It's my right to be contrary!

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I’ve been sick for four days.

Did I mention that I am the world’s crankiest sick person? I'm running around cursing just because. When ethrosdemon asked what she could do to make it better I asked her to kill fictional characters for me. Or do something snarky. A fictional character being snarky about their own death would be better than chocolate - which I cannot have right now.

Other things I have decided in my 72 hours of cabin fever:

1. Jet, the 80’s band which sang ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’ is vastly preferable to Jet, singers of ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ even though I do like the latter. (Mad props to serialkarma)

2. If I eat another bowl of chicken soup/chicken broth/chicken anything, I will lay an egg.

3. I don’t really like Messiah Complex Protagonists. I don’t like Superman. Or Clark Kent. Or Harry Potter. This does not stop me reading or writing about them, but it does stop me from empathizing with them. It stops me from appreciating them the way I do characters I can empathaize with, like say, Lex or Faith or Neville. I think you should save the world because you think it's worth saving and you want to, not because someone says you have to. I hate it when people pull that obligation shit. ETN: This is not some gauntlet I'm throwing down to player-hate on Superman. This is not some Smallville-esque ode to Clark's characterization either; I've never been into Superman. I've always preferred Batman to Supes and Plastic Man to both. I'm more Everyman than Ubermensch.

4. I like accidental heroes. Like Neville. And Plastic Man.

5. I don’t like the Justice League cartoon. This has no bearing on my massive collection of JLA comic books (issue #92 in stands now), because as I said in #3, I heart Plastic Man. But I highly doubt that the Cartoon Network is going to put the deadbeat father who’s, gasp, not model material, at their animated table. Their loss.

6. MS Words sucks ass.

7. If I don't get out the house soon there's going to be an accident.

Comments

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I loved Buffy, the television show, but whether or not I loved Buffy the character is another story altogether. I preferred Buffy, the character, of S1-S3 to the latter Buffy, who seemed very up on the cross and woe is me. I mean, yes, okay, woe is her, that was a pretty short end of the stick she drew: mom dies, she dies, man runs away, random sister, everybody going bonkers and abandoning her and then Spike? I won't even go there. Especially when I'm sick and not particularly rational. The characters I preferred on Buffy though were those who did what they could without being 'the choosen one' i.e. Xander, Oz, Cordy, Giles... I like 'the regular people.' At the heart of all this is simply my cynical disregard for all 'heroes.' I don't believe in them, per se. I think you (generic you) should believe in yourself. I think that believing in other people and sticking them on pedestals is dangerous and foolhardy and bound to end poorly.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry it took me so long to respond. I'm not sure you'll see this, but I agree with you. I understood why Buffy resented the fact that she was the chosen one, but I always wanted her to see the other side of it. She gets to do great things for humanity in a definitive way. I think most well-intentioned people try to come to terms with what they give to the world around them, but spend most of their lives unsure if they've given enough, like Steinbeck's Great Ledger. Buffy had something to real to give, but too often seemed concerned with outside validation rather than personal fulfillment.

I do think there were moments, like in Helpless, when Buffy acknowledged that even if she didn't have the superpowers she would still be moved to do what she could, unfortunately there weren't many.