July 2004 posts
Which evil character
possessed the greatest physical strength? -- megaslayer, 08:08:29
07/17/04 Sat
Caleb was really strong and knock out Buffy with one punch. Glory
could destroy a entire building with ease. The Beast was very
strong but not in real league with the others. Hamiton and Jasmine,
(full power)Illyria are pretty strong as well. My personal opinion
my order are Jasmine,Glory,Illyria,Hamiton,Caleb, and the Beast.
Replies:
[> How did Conner kill Jasmine so easily? -- Kana, 09:11:05
07/17/04 Sat
Being a former power makes Jasmine incredibly strong yet her taking
on human form (in a fashion) made her kind of vulnerable, at least
the Beast had more resillience.
[> [> Re: How did Conner kill Jasmine so easily?
-- head_wizard, 14:06:17 07/17/04 Sat
Because he was part of the base material keeping her on earth
theremore he could easily kill her if Cordelia woke up she could
have done the same
Spike's Soul -- Roy,
14:03:07 07/17/04 Sat
As far as I know, Buffy has been the only one who has asked Spike
how he had acquired his soul. I realize that Giles was too busy
succumbing to his fear of The First and the latter's influence
on the blond vampire. But has Angel or Wesley ever asked Spike
how he had acquired his soul? And if not, why hadn't they? I would
think that a vampire cursed with a soul and an ex-Watcher obssessed
with the study of the supernatural would be interested.
Replies:
[> Asking About it -- dlgood, 14:47:11 07/17/04 Sat
But has Angel or Wesley ever asked Spike how he had acquired
his soul?
Not onscreen.
And if not, why hadn't they? I would think that a vampire cursed
with a soul and an ex-Watcher obssessed with the study of the
supernatural would be interested
Apparently not. Giles never bother to research the Gypsy tribe
that cursed Angel, nor was he ever shown as particularly interested
in Angel's past.
As it turns out, Spike got a soul, and most of the people he knew
who learned this didn't really care too much about how or why
he did so. Mostly they just seemed to care about what difference
it might make with him.
[> [> There's also a little thing called: "stuff
which happens off-screen in order to avoid repetition"
-- Finn Mac Cool, 17:57:41 07/17/04 Sat
[> [> Re: Asking About it -- skeeve, 08:00:54
07/19/04 Mon
Mostly they just seemed to care about what difference it might
make with him.
Yup.
The fact that it didn't seem to change him
much supports my contention that he already
had a soul or at least pieces of several souls.
Nasty speculation re "Not
Fade Away" -- KdS, 05:24:27 07/20/04 Tue
A question that seems to be getting a lot of play in other discussions
and fanfic that hasn't been much alluded to on this board:
Did anyone from Angel investigations sign one of those pesky Wolfram
& Hart Eternity Contracts?
Replies:
[> Interesting -- Rahael, 05:28:17 07/20/04 Tue
It also made me think of this: since "Sanshu" was defined
as "being mortal", exactly what did Angel do, by signing
away his right to "mortality" anyway? Or is it a double
paradox - he signs away his mortality with his blood, knowing
full well, he's going to die very soon...
[> ..see that the point -- luvthistle1, 10:24:04
07/20/04 Tue
...W&H never do anything without getting a contracts. I sure
they would have had Angel sign one. but i'm not sure. Didn't Angel
have Spike sign something when he ask him to join W&H? I remember
Hamilton saying welcome aboard to Spike, and Spike asking how
did he know. Gunn might have sign because he was the first accept
it. But if they all had sigh a contract, than it's most likely
they will all survive the finale battle.
Funny thought: I know if Lilah had one of those contracts, Lindsey
did as well, so when Lorne killed him, W&H might be able to bring
him back, like they did Lilah. after all he was their "Golden
boy", so even if he had quit, which was so long ago, they
might have worked out some sort of an deal, before sending him
to that hell dimension.
[> Re: Nasty speculation re "Not Fade Away"
-- s'kat, 11:44:04 07/20/04 Tue
Did anyone from Angel investigations sign one of those pesky
Wolfram & Hart Eternity Contracts?
Not according to anything I saw on screen. Wes looked at the contracts
in Origin, but didn't sign one. Angel signed a lot of contracts
Gunn gave him in his blood, but no one else was seen on screen
or mentioned off-screen as signing one.
Lilah signed a contract for her soul to WR&H but not for
eternal life. I don't believe Lindsey did though, because you
have to reach a certain level. In Dead End S2, it's implied he
never did. (Although you could retcon that I suppose.)
The only things they did was mindwipe (Angel), the amulet (Angel),
and to agree to run the place (Angel and Company).
Now you could maybe make a case on the amulet - that the amulet
carried with it a hidden clause, that whoever wore it, had by
agreeing to wear it, signed an eternity contract.
The idea being you purchase the item and everthing that goes along
with it. Since no exchange was made and Angel merely gave the
amulet away - that might not hold up. In which case if an eternity
contract was attached to the amulet, it might be null and void
or alterred due to the fact that the person who contracted for
it, did not in fact use it but gave it away. Or in some cases
of contract law,
Angel may have given the amulet away, but since it was just part
of the larger package, he still remained the contractee and therefore
responsible. Doesn't matter who wears the amulet - it would always
come back to Angel as a boomerang after it was worn and the price
for the amulet (ie. running WR&H or whatever else was in that
contract that included the amulet and the mindwipe and the new
life for Connor) would remain Angel's responsibility. He could
not pass it with the amulet to someone else, namely Buffy or Spike
unless the contract specified it. Which explains why GhostSpike
got stuck to Angel - it was part of the contract he signed - I
wouldn't put it past WR&H to put in a codicle regarding that.
Angel really should have read the fine print.
Anyone else but Angel?
Well Gunn made a contract for intelligence enhancement. But
that wasn't in exchange for Eternity necessarily. OTOH, we do
have the conduit who tells Gunn, he already owns him. So maybe
there was a hidden codicile in that agreement?
Outside of Gunn? Can't think of any instances on-screen.
[> [> What we have and have not seen... -- dlgood,
12:58:44 07/20/04 Tue
Not according to anything I saw on screen. Wes looked at the
contracts in Origin, but didn't sign one. Angel signed a lot of
contracts Gunn gave him in his blood, but no one else was seen
on screen or mentioned off-screen as signing one.
We don't really know what contracts they did or did not sign,
and what the nature of those contracts were. But to retain employment,
get paid, and qualify for benefits, they would have been required
to sign contracts. At least Fred, Gunn and Wesley (being humans
with legal identities) certainly would have had to sign. Presumably,
W&H reports to the IRS after all, though it's possible to believe
they can work around that...
In "Home", Lilah describes it as a "Standard Perpetuity
Clause."
Note the use of the term "Standard". Lindsey may not
have thought he agreed to that term, but as Lilah commented "be
sure to read the fine print". Lindsey might not have actually
known.
It's true - we've never seen concrete evidence that they signed
such contracts, or that the Perpetuity Clause was a part of it.
But we've also been given no particular indication why W&H wouldn't
want to make that Clause a condition of employment when they could
hold that power over AI's heads. Nor had we been given any indication
from Eve, Hamilton, or anyone else that W&H had removed the Standard
Clause.
IMHO, it's entirely up in the air for one to judge either way.
I'd be very willing to believe either case.
[> [> [> Re: What we have and have not seen...
-- s'kat, 15:14:46 07/20/04 Tue
But to retain employment, get paid, and qualify for benefits,
they would have been required to sign contracts. At least Fred,
Gunn and Wesley (being humans with legal identities) certainly
would have had to sign.
Actually no they wouldn't. The only forms you have to sign are
W4, W2 and I9 forms which are standard goverment issue and cannot
in any way vary from standard government issue or the company
gets audited and they are considered invalid.
The US is known as an Employment At Will Country, what that means
is you can leave at any time and it is rare to sign an contractual
agreement. Very few companies require it.
I've seen two that did and those were banking/investment,
or technology firms. Law firms don't usually.
There's nothing in the text or script of the series that indicates
that WR&H employees signed contracts. Fred, Wes, Gunn, and Lorne
could have worked there and more likely did without ever signing
an agreement outside of the standard government forms.
So no, that argument doesn't fly. Maybe if you are working for
a government defense contractor - you'll sign a contract for security
purposes. But not for a law firm.
In "Home", Lilah describes it as a "Standard
Perpetuity Clause."
Note the use of the term "Standard". Lindsey may not
have thought he agreed to that term, but as Lilah commented "be
sure to read the fine print". Lindsey might not have actually
known.
Means Disability - I believe. If you become disabled or
are killed, the firm agrees to pay benefits in perpetuity.
(Pension, life insurance, disability clause) And you agree to
let them. Standard for most companies. With WR&H it
probably means you get to work for WR&H in hell. Not sure if Wes,
Fred or Gunn signed them - they wouldn't have to since they run
the company not work for it, so unlikely they'd sign them. If
they did they'd have a way out since could claim incompetence
or under magic spell (mindwipe). Angel? He has no loop hole.
It's true - we've never seen concrete evidence that they signed
such contracts, or that the Perpetuity Clause was a part of it.
But we've also been given no particular indication why W&H wouldn't
want to make that Clause a condition of employment when they could
hold that power over AI's heads. Nor had we been given any indication
from Eve, Hamilton, or anyone else that W&H had removed the Standard
Clause.
Again it depends on what the Standard Clause means here?
And if every employee signed or just employees hired by WR&H?
There's no indication that Gunn, Wes, Fred or Lorne did. I wouldn't
be surprised if Angel did. Spike certainly never did. Hamilton,
Harmony, Eve - yeah they did. So did Lindsey - since they were
all hired by WR&H or created by them. Gunn, Wes, Fred, and Lorne
agreed to work for them but more under what we call a contract
at will or a oral agreement. We agree to work for you, Angel signs
the deals.
So they aren't bound. Angel however is. Unless you want to argue
that Angel had the power or they gave Angel the power to bind
them? Which is tricky since can Angel's power of attorney hold
up for the others after the mindwipe is revealed? They only agreed
after the mindwipe, not before.
So Angel is screwed. Everyone else? Probably has elbow room.
[> [> [> [> Re: What we have and have not seen...
-- dlgood, 15:54:36 07/20/04 Tue
what that means is you can leave at any time and it is rare
to sign an contractual agreement. Very few companies require it.
Go figure. Every company I've worked for has required me to sign
a large number of contracts and other agreements (including non-disclosure
and non-competes) - but then I've also held security clearances
at each one.
Maybe if you are working for a government defense contractor
- you'll sign a contract for security purposes. But not for a
law firm.
You likely would for this one. Particularly Wesley and Fred, who
would likely have to sign contracts relating to Intellectual Property
Rights given the nature of the work they were doing. I would be
astonished if they didn't have to sign NDA's as well.
Gunn, Wes, Fred, and Lorne agreed to work for them but more
under what we call a contract at will or a oral agreement. We
agree to work for you, Angel signs the deals.
So they aren't bound. Angel however is. Unless you want to argue
that Angel had the power or they gave Angel the power to bind
them?
Or unless one argues that since W&H recruited each member of AI
individually, not necessarily expecting to have them all, that
W&H required each member to sign individually. Or alternatively
as a package deal - in such a circumstance where it was considered
"collectively bargained".
It's problematic for me, because I certainly wouldn't want to
think the SP owned every employee including the AI crew.
OTOH, I think it's a large sacrifice of the credibility of W&H as
a villain to consider that they wouldn't attach such a clause
to the folks at AI. It's quite easy for me to believe that such
a clause was included in the fine print of any number of forms
that W&H would have gotten their new management to sign. And simply
wasn't shown because it wasn't necessary to the story.
Honestly, do you think that W&H (and the SP) wouldn't intend to
shackle their employees and new management, including the AI folks?
These folks aren't flunkies - I find it hard to believe W&H would
give away the keys to the kingdom without a bit more leverage.
Makes it a pretty wimpy Faustian Bargain otherwise.
I'm willing to believe that AI didn't sign such contracts, and
are free of such worries - but I do find it a bit less plausible
and uncharacteristic of W&H.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: What we have and have not
seen... -- Kenny, 13:16:11 07/21/04 Wed
I just don't see the AI people going for a contract that included
one of those. and I don't think that W&H could sneak it past,
as AI was looking for things like that. I figured W&H just had
to concede that point from the get-go.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: What we have and have
not seen... -- Roy, 11:33:13 07/24/04 Sat
I think that W&H would be able to do it. Remember - they had agreed
to become employees of the firm "before" Gunn received
his legal upgrade. He would have been the only one capable of
knowing what exactly was in their contracts - if they had each
signed one.
[> [> [> [> "standard" could apply to
either of 2 things -- anom, 17:13:15 07/23/04 Fri
It could mean the presence of the clause in the contract is standard,
or it could just mean the language of the clause, which may or
may not be included in any given contract, is standard.
I don't know one way or the other, but it certainly seems possible
that W&H considered only certain employees worth keeping around
in perpetuity. (I'd guess Harmony wasn't one of them.) And since
(a) Angel & co. were the bosses, not employees, as someone pointed
out, & (b) Angel knew about the perpetuity clause from his elevator
ride w/Holland Manners & wouldn't be likely to agree to it, I
doubt he'd let it be included in his contract. Hell, he'd probably
look through the contract for it & make a point of crossing it
out!
Speaking of Holland Manners, Lindsey was a prot g of his...that
may make it more likely that the clause was in his contract. Maybe
Lorne knows! After all, he's heard Lindsey sing.
[> [> [> Re: What we have and have not seen...
-- mshepnj, 07:11:47 07/21/04 Wed
As a regular employee of W&H and presumably starting as an associate
at a lower level, Lilah knew what she was signing when she joined
the firm. I would have imagined the same to be true for Lindsey,
Holland and the rest of them.
But as a recruited executive, the deal Angel negotiated with W&H may
have been considerably more favorable.
IIRC, when Angel accepted the offer from SPs in "Home"
he said to Lilah something like "Now, I'll tell *you* how
this deal's going to work." I took that to mean Angel had
a strong negotiating position and could have negotiated away the
standard perpetuity clause as part of the deal.
At the end of season 4, based on Angel's history, it would be
reasonable to assume that Angel puts too high a value his eternal
soul to ever agree to sign it over to the SPs. While the situation
with Connor was very grave and desparate, I got the impression
that SPs wanted Angel badly enough that they would make some concessions.
But then in view of Angel's state of mind during much of season
5, his comment about there being no hope of redemption and his
apparent belief he's going to hell no matter what, maybe he did
afterall. Of course, it's also possible he was just depressed,
because at that point he made that comment, Spike hadn't joined
W&H and he acknowledged that they were probably both going to
Hell no matter what they do.
As for the others... Gunn seemed to know exactly what he wanted
in "Home" after his visit to the kitty in the white
room, irrespective of Angel's "executive decision" but
I can't believe Fred or Wes would be likely to agree to sign their
immortal souls over to the SPs. Wes knew about the clause because
of his conversation with Lilah and - I think - he had the least
to gain from joining W&H and I have to beleive he would shared
that information with Fred. Nor do I think Angel would negotiate
a deal with the SPs for all of AI that would put their souls at
risk.
My own fanwank is that they, except perhaps Gunn, did NOT agree
to the perpetuity clauses.
[> [> But wasn't it "standard" -- luvthistle1,
13:48:28 07/20/04 Tue
Didn't Lilah said to Wesley in Home, that the perpetuity clause
was "standard", . which would mean that everyone sign
one. Since Holland had one, which allowed him to return and take
Angel down to the whiteroom, or hell, whatever room that was.
we can assume, thay it was in place before Darla kill them all.
also all of the dead lawyers in "Habeas Corpses", which
explain why they kept coming back . Gunn killed Gavin, to make
sure he stayed dead.
[> [> [> Re: But wasn't it "standard"
-- s'kat, 15:25:09 07/20/04 Tue
Didn't Lilah said to Wesley in Home, that the perpetuity clause
was "standard", . which would mean that everyone sign
one. Since Holland had one, which allowed him to return and take
Angel down to the whiteroom, or hell, whatever room that was.
we can assume, thay it was in place before Darla kill them all.
also all of the dead lawyers in "Habeas Corpses", which
explain why they kept coming back . Gunn killed Gavin, to make
sure he stayed dead.
Depends on what the perpetuity clause was in. Standard may include
Standard employees, but Gunn,Wes, Fred and Lorne aren't - they
came in under what you might call *new management*, new management
doesn't necessarily sign standard agreements or any agreements
from under the old management. They create their own agreements
- a point Angel kept making in Harm's Way.
Perpetuity clauses are usually, as I explained to dlgood above,
in contracts regarding pension, disability, or confidentiality.
So it is possible they may have ended up signing one of those.
It's rare to sign contracts for employement in the US, although
there are companies that do. I can't see the Fang Gang doing this
though.
The difficulty with the idea that Fred, Gunn, Wes or Lorne signed
- is two-fold, one if they did, they weren't in their right minds
at the time, they were under the influence of the mindwipe which
does not hold up and makes contract null and void. Two since they
were new management and came in with Angel, it's unlikely they
signed anything and Angel did all the signing and since you can't
sign someone else's soul away or body, all Angel could do is sign
away his own. We only see Angel signing remember?
So, this means that you can prove Angel signed a Standard Perpetuity
Agreement and that would hold up. Not so sure it does for the
other four, although I suppose if you *really* wanted to you could
make an arguement regarding it, people have done worse things
in fic.
