November 2002 posts


Previous November 2002  

More November 2002

Emotional Honesty and The House as Unconscious and Conscious Mind in NLM (7.9) -- alcibiades, 09:25:38 11/27/02 Wed

Several points about Never Leave Me.

I still don't believe all there is to Buffy's feelings for Spike is I hated myself last year and I used you to punish myself. Because for one thing, from day one in Lessons, even before she sees Spike again, all she does is go around saying My boyfriend was hot -- at least once an episode it seems.

Also, Buffy gets self defensive both times Spike is speaking to her in NLM , the superiority/inferiority complex working overtime, like when she tells Spike he doesn't know her, he doesn't even know himself, to get him to shut him up because he is getting to something too painful for her to admit to him and perhaps to herself, although she sort of did admit it to Holden before she poofed him. Some of what she says to him contradicts things she has said to Holden in CWDP and also to Willow in Something Blue about thinking she needs the pain in relationships because that is where her passion is.

Buffy is still disconnected from her essential passion, she has melted somewhat, but I think there is still a melty ice girder around her heart. I am not sure I will believe her completely until she reconnects with it because I think it will prove to be the seat of her power. And I think then that the blinkers will fall off entirely about her motivations. When Buffy answered that she had never killed him because she saw him striving to become better -- that worked for the last 2 episodes. It didn't work for earlier episodes in their life. Last year she did use him to feel pain so that she could be a slayer.


Buffy still is slighting Spike to her friends -- hiding a great deal from them about how she feels -- I continue to find the disjunction grating, because to herself and to him she has admitted that he is a man, but she is still putting him down to them. Thus another avenue of emotional dishonesty

As a matter of interest, in the line-up, this episode was parallel to last year's Smashed, -- representing a
consummation of another sort between Buffy and Spike. Spike being honest I think all the way through and Buffy bouncing back and forth between levels of honesty but finally being rawly honest at the very end of the conversation just before Spike is snatched by the first evil.

Most importantly though -- in this episode something really cool happened.

Spike finally realizes and admits to his unconscious, that Buffy is not a super-ego replacement after all. She is imperfect and did all kinds of bad things to him last year not because he deserved it (that is a different question) but because she was trying to punish herself and used him.

Spike, OTOH, has to assimilate knowledge of the real, imperfect Buffy who would cause him pain just to punish herself -- with it having nothing to do with him at all, just that she saw him as a handy monster to use. Thus, that she can be very cruel and insouciant and selfish to go along with her hero gig. She's a real girl, a real person. He has quit idealizing her now and still loves her. That is a big one for both of them. That Spike can get past this point and that Buffy knows that someone can see her monster self and still love her.

It is interesting that the FE is much more knowing of that side of Buffy than what Spike had heretofore assimilated deepdown.

Buffy, otoh, finally saw and admitted to her unconscious, the man beneath the monster. This was a man she had seen once -- or so we thought -- in Intervention through The Gift. But she either never really saw it or rejected it for the sake of painful self gratification (if self-punishment can be called that) after she came back from the dead, or her rejecting seeing it was another way to punish herself by punishing Spike. She needed and wanted Spike to feel low so that she
could feel low as well. Because the punishment was not acute enough and hence wouldn't work if she was sleeping with a recovering monster.

I always said last year that Buffy wanted Spike to fail -- not to succeed.

In any case, psychologically we get the chiastic structure (shaped like an X). Spike replaces his ideal/heroic girl with the messy reality. He knows internally Buffy's very real flaws. Buffy replaces her monster image with the man who is risking everything to hold the inner monster at bay and beat him.

Last week, I wrote about the fact that Spike has been inhabiting basements which are not his in Season 7 -- meaning that the vamping does not represent his own inner basement, his own id, but is rather something working through him to place him in the basement again.

This week, we see Spike manacled in BUFFY'S basement, because that is where she has been keeping him chained all along in her conscious mind. She needed him to be there. HE is HER monster, kept in her basement, where she needed him to be all last year, even though from Intervention all the way until Entropy, he resisted being a monster.

Buffy partly freed Spike from that status herself when she told him that she no longer saw him that way -- but he was still locked in chains in her basement as she said it -- symbolizing perhaps that though she has articulated it she is not quite there yet?

Spike is only completely released by the First Evil -- who knows what this signifies at this point? Redemption by going through evil to do the ultimate good? That would be cool -- because essentially it's Sabbatian heresy. But who knows, as I say.

[Sabbatian heresy was this messianic movement started in the 1600s which for all kinds of interesting historical reasons ultimately evolved into a philosophy where you have to descend into the Abyss to "cram the maw of impurity with the power of holiness until it bursts from within."]

In any case, with Buffy telling Spike that she supports him, he will be stronger now in his resolve to be a man than he has ever been, even when held in the jaws of death.

When Buffy frees Spike from occupying monster status, she does so in her own basement. Whereas when Spike frees Buffy from representing his higher consciousness, he does it on her second floor, the top level of her house, in her bedroom. However, he is not entirely free, as it is still her house. It is still all about Buffy, for Spike, as we heard last week.

Another related point: In this episode, Spike is only ever in Buffy's upstairs or her basement -- but still not introduced on the main floor. This symbolizes physically that Buffy is indeed keeping Spike away from the normative interaction with her friends, still. He is in her bedroom, symbolizing the intimate relationship, once physical, now emotional and much closer than to any of her friends. Or he is downstairs in the basement, which symbolizes the subservient relationship he has had to her. But he is never on the main floor with her and her friends, thus he still does not have normal social intercourse, as it were, with her sister and her pals. This is manifested in Buffy's verbal unease with him still to her friends, where once again she slights him, betraying the level of honesty she has with him when she deals with him alone. She still can't admit to that publicly. And she is thus slighting herself. She is not trusting her heart because she is still disconnected to it.

Buffy's relationship with Spike is all neatly symbolized by the abodes she chooses for him in her own house.
[> Re: Emotional Honesty and The House as Unconscious and Conscious Mind in NLM (7.9) -- frisby, 09:45:00 11/27/02 Wed

Admirable post. Just one small food for thought. Buffy has not killed Spike before 7.9 because she watched the man battle the monster within and believed he would continue to become a better man. Spike strives for this out of his love of Buffy -- or -- did he "use" Buffy as a reason to transcend his own monstousness and actualize his own human potential?

Also, as Spike got Buffy to see, Buffy used Spike because she needed to hate and suffer so her passion could be transformed into strength (the source of her power), and Buffy admits it, -- but -- she then says "not anymore" meaning she no longer needs the anger or pain to power her role as the slayer, but now has moved beyond that level to a higher one.

If so, this means each "used" the other as a means to further themselves, but, as a result, have also grown even closer. For Spike still, "it's all about you Buffy" and for Buffy still, "I belive in you Spike" -- is not all of this true romantic erotic love at its best and highest?? Is all of this not the key to humanity itself (given that the destiny of humanity turns on the institution of marriage)?

My present questions are what are the possible scenarios for ending the series with regard to the Spike/Buffy dynamic?
[> Re: Emotional Honesty and The House as Unconscious and Conscious Mind in NLM (7.9) -- ponygirl, 09:51:56 11/27/02 Wed

Yes! Exactly what I was thinking! And much better written...

Totally agree with the living room symbolism. And also that this is the room the Scoobies use to express their concerns/dissatisfctions with Buffy, the fact that the room is trashed is not a good sign.

Spike, of course, ends up exactly where he started this season - in another basement. But rather than being stabbed and cast down like poor Jonathon, he is raised up above the evil and its minions. He gets to see exactly what the monster within him looks like as it emerges from beneath, but Spike still remains above. With all you've written, alcibiades, it seems very significant that it is at the moment that Spike is raised up that the FE morphs into Buffy (though it may also have been so they could use the shirtless line).
[> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and The House as Unconscious and Conscious Mind in NLM (7.9) -- alcibiades, 11:14:25 11/27/02 Wed

Thanks Ponygirl,

Wow, that was such a rich episode. I really liked it.

You wrote:

Spike, of course, ends up exactly where he started this season - in another basement. But rather than being stabbed and cast down like poor Jonathon, he is raised up above the evil and its minions. He gets to see exactly what the monster within him looks like as it emerges from beneath, but Spike still remains above.

Yeah strong shades of stare long enough into the abyss and the abyss stares back into you. Not to mention, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster."

With all you've written, alcibiades, it seems very significant that it is at the moment that Spike is raised up that the FE morphs into Buffy (though it may also have been so they could use the shirtless line).

Here is a related point about ending up back in the school basement, in the very room, the point from which he started out his journey this season.

In Selfless, Spike in the Hellmouth basement tells Buffy he has noplace to go.

Since then we see him primarily sleeping (or being waken up) at Xander's house, existing in other people's basements, or on the prowl. In this episode he starts out in Buffy's bedroom, moves back down to Buffy's basement and then ends up back in the school basement. He has made a circuit.

I think that Spike's arc throughout season 7 will be about Spike making a place for himself in the world. So he will have a place to go.

Otherwise he is always going to be subject to the whims of his enemies and the usages they put him to, or will be out of place in the abodes of his friends.
[> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and The House as Unconscious and Conscious Mind in NLM (7.9) -- Tyreseus, 19:32:28 11/27/02 Wed

I think that Spike's arc throughout season 7 will be about Spike making a place for himself in the world. So he will have a place to go.

If so, I'll bet ME has some killer Anya/Spike parallels planned.

I think that this season will play with the idea of identity a lot. The First Evil changes it's appearance so often, I wonder if it even has a "true appearance." It lacks identity and fosters confusion in those around it.

Anya - the communist, the capitalist, the vengeance demon, the housewife, the would-be-spouse, the thief... Here we have an idividual who has tried on several roles and is still at square one.

Dawn - teenager growing pains. What is her role with the scoobies? What does being "the key" mean post-Glory?

Xander - "the heart of the scoobies" has had his heart stopped and replaced with darkness. He feels like an automaton without purpose. Will Xander bust out his his own version of the song "Going through the motions?"

Buffy - Okay, I hope I'm not spoiling anything here, but it seems pretty obvious that those other girls who were murdered in other countries were either slayers or slayer-in- training. Even after meeting Faith, Buffy identifies herself to VampHolden as not "a slayer" but "the slayer" (Holden: "As in, the only one?" Buffy: "Pretty much.") If there are other slayers, other chosen ones, how will Buffy's self- perception change? She's no longer on this quest or mission by herself.

Willow - has perhaps the strongest sense of identity out of the scoobies. Has embraced her witchiness, her lesbianism, her scholastic pursuits (what exactly is her major?), even her dark side. Although, she seems to be battling that dark side. When the bringers attacked, she didn't put up the spell shield around herself and Dawn as she did in Selfless when the spider demon attacked her and the crying girl. Why not? Is she afraid of using magic in battle situations because of the whole black-eye bitch thing that happened in Selfless?
[> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- Sophist, 08:13:47 11/28/02 Thu

Xander - "the heart of the scoobies" has had his heart stopped and replaced with darkness.

A pretty obvious Heart of Darkness=>Apocalypse Now=>Restless reference.

This assumes that Xander was referring to himself. I think he was, but he did leave it vague. If he was talking about himself don't you think it's pretty unfair for him to blame Anya for that condition instead of recognizing his own fault?

"And for my sins they gave me a mission...."
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- Slain, 13:00:43 11/28/02 Thu

My understanding was that Xander was, unconsciously, talking about himself; as if the interrogation session was in some way analogous to a psychiatry session. While he has always consciously blamed himself, he clearly also feels that Anya is at fault for not taking him back. But perhaps the point of the line was to remind us that Xander is still in no way 'over' Anya.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- alcibiades, 23:57:12 11/28/02 Thu

While he has always consciously blamed himself, he clearly also feels that Anya is at fault for not taking him back. But perhaps the point of the line was to remind us that Xander is still in no way 'over' Anya.

