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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:06:12 GMT -5
Lee, I think it would be great to go to the Tennessee Buffy convention for writing next year. So count me in!
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:06:53 GMT -5
Spring, from hints I've read, Angel is going to be very much 're-vamped' next year if it is renewed, and I can see how it might be possible that Spike could end up being the only vamp on staff. I hope we get a chance to find out.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:07:32 GMT -5
Rob, the Dancing Lessons fanfic site has some great music compilation CDS they put together to illustrate 'Dancing Lesons' and 'War'. I made a contribution to the site (to pay for server) and got single and double CD sets - the music is so good and introduced me to some groups I didn't know before (I have since purchased their CDS). A few included are the Ramones 'Let's Dance', Sex Pistol's 'My Way' and the pertinent dialogue from 'Fool for Love' set to a technobeat. The matchup of music to fiction is really good.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:08:14 GMT -5
Rusty, I directed my response to your post to Rob in error. I was really talking about your CD post. Sorry.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:08:50 GMT -5
What a great idea! Nan, you should contact the slayage editor and offer it. It is VERY good and so say all of us.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:09:31 GMT -5
Due to an unexpected need for my first 911 call and my first ambulance ride, (rapid heartbeart, short stay in hospital, I'll be fine) I was unable to get to the board for 24 hours and missed 6 pages of posts. My we are a verbal bunch!
Meantime, my friend Charles (the first person I 'turned' for Buffy) was in a doctor's office and picked up a recent copy of 17 which had SMG on the cover. In the interview she was asked if she will miss the people on the show. Her first response was that she will miss James Marsters very much, that he and she are just like brother and sister.
Isn't that sweet? Or, when you think about it, really twisted.
She also said that one reason she wants to leave is that it is just too physically demanding. She said if tests were made she'd probably have the body of an 80 year old from all the damage that's been done by the stuntwork. I thought that was interesting, as it is one of the reasons James (in another interview) gave as his opinion on why she decided to quit.
Shifting thoughts... I've been reading Necessary Evils for 3 days now (had downloaded a bunch of chapters) and that is SUCH a good story. I'd read 'A Raising in the Sun' previously, but want to thank Nan and the others who raved about Necessary Evils, as it is really really well done. I add my recommendations.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:10:11 GMT -5
Patti, do the doctors have any idea what caused your symptoms? It must have been pretty scary for a while there, huh? I sounds as if they've ruled out anything horrible which is good to hear.
I was having similar turns for a short while (a week, maybe a year or so ago. They really scared me but they never lasted so I never went to the doctor. I cut down on caffeine and they seemed to go away.
About Necessary Evils, be sure to read the extras for it which are also listed on the menu. They're a scream. Her sense of humor is what I love most about Barb Cummings. I'm looking forward to the end of the story (someday).
deborah
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:11:15 GMT -5
I just finished reading a recent magazine (Seventeen, I think, with SMG on the cover) where someone interviewed SMG on her feelings about ending BtVS. A couple of things caught my attention. Quotes are what I remember she said verbatim.
When asked if she would miss her castmates, she replied that she would miss JM because she got along with him so well. She said, "we're like brother and sister." She didn't talk about anyone else. (Or, to be specific, the interviewer didn't put any more answer into her interview.)
When asked what she wouldn't miss, she talked about getting bruises and hurt legs. She mentioned that JM came onto Buffy in the second season, "episode three or four, I think", and he wasn't yet very good at stunt fighting because he came from a theater background. He had "these big boots" and she got bruises all over her arms from the fight scenes in "School Hard". She said she still kids him about that every once in a awhile.
Sounds like they have a very good relationship (from her viewpoint at least). I'm glad to hear she liked him and was happy about him both as a person and as an actor. Maybe if she is in a position to recommend someone for a part in one of her movie offers, she'll try to get him on board. Okay, okay, no comments on her future movie offers, please. If she makes it, it might be a very good thing for JM too.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:11:52 GMT -5
I'm forever grateful that FX allows us the opportunity to watch classic episodes like Seeing Red over and over.