[> [> [> [> Hee! -- LittleBit, 15:37:05
07/20/04 Tue
I've always rather thought that it was a W&H play on words with
the twist in the meaning of "Standard Perpetuity Clause"
which would, anywhere else, mean something quite different anywhere
else. Not unlike their unique interpretation of "Employee
Termination." 
[> [> [> [> [> Sheesh -- LittleBit, 15:38:19
07/20/04 Tue
Apparently my mind was in several 'anywhere else's. Jeepers.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Hee! -- s'kat, 15:58:09
07/20/04 Tue
I've always rather thought that it was a W&H play on words
with the twist in the meaning of "Standard Perpetuity Clause"
which would, anywhere else, mean something quite different anywhere
else. Not unlike their unique interpretation of "Employee
Termination
Or the writers? I think you're probably right on this.
It's a play on words. "Standard Forever Clause" for
those who don't know legalese. It's in every standard contract,
and in perpetuity - meaning that it stands forever even after
the contract burns. Hence the fact that you can't burn the contract.
Something tells me Minear and Whedon have an ax to grind over
their standard contract with FOX.
LOL!
[> [> [> [> That right , he sign -- luvthistle1,
21:15:13 07/20/04 Tue
..for all of them. which means that Fred didn't really agree to
go to W&H. she was the only hold out. she was also the only
one who didn't want to accept their offer. hmm? I wonder do he
feels guilty?
[> [> [> [> if we wanted to be reeeaallly nasty...
-- anom, 22:07:14 07/20/04 Tue
"So, this means that you can prove Angel signed a Standard
Perpetuity Agreement and that would hold up. Not so sure it does
for the other four, although I suppose if you *really* wanted
to you could make an arguement regarding it, people have done
worse things in fic."
..."we" meaning the folks putting together the S6 fic,
we could decide that perpetuity clauses were binding on all of
the fang gang & bring them back that way! That'd be a worse
thing.... We could have it both ways--they all do die in
that alley, but they're all back next season! Hey--it could even
work for Fred! So her soul's been destroyed--w/a perpetuity clause,
who needs one? Only thing is, it makes W&H the Big Bad again,
& that's soooo last season...OK, never mind. ]@>)
[> [> [> [> [> Well, with no soul... --
Doug, 09:07:23 07/21/04 Wed
There's nothing for W&H to bring back. They may have a claim,
but since the thing they have a claim to doesn't exist anymore
they are out of luck.
[> [> [> [> [> [> i wouldn't assume that
-- anom, 16:54:52 07/23/04 Fri
After all, when any of their human employees dies, s/he doesn't
have a soul either (even if it hadn't been sold already). So I
don't see a reason they couldn't bring back Fred. And/or Illyria,
depending on whether the clause is binding on successor occupants
of the person's body. In the case of Angel, it may be more of
a question of whether there's a body to bring back. Reattaching
a head is one thing; completely reconstituting a body is another.
Of course, they could always go the route they took w/Darla, but
that would give them a live human, with a soul, instead
of a dead vamp. As opposed to an undead vamp...hmm, wonder what
the implications of that might be? And if Angel died in the fight
& they brought him back under the perpetuity clause...without
his soul, 'cause he died...would they end up w/Angelus? He'd really
hate working for W&H, but I bet they have ways to make sure
he'd have to!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> The problem is that
Illyria didn't sign the contract... -- Doug, 19:25:04 07/23/04
Fri
...Fred did. And they made it abundantly clear that Fred's soul
was destroyed. In the case of the standard employees, even if
their souls are no longer in their bodies at time of death (I'm
presuming that the soul actually changes position when it is sold,
as opposed to remaining in the body while merely changing title),
they are still bound by contract they signed. With Fred there
is nothing left to be bound, as the entity known a Winnifred Burkle
has ceased. While Illyria uses the body as a host and inherited
some memory, the show was pretty clear about there being no continuity
of essence between Fred and Illyria, even if there is limited
continuity of form and memory.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> we have no
evidence that the soul is involved -- anom, 16:17:19 07/25/04
Sun
Very little is said on the show about the actual content of the
perpetuity clause. It isn't even called that the 1st time we hear
about it, in Reprise, when Angel gets in the elevator:
"Angel: You're...
Holland: Holland Manners.
Angel: ...not alive.
Holland: Oh, no. I'm quite dead. Unfortunately my contract with
Wolfram and Hart extends well beyond that."
The only other times the clause is mentioned occur in Home. First,
when Lilah appears in the Hyperion's lobby:
"ANGEL
Wolfram & Hart. The contract she signed with them extends beyond
her death.
LILAH
Standard perpetuity clause, I'm afraid. Always read the fine print."
Second, at W&H, when Wesley burns her contract:
"LILAH
Wesley...
He touches the flame to the contract and the paper ignites.
WESLEY
You've suffered enough. I want you to find some peace.
Lilah smiles at Wesley sadly.
LILAH
Gallant to the end. But I knew what I signed up for."
So apparently she did read the fine print.... Anyway, there's
no mention of the soul in any of this. We know the clause is binding
on the body, because we see their bodies on screen, complete with
the marks that were inflicted on them before the clause was invoked.
And the personality seems to remain. But I don't see any indication
1 way or another of whether the soul plays any part in the way
the perpetuity clause takes effect. Given the way of things at
W&H, it can be hard to tell if their employees have souls
even before they die. What, in all of this, is the person's "essence,"
& what happens to it? I don't think we know that either. ME has
left us free to understand this any way we like--& to argue about
it--by giving us minimal information about it.
As for Illyria, I was referring to a clause found in many contracts
that makes them binding on the "heirs, successors, & assigns"
of the person or company that originally agreed to the contract.
Just as an heir may inherit the debts of his or her parents or
a company that buys out another takes on its obligations, Illyria,
if W&H chooses to enforce the perpetuity clause, may be subject
to it even if it was Fred who signed the contract ("if"--we
don't know if she did), by virtue of her occupying Fred's body.
It's kinda like a software agreement that you are considered to
have accepted by opening the package, even if you can't read it
until after you open the package, or a lease that's binding on
the next tenant of the same apartment.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: we
have no evidence that the soul is involved -- Rufus, 18:06:32
07/25/04 Sun
As for Illyria, I was referring to a clause found in many contracts
that makes them binding on the "heirs, successors, & assigns"
of the person or company that originally agreed to the contract.
Does that include former "God Kings" sub-letting a shell?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> w&h could
probably make a case that illyria is fred's "successor"
-- anom, 18:19:00 07/25/04 Sun
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Making the reading of A Little Princess all the more befitting!
-- Ann, 11:02:58 07/26/04 Mon
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
[> well, since i *haven't* read it, that comment is lost
on me -- anom, 18:49:57 07/31/04 Sat
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: well, since i *haven't* read it, that comment
is lost on me -- Ann, 13:28:36 08/05/04 Thu
Sorry. On Fred's deathbed, Wes was reading to her from The Little
Princess.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> i remember *that*... -- anom, 18:39:29
08/05/04 Thu
...what I don't get is why the "successor" clause makes
it more fitting. C'mon, I said I hadn't read the book, not hadn't
seen the episode!
[> [> [> [> oh! now i get it! -- anom, 10:43:03
08/01/04 Sun
"Perpetuity clauses are usually, as I explained to dlgood
above, in contracts regarding pension, disability, or confidentiality."
Isn't death the ultimate disability? So the clause would
apply!
And as for pensions, if employees never stop working for W&H,
the firm never has to pay out on its pension plan! They must save
a bundle that way! Or maybe not...if they have to continue paying
dead employees at full salary.
[> [> Re: Nasty speculation re "Not Fade Away"
-- Cheryl, 22:54:31 07/20/04 Tue
Lilah signed a contract for her soul to WR&H but not for
eternal life. I don't believe Lindsey did though, because you
have to reach a certain level. In Dead End S2, it's implied he
never did. (Although you could retcon that I suppose.)
I had always assumed that because Lindsey had gotten out of W&H before
he was promoted, that he didn't sign that clause - that it was
for higher-ups. And that was solidified for me after Angel had
him murdered because why would Angel kill Lindsey, if that could
have meant Lindsey would then be at the SP's beck and call? Wouldn't
Angel have checked to see if Lindsey had a clause before deciding
to kill him? Especially since a dead Lindsey working solely for
the SP could mean more trouble for Angel? And why did the SP put
Lindsey in that holding cell instead of killing him if they could
have controlled him once he was dead? Although, just how much
damage can these dead W&H employees do? Based on what we've seen
from Lilah and Holland, they serve mostly as guides. So maybe
a dead Lindsey in the SP's control doesn't really mean anything.
Now I'm all confused! ;-)
[> Wolfram and Hart came a courtin' -- Rufus, 18:33:44
07/20/04 Tue
I don't care if anything was signed as verbal contracts can be
just as binding if the person performed in such a way that signified
they had agreed a contract in verbal form.
In Home, the gang were courted by Lilah and shown the keys to
their dreams in the form of Wolfram and Harts resources.
Angel warned each one of them what would happen...
From Home,
ANGEL: You want to get into that limo when it gets here? That's
up to you. It's not a decision I can make for you, for any of
you, but know this: Before the ride's even over, before you
even cross through their doors, you'll be corrupted.
Lilah continued...
LILAH: Look, if we wanted to harm you, we'd have blown up the
limo, right? (a man wheels in a car of guns) If you prefer to
be armed during your stay here, we'd have no objections. Just
because we've tried to kill or corrupt each and every one of you
at one time or another doesn't mean we can't be trusted.
Each character should have seen the writing on the wall long before
the shit hit the fan. They all went into it with hopes of fighting
from within the Belly of the Beast, but were aware of the chance
that they would just be eaten. Like Angel said...
LILAH: Again, your choice. Think of what you can do with the
resources of Wolfram & Hart at your fingertips, the difference
that would make. Nothing in this world is the way it ought
to be. It's harsh, and it's cruel, but that's why there's you,
Angel. You live as if the world were as it should be. With all
this, you can make it that way. People don't need an unyielding
champion. They need a man who knows the value of compromise and
how to beat the system from inside the belly of the beast.
ANGEL: The beast's belly? Doesn't that usually mean you've
been eaten?
Wolfram and Hart courted each character with the answer to the
dreams they each had. Thing is that W&H became a very abusive
spouse, as Gunn found out in A Hole in the World.
GUNN: I didn't come for a favor. (gets to his feet)
We can make a deal.
CONDUIT AS GUNN: Deals are for the devil.
GUNN: You want someone else-a life for hers-you'll get it. You
can have mine.
CONDUIT AS GUNN: (laughs)I already do.
See, even if there was no contract signed, the Senior Partners
had the characters as long as they stayed inside the Belly of
the Beast. The last part of the season was all about how the gang
broke the deal, and that's where you get the dragon at the end.
The dragon represents W&H, and their desire to hang onto what
they have.
[> [> whoa... -- anom, 21:37:01 07/20/04 Tue
I never thought about how that statement of Lilah's applies to
Angel's decision about Connor in Home:
"LILAH: Again, your choice. Think of what you can do with
the resources of Wolfram & Hart at your fingertips, the difference
that would make. Nothing in this world is the way it ought to
be. It's harsh, and it's cruel, but that's why there's you, Angel.
You live as if the world were as it should be. With all this,
you can make it that way."
With "all this," Angel made Connor's world, past & present,
"the way it ought to" have been. Lilah leaves out part
of Angel's line when he originally made this speech to Connor
in Deep Down: "We live as if the world were as it should
be, to show it what it can be." Maybe part of Connor's
acceptance of the memories he got back in Origin was that he had,
through the false memories, seen that his world really could be
what it ought to be, when w/only his original memories, he wasn't
able to believe it was possible.
I still don't believe it was the right decision, though. Just
pointing out 1 possible additional facet.
[> [> [> Re: whoa... -- Rufus, 04:17:31 07/21/04
Wed
Maybe part of Connor's acceptance of the memories he got back
in Origin was that he had, through the false memories, seen that
his world really could be what it ought to be, when w/only his
original memories, he wasn't able to believe it was possible.
Exactly.
Carry on that thought to what Connor said in Peace Out..
From S4 Angel "Peace Out"
CONNOR: (points the tip of his sword at Wesley's face) Shut
up. (scoffs) All your talk about saving the world. Well...
now somebody's gone and done it. Made everything right... and
good. (angrily) And you can't stand it because you're all
so full of yourselves. (whispers in Wesley's ear) Don't you
get it? You're all alone now. All of you. You're the ones left
out in the cold. You... don't... belong.
Talk about twisted. All his combined experience from the Quor
Toth and LA and that's the result.
CONNOR: I wanted to see you again. I had to, to know that you're
still here... with me. (close-up to show the person on the altar
is Cordelia) I'm sorry I haven't- (sits on altar beside Cordelia)
It's started, Cordy. The new beginning. Just wish you'd wake up
and see it. Just what you wanted. (looks down) I mean... (stands,
paces) it is what you wanted, right? Why you came to me? You
know...what this was all about? Protecting our baby-Jasmine-so
she can...be, and make this world the... the kind of place you
wanted. And it is better. Not harsh and cruel-the way that angel
likes it so he has a reason to fight. (walks away, angrily)
'Cause you know that's what he's about, him and the others.
Finding reasons to fight. Like that's what gives their lives any
meaning. The only damn thing! (punches the lectern, smashing
it) I'm not like them. I just...
Angel does a remix of Connor's life and even though the outcome
wasn't what was expected, one of the things that changed was the
combined memories did change how Connor saw his past, and how
he saw fighting the good fight. Vail gave Connor an ideal family
life, and a rest. Without the weight of the past getting in the
way of any progression, Connor got a chance to experience the
type of life he longed for. Like Dawn from Buffy s5, he was ready
to sacrifice himself but like Buffy, Angel protected his family
and the world.
CONNOR: Uh, that's not good, is it?
ANGEL: Wolfram & Hart. Looks like they're taking the gloves off.
CONNOR: What do we do?
ANGEL: You go home.
CONNOR: Huh?
ANGEL: This is my fight.
CONNOR: That's some serious macho- (some of the building debris
falls on him)Aah!
The concrete support beam falls from the ceiling onto the lobby
floor.
ANGEL: Go home...now.
CONNOR: They'll destroy you.
ANGEL: As long as you're OK, they can't. (the building rumbles
as yet another concrete ceiling joist falls, crushing the balcony)Go.
The new Connor was willing to fight. He has changed. Too bad the
show was cancelled cause that storyline, the one where the fallout
from the battle and the mind alterations with Connor would have
been worth watching. Oh, and I highly doubt the new Connor could
be sucked in by a power wearing Cordy's body...;)
[> [> [> [> Re: whoa... -- anom, 20:50:44
07/25/04 Sun
"Without the weight of the past getting in the way of any
progression, Connor got a chance to experience the type of life
he longed for."
Yeah. I don't think Connor could've even imagined the kind of
life that Vail built for him. He had no idea what it might be
like. Even though the memories are false, the people are real,
& so are their feelings. And this is a Connor who grew up knowing
other people, seeing other families, both how bad & how good they
can be--something he couldn't have had the least concept of before.
Even though it's not the truth in his case, he knows people for
whom it is.
[> [> The Rule Against Perpetuities -- Cleanthes,
16:12:51 07/21/04 Wed
Okay, I haven't dusted off my copy of Pollock & Maitland for awhile,
but I still have saved this little paragraph from one of my old
law texts:
"I happen to be a firm adherent to the position that general
theories about, and simple definitions of, any interesting subject
are worthless, or even dangerous, unless you already know a great
deal about the subject. Take the Rule Against Perpetuities: "To
be valid, an interest must vest, if it vests at all, within lives
in being plus twenty-one years and any necessary period of gestation."
If you know nothing about the Rule, then knowing the words of
the Rule is not going to help you a bit. If you know a little
bit about the Rule, then you are dangerous. And if you know a
lot about the Rule, then you do not need to know the words of
the Rule--though you probably, in fact, will know them."
This little rule against perpetuities in the English Common Law
applies to contracts as well as trusts and estates. It does not
apply to illegal contracts insisted upon by the Senior Partners,
evidentally.
And so, I have to agree with Rufus because if the rule against
perpetuities does not apply, then neither would the Statute of
Frauds, which would prohibit oral contracts, nor even implicit
contracts. Moreover, there would be a kind of anti-Equity going
on here, so that the normal rules involving promissory estoppel
would work AGAINST the person with clean hands.
There are loads of legal jokes going on in Angel. Someone at ME
has had either legal training or has spent way too much time in
the company of lawyers.
[> [> [> Re: The Rule Against Perpetuities --
Haunt, 20:20:48
07/22/04 Thu
Y'know, the funny thing is my (who happens to be an intellectual
properties attorney at a major law firm) and I (who happen to
know next to nothing about the law, or rather know just barely
enough to make me dangerous) spent the past two days driving to
and from Florida discussing this very subject. I'd mentioned to
her the interesting topic going on here and that lead ultimately
to her breaking out her copy of Blacks Dictionary of Law.
As I said, I'm NOT a lawyer, have no advanced degree or higher
education, and love to think "big, deep thoughts" as
long as I'm not required to quote from any scholarly scripture
to back up it up. So all I remember from my talk with my wife
was that she quoted basically exactly what you just said up above,
including the bit about the Statute of Frauds, though I'm not
certain that she came to the exact same conclusions based on those
quotes.
