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[shadowkat]

Alright..taking a bit of time out to admit the latest Mark Watches post amused me.

Highlights:

*BUFFY’S DREAM. WHAT THE FUCK. Oh my god, Faith, I miss you. How is this show going to deal with you? I thought you were dead for sure, and now you’re here, and you’re in a coma, and I just feel bad for you. Why do I have a feeling this dream sequence has some other importance I’m not seeing?

Me: You have no idea. Fan literally rewound that dream five or six times to figure out the clues for the next two seasons - which are all interwoven in that dream. The coming of Dawn, Joyce's death, and finally Buffy's death to save the world.

And if you think the dream sequence in S3 is trippy, just wait until Restless in S4.

Also Dude, seriously, is Fuck your favorite word? It makes your posts difficult to read at work.

Angel: SHUT THE FUCK UP. I am so irritated by you and your constant need for melodrama. First, you don’t want Buffy around. Then you want to help her. Then you don’t want to live. And now you won’t stick around to say goodbye because it’ll be “too painful.” Maybe it’s so painful because you won’t make up your goddamn mind. Can you even imagine the pain you are causing Buffy with this whole back-and-forth routine? No? SO STOP IT.

If Angel's lurking indecisiveness where Buffy is concerned bugs him in Graduation Day, just wait for Pangs and I Will Always Remember You - which are what killed that ship dead for me. For more or less the same reason's Mark is echoing above.

Oh, of course Angel is going to Brood in the fog and smoke before disappearing. Angel was never truly worried about saying goodbye. He just needed to brood one last time.

LOL! Actually, not for the last time. And... Well he never actually does need to say goodbye, because he just keeps popping up, once a season. I think the only season he didn't pop up was S6 - no wait, he did, just off stage. B/A relationship otherwise known as "do I stay or do I go, I can't make up my mind!!!"

Almost makes me want to re-watch the series again.


I think my Buffy poll is finally done. I'll close it Friday night. With 75 participants, S3 is still not much of a favorite, only 11 people list it as a favorite and only 6 as their favorite of all the seasons. S5 is still ahead by a wide margin, with S6 a few lags behind, and S7/S3 tied for third place, S4 is in fourth,
S2 is in fifth and S1 dead last. Apparently the majority of my flist or whomever took the poll prefers the latter seasons to the earlier ones. I'm guessing they are mostly Spike fans like myself...because let's face it he's not in the earlier seasons. If you are a Spike fan, you probably won't rank 1-3 as your overall favorite or 1st. The people who tend to put S3 first - I've noticed - aren't Spike fans, but Faith or Xander fans. Poor souls. You really got gypped. Faith hardly has much of an arc.
Angel/David Boreanze fans, I don't feel sorry for, they got an entire series featuring their hero. Plus Bones. Frigging lucky people. While us Spike/James Marsters fans, got barely anything in comparison. I really need to stop becoming enamored of quirky character actors.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! Thanks. Yes, I can imagine the reactions. Unfortunately. Bella/Edward shippers have nothing on Bangel. Actually Stephanie Meyer was a Bangel shipper, Bella and Edward were taken directly from Buffy/Angel - which is why Whedon felt the need to make fun of the ship and Twilight in his comic books. Can't say I blame him completely for that...it would urk me too, if I were Whedon.

I'm curious to see how he views Spike. Spike is an ambiguous character who basically flipped the mythology regarding souls and demons upside down.
The whole behavioral conditioning bit, plus William the Bloody Awful Poet,
add to that...Buffy beating him to a pulp in Dead Things does shine a a whole new light on Spike desperately forcing himself on Buffy in a crazed attempt to restart their relationship. The filming of that scene jars the eyes. Because it is an impossible scene to watch without wanting to switch channels, leave the room, or scream at the tv. A lot of people just reacted to what they saw - which Mark seems to do a lot. So I can't really see him applying critical thought to it. Most people didn't. Made it frustrating to discuss online. To this day, I can't help but think the writers wanted to hurt their viewers with that episode.

You can't really look at the AR scene out of context. Which a lot of people did.

[tomomakimou.livejournal.com]

Actually Stephanie Meyer was a Bangel shipper, Bella and Edward were taken directly from Buffy/Angel - which is why Whedon felt the need to make fun of the ship and Twilight in his comic books. Can't say I blame him completely for that...it would urk me too, if I were Whedon.

OMG, really? I didn't know that! Thank you for this piece of trivia. :D

I agreed with everything you said regarding Spike and AR.

