Because I'm curious - The Buffy Fandom Character Wars Poll

[shadowkat]

I got curious about this while reading a post on the internet...don't ask which one.
Weird things inspire me. Anyhoo...I left out the obvious ones, because let's face it we already know who prefers Xander to Spike, Buffy to Spike, and Spike to Angel - we've argued those to death. Really. Who cares?? But these are harder choices because in a lot of these cases, people dearly love both characters. I'm making you pick one. Roll the dice. Which one at this particular point in time do you prefer? [ETA: DO NOT OVERTHINK THIS PEOPLE. BY PREFER - I mean which character you liked or enjoyed watching on the show better as a fictional character in the series. Not who you think is the better human being, more morally upstanding, or prefer as a role model for the kiddies or to hang with or be your best bud. This is a fictional character fandom poll not who I want to be friends with or marry poll.]

Don't worry, you're not being held to it. You can change your mind next week or tomorrow as the case may be. I certainly will. Polls are anything but definitive.

I do hope more than 10 people respond or I'll look like an idiot. ;-)

[Poll #1850464]

Comments

[ann1962]

I pick Riley now, but probably would have picked one of the others back in the day. Riley's character has aged well on the show, surprisingly enough.

And I have extremely mixed feelings about Willow.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that horrible S6 episode As You Were destroyed the character of Riley for me forever...not helped greatly by the Whedon comic books.;-)

Now, if I skip AYW...or forget it...than I like him better.

And I have extremely mixed feelings about Willow.

I do as well. Her character arc is uneven...the writers blended too many metaphors and as a result it go really muddied in S6 and S7. Also, I felt they didn't do a good enough job of redeeming the character in S7, they sort of let her off the hook - "bad evil magic made me do it".
I really wanted a Spike/Willow conversation.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that horrible S6 episode As You Were destroyed the character of Riley for me forever

Kinda what happened to me with Willow and season six. It pointed out flaws she'd had all along, and then topped it off with some really bad acting by AH in the last two episodes that year. And we all thought Dark Willow was so great before that!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

They didn't write Willow's arc well in S6. Both Cordy and Willow have poorly written arcs, and neither actress had the ability to save it. Amy Acker probably could have pulled it off - as we see with Illryia. Or Julie Benze.
But Hannigan and Carpenter just didn't have it in them.

To be fair to Hannigan though - part of the problem with the last two episodes was the makeup - her contacts were killing her and there was a lot of dust.

I'll admit in retrospect...Willow's arc disappointed me. I wish they hadn't done the drug metaphor or drug metaphor mislead. The whole Rack bit did not work. Nor did the magic withdrawl which seemed silly.

That said I liked the build-up of the arc and how they pointed out all her flaws. Willow's flaws were interesting to me and realistic...considering her insane perfectionist, yet never there, parents. Wickedly bright girl with 0 self esteem, who has been relentlessly bullied and has a chip on her shoulder - not a good mix. In some respects Willow and Warren echoed each other.

[liliaeth]

The problem with Willow's arc is that Whedon chickened out. That's the long and short of it.

She had this great ongoing arc of going subtly darker and darker, with her lack of respect for the right and wrong of things, beyond the immediate consequences. She always asked if you could do something, instead of whether you should do something.

And then she raped Tara, and she never showed a hint of remorse for it.

Only instead of dealing with that, Joss chickened out and tried to muddle things with the magic=drugs methaphor, so there'd be an excuse for her going evil, instead of the internal reasons she'd had all along.

In fact, if s7 had dealt with Willow for once actually getting held responsible for her actions, it might still have been salvaged. Instead all we got was Gnarl and suddenly we were all supposed to love her again and think she was all forgiven for all the crap she did. (made even worse by having Warren return in the comic, so that even her murder of him got retconned)

In other words, the biggest damage done to Willow's arc, was done precisely because Willow is Whedon's favorite character and he couldn't bare taking her where her storyline was heading naturally.

It's one of the reasons I utterly respect Toby Whitehouse so much. He had Mitchell do unforgiveable things, and then he allowed the consequences of that to let his story go to its natural end. Instead of trying to save the char. (the fact tht the actor wanted to leave admittedly had a lot to do with that as well)

Or an other example, if Whedon had spent as much attention on exploring the potentials as that he wasted on an annoyance like Andrew, just because he's got such a hard on for Lenk, then s7 would have improved a hundred fold.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Whedon did the same thing with Angel, the exact same thing, and he didn't like that character. But he feared losing the character because of fan response.

It's a problem with prime-time tv serials, particularly American TV serials. If you have a long-running main character who is good and a lead in a show, you don't want to make them irredeemable. Because, hello, there goes the audience. Popular Action-Hero Comic book serials have the same problem.
Marvel and DC were always turning heroes dark, then giving the magical possession excuse. Bill Willingham of all people wrote an excellent rant about it once.

[liliaeth]

Oh definitely, though I'm pretty sure that 'saving Angel' had more to do with Dark Horse insisting on it, than Whedon's refusal to get rid of him.

Whedon never really was all that interested in Angel.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

He also did the same thing with Cordelia. (The evil God made me do it excuse...actually Angel's arc in the comics is frighteningly similar to Cordy's in the tv series. "If I screw it up once, try try again.")