Did that make any sense at all? *shrug*
[> [> [> Re: The Rule Against Perpetuities --
Rufus, 03:15:48 07/23/04 Fri
Anti-Equity.....
[> [> [> [> Anti-Equity -- Cleanthes,
16:18:40 07/23/04 Fri
Rufus, I put that bit about "anti-equity" in there with
you in mind specifically. I'm so happy you noticed! You love me,
you love me, you really do!!!
I think that Wolfram and Hart actually did have a kind of anti-equity.
In the English legal system, there were equitable remedies in
addition to common law remedies. The common law remedies were
available to everyone, but the equitable remedies were only available
to those with "clean hands" -- that is (and speaking
outside anything like a strict, law-school definition), they can't
have had any doubtful or questionable actions on their side of
the fact pattern leading to the lawsuit. Those with "clean
hands" then had these greater remedies available.
Wolfram and Hart's contracts have an implicit (or maybe explicit
- I haven't reviewed them!) dirty hands clause. If you
sign, you will have things interpreted against you in the most
unequitable way possible.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Anti-Equity -- Rufus,
15:36:22 07/24/04 Sat
ANGEL: You want to get into that limo when it gets here? That's
up to you. It's not a decision I can make for you, for any of
you, but know this: Before the ride's even over, before you
even cross through their doors, you'll be corrupted.
Clean hands, who has clean hands out of the gang? Angel had locked
the lawyers in the wine cellar knowing he was leaving them to
die. Fred, Gunn, and Wes were in on the death of Professor Seidel.
Lorne could have less than clean hands in that he didn't pick
a side when he read people/demons. We can use whatever excuse
we want for each thing a character did to grubby up their hands,
but that doesn't change the fact that to even contemplate an agreement
with an organization responsible for so much misery can't make
their hands any cleaner. So, even if W&H has a dirty hands clause,
I'm sure that the preperation/grooming in getting someone to agree
to work with them ensures there's at least some grime under the
fingernails...;)
Yes, I love you...who else would mention anti-equity for me?
[> [> [> In Laymen's terms -- shadowkat, 12:16:09
07/23/04 Fri
Ah, remembering the rule now, looked it up in my own legal dictionary
just now.
In laymen's terms:
It's basically keeping something from being removed from the marketplace
indefinitely. You can't tie up property forever - that would be
contrary to the whole concept of a free market economy.
So for instance: Joss Whedon and Tim Minear sign a deal with Fox
TV, Fox can claim rights to Whedon and Minear's products for a
certain period of time, usually 15 years, with a date of renew.
Same goes with copyright registration - businesses can claim a
copyright in something for a specific term, then renew (I forget
how long). They always have to renew it and pay a fee, but they
can renew their claim indefinitely.
Rule Against Perpetuaties is to prohibit people from clogging
title or keeping hold of property forever - so yes, you can more
or less indefinitely renew your claim (in some cases you can't,
but I forget them), but during period it is up for renew - it's
unclogged. Although only on paper, since no one is going to grab
you're claim while you're renewing it - especially since most
people renew before the time period is up or just as it comes
up. In some instances if you miss the due date, you can still
renew, but others can grab your claim.
In Angel, they made fun of the rule. Minear/Whedon etc don't own
ATS or BTVS or any of the characters or stories, Fox and Kuzuis
do and will as long as fox and Kuzuis renew their claim to it,
so even though there's a rule against perpetuities, it must seem
to the writers that it's little more than a joke. Since they've
found a way around the rule and seem to have rights to the creators
efforts forever.
[> And if W&H did sneak it past them somehow... -- Ann,
17:02:20 07/21/04 Wed
did Gunn know because of his up-grade?
[> [> Re: And if W&H did sneak it past them somehow...
-- Roy, 11:36:32 07/24/04 Sat
I don't know, but it is interesting that he became a W&H employee
"before" his upgrade. That doesn't bode well for them.
TGIQ improves on 2nd viewing
-- Ames, 10:36:06 07/20/04 Tue
I haven't watched it again since it first aired, but it was on
last night. I said I was a bit disappointed with it the first
time around, but it improves a lot on 2nd viewing as a standalone
ep, outside the context of the end of the series. The comedy really
works, and a lot of it was very funny. I guess the consensus that
it was a worthy episode that suffered from placement was more
or less correct. The secondary Wesley-Fred-Illyria story line
still seems awkwardly juxtaposed with the comedy, but now it's
possible to forget that it was stuck in the middle of a series
of dark and serious end-of-the-line episodes. I think in retrospect
that BtVS S7 made the better decision to go with a James Cameron/Terminator-style
continuous rush to the end from ep 8 through 22.
Replies:
[> Re: TGIQ improves on 2nd viewing -- Bjerkley, 14:23:32
07/20/04 Tue
I actually really enjoyed it the first time round. And while the
Illyria scenes did seem a bit out of place, I was such a massive
fan of that plot strand that I didn't care.
However, while I enjoyed TGIQ, it seriously harmed my liking of
Power Play. I didn't think the episode was great, but the central
point/twist about Angel working a cunning plan to take down the
bad guys, which had been going on since You're Welcome, was undermined
somewhat by the previous episode's comedy japes.
A very good episode, but a mistake on a par with the placement
of Go Fish, if not more so.
Tales of the Slayers project
-- O'Cailleagh, 01:59:22 07/21/04 Wed
I just remembered one of the reasons I came online today!
I was thinking, for those of us who are not too heavily involved
in S6, it might be fun to do a Tales of the Slayers Fic project.
How I see it working is like this.
We each pick a time period.
We then create a Slayer for that period.
We then write a shortish Tale about that Slayer.
Its as easy as pie.
(how easy is pie exactly?)
If there's enough interest over the next week or so (I won't be
back online til then), then I shall declare the Project open.
I'll pop up a list of known Slayers (Based on the Series, the
TOTS comic, and the TOTS novels) and we'll work from that.
The idea is to fill in the gaps rather than writing about a particular
(existing) Slayer. Although, if you're familiar with the novels/comic
and have a favourite, then I suppose it wouldn't hurt to write
about them. However, I think it'd be a bit been there if there
are any Buffy Tales, so she is off-limits!
One other thing, if anyone fancies writing about a 60's Flower
child type Slayer, let me know, cos I'll be referring to her in
my own Tale, so it'd be nice to have a bit of continuity of some
kind.
So, to recap, the project is open to all, unless they are too
busy,of course, and it will be fun. Personally, I'd really like
to see a Canadian or Australian Slayer. Don't know why exactly...just
thought it'd be nice.
O'Cailleagh
Replies:
[> Future Slayers -- Kana, 03:06:50 07/21/04 Wed
I'd like to see future slayers as well, like Fray, even though
i know jack about Fray. What about current slayers that haven't
been mentioned, are they allowed?
[> All new projects are welcome! -- Masq, 06:20:02
07/21/04 Wed
I am going to read the comic "Tales of the Slayers"
this summer.
Season 6 is going to start gearing up now that I'm back from all
my vacationing and the Exec Committee has started wrapping up.
Save a little free time for consultations!
[> That sounds great! -- Finn Mac Cool, 13:03:46
07/21/04 Wed
Some interesting time periods could be: Stalin's Soviet Union,
Biblical Era Israel (either Old or New Testament could work),
Ancient Greece, the Old West, 30's Prohibition Era, Viking Era,
or the Times of King Arthur. Oh, and stories about a Slayer soon
after "Chosen", as well as the Slayer immediately before
Buffy could be great.
P.S. Would this project just be a lot of short stories sharing
a basic premise, or would there be some sort of framing device
(such as someone going through old Watchers Council records, or
a vampire or some other immortal who has run into a bunch of Slayers)?
[> [> Re: That sounds great! -- Majin Gojira, 17:24:25
07/21/04 Wed
I'd probably do a 1950s Slayer vs. B-Movie Monster or 1940s adventure
akin...or possibly along with 'Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein'--because
that's just a great movie.
[> [> [> Re: That sounds great! -- Jane, 20:08:08
07/21/04 Wed
I really like this idea. I have just finished reading the 3rd
volume of "Tales of the Slayer" (novelized version,
not the comic). I can see lots of potential, pardon the pun, for
some very interesting stories. I'm not a writer, but I'd happily
offer my services as beta reader or research assistant to the
project.
[> [> [> Got a few more ideas: -- Finn Mac Cool,
20:49:10 07/21/04 Wed
A Japanese Slayer in the 1950's or 60's who fights an evil cult
to stop them from raising a Godzilla like demon.
An American Aboriginal (a.k.a. "Native American") Slayer
who has to fight against the first shipful of vampires to come
to the continent (possibly with the vampire ship being the source
for the Flying Dutchman legend).
A Slayer who has to fight a gang of demonic pirates (or possibly
a pirate Slayer who raids a town full of demons).
P.S. Majin Gojira, your ideas are really good (I particularly
like the idea of a Slayer fighting a 50's B-movie monster; very
inventive).
[> [> [> [> Re: Got a few more ideas: -- anom,
21:13:00 07/21/04 Wed
"An American Aboriginal (a.k.a. "Native American")
Slayer who has to fight against the first shipful of vampires
to come to the continent (possibly with the vampire ship being
the source for the Flying Dutchman legend)."
How about one who gets drawn into resisting the Europeans who
start to take over her people's land? She could be anywhere in
either N. or S. America, or the Caribbean.
I was gonna suggest a story where Joan of Arc actually was a Slayer,
but I Googled & found it's been done, so never mind that one.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Got a few more ideas:
-- Finn Mac Cool, 22:25:16 07/21/04 Wed
"How about one who gets drawn into resisting the Europeans
who start to take over her people's land? She could be anywhere
in either N. or S. America, or the Caribbean."
I'm personally not too fond of the idea, but using vampires or
demons as a metaphor for that is something I could get behind
(infusing politics into the Jossverse is just a pet peeve of mine
(though I can enjoy the occasional political metaphor)). Besides,
vampirism is a disease of sorts, and Europeans intentionally exposing
the aboriginals to foreign diseases was among the more dispicable
things they did. I can very easily see some early settlers dropping
a bunch of vampires onto aboriginal land so that they wouldn't
have to deal with them.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Got a few more ideas:
-- ghady, 04:48:02 07/22/04 Thu
Ok i've got a few ideas (and given that i'm a "writer"
(though i'm 17) i hope i'd be able to finish a few stories)
1) A Slayer that faced the Judge eons ago
2) An Arabian Slayer would be cool (though obviously the dialogue
would have to be in English..) Sometime during the appearance
of the Prophet Mohammad maybe.. Or during modern times as well..
3) A Slayer that was present at the Crucifixion
4) The FIRST Slayer!! That should be cool (i havent seen all of
BS7 yet, so if there are any tales abt her, let me know)
5) The LAST Slayer.. Oh, we could use W&H apocalypse for this
(unless that's dealt w/ in AS5, which i havent seen).. But still,
imagine what it would be like for the LAST Slayer EVER (oh wait..
i forgot abt what happened in Chosen--i read the spoilers).. fine,
scratch that..
6) A Slayer during WW1 and WW2.. i've read a lot of things abt
"the rise of demonic acitivty" during these wars.. so
that COULD work.. if anyone has played Eternal Dakrness: Sanity's
Requiem on the GameCube, they'd know what i mean..
7) Buffy in the alternate reality that Anya created in the Wish.
i'll think of some more..
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Got a few more
ideas: -- Majin Gojira, 05:45:05 07/22/04 Thu
More cool ideas:
"2) An Arabian Slayer would be cool (though obviously the
dialogue would have to be in English..) Sometime during the appearance
of the Prophet Mohammad maybe.. Or during modern times as well.."
Or durring the time of Captain Sinbad...and the various Harryhausen
Monsters of the day ;-)
"6) A Slayer during WW1 and WW2.. i've read a lot of things
abt "the rise of demonic acitivty" during these wars..
so that COULD work.. if anyone has played Eternal Dakrness: Sanity's
Requiem on the GameCube, they'd know what i mean..."
Or if they watched the movie/read "Hellboy". A young
Hellboy recieving some tips from a Slayer would be very interesting...and
likely for the Worlds Greatest Paranormal Detective.
"Goddamn Nazi Frankenstein Monkey!" (I love that line!)
Or, simply take it between WW1 and WW2 and make it either Super-Pulp-like
(IE: Indiana Jones, The Shadow, Doc Savage, Tarzan, Flash Gordon,
etc.) or Super-Cthonic (The Cthulhu Mythos is already connected
to the Buffyverse so why not!)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Crucifixion idea
-- SS, 06:00:31 07/22/04 Thu
With Judas's kiss a vamp bite?
"I know one of you at this table will betray me"....
:)
SS
[> [> [> [> Re: 1940s-1960s Slayer Ideas --
Majin Gojira, 05:35:58 07/22/04 Thu
Thanks Fin.
I like the idea of a Slayer preventing the rise of a Godzilla-like
monster and have been toying with Buffy/"Daikaiju" crossovers
for years and have come to some pretty bizzare conclusions:
1) Slayer's are erily similar to the Heisie (post 1985) version
of everyone's favorite turtle: Gamera (this is especially evident
in the last film of the Gamera Trillogy: "Gamera 3: Revenge
of Iris")
2) Daikaiju in the Buffyverse would basically be True Demons,
or even Old Ones (depending on size and power). A few monsters
(IE: Mothra and various Ultramen) would be the buffyverse equivelent
of Powers on Earth.
3) The Bizzare Natural History of Giant Monsters presented in
several Daikaiju films is almost identical to that displayed in
the Buffyverse (No, Really!). Examples include: "Giant Monster
Gammera"/"Gammera the Invincible" and "Gigantis
the Fire Monster"/"Godzilla Raids Again".
One of the best ideas I've heard for a Buffy crossover with Godzilla
himself involves the two actually working together against the
team of an Evil Sorcorer and the Devil-Beast Bagan (very obscure
monster whon never actually made it into a movie...but has gotten
a small cult following as of late).
[> [> [> [> [> Re: 1940s-1960s Slayer Ideas
-- Finn Mac Cool, 10:30:14 07/22/04 Thu
The problems I see with a team-up between Buffy and Godzilla are:
first, that it's hard to make a teamup between a sentient person
and a monster so large it probably wouldn't know said person exists;
second, any Buffy level villain could be annihilated by Godzilla
easily, and any Godzilla level villain would be too powerful for
Buffy to even scratch. Not saying it COULDN'T be done, just that
it would be quite the feat.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: 1940s-1960s Slayer
Ideas -- Majin Gojira, 11:30:42 07/22/04 Thu
That is why the threat is split thustly: Sorcorer raises Bagan.
Buffy fights Sorcorer, giving Godzilla the edge against Bagan.
This, of course, would be either a "Neutral" or "Good"
encarnation of the Big G.
I've thought about it WAY too much.
But I'll probably stick to the B-movie monster idea...because
there are a lot of funky B-Movie monsters who actually COULD fit
in the Buffyverse:
Giant Mutant Leaches, The tentacled "Beast of the Haunted
Cave" is very Cthonic, Giant Insects (ranging from just 4ft
long to 150ft tall), A Reverse-reptilian Were-Creature ("The
Hideous Sun Demon"), etc.
Others are just REALLY out there: Atomic Mutants, Alien Invaders.
Atomic Alien Invaders, etc.
OT : Could someone please
explain Homecoming to me? -- phoenix, 09:49:57 07/22/04
Thu
I'm trying to write a story set around the episode 'Homecoming,'
and it would be very helpful if some kind person could explain
the significance of the Homecoming dance, and the Homecoming queen
, to me. How did it originate? What is it's siignificance to American
teenagers? Anything else you think might be helpful.
I'm British, and to give you some idea of how little I know -
when I was small I heard the Monkeys song, Daydream Believer(or
whatever it was called) and spent ages wondering why they were
singing about Queen Elizabeth II coming home! It was quite a few
years later before that song finally made sense.
Replies:
[> When it doubt check the Annotated Buffy -- Lunasea,
10:04:36 07/22/04 Thu
Here is the link for homecoming
Thanks Rob for all your hard work.
[> [> Aww, thanks! Consider the cockles of my heart officially
warmed. :-) -- Rob, 10:14:28 07/22/04 Thu
[> [> [> Does that make me the official cockles warmer?
-- Lunasea, 01:59:07 07/23/04 Fri
[> [> Re: When it doubt check the Annotated Buffy
-- phoenix, 14:15:15 07/22/04 Thu
Thanks, Annotated Buffy is a great resource,you are doing a wonderful
job Rob, unfortunately it doesn't quite answer my question in
this case. Oh well.
[> Re: OT : Could someone please explain Homecoming to me?
-- DEN, 15:46:49 07/22/04 Thu
Homecoming usually takes place in the fall, during football season.
It's both a high school and a college function, whose justification
is was to bring back alumni for a football game some nostalgia,
and perhaps donations to the alma mater. The danceitself is for
current students. Particularly in high schools, it is usually
THE social event of the fall semester, a counterpiont to the prom
in spring. The "king" and queen" awards orginally
almost always went to a star football player and a cheerleder.
Recently the competition has been more open--it's become a combination
of popularity contest and "communiy service" as well
as athletic status.
As you may have deduced, being without a date for the dance can
be devastating, while the competitions for king and queen can
be even more intense than the episode shows.
I hope this helps.
[> [> Re: OT : Could someone please explain Homecoming
to me? -- Cactus Watcher, 20:09:47 07/22/04 Thu
As DEN says it started mainly as a gimmick for colleges to sell
more football game tickets and hopefully to get a few donations
from alumni, but it quickly expanded to a party for the current
students. Typically there is a 'pep rally' on Friday night to
get the students and alums together and excited about the game.
