scenario is so heavily weighted against the Slayer, robbing her not only of her powers but the knowledge that she is being robbed at all, that it makes more sense to view the Cruciamentum not as a test, but as a method of control, designed to kill off Slayers that reach adulthood and so gain more independence from the Council. At the very least, it demonstrates the Council’s control over the Slayer, holding the implicit threat of taking away her powers again over her head for the rest of her life. As is the case with many unjust systems, the cruelty is the point.

The Cruciamentum is the Council’s most clear and obvious cruelty, but it is not by any means their only one. Cruelty is their origin story, as we see in Get It Done how they forcibly created the first Slayer through metaphorical rape. It is baked into the central idea of One Girl In All The World – a system which relies on the deaths of an infinite chain of young women. Its current setup, with one Watcher in the field and apparently dozens sitting safely away in England, leads to an inevitable cruelty of indifference that Giles calls out in this episode. There are cruelties of incompetence – failing to alert the field about the firing of Gwendolyn Post, sending the underqualified Wesley to Sunnydale. But perhaps their most impactful cruelty is also their most subtle. It came the moment that Buffy Summers, sitting outside her school in 1997, was called to be a Slayer. This act not only changed Buffy’s life, but caused an irreparable crack in her psyche. It splits her perceived self into two component parts – The Girl and The Slayer – twin selves that she spends seven seasons trying to reconcile.

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[coraniaid]

Finished The Dark Age.  It’s not as well-constructed an episode as Lie To Me, nor as fun an episode as Halloween, but despite that (or maybe because of it?) it’s still one that I really want to talk about.  So this is probably the first of a few posts.

(Also I’m going to cover both parts of What’s My Line? at once and I don’t know when I’ll have time to watch them back to back the way I think they should be watched.)

I noted before that Giles’ Ripper backstory can be summed up as “when he was younger Giles briefly dropped out of Oxford, experimented with drugs and had sex with Ethan Rayne”.  

Yes, the second and third parts of that sentence are not explicitly canon but this is a very popular reading in the Buffy fandom and has been for over twenty years. And it's a reading which I think is heavily implied on screen: both in this episode itself (among other things: Giles admits that summoning Eyghon resulted in “an extraordinary high” and, while researching in the library, Willow notes that “ancient sects used to induce possession for bacchanals and orgies”) and in the wider context of the show (where magic is frequently used as a metaphor for both drug addiction and, in Seasons 4 and 5 in particular, for lesbian sex).  It only becomes more heavily hinted at in Ethan’s next two appearances on the show, particularly in A New Man with Ethan’s description of himself and Giles as “a couple of old … mystics”, or his off-screen comment that “you know, you’re really very attractive” that Giles clearly assumes is aimed at him.

The thing is though, once you’re viewing Giles’ past in that light, the way it’s actually handled by the narrative – as something Giles is deeply (and correctly!) ashamed of; as something which fundamentally threatens his relationship with Jenny once she learns about it; as something which is intrinsically tied up with death and criminality and (to quote Ethan himself in Halloween) “degenerate” acts – becomes more than a little uncomfortable. What, if anything, is the show actually trying to say here?

And it’s particularly galling too to know that Ethan – who, let’s not forget, was only introduced a couple of episodes ago – will appear in just two more episodes across two more seasons before the show’s heroes cheerfully allow him to be abducted without trial and taken to “a secret detention facility in the Nevada desert” to be “rehabilitated” by a branch of the United States military. One that Buffy and Giles already know is engaged in all sorts of unethical practices quite beyond being, well, a branch of the United States military, and which Ethan himself has correctly warned them is “blundering into new places it doesn’t belong, throwing the worlds out of balance”.  And to know that – while Buffy will later turn on the Initiative and plan to rescue Riley and Oz from their control  – Ethan himself will never be seen on screen again.

[pie-bean]

I haven't noticed it before but apparently animated wallpapers and flooring also move in their mirror reflection. It's quite blurry but if you look closely you can see it

[johnnyslittleanimalblog]

DuckFace by Roeselien Raimond Via Flickr: Baby Ducklings casing insects: Ducklings of All Ditches United

[rabbitcruiser]

Muncho Lake, BC (No. 2)

The lake is part of the Muncho Lake Provincial Park and located at kilometre 681 (mile 423) of the Alaska Highway. The lake is about 12 km (7.5 mi) long and its width varies. It reaches a maximum depth of 110 m (360 ft). The surrounding peaks (the Terminal Range of the Muskwa Ranges to the west and the Sentinel Range to the east) reach altitudes of more than 2,000 m (6,600 ft), while the lake lies at an elevation of 820 m (2,690 ft). It is formed along the Trout River, a tributary of the Liard River.

The jade-green color of the lake is attributed to the presence of copper oxide leached from the bedrock underneath. Its name is derived from the Kaska language in which "muncho" translates as "big water".

The small community of Muncho Lake is established on the lake's southern shore, at the confluence of Trout River and Muncho Creek. The Muncho Lake/Mile 462 Water Aerodrome is set up along the eastern shore of the lake, at Mile 462 of the Alaska Highway.

Source: Wikipedia