Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Warning: spoilers for seasons one through seven.

First there was the movie, and the movie was bad. It was B-grade bad, but that’s not the same as badfic.

Then there was season one, and Angel couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, but a hulking black hole that sucks the life out of every scene he’s in is not badfic per se. The badfic of Angel was the Mr. X effect inherited from the Deep Throat character on the X-Files - a stalker who just hovers around acting like there’s a deep plot that Our Heroes are missing. Yet there is no real plot, just a lot of bad lighting, mood music, and honeybees.

Badfic is the attempt to conjure up the emotion and excitement of a good plot without actually bothering to write the good plot. The Master was also B-grade bad, but too obviously over-the-top to be badfic. Season two, on the other hand, was a world of badfic. A gypsy curse designed specifically to keep you apart from your inscrutable boyfriend is no more dignified than the worst Mulder/Scully hurt-comfort fic. Then he turns evil, you have to kill him, and you feel bad about it. If it were me, I’d be happy to have an excuse to off the sod. He really needed to be put out of everyone’s misery.

That brings us to the high point of Buffy, season three - was there ever a bad guy like the Mayor, or a bad girl like Faith? There was still some residual Angel badficness going on - hey, he needs a transfusion, and it has to be your blood! - but the Mayor’s wonderful anti-Angel speech made up for all that.

Season four wasn’t too bad, despite the Buffy Does Sunnydale U. badfic elements. Spike was a significant redeeming factor. Glory was a little too punchy in season five, but like the Master, she was B-grade rather than badfic.

Likewise, resurrecting Buffy was a nice B-grade move, but refusing to let her get over her death even after she’d sung through all her issues in the musical was a classic badfic move. Turning the spunky Buffy of season four into depresso-girl of season six was another badfic move. The motto of badfic is, a good wallow is better than a good plot.

The final move of badfic is to break the conventions of the genre. Season six brought us good guys going bad and becoming arms runners and rapists, doing the magic drug, and flaying people, not to mention death by gunfire. Season seven has upped the ante to maiming main characters and voting Buffy off the Hellmouth. If someone noticed how Buffy got to be the Bad Slayer, do tell me.

How could I forget the soap opera that is Spike? Spike gets a soul, Spike goes batty, Spike goes evil, Giles tries to get Spike killed, and finally, the Spuffy episode to end all Spuffy speculation (in a bout of dry heaving). Yes, Buffy again confesses her undying ambivalence for Spike, and barely one commercial break later, is doing the tongue mambo with Angel. It’s a soap opera love triangle undreamt of in the worst badfic.

All I can say is, Drusilla much?

Besides yet another answer to the question Why Khan? I also have a new MIS page up, mainly to provide an index of my drabbles from the Empty Shell challenge.

Today’s answer is Ayn Rand’s. In “What is Romanticism?” from The Romantic Manifesto, she observes that the best (in the sense of most interesting and well-drawn) characters in Hugo, Dostoevsky and other Romantic authors’ works are the bad guys, while the heroes are cardboard figures:

This phenomenon—the fascinating villain or colorful rogue, who steals the story and the drama from the anemic hero—is prevalent in the history of Romantic literature, serious or popular, from top to bottom. It is as if, under the dead crust of the altrust code officially adopted by mankind, an illicit, subterranean fire were boiling chaotically, and erupting once in a while; forbidden to the hero, the fire of self-assertiveness burst forth from the apologetic ashes of a “villain.”

Now this is even truer for Khan than for the characters about whom Ayn Rand was writing. Altruism is ingrained in our culture despite all her attempts to root it out. It’s easier for us to look at the Prime Directive and say that’s the dead crust of a self-defeating moral code—and that maybe Khan is right to try to bring order to chaotic humanity. Ordem e Progresso (order and progress, the motto on the flag of Brazil) was a more popular motto in the 60’s than it is today.