Then on Saturday morning there is a parade through the local neighborhood
with the school marching band and decorated cars. The game comes
usually on Saturday afternoon, after which the alums go off and
do adult celebrating or commiserating over the game. The students
have a dance Saturday evening. The dance is pretty meaningless
at the college level (at one of the universities I attended, a
cow was elected homecoming queen way back in the 1930's), but
seems like life and death to high school age kids. The festivities
are similar at both the high school and university level, with
the high school making up for the smaller scale with more enthusiasm
from a bigger percentage of the student body. About the only alums
who ever show up at the high school dances are the Homecoming
King and Queen from the previous year who crown the new winners
for the year.
[> [> [> Re: OT : Could someone please explain Homecoming
to me? -- phoenix, 06:32:54 07/23/04 Fri
Thanks everyone, that was very helpful; and may I just say - they
elected a cow? Well I'm sure it was a very personable cow, and
probably looked cute in a tiara.
[> [> [> [> Re: OT : Could someone please explain
Homecoming to me? -- CW, 07:18:45 07/23/04 Fri
I don't know about the tiara, but there are pictures of her riding
on a decorated trailer in the Homecoming parade.
[> Actually, I always assumed that this custom probably
originated... -- Marie, 01:41:58 07/23/04 Fri
...many moons ago, when a local country girl and boy were picked
to lead the celebrations after the harvest was safely brought
'home'...
But I'm Welsh - what do I know!
Marie
[> [> Re: Actually, I always assumed that this custom
probably originated... -- phoenix, 06:35:20 07/23/04 Fri
Interesting. But I'm Scots/English so I probably know even less
(-:
[> [> Re: Actually, I always assumed that this custom
probably originated... -- O'Cailleagh, 19:00:40 07/27/04
Tue
I think the core idea of it was probably the Nice Village Boy
and Girl, the plethora of titles such as May Queen suggest a definite
link at least.
I've been meaning to ask you Marie, do you speak Welsh?
If so, could you tell me if Pen-y-Uffern is acceptable as the
Welsh for Hellmouth?
If not, could you tell me what might be please?
O'Cailleagh
[> [> [> Re: Hellmouth -- Marie, 01:59:00 07/28/04
Wed
Actually 'pen' means 'head' or 'top'. 'Mouth' is 'ceg'. 'Pen yr
Uffern' would therefore translate as the top of Hell, or Hell's
Top, maybe. There is no actual translation, but I would say 'Ceg
Uffern' (we say things back-to-front here!). 'Ceg' has a long
e, by the way, similar to the vowel sound of 'bear' or 'chair'.
Nice try, though! Are you writing a Welsh Slayer story?
M
[> [> [> [> Re: Hellmouth -- O'Cailleagh, 16:21:00
08/02/04 Mon
Thanks Marie, I knew it wasn't quite right! Yes, its sort of a
Slayer story, although the Slayer isn't the focus. Its set in
the Buffyverse version of Newport (we have a Hellmouth you know!)
O'Cailleagh
How many demons have the
type of power that Willow has? -- megaslayer, 16:18:19
07/22/04 Thu
I think Vail is probably stronger than Willow because his channeling
doesn't drain him very easily. Skip had some powers but were never
seen so an unlikely candidate. Dhoffryn was pretty powerful to
change humans to demons giving them their powers.
Replies:
[> My opinion: -- Finn Mac Cool, 18:38:53 07/22/04
Thu
Vail: We can't tell, since the only spells we've seen him do have
been relatively small scale; we don't know how much the Connor
spell drained him, how much he had to prepare, and how much the
other sorcerors Wesley mentioned helped.
Skip: He seems to have a great deal of physical strength and endurence,
however, considering he was a servant of a Power That Was, odds
are a lot of his feats were actually Jasmine's power. After all,
if he could freeze time, create extensive mental constructs, and
keep people in a box of eternal fire all on his own, he probably
would have done some of those things when fighting the Fang Gang.
D'Hoffryn: He seems to have more power, at least to me. We know
he can alter the flow of time, per Anya's comment in "Dopplegangland",
although how much effort he'd have to go through to accomplish
that is unknown. However, we do know he can teleport himself and
other people through space and into different dimensions, can
turn people into vengeance demons, incinerate people alive, and
raise over a dozen dead people. We know Willow can do the telporation
and incineration stuff, we have no information one way or the
other on the time altering thing, but we do have her comment that,
even at her most powerful, she didn't think she could resurrect
a room full of dead folks. Considering D'Hoffryn is like the chief
vengeance demon and all, it's probable that he has the same near
limitless wish-granting abilities that all vengeance demons have
(though whatever mystical rules govern this are unknown to us).
Still, given the way D'Hoffryn casually raised those dead guys,
a feat Willow didn't even think she could do, I'm inclined to
believe he's the more powerful one.
[> [> Re: My opinion: -- BrianWilly, 22:32:11
07/22/04 Thu
I agree that D'Hoffryn is probably one of the biggest powers that
we've seen...he's self-proclaimed ruler of Arashmaharr, supposedly
a demon dimension, and thus could maybe brink on hellgod status.
He his true manipulative and plotting nature with a laid-back
and good-natured attitute...a convenience usually only given to
those who understand true power.
But I always get wary when someone brings up the frat boys' resurrection
as proof of this power. As far as we know(ie until we know better),
that act was a "wish," an extension of the power inherent
in all vengeance demons. We don't know much about these wishes,
but one thing we know is that you can't make them on your own
behalf, that the wish must come from someone else...which of course
severely limits their usefulness from a self-serve perspective.
Just like Anyanka can't go around cursing men on her own, D'Hoffryn
couldn't just zap the boys back to life without the will of someone
else, and not without balancing the scales and appeasing the fates
ie replacing the dozen human deaths with the death of a vengeance
demon.
I could be wrong and it could all have been a grand show to further
Anya's torment, but Anya has been around a long time and understands
the rules and limits of demon power and demon magic...she understood
the whole time the metaphysical ramifications of her wish, ie
the frat boys could only be brought back through a sacrifice of
that nature. When Willow said that she couldn't perform the spell,
she was talking about resurrection based upon the loophole of
mystical death. What about resurrection based upon the loophole
of sacrifice, a "simple" give-and-take of energy as
ascertained in the Buffyverse? It's a line that maybe shouldn't
be crossed, but who knows if Willow was simply to scared to cross
it through no fault of her own, or if she truly couldn't? I'm
just not so sure that this incident of the resurrection is proof
that, power-wise, D'Hoffryn would be able to take on Willow, and
especially not the Willow at the end of season 7.
On the subject of Vail, I think that most likely he does know
more about magic than Willow does. For someone who is so enamored
by magic and so talented at getting it to do what she wanted,
Willow didn't actually know that much -- compared to the
true Buffyverse witches and sorcerers -- about its workings and
consequences until season six, and it even wasn't until her tutelage
under the Coven in season seven that this knowledge went beyond
"magic equals power." She's a quick study once she puts
her mind to it, but something tells me that she still has a lot
to learn. Compared to someone like Vail or even Giles, Willow
definitely isn't as knowledgeable. That doesn't mean, of course,
that she couldn't kick their asses...knowing about magic isn't
the same, apparently, as using magic, which Willow is definitely
good at.
[> [> [> Re: My opinion: -- Wizard, 22:41:36
07/22/04 Thu
Yeah- that was one of her major problems. She only saw the power
of magic, but she didn't know all that much. I think that it's
because she is mostly self-taught. Tara might have tried to show
her a few things, but it's one thing to teach a student. An equal-
and later a superior- is something else.
I think Vail could give her a run for her money, maybe.
[> [> [> [> Re: My opinion: -- David, 10:53:47
07/23/04 Fri
I think D'Hoffryn is probably a bit more powerful although maybe
after Choosen Willow may have gottena little more powrful. I think
it would be a really close fight between them.
Vail may be evenly matched or possibly a tiny bit more powerful
than her since he can 'bend reality to his will' and that has
to be impressive although like with D'Hoffryn it would be a close
fight
Willow could beat Skip because i think Jasmine was providing most
of his power with the exception of his strength other than that
he Jasmine froze time, caused the fire cage, and ascended Cordy
question abt executive producers
on angel -- ghady, 16:37:32 07/22/04 Thu
while watching cavalry, i suddenly realized that they only credited
joss and an exec prod. so, believing this to be "weird",
i went back to my AS3 DVDs and saw that both joss and david were
credited there. why is that?
Replies:
[> Long story made short -- Cactus Watcher, 19:27:31
07/22/04 Thu
David quit as boss on Angel before season 4 to work on other projects.
Thus the license plate and "Thank You, very much" end
tag/logo also ended with season three.
[> [> but did he still work on angel? -- ghady, 04:56:45
07/23/04 Fri
[> [> [> Re: but did he still work on angel? --
CW, 06:04:43 07/23/04 Fri
No, but another David, David Fury, did.
The Wolf, Ram, and Hart...
-- Corwin of Amber, 19:59:35 07/22/04 Thu
Several times in Angel, Wolfram & Hart have been refenenced as
Wolf, Ram and Hart. Most notably in the Pylea and Illyria arcs
of the series. In Shells, (I think, it may be AHITW), Illyria
references them as if they had been living beings, contemporary
with her. So is there a Wolf-demon, a Ram-demon, and a Hart-demon,
allied and running around the Buffyverse? Given that gods/demons
are often portrayed as animal-headed people, this isn't outside
the realm of possibility. Are the modern animals, wolves, sheep
and deer descended from them? Or are they in fact not demons,
but some sort of nature spirts? The reference Wolf, Ram and Hart,
almost sounds like a totem.
Replies:
[> Re: The Wolf, Ram, and Hart... -- David, 10:46:19
07/23/04 Fri
I think the Wolf the Ram the Hart refers to three demons or tribes
or something or maybe a group of gods like Illyria but just weaker
than her. I don't think the actual animals we have now are their
decendants but i do think the name may have been passed on because
they shared some traits like The Wolf may have been a hunter and
therefore humans remembered this and named the animal a wolf.
The Ram may have had some traits too with the animal ramand same
with the Hart.
Also in the Old Ones language The Wolf the Ram the Hart may mean
something else. Remember Illyria only said their name in English
for Knox so maybe it means something different entirely
Hope this helps.
nominations for "best
of the archives" -- anom, 22:44:57 07/22/04 Thu
Masq suggested below that we need a set of "best of the archives"
links. I'd like to start by nominating manwitch's fantastic posts
linking Buffy's 7 seasons to the 7 chakras, which began
in Jan. 2003 with Something
Else Entirely (top of page) & had an end-of-series follow-up
in May 2003, A
Something Else Entirely Epilogue (about 2/3 down).
Of course, I want to give Rufus credit for the link that started
this, & to Solitude1056, who originally wrote Existentialism,
Mini Lecture #23, Revisited (also about 2/3 down the page).
And Masq for suggesting the "Best of" idea, as well
as for making the whole thing possible.
There are so many more candidates, & I may add more of them myself,
but meanwhile, anyone wanna make other nominations?
Replies:
[> I'll beat OnM to the punch and suggest "The Law
of Cause and Effect" by Ryuei -- Rufus, 03:05:34 07/23/04
Fri
Of course OnM reposted it here.
[> Actually, it was OnM who had the "Best Of"
idea -- Masq, 04:23:06 07/23/04 Fri
[> [> The original post is currently at... -- OnM,
05:02:56 07/23/04 Fri
http://www.voy.com/14567/2/12375.html
(Of course, now being in the archives, it might move anytime.)
Note that the suggestion wasn't just a matter of finding a favorite
thread from days gone by and linking to the archive page/section
in question, although that's perfectly OK, the idea was to take
the original threads (and related threads, even) and edit them
together into a form suitable for reading as is they were being
published in a book.
These could then be transported over to the new "Best of"
section of ES. (Or, Masq could collect them all into a genuinely
publishable form and then post-said-publishing make oodles of
bucks and generously share it all with us, her noble minions
contributors!)
;-)
But, that does take time, so if you want to just link, by all
means do so. Perhaps another poster could do the edit/rewrite
routine.
Take it and amble, as Earl (almost) sez!
:-)
[> [> [> I discovered something nifty -- Masq,
06:40:08 07/23/04 Fri
When linking to a post that is currently part of the voy system,
you just link directly to it (leaving off the archive directory):
http://www.voy.com/14567/12375.html,
and it will take you there, no matter which archive it's currently
in.
Works until it falls off the board!
[> [> [> [> That *is* nifty-- ya sure couldn't
do that before! -- OnM, 19:09:41 07/23/04 Fri
[> [> [> Oh, good idea, OnM! -- Jane, 11:35:49
07/23/04 Fri
Now that's a book I would happily fork out some of my hard earned
money for!
[> [> [> [> Now why do I have a sudden vision of
a cartoon deity... -- OnM, 19:08:00 07/23/04 Fri
... telling King Arthur that "Of course it's a good idea!!"
?
Ni! Ni!
[> Here are a few -- Ann, 05:24:40 07/23/04 Fri
Darby's meet the posters thread http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/feb03_p29.html#1
This IMO is the best thread on the board.
All of the MOLOJ adventures
9/11 thread
The Gathering posts of course
Random's Agape Love post http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/jan04_p08.html#20
about half way down the page
Age's symbolic look at Buffy S5 http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/june_p.html#45
If not said already, all of manwitch's Buffy Spiritual Journey
Posts
All of Rufus' commentaries she posted and I think Rahael did some
also
I will have more later but these are ones I love!
[> [> Seconding -- Tchaikovsky, 07:24:20 07/23/04
Fri
The 'Meet the Posters' thread was immense.
TCH
[> [> [> And there was more than one of them --
Masq, 09:08:02 07/23/04 Fri
Don't ask me for URLs. *ack* ; )
[> [> Ann... If CJL doesn't get off his duff soon, I'm
reopening R.R. -- Rochefort, 16:16:29 07/24/04 Sat
[> [> [> SQUEE!!!!!!! -- Ann, 17:13:18 07/24/04
Sat
Waiting patiently [not]! Either of you, doesn't matter, we need
a fix! LOL
And of course no pressure at all. That wouldn't be nice.
[> [> [> Oh, the hell with it. Rochefort, e-mail me...
-- cjl, 18:29:33
07/25/04 Sun
I'll send you everything I have on Chapter 12. I would have liked
to have finished up, but I don't want to keep our public (Ann?)
waiting any longer.
[> [> [> [> Hey! I are a "public," too!
-- dub ;o), 13:19:48 07/26/04 Mon
[> [> [> An update on the revival/continuation of
Rescue Revisited -- cjl, 11:42:42 08/03/04 Tue
Rochefort and I have exchanged e-mails. I have properly groveled
and asked for forgiveness regarding my writer's block on a key
segment of the penultimate chapter. I have completed about three-quarters
of Chapter 13; Rochefort has agreed to pick up the gauntlet, finish
up the chapter, then work on the conclusion.
Don't know when the new chapter ("Entanglement") will
be posted. Rochefort is going on a brief vacation, and will work
on it when he gets back.
[> [> [> [> Yippee! Yay! Hurrah! -- Jane, 23:38:29
08/03/04 Tue
Midnight is busy polishing his horn. There will be unicorns,
right? 'Cause I recall that he was still part of the narrative
in the last chapter. He will be so excited; we must email Morningstar
immediately.
[> A lurker de-lurking to volunteer -- JudyKay,
11:09:47 07/23/04 Fri
I've been reading this board since I discovered it around March
of this year, and have thoroughly enjoyed every moment. (I'm a
recent fan to both Buffy and Angel, so it's not like I've ignored
you for years!) I haven't posted before because I didn't feel
like I could contribute much to the discussions except "boy
that was good," or "I never thought of it that way!"
But I do have some skills in organizing and editing documents
and would like to volunteer to help Masq on this project. It would
give me a chance to read all the good past posts and I've been
unemployed for months, so I have plenty of time! I know HTML and
I also have a lot of desktop publishing skills if you really want
to gather them into a book (which I think is a great idea). The
content I'd leave up to you guys to decide, of course, since you
are more familiar with the history of this board, but I can help
with any of the production rigamarole that needs to be done.
JudyKay, lurking no more
[> [> Welcome! -- Masq, 11:31:23 07/23/04 Fri
I think Lady Starlight, who I would most likely pawn this project
off on, would welcome your help with it.
And welcome to the board!
[> [> [> Did I hear my name?? -- LadyStarlight,
18:54:18 07/26/04 Mon
I'd very much welcome help and assistance! But I'm not sharing
any chocolate I get -- I draw the line there. ;)
[> [> [> [> Re: Did I hear my name?? -- JudyKay,
10:30:03 07/29/04 Thu
I'd very much welcome help and assistance! But I'm not sharing
any chocolate I get -- I draw the line there. ;)
But I lurv chocolate!
(I'll help anyway!)
JudyKay
[> [> A quick note to lurkers -- Lunasea, 12:03:18
07/23/04 Fri
I didn't feel like I could contribute much to the discussions
except "boy that was good," or "I never thought
of it that way!"
That isn't not much. That is actually a whole lot. Maybe not to
foster discussion, but it means a lot to the writers (or at least
to this particular writer) when a lurker speaks up to say s/he
liked something or even better to say that we got you to see something
a new way or at least consider a new angle.
