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Dec. 21st, 2010 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonflower77 right. where do i even start?"
"in the beginning... the real beginning... there was the immeasurable dark. and in that void, we simply were. eternal. forever. before time. there were no limits, then. no boundaries. i was worshipped. adored. my immensity could not be contained. the world trembled at my feet. i was everything. i was all. i was free. yet now i am trapped here, in this one realm, in this static time. the worlds are closed to me. i miss them. even the one made of shrimp. sometimes. this shell is not of my choosing. it feels too much. weak. like you. (at this point she has picked up a crab and is speaking to it) what is my place here. i am a walking corpse."
where has the fractured inner monologue come from? it sounds like the entries from virginia woolf's diary where she was about to go into hypomanic mode and wrote in brief sentence fragments punctuated by multiple "&"s. since mania is clearly out of the question here, considering the emotional tone of this, i would have to presume that this is a mixed episode. this does not help things.
i don't recall illyria ever speaking like this on the show.
next. i do understand that it is easier - especially in a comic book - to reduce a complex situation to one of its aspects, and then deal with it that way. but it still qualifies as "character derailment". previously, everything had been done in the inner universe of AtS to characterize illyria as a creature that is as foreign to humanity as it could possibly be. we do not know, and cannot know, anything about its life back in the time of the old ones, or what it could have felt or thought then. one thing is certain, though: it had to be more complicated than merely doing whatever you want. and to take this life and try to present it in terms of absolute freedom vs. the limitations of her current condition feels like a gross oversimplification.
also: this being has lost its home. then it has lost the only creature that had mattered, in the void that had formed upon its loss. why is there no mention of this?
i kept waiting for any reference to her grief over wes' passing - perhaps not words, but some images, something that would indicate that she misses him - and i did not find any. it is highly implausible that she has already gotten over it by now. and i do not see her foregoing this and plunging into other, and arguably more "human" feelings, such as guilt, instead. if anything, it is the grief over wes that should have served as her "window" to discovering that she has other feelings as well, not the other way round.
she is mourning fred, which is understandable, as she and fred and wes have become tangled in this inseparable knot, but she is not mourning wes himself? this makes no sense.
what follows are images from "angel: after the fall" where illyria briefly returns in her primordial form.
"her demise should mean nothing to me. a pointless death amongst countless others. these memories, just leftover fragments of this husk. and yet they bind me to it. trap me in it. before i was a god-king. above even the highest powers of the world. and for a moment, i was unleashed again. immense. then, this...infection again. only this time, worse. humiliating. brought down by grief and loss and... love. love that i destroyed in my becoming."
everybody and their dog has been exploiting the fact that she occupies fred's body and making use of her identity/emotional confusion and her nascent guilt over murdering fred (which is in full bloom here). like many people suffering from depression, she fails to see this because she focuses on her own faults, not those of others. but a fact remains a fact. first gunn the vampire maniac wanted to bring out illyria's original form, because he believed he could persuade her to rewind time back to before the fall. so he injured her while she was in fred's form, and more vulnerable than usual; then he manipulated her psychologically through appealing to her feelings about fred. which, predictably, resulted in her having a nervous breakdown. frankly, so would i, if i were in her position. and of course, when she did, she vowed to destroy time and reality as we know it. what else did they expect her to do? tell gunn, "oh, sure, always glad to oblige"? seriously? then, to prevent her from carrying out her intentions, they had to flood her telepathically with wes' and spike's memories of fred, once again making use of the her connection to fred and her wounded conscience.
