today today today
Apr. 29th, 2003 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlock"To light a candle is to cast a shadow."
-Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
This quote intrigued me this afternoon. In the context it's meant to comment on causes/effects of actions, to say 'if you do this, that will happen.' However, taken as a statement alone, it brings to mind all sorts of delicious philosophical-y stuff, unrelated to the context but interesting in their own right. Thoughts about balance, about the necessity of having both light and dark in any situation to succeed, about night and day.
Also, it's making me wonder about niggling fanficcy ideas. If there's an ultimate good in BtVS verse, must there be an ultimate bad? If that ultimate good is the Slayer, do vampires as a collective race constitue her polar opposite, or is their something else?
When those old shaman dudes made the first slayer, was somethign equal and opposite also created? Is there someone just like Buffy and Faith out there, a Chosen young girl running around strong and smart and fast, whose only mission is to fight good and further evil? Would it even be a girl, or would it be a boy, to further the opposites trend?
Or was the slayer created as the equal/opposite of vampires/demons?
God, I need a life.
-Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
This quote intrigued me this afternoon. In the context it's meant to comment on causes/effects of actions, to say 'if you do this, that will happen.' However, taken as a statement alone, it brings to mind all sorts of delicious philosophical-y stuff, unrelated to the context but interesting in their own right. Thoughts about balance, about the necessity of having both light and dark in any situation to succeed, about night and day.
Also, it's making me wonder about niggling fanficcy ideas. If there's an ultimate good in BtVS verse, must there be an ultimate bad? If that ultimate good is the Slayer, do vampires as a collective race constitue her polar opposite, or is their something else?
When those old shaman dudes made the first slayer, was somethign equal and opposite also created? Is there someone just like Buffy and Faith out there, a Chosen young girl running around strong and smart and fast, whose only mission is to fight good and further evil? Would it even be a girl, or would it be a boy, to further the opposites trend?
Or was the slayer created as the equal/opposite of vampires/demons?
God, I need a life.
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Re:
Date: 2003-04-30 12:24 pm (UTC)He is mostly famous for his "Cthulhu Mythos" cycle of stories which deal with the struggle of ordinary people when they come face to face with over whelming cosmic horror.
I could rattle on about HPL forever. Really you should read some of his stuff but as far as the buffy comparision goes:
1) According to HPL, the "Great Old Ones" existed on earth (and indeed throughout the universe) before man. When man arose they vanished, but they have been trying to get a foot back into our reality ever since. This ties up with Giles introduction "..the world did not start out as a paradise".
2) No one "wins" in Lovecraft stories. The evil they fight (and evil is the wrong word really for Lovecraft villians, since there motives are unknowable) is eternal, its just a case of pushing it back, delaying the inevitable.
3) Most of the "victories" in Lovecraft Stories involve turning dark forces against themselves. Unfortunately this tends to corrupt the hero.
So a Slayer whose power is "rooted in the darkness" she fights is a quite lovecraftian concept.
Of Course Buffy is WAY more optimistic than HPL's work. I just think the mythological approach to demons having once owned the world and fighting for it back is quite lovecraftesque. Oh and the show has used the term "Old Ones" way too many times for Joss not to have been aping HPL just a bit!
Re:
Date: 2003-04-30 12:56 pm (UTC)