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Waaaaah!!! LJ deprivation! I spent the time by staring at my screen and pressing "refresh" every so often in the vain hope that it would be fixed.

I haven't really been keeping up with LJ lately. I've been reading everyone's posts, but I've just felt too tired to comment or to answer anyone else's comments on my posts. I feel rather guilty about this -- comments are the lifeblood of LJ (imho), and part of me really misses exchanging them with people and replying to everyone's. The other part of me is just too blah and can't concentrate for long enough to write anything coherent. So I'm very sorry if I haven't answered your comments, and I've gotten some very nice and thoughtful ones over the past few days, and I really appreciate that. Usually I try to answer comments, particularly ones on my own posts. It's a bit like the feedback thing with authors, I suppose, not that I am an author. I guess some people are too tired or get too many comments or etc. to reply to all of them, but I sort of like having people comment (ok, I check obsessively and wonder why I don't get more, though I am trying to wean myself from that mindset), so I generally try to reply to people so that they know I'm reading the comments and that I like having people comment. What about you people? Is there some sort of comment protocol that you generally follow? I've felt very guilty lately for breaking my own.

Tales of the Slayer, Vol. 1

The title of the book is rather self-explanatory, if one is a Buffy fan ;). The only other Buffy tie-in I’ve read is Tales of the Slayers, the graphic novel. I'm usually not one for tie-ins, although I love fanfic. I think there's something about the boundaries of the world that is more limited in tie-ins -- the authors can't play around with the world or the characters that much, especially in an ongoing franchise. I like fanfic because it has the opportunity to be much more speculative, to drag the characters into situations that the writers of the show may not dare to, to bend and twist the world in shapes that may not happen otherwise.

That said, I really do enjoy these forays into the Buffyverse because they aren't about Buffy and the crew. Much more can happen. And it helps that the Buffyverse has a very enticing mythology for me, a Slayer in every generation, since the dawn of man or so.

This collection of stories has fun taking the concept and running with it, some with several rather obvious historical choices, not that I can blame them. I like the first story best, about a Greek Slayer in the battle of Marathon. I think it's because it's not a story on putting a Slayer in a cool historical period (again, not that I can blame them!), even though Thessily the Vampire Slayer is in a very cool historical period, during a very cool historical event. I like that Thessily is an old Slayer, given their short lifespans, and I like seeing her whole life as a Slayer.

I also liked the 1880s Kentucky Slayer because of the era and the voice and the wonderful ordinariness of it.

Some of the other stories just don't work for me, particularly the one on Roanoke Colony, which feels like it's trying to hard to twist itself into the Slayer mythology. Others feel like they're trying too hard to be dark and therefore artistic. It is rather silly complaining that a book on Slayers is too morbid, though. But one of the reasons why I like Buffy so much is because it's about the ordinary within the extraordinary, about those little touches of humanity.

Pretty interesting, though mixed. Will probably be seeing if I can borrow more in the series. (Ooo, vol. 2 has a Heian Slayer written by Kara Dalkey! Ok, I'm in.)