Buffy or rather Angel & Buffy Character Wars Take II

[shadowkat]

To amuse and cheer myself up after a difficult work period..head-inducing is an understatement, I'm doing another crazy Buffy and Angel Character Wars Poll, although this is more Angel than Buffy. I don't really care why you pick whoever you pick. But I'm pairing people that a lot of folks, including myself, love equally and making you choose one. Hopefully you'll play along. There are admittedly some easy choices in there.

Rules? None. Pick the one you like best. Don't over think it. Don't worry about the other fella or gal, just pick the one you like and run with it. You can change your mind tomorrow, I might. This is for kicks. I may or may not speculate on it later.

Hopefully, more than 10 people will play, so I don't look like an idiot. One can never tell with polls...;-)

PS: LJ only permits 15 entries...I could have easily come up with 20.

[Poll #1851403]

Comments

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

I like that Holtz was pitted against Wood. Who was the better Captain Ahab?

Chose Holtz. Robin had his moments, too, but that final scene Holtz shares with Angel in the motel room puts him over the top for me. Awesome.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Agreed - that final scene between Holtz and Angel in the hotel room is amazing.
Holtz was admittedly a more developed character than Wood. They knew who Holtz was before he aired, what his arc was going to be, and how he would interact with Angel. Wood on the other hand? They didn't know Wood's arc until First Night aired in S7. Which was about half-way through the season. It came to Jane Espenson in a dream. This of course affected how well the story played out. Because they didn't know ahead of time, they didn't really develop the characters arc or figure out how he would interact with the other characters. They just threw him at people to see what happened.

Wood as a result was a character that was created more or less on the fly. While Holtz was pre-determined, outlined, and developed before S3 began.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

It came to Jane Espenson in a dream.

Ah, but sometimes an artist's greatest inspirations come in our dreams! Not saying that happened with Wood, but I did love what they (admittedly, eventually) did with his character, fitting him nicely into the moral puzzle of Season Seven with LMPTM. I thought there was some really subversive stuff going on there, particularly with the notion of ancestral crimes, identity politics, racial animus, etc.

But yeah, Holtz still wins the Revenge-O-Thon for me, because it was so poetic and beautifully constructed. Whereas Robin exacted his revenge more or less as a crime of opportunity, Holtz' (as you noted, well-planned) plan felt more like the grand revenge of Titus Andronicus. It's so round and perfect that I almost found myself rooting for him, even as Angel sinks to the bottom of the sea. I think the Holtz arc was when I first actually become invested in AtS to a similar degree that I was in BTVS.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ah, but sometimes an artist's greatest inspirations come in our dreams! Not saying that happened with Wood, but I did love what they (admittedly, eventually) did with his character, fitting him nicely into the moral puzzle of Season Seven with LMPTM. I thought there was some really subversive stuff going on there, particularly with the notion of ancestral crimes, identity politics, racial animus, etc.

Now, if only she'd had had that dream a lot earlier. ;-)

I agree on a "meta" level it ultimately worked out. Or they wouldn't have done it, I suspect. But...you can sort of tell that they hadn't plotted it out. Since it gets brought up, dealt with, dropped. When I discovered they hadn't - I went, oh that explains a lot.