*FINALLY* I've finished Buffy, let's dish a little.

[DevilEyes]

i read a bit, issues here and there... the Twilight storyline was perticularly bad in my eyes...

Spoiler: season 8

I mean, the whole Buffy and Angel boinking the world into another universe was bad enough... then there's the whole humans around the world have begun to embrace and accept vampires into society arc that just left me wondering what drugs had been dropped into the IDW watercooler...

I won't even go near the 'buffy is a bisexual now' storyline that had me shaking my head in bemusement, or the giant dawn storyline again saying 'sex is bad', which has always been a common theme through buffy...

I mean Angel's killing of Giles was pretty pathetic, even from a storyline point of view, and now the entire gang just goes 'oh well, he wasn't evil, so he must have had a good reason for it. we'll let the vampire with a soul slide again, even though Giles was the closest thing we've all ever had to a father, and supported us for over 8 years now... but it's Angel, so it's ok...

Those are my major gripes with season 8... and the whole SuperBuffy storyline that actually had me laughing out loud lol

M

Ha, I'm not a fan of the Twilight storyline, but

Spoiler: season 8

the gang doesn't go "oh well, he must have had a good reason". We've been told explicitly that Buffy can't even look at him now, and "everyone else wants his head on a pike", the only one who's forgiving is Faith, who took him to London and took care of him while he was catatonic for months after Giles' death. And Faith has her own reasons - Angel was the one who helped her years before at the time when everyone else was after her. None of the gang have even talked to Angel since and we don't know how willing they will be to forgive him.

Buffy isn't bisexual - she was just "experimenting" (at the time that she was surrounded almost exclusively by women for two years) and they made it clear that she is straight and it was never going to work out with Satsu. I thought it was believable enough the way it was depicted, but they were certainly milking the publicity for its worth.

Personally, I'd say that Giant Dawn storyline just said that her boyfriend Kenny was an asshole, but sadly Dawn acted like it was actually her fault, which pissed me off.

The space sex and the sentient universe was just

And actually it's Dark Horse, not IDW. Though IDW produced a lot of nonsense as well with their Angel and Spike comics... they even had a comic where Spike's arm dusted and grew back after it was cut off. That's what happens when writers don't do their homework.

 

[Methos]

thats fair, like i said before, we all have different interpretations of the show and comics... i just thought all of what i read of season 8 was beyond awful, but i'll admit to not reading every issue

M

 

[DevilEyes]

thats fair, like i said before, we all have different interpretations of the show and comics... i just thought all of what i read of season 8 was beyond awful, but i'll admit to not reading every issue

M

Heh, well, a lot of it is still "WTF" even if you've read it all... Joss has admitted that they went overboard in season 8 with the larger than life comic book stuff, they enjoyed having no budget and no limitations on what they could do. Some things in season 8 work for me in the sense that I get the metaphors and what Joss was going for in the overall story - it helps that I've read some really good meta on it that makes sense of it all - but the execution was still shoddy. I'm in two minds about the comics, but there are some issues I really liked a lot, including most of those that Joss wrote, and Brian K. Vaughn's Faith arc "No Future For You". He was a fan of the show and a big fan of Faith and it showed.

They said they would be back to the basics in season 9 and that it would be more down to earth, but they are still using WTF twists way too often.

 

[sonak]

1.I don't think there's ANY indication that he was going to rape Willow. The lines that reference sex are supposed to be about metaphors for impotence, and that scene after the break is mostly played for comedy.

That's The Initiative, after he had a chip implanted in his head (but boy, do they play with the biting/sex/rape metaphors or what). I was talking about Lovers Walk in season 3, when he kidnapped Willow to make her cast a love spell on Drusilla.

http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/scripts/042_scri.html


He bursts into serious tears, buries his head in Willow's shoulder. She is entirely nonplussed.
WILLOW
There there...

SPIKE
(into her neck)
Friends! How could she be so cruel?

He holds onto her, letting the sobs subside -- and they do, his grasp becoming a little tighter, more sensual, his face in her neck advancing to nuzzlage. She begins to look increasingly alarmed.

SPIKE
Mmmmm... your neck, that smell...

He lifts his face -- and it's gone vampy.

SPIKE
I haven't had a woman in weeks --

Willow springs up.

WILLOW
Whoah! No! Hold it!

SPIKE
Well, unless you count that shopkeeper...

WILLOW
Now hold on! I'll do your spell,
and, and, I'll get you Drusilla back
but there's no bottles in the face
and there's no "having"! Of any
kind! With me. All right?

He stands, growling -- and a second later his face morphs (greenscreen) back to human.

SPIKE
All right. Get started.

2. As I said before, his relationship with Dru was not comparable to his relationship with Buffy for a lot of reasons. Buffy was a Human with a soul for one.

You keel saying that, but you don't explain how that makes it 'not comparable'.

3. What about before he had the chip? And "started to have sex" is a lot different than being willing to rape, no matter how rough or weird the sex.

Do you even have a point with this? What does it prove that he didn't try to rape Buffy while they were fighting each other, which is what their interactions before the chip were usually about, not counting the time when they were temporary allies? He didn't even realize he was genuinely attracted to her until season 5 when he had chip in his head for over a year. Did you just ignore the explanations why he did in Seeing Red? He wasn't using it to hurt her as his mortal enemy, he was trying to connect to her the way they did while they were having a sexual relationship, to make her "feel it". What does that have to do with Spike not trying to rape Buffy in School Hard etc.?

And how is "he didn't try to do it before" an argument why it's OOC? That would make 99% of things characters do OOC, just because they haven't been doing the same thing in every episode under completely different circumstances.

I didn't say anything about sex being "weird" - I don't think rough sex or BDSM or public sex is "weird", anyway - so don't put words in my mouth. They were having sex all the time and we've seen several times when she'd say "no" but he would ignore it because he was sure she didn't really mean it, so you're not really providing an argument that he wouldn't do the same in Seeing Red when she really meant "no".[/QUOTE]


1. You're right, I was mistaking which episode you were referring to. I STILL don't see the dialogue as anything other than references to "having" in a vampire eating blood way.(he goes up to her neck and comments on the smell-how is that not a reference to doing vampire things? Remember Xander's "you were staring at my neck" to Angel? Was that supposed to suggest that Angel was sexually interested in Xander? There's probably some intentional coyness in the dialogue in that scene between Spike and Willow, but that's it. Still, his behavior towards Humans that he has no relationship with and before he gets the chip isn't really that relevant here.

2. I'm saying that Spike evolved as a character. The whole no soul thing aside, Spike changed as a character over the series, especially with the chip, even before getting his soul back. We are explicitly told that soulless vampires are capable of love, and I think that Spike came to love Buffy in his own weird way. I don't see late season 6 Spike raping her.
3. Don't get defensive, I wasn't making any assumptions about your attitudes towards sex. I was responding specifically to comments that you made.