The last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was fairly interesting... part Phil Dick, part ... um... "Dallas person wakes up in shower and the last season was all a dream". I'm weary of going as in-depth into this as I'm going to, mostly because it is junk-television (albeit fairly entertaining junk) and it seems silly, but nonetheless...

So, Buffy kept going back and forth between what would be reality in a mental institute with her parents and a doctor trying to get her straight, and the fantasy that would make up the entire premise of the television show-- a mass of plot contivances piled on by fake mythology by her psyche to keep her away from what reality has gone on for the past several seasons of the quirky geeky fantasy show. Curious thing to do, particularly since they purposefully didn't come out strong on which "reality" was "real" ... ie: Having spent much of her young life kicking demon-possessed dogs and confronting the otherwise demon-posessed, is she yearning for conventional reality-- her psyche contriving the most expedient explanation: she's psychologically troubled that needs to deal with these problems, or... or... or is the "reality" that she's psychologically troubled, and after finding that in her effort to stick herself on the vanguard of some important common mission, finally no longer wishes to deal with the contrivances of the mass of mythological and psuedo-mythological and contrived-hidden-history that her and her "team" partake of for said common world-mission, and get back to the "normal, conventional real world"?

It's a pretty curious thing to do with some harm-- break down the 4th wall of a geeky quirky little fantasy show-- perhaps effective in dousing whatever vicarious thrill the viewer gets from watching the show with a little self-awareness. It's a product, and the thought of quibbling over which reality is true brings to mind the simple fact that it doesn't really matter-- it's a tv show.

In terms of saving the world, and being at the vanguard of something important and esoteric (which is the appeal of Buffy the Vampire and virtually any and all fantasies)... hm. Contivances are necessary to stake a claim to "the truth", and the feeling of hyper-importance. Revisionist History is a necessary thing for all new lineages of emperorers to legitimize themselves-- peg the old rulers down a bunch of notches to nothingness, and assert whatever claim they have to the throne. On the other hand, it does destroy the old revised history, but only to replace it with a new one.

To stick oneself on the vanguard of humanity requires sticking themselves in a historical context where they can justify doing what they do because historical figures were just like them. One needs to convince themselves, and from there the world, that they are not creating or contriving the rules of the "new empire" (whatever that empire would be), but that they're recreating the rules of the "new empire" from what had been recently desecrated... (contrivances pop up in the way of the what the history was, and how it got to be destroyed.)

....

thoughts developed via an email correspondance and through the whacky message board I sit at the helm of.

to the start page...