It never becomes less difficult to watch that scene, doesn't it? Though, seeing around, it seems like it hit me much less than it did many others. Watching episodes in rapid succession made me easier to engage with the canon more objectively. Speaking from my experiences, our perception is often of the bigger picture rather than of the specific pieces when we watch TV shows on DVD all in one go, whereas watching a show on a weekly basis as it airs, we tend to fixate more on individual elements.

As for me, I loved Spike even more because of what he did post-SR. I wasn't fooled even for a second that Spike left for Africa to get his chip out. The whole picture was laid out in front of me. He owned up to what he did and went out his way to fundamentally change himself. Talking about “flipping the mythology regarding souls and demons upside down”! :D

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Speaking from my experiences, our perception is often of the bigger picture rather than of the specific pieces when we watch TV shows on DVD all in one go, whereas watching a show on a weekly basis as it airs, we tend to fixate more on individual elements.

This is very true. When I watched the Wire, Trueblood, Dexter, Farscape and Fringe via DVD, I reacted to the story very differently those who watched it in weekly installments or live.

Also how spoiled you are makes a difference. I was trying to explain this to another poster, who seemed to get it, but not quite...she/he was very spoiled for the series. Knew everything. But hadn't watched it. But here's the thing - they were spoiled by someone else's perspective. They knew another viewers thoughts on it. How they perceived it. On top of this, they watched episodes out of order. For example they watched Hells Bells before Normal Again. Or Once More with Feeling before Afterlife. They say Bargaining before The Gift.
Seeing Red before Dead Things, As You Were, Normal Again and Entropy.
Seeing episodes out of order...will change the narrative structure.
It will change how you view the tale being told.

When I watched the series live, many fans saw the episode Seeing Red before the episode Entropy. If you see Seeing Red first, a lot of things make no sense. First off - Willow and Tara's reunion is sort of abrupt. Xander's behavior is...odd. And Spike's even more so, it makes no sense why Spike would visit Buffy or Dawn would confront Spike regarding his feelings for Buffy. Entropy is important. You can't watch Buffy the way you would watch the X-Files or Bones, popping in and out, it doesn't work. So of course they'd react violently to Seeing Red - they missed the set-up.

On top of this...at the time, two other things happened. The writers were playing mind-games with their fans. The internet was a brand new toy, as was interaction with fans. Also Whedon hated spoilers and kept hunting ways to keep them from getting out, he wanted to surprise his audience. So...the writers lead the fans to believe that Spike was getting his chip out. They carefully planted spoilers with trustworthy sources. In interviews they discussed at length how Spike was the bad boyfriend, and how fascinating it was that fans saw it differently and didn't think he needed a soul to be good, and clearly they had to fix that, but then maybe not. Marti Noxon - who has no filter, had a tendency to say whatever came to mind. (I seriously think the characters of Anya and Cordy were in part taken from Marti's tendency to say whatever popped into her head.) They also lied to the actor playing Spike and convinced him that the character was getting his chip taken out. It was all part of an elaborate game of chicken with the fans.

A first time watcher such as Mark or yourself, who is watching either by DVD or streaming video...isn't going to have that problem. You can be blissfully unaware of the writer's idiotic interviews and mind-games. And avoid some of the fans who tell you what happened in an episode that they saw out of order and did not understand.

I think perception is highly colored by our environment and how others see things. If for example you watched Seeing Red with a friend who had been raped...you might react to it differently than if you watched it alone.

As for me, I loved Spike even more because of what he did post-SR. I wasn't fooled even for a second that Spike left for Africa to get his chip out. The whole picture was laid out in front of me. He owned up to what he did and went out his way to fundamentally change himself. Talking about “flipping the mythology regarding souls and demons upside down”! :D

Oh, I agree, I felt much the same way. Although at the time - I thought he'd turn human. I loved him even more after SR, because of how he reacted, the horror, the remorse, and what he did afterwards.
It totally flipped the mythology upside down. It also shown an uncomfortable light on Angel...