So the attractive villain is the villain who might be right, who is somehow a challenge to the morality of the hero (anemic or not). We see this in “Space Seed” when Spock is shocked at Kirk’s admiration for Khan Noonien Singh; part of what makes Kirk an anemic hero is that he feels no need to defend his own culture. He calls Khan a tyrant without ever praising freedom, and so there is no conflict of ideas, only the brightness of Khan against the drab Federation background.

I do love a colorful Khan.

Seema accidentally put me in mind of yet another possible answer to the question Why Khan? Perish the very thought, but Why Khan? might be suspected to have the same answer as Why Angel? or Why Scott? - that is, I might love him for his pecs alone, for his Latin and leather manliness. I might even like Magneto for the black cape, shiny helmet, and well-preserved good looks.

The truth is that I’m not attracted to the vapid type, to Volvo Boy or the One-Eyed Insomnia Cure, because I don’t see any character in their faces. I prefer a good genocidal maniac, or even a lovesick platinum-blonde vampire. The Keanu Reeves phenomenon, in which fangirls swoon over (allegedly) pretty faces who can’t act their way out of a paper bag, is a deep mystery to me.

So I don’t love Khan because he’s beautiful; he’s beautiful because he’s lovable.

The corollary of transhumanism might be misanthropy - or, in Magneto’s honor, misentomy, a word coined for the occasion of this blog entry to mean hatred of insects.

Khan is glorious in his superiority when he says, “Captain, although your abilities intrigue me, you are quite honestly inferior.” Khan is above hating the insects - even Magneto is, I suspect - but she who loves Khan might love him because she hates the average man.

This is, in fact, Rabble Rouser’s interpretation of Marla McGivers in Weeds - Marla doesn’t care much for her shipmates. That’s not how I see the cheerful Marla of the first half of “Space Seed” - she can love Khan without hating Kirk.

And so can I.

This is yet another attempt to answer the question, “Why Khan?” See the previous two entries in the Muses category for the whole story. Minor spoilers for X-Men United.

So far I’ve been knocking down evil straw men, but here’s a relatively good theory of the attractiveness of the bad guy: transhumanism. Transhumanism is the hope for a more-than-human future through genetic engineering, cybernetics, uploading human consciousness to computers, and other science-fictional fantasies. It has been said that those who believe uploading is in our future generally predict it will be here by their 70th birthday.

The theory is, if you want to be transhuman yourself you might begin to identify with the evil transhumans of fiction rather than the boring human characters. My favorite bad guys - Khan, the Borg, Magneto - are certainly transhuman, but that’s not my reason for liking them.

For one thing, I don’t believe in transhumanism that way. I like to write about transhuman characters, but I don’t want to be Borg. I don’t believe I’ll be uploaded on my 70th birthday. I don’t think genetic engineering is a good idea even though it’s all over my original fiction.

More importantly for the Why Khan? question, I don’t care for all the transhuman characters, just the cool evil ones. Scott bored me to tears in both X-Men movies, and Storm, Jean, and Xavier weren’t far behind on the snooze scale. I just saw the movie two hours ago, and I wouldn’t have remembered Xavier’s name if I hadn’t come across it just now in an online review. As we were walking out of the Fenway 13, I was calling him Picard so Veronica and company would know who I was talking about.

I had no difficulty remembering Magneto’s name. In fact, I scared Veronica with my thing for Magneto - she even forgot that I still owe her for the ticket. Ten dollars is a small price to pay for the line, You are a god among insects.

I don’t love Khan for his transhumanity per se.

Cool Boston site of the day: The Mapparium

Another possible explanation of fondness for the bad guy is…simple badness. Maybe the writer is evil and gets along best with evil characters. Alternately, maybe the topic is horror, so their works are populated with nasties who would give Stephen King nightmares.

This is not my attraction to Khan.

This one’s for Seema, to memorialize her fight with the ASC troll and other ASC Awards sockpuppets and cheaters.