Sometimes it is very disheartening to spend hours (even days)
doing research and writing up an essay only to feel like it was
ignored. It makes it that much harder to write the next one. Too
many times ignored can translate to not putting the effort out
at all. I know I'm not the only one that feels that way.
I hope that all the lurkers out there realize they are an important
part of this board. Writing an essay is a form of communication.
If there isn't an audience, there is no communication. Speak up.
Let us know you are out there reading, even if that is all think
you can say. You'd be amazed at how important this act is.
[> [> [> Re: A quick note to lurkers -- JudyKay, 13:13:05
07/23/04 Fri
Point taken. I will try to post more often, now that I've broken
the ice. I few years back (in a whole other fandom) I was kinda
burned by some people on a private discussion list, so I'm a bit
shy about plunging back in, but you all seem so nice and civil
that I feel very safe on this board.
And Lady Starlight, email me and let me know what I can do to
help.
JudyKay
[> [> [> [> Re: A quick note to lurkers --
Lunasea, 13:18:28 07/23/04 Fri
I can understand about the being shy part, especially after having
been seriously burned on another board myself. Just come in at
your own place. Few people here bite and they tend to only bite
those that bite back. It's a very mutual biting.
This is probably the most civil place I've ever visited. Glad
to see you come out of the lurker closet. Lots of woos and hoos
for having the courage to do that.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: A quick note to lurkers
-- Jane, 14:34:57 07/23/04 Fri
I second what Lunasea says. I lurked here for over a year before
I started posting. Now I feel so at home, I went to the Chicago
meeting, and had a blast. Welcome.
[> [> [> Re: A quick note to lurkers -- Susan,
13:43:38 07/24/04 Sat
Hello to all here:
I discovered this board several weeks ago and have had many wonderful
hours reading it and also everything contained on the ATP webpage.
Actually I am still reading the website, I keep finding more and
more wonderful reading. Thank you to all those that write here
and to the webmistress of ATPoBtVSAtS.
Susan of Susan's Pages
http://wtv-zone.com/herstorythree/entrancetwo.html
[> [> [> [> Thanks for reading! -- Masq, 08:56:49
07/25/04 Sun
And welcome!
Can anyone confirm that Firefly
has a three-picture deal? -- Merle, 12:55:41 07/23/04 Fri
http://actionadventure.about.com/od/news/a/aa071404.htm
Alan Tudyk states that he's already signed on for three movies.
If this is real, why isn't it bigger news on the fansites? I'm
ready to dance in the street.
Replies:
[> Re: Can anyone confirm that Firefly has a three-picture
deal? -- JudyKay, 13:20:42 07/23/04 Fri
I think it's dependent on how well Serenity does in the
theatres. But they wanted to make sure they locked all the actors
for the other two movies, in case the first one's a big hit.
JudyKay, plunging!
[> [> Encouraging words from Chris Buchanan -- Merle,
12:23:47 07/24/04 Sat
http://fireflydvd.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=2455#2455
Scroll down 1/3rd of the way. An extra hears from CB that Universal
is very pleased with the BDM so far and is giving ME the royal
treatment -- no creative interference, use of the best sound stage,
not destroying the sets, etc. I find that promising.
But even if the sequels aren't a sure thing, I would have thought
even the possibility of an extra two Joss movies would be cause
celebre. Where's the Firefly love?
[> It's becoming more of a standard contingency, not a guarantee
of sequels. -- Earl
Allison, 05:00:59 07/26/04 Mon
This is coming up more and more, not necessarily because sequels
are greenlighted before their initial movie(s) air, but to keep
actor/actress salaries locked in.
It helps prevent someone from holding up production on said sequels
(should they be made) simply because their character is (or is
merely perceived to be) indispensable, and they want as much money
as they think they can manage.
For example, I believe most of the BtVS cast was signed for five
seasons originally, or for four after S1 succeeded, but there
were no absolute guarantees from the WB that it might not be axed
before all five seasons were made and aired.
Still, for you Firefly fans out there, I hope you get your sequels
anyway :)
Take it and run.
how do the ppl at ME think
abt their storylines?? -- ghady, 05:07:00 07/23/04 Fri
One thing has always baffled me abt these shows, and that's the
continuity. How do the writers think of these things? As an example:
the little girl in red at W&H (Mesektet) first appeared in AS3..
then, in AS4, we find out that she is part of the Ra-Tet bla bla..
So did the writers KNOW what she was the moment they introduced
her, or was it more like "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we
use that red girl again?" Another thing, in a flashback in
AS2, we hear Angel and Darla saying sthg like "it's this
guy Holtz.. he's tough..".. We don't even SEE Holtz then,
and the casual viewer would not have even remembered them saying
that. But then Holtz appears in S3. So did "they "think
this one out??
Another thing: Fred and Pylea. Was it their intention from the
beginning to have the professor put her there? Or was it more
like a "this would be nice" thing?
Now I'm assuming that the WHOOOLEEE arc of AS4 was carefully planned
out even before they started shooting.. I don't think ANYTHING
in AS4 was thought of at the last minute, right?
One last thing: when the First was first introduced in BS3, did
Joss intend for It to be the Big Bad of BS7, assuming they actually
HAD a BS7? Or was it done on a whim?
Replies:
[> also: Wolfram and Hart/ The Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart--was
that intentional or was it accidental?? -- ghady, 06:56:22
07/23/04 Fri
[> There's mixed reports -- KdS, 13:11:49 07/23/04
Fri
Kristine Sutherland, who played Joyce, has said that Joss told
her her character would be killed off eventually as early as the
start of Season Four, and also hinted at the Dawn plot in the
same conversation. But I think a lot of it is simply improvised,
certainly when you're talking about separate seasons. BtVS7 showed,
IMHO, signs of a significant rethinking of the season arc at around
midpoint. The arc of BtVS4 was apparently seriously affected by
the unexpected departures of both Seth Green and Lindsay Crouse
(supposedly the Oz/Veruca/Willow triangle would have lasted much
longer and Veruca would have been more morally ambiguous, Walsh
may have been the Big Bad and Adam more sympathetic, there would
have been more on Walsh's perverse sexual atraction to Riley).
The arc of AtS4 was apparently much affected by Charisma Carpenter's
pregnancy (initially it was planned that Cordelia would have been
the Big Bad herself, either possessed or morally corrupted, then
it was intended that Cordelia would have woken up and killed Jasmine,
but CC was physically too far gone to do it).
[> [> Warning, SPOILERS for AtS4 above! -- KdS, 13:13:02
07/23/04 Fri
Are you still watching S4 ghady? I'm very sorry I forgot.
[> [> [> Re: Warning, SPOILERS for AtS4 above!
-- ghady, 16:18:00 07/23/04 Fri
yea i'm still watching AS4, but it's okay there were no spoilers
above.. i'm up to cavalry where cordy went evil at the end (i'm
gonna miss lila), and i've heard a lot of talk abt this Jasmine
and how disappointed everyone was that she was the Big Bad and
not cordy, so i wasn't spoiled at all..
but what's this you said abt BS7? I always assumed that they planned
the entire arc from the beginning of the season, but foolishly
spent like 7 episodes w/ fillers and a lot of talk abt "a
dark evil a-brewin" for no reason i can think of. from Conv
w/ Dead Ppl and on the "real" story began.. is that
what u meant?
[> [> [> [> Nothing concrete -- KdS, 11:28:48
07/24/04 Sat
Purely my own reactions to BtVS7, which may just have been due
to my personal blinders. Too complicated to explain now and not
that important.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Nothing concrete -- ghady,
04:22:31 07/25/04 Sun
ooh.. now u got me all interested.. but if it takes too long to
get the info (and if it's too tiresome), then seriously forget
it (seriously.)
[> [> [> [> Jasmine was cool (not spoilery)
-- Masq, 18:57:16 07/24/04 Sat
She could have been a seriously cheesy character, but the Gina
Torres pulled it off well.
[> [> BtVS S2 -- Roy, 13:04:55 07/24/04 Sat
I think that BUFFY's Season 2 also showed signed of rehashing.
Don't forget, Spike was supposed to be killed off in "What's
My Line". Apparently, Whedon changed his mind . . . and it's
a good thing. The entire season arc for S2 seemed seriously in
danger of being disjointed. Only Spike and Drusilla's presence
were able to give the season any kind of continuity.
[> [> [> The story was... -- KdS, 08:27:27
07/25/04 Sun
If I recall correctly Spike was intended to die in What's My
Line, but I think it was also intended that the Anointed One
would survive a lot longer. Possibly the power struggle in later-S2
would have been Angelus vs. the Anointed One instead of Angelus
vs. Spike. However, the child actor for the Anointed One wasn't
very good, plus I think they realised the character wasn't that
well-conceived to start with.
[> [> [> In some ways, it's unfortunate... --
dmw, 08:43:07 07/25/04 Sun
In some ways it's unfortunate that their early changes in season
2 (Spike living longer/the Anointed dying earlier) and season
3 (killing Mr Trick and promoting Faith and The Mayor as the little
and big bads of the season) worked out as well as they did, as
their success allowed them to keep pulling such switches with
the expectation that it would work on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, their story/character changes in season 4 (losing
Walsh was apparently not their fault though, and frankly I'm glad
they lost Oz/Verucca as the love triangle story is too cliched
for me) and in seasons 6 and 7 didn't come off. I wish they'd
plotted out everything from the beginning (with some contigency
plans for losing actors and such), but I can only think of one
writer who managed that for a multiple year arc on TV.
[> [> [> [> and who IS that writer? (joss?)
-- ghady, 14:38:47 07/25/04 Sun
[> [> [> [> [> Ah, no -- dmw, 16:47:42
07/25/04 Sun
Ah, no. The writer would be J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote
Babylon 5.
[> [> Minor Correction -- Mr. Bananagrabber, 12:42:18
07/26/04 Mon
In Doug Petrie's BBC journal on season 4 (a great read, btw. don't
have the link but you can proably google it), he states pretty
definetively that Whedon & Co. were aware that they had Lindsey
Crouse for a limited time and had always planned to have Adam
take over as the Big Bad. I am not sure were the story began that
Ms. Crouse departed unexpectedly but I guess they may have started
with people's general disappointment over Adam.
[> [> [> Ok, thanks -- KdS, 13:59:50 07/26/04
Mon
[> [> [> [> Re: Your welcome -- Mr. Bananagrabber,
15:21:53 07/26/04 Mon
[> Some is deliberate, some retconning, and some is, IMHO,
pure accident. -- Earl
Allison, 05:13:30 07/26/04 Mon
I do think that some arcs are planned, to some extent, well in
advance. Dream-Faith's comments in "Graduation Day"
seemed to imply that Buffy was going to die in two years, the
end of S5 (counting down from 730, or something).
Other items are reworked on the fly.
Of course, someone already brought up S2. Spike was supposed to
be staked, and Angelus and Drusilla were to be the Big Bads. The
Annointed One was killed off because the actor grew too tall for
the role, I hear. Jenny Calendar was not supposed to be Angelus'
victim, Oz was, but Joss liked his performance, so Jenny got killed
instead. This rankles me not so much for what was done, but because
ME seems to take refuge behind the "we planned all this in
advance" claim far more often than is justified.
Angel only came back in S3, from what I heard, because of the
lure of a spinoff.
With an episode like "Restless," and with respect to
the educated posters here, I think it's far more of a "throw
everything at the wall and see what sticks" presentation.
Yes, there is some decent foreshadowing, but IMHO there is also
a LOT of stretching to make some items "relevant."
Was the First meant to return in S7? I'm pretty confident that
the answer there was "no." S5 seemed a logical end to
the story (far more so, IMHO, than S7), so I don't see Joss and/or
ME making plans THAT far in advance, when their short-term plans
fall through so consistently due to actor availability or whatnot.
I guess it's some from Column A, some from Column B, and a smattering
of Column C thrown in :)
Take it and run.
[> [> Re: Some is deliberate, some retconning, and some
is, IMHO, pure accident. -- Mr. Bananagrabber, 11:54:12
07/26/04 Mon
Minor point here but I don't find that ME hide behind the "we
all planned this in advance" claim. Whedon & his co-writers
(specifically Noxon & Fury) have always been pretty open that
much of what the fans seem to think is worked out far in advance
is just happenstance. I've always felt the fans dwelled on the
advance planning theory far more than the staff did. Certainly
some has been planned out (Dawn, for instance) but this is TV
and things can change quickly. Actaully, recall that Whedon talked
about this in his Salon interview last year. Referred to it as
'running the rapids' if I remember correctly.
Oh, is there any confirmation on Whedon planning on killing Oz
rather than Jenny or is that one of those theories that gets repeated
so often it becomes part of the folklore of the fandom?
[> Re: how do the ppl at ME think abt their storylines??
-- Mr. Bananagrabber, 12:51:28 07/26/04 Mon
To answer your question....
1) Little Red Riding Hood & the Rah-Tet - No idea on that one
but I highly doubt it.
2)Holtz - Tim Minear stated that they dropped that in S2 because
they were planning to bring Holtz in as the adversary in S3. However,
they had no real idea what Hotlz would be at that point. They
only decided what the character & plotline would be after S2.
3)Fred & the Professor - Not planned at all. Liz Fain & Sarah
Craft pitched that plotline at their job interview and Whedon
liked it so that became the Pylea backstory
4) Season 4 main arc - Largely improvised according to Steven
DeKnight's interview in Reading The Vampire Slayer, which just
makes S4 all the more impressive.
In interviews, Whedon has stated that the writers have the basic
theme and certain major storypoints at the beginning of the season
and then they go from there. A lot of fans are kind of obsessey
about the level of planning involved but the show has (at least
according to the crew) followed a pretty lose plan most seasons
with only the major story point & themes worked out in advance.
[> [> Any clue about the "730" stuff --
Finn Mac Cool, 14:22:41 07/26/04 Mon
Rumor among the fandom is that, at the end of Season 3, Joss had
quite a few specific plot points in mind, including: Buffy would
die, she would gain a little sister named Dawn, Willow would lose
her love and go evil, Buffy would have to kill Willow, Sunnydale
would be sucked into hell before Buffy's death could prevent a
global scale apocalypse. From what I've heard, around the time
"Gradutation Day" was being written, Joss was developing
these plot points for Season Five, although some had to be postponed,
altered, or eliminated. I'm pretty certain the "730"
thing was very much intentional foreshadowing of Buffy's death,
but do you have any clue about the other stuff?
P.S. Are you also an "Arrested Development" fan, or
is "Mr. Bannanagrabber" just a coincidence?
[> [> [> Re: Any clue about the "730" stuff
-- Mr. Bananagrabber, 15:20:41 07/26/04 Mon
Yes, I am a huge "Arrested Development" fan. And wouldn't
it be kinda creppy if that name was just a coincidence. :)
I have read a lot of Whedon & staff interviews (I've spent way
too much money on Dreamwatch & such over the years) and I have
never seen some of the stuff you are talking about outside of
fan boards.
First, Whedon has pretty much confirmed that he planned to give
Buffy a sister & that Buffy would die at the end of season 5 (hence,
the infamous 730 quote from GD2). These ideas were first introduced
at the end of season 3.
The earliest I've heard anyone mention something about the killing
of Willow's love and Will going over the edge was somewhere around
the beginning or middle of season 5. I've seen Amber Benson, Doug
Petrie & Whedon all place the geneisis of this plotline around
that time.
As for the Sunnydale-sucked-into-hell thing, Whedon (& Ms. Noxon,
I believe) had mentioned this as a possible ending. I always thought
they was joking about it till I saw 'Chosen'.
Now, I've never heard any of the staff talk about Buffy having
to kill Willow. I've seen this contention on fan boards a lot
but I've never read anything to back it up. Personally, I don't
buy it as it sounds more fan ficcy than anything else. Also, I
have no idea how this could possibly work into S5.
[> [> [> [> Re: Clearing Something Up -- Mr.
Bananagrabber, 17:35:18 07/26/04 Mon
Re-read my above post and realised something may be a little confusing.
Whedon & staff did not talk about Tara dying & Willow going nuts
during S5 (which you could kinda infer from the above) but that
Whedon & staff place the origin of the idea around that time.
DeKnight has stated that Whedon had the speciifc idea for Tara
to be killed by a stray bullet at the beginning of S6 and that
Whedon had the scene set at The Espresso Pump.
[> [> [> [> [> So, did they come up with that
idea after they found out there would be a Sixth Season? --
Finn Mac Cool, 21:05:35 07/26/04 Mon
I'm pretty confident that Joss originally planning to end the
series with Buffy's Season 5 death is true. But that either means
that he didn't come up with the Dark Willow storyline until after
he found out there would be a post-Season 5 "Buffy",
or he did originally plan to put it in Season 5.
P.S. Yes, Buffy killing Willow sounds fanficcy, but then, before
Season 6 came around, Willow going on a magical killing spree
to avenge Tara might have sounded that way as well.
P.P.S. I'm glad you're an "Arrested Development" fan;
the potential innuendos of "Bannanagrabber" is a topic
I don't really want to get into.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: So, did they come up
with that idea after they found out there would be a Sixth Season?
-- Mr Bananagrabber, 23:03:31 07/26/04 Mon
I don't see any reason Whedon wouldn't believe there would be
a post-S5 Buffy. The actors were signed to longer deals (seven
years) and it was one of the most popular & acclaimed shows on
it's network. Granted there were some questions of continuing
late in S5 but the final episodes were already filming when those
issuses came up. Therefore, I don't think Whedon ever planned
to include Willow's fall in S5. Also, I don't really get why some
fans seem to believe Whedon thought the show would end at S5,
the man is still talking about finding ways to continue the mythology
even now.