I think what he said went further than that however. Unlike Buffy, who now seems to be accepting the blame of having behaved like a monster in her relationship, and has mostly processed it and internalized it, I don't think Xander is there yet.

Remember, he, unlike Buffy, has yet to articulate to anyone the real reason he walked out of the wedding. Maybe he needs a vampire confessor he can dust before he gets brave enough to speak.

And speaking of Buffy accepting blame and admitting to acting like a monster, having just watched The Gift, Tabula Rasa and Smashed on the FX marathon, it was just creepy to see exactly how ME set up the narrrative for the audience to have our expectations smashed.

First, Spike's speech to Buffy as she is ASCENDING the stair in The Gift, where he tells her, I know I am a monster, but you make me feel like a man. The fact that she is painfully ascending (as he is) is key there, because after she DESCENDS in AfterLife, her interaction with him is willfully going to
descend into something like, I know I am a woman but you let me become a monster -- it's all rage and alienation and deathwish.

And then in Tabula Rasa, you see just how much rage and anger Buffy has at Giles, another man who is leaving her in the lurch, and the one man she thought she could count on until the end of the world. And his exit is every bit as inexplicable to her, as an adult (and to the audience, I might add) as her father's must have been to her as a teen. So that when Buffy tells Spike in Smashed about their kiss in
TR, "you know I was thinking about Giles," this time the explanation feels like it has truth to it, even though Spike discounts it. Spike becomes a conduit to punish Giles and all the men who have left her. And since she has decided to view him as a monster again, she doesn't have to feel bad about using him that way.

And finally in Smashed, when Spike tells Buffy, 'I wasn't planning on hurting you...much" and then Buffy replies, 'you haven't come close to hurting me yet,' it turns out unconsciously that this is what she was both wanting and wanting to mete out. Though Buffy denied it in NLM, when Spike tells her that she likes men who cause her pain, because she needs the pain to be the slayer, I think that was
defensive on her part, not accurate, because it has been correct in the past. Part of the problem unconsciously last year for Buffy seems to have been that Spike wasn't doing his job in causing her enough pain, so she overcompensated by causing him pain, until finally she got a really bad result -- and Spike caused her enormous pain in the AR -- she brought the monster out in him after all.


This is ironic. Last year, there was a sense among the audience that Buffy needed Spike to be able to hit her without a chip reaction because that made them on an equal par in the relationship. Spike certainly understood that once he could hit her again the relationship would be consumated. He thought it was because he had gotten his rocks back.

But it turns out what it really signalled was that unconsciously Buffy felt that if Spike could fight her
freely, she could use him as a physical and emotional punching bag without compunction.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Really excellent points -- Rahael, 02:34:42 11/29/02 Fri

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Ditto! Wonderful post -- ponygirl, 07:06:17 11/29/02 Fri

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- leslie, 12:02:36 11/29/02 Fri

"...when Buffy tells Spike in Smashed about their kiss in TR, "you know I was thinking about Giles," this time the explanation feels like it has truth to it, even though Spike discounts it. Spike becomes a conduit to punish Giles and all the men who have left her."

It also makes Spike's comment in return--"I always wondered about you two"--less icky and inappropriate-conduct-between- mentor-and-student-ish and more emotionally accurate. Buffy's feelings about and actions towards her lovers are hugely influenced by her feelings about her father(- figures). She wants them to need her so badly they can never leave--never abandon her--and she wants to take out on them her anger at having been left by others in the past, and she is so guilty about feeling this way that she will deny with every breath in her body that this is what she is doing.

Giles really does fail in his role as father-figure when he leaves--he is looking at her only in the arena where he sees himself as her "father"--slaying--and he is blind to the whole emotional axis has its roots before his arrival in her life. What does he say? "I've taught you everything you need to know about slaying, and your mother taught you everything you need to know about life"? Nice sentiment--but are we really holding up Joyce as a paradigm of successful relationships? She has only just begun to recover emotionally from her divorce when she dies, only just begun to actually date men who aren't psycho robots; I forget the episode in which she warns Buffy about shutting down emotionally and refusing to trust anyone (it's shortly after Riley leaves), and why? *Because that is exactly what she had done after Hank left her.* She concentrated on her work and devoted all of her emotions toward her family. That's what Buffy does, too.

The thing about her progressing to another level of emotional understanding now, though: Of all these lovers who have left her, Spike is the only one who came back. The only one who came back still in love with her and still wanting to try to make it work somehow. And so, he's the first opportunity she has had to actually *get* to another level of emotional development. Simply breaking up with someone (being broken up with, rather) and then starting over with someone else and hoping it will be better this time--it still leaves her with the fear that he will leave just like all the others. Similarly, Giles left Sunnydale, but again, he came back when things really became apocalyptic, and suddenly, unloading to him made her able to see everything in perspective. She's finally realizing that men may leave and yet come back, and she's still trying to get a handle on what that means and how to deal with it. That scene in the basement with Spike shows her finally testing out new waters.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- shadowkat, 12:53:42 11/29/02 Fri

"Though Buffy denied it in NLM, when Spike tells her that she likes men who cause her pain, because she needs the pain to be the slayer, I think that was
defensive on her part, not accurate, because it has been correct in the past. "

Actually, I think you're wrong here. Buffy doesn't really deny it. Here's exactly what she said:

"No. I don't hate like that. Not myself. Not you. Not. ANYMORE." Emphasis on the anymore.

She admits to him earlier, that she used him.

"You used me"
"Yes"
"That's right you told me that didn't you."

Buffy is no longer in denial. Actually the two characters have exchanged roles in a way. Last year - Buffy did use Spike to punish herself. She did hate herself. But she doesn't anymore... now Spike hates himself. Last year Spike didn't see himself as a "monster", he didn't hate himself, at least not until he attempted to rape Buffy - then, he began to. Last year Buffy had sex with Spike - because she had the death wish - she wanted to die. She was literally boinking death - with the view that maybe one day death would kill her - yet I think somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt safe doing it, because she knew he never would.

In Fool For Love - Spike expresses the desire to conquer her, a desire he repeats in Intervention to the Buffbot.
"I love you Spike."
"You're mine, Buffy."
Then in Wrecked. "I always knew the only thing better than killing a slayer was f...."
And in Fool For Love - "To have what we're all waiting for - One Good Day."

Now we get him admitting to her what he is in the basement.
"You don't know the Real Me. You got off easy. I know how much blood to take from a girl to make it painful...to make them cry, because it isn't worth it if they don't cry."
Spike - as far back as School Hard - has been portrayed as a sexual predator, a rapist, seducer. We find out why in Fool For Love - the girls made him cry, so he makes them cry in retailation, while his paramore, Drusilla, watchs and applauds. Then he falls for Buffy - who, as a friend noted, is different from everyone else he knows - "I know I'm a monster, but you treat me like man." She did actually.
Before they started kissing and had the sex, she had begun to treat him with respect, not as joke - which as a friend noted may have been why he fell for her. As early as Becoming - you can see that - she treats him as bad man, but not as a joke or a monster entirely. This may be the same reason Angel fell for her, I don't know.

Anyways - I think when Buffy ascended from the Grave and descended from heaven - she needed the pain to feel alive. She hated herself for being angry at her friends for bringing her back, she hated herself for wanting to be dead, and she hated herself for feeling nothing. What is the best way to punish yourself? Have sex with the person you hate. What is the best way to punish Giles, who left you? Have sex with the person Giles would disapprove most of. What is the best way to punish your first love? Have sex with his enemy. So I agree with this statement:

"Spike becomes a conduit to punish Giles and all the men who have left her. And since she has decided to view him as a monster again, she doesn't have to feel bad about using him that way. "

I think that was true, last season. It is NOT true this season. Buffy has changed. Both Spike and Buffy have changed, they aren't the same people they were last year. Buffy has figured that out. Spike thought he'd changed, now he's not so sure. The first evil has been playing on his vulnerabilities for some time now, telling him over and over again that he can't change - things Buffy threw at him last year. But I think when Buffy said those things?
"You aren't a man. You can't change" part of it - was directed towards herself. Like you said - last year Buffy had to make him into nothing more than a monster to justify her actions. She couldn't at any point see him as having the ability to change. And well, I'm on the fence about this, but I'm not unconvinced that part of the creepy irony is that the writers didn't see Spike as having a capacity for change without a soul - without the ability to feel remorse. Soulless - Spike did not understand Buffy's desire to punish herself or that her relationship with him was JUST to punish herself. He believed that she had come back wrong and he could have her now - conquer her, possess her. That he was no longer beneath her. It's not until he almost rapes her - that he realizes what was going on and that he is beneath her. The Attempted Rape was a turning point for both characters - a violent act that snapped both to attention. It made Buffy realize she didn't really want to be hurt or punished and did care about Spike and did not expect him to go that far, actually had trusted he wouldn't deep inside, the realization that he did - snapped her a bit to attention. And it made Spike realize that he was a monster and would hurt Buffy and did not understand what she was going for and without a soul? Never would be man enough for her. Too much monster - not enough man.

So I guess I agree with pretty much everything you state, but the implication, which I may be misunderstanding (if so apologise) that Buffy still wants to use Spike to punish herself, that she still is attracted to or wants men who hurt her. Because I don't see that as the case this year.
I think she's finally moved past that. I think almost being raped and killed in Seeing Red - propelled her past that desire, along with Willow's actions. It's sort of the old watch what you wish for - you may just get it adage. Buffy wished Spike to REALLY hurt her and when he finally almost did?
She realized it wasn't what she wanted. Just as when Warren almost killed her - she realized it wasn't what she wanted. And when she saw what hate did to her friend Willow? She realized that wasn't what she needed. Hate didn't make her feel more alive. It was love that did. Love for her sister and her friends. In Grave she states: "I want to show you the beauty of the world. I want to see my friends happy again." Which brings up another adage, Buffy learned - when fighting monsters - watch out and don't become one. Buffy came periolously close to becoming one last year - but didn't - another thing she admits to the vamp- psychologist.

What's interesting and ironic in her basement scene with Spike - is she gives him credit finally for facing the monster inside himself and fighting against it.

"You faced the monster inside you and fought back.
You risked everything to become a better man.
And You can be. You may not see it. But I do. I do. I believe in you Spike."

Why does she see it?

"You think getting a soul drenched in blood gives you insight? You don't know me. You don't even know you."

She sees it because last year Buffy faced her monster and fought back.

"I'm using you, it's weak and selfish and it's killing me."AYW
"I behaved like a monster last year - the things I did to him." CwDP

I'm not saying she's at the end of her journey. I'm saying that she does realize she was monster last year. That she is NOT in denial about that. Nor is she in denial about the fact that she wanted to be hurt by men or needed them in the way Spike states. But she doesn't anymore. She's been learning her lessons.

What is odd - is why Buffy doesn't recognize this change in Spike until Sleeper. Why not in Beneath You? OR Help? OR Him? When he is trying to help her and not kill her? Why does she finally see it when she's in the cellar about to be killed by his vamp kids? Possibly because before then, Spike is either just crazy or contained. Here - in the cellar - Buffy sees something in Spike she's never ever seen before. He reacts to the memory of killing the people in the same way she reacted to the possibility that she killed Katrinia. He reacts to the tast of her blood in a similar way to how she reacted to the tast of Dracula's. And
for the first time since she met him - he asked her to kill him. Prior to this, he makes excuses, asks her not to. HEre, he requests she do it. And also - she sees him fight the demon, fight the urge to bite her. And reel back in horror. This is something, she knows deep down that could not be faked. In Beneath You? She's not so sure. He jumps from personality to personality - so maybe it is an act. Her gut says it isn't but she's not sure and she can't afford to be wrong. In Sleeper - she's terrified she made a mistake and he has been playing her - "The oscar goes to..."
but he hasn't. And she states to him - in a way it would be easier if it were just an act, for them both - but she knows now to trust her gut. She's learned to listen. She's learned not to kill on impulse. And she's learned not to go for the pain - that is what separates her from the monsters she fights. The D'Hoffryn's of the world.