where does this leave illyria herself? she is little more than a victim. she has been repeatedly subjected to what i can only call rape. being inserted into a foreign body she did not want to have, and was disgusted with - that was rape, check. being awakened into a world where nothing was familiar to her, while her own home was dust - rape, check. having her powers forcibly sucked out of her, though she would rather die - rape, check. being used, like an inanimate instrument, by a maniac who wanted her to manipulate time for him (not to mention that this involved what would have been a serious physical injury to anyone else) - rape, check. having a subsequent breakdown she could not help having, and then being brought down through the horrific mindfuck involving others' memories of fred, which was about as intrusive as possible and hit her most painful spot - rape, check. the fact that this was done to creature we would characterize as the ultimate alien, or an "eldritch abomination", does not make it right. nothing can make this right. and i do not like how it is being justified in-universe and presented as an integral part of what is supposed to be a redemption story. granted, what doesn't kill one makes one stronger, and one could some learn valuable lessons from an ordeal like this, but this does not justify the ordeal itself. whereas i had a distinct feeling that, in the universe of these graphic novels, all this was treated as something that was perfectly fine, and happened just as it should have.
besides, judging by "angel: after the fall", the newly returned original form of illyria was an ideal woobie destroyer of worlds, if there ever was one (i had seen this coming for a while, so it did not seem entirely out of character). and these do not set out destroy reality because they want absolute freedom. they do so because they simply want something to smash, the more the better, and if the smashing can be done on a global scale, well then, that is better still. they have had too much; they have experienced the proverbial last straw that breaks the camel's back or the last drop that makes the cup overflow. i had a feeling that this was what happened to illyria. of course she put it in her own unique stilted, arrogant language ("there is no order over here and i cannot get what i want"); but the feeling behind the words appeared to be quite different.
their claiming that she misses that moment because she was free then reads like a self-contradiction.
and on a small side note, i can't stand it when the word "love" is being thrown around carelessly like this. the more tragic the situation, the more artificial, inadequate and out of place it sounds. especially when it is being mentioned in vain by people like illyria, who do not normally talk about their feelings altogether. this is not a soap opera, this is supposed to be a work of noir/post-apocalyptic/dark science fiction.
"there should be no room in me for this. a sickness. it is endless, this regret. this emptiness where only i should remain. instead, there is a hole. where SHE used to be".
there is a striking image, at this point, of illyria of today, in dark shades of gray, fighting demons, and below a colored photo of fred together with her friends from team angel.
"'please, wesley, why can't i stay?' i heard this, uncomprehending. uncaring and impatient to be born. i burned my way through her. i hollowed and conquered. i felt her go. a small, sparkling warmth, a speck of consciousness. pretty, but too tiny to matter. she was gone in an instant. and so i became. i rushed forward, ecstatic to be whole again. to be free. only... the shape was not my shape. the world was not my world. from her, i took everything. and from him..." all this is against the same dark background, in shades of gray, showing wes' memories of fred's final moments, then wes, weeping and covering his face with his hands. then, in color, with illyria standing on a rooftop, presumably the same one where she used to spend evenings with wes -
"i took hope."
i'm glad that someone has finally stepped out and specified how exactly this happened. it was never clarified on the show itself. illyria's resurrection could be taken in two different ways: either she consciously invaded fred's body, doing what she had to do to survive, or she was an unconscious spirit or sheer life-force (suggested by that "dust" form) which became conscious only after she had taken possession of fred's brain. in a sense, i am glad they did state that it was the second scenario, because this way they at least have a justification for illyria's guilt.
unfortunately, the narrator is unreliable. i have no reason to believe her side of the story because i couldn't be sure that she is not turning everything over on its head; while in this state of mind, one is likely to blame oneself for what one has not done, even to invent events that did not happen. perhaps she had appropriated fred's body without being aware of doing so, but has come to believe that she had done this willingly, and is, in fact, an outright murderer? how am i to tell she hasn't developed delusions of guilt? and i would not be entirely surprised if she did. everything has been pointing at this for quite some time.
the creators of this graphic novel have done nothing to remove this possibility. even the choice of color and phrasing suggests the distorted perception characteristic of depression. she calls herself empty, dead and a non-entity, which is more than typical; the present-day illyria, in black and white, is nobody, or so she feels, whereas fred, in color, is someone of value. they have not specified how far this distortion goes, either.