Also, we hadn't really seen how powerful Willow could be till
the final few episodes of S5 (Ep 5.19 'Tough Love' is really facinating
episode because it lays out so many of the key issuses of S6)
so I don't see how the Dark Willow thing could be properly set
up here plus there is the whole Glory arc to deal with. I just
don't see how they could work this all out.
Yeah, maybe I shouldn't say 'fanficcy' but I just can't see Whedon
having Buffy kill Willow. The realtionship among the key four
is such a central touchstone that I can't imagine him having that
ending. I've always had a really good sense of what Whedon would
or wouldn't do (for instance, I never believed the mindwipe would
be a central issue to Angel S5) and I just can't see him doing
that or even seriously considering it. Then again, I could be
wrong but I've never read anything to that effect.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> I also had my doubts
-- Finn Mac Cool, 23:49:07 07/26/04 Mon
I mean, while he can be the King of Angst at times and bring characters
into big pools of darkness, his final message is usually a hopeful
one. While Angel has many times struggled with his mission, flirted
with the dark side, and sunk into despair, he always seems to
rise above it in the end. Even Season 6 of "Buffy",
one of the darkest areas Joss has gone to, ended with a song about
peace and love while the Scoobies bonded with each other. Now,
I could see Joss potentially killing one of the Core Four, and
just MAYBE him having another Scooby do it (if it was a "Becoming
II" sort of scenario), but I don't see him turning one of
the Core Four evil then simply killing them: no redemption, no
reformation, nada. Yeah, I can't really see Joss doing that.
P.S. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who didn't see the
mind wipe becoming a big plot point in Season 5 (I even once suggested
the idea that the rest of the Fang Gang should find out and then
casually shrug it off as "no big deal"). I'm curious,
though: what were your reasons for believing this?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Willow
WAS supposed to go bad in S5. -- ghady, 05:22:49 07/27/04
Tue
It's on a commentary, but i forget which one. I remember Joss
SAID (ie i HEARD him say) that Willow was supposed to go evil
in S5, but they realized that that wouldn't work so they decided
to postpone it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Willow
WAS supposed to go bad in S5. -- Mr Bananagrabber, 07:08:46
07/27/04 Tue
Yeah, you got me on something there. After I posted last night,
I looked it over and realized that I shouldn't have said Whedon
'didn't ever consider' the Dark Willow plotline in S5. I can certainly
see him considering it for S5 but I don't believe it would have
ever gotten by the most initial design of the season. There simply
isn't enough set-up for Willow's power in S5, although you can
certainly seem them laying the tracks for the S6 arc. Also, having
Willow go seriously dark would clearly overpower the Dawn storyline
in a signifcant way.
Would love to know the commentay Whedon mentions this in? Perhaps
in the S6 commentaries which I have not gotten to listen to yet
or maybe it's in S5 and I just didn't get it in my notes. Yes,
I am a honking nerd to the degree that I take notes on the commentary
tracks.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I also
had my doubts -- Bjerkley, 06:11:44 07/27/04 Tue
I think Buffy killing Willow came from a rumour about how The
Gift was meant to play out. Basically, Glory brain sucking Tara
was meant to have sent Willow off the deep end and turned her
into Dark Magic Willow, and so she takes Doc's place up on the
tower. Hence she is pushed off it by Buffy. Anya is killed by
the falling debris. Xander, rather than Ben, shares a body with
Glory and is so killed by Giles. Buffy rides the whole of Sunnydale
into the Hellmouth.
While this rumour has been turned into fact in some quarters,
it's basically a load of B/S. As far as I can tell, this all came
from a post by William the Poet at The Stakehouse asking how twisted
an ending this might have made.
The only things that were seriously planned was to have Sunnydale
sucked into the Hellmouth, and Willow to go dark at some point.
The rest is fanfic. Or if not fanfic, the result of some very
disturbed, but not altogether serious, discussion.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I also
had my doubts -- Mr. Bananagrabber, 09:14:06 07/27/04 Tue
You sum up my feelings on Whedon having Buffy kill one of the
core four nicely. It's just far too nasty for him. Bjerkly's comments
underneath I think nicely put the Buffy-kills-Willow issue to
rest.
As for the mindwipe, I generally agree with you that if Angel
told his crew the situation with Connoor and the circumstances
surrounding the spell that they would not leave him or allign
againist him. I don't know if they would shrug him off (certainly
I could see some angst) but I don't believe it to be a dealbreaker.
There are a couple of reasons why I belived the midwipe wouldn't
be a major issue in S5. First off, there is no clear indication
in 'Home' that the mindwip affected anyone's decesion making.
The Fang Gang is clearly leaning toward W&H's deal throughout
the episode. If Minear had wanted to indicate that the mindwipe
would have an affect on the group's decsion, it would have been
very easy to write a scene where either Fred or Wesley were clearly
opposed to the deal but then changed their mind after the spell.
No such scene occurs in 'Home' so I never assumed that the Gang
had been fundimentally altered by the spell.
More importantly, I feel that 'Home' endorses Angel's decision
regarding Connor. It's important to remember that Connor is a
raving super-powered pyschotic who intends to kill Cordelia, several
innocents & himself when Angel makes his choice. I don't think
a hero in this mythology has ever fallen as far as Connor had.
Angel does what I think any father would do in this situation,
he uses whatever means he can to save his son. It's one of the
main reasons that I don't think the gang would turn on him. I
think they would undersand his choice.
I've seen some people compare Angel's choice to Willow's spell
on Tara from 'All The Way' but I feel that is off the mark. Willow's
spell is act of utter pettiness. She just doesn't want to argue
with Tara on the magic issue. What Angle is facing is a thousand
times more intense than that. The spell Angel performs strikes
me as far closer to the spell that creates Dawn, a spell that
is about protecting someone. The Scoobies' acceptance of the Dawn
spell is another reason I never thought the mindwipe would be
a major issue. Actually, 'Origin' resolves it pretty much the
way I thought it would although I had hoped Connor would have
been a little more interesting upon his return (yeah, I perfer
the homicidal, cranky Connor)
I could go on & on but this is probably getting to be a pretty
boring read so I'll just leave it at that.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Yeap,
much the same thing I thought -- Finn Mac Cool, 10:59:01
07/27/04 Tue
I only suggested they "shrug it off" because
(a) It would be a fairly funny scene.
and
(b) Everyone was going on about how horrible Angel's decision
was, and when I disagree with extremists, sometimes my opposing
views can become equally extreme.
Now, I could certainly see Cordelia being very upset about it
(she's always been very big on honesty), but even she calmed down
when she found out why Angel did what he did.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: So, did they
come up with that idea after they found out there would be a Sixth
Season? -- dmw, 17:45:07 07/27/04 Tue
I don't see any reason Whedon wouldn't believe there would
be a post-S5 Buffy. The actors were signed to longer deals (seven
years) and it was one of the most popular & acclaimed shows on
it's network.
The main reasons that people thought that BtVS would end with
season 5 was that their contract with the WB was up, BtVS ratings
were never great (yes, it was one of the WB's top 4 shows in s5,
but it was only around the 25th percentile overall), it was an
expensive show, and future episodes were likely to bring in less
profit once they had the 100 episodes they needed for syndication.
UPN bet against that and lost millions as ratings crashed from
an all time high with Bargaining to about a third of that value
for most of the second half of s7.
Also, I don't really get why some fans seem to believe Whedon
thought the show would end at S5, the man is still talking about
finding ways to continue the mythology even now.
Almost any writer can keep adding to their serial forever, but
at some point the stories begin to decline in quality and never
reach their height again. Some authors know when to stop, but
most don't and no publisher will call it quits until the author
forces them to or they're not making money any longer.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: So, did
they come up with that idea after they found out there would be
a Sixth Season? -- Mr. Bananagrabber, 09:29:56 07/28/04
Wed
How do you guys do that italics thingy? Very cool.
I totally see your point about why people thought BTVS could end
with S5. However, this really didn't become an issue the public
(or from their comments, the creative team) was aware of until
spring of S5. I don't believe S5 began with people suspecting
the end of the series (say like S7).
Perhaps I was a little unclear in my thoughts. I was merely trying
to say that Whedon & Co. (based on public statements)had no plans
to end Buffy at S5. If the show had ended at 'The Gift', then
that would have been the WBs corporate decision not the creative
teams.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Italics
-- dmw, 18:23:28 07/28/04 Wed
You can italicize text by putting it within <i> and </i>
tags, like this. Select "page source" under the
View menu of Mozilla or Netscape, and you'll be able to see all
the HTML tags used in the web page you're viewing. If you're not
using Mozilla, click here
to download it and you'll be immune to almost all spyware and
popup ads.
Book melee - first post -initial
thoughts -- Ann, 07:29:03 07/23/04 Fri
My first thoughts on Hamlet, R&G are Dead and ties to S5 AtS.
I wish I could record my sleep time thoughts about any specific
idea I have because they come oh so much more smoothly. Anyway.
So all season long, I have been grappling with the images ME decided
to involve and show in AtS. They have been strewn, placed and
forced through all of the episodes. Some more smoothly than others,
not unlike my posts here ;-). Similar images, but there was no
center connecting them all. The Circle of the Black Thorn tied
them somewhat, but still no concrete connection in my mind. I
need that. Last night while watching Olivier's Hamlet 1948(second
part of two videos tracked down after some searching in many branches
of our public library) I had a revelation that ties Hamlet, R&G Are
Dead and several Angel episodes together. Especially TGIQ. Shadowkat
did a post about these connections earlier. http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/may04_p01.html#11
Here amongst other wonderful ideas she describes the series of
loops the story takes. That was part of my revelation last night
when Hamlet shouts out "what dreams may come when we have
shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause..."
This was the theme of the season. All of the shells, springs,
hollow centers, holes in the world, twists and turns of the story
can be explained and wound together with this metaphor. The mortal
coil, existence and questioning life and lies are AtS S5.
I think that almost all of Season 5 can be tied to this metaphor.
The coil of the writer's pen's lines and strokes, the coil of
the absurdity of Angel's journey, looping around, crossing over
and over, never ending, and the holes that are revealed as the
story continues. Form and content. The coil goes below, what lies
beneath, rises above and back again. It is Angel's journey and
it is the writer's journey. The creation, the art exists despite
the fact that the coil is mortal. It will end, but it is forever
onward. It is not the immortal coil. However, this episode, TGIQ,
has an Immortal. We get a glimpse of the story continuing with
Buffy's fling with the Immortal; he is the story that continues.
The story does continue. The story is immortal. And because he
was placed in such a crazy, cartoonish episode, I think it, while
absurd on a certain level, does tell us that life goes on no matter
what we do or want. Buffy is dancing, her back to us, yes, we
don't always get what we want, or even see it sometimes. When
grieving, life's back is to us, Hamlet feels this completely.
We don't see it or feel it but it goes on waiting for us to greet
it again when we can. I think the can't-see-Buffy-but-she-is-there-dancing
scene was so telling. For Angel, for Hamlet and for all of us.
We don't see the Immortal either because we don't know the rest
of the story. He represents all of the angst about our futures.
That is why he scared Angel and Spike so but Buffy is embracing
him. Their futures have not been determined yet even if there
are prophecies or writers willing to write. Putting the Immortal,
and what he represents, with Buffy was brilliant. What they want,
the helix of desire for Buffy, what they don't have all tied together
with the real fears about their futures. This also ties in nicely
with Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech from which
the coil is taken. Hamlet has fears of his future, pain to be
dealt with in his present, "the whips and scorns of time".
The play is within the play and writer as coil maker. The players
in Hamlet, the letters and players in R&G, and Buffy and the
Immortal in Angel's chase all swirl around, within and without
structuring the coil. Hamlet swirls around the ghost of his father,
trying to discern the truth, suffering as it is revealed, Angel
and Spike swirl around Buffy in this episode, trying to find her,
suffering with the realization that Buffy has moved on, and Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern swirl around each other trying to remember, suffering
with their inability to remember but still trying. These coils
all, mortal in the immortality of the story, swirl. R&G are cut
off before the play even begins. The title is a spoiler as well.
Their names are "hereafter Guil...hereafter Ros. Their coil
barely begins and we already are told the truth of their ending.
They are the monkeys flung around by Stoppard in a Godetesque
manner. This play is the cry of the writer as to his role, his
power and the rules regarding his voice: "Guil: Allowed yes.
We are not restricted. No boundaries have been defined, no inhibitions
imposed. We have, for the while, secured, or blundered into our
release, for the while. Spontaneity and whim are the order of
the day. Other wheels are turning but they are not our concern.
We can breathe. We can relax. We can do what we like and say what
we like to whomever we like, without restriction." [p. 116]
The voices of the characters change when Hamlet enters the scene.
He is their meaning, the reason for this play. Ros says "We
cheer him up.." They have a purpose despite feeling like
a "spectator". Guil says "Words, words. They are
all we have to go on." And later he says "WHO DO YOU
THINK YOU ARE?" (in caps) Perhaps this is metanarration on
Stoppard's gall to use Shakespeare's play in this way. I am sure
that was one of the criticisms of the play. All fan fiction writers
have heard this complaint but as the player says, "It is
written." A little revolution of sorts.
I found amusing the Who's on first exchange on pg. 67-68. Really
captures the tone of the whole play, not unlike the caveman astronaut
argument.
This is contrasted nicely with Hamlet's father's fears that he
would be forgotten. This is the plea of the dead to the living.
The coil continues after death. Memory, well discussed in R&G,
is the coil linking us to those passed on. The coil changes with
each new milestone, reinterpreting loss and memory. It also reveals
the writer's fears that his writing will be forgotten over time.
Also like the Connor memory mindswipe arc.
Other stuff:
Gertrude's kisses given to Hamlet in the movie are decidedly not
maternal yet at the end she wipes his faces, like Mary to Jesus,
producing the shroud of Turin, the shroud of his death.
Also, do you think?
Ophelia- Fred/Illyria
Gertrude -Cordy
Polonius - Gunn
Horatio - Wes
Laertes - Spike
Hamlet- Connor
Both Kings - Angel/Angelus
The Players- Lorne
Thanks and I look forward to your thoughts on these plays. Post
on!
____________
[FYI other references to moral coil: It is also referred to in
Angel S3 Forgiving: SAHJHAN: Angel. I'm guessing I have you to
thank for the whole mortal coil thing.
ANGEL: Yeah. Tell you what, take me to the Quor-toth world, help
me find my son -- we'll call it even.
In Buffy S5 _No place like home Glory says You know, when you
think about it, I'm the victim here. First off, I don't even want
to be here. And I'm not talking about this room or this city or
this state or this planet. I'm talking about the whole mortal
coil now, you know? It's disgusting! The food... the clothes...
the people. I could crap a better existence than this.
In CWDP Cassie says: (mocking) Oh, baby, you left such a big hole.
It hurt so bad. (serious, leans in) You don't know hurt. This
last year's gonna seem like cake after what I put you and your
friends through, and I am not a fan of easy death. Fact is, the
whole good-versus-evil, balancing the scales thing-I'm over it.
I'm done with the mortal coil. But believe me, I'm going for a
big finish.
WILLOW: From beneath you, it devours.
And William says in LMPTM: It's true, mother. Drusilla-she...she
has made me what I am. I am no longer bound to this mortal coil.
I have become a creature of the night. A vampire.]
Replies:
[> Re: Book melee - That was great! -- Pony, 09:28:29
07/23/04 Fri
Fab first thoughts Ann! I don't have time at the moment to get
into it, but I was wondering if Angel in s5 could also be paralleled
to Hamlet's struggle to take action. Perceiving various crimes
and the rot around them do they remain silent and therefore complicit?
Or do they choose a course that will end in their own destruction
and that of the system they operate within?
[> [> Re: Book melee - That was great! -- Ann, 09:58:36
07/23/04 Fri
Thanks.
I think so Pony. I was envisioning the ramparts where much action
happens in Hamlet to the lobby of W&H. The movie reveals this
too, with levels everywhere, partly just good staging, but also
reveals metaphor and intent. Angel's and Hamlet's struggles with
action, and reaction are similar. Hamlet's are on a much more
condensed scale I think and certainly without the history that
Angel has. But then again, could the history of his family, past
kings that are referred to several times equate Angel with him
even more? As Prince he carries the weight of history, like Angel
does with Angelus' actions.
[> [> [> Love your AtS links! I hope to have time
tomorrow to post my thoughts on Hamlet & Spider-Man! -- Rob,
17:45:09 07/23/04 Fri
[> [> [> Re: Book melee - That was great! -- Pony,
09:57:22 07/26/04 Mon
Angel's and Hamlet's struggles with action, and reaction are
similar. Hamlet's are on a much more condensed scale I think and
certainly without the history that Angel has. But then again,
could the history of his family, past kings that are referred
to several times equate Angel with him even more?
There are also all the references to Fortinbras and his approach.
The outside world is closing in, but the characters are consumed
with their internal struggle - it reminds me of the insular nature
of s5 where everything was related to W&H, any sort of larger
quest to do good was lost because of the events at the company.
Yet to Hamlet, Fortinbras is seen as an ideal ruler. He's someone
very similar to Hamlet in history and motivation but Fortinbras
goes about his duty in a very different and ultimately less destructive
way. It's similar in a way to Angel where he can't be sure if
he's seen as being on the right side anymore, but any attempt
to find a different way is thwarted by the rotten state of W&H.