Part of the problem with watching the show - I think, is whose pov we find ourselves in. In Sleeper -we're in Spike's most of the time. In Beneath You - we're mostly in Buffy's and part of the time Spike's. If we watch primarily from Spike's pov - we tend to see the characters skewed a certain way, Xander comes across as a hypocritical jerk, Anya - an annoying emotional ditz,
Buffy - almost unreadable. If we are in Buffy's pov - Xander is more informative and supportive. It's an interesting trick. And I don't always pick up on it until a fourth viewing. But I think figuring out whose pov the writers are focusing on in each episode- may be an important thing in analysing episodes, because I'm not so sure we can trust the pov we're in - this year especially - with all the illusions to misperception. Spike's perception of events - clearly can't be trusted. Nor can Dawn's or Willow's. I think, and I may be wrong here, that Buffy and Xander's perceptions can be at least at this point. As well as Giles. But again I could be wrong - I didn't think the BBW was the first evil after all...(sigh). ;-)

Anyways interesting post. Just my ten cents to add to the discussion. SK
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> The Importance of the Last Word -- Finn Mac Cool, 14:31:23 11/29/02 Fri

There's also a hint the writers give about which character's opinion of the situation is the right one: who gets the last word.

In "Graduation Day I", Xander delivers the last word when talking to Buffy about whether she should kill Faith or not. The writers thus put their support behind Xander's position (which was carried out later on).

In "Tough Love", when Dawn keeps saying that she's evil, Spike gets the last word in arguing that she isn't. And the writers certainly take the stance that Dawn isn't evil.

In "Normal Again", Spike delivers his speech about Buffy being addicted to misery without a rebuttal from her at the end. We are shown that what Spike said about Buffy there was true.

Everytime two characters debate an issue they have, the last person we see argue his/her point is ultimately the one that the writers want us to accept. Thus, when Buffy says "You don't know me. You don't even know yourself", and we cut away, Buffy is getting the last word. Her position is being given validity because that's the end of the argument that we hear.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- alcibiades, 16:10:50 11/29/02 Fri

I agree with everything you say except this:

She sees it because last year Buffy faced her monster and fought back.

"I'm using you, it's weak and selfish and it's killing me."AYW

Maybe. But I am going with maybe not.

The way Buffy broke up with Spike was possibly the cruelest way she could have done it, unless she had actually slept with Riley or Angel. And in that long shimmy down the rope with Riley to kill the monster, it always seemed to me that that was precisely what she was aiming for, sex with Riley as another way of escape -- she was only stopped in that by the appearance of Sam.

And then she continued to be gratutitously cruel to Spike every time from then on when they interacted. So breaking up with him allowed her entirely to continue her pattern of abuse with him, not to discontinue it.

With the exception of Hell's Bells where she treated everyone well, Buffy did begin acting better to her friends after Normal Again, but, not Spike. She still wanted her monster to beat up.

I don't really think that Buffy battled that monster at all until after Seeing Red. I think after that she would have had a very different way of dealing with Spike, because then she really faced up to the pattern of abuse she had created and its aftermath and realized, as you say, that she did not want it. In Villains, had he been in his crypt, I think she would have dealt with Spike very, very differently and responsibly and not cruelly. Also, because by then the stakes had changed drastically and the world had begun to penetrate and intrude so that it was no longer her pain that she felt foremost and needed to exorcise.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Emotional Honesty and Hearts (Spoilers 7.9) -- shadowkat, 19:36:50 11/29/02 Fri

"I don't really think that Buffy battled that monster at all until after Seeing Red. I think after that she would have had a very different way of dealing with Spike, because then she really faced up to the pattern of abuse she had created and its aftermath and realized, as you say, that she did not want it. In Villains, had he been in his crypt, I think she would have dealt with Spike very, very differently and responsibly and not cruelly. Also, because by then the stakes had changed drastically and the world had begun to penetrate and intrude so that it was no longer her pain that she felt foremost and needed to exorcise."

Good point. I agree. She didn't really stop punishing herself and him by extension until after the attempted rape and possibly Warren's bullet. I think finding him gone in Villains - probably re-emphasized it. Because I agree with leslie's post above, she does have a tendency to punish her lovers for the leave-takings of the father figures. And there's a little bit of the whole - "oh never leave me, how could you treat a poor maid so" theme going on with her which she may be compensating for with the push-him away beat him up, pull-him close and make him need me attitude.

What happened last year - was she had taken for granted the fact that Spike wouldn't leave, that he wouldn't really hurt her - sort of like a little kid playing with matches.
When he does really go to far and does leave because of it?
She wakes up. But it wasn't just Spike's leaving or the attempted rape or the bullet combo that snapped her to attention - it was also Willow, Willow in her own self-hate, grief, and rage became the monster that Buffy had been on the verge of becoming. I think fighting Willow and literally being pushed back into the Grave by her - might have made Buffy realize how close to the edge she'd come herself. DarkWillow certainly made a point of driving it home. "You're one to talk - sleeping with a vampire to feel." (Two to Go)

So - you're right - she didn't come to the realization in AYW, if she had? We probably wouldn't have had the AR scene later. We needed the AR, the bullet, and DarkWillow for Buffy to finally grasp it.
[> How 'bout that underworld cross and those stigmata -- alcibiades, 09:54:16 11/27/02 Wed

In my previous post I mentioned the Sabbatian heresy --

It was a Jewish failed messianic movement started in the 1600s which for all kinds of interesting historical reasons ultimately devolved into a philosophy where you have to descend into the Abyss to "cram the maw of impurity with the power of holiness until it bursts from within." It started as a way to explain how the "so-called" Messiah, Shabbtai Tzvi, could under death threat convert to Islam (under Ottoman compulsion since the government was trying to nip the extremely popular and for that reason dangerous messianic movement in the bud) yet still be the Jewish Messiah. -- Thus, descending to the depths to release and raise the sparks of redemption and creation even from the lowest place, the abyss or the hellmouth.

In any case, this notion of heresy or mindful religious perversion goes hand in glove with the upside down crucifix in the final scene, where Spike's stigmata, as it were, are being used, not to redeem the world, but to lose it and destroy it.

I love that cross image, btw, but then that makes sense since I'm a religion nut. And Spike's trope all along has been the crucifix -- he also perverted and inverted a few religious rituals of his own -- notably in What's My Line, with its imagery of the inverse Holy Family with the son using the Blood of the Father to save the Holy Mother.

I also wonder what next for Spike? Will he have to save himself? And as a once notorious warrior of the dark battle the primal vampire.

Or, as the damsel in distress since STSP, will Buffy descend into the underworld to rescue him.

What existential state will he be in when he emerges?

Man, vampire, what?
[> Past Eps -- Spike Lover, 14:58:08 11/27/02 Wed

As many have pointed out, this season, they have been making numerous references to past episodes, particularly through visuals...

Last night's ep:

Angel chained to the wall
Spike's torture at the hands of Glory
Dawn's blood/The Gift

Whoever those attackers were, apparently they were someone who Buffy remembered to have died. Maybe the FE can morph into anyone who has died, which explains why he can take Spike & Buffy's form. Does this mean Halfrek will be back? And the watcher's coucil will appear as well?

Also, I really liked the part where Spike warned Buffy that she had never seen him at his evil peak. --Neither, therefore, have we.-- (Thanks to the writers for the rape descriptions. Would have appreciated them a couple of seasons ago.)

I too bristled at Buffy's body language and argument, when Spike is trying to call a spaid a spaid with her. But maybe she is not ready to hear the truth. It is so rare that she is ever admonished by anyone.

Ironically, when he asked the question (which was a good one): Why don't you kill me? (Because ratings will fall? Because JM has a contract? etc) I actually screamed out 'Angel' (he was chained to the wall afterall), but was surprised about the answer 'because you need a man to treat you bad.' Boy, this should raise a feminist flag.

Is he implying that feminists are not empowered when men treat them well? or something like that?

"We know it is not love" line was interesting too. He (and we) now know that Buffy does not love him. If only he had known that before he had gone into that bathroom... And it seemed to me that 'we' somehow included Spike. I feel like Spike, if he does still love Buffy, has gone into the next phase. He is out of the 'love at first sight', drunk w/ love phase. He is now to what X was describing to Andrew... trying to live your life day to day with the knowledge that someone else has your heart, and because there is no hope for reciprocation or that you will fall out of love with them, there is depression/darkness/a void.

The other really interesting thing I thought was the FE's last words to Spike, something about, 'all you had to do was xxxx, but instead you had to go and learn about yourself.' Clearly he was talking to the vampire/demon. He was talking to Spike, not William, the Victorian. It is Spike, the demon, whom Buffy cares about.

Well, I think I am rambling now. Have a good Thanksgiving.
[> [> When did Buffy ever deny a truth this ep? -- Finn Mac Cool, 17:36:15 11/27/02 Wed

[> [> Re: Past Eps -- Rufus, 23:56:03 11/28/02 Thu

He was talking to Spike, not William, the Victorian. It is Spike, the demon, whom Buffy cares about.

William is Spike is William.....all the same guy the difference being that Spike is William without a conscience and a demon supplement.....one that makes the resulting hybrid immortal (barring any wooden or decapitating,or firey misadventures), physically stronger, but the mind and form is still who the person has always been. If this weren't true then both shows would have sod all to write about the vampires as they would only be able to reference their vampire past totally ignoring any human influence other than the surface.
Poll for Never Leave Me (spoilers for Never leave me and Through the Looking Glass) -- VampRiley, 12:54:30 11/27/02 Wed

Okay. Really liking the ending of Never Leave Me. But, I do have a question for the board. The First asked Spike if he wanted to see a "real vampire" and we see the dude coming out from the opened seal. But, my question is, is this real vampire a pure bred one? Now, since we have some time before new eps, I thought I'd get the general consensus of how everyone feels on this topic.

Since the site is down at the mo for some reason, here's the entry for Through the Looking Glass.

The metaphysics of vampires: While the physical laws of the Earthly plane seem to be in force in Pylea (e.g., gravity), the metaphysical laws that govern our world don't necessarily apply. Angel can walk in the two suns'-light and see himself in a mirror. And when he tries to morph into vamp-face, he turns instead into a ravenous, blood-thirsty beast with sharp teeth and claws (apparently, though, you still kill a Pylean vampire by the usual means). The AngelBeast tears the palace guards limb from limb and attacks Wesley and Gunn.

Wesley theorizes that Angel has turned into a "pure vampire". While vampires on Earth are demon spirits that usurp and transform the physical body of mortals, in Pylea, they are physical, animalistic monsters. In Pylea, Angel in human form is much closer to being human than demon. In demon form, he is much closer to demon than human. It is difficult to have both at the same time. Pylean vampires still crave blood, and Fred saves Gunn and Wes by luring the AngelBeast to the water pool in her cave with some blood from the dead guards. Angel is still aware on some level while the Beast is predominant. When the beast sees its reflection in the water pool, human Angel reasserts himself.

Note: If the "pure vampire" is a mindless predatory beast, it has no free will; it cannot be condemned for its actions. What does this say about the human hybrids that exist in our dimension?