Still, a commercial break in the middle of the bathroom scene is unbelievably ignorant. Does anyone actually WATCH the episodes that they're slicing up?
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:12:26 GMT -5
I see we both found the 'Seventeen" article and wrote about it almost simultaneously. You got it at the doctor's office, I got it at the hairdresser's. It's only a two page article, so I probably won't run out and buy the magazine and there were no pictures of JM - doubly damning. But the info was very nice.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:13:40 GMT -5
This is my stumbling effort at an essay.It's not my forte, but I throw the general idea out there.
Spike’s Gift
If Spike wore a T-shirt with a defining phrase on it we all know what it would be. Two words: Love’s Bitch.
The need to love and be loved is a guiding force in both his human life and his undead existence. Alive, William, is a ‘good man’ but an ineffectual romantic, lousy poet and, inevitably, a spurned suitor. His siring by Drucilla frees him from most of his human restraints, but remarkably, not his ability to love. As a vampire William finally finds the being that will release all his frustrated need to love and be loved in Drucilla. He willingly becomes her childe, her devoted lover, her caretaker and her cure. It’s just this capacity to retain emotion and commitment that causes the Judge to observe that he and Drucilla ‘stink of humanity’.
Capable of love or not, Spike is also evil. He has gleefully traded his weak and passive William persona for the freedom of the impulsive big-bad-Spike. But unlike Liam’s instant transition to Angelus, William’s transformation to Spike is deliberate and self-crafted. When Liam becomes Angelus, the demon is fully and viciously in charge from the very moment he awakes. There is no ‘choice’, no shades of gray. When William awakes from being turned, his inherent Williamness is still there. His ability to love and make choices has survived. What he’s been given in being sired is the ability to be strong, to operate without restraints, to transcend the consequences that come with being weak, human, and subject to the rules of society. It’s exhilarating, and guilt free. But as bad as he wants to be, Spike can’t give up the need for love. It’s as much his curse as his ability.
Although Drucilla has been the center of Spike’s universe, when he is disabled she is ultimately incapable of returning the favor. Returned to her full strength, she no longer needs him to protect her, and in fact in his weakened state he can’t. He has both saved her and failed her, so she rejects him and allows him to be repeatedly taunted about his inadequacy by Angelus. This is not only a repeat of his treatment at the hands of his human ‘friends’, but reminiscent of the scenario we will later see as a flashback showing William being rejected by his mother once he has lovingly turned her into a vampire to both cure her, and keep her with him. The vampire mother cites William’s weaknesses and inadequacies as the reason she can’t wait to leave him.
Spike’s love has been called obsessive, masochistic, perverse, immature, dependent, and abusive. We see with Harmony that Spike is capable of meaningless, exploitive relationships with women he considers ‘beneath’ him. He’s a man who always needs a woman in his life, but he has to be attracted by both their power and their vulnerability before devoting himself to be their champion. But, once he has made the commitment he is theirs, and will suffer if not gladly, at least willingly and even at their own hands, for love.
Love both defines Spike, and continuously betrays him. Like Buffy, who has been told with significant ambiguity, that ‘death’ is her ‘gift', Spike is continuously attracted to the ability that both makes him unique, and is the tool of his own destruction. Love is Spike’s gift. And just like death has been the journey for Buffy, Love has been the journey for Spike. Each gift is both what each of them give, and what each of them need, what they have always longed for in their not-so-secret hearts.
However, Spike has actually passed the Slayer on the path to resolution. Even more than Buffy, Spike knows what he is, and what he’s been. Further, he knows that there’s no fixing the past. He’s sorry, OK? But he’s through wallowing, something that Angel, Buffy and Wood have trouble giving up. Spike gets it. Trying to fix the past solves nothing. He finally understands that what matters is the now. Who you are, and what you can do in the present, no begging, no whining, no sackcloth and ashes. And more important, at this point there is no wishing, no manipulation that will create the future he wants. Only what will be. He still loves Buffy, but she’s not his trigger anymore, just as his mother is no longer his trigger. He’s finally free to be his own....man. Love is no longer his jailer or his obsession. It’s his gift.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:14:31 GMT -5
It's easy to see why I love Seeing Red so much. I have many good feelings about Villains, as well.
