Veronica vs Buffy: Mind vs Emotion?

[james_davis_nicoll]

That's a grossly simplified summary of this entry over on resolute's LJ. Go read it.

If I were David Brin, I would use this as a springboard to show how this mean Veronica = Civilization and all that is good, whereas Buffy = the shadowy menace of irrationality. Note that Veronica and her father's snoopiness clearly is a metaphor for the Transparent Society.

Comments

That Always Bugged Me About the Initiative...

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

Caveat: I know that Whedon was never big on internally consistent world-building. That said...

Both Buffy and Angel make it pretty clear that as a last resort, the best way to defeat evil is a judicious application of high explosives (cf. the Judge, the Mayor, etc.). With that principle established, they still wind up backing away from the natural consequences of it.

The Slayer may be preternaturally strong, The Chosen One, etc., but in the end, she is one person. An infantry platoon could pretty well deal with just about every threat that Buffy faces.

Of course, I do appreciate that Whedon was setting up the idea that you really can't trust the State, but the solution to such untrustworthiness doesn't strike me as the unaccountable lone Slayer. The solution would be a more accountable military/law enforcement unit.

I will sandwich this comment again by saying that I am well aware that Whedon is all about the relationships rather than the internal consistency of his worlds. I just don't think that the two have to be mutually exclusive.

Re: That Always Bugged Me About the Initiative...

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Is there anything Sunshine didn't improve? The effects of high explosives on her Buffyesque vampires was I think unspecified, but targetting would be clearly a problem. They're fast, and have the enthrall on eye-contact thing going for them. As for lair-searching[1], the vamps can't kill in daytime, but their other mojo might work, and daytime guards are mentioned in an ominous fashion, though for all we know those were just hired humans with guns[2]. Plus it's not clear there'd be any mortal entrance to a mastervamp lair. So the human gov't knows about vamps and has our tech and some magic, but it's still at best an even fight.

[1] I forgot to mention in my other entry: there were various occasions on Buffy where I thought "look, you know where the lair is. Go knock holes in the roof during daylight. Or burn it down."

[2] I still love the image of master vampires hiding in their basements and lurking on the Internet. It's up there with S1 Buffy: "Whoosh, they're gone." "Vampires can fly?" "They can drive."

Re: That Always Bugged Me About the Initiative...

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. I did start wondering how Sunshine would fall on the VM/Buffy scale. Most of the book is Sunshine's internal monolog, she's fairly introspective in some ways. But some of the introspection is along the lines of "la la la I don't want to think about that" or "my, I never did wonder what happened to my father's family, did I?" Very emotionally reactive, and impulsive when she does do things.