On this model, a vampire is a predatory beast without intelligence or rationality. This implies that Earth vampires are human bodies whose conscience (soul) is gone, replaced by a primitive demon spirit with only an urge to feed. What remains of the human predecesor is their intelligence and memories, resulting in predatory, conscience-less, human-like creature still motivated by events and people from their former human lives.

The operative word here is theorized. Wesley new the metaphysics of the pylean dimension obvious work differently since Angel didn't burst into flames in direct sunlight.

Taken from the transcript of TTLG by psyche's site.

Wesley: "I have a suspicion I may know what. Angel's vampire-self - has been sublimated somehow - by this dimension."

He picks up a handful of wet mud and gets ready to smear it over Gunn's scratches. Gunn holds up a hand.

Wesley: "It's okay."

Gunn lets him pack the scratches with mud.

Wesley: "Only his human side as surfaced since we've been here..."

Gunn: "You mean being able to walk around in the sun - seeing his reflection, like that?"

Wesley: "Yes. And now, for whatever reason he's accessed his demon, but he can't find the balance he normally would in our world. His demon-self has totally
overcome his human side."

Gunn: "So that's what the thing inside of him really looks like?"

Wesley: "In its purest form."

"Suspicion" is the operative word here. This leads me to believe that the watcher's council doesn't have a clear picture of what a pure bred vamp looks like. Given the past of the ep, it's resonable to conclude that that may be what the pure vampire looks and acts like. But, what of the "real vampire" from Never Leave Me?. So, here's the poll.

A) There are really different breeds of vampires, giving rise to more than one way they can look and act, much like demons in general.
B) What we saw at the end of Never Leave Me was the pure vampire (meaning only one breed and creating many breeds of half breeds is just a result of siring people from different regions of Earth or whatever).
C) Pure bred vamps may be able to interbreed with each other, in much the same way humans do and when creating half breeds from humans makes infertile offspring, like when you cross a horse with a donkey to create an infertile mule.
D) I shouldn't have waistd my time coming up with this.

VR
[> My take on it (spoilers for ep 7.9) -- Masq, 13:14:55 11/27/02 Wed

The First describes this as a "real vampire", and that can be taken as meaning a pure vampire, perhaps the demon of the species that created the original human-demon hybrids we call vampires.

Is this a contradiction with "Through the Looking Glass"? Not really. They both could be representations of what the original pure-vampire demon looked like. But one could imagine that Pylea has its own spin on what they call the "Van-tal, a drinker of blood." After all, the rules of hybrid vampirism were different for Angel over there, and perhaps he manifested his vampire self as a breed of the pure vampire demon common in Pylea (same species, different Pylean breed), as opposed to whatever dimension that Uber- vamp crawled out of.

At any rate, we won't know exactly what the Uber-vamp is, exactly until January (if then). And of course Wesley was just hypothesizing when he said that was what a pure vampire looked like. I'm hoping they're both variations on what the pure vampire looks like, myself.
[> [> Re: My take on it (spoilers for ep 7.9) -- Slain, 16:45:16 11/27/02 Wed

Until January... my God. I've always despised the vagaries of American Network TV. In my country, we only stop in the middle of show's runs for incredibly minor sporting events and the last week end December! Though, on reflection, perhaps it is better to have regular, anticipated breaks, as opposed to suddenly finding Buffy is off the air for a month because of the indoor bowls championships.

My thought (singular, rather than plural) about the vampire was that it was the Master, reconstructed from the grave and looking somewhat the worse for it. We know it's possible to bring humans back from the dead (Buffy, Darla), so perhaps the same can be done with vampires? The setting of his resurrection being presumably directly underneath the scene of his death. However it didn't look to me like the demon physically resembled the Master; its face was differently proportioned, so I suppose I shan't bet my savings on it being him just yet.
[> [> I'm with her here. Errr, that is... -- OnM, 20:49:25 11/27/02 Wed

... in that I agree that:

"they're both variations on what the pure vampire looks"

The season is about going 'back to the beginning', so I think seeing what one of the very first vampires to roam the Earth looked like would fit right in with the general theme.

My guess is that the First may think that the ubervamp may act to inspire Spike to return to the ways of evil, but my suspicion is it will have the opposite effect, at least eventually if not immediately.

Spike makes a big point of informing Buffy just exactly how evil he really is, but now he meets a creature that may be a progenitor of his species, but otherwise makes Spike's own past evil deeds look like those of a 'pathetic schmuck'.
[> Of the Vampire -- Finn Mac Cool, 13:28:46 11/27/02 Wed

My suspicion is that what we saw come out of the Seal of Danthalzar (hope I spelled that right) is the first vampire who was created when his blood was mixed with a demon's. I doubt it was the pure spirit of vampires, since it didn't go into ravenous beast mode, and couldn't be the demon who made the first vampire since this one still seemed to be human based (albiet warped and twisted by age like the Master and Kakistos were). Thus, we're left with the First Vampire.

I think the First Evil calling it a "Real Vampire" was just an expression used to put Spike down. Similar to the way that some people use the phrase "real man" to refer to a macho-idealized figure.
[> [> "real vampire"/"real man" -- Rochefort, 13:56:53 11/27/02 Wed

Finn Mac Cool, I think that's exactly what the use of "real vampire" means. I see the Spike story as very much a story of the construction of a positive masculinity in a third wave feminist world. Spike's masculinity gets castrated, reconstructed, castrated, reconstructed, castrated, reconstructed, until he doesn't know WHAT the hell he's supposed to be. The First's revealing of a "real vampire" then, is very much like taunting him with what a "real man" is; something that Spike, despite all his struggling, has never managed to find.
[> [> Re: Of the Vampire -- aliera, 14:18:39 11/27/02 Wed

Whoops I just "pinged" off Roch's post and lost mine but I had a similar take to you Finn on the uber-vamp. His costume and appearance seems to connect to the Master although it's a different vamp. One of the poster's at the stakehouse noted that this is the same actor who played Gnarl?

The first thought that crossed my mind was Order of Aurelius. As unappealing as he was, I guess I would have expected something different for the Oldest or First Vampire, something more demonic or bestial in visage. And not so short or was that the camera angle? I was thinking that he/she would have predated or been of the time of the first slayer (although I read the post about the first slayer being a Guide or Buffy's mental image of the First which makes sense too.) so I wasn't looking for the costume and physical appearance to be so like the Master's. Was there a connection between the Order and the First? I don't think I ever saw Amends but it seems that we don't know too much about the First? Also isn't it a little early in the season for the BB to be revealed? Maybe I'm thinking too much!
[> [> [> Re: Of the Vampire -- annon, 14:33:04 11/27/02 Wed

he was probobly wasn't the oldest, he had no hooves, but then again neither did Pylean Angel as the demon itself
[> [> [> Re: Of the Vampire - see Nosfertu -- shadowkat, 15:01:14 11/27/02 Wed

If you see the commentary to HUSH - Whedon states that one of his favorite and scariest images is Nosfertu's vampire.
Nosfertu is one of the very first vampire films made, it is a silent german film that starred a german actor who was soo method that he literally believed he was a vampire. Legend has it the actor drank blood on the set. The director was attempting in Nosfertu to create a realistic vampire movie.

For a biographical sketch on the making of Nosfertu? See Shadow of the Vampire, starring John Malkovich as the director and William Defoe as the vampire.

Nosfertu was probably the vampire movie that was playing when Dawn was attacked by the first evil in CwDP. And the vampire at the end of this episode? Looks exactly like Nosfertu - with long nails, bald bat head and hunched over.

Nosfertu is sort of the antithesis of the romanticized view many people have of vampire lore, a romanticized view that ME has consistently made fun of. They start making fun of the "gentleman vampire" idea as early as Welcome to the Hellmouth. But most notably in School HArd and Lie to Me with these lines:

School HArd: "People actually fall for that Ann Rice routine? What a crazy world.." Spike to Angel, after Angel tells Spike he's been leading Buffy on.

Lie to Me: "These are children, they don't even know how we dress..." Angel commenting on the goth kids who want to be vampires.

And of course Spike's lines to Buffy in this episode. It's interesting - considering how many posts I still see on the boards romanticising vampires and preferring Spike evil and soulless. So - let's bring out what a true vamp looks like - the monster. Still romantic?? I'm wondering if ME is in some way exploring our desire to either romanticize or pretend monsters don't exist or even deny that we have one inside ourselves. And doing it through an examination of Spike - the ensouled vampire fighting the vamp within and an uber- vampire - showing what that vamp within looks like.


Anyways just my two cents...sk
[> [> [> [> Re: Of the Vampire - see Nosfertu -- aliera, 17:35:53 11/27/02 Wed

I just finished my in-box...yesterday was a busy day you can tell that people are really into the season so far...anyway, you're not alone Nosferatu (FW Murnau) was mentioned several times. I don't know about the movie (this where I love to read what you all post) but here's a few (probably irrelevent) clips from Nina Auerbach's "Our Vampires's Ourselves":

1) features the first male mortals in our tradition that the vampire not only lures buts bites...he chooses to go to Dracula's country...as penance for crossing the border belongs to him body and soul...he recreates himself in his journey towards the vampire.

2) Murnau's film features a sick city, not an invaded nation. Jonathan is as receptive to the vampire's infection as the city itself.

3) While Stoker gets his first big effect by revealing that Dracula has no soul and therefore casts no shadow; Schreck becomes his shadow.

4) Isolated by his clownlike makeup and by immobilizing compositions, he is no more than the a shadow of the community he infects.

5) The final title 'as the shadow of the vampire vanishes with the morning sun' --presumably heals a stricken community...the sun usually *creates* shadows rather than dissipating them.

6) According to the book of vampires that Jonathan discovers, "Nosferatu drinks the blood of the young." Indiffernt to gender, Nosferatu unlesses mass death, not individual sexuality.

7)But only a pure woman can destrot one. Nina accordingly becomes the bridge between town and invader, humanity and monster. Nina's ambiguous sacrifice abolishes Stoker's polarization between pure and carnal women, for Nina is less a victim than a link between shadow and substance, life and death, corruptibility and respectibility. She may dispel Max Schreck, but she also marries him to the respectibility (community?) she represents.

8) Gregory Waller writes eloquently about the wives in Murnau's original and Herzog's remake, whom he sees as solitary warriors, independent of traditional weapons and of wise directing father figures...sacrificing themselves ironically--and, ultimately, tradgically--to institutions that silence them...(not in Buffy though! at least not silenced).

9)This about a different film...Waller notes astutely that...Renfield is maddened by Dracula, while in Stoker's novel the vampire manipulates a madness... that lurked in England before his coming.

10)Stoker quarantined his vampire from civilization while Murnau's was a shadow of his own diseased Germany. Thus Nosferatu itself crosses the bridges between classes, genders, and orders of being...

She sees this presenation of Dracula as ghostly phatasmmal and Victorian. Also a mention in her notes of Oscar Wilde (an enemy? of Henley ('Inviticus')) but I haven't gotten to that chapter yet. No mention of the shortness though! ;- )
[> [> [> [> [> Nosferatu is something of an intellectual plague carrier as well. -- KdS, 05:10:31 11/28/02 Thu

Many of the points you bring up have been used to draw parallels between the presentation of Orlok (the real name of the vamp in Nosferatu) and anti-semitic metaphor. If you look at the original Murnau film Harker's employer, the mad solicitor Knock (who plays the role Renfield did in the novel), is a blatant anti-semitic caricature in his costume/make-up.

