(no subject)

[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]

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.