it is a shame they took care to eliminate one ambiguity, but did nothing about the other, which could be even worse. the very possibility that the story can be read from this perspective is not a good sign. then, rather than being a story of redemption, it becomes a story about someone who had been reduced to a powerless position and repeatedly abused, and, as a result, has internalized all the aggression and redirected it inwards, giving herself a twisted sense of agency in the process - coming to believe, as she does, that she did have some say in her situation, in the death of fred and the forced acquisition of a body she did not want, that it was not entirely somebody else's doing. depression, after all, may be not only a a process where one directs the violence one has experienced at oneself; it may also be a last desperate attempt to shift the locus of control back from one's surroundings to one's own being.
the fact that this is a creature who is used to being the one in charge only makes matters worse.
i do not see anything whatsoever that would be redemptive or worth glorifying about this. especially alarming is casagrande's statement that illyria is, in fact, empty, rather than just seeing herself as such - this means that the artists somehow justify this dreadful condition and the attitude illyria has toward herself as this point. i do hope the next book will be more uplifting.
everything else aside, illyria's approaching angel to ask for assistance feels out of character. i simply cannot see her doing this. for that matter, i have trouble seeing anyone in their right mind going to angel for advice. the man can hardly help himself, much less anyone else. also, this is a person who had dragged his people down into death with him, and whose suicide mission had ended up in the whole of LA being collapsed into a hell dimension, if this is any indication.
but specifically not illyria. she is arrogant, which would make it naturally difficult for one to ask anyone for aid; and she feels alienated from her surroundings, which tends to make one fearful and/or mistrustful of people one does not know well, and reluctant to open up. what relationship was there to speak of between angel and illyria that she would ask him about something so personal? while i was watching the show, i had the impression that, even if a relationship was present, it was of the yowling-nose-to-nose-like-two-cats variety. but certainly not the sort depicted here. so yes, while i can understand her going to spike afterward, it is beyond me why they made her talk to angel.
i think writing this did make me feel better.
"in the beginning... the real beginning... there was the immeasurable dark. and in that void, we simply were. eternal. forever. before time. there were no limits, then. no boundaries. i was worshipped. adored. my immensity could not be contained. the world trembled at my feet. i was everything. i was all. i was free. yet now i am trapped here, in this one realm, in this static time. the worlds are closed to me. i miss them. even the one made of shrimp. sometimes. this shell is not of my choosing. it feels too much. weak. like you. (at this point she has picked up a crab and is speaking to it) what is my place here. i am a walking corpse."
where has the fractured inner monologue come from? it sounds like the entries from virginia woolf's diary where she was about to go into hypomanic mode and wrote in brief sentence fragments punctuated by multiple "&"s. since mania is clearly out of the question here, considering the emotional tone of this, i would have to presume that this is a mixed episode. this does not help things.
i don't recall illyria ever speaking like this on the show.
next. i do understand that it is easier - especially in a comic book - to reduce a complex situation to one of its aspects, and then deal with it that way. but it still qualifies as "character derailment". previously, everything had been done in the inner universe of AtS to characterize illyria as a creature that is as foreign to humanity as it could possibly be. we do not know, and cannot know, anything about its life back in the time of the old ones, or what it could have felt or thought then. one thing is certain, though: it had to be more complicated than merely doing whatever you want. and to take this life and try to present it in terms of absolute freedom vs. the limitations of her current condition feels like a gross oversimplification.
also: this being has lost its home. then it has lost the only creature that had mattered, in the void that had formed upon its loss. why is there no mention of this?
i kept waiting for any reference to her grief over wes' passing - perhaps not words, but some images, something that would indicate that she misses him - and i did not find any. it is highly implausible that she has already gotten over it by now. and i do not see her foregoing this and plunging into other, and arguably more "human" feelings, such as guilt, instead. if anything, it is the grief over wes that should have served as her "window" to discovering that she has other feelings as well, not the other way round.
she is mourning fred, which is understandable, as she and fred and wes have become tangled in this inseparable knot, but she is not mourning wes himself? this makes no sense.
what follows are images from "angel: after the fall" where illyria briefly returns in her primordial form.