I'll probably get denounced as PC, but I think we need to be attuned to these underlying metaphors.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Nosferatu is something of an intellectual plague carrier as well. -- aliera, 05:51:31 11/28/02 Thu

Oh I hope not I like to explore the references also. I picked up the book because I started to requestion where the vampire metaphor is going this season so of course I had a curiousity about where it had been, LOL. So much to find out so little time. Although we have a potential wrapping up this season we also seem to have a transformation building which would be very in keeping with the Innanna-like journey of last season, plumbing the depths as it were (or rather was). The work of Stoker and Murnau and others was a shift away from the portrayals of Ruthvyn and Carmilla and Varney which were themselves a shift from vampire archetypes in the the older tales. Depending on how broadly you'd like to define vampire you can go pretty far back and also spread your net pretty wide since this particular metaphor is one of our(our in the global humanity sense) most enduring, malleable and pervasive. We have vampires in Africa, China, Arabia, the Phillipines, Prussia, India, the Aztec tales...there's a mention in the bible in the Solomon stories...there's even a Mexican (Nathual) vampiric witch called a Tlaciques which can assume the aspect of a ball of flame or a turkey. I'll have to treat my dinner with more respect (it's Thanksgiving here today and turkey is traditional so I had to give that a mention!)

The other interesting thing is the popularity of the metaphor in our times in writing and film and thought. Thanks for the additional information and I think that the exploration is important. Back to the beginning. It's all connected. I don't think that Joss chooses the images without an understanding of the references especially the film references. ;-)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> And there's the Marxist take as well.... -- luna, 06:53:04 11/28/02 Thu

Whether he's repesented as Dracula, Prince of Darkness, or Nosferatu, slimy old man, there's also a Marxist reading (and there's a book or at least article about it, but can't remember author right now). In that reading of the story (the Stoker/Murnau plot), the vampire is presented with all the trappings of the decaying aristocracy, a parasite on the working class. Of course, Harker, Mina, et al. are middle- class, so that gets away from pure Marxism, but still...

To me, the more recent versions of the vampire have spun off of this in some ways. In Christopher Lee films, the vamp/aristocrat was played for campy fear, since the class power was no longer real to the viewers, while in Anne Rice, the vampire became sympathetic as the wannabe's of late 20th century America looked nostalgically at the past (sort of like Gone with the Wind for Southerners--LeStat is their Scarlet O'Hara).

With films like Lost Boys, and I believe with Buffy vamps in general, including Angel and Spike, the symbolism flip- flopped. There's still a reading of class conflict, but now the vamps are the under class. They dress like hoods, hang out in alleys, mug people. (BTW, would some of you with the right knowledge tell me where Spike's British accent fits into the class system?)

But I have no clue right now of how we'd apply all this to the First Vampire, unless it's the same as suggested above, the Pure whatever-it-is, unmixed with any other elements. More later after I ponder, I hope.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> He's deliberately imitating a working class accent -- Rahael, 07:31:40 11/28/02 Thu

If you read the fool for love commentary (in archives, I think, transcribed by moi), Joss was very concerned that the formerly middle class William slide down the social scale as he constructed his self image bit by bit.

If you can't find it, let me know, I'll email you a copy.

All grist to the mill!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> its a cockney accent - not always working class.... -- Helen, 06:59:29 11/29/02 Fri

There's some very wealthy people in Essex who have moved out of the East End with accents just like Spike's (and I'm related to many of them).
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Merely trying to relate Joss' intent -- Rahael, 07:20:06 11/29/02 Fri

which I thought backed up Luna's point.

Surely the crucial thing is, that when William grew up, and the century after he was vamped, the upper classes tried to get rid of regional accents?

And, as KdS obliquely pointed out, in Britain, class and wealth aren't the same thing.

Unfortunately, there is still a lot of prejudice about wealthy people who don't have 'the right background'.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> entirely agree that in UK class and wealth are not synonymous... -- Helen, 07:50:51 11/29/02 Fri

...many (relatively) impoverished "upper class" people about, and many many more financially comfortable, nay affluent, people who are considered, and consider themselves to be, working class.

As for Angel representing the aristocracy, that is certainly a role he seemed to adopt for himself around the time William was vamped "a real kill, takes artistry etc etc", but his human background suggests otherwise - he mocked his father in "The Podrigal" for talking grandly about not corrupting the servants (as though upper classs are custodians of morals as well as riches)
"The servant. We have one servant, father."

If anything, William seems to have ceom from a more upper class background...
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> That's the irony, isn't it? -- Rahael, 07:54:56 11/29/02 Fri

The gap between image and reality...

(plus, as we have discussed here before, Angel is Irish, and William is English, and there are tensions there too...)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> absolutely! I just love teasing out every possible strand of goodness! -- Helen, 07:58:57 11/29/02 Fri

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> and here's Doug Petrie's quote -- Rahael, 07:27:05 11/29/02 Fri

"Talking about building Spike piece by piece. Here you’ll notice that Spike’s changed his accent.. Before, he had an upper crust British accent. Now he has a cockney, almost working class accent going on. In conceptualizing this scene, Joss Whedon was very clear about working class differences and social castes, where Spike very much represents the working class and Angel is more the elite, more the kind of aristocracy."
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Spike -- KdS, 07:40:33 11/28/02 Thu

Spike's accent as Spike is definitely working-class but exaggeratedly so. His accent as William in Fool For Love is fairly educated and upper-class, and you can hear the accent shift as that episode runs.

Spike's a very easily recognisable type to the present day English person - the middle-to-upper-class man who assumes what he sees as working-class accent, dress and clothes out of an essentially patronising view of the working class as realer, more authentic, more potent (in all senses of that word). See Guy Ritchie, Damon Albarn, Malcolm McLaren, Joe Strummer (but not the Pistols, who were all genuinely from working class backgrounds). The perfect dissection of the phenomenon appears in Pulp's famous song Common People, which made the British Top Five and was consciously written as an attack on the social abseiling of Albarn, whose band Blur had just released an album filled with middle-class sentimentality over a mythical English working class past.

God, it must be so much easier in the US, where (to an English view) all that matters is your income.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Common People lyrics (if you haven't heard it) -- KdS, 07:45:30 11/28/02 Thu

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at St Martin's College
That's where I
Caught her eye

She told me that her dad was loaded
I said, "In that case I'll have rum and Coca Cola"
She said "fine"
And then in 30 seconds' time
She said

"I wanna live like common people
I wanna do whatever common people do
Wanna sleep with common people
I wanna sleep with common people like you

Well what else could I do?
I said, "I'll..."
"I'll see what I can do."

I took her to a supermarket
I dunno why, but I had to start it somewhere
So it started
there
I said, "Pretend you've got no money"
But she just laughed and said, "Oh, you're so funny!"
I said "yeah" (huh)
(But I can't see anyone else smiling in 'ere.)
"Are you sure?"

"You wanna live like common people
You wanna see whatever common people see
Wanna sleep with common people
You wanna sleep with
Common people like me?"

But she didn't
understand
Oh, she just smiled and held my hand

Oh, rent a flat above a shop
And cut your hair and get a job
And smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'Cos when you're laying in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
Never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance
and drink
and screw
because there's nothing else to do

Sing along with the common people
Sing along and it might just get you through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along even though they're laughing at you
And the stupid things that you do
Because you think that poor is cool

Like a dog lying in the corner
They will bite you and never warn you - look out
They'll tear your insides out

'Cos everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh
(sniff) yeah!
And the chip stains and grease
Will come out in the bath

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why

Oh, rent a flat above a shop
And cut your hair and get a job
And smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
And still you'll never get it right
'Cos when you're laying in bed at night
Watching
Roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

Never live like common people
Never do what common people do
Never fail like common people
Never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance and drink and... screw
Because there's nothing else to do

Wanna live with common people like you
Wanna live with common people like you
Wanna live with common people like you
Wanna live with common people like you
Wanna live with common people like you
Wanna live with common people like you
Wanna live with common people like you, la la la la
Oh, la la la la
Oh, la la la la
Oh, la la la la lala
Oh yeah.

(J Cocker, S Mackey, C Doyle, N Banks, R Senior)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> oh, love this! -- Rahael, 08:07:49 11/28/02 Thu

Now you've brought back the memories KdS!

I'll even admit to a teenage crush on Jarvis Cocker.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Well, in the US it's gangsta wannabes--same thing, I think -- luna, 16:21:31 11/28/02 Thu

[> [> [> [> Don't take Shadow of the Vampire too seriously... - - KdS, 05:05:32 11/28/02 Thu

At the time it was released in the UK many critics were absolutely outraged at its presentation of Murnau who in real life seems to have been a fairly decent bloke. Schreck likewise - he had a fairly long career and seems to have been a pretty orthodox late 19th-early 20th century stage actor. I'd be interested to know what source you got drinking blood on the set from as I don't believe the "method" attitude was at all common in that era. If it's a source from the time, both American and German film industries went to some pretty bizarre lengths in publicity. (Early showings of the Whale/Karloff Frankenstein had nurses in the cinemas in case anyone collapsed with fright).
[> [> A Real Vampire and Spike.....spoilers for Never Leave Me -- Rufus, 21:03:01 11/27/02 Wed

At the end of the episode the First evil said this to Spike.....

"First evil in form of Spike:
YOU'RE THE ONE WHO COULDN'T HOLD HIS END OF THE BARGAIN.

YOU'RE THE ONE WHO COULDN'T TAKE CARE OF WHAT'S-HIS- NAME.

YOU'RE THE ONE WHO HAD TO MAKE BREAKTHROUGHS AND LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT HIMSELF.

OH! AND SO NOW, FITTINGLY, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO GETS TO DO THE HONORS.

Morphs to Buffy form......FE: I HAVE TO ADMIT, I'M GLAD IT WORKED OUT THIS WAY. I WAS GOING TO BLEED ANDREW, BUT...YOU LOOK A LOT BETTER WITH YOUR SHIRT OFF.

TO BE HONEST, I'M GETTING A LITTLE TIRED OF SUBTLE. I THINK IT'S ABOUT TIME WE BRING SOME AUTHORITY TO OUR PRESENCE.

NOW SPIKE, WANT TO SEE WHAT A REAL VAMPIRE LOOKS LIKE?" taken from Closed Caption and notes.

I'm under the impression that the First Evil attempted to seduce Spike with images of the Buffy he longed to be with, a Buffy who would love and understand him. As Spike hadn't had to cope with a soul for so long he wasn't ready for the impact of the feelings he would get about killing and now caring about and regretting what he had done. Spike wanted to rid himself of the memories of what he had been, but after awhile even the seduction of the First Evil in Buffy form wasn't enough to stop Spike from wanting the real thing and that is why they attempted to prevent Buffy from seeing Spike in the basement of the School.

The striking difference between the First Evil Buffy and the real person was enough for Spike to start gathering his marbles back into one sack. This is what the First Evil is talking about when it mentions breakthroughs. Spike went through a similar period of shock and inaction that Angel did, and it was only the passing of time and seeing Buffy again that started Spike wanting to search for who he could be. This went against the plans of the FE, but it decided it could work with that and get Spike to kill by pulling a Manchurian Candidate on him. First the Initiative "Clockwork Oranged" Spike, then the FE did the Manchurian Candidate brainwash" to get Spike to kill. Both things were done to him.....and we have to remember that even without a soul, Spike was capable of seeking one out for Buffy. That he did himself. And because of that and the profound guilt over what he had done in the past Buffy feels that he had proved himself. She believes in him now. And I think that one simple statement is what will make the difference, no matter how bad it seems to get.