These are true ensemble episodes. No particular cast member gets the majority of screen time. Everyone has a lot of great things to do.
From a personal standpoint, there's more Buffy-Xander goodness in these two eps as there's been for all of Season 7's eps combined.
I'm probably in the minority here, but the chemistry between them is wasted. Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but in a friendship one.
I'm not sure what else Xander has to do to earn Buffy's respect. The closest we've come to her truly confiding in him this year was in the midst of an argument in Selfless.
Buffy was close to Xander early this season because there was no other adults available. He was the last Scooby standing.
Almost at the very moment Spike and Willow came back into the picture she has barely given him the time of day....probably because she feels that they can understand her better because of their shared power.
Apparently Xander isn't worthy when things really get bad. It hurts me. A lot. I want to see more of the Buffy that loves and respects Xander. When I watch the two episodes that were on tonight I thought she truly did. God knows there's been no evidence of it this season. Now he's irrelevant.
Yes...I know. I'm grousing about something that doesn't matter very much. This year is about Buffy and Spike. I get that. I actually want to see more of that as well. Seeing Red had a lot of terrific things for everyone in one episode. They need to get back to that...in a hurry.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:15:54 GMT -5
Wowser--this is great stuff, Randy! Send it immediately to Vlad for inclusion on the essays page!
I had a whole post about what I thought was great about your analysis but accidentally wiped it before I could post it. I'll try again.
Two things in your discussion strike me was particularly fine. While I'm trying to remember what I said the first one one, I'll go to the second: your paralleling the First Slayer's declaration to Buffy that "Death is your gift" with its unarticulated but plain (once pointed out) corollary that love is Spike's gift. You're absolutely right about this. And he has yet to find anyone who will fully accept it from him. Not Drusilla, and not Buffy. And, now that we've seen Lies My Parents Told Me, not his mother, Anne, either. Each of them either can't or won't accept the totality of his commitment and end up pushing him away, though in Drusilla's case, she may be right about his heart turning away toward Buffy though he himself was in South America, with her, and though he wasn't consciously aware of any change in his affection until much later.
The first point, which I've now remembered, is that love is both Spike's greatest strength and his greatest vulnerability. For love, he's capable of courage, absolute dedication, and self-sacrifice, none of which is intrinsic to vampire nature. He can and does achieve prodigies that elevate him to heroic status at least equal to the mythic role of the Slayer. However, these strengths of energy and resolute aggression do nothing to protect him against the thing he loves. Both Buffy and the Scoobies--particularly Xander--abuse him shamefully, and he cannot defend himself. It's as if he's been given a magical weapon and the strength and will to use it, but no armor. No defense. That's the price of the weapon.
And as much as that hurts, he accepts the price and pays it. Over and over and over again. I know I've expanded here a little on what you said, but it's fundamentally your point, not mine, and I appreciate your putting it so clearly.
Now if I can prevent myself from losing this post too, I'll send it.
Again, Bravo, Randy!
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:16:33 GMT -5
Very well written and thought out. Just what I would've expected from someone with your talent, Rusty.
I drew a parallel a few pages back between he and Xander. Both are all about love, in all its positive and negative aspects.
They go about it in an entirely different way, of course; but love rules their universe, for better or for worse.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 8, 2003 18:17:11 GMT -5
Thank you both. Nan, your comments and expansion on my theme were great. If my essay gets posted to the S3 your expansion should be included. It really fits.
Rob, as always your comments on Spike and Xander were right on the money. They're a great Odd Couple. Friendship really does lurk under all that animosity, and a great progression in their relationship and its comic potential has been ignored. Plus resolution of the many issues they have is really important especially since they are essentially a triangle with Buffy.
If there's a spin off Xander and Spike should be roommates.
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