If Angel could be seen as Hamlet, brooding over his fate and his
rather complicated plans and deceptions, and Spike as Laertes,
the man of action whose rashness leads him to be a pawn for others;
could Buffy then be Fortinbras? The distant rumoured ideal?
[ponders a stage production with such a cast - if only!]
[> [> [> [> Great Connections! -- Sara, 07:31:00
07/28/04 Wed
I love the parallels you've found to Angel. Especially the Wolfram
& Hart tunnel vision! Really interesting. At work right now so
I have to keep this post short.
[> Re: Book melee - first post -initial thoughts --
Jane, 11:31:09 07/23/04 Fri
what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal
coil, must give us pause..." This was the theme of the season.
All of the shells, springs, hollow centers, holes in the world,
twists and turns of the story can be explained and wound together
with this metaphor. The mortal coil, existence and questioning
life and lies are AtS S5.
Oh, this is wonderful, Ann! I love the way you have made the connections
between the plays, and the 5th season of Angel. I also like Pony's
thoughts that part of the conflicts that both share revolve around
the inablility of Hamlet and Angel to choose a course of action.
They get stuck in the quicksand of ennuie, until the choice not
to act sets into action the events that force them into action.
I found a passage in R&G that I thought was very relevant to the
way the citizens of Sunnydale react to the strangeness of their
town. It relates to witnesses, and the need for the abnormal to
be seen as normal:
Act one. Guil: "A man breaking his journey between one place
and another[...]sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That
in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical
encounters of various kinds,or to be less extreme, a choice of
persuasions to put it down to fancy; until- "My God,"
says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a
unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes
the experience as alarming as it ever will be. A third witness,
you understand,adds no further dimension, but only spreads it
thinner [...]until the more reasonable it becomes until it is
as thin as reality...."Look, look!" recites the crowd.
"A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been
mistaken for a deer."
That seems to be the mindset of many in Sunnydale. Perhaps the
Sunnydale citizens are the Jossian equivalent of the Tragedians.
[> Great Start! -- Sara, still working on Hamlet, 3
pages at a time..., 17:05:12 07/23/04 Fri
I love how you tied in to Angel with this. I don't have too many
thoughts of my own yet, but I'm enjoying the thoughts you guys
have come up.
One thought I did have, was the whole "nunnery" reference.
I have heard people discuss it as the slang meaning for brothel.
Now that I've read the actual text it seems very clear that Hamlet
means nunnery when he says nunnery. His speech struck me
as a man who has become so disillusioned with the world that he
no longer has any faith in love, therefore in a typical guy type
way, wants the woman he's in love with to be off the market. If
he's not going to take her, no one else should have her.
I am absolutely loving reading the quotes I've heard all my life
in context. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much,"
"The plays the thing," and more. I wish I could remember
all of them - I read one and go "oooh! look at that! I have
to remember that's from Hamlet." Then it slides out
of my head with most every other bit of substance I once had.
[> [> Re: Great Start! -- Rob, 17:39:31 07/23/04
Fri
One thought I did have, was the whole "nunnery" reference.
I have heard people discuss it as the slang meaning for brothel.
Now that I've read the actual text it seems very clear that Hamlet
means nunnery when he says nunnery
Actually, I have to completely disagree here. IMO, when he says
"Get thee to a nunnery," he is definitely trying to
disparage her, as revenge for her "checking up on him,"
and her acting as a puppet of Polonius'. He wants people to think
he is going mad, and doesn't want his ruse discovered by Ophelia,
so is forced to do something that pains him to do: insult the
woman he loves. Another important thing to take into consideration
is that Hamlet himself feels betrayed by Ophelia at this point.
This is clear when you see it peformed more so than reading the
text. Traditionally, Hamlet recites the line, "Get thee to
a nunnery" with an amount of vitriol and nastiness that implies
more than the dry phrase itself.
Also, the derivation of "nunnery" as "whorehouse"
comes from the fact that back then there was a great deal of corruption
in many levels of the church, and many of the priests and nuns
became notorious for not being as pure as they claimed. The stereotype
among nuns in particular was that they were having sex with each
other. So even if Hamlet did simply want her to not be with another
man, telling her to go to a nunnery would accomplish the
same end and implies she would be doing more with the other nuns
than praying or stitchery.
Rob
[> [> [> Boyfriends, girlfriends -- Ann, 06:25:22
07/26/04 Mon
When I first read this scene, I saw Hamlet's anger and maybe even
disgust with Ophelia more than anything else. However, on viewing
of Olivier's production, what struck me most was it appeared Hamlet
was pushing her away intentionally, cruelly. He knew what was
coming as his plan unfolded and didn't want her to be a part of
it. He mocks her saying "...you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make yours wantonness your ignorance...".
Her supposed boyfriend saying these things would crush well any
young girl. Can you imagine the heartache? She is just a girl
after all.
Then her father dies to top it off by the hand of her boyfriend.
She is crushed completely. His plan is too important to let her
ruin it or reveal it. I like to see Hamlet as boyfriend because
he too is just a boy. He is a prince, raised as such, but he is
just a boy. So when he father comes to him, he sees Dad. He sees
King, but he hears Dad. That is why his grief is so strong, wanting
revenge, feeling disgust for his mother's actions. Shakespeare,
like Whedon (or maybe that should be the other way round) tortures
his characters well. Everything is taken from Ophelia who maybe
is the mirror to Hamlet. She is the softer side of his character.
Perhaps how he really feels inside, but can't show it for his
princely/manly/teenage nature doesn't allow this. I think Horatio
mirrors the rational side of Hamlet, thinking things through before
action. Ophelia has to die because for Hamlet to take revenge,
the softer side has to be put down. She is drowned because fairness
and goodness in Hamlet has been drowned, taken away by his uncle's
actions and his mother's enabling of his actions. But with all
revenge, it never turns out well. The uncle's actions are revealed,
but Hamlet has to join his father. Now the Claudius will never
be alone again, he gets what he want, to never be forgotten with
his son at his side. Ophelia never makes it to a nunnery, her
youth preserved forever in death, with Hamlet's harsh words ringing
in her heart. Yes indeed a tragedy.
[> [> [> [> boys & girls? not necessarily --
anom, 16:24:44 07/26/04 Mon
I ended up addressing issues from several posts in this one, but
I started & ended w/Ann's.
"I like to see Hamlet as boyfriend because he too is just
a boy."
My 1st impression was also that Hamlet is quite young; after all,
he's come back from school for his father's funeral, all too soon
followed by his uncle's coronation & marriage to his mother. This
may seem to translate into the equivalent of college age in our
times. But late in the play, in the graveyard scene, we learn
that Yorick has been dead for 23 years, & Hamlet was old enough
at the time not only to get piggyback rides from him but also
to appreciate his "infinite jest." This suggests that
Hamlet was pretty far along in language skills by the time Yorick
died, which would put him closer to 30 than to 20. Unless, of
course, Shakespeare was as bad at math as Joss is.
There's less--OK, no--evidence of Ophelia's age. The most I can
come up with is that Laertes seems to speak to her more like an
older than a younger brother, & he's probably around the same
age as Hamlet.
"So when he father comes to him, he sees Dad. He sees King,
but he hears Dad. That is why his grief is so strong, wanting
revenge, feeling disgust for his mother's actions."
I don't dispute that he sees Dad. But the rest is true before
the appearance of his father's ghost. He's already suicidal, wishing
"that the Everlasting had not fixed/His canon 'gainst self-slaughter"
in his "too, too solid flesh" soliloquy, even though
he doesn't yet suspect foul play in his father's death. In fact,
he may see in the ghost's revelation something to live for--a
purpose. (Angel in S5, anyone?) And while it's true he's faking
one kind of madness as a cover for his "investigation,"
he may in reality be suffering from another kind, which makes
him suspect almost everyone around him--as though they all knew
what he now does. It's actually kind of strange that he trusts
Horatio so much.
I don't see Rosencrantz & Guildenstern's motives as suspect. Sure,
they're acting at the king's request, but also at the queen's,
& they have no reason to think either one has anything but Hamlet's
best interests at heart. They think they're doing the right thing
for their friend & are almost as clueless, on a smaller scale,
as they are in their own play.
Hamlet's rejection of Ophelia could stem from more than his encounter
w/the ghost & his attempt to learn the truth. She's been receptive
to the "tenders of his affection," until her father
advises her not to speak to him anymore. But he really seems to
have loved her, & she may have been his only comfort after his
father's death. He certainly couldn't turn to his mother, after
she married his uncle; & now Ophelia refuses to see him. And his
mother's remarriage, as I think someone mentioned in this thread,
causes him to question whether Ophelia might forget him as easily
as Gertrude apparently did his father. The change in her behavior
toward him might even play into these fears.
Interesting idea that Ophelia & Horatio represent Hamlet's emotional
& rational sides. There's probably no way to know if Shakespeare
intended this, but Hamlet's disparaging of Ophelia & unquestioning
trust of Horatio may support it, as well as the fact that he involves
Horatio in his efforts to find out whether the ghost's accusation
is true. So the dying prince's last request is that Reason carry
on to make the truth known, though even it must "draw thy
breath in pain."
[> [> [> [> [> Re: boys & girls? not necessarily
-- Ann, 17:11:09 07/26/04 Mon
Yes the age question. I googled around and in fact there is much
scholarship on this question. I took him to be about the age of
current day collegiate, 18-20. But unless courtship was very late
in that day and age, I still feel that they are in that age range.
Their attitudes, judged of course by our standards and values,
seem to be in that age range. Lovelorn and all.
I like your point very much about Hamlet being depressed, and
his father's ghost gives him a reason to brighten. I don't think
his grief is unnatural or mad at this point. A purpose. I think
this true. A focus in grief, he propelled by it, but it also takes
his mind off of it. Hamlet dives into that relief but it only
feeds his fears and madness. I think he trusts Horatio because
he is reason. Hamlet needs that or at least the appearance of
that to give himself some structure or support because he has
no other.
[> Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are .. overdue? No, they're
dead, right. -- LadyStarlight, 19:38:08 07/23/04 Fri
First off, do not attempt to work on any kind of a budget while
watching. You'll find yourself adding things like "doublets
-- 1 gold piece" and things just go downhill from there.
What struck me about R&GAD was the snappy dialogue -- almost Jossian,
really. Things flowed, there were funny lines (even the husband
snickered at a few), yet the funny underscored the pathos. R&G stumbling
through life, not knowing where they are, or where they're going,
yet sublimely content to go.
Which reminded me uncomfortably of myself. Then I comforted myself
with the fact that I, unlike R&G, have more than one good
friend to make the journey with.
On to Hamlet soon!
(and Gary Oldman/Tim Roth? My new OTP. I am shallow.)
[> [> no, r & g aren't overdue...godot, now--*he's* overdue!
-- anom, 23:18:17 07/24/04 Sat
I'm almost finished w/the reading. Last time we were going to
do this, I read both plays, Hamlet first. This time, since
I had read them recently, I tried reading them more or less together--each
time I got to the lines that occur in both plays, I switched to
the other play & read it up to the same point, then read the shared
lines & switched back. Makes for interesting reading &, I
hope, some insights. But I'll save those till I've finished (tomorrow,
probably).
[> The Silly -- Ann, 07:04:32 07/24/04 Sat
Because I like the silly:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/97/May/scoobyham.html
http://www.elite.net/~lkfaunt/DJHamlet.html
http://www.gilligansisle.com/hamlet.html (If you are old enough
to remember!)
Didn't know Princess Di did these sorts of things lol: http://www.bard.org/Education/Shakespeare/Hamlethumor.html
And this may be inappropriate, I am not sure. http://www.symynet.com/tao_te_ching/modern-translation-hamlet-soliloquy.htm
FYI: Only because it was the one I saw:
1948: Hamlet, directed by Laurence Olivier
Received four Academy Awards
Best Picture - Laurence Olivier producer
Best Actor - Laurence Olivier as Hamlet
Best Costume Design, Black-and-White - Roger K. Furse
Best Art Direction, Set Decoration, Black-and-White - Carmen Dillon
and Roger K. Furse
It was nominated for a further three awards
Best Director - Laurence Olivier
Best Supporting Actress - Jean Simmons as Ophelia
Best Music Score - William Walton
Notable other appearances include Patrick Troughton as the player
king, Stanley Holloway as the gravedigger, Peter Cushing as Osric,
Felix Aylmer as Polonius, Terence Morgan as Laertes, John Gielgud
as the uncredited voice of the ghost, and Christopher Lee as an
uncredited spear carrier.
Re. The undecidedly not maternal kisses I referred to yesterday:
Herlie, who plays Hamlet's mother, was 28 years old when the movie
was filmed. Olivier, who plays her son, was 41. Casting decisions
that inspire question and debate.
[> [> Terry Pratchett -- dmw, 14:54:45 07/26/04
Mon
Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters is fun Shakespearan silliness.
It's mostly Macbeth, but there's some Hamlet in there too.
[> Rosencrantz and Guildenstern- and their role in Hamlet
(Spoilers, most stuff) -- Tchaikovsky, 14:19:53 07/24/04
Sat
'Why, man, they did make love to this employment:
They are not near my conscience: their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow.
'Tis dangerous, when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell-incensed points
Of mighty opposites'
-Hamlet: Act Five, Scene Two; 'Hamlet'.
Hello everyone. Thanks to Ann for her immense organisation of
the Melee, which seems to be meleeing in that good old-fashioned
style. I had planned to write some bits and pieces a little earlier,
but work and fatigue slipped in between the completion and my
hopes, so I come at the job a little bit later than I'd planned.
Actually, I'm late in a variety of different ways. Hamlet was
probably the first Shakespeare play I fell in love with, and I
then studied it for two years into my A-level English examination.
Since then, of course, the smaller points of genius that lace
a very long play have been slipping away from me. I'm using the
title above as a very loose point to jump in- I suspect I could
and would ramble on interminably otherwise, so although it looks
like a structured essay, don't expect complete focus or utterly
formal language. After all, I'm trying to have fun!
So we first see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the second act
of the second scene. By this time, an awful lot has been happening
in the old rotten state, and both Polonius and Hamlet are in one.
The ghost has advised Hamlet of his uncle's treachery, with Hamlet
not acting on the meditation that 'this spirit I have seen...May
be the devil'. Instead, he affects madness in an attempt to lure
out of the various lords and attendants their part in the whole
sordid fiasco. It has to be said that Hamlet has so much fun in
doing this, one wonders whether eventually he continues to do
it out of idle entertainment, particularly in his at times vicious
toying with Polonius. In any case, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
enter the play in the role of the partly-apprised audience. We
imagine that Claudius and Gertrude have filled them in with as
much information as they know, and that from there they must work
out exactly what Hamlet is doing.
Unfortunately for them, they fail utterly in their game playing.
I was watching 'Punk'd' yesterday, and it's the episode where
Aston Kutcher is the attempted Punkee by his own staff. He's too
quick for them, and with the help of Britney Spears, punks them
right back. What an utter waste of time. In any case, the point
holds for Hamlet. This is Kutcher's show and he's not going to
be the victim. So in order for Hamlet to be the big cheese, he's
got to be the one pulling the strings, (the cheese strings, I
suppose. Go figure). Before more than fifty lines have amassed,
Hamlet asks them a question they can't skirt; 'Were you sent for?'.
Now the hook of the second act is our interest in the various
stages and performances in Hamlet's madness. It's clear that acting
with Polonius in Act Two Scene Two, (the 'tedious old fools' section),
he is acting mad. Polonius himself understands this a little,
coining the catchphrase 'Though this be madness, yet there's method
in it'. At other times, his sanity is more questionable. He starts
off affably with our witless audience substitutes; but after he
ascertains that they were sent for, the text gets more ambiguous.
Almost immediately, Hamlet launches off into a speech that can
be read as a great affirmation of humanity 'How noble in reason,
how infinite in faculty...In reason, how like a God, the paragon
of animals'. But it's been made quite clear that Hamlet doesn't
feel this too often. Are we to read this section as a noble but
flawed attempt on Hamlet to feel delight in his own humanity.
Or is this a sterile windcheater to deflect any of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern's questions? Again, are we to read the section
as an attempt to show Hamlet's core dilemma, (summarised elegantly
in his 'How all occasions do inform against me' soliloquy), his
raging intelligence, his existentialism even, against his inability
to act. He can weave a tale of the greatness of humanity, but
he finds it impossible to feel it.
In a sense, we're here seeing Hamlet as artist. Though Sartre
could claim Hamlet for his own, seeing his dilemma as an ability
to comprehend the lack of essence before his existence, a question
Shakespeare seems more interested in playing with is about how
artists function. Here is Shakespeare, indisputably the greatest
dramatist who has ever written in the English language, and arguably
the greatest poet, and what we remember of him now is his words.
And most of them aren't even his own, but his character's. He
has drawn the Sistine chapel in his prose, but occasionally all
he can see is mortality, rather than the dance of the angels.
Shakespeare uses Hamlet's inability to kill his uncle as a starting
point in exploring how much we can learn about ourselves while
not acting in a decisive way. Does 'To be or not to be' come off
as empty verbalising, particularly when set against the emotional
'the play's the thing' soliloquy that comes only fifty or so lines
earlier? Ultimately I'm led back to the tragic flaw configuration.