As for the Vampire under the Seal.....the First Evil was mocking Spike with the truth of what he had become really is. The Real Vampire is no hybrid, with no emotions that make it unpredictable....I feel the Vampire at the end of Never Leave Me, will be just another way for the First Evil to assert it's authority in a world it can't be corporeal in.....unless of course there is something out there that can change that.
[> Re: Poll for Never Leave Me (spoilers for Never leave me and Through the Looking Glass) -- Troy, 17:38:26 11/27/02 Wed

So, Spike's blood opens the seal and a "real" vampire, the worst part of him, comes out. If it had been Andrew's blood, what would have appeared? The same thing, or the "original", worst part of a human being?
Is the FE more specifically linked to vampires or does he just brings out the evil within?
Don't know if I'm making any sense here, but I've just been wondering. What do you think?
[> My take (similar to others') -- HonorH, 19:15:00 11/27/02 Wed

What Angel became in Pylea was a pure vampiric demon, without the human element. What we saw rising was the first true vampire. In WttH, we learn that the first vampire was created from a demon mixing blood with a human. This, then, wouldn't be the demon that mixed its blood with the human-- this would be the human, post-mixing. The very first vampire.
[> [> Re: My take (similar to others') -- Tyreseus, 19:47:39 11/27/02 Wed

I really hope that's true HonorH. It would be great if we got the first-hand story on the creation of vamps and maybe an explanation at the same time on the origin of slayers (and the Counsil of Watchers).

CavemanVamp: Grr. Arg. You come. Me eat.
Cavegirl: Your teeth too pointy. You stay back. I have broken sharp stick. Me sticky.
CavemanVamp: (morphs face back to human mode) Want to make boinky-boinky back at cave?
Cavegirl: Okay. But you no bite.
(After making boinky-boinky, the sun comes up and Cavegirl escapes. Nine months later, the first slayer is born. See - this could tie into the whole "how did Connor happen" thing on Angel.)

My other favorite theory is that Spike's blood was what gave form to the evil released by the Seal.

In answer to the poll question, though, there could be a great deal of diversity to the look of "pure vampires." Just because Angel's demon didn't look like the Master who didn't look like the vamp from "Trick, Hope & Faith" who didn't look like our new vamp doesn't mean that Vamps can't come in different shapes and sizes. Sometimes a species of demons is very homogenous looking (like in Hush), and sometimes they aren't.
[> [> [> Re: My take (similar to others') -- Rook, 20:01:40 11/27/02 Wed

If Spike's blood gave form to the thing that rose from the seal, just imagine if they had used the actual pigs blood!


[> [> [> [> LOL! -- Tyreseus, 20:09:38 11/27/02 Wed

Point taken - which does bring up an odd question about the metaphysics of the seal of Danzathar. If pig's blood would have been enough, why did the first evil have Andrew kill Jonathon in the first place? And if Jonathon's blood didn't work because there wasn't enough, or because he was anemic, why did just a few drops of Spike's open it up?

If the blood needed to activate the seal didn't discriminate between vampire, human or pig - wouldn't one of the harbringers (bringers) have worked as well? Or couldn't the first evil have had them knock off a blood bank in the middle of the night?

The metaphysics seem fishy.
[> [> [> [> [> Pig's blood (spoilers for 7.9) -- Indri, 20:37:15 11/27/02 Wed

I also thought the metaphysics for opening the seal was way dodgy.

Perhaps the FE simply wanted Andrew to kill Jonathon, both to remove Jonathon's influence and as a rite-of-passage into evil for Andrew.

But this doesn't explain why Jonathon's blood failed to work. Why would anaemia be important but not the species of the blood? Apparently, it didn't even have to be all that fresh. And why did the FE pick Spike in the end? Simple irony?

At least the scene with the piglet suggested that either human or pig's blood could do it, which is just as well given that a mixture of both flows through Spike's veins.

So, if I fudge things very hard I come up with this nonsense:

The FE knew all along that souled vampire blood was needed and that's why it wasn't keen on Spike leaving the basement. Jonathon was a red herring to prove that Andrew was "hard enough". The piglet was a ruse so that Andrew could be found by Willow in the butcher's shop, thereby distracting the Scoobies and ultimately separating Spike from the others long enough that the FE's minions could grab him.

Not very plausible, is it? Anyone else want to have a go?
[> [> [> [> [> [> Ooh! Ooh! I do! -- Finn Mac Cool, 20:59:46 11/27/02 Wed

Why couldn't the Harbingers be used to open the seal?

Blood was needed to open the seal of Danthalzar. While it could be pig blood or human blood, it couldn't be demon blood (when we've seen it, demons often have weirdly colored blood, like green or orange).

Why didn't Jonathan's blood work?

OK, I'm not entirely sure how anemia works, but if someone has very little blood, does the blood they have become diluted or something? If it does, than it was the quality, rather than the quantity, of Jonathan's blood that mattered.

Why was Jonathan specifically used and not someone off the streets?

As the First Evil said, it was trying to be subtle, and the Harbingers "tend to draw attention to themselves", so having them go and nab someone might not be too bright. Since Jonathan had just come to town, and he snuck into the basement willingly, no one noticed him.

Why did the Harbingers go after Andrew and Spike?

They were security risks. Andrew was on the brink of telling the Scoobies everything it knew, and Spike was starting to get his memories back. The First Evil probably figured that using one of them for the ritual would be killing two birds with one stone.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> "anemic"? -- anom, 22:12:21 11/27/02 Wed

Hey, that wasn't Jonathan talking, it was the 1st Evil. Why should we believe anything it said, whether it's "anemia" or "not enough blood 'cause I'm small"? It was just saying whatever it thought would get Andrew to do what it wanted.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> You know, it's possible-- -- HonorH, 22:14:33 11/27/02 Wed

It's possible that killing Jonathan was just the first part of the ritual. A death was needed, then additional blood. As you said, anom, we needn't trust anything the First says.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: You know, it's possible-- -- lynx, 23:35:28 11/27/02 Wed

maybe...

the ritual needed the blood of an innocent (jonathan's - which seems to have been absorbed into the seal) and then some drops of ''evil'' blood with the fancy incisions.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: You know, it's possible-- -- aliera, 06:55:47 11/28/02 Thu

That's what I was thinking also...does anyone know what the three symbols on Spike were? Re: the mention of Andrew as a potential sacrifice in a way Andrew's blood was in Spike. There was also that odd mention of Andrew's "aunt" in TTG/Grave and the family's demon summoning abilities. I don't believe we can entirely rule out that Andrew's blood isn't more than human.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Andrew's aunt? -- Slain, 15:50:25 11/28/02 Thu

I don't remember that reference - whereabout was it in the episode? Certainly I'd like some more background on Andrew - we already know demon summoning runs in the family, from his brother Tucker, of course.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Andrew's aunt? -- aliera, 16:06:24 11/28/02 Thu

Sorry Slain my error it was Villains:

Villains the holding cell: courtesy of Pysche (a goddess)...

We move through the police station to the HOLDING CELL, where ANDREW AND JONATHAN languish amidst a few other detainees. Jonathan paces near the bars, totally freaked. Andrew looks more relaxed, if a bit bored.

ANDREW
You think they'll let my aunt bring
me my disc man?

JONATHAN
That's what you're worried about?
In-flight entertainment? We're in
jail-

ANDREW
We're in custody. We haven't been
charged yet-

JONATHAN
Thank you, Dragnet.
(hushed)
It doesn't matter what they call
it - they got us, okay? We're going
down.

No kidding...

Cute part in the review from Slayage.com and the question on my mind too: "As for the funny stuff last night (which that clearly was not), Jonathon & Andrew were great as cellmates (loved Andrew's Matthew Broderick comment). I'm going to miss the comic relief the Trio ("I'm sure you've heard of us") have provided this season, and when I look back on season 6 as a whole, some of my favourite moments will be theirs. Too bad the Big Bad Witch is coming to make the surviving members wear each other's pelvises as hats. Where's your aunt NOW, Andrew?"

;-)
[> [> [> [> [> My guess would be... -- OnM, 20:41:23 11/27/02 Wed

... that the pig's blood was just a ruse to get Andrew to the seal, where the first would have him killed and open up the seal. But, Willow intervened and Andrew ended up at Buffy's place.

So, the First tried to get Spike to drain enough blood from Andrew to weaken him, then they'd take him to open the seal. Spike failed, so Spike became the next available candidate.

My presumption on the metaphysics here is that the blood used to open the seal had to come from someone who had done evil at one point or another. The more evil the sacrifice was, the less blood would be required. Thus, only a few drops from Spike were sufficient, but all of Jonathan's blood was not enough.

Sound reasonable? That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it for at least another five minutes or so!

;-)
[> [> The cynic in me says... -- Me in DE, 21:27:09 11/27/02 Wed

Plot device. Spike's blood opens the seal, so he'll have to die to close it.

Or wait...have we seen this before?
[> [> [> Re: The cynic in me says... -- Rook, 03:57:09 11/28/02 Thu

Except that it doesn't seem like closing the seal would od any good, since what was inside is already out, unlike Acathla/Glory's Portal, which were still in the process of opening.
[> My answer is A, and C. I think. (speccy spoilery) - - ZachsMind, 14:30:43 11/28/02 Thu

There are different breeds of vampires, giving rise to more than one way they can look and act, much like demons in general. There can even be different strains of vampires and different combinations of blood dispersal. This would explain why some vampires are stronger than others, and other variations which are inevitable when one is writing a serial series of this nature. Continuity is not a 100% accurate science.

What we saw at the end of Never Leave Me was A pure vampire. What we saw in the Angel series could be too, but still possibly tainted by its presence inside Angel to a degree. So if there's any make-up differences between these two kinds, it could be explained by saying Angel tainted the 'pure' vampire's essence inside Angel when it appeared in Pylea a little bit, as did his Sire "The Master" before him. Wesley may be wrong in saying it's a "pure" vampire. That it was still altered a bit, but that in Pylea the monster form of the vampire change was more drastic.

Also, this could be the "Klingon" syndrome. That the klingons in the original Star Trek series look dramatically different from the ones in the Next Generation or in the movies, predominantly because the producers of the newer series had better access to more interesting make up capabilities and more talented make up artists. Both Angel & Buffy are handled by the same production company, helmed by Joss Whedon, but they may have slightly different accessibility to the visual departments, and different creative individuals in those visual departments. It's possible we could be reading too much into the differences of the two series. As much as we'd like the two to gel and merge more often, they're effectively different worlds right now, being on different networks.

Notice that the Rain Of Fire in Angel hasn't been mentioned in Buffy yet, even though Sunnydale & Los Angeles are probably not over the horizon from each other. There'd at least have been a news bulletin in Buffy, if the Rain of Fire isn't scouring the entire Earth in Angel's world. They are related, but being on separate networks there are certain protocols of network politics that infringe on interactive storytelling between the two series.

We simply can't read too much into it. There are some things beyond Whedon's control.

There could either be only one breed of vampire from its source world, and creating many breeds of half breeds could still be the result of siring people from different regions of Earth or what have you. There could also be vampire breeds from different worlds. Perhaps the source of Angel's vampirism is Pylea. Perhaps not. Perhaps this vampire appearing beneath Spike at the end of "Never Leave Me" is from a completely different world. Or maybe they're both and the same, but just as human beings only have basic physiological differences but appear in all shapes and sizes, so too can vampires. Don't expect the Whedon writing staff to delve too deeply into this, as it may lead to yet more inconsistency and confusion. It also depends on storytelling. If it's not germaine to the Buffy storyline why there's differences between it and Angel's past storylines, they just won't delve in order to keep the action moving forward.

Pure bred vamps could be able to interbreed, in much the same way humans do and when creating half breeds from humans makes infertile offspring, like when you cross a horse with a donkey to create an infertile mule. OR vampires may only be able to breed via blood infusion with other species. Like a virus.