"her demise should mean nothing to me. a pointless death amongst countless others. these memories, just leftover fragments of this husk. and yet they bind me to it. trap me in it. before i was a god-king. above even the highest powers of the world. and for a moment, i was unleashed again. immense. then, this...infection again. only this time, worse. humiliating. brought down by grief and loss and... love. love that i destroyed in my becoming."
everybody and their dog has been exploiting the fact that she occupies fred's body and making use of her identity/emotional confusion and her nascent guilt over murdering fred (which is in full bloom here). like many people suffering from depression, she fails to see this because she focuses on her own faults, not those of others. but a fact remains a fact. first gunn the vampire maniac wanted to bring out illyria's original form, because he believed he could persuade her to rewind time back to before the fall. so he injured her while she was in fred's form, and more vulnerable than usual; then he manipulated her psychologically through appealing to her feelings about fred. which, predictably, resulted in her having a nervous breakdown. frankly, so would i, if i were in her position. and of course, when she did, she vowed to destroy time and reality as we know it. what else did they expect her to do? tell gunn, "oh, sure, always glad to oblige"? seriously? then, to prevent her from carrying out her intentions, they had to flood her telepathically with wes' and spike's memories of fred, once again making use of the her connection to fred and her wounded conscience.
where does this leave illyria herself? she is little more than a victim. she has been repeatedly subjected to what i can only call rape. being inserted into a foreign body she did not want to have, and was disgusted with - that was rape, check. being awakened into a world where nothing was familiar to her, while her own home was dust - rape, check. having her powers forcibly sucked out of her, though she would rather die - rape, check. being used, like an inanimate instrument, by a maniac who wanted her to manipulate time for him (not to mention that this involved what would have been a serious physical injury to anyone else) - rape, check. having a subsequent breakdown she could not help having, and then being brought down through the horrific mindfuck involving others' memories of fred, which was about as intrusive as possible and hit her most painful spot - rape, check. the fact that this was done to creature we would characterize as the ultimate alien, or an "eldritch abomination", does not make it right. nothing can make this right. and i do not like how it is being justified in-universe and presented as an integral part of what is supposed to be a redemption story. granted, what doesn't kill one makes one stronger, and one could some learn valuable lessons from an ordeal like this, but this does not justify the ordeal itself. whereas i had a distinct feeling that, in the universe of these graphic novels, all this was treated as something that was perfectly fine, and happened just as it should have.
besides, judging by "angel: after the fall", the newly returned original form of illyria was an ideal woobie destroyer of worlds, if there ever was one (i had seen this coming for a while, so it did not seem entirely out of character). and these do not set out destroy reality because they want absolute freedom. they do so because they simply want something to smash, the more the better, and if the smashing can be done on a global scale, well then, that is better still. they have had too much; they have experienced the proverbial last straw that breaks the camel's back or the last drop that makes the cup overflow. i had a feeling that this was what happened to illyria. of course she put it in her own unique stilted, arrogant language ("there is no order over here and i cannot get what i want"); but the feeling behind the words appeared to be quite different.
their claiming that she misses that moment because she was free then reads like a self-contradiction.
and on a small side note, i can't stand it when the word "love" is being thrown around carelessly like this. the more tragic the situation, the more artificial, inadequate and out of place it sounds. especially when it is being mentioned in vain by people like illyria, who do not normally talk about their feelings altogether. this is not a soap opera, this is supposed to be a work of noir/post-apocalyptic/dark science fiction.
"there should be no room in me for this. a sickness. it is endless, this regret. this emptiness where only i should remain. instead, there is a hole. where SHE used to be".
there is a striking image, at this point, of illyria of today, in dark shades of gray, fighting demons, and below a colored photo of fred together with her friends from team angel.