Title:   Goodbye Internet Trolls
Author:  Jemima
Summary: A filk of Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" for Seema.
The original lyrics were by Bernie Taupin, music by Elton John.

When are you gonna grow up?
When will you understand?
I should have stuck to P/T,
I should have studied for that exam.

You know you can't mock me forever -
You see I've misplaced the muse.
I can't remember when I last got feedback;
This fan's too young to be filking the blues...

So goodbye Internet trolls
And the dregs of the mailing-list crowd -
Don't look for me in your treehouse
I'm down here laughing out loud.

Laugh at the horny, bad smut on the lists
Weed out the scriptkidz and moles -
Now I'm pointing my browser at sunny skies,
Without the Internet trolls...

What will you do without me?
Who are you going to flame?
Keep your minions voting for godawful fanfics -
I'm not playing your contest game.

Surely you'll find a replacement,
There's plenty of newbies to use -
Fangirls who haven't seen through you
Looking for contests they're just gonna lose...

Khan showed up at the ASC Awards Dinner, collecting several of my awards for me (in VOY and Overall). He also made an appearance in TOS).

The title of this entry doesn’t refer to the lovely Seven story by nostalgia. Instead, it’s a possible answer to the question someone asked me, Why Khan? Why the bad guy? Why the Borg?

I’m not going to insult Marla McGivers with the suggestion that she suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, but a writer who is forced to spend endless hours inside the mind of a purported bad guy can come to feel sympathy for her personal devil, identify with him, and eventually give him all the good lines.

That’s not my excuse.

I took too long writing my ASC Awards acceptance speeches, so I don’t have time to blog about Khan. Soon, though, I will discuss the Superior Ficcability.

Filk on demand - one muse, no waiting…

Title:   I Will Revive
Author:  Jemima
Series:  TOS
Summary: A filk of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" for Rocky.

Oh, once I was a god
I was idolized
For bringing order to a world
I should have sterilized;
But then my flock put up a fight,
Foolish quislings led astray -
I slipped away,
I fled in the Bot'ny Bay.

And now you've come
To outer space -
I just woke up to find you here
With that dumb look upon your face;
I would have set another course,
I would have hewn your family tree,
If I had thought for one mad moment
You would dare to follow me.

So this is man
You look the same -
Still no improvement
I see the race I overcame.
Just like the sheep who sent their shepherds to the sky
You thought I'd perished,
You thought you'd kissed Khan goodbye...

Oh no, not I!
I will revive -
Genetically superior,
I know I'll come alive.
I've got one more life to live
I've got sins not to forgive
So I'll revive
I will revive

And by my superhuman strength
Saved from death's embrace,
In Sickbay on the mend
I'm glad to see a friendly face.
I have dreamed two hundred years
Of angry rabble in my way,
But she will stay,
Yes, I've found a mind to sway.

I grow fatigued
I will retire;
Back in my quarters, oh, lieutenant,
You and I'll conspire.
Because she felt like dropping in,
Because she knelt and made her plea -
Yes, she came despite my warning,
She has bound her fate to me.

So this is man
You look the same -
Still no improvement
I see the race I overcame.
Just like the sheep who drove their shepherds to the sky
You thought I'd perished,
You thought you'd kissed Khan goodbye...

Oh no, not I!
I will revive -
Genetically superior,
I know I'll come alive.
I've got one more life to live
I've got sins not to forgive
So I'll revive
I will revive

So this is man
You look the same -
Still no improvement
I see the race I overcame.
Just like the sheep who chased their shepherds to the sky
You thought I'd perished,
You thought you'd kissed Khan goodbye...

Oh no, not I!
I will revive -
Genetically superior,
I know I'll come alive.
I've got one more life to live
I've got sins not to forgive
So I'll revive
I will revive
I will revive

Oh, once I was a god
I was idolized
For bringing order to a world
I should have sterilized;
But then my flock put up a fight,
Foolish quislings led astray -
I slipped away,
I fled in the Bot'ny Bay...

[fade out]