It may even be possible that The First is speaking in error. That the TRUE state of vampire isn't even humanoid. It's akin to a viral infection. It may not even have its own physical state as we view it. We just assume all vampires are human, and that the original vampires were human, because that's all we've seen. It's rather ethnocentric of us. What if an alien nonhumanoid race of beings from a completely different planet were infected by vampirism? They wouldn't suddenly appear humanoid. They'd take on whatever form they had before, but have an inclusion of vampiristic traits and qualities.

Maybe it's even possible that one could 'turn' or 'sire' dumb animals, which is where we might get lycanthropy. A halfbreed vampire could turn a wolf, which in turn becomes a vampire wolf and bites an ancestor of Oz's family line. By the time such an exchange of vampirism gets to someone like Oz however, it's sererely tainted and mutated so that it's not even really a vampire anymore.

Oz & Spike could be long lost cousins! *shiver* Ooh! Perish the thought! =)
Drew Goddard -- Trebor, 21:43:59 11/27/02 Wed

A quick coupla questions about the great Drew.

Does anyone know what his previous show credits have been? Watching NLM, the interrogation (sp) scene, I had flash backs to Homicide episodes with the great Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor in "the Box".... well, it made me harken back to those great days.

That scene was just great.

Also, Clem seems to be the odds on favorite for recurring character to die in the next Drew episode, but does anyone else have any other bets? Is this similar to the ATS bet on which character says "Champion" first?

thanks
[> A parthenogenetic explanation of "Drew Goddard" and a comparison of interrogation techniques -- d'Herblay, 22:54:50 11/27/02 Wed

These three episodes seem to be the entire extent of Drew Goddard's curriculum vitae and, one must ask, isn't that a bitch? I mean, last year this time he was just another schlub complaining about "Wrecked," but did he just sit back on his ass writing his little apocryphal scenes? No! He went out and did something about it! Bastard.

Of course, there is always the possibility that he sprung fully grown from Joss's head, much as Diego Guttierrez (author of "Normal Again") seems to have. (Ok, the fact that Diego seems to be currently credited as a writer on Dawson's Creek blows the whole "Diego is Joss's identity in an alternate universe" theory. Well, I'm sticking with the Spike is Henley thing.)

As to your comparison of the Anya/Xander/Andrew scenes with the classic interplay of Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor's Detectives Pembleton and Bayliss on my second favorite TV show of all time, Homicide: Life on the Streets, I have to disagree. I don't remember Pembleton and Bayliss playing "good cop/bad cop" very often; Pembleton was usually more cerebral, and Bayliss often played on a suspect's emotions. Of course, every once in a while, the writers at Homicide would remind us that Bayliss had a tendency to react to frustration with shockingly quick outbursts of violence, paying off in the season finale; however, if violence occured in the box, it was usually portrayed not as a tactical success but as a moral (and legal -- coerced confessions being inadmissible) failure. Of course, perhaps it's time for me to review some episodes . . . just let me go watch "Amends" again. (Stupid snowstorm.)

I've watched a fair amount of cop TV over the years -- my favorite dramas of all time outside the Buffyverse are Homicide, Hill Street Blues and The Shield. But "good cop/bad cop"? Makes me think more of Simone and Sipowicz on NYPD Blue. (Lots of people named "Andrew" referenced in this post. I should change the slam on "Wrecked" to a slam on "Older and Far Away" just to fit in Drew Z. Greenberg.) And even there Sipowicz's temper was more a liability than an asset. For interrogation-room violence as a technique with a noble purpose, the clearest analogy would be to "The Shield," especially the series premiere in which a pederast who knows where an eight- year-old girl is hidden proves resistant to the psychology- based techniques of Jay Karnes's Detective Wagenbach. Getting the conviction, in this instance, is not nearly as important as finding the girl before she dies, so Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey, dirty cop extraordinaire, is sent in. In fact, for me, the resonance was so great that I half- expected to see the following scene:

INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE - DAWN'S BEDROOM - DAY

Andrew sits, still tied to the chair. BUFFY enters, carrying a paper sack.

ANDREW
Are you here to play good cop/bad cop too?

BUFFY
Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I'm a
different kind of cop.


Buffy opens the paper sack and places a PHONE BOOK, a ZIPPO LIGHTER and a PACKAGE OF RAZOR BLADES on Dawn's bed.

ANDREW
Isn't FX the coolest? It's the best TV on TV.
Hey, have you seen Son of the Beach I heard the
hot chick is married to some guy named David
Boreanaz. Who's that?


Buffy takes the phone book and wallops Andrew across the jaw.

But I could just be strange.
[> [> Um, d'Herb? -- HonorH, 23:25:41 11/27/02 Wed

Did your Super-Evil Alter-Ego spike your coffee again? I mean, really: parthenogenesis? Everyone knows NewDrew is a product of thaumogenesis. You see, according to my calculations and observations, Joss replicated himself in order to helm all three shows. Since we get an extra Joss, a new force of Evil--namely, ME's new hatchet man, Drew Goddard--came into being as well.

Makes perfect sense.
[> [> [> Re: Um, d'Herb? -- Slain, 12:44:53 11/28/02 Thu

Well, you may be flippant, but if the bookmakers would take my bet, I'd put a substantial sum of money (at least £10) on Drew Goddard being either Joss Whedon, or an amalgam of several writers, one of them almost certainly being Marti Noxon! I can fully believe that Marti wrote the Spike/Buffy scene in the basement (who else would have the guts to introduce the Spike-as-rapist element?), and that Joss or other writers wrote other scenes. Historically, Joss has rarely given brand new writers important scenes; Tabula Rasa was an obvious exception, it being a first episode, but it was largely self-contained in concept. Yet this so-called 'Drew Goddard' has done all of the things traditionally reserved for more well-seasoned writers, and done them suspiciously well. I will be spending the weekend trying to come up with any anagramatical or mystical significances that the name 'Drew Goddard' might have.
[> [> [> [> Regarding Marti-- -- HonorH, 13:32:20 11/28/02 Thu

Rumor has it that she did, indeed, pen the Buffy/Spike basement scene. It has her emotional gut-wrencher stamp about it, certainly.

I like your theory! It's actually been floating about in my head as well. "Drew Goddard"--Drew Greenberg's first name, "God" for Joss, "da" for David Fury, "r" for Rebecca Rand Kirshner, another "d" for Doug Petrie, and I'm sure we can work Marti in somewhere.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Regarding Marti-- -- Slain, 15:19:43 11/28/02 Thu

Interestingly, Drew Goddard is an anagram for "Dr. Grow Added", and also "Add Word Dreg". Hmm. There's definitely something there, if you ask me.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: DG is real person -- Sang, 19:44:44 11/28/02 Thu

Sorry, But Drew Goddard really exists, unless Joss secretely got English degree at U. Colorado 1997. He is also a decendent of the father of Rocket scientist. This is the third time I posted it here.

http://ucsub.colorado.edu/~honors/theses/f97/f97.html

Drew Goddard
Department of English
B.A. Honors Thesis Abstract

I'm hesitant to summarize my work in a few sentences. Simply put, if I could summarize myself so easily I wouldn't be a writer. I had originally intended From the Light to be the first three chapters of a larger work. As I was writing it, though, it became apparent that the circular structure of the writing allowed the piece to stand on its own.
The piece consists of three stories, each told by a different narrator. The first narrator is a high school senior trapped in a night. The second is an adolescent male trapped in his body. The third is a doctor trapped in his hospital.

The triple narrator format of the work stresses the importance of author-reader interaction. I strive to give my readers A & B and allow them to create C on their own. On the surface the three narrators seem connected by the loosest of strands; the narrative moves from one story- teller to the other through chance interactions. The meat of the work comes from what is not said, from the white on the page between each word and each character.

This is not to devalue the words themselves. Drunk driving mishaps, urine sample catastrophes, and first communion pictures all serve as ideal minimalist conduits to the bigger picture (I'm not exactly sure what ideal minimalist conduits means, but it sure sounds good, doesn't it?). Each chapter -- each sentence, for that matter -- provides the reader with the necessary pictures. Like the characters in these stories, the reader must strive to make sense of these fragments of light and darkness.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Oh, stuff that! -- HonorH, 19:57:31 11/28/02 Thu

I'm not letting facts stand in the way of a perfectly good conspiracy theory. After all, they could've manufactured those records, you know, just to throw us all off the scent. Next, we'll find out he's got a wife named Lily and three- and-a-half kids named Peter, Sandy, and little Demi, and a Weimeraner named Wegman in their back yard, which is surrounded by a White Picket Fence. It's too easy, I'm telling you!

And that's all *if* it's the same "Drew Goddard". They might let us *think* that's NewDrew, when in reality, it's a patent attorney in Denver who's divorced from his wife, Christine, and lives with his pug, Poughkeepsie, and has absolutely no clue what ME is.

You see? Good sense and conspiracies have absolutely no relation to each other. In fact, in most cases, they're mutually exclusive.
[> Trebor, I thought of Homicide, too! -- cjc36, 07:52:34 11/29/02 Fri

"Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Honorificus (The Uber-Femme Fatale), 22:12:18 11/27/02 Wed

Well. We have a pretty pickle now, don't we? Or, rather, Buffy and her sycophants have one. Me? Not so much. Although there were some sickening moments, this episode left me with kind of a warm feeling inside. Almost gooey, like a nice, fresh eyeball. Shall we get to the review?

Fashion Statements
The Good
Robin Wood, as usual. Yummy in his suit, yummier when he takes off his tie and jacket to bury a body. I do believe I have a new crush!

Someone finally got Dawn out of warm colors. The fuchsia was pushing things, taste-wise, but anything's better than that rusty button-down she was wearing last week.

I actually fully approved of Willow's clothes this week! The shirt was lovely, the pants flattering, and I really want that adorable little pendant.

Spike. Chains. 'Nuff said.

Spike naked and bleeding. Gotta love that!

The Bringers. That, my fiends, is how you dress your minions! The robes are both decorative and practical, with a nicely intimidating, "You'll soon be dead, sacrificed to bring about the End of Days," air to them.

The Bad
Andrew. Just goes to show that even black leather can't rescue the Fashionably-Impaired.

Buffy's black shirt. I didn't like.

The Watchers. Tweedy, buttoned-down stuffed shirts, the lot of them. Gave me hives just looking at them!

Warren. One big fashion "Don't!" even as the First. He looked better without skin on.

The Iffy
Anya. On one hand, she's got the body and coloring to carry off that outfit. On the other hand, I could see her bra, and that's just wrong.

Did Xander wear the same shirt for the whole ep, in spite of the fact that it took place on two different days?

Plot in a Nutshell
In this plot-heavy episode, Spike gets the DTs from blood withdrawal while Andrew struggles with the concept of killing things. Willow bags herself a Geek, who gets battered on his way to squealing, Spike gets Triggered again while in the midst of an Existential Angst attack, the First Evil makes its presence known, the Summers house gets wrecked yet again, and Watchers go blooey. All in all, a good evening.

Demonic Quibbles and Comments
I'm not sure I can take seriously an Uber-Vamp that looks like the unholy product of a tryst between a Gentleman and Gnarl.

Highlights
Anya beating up Andrew.

Anya hitting Xander.

Spike biting Andrew.

Buffy giving Spike the ol' Boot to the Head.

My lovely Robin Wood disposing of the body. Yes! He's evil! (Although, as my Annoying Alter-Ego points out, that scene took place right after the discussion of Sleeper Agents, thus possibly giving a textual clue that All Is Not As It Seems. See why I ignore her?)

The Summers house getting trashed yet again.

Watchers go blooey! I could watch that scene again and again.

The Twerp nearly getting gutted.

Spike in the S/M rig. Yaay!

Lowlights
Being forced to see Andrew in black leather. Turns my stomach, to tell you the truth.

Spike whining! I swear, the first thing a soul does is make you into a pathetic, sniveling wimp.