[tomomakimou.livejournal.com]

Reading your journals really help me understand what being part of the fandom was like back then. :)

Those people who watched the series out of order? I did as well, with the AtS. I watched all 7 seasons of Buffy first before watching any episode of AtS. Come to think of it, this is probably one of the reasons why I feel indifferent towards Faith. In my initial view, she showed up in S3, did a bunch of terrible things, got stabbed and fell into a coma, came back in S4, did a bunch of terrible things & one good thing before disappearing again, came back in S7, somehow all reformed and redeemed. Actually this explains a lot why I don't have emotional attachments with this character. But then again, the character seems to resonate with many people in S3, but not with me. So, I probably wouldn't have been much of a fan even if I did watch her arc properly. :p


All those behind-the-scenes stories make me sad. I feel really bad for JM.... I've heard how hard it was for a method actor like him to do the AR scene, but on top of that, he believed that incident would lead his character down the path of villainy? After all he had been through over the course of five seasons?? Geez, that must have really hurt. :(

All I can say is I'm glad I didn't have to go through all the heartaches in this fandom. (I know how it is, I've been part of one crazy fandom before....*shivers*)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee, I've come to realize that all fandoms are crazy...hence the term "fan" - "fanatic". From a distance I've seen the insanity in the Star Trek, Doctor Who, SPN, Smallville, BSG, and Farscape fandoms. And don't get me started on daytime soap opera fandoms. Heck - I made the mistake last year of tip-toeing my way into the Kim Harrison Rachel Morgan fandom..which...*shudder*.

The people reading the Buffy comics now are experiencing pretty much the same things that happened while the tv series was on.

All those behind-the-scenes stories make me sad. I feel really bad for JM.... I've heard how hard it was for a method actor like him to do the AR scene, but on top of that, he believed that incident would lead his character down the path of villainy? After all he had been through over the course of five seasons?? Geez, that must have really hurt. :(

I think from his Q&A's he would have been happier if Spike had become evil after that scene and got staked. Marsters did not want to do the AR scene. Apparently someone close to him had been raped or he had been, not clear, and it was a trigger. The horror you see on Spike's face was not acting - that was the actor's pure terror in having to do that scene. According to some reports - he almost quit and broke his contract, but Gellar talked him out of it. But I don't know if that's true.

The problem with tv is the actor doesn't know what the writers will do with their characters or where the story will go or their motivations ahead of time. There's no finished script before they take the role,
and when they get the script, it's often an hour or two before they have to do the work. And the script changes. They also would do scenes that never aired. So the actors never knew what their actual arcs were.
Impossible job. And a lot of tv writers are bullies who have little patience for or respect for actors - seeing actors as spoiled brats who get all the attention. They really don't respect the actor's feelings.

We forget working on a set isn't much different than any other job. There's people you hate, bullying bosses, and annoying co-workers. The only difference? You have to kiss them, pretend to have sex or make love to them, and get naked with them. I couldn't do it. But they are paid very well.

[jaymi-leaf.livejournal.com]

That was a pretty bad time for James around SR. I remember it being reported on fansites that he'd turned up to a fan convention between S6 & 7 and had some teenage girls calling out 'you can rape me any time you want' which had upset him a lot. Personally I feel you can see the difference in his acting style after that in season 7 & season 5 of Angel (of course he is playing a slightly different character then so maybe that's it...)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh definitely. To this day - he gets nitwits at conventions scream things out at him like "You raped Buffy, I'll never forgive you" - seriously, Xander was more intent on raping Buffy in The Pack than Spike was. And besides, Spike never raped her. That's like saying he raped Willow in The Initiative (which he actually did intend to do) or Buffy in Harsh Light of Day (ditto). Besides, that was the character he was playing and it wasn't the actor's idea. If you want to scream at someone for coming up with the idea - scream at Whedon. People can be idiots. And they have no filter. And no self-awareness. I feel sorry for actors. That's not an easy job.
The writer gets to hide behind the actor, in the shadows, while the actor takes on all the responsibility. If the story is shit - the actor gets blamed. If the story is great - they get applause.

Personally I feel you can see the difference in his acting style after that in season 7 & season 5 of Angel (of course he is playing a slightly different character then so maybe that's it...)

Actually in everything he's done since Buffy, you can see the restraint. He pulls back. His performance isn't as raw. And he no longer applies the method. Buffy stopped him from being a method actor. He was a method actor all the way up to Lies, I believe, then suddenly stopped. Because it was driving him insane.

Buffy and Angel burned through actors...it was called Buffy the weekend killer at the time. Sarah was burnt to a crisp. She killed herself for that series. As did Marsters. With very little support from the show-runner. Vincent Kartheiser, David Boreanze and Charisma Carpenter have voiced similar views.

But this is typical of a lot of the lower budget tv shows. They had no money and worked fast. Also the entertainment industry sort of thrives on bullying. It's why actors prefer the stage. The writer disappears, as does the director. You have control.