"'please, wesley, why can't i stay?' i heard this, uncomprehending. uncaring and impatient to be born. i burned my way through her. i hollowed and conquered. i felt her go. a small, sparkling warmth, a speck of consciousness. pretty, but too tiny to matter. she was gone in an instant. and so i became. i rushed forward, ecstatic to be whole again. to be free. only... the shape was not my shape. the world was not my world. from her, i took everything. and from him..." all this is against the same dark background, in shades of gray, showing wes' memories of fred's final moments, then wes, weeping and covering his face with his hands. then, in color, with illyria standing on a rooftop, presumably the same one where she used to spend evenings with wes -
"i took hope."
i'm glad that someone has finally stepped out and specified how exactly this happened. it was never clarified on the show itself. illyria's resurrection could be taken in two different ways: either she consciously invaded fred's body, doing what she had to do to survive, or she was an unconscious spirit or sheer life-force (suggested by that "dust" form) which became conscious only after she had taken possession of fred's brain. in a sense, i am glad they did state that it was the second scenario, because this way they at least have a justification for illyria's guilt.
unfortunately, the narrator is unreliable. i have no reason to believe her side of the story because i couldn't be sure that she is not turning everything over on its head; while in this state of mind, one is likely to blame oneself for what one has not done, even to invent events that did not happen. perhaps she had appropriated fred's body without being aware of doing so, but has come to believe that she had done this willingly, and is, in fact, an outright murderer? how am i to tell she hasn't developed delusions of guilt? and i would not be entirely surprised if she did. everything has been pointing at this for quite some time.
the creators of this graphic novel have done nothing to remove this possibility. even the choice of color and phrasing suggests the distorted perception characteristic of depression. she calls herself empty, dead and a non-entity, which is more than typical; the present-day illyria, in black and white, is nobody, or so she feels, whereas fred, in color, is someone of value. they have not specified how far this distortion goes, either.
it is a shame they took care to eliminate one ambiguity, but did nothing about the other, which could be even worse. the very possibility that the story can be read from this perspective is not a good sign. then, rather than being a story of redemption, it becomes a story about someone who had been reduced to a powerless position and repeatedly abused, and, as a result, has internalized all the aggression and redirected it inwards, giving herself a twisted sense of agency in the process - coming to believe, as she does, that she did have some say in her situation, in the death of fred and the forced acquisition of a body she did not want, that it was not entirely somebody else's doing. depression, after all, may be not only a a process where one directs the violence one has experienced at oneself; it may also be a last desperate attempt to shift the locus of control back from one's surroundings to one's own being.
the fact that this is a creature who is used to being the one in charge only makes matters worse.
i do not see anything whatsoever that would be redemptive or worth glorifying about this. especially alarming is casagrande's statement that illyria is, in fact, empty, rather than just seeing herself as such - this means that the artists somehow justify this dreadful condition and the attitude illyria has toward herself as this point. i do hope the next book will be more uplifting.
everything else aside, illyria's approaching angel to ask for assistance feels out of character. i simply cannot see her doing this. for that matter, i have trouble seeing anyone in their right mind going to angel for advice. the man can hardly help himself, much less anyone else. also, this is a person who had dragged his people down into death with him, and whose suicide mission had ended up in the whole of LA being collapsed into a hell dimension, if this is any indication.
but specifically not illyria. she is arrogant, which would make it naturally difficult for one to ask anyone for aid; and she feels alienated from her surroundings, which tends to make one fearful and/or mistrustful of people one does not know well, and reluctant to open up. what relationship was there to speak of between angel and illyria that she would ask him about something so personal? while i was watching the show, i had the impression that, even if a relationship was present, it was of the yowling-nose-to-nose-like-two-cats variety. but certainly not the sort depicted here. so yes, while i can understand her going to spike afterward, it is beyond me why they made her talk to angel.
i think writing this did make me feel better.