In Shakespeare's other orthodox tragedies, the Hero has an identifiable
tragic flaw in an otherwise righteous persona. Macbeth's ambition.
Lear's vanity, so that he cannot accept Cordelia's honesty. Othello's
jealousy and covetousness of the innocent Desdemona. Here it is
tempting to suggest that Hamlet's tragic flaw is his inability
to convert his high-falutin' words to action. But eventually,
once we get to Hamlet's extraordinarily powerful (to me at least)
Sparrow speech -('The readiness is all'), he's almost argued himself
out of life itself. He's found his spiritual belief inside his
words. He is ready for his death. So the following carnage takes
on an odd perspective. Shakespeare doesn't condemn Hamlet's inaction
in the same way that he shows Macbeth, Lear and Othello's sad
endings. Where Macbeth ends fighting against someone he never
believes exists, Lear bemoans the irreversible destruction of
his daughter, and Othello stabs out Desdemona's redemption, Hamlet
gets the wonderful line (re-used, appropriated in Lynch's amazing
'Mulholland Drive'), 'The rest is silence'. His end is calm, rational
and having completed the task that took him so long.
So where do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fit in to all this? Sure,
they're pawns, and they're the people caught in the cross-fire
that Hamlet mentions almost cursorily in quote that begins this
post. But can we go along with Hamlet's 'no win, no fee' analysis
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as having insinuated their own
demise? How harshly does Shakespeare judge his audience? Well,
he's playing with them, and not always gently. After Rag are completely
bamboozled by the Hammer in 2:2, and they say almost as much to
the King and Queen, we next see them after the Play within a Play.
Here Hamlet chides them for playing him like a recorder, while
Rag protest just a little too much, methinks. They know they've
been disloyal to their friend. Why so? Well, look at the audience's
previous scene. We see Hamlet emceeing at the Play, with all the
look of someone totally mad. Particularly with Ophelia, he is
indiscreet enough to worry both his erstwhile love interest and
the Queen herself. Here we start to doubt Hamlet's actual sanity,
rather than just whether he's playing with other characters. And
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern follow. In the following scene, we
see the two being painfully obsequious to Claudius, and getting
for their pains in act four the most gothic of Hamlet's mad acts.
By this stage, they've been won over to the side of Claudius;
Hamlet is mad and must be got rid of. For this desertion of faithfulness,
Shakespeare grants them sweet oblivion. It is as if he's saying
to his audience- one must come with the artist on his trip of
partial insanity to come to the complicated conclusion where you
might lose something. If you dismiss the play as foolish halfway
through, you're as good as dead.
How does Tom Stoppard use Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in his
ingenious piece of fanfiction? Well, for a start, this is a thoughtful
comedy, but a comedy nevertheless. There are long 'The Girl in
Question'-esque periods where the duo's intelligence, (or at least
Guildenstern's,) is sacrificed for the meta-Shakesperian joke
that the two are merely ciphers of each other. And in order to
fit their gibbering in the face of Hamlet into context, they show
themselves not entirely aware of the intricacies of the plot.
Of course, they wouldn't be, since they have barely been present
at any of the events.
Sometimes, though, they come into their own. There is a hint of
idiot savant to the pair of them- they carelessly invent anachronistic
items of 20th century genius. Here we're seeing the flip-side
of the coin that Hamlet tosses throughout the play. Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern tend to act without much thought- and when they
do think their thoughts are used as elliptical humour, as when
Rosencrantz invents probability theory, (the 'Heads/ Heads/ Heads/
Heads...' scene is an amazingly daring use of minimal semantics,
and possibly inspired Curtis' obscener version some years later),
Eventually, their lack of thought before action leads to their
death, but in the meantime they bumble joyously, and with little
thought for the consequences. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
presented here more as the artless jokers than the obsequious
courtiers that tend on Claudius in Act Three, Scene Three. Accept
that they know which way their bread is buttered, and they are
shown even in the Stoppard play as having various shrewd ploys
for pleasing the courtiers.
One of the most interesting suggestions in the film (the Stoppard
adaptation with Oldman and Roth, this is), has the Raggers just
suggested as never killed at all, but perhaps merely players in
the Player King's production. Stoppard ingeniously idenitifies
the Player King with Shakespeare himself, playing off his tendency
to gore, (regardless of the play's other merits.) In the pageant
scene, we see the Player King performing in puppetry almost all
of the actions of the later section of 'Hamlet', before cheerily
dismissing it as complete carnage. And at the beginning, we see
Guildy and Ros with the players and hoping to become one of them.
Stoppard is asking us to question whether the double are really
the audience. Perhaps Hamlet is really just a construct, and perhaps
our two little guys never died on the ship after all.
R+G works on the same principle as Angel 5.20, in that it posits
that what we expected to be interested in is going on elsewhere,
and we're just going to have to enjoy what we've got. The genius
of both Greenwalt and Stoppard is to make the hoops along the
way fun enough to hold our interest. At the end of both, we want
to say 'Yes, but I wanted to see what Buffy was doing, or 'But
I missed Hamlet's 'Too, too solid flesh' speech'. But actually,
we're shackled with figures who, rather than representing the
artist, represent a more modest everyman. Sure, we're supposed
to associate with Buffy's spiritual journey and Hamlet's inaction
dilemma. But when we put these in perspectives as the almighty
work of a great writer, (Shakespeare; Whedon), we can get a picture
through another character of what it is to be not quite there.
And that's an important message, because we're not quite there
as often as not. Life is perhaps more often absurd and so complex
we cannot understand more often than it is a genius-endowed meditation
on what it is to be human. I feel like Angel and Spike sitting
in the office- like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern idly comparing
notes on Hamlet, more often than I feel like super-hero Buffy
or Brain of Denmark Hamlet. In the earlier work is the genius.
In the later work is the perspective change that can make us happy
to be just where we are, even if the location of that is a long
way from the Big Apple, (Adam's? Brooklyn 2005's?)
Shakespeare has bigger and more extraordinary goals than rounding
off Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's story emotionally. He was writing
the most world-renowned play of the last five hundred years, and
one that I cherish and relate to on an almost daily basis. Stoppard
asks the question; what if we're the people who watch that and
feel daunted, or even don't understand. We can pick up sections
with understanding, but perhaps ultimately, our fun is had in
the pointless and irrelevant ephemera. In the 'Questions' game.
In that stochastic toss of the coin, coming down 'Inaction' every
time. In idle semantics. And in acceptance of our place as, ultimately,
neither the most interesting nor the most important person in
the world.
Wow, there goes 2,000 words and I barely feel I've scratched the
surface of either play. There's life in this melee yet. Lay on
Macduff. Oh, hang on a minute...
TCH
[> [> Here's what a bottle of Jack would look like if
I actually had one... -- ladyhelix, 08:37:22 07/25/04 Sun
Once again she peeks over the shoulder of the giant and VERY MUCH
enjoys the view!
Thank you TCH, and thank you Ann! I'm not sure my brain will ever
work like this, but even if it doesn't it is a joy to see the
things I love dearly become even more rich and beautiful!
AtS stays alive through this, but what I am most indebted to you
for is opening the door to Hamlet/Shakespeare - which had NO hope
of being visited otherwise (at this point in my life)! I would
Never have considered attempting Hamlet, or fought the rewarding
battle of trying to actually understand it without your challenge.
It has been GLORIOUS - and it is clearly just beginning!
And TCH - the many lurkers who never respond because you leave
us all speechless and gaping - thank you for your willingness
to post and to share.
[> [> [> It's a pleasure, thank you -- Tchaikovsky,
09:17:43 07/25/04 Sun
[> [> [> Re: Here's what a bottle of Jack would look
like if I actually had one... -- Jane, 22:07:19 07/26/04
Mon
What LadyHelix said. I don't think I would have returned to Hamlet
after so many years but for this melee. Thanks to TCH, for your
always interesting interpretation. Great melee gang!
[> Physics, Causality, and Free Will in R&G -- dmw,
09:29:02 07/25/04 Sun
If Rosencrantz lived in our world, he would have surely anticipated
Newton and founded the science of physics through his almost brilliant
series of experiments conducted in the span of a few hours, but
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don't live in the real world. They
live on the stage, and perhaps less fortunately for them, they
aren't the center of their imaginary world, but mere bit players
on the periphery of Hamlet. Perhaps one could argue that it's
their position on the periphery, absent their creator's attention,
that's allowed causality to fail them and thus allowed them to
be plucked out of time and story for another creator to pick them
up and set them at the center of another story.
But given their own story, why don't causality and physics resume
their accustomed grave role in the cosmos for Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. Perhaps the problem is that because despite R&G's
titular role, this new play still isn't their story. They have
brilliant dialog despite little thought, but they have nowhere
of their own to go, no duties solely their own to perform. Their
fate has been predetermined by Shakespeare (and do we see their
perception of him in R&G's observation of the obviously mad
Hamlet?), and their new author has seemingly put them on the stage
without directions, leaving them to their own devices to find
or save themselves should they recognize that need.
Can they change their fate though? At first, it seems that R&G have
slipped out of the grasp of Shakespeare's pen, free to do what
they can, but is the failure of physics and causality freedom
or the deeper nature of their trap? The failure of probability
in the constant result of heads when the coin in flips strongly
suggests their predestination, hinting that randomness is no escape
from the story. Yet causality and determinism offer no escape
either, as the constant failure of the physics experiments demonstrates.
They're trapped in both Shakespeare's story without hope of escape.
Are we trapped in our own stories without hope of escape?
The physical world only offers the two choices in the play: the
randomness of quantum mechanics and the determinism of classical
mechanics, neither of which seems sufficient for free will. You're
not any more free if all your choices are random than you are
if all your choices are predetermined. Of course, while we don't
want to be Rosencrantz or Guildenstern stuck in a play not of
our own devising, do we really want our wills to be free of the
world? If we didn't take into account all of our interactions
with the world, each one changing our path, we wouldn't learn
from experience. However much we're tempted to declare ourselves
islands, separated from the rest of the universe by our skin or
at least our skulls, we're not. While many of our causes come
from inside the three pound universe inside our skulls, much of
it comes from the larger universe outside too, of which we're
a part. Upon reflection, I can't say that I'd want it any other
way, regardless of the fact that it leaves our wills not free
in some technical sense of the world.
[> [> Good stuff; one thought this dislodged -- Tchaikovsky,
01:05:05 07/26/04 Mon
The coin tosses towards the beginning of Stoppard's play are in
a way a re-imagining of the ghosts of the first act of Hamlet.
Nowadays we live in a society that tends to be more sceptical
of the super-natural, (Hamlet was written shortly after Macbeth,
which Shakespeare wrote partly to toady to James I and VI obsession
with 'Daemonologie'), and so the spooky, fate-driven things need
to be more circumstantil, and less outlandish. And yet the one
hundred and fifty six coin tosses coming down heads, despite the
probability theory explanation, worry Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
in a gentler way than the ghost worries Hamlet. It is another
cog in the questions of determinism or free will, coming from
a different angle. If the coin is pre-destined to come down heads,
we have no control whatsoever. However, if the choice is strictly
random, we are also left with little to show for our self-consciousness.
So finding the line on the continuum is expressed in the same
way as Hamlet's father expresses in Act One, Scene Four.
TCH
[> [> [> Re: Good stuff; one thought this dislodged
-- Pony, 09:27:47 07/26/04 Mon
I see the coin toss as demonstrating that fate has been set, there
is no escape from the tragedy for R&G or Hamlet himself. So much
of the play is R&G trying to test the restraints that have been
set on them from the forces of physics to the structure of the
play and finding that they can't escape. So what is the point
then? Well, I think it comes back to all the existential debates,
R&G's continual asking of why humanizes them, makes their
struggle meaningful to the audience even if it ultimately meaningless
in the context of Hamlet. Even at the very end as they
accept their fate, there's still the expressed hope that next
time they will do better, that at some point they will find a
place where they can exercise free will.
To bring this back to the Buffyverse, I almost consider Wesley
the most R&G figure - not because he's comical in anyway but because
he is constantly testing the boundaries of fate and prophecy only
to realize that his actions have only served to fulfill it.
[> [> [> Re: Good stuff; one thought this dislodged
-- dmw, 14:58:16 07/26/04 Mon
The coin tosses towards the beginning of Stoppard's play are
in a way a re-imagining of the ghosts of the first act of Hamlet.
Nowadays we live in a society that tends to be more sceptical
of the super-natural, (Hamlet was written shortly after Macbeth,
which Shakespeare wrote partly to toady to James I and VI obsession
with 'Daemonologie'), and so the spooky, fate-driven things need
to be more circumstantil, and less outlandish.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but your view makes a lot of
sense.
[> [> For the mathematically unchallenged -- Ann,
10:15:54 07/26/04 Mon
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CoinTossing.html
Certainly not I. Hee on the wolfram of course.
[> I've got a theory... -- Sara, who loves to be controversial,
17:33:25 07/25/04 Sun
Ok, I haven't finished Hamlet yet, let's face it 3 pages
a night doesn't go really fast. I'm in Act 4, so I will propose
this knowing that I could get proven wrong somewhere in the rest
of the play, but if I wait until I'm done, the whole melee may
be on the next book!
At this point in time, my interpretation is that Hamlet is not
trying to pretend to be crazy. His plan to find out the truth
was all about watching Claudius react to Hamlet's additional speech
in the play. That was all he needed - proof of the Ghost's claim.
His grief and anger resulted in behavior that the others believed
to be madness. His anger made no sense to anyone that didn't know
that he found out that his father was murdered by his uncle/stepfather.
It changed his view of the world. When he sees Ophelia he no longer
believes in the future of love, his mother after all married the
man who murdered her husband, but that doesn't mean he is not
still in love with her - not surprising that it resulted in a
dramatic interaction that came out of nowhere as far as Ophelia
was concerned. His relations with Rosencrantz, Guilderstern, Polonius
and even his mother were affected by his belief that they are
conspiring with the murderer of his father. What is reasonable
to Hamlet, would look like paranoia to those that didn't know
everything he knows.
So, that's my little theory - I expect much disagreement, but
that's what makes the mel in melee!
Tonight I'll try and read 6 pages - wish me luck!
[> [> Well, Hamlet definitely *says* he's going to act
mad -- Tchaikovsky, 02:10:35 07/26/04 Mon
Act One, Scene Five, (to Horatio):
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumb'red thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me- this is not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.
And I don't think it's in question that he's playing with Polonius.
Much more ambiguous moments include the latter part of his speech
to Ophelia, when he realises he is being spied on (III;i), the
play within a play (III; iii), and the beginning of Act Four after
his stowing of Polonius.
Of course, how well he acts mad is up to interpretation, and a
comparison with Ophelia's genuine madness in Act Four, Scene Five
in my opinion suggests he's feigning madness or at least that
his madness is more clearly explicable than what leads to Ophelia's
death.
Good luck!
TCH
[> [> [> Re: Well, Hamlet definitely *says* he's going
to act mad -- Ann, 06:59:51 07/26/04 Mon
a comparison with Ophelia's genuine madness in Act Four, Scene
Five in my opinion suggests he's feigning madness or at least
that his madness is more clearly explicable than what leads to
Ophelia's death."
Exactly. I think this is what pushes him over the edge, realizing
that his plan killed her. So when he duels Laertes he lets him
win I think. Hamlet welcomes death saying "Heaven made thee
free of it! I follow thee.." As long as Horatio makes clear
the uncle's motives as Hamlet asks him with " report me and
my cause aright to the unsatisfied", Hamlet can be free.
[> [> [> Still Disagreeing -- Sara, going out
on a limb here, 11:53:21 07/26/04 Mon
I forgot that little speech...oops. But I still can't see feigning
madness as part of his plan - it certainly doesn't help him in
any way. If he wants to revenge his father's death by killing
Claudius, it would have worked much better not to cause suspicions.
I would look at the speech you quoted as warning Horatio that
regardless of what he may say or do, Horatio should trust him
and not react. That doesn't necessarily mean that he is planning
to convince the world he's crazy, more that he may be acting in
unexpected ways as he follows through on the information he was
just given.
...but then again I could be wrong.
- by the way, I finished Act 4 last night, so I'm getting there!
[> [> [> [> From acting to being mad -- dmw,
15:02:27 07/26/04 Mon
While Hamlet's plan has a degree of cunning, overall it doesn't
make a great deal of sense to me either, but foolish and blinded
by emotions isn't quite the same as mad. However, I suspect Ann
is right that Ophelia's death pushes him over the edge from acting
mad to being mad.
[> Shakespeare's Kings -- dmw, 15:06:05 07/26/04
Mon
While reading for the melee, I discovered an interesting book
on Shakespeare that admittedly isn't directly relevant as it doesn't
cover Hamlet, but as it sounds like an interesting account of
the history behind many of Shakespeare's plays I thought I'd mention
it here. One of my favorite historians, John Julius Norwich, wrote
a book called Shakespeare's
Kings: The Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle
Ages: 1337-1485, which alternates between explaining the English
history behind Shakespeare's plays and showing us where Shakespeare
was and was not historically accurate in his dramas.
[> I finished it! Yea me! -- Sara, doing the happy dance,
but only 3 steps at a time!, 07:32:32 07/28/04 Wed
[> [> Yea you! Can't wait to hear your thoughts!
-- Ann, wearing her melee crown and waving sceptre, 13:39:43
07/28/04 Wed
[> [> All finished and didn't die? Arise, Horatio.
-- TCH, 15:57:25 07/28/04 Wed
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