The First was right. That really was the worst attempted pig slaughtering in the history of the universe. Leave it to Andrew, or, as his friends call him, "that guy."

Buffy believing in Spike. Gag me!

No Giles! I feel cheated. I hate cliffhangers. They're cruel and inhuman, which normally I like, but in this case, it just doesn't work for me.

Xander saving the Twerp from the aforementioned gutting.

Andrew didn't die. Phooey.

Burning Questions
The question of why all of Jonathan's iron-poor blood wouldn't open the seal, but a few dribbles of used vampire blood would is open to debate.

Spike's chip isn't working? Since when? Last week, it fired when he decked Xander. I know, since I watched that scene a few dozen times, giggling joyfully. It wasn't working when he was "triggered," but that's not exactly any wonder. So why do both Buffy and Spike now think that it's stopped working? I can see her thinking it, but him? Doesn't make sense. Maybe he should slug Xander again, just to be sure.

The Immoral of the Story
If you're the source of all evil, find a better pawn than Andrew.

Overall Rating
T minus q on the Non Sequitur Scale, with a few mandarin oranges on the side. I liked it, in spite of the flaws.
[> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Rufus, 00:00:38 11/28/02 Thu

My lovely Robin Wood disposing of the body. Yes! He's evil! (Although, as my Annoying Alter-Ego points out, that scene took place right after the discussion of Sleeper Agents, thus possibly giving a textual clue that All Is Not As It Seems. See why I ignore her?)

Oh come on!!!! Are you sure Robin Wood is evil? He could be the kind of guy who likes a clean school....and saved the janitor some digging.....;)
[> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- ponygoyle, 07:22:20 11/28/02 Thu

Hail once more Honorificus! Your review and this episode made me realize once more why I work so hard -- sure the nights are long, the co-workers smelly, and the dental plan medieval -- but sometimes after a lot of planning, brooding and loss of minions, you get a semi-naked hottie dripping blood from your chandelier. These are the moments to savour, and I'd offer my congratulations to old FE, except that the being owes me money, and let me just say for someone who's non-corporeal It can certainly scarf down a lot of party mix.

And finally I offer a happy Thanksgiving to those demons of the American persuasion. May your ritual slaughter be joyous and stress-free!
[> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Tess, 08:50:28 11/28/02 Thu

"The question of why all of Jonathan's iron-poor blood wouldn't open the seal, but a few dribbles of used vampire blood would is open to debate."

I've been pondering this myself. I don't think the FE ever thought Jonathon could open the seal. For one thing the instruments used on Spike were too ritualistic whereas Jonathon was just stabbed. A couple of theories I have are: the FE just used Andrew and Jonathon to expose the seal (although why it couldn't have Spike or Principle Woods if he's indeed under the FE's spell dig it up, I don't know) and once the seal was exposed had Andrew kill Jonathon because it knew Jonathon would go to the Scoobies. Jonathon wasn't weak-willed enough for the FE to control.

The second theory would be that it was a multi-level ritual, the first being pure human blood and the second being vampire blood. Not sure where the pigs blood fits into this theory though, or for that matter why its important that it's a vampire with a soul. But the FE does seem to have fixated on ensouled vampires twice now, and once it discovered it couldn't control Angel it conveniently disappeared until Spike showed up with new soul in body.
[> [> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Juliet, 20:03:52 11/28/02 Thu

Love the multi-level ritual theory...here's how the pig's blood might fit in:

1st Stage
- Johnathan's blood (pure human blood)

2nd Stage
- pig's blood

3rd Stage
- Vampire blood

but in order for the vampire to have blood, true vampire blood...it needs to bite someone.

So, it sends Andrew out for pig's blood. Since this thing seems to know everything, it knows Willow's heading out for some pig's blood too. Then, they run into each other, and predictably, Willow brings Andrew back. Of course she would, and the First knows this.

So then, it makes Spike go for Andrew, and it 1) effectively keeps the seal thing from the Scoobies and 2) fills Spike up enough so he has some blood.

And since Spike drank some yummy pig's blood, there's some in the seal now.

Stupid First Evil, it's like Big Brother.
[> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Medusa, 10:04:05 11/28/02 Thu

My simpering alter-ego is down with the flu and is not even fulfilling her yearly ritual sacrifice with pie, for the first time in her adult life. The spawn are in shock, especially the pumpkin pie-loving one know as "Laura." (Stupid name! A pox on those who name their children after pioneer-worshipping fact-based novels!)

Before she ingested a virtual cornucopia of pharmecutical hors d'oeuvres, Arethusa asked me to step in for her. So working from her notes, I would like to make the following observations:

1. Finally, we see Spike's true nature. Why should humans be the only ones who cover up their abusive nature with charm, good looks and cool clothes? The best part: getting people to blame Buffy for his evil. Sheer genius! Truly awesome!

2. Robin Wood hypnotized into cleaning up after minions. If you don't turn them, put them to work, I always say.

3. The blood thing. Anemia is a shortage of red blood cells. Why drink white wine when you can have red?

4. Butchering the CoW was a mistake. Their bureaucratization of evil was one of our side's greatest achievements. It aided the true inhabitants of this earth immeasureably.

Off to feed the snakes little mice dressed up as Pilgrims.
[> [> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Honorificus (The Panacea), 22:10:03 11/28/02 Thu

Medusa, darling. So good to see you here. So, your simpering alter-ego is down with a virus, eh? Poor darling. Tell her arsenic would solve her problems. As to the points raised by her and commented upon sensibly by you:

1. Finally, we see Spike's true nature. Why should humans be the only ones who cover up their abusive nature with charm, good looks and cool clothes? The best part: getting people to blame Buffy for his evil. Sheer genius! Truly awesome!

Quite. That boy really did have Fangsome Foursome blood in his cold veins for a time, didn't he? My only complaint is that he wimped out on the details. Talk about a half-assed attempt at getting yourself staked! What, his tummy was too delicate to itemize his evil?

2. Robin Wood hypnotized into cleaning up after minions. If you don't turn them, put them to work, I always say.

I'm still hoping the lovely Mr. Wood is evil, rather than just brainwashed. Someone who dresses that well surely can't be all good, can he?

3. The blood thing. Anemia is a shortage of red blood cells. Why drink white wine when you can have red?

That's what I say. I once had the misfortune of getting diabetic blood. Far too sweet! Of course, used vampire blood tastes simply wretched, and this particular vampire had ingested both Geek and pig blood. Ick!

4. Butchering the CoW was a mistake. Their bureaucratization of evil was one of our side's greatest achievements. It aided the true inhabitants of this earth immeasureably.

Yes, but they were all so stuffy and deserving of death. I agree that they ran splendid interference with the Slayer, but on the whole, I can't fault the First for deciding to be done with the whole rotten organization. Besides, they fired Giles and Wesley, the only truly interesting members they ever had. I can't excuse that.
[> [> [> Re: "Never Leave Me": The Super-Evil Review -- Bitch Queen of Slut Town, 23:23:00 11/28/02 Thu

That's what I say. I once had the misfortune of getting diabetic blood. Far too sweet! Of course, used vampire blood tastes simply wretched, and this particular vampire had ingested both Geek and pig blood. Ick!

Yes, I suppose it wasn't the greatest flavor, but any great chef knows that presentation is an important part of any meal. The First was a genius at presentation. Spike stripped and strapped to the S/M toy ... the delicate and precise opening of wounds ... the grunts of pain as the minions carved the turkey ...

Not to mention the lingering aroma of the recently rotting geek corpse.
[> Open invitation to all Super-Evil Alter-Egos! -- Honorificus (The Culinary Expert), 11:43:11 11/28/02 Thu

Please, come one, come all, to my cave for a feast! As the humans are having their ritual sacrifice (with pie) today, I thought we might get together, gorge ourselves, and play a few games of "Bait-the-Goth". In fact a few are over here already.

(Sophomorica, dear, please don't gnaw on the flatware. Minion! Get her a bone!)

I'm providing an exceptionally tender Roast Geek with fruit bat stuffing, plus a Geek Brain Souffle (which is truly unholy, if I do say so myself). All of you may bring your specialties. If you're fresh out of ideas, let me suggest blood wine and bone-meal muffins, which no feast is complete without. Also, the party is strictly Bring Your Own Goth. I haven't enough to go around.

(No, Soph! That's not for eating; it's table decoration . . . well, never mind. Have at it. Someone clean up after her, and get a new centerpiece!)

1:00. Be there, or face my wrath. Okay?
[> [> Advice for the BYOG party -- ponygoyle, 12:05:34 11/28/02 Thu

I know that in some areas Goths can be a bit elusive, so for the Goth deficient I can loan out my signed Peter Murphy CD (or rather my ex-roommate's CD - and you don't want to know how she achieved that ex) to anyone who needs it. Simply leave the CD out in a conspicuous but well-shaded area and watch the Goths pounce. Please don't let the Goths chew or weep on the CD-- while I do have Peter locked in my basement I fear that he only has a few good signing years left.

See everyone at the party! I'm off to get my claws done for the occasion.
[> [> *burp* Delicious! -- Sophomorica, chewing on a bone, 15:55:09 11/28/02 Thu

[> [> Re: Open invitation to all Super-Evil Alter-Egos! - - Bitch Queen of Slut Town, 18:02:56 11/28/02 Thu

A most tempting invitation, dear Honorificus, but my alter- ego is vegetarian and spent the day sucking on weeds and serving a white sloppy substance they call "mashed potatoes" to the smelly dregs of society.

Meanwhile, I managed to creep into the First's basement and suckle the warm blood off William the Bloody's chest. Honestly, I'm stuffed. Or would that be glutted?

Eat a Goth for me, though, and if you have any left-over fried puppies, save me a doggie-bag.
[> [> [> For those demons still looking for fun... Demonic Chanukah party! -- ponygoyle, 06:24:01 11/29/02 Fri

Swing by my keep tonight for an old-fashioned latke party! Bring any leftover geeks and goths from Honorificus' bash.

'Cause potatoes aren't the only thing you can fry in oil...
Evil Scoobies Spoiler for "Never Leave me" -- Hauptman, 07:19:31 11/28/02 Thu

The shoe is dropping. That is the funniest description of this season of Btvs I have read. (It's comment a little further down. I apologized to the author for nicking it.) The most accurate, too. I just can't shake the feeling that I have seen all this before and that it was better the first time.

But that isn't the point of my post. I was watching the end of 'never leave me' with Evil-Buffy standing there while mad Spke was drained of blood ...and I thought about how many times in the past it was the scoobies themselves who either aided or abetted in the the near destruction of the world. Although they always seem to save the day, they also have a habit of bringing things to the brink through actions or inactions.

Season one: The Master says that he would not have been able to rise had it not been for Buffy showing up and providing him with the neck he needs.

Season two: Angel (a Scoobie) tries to destroy the world; Giles (Papa scoobie) gives him the information he needs to do it.

Season Three: Faith (rejected unloved scoobie)throws in with the Evil-Mayor and trades Willow (victim doormat Scoobie) for a box of bugs that will blah, blah, blah destroy the world!

Season Four: Reily (Do it all night Scoobie) turns out to the be the "Brother" of the big bad who wants Buffy there to maximize the parts potential. A little more indirect, but Buffy is a part of the evil master plan to destroy the world!

Season five: A part of Buffy (dramatic pause) a part of her(string section up) was used to give life to the key. Tara (brain-sucked scoobie) gives the ball of green goo up to the fashion victim God and shortly after Dawn (a.k.a. get out! get out! Get out! scoobie) Nearly destroys the world!

Season six: Willow (I have some issues scoobie)nearly destroys the world!

Season seven: Spike's blood has opened the thing letting out the thing that may do something to destroy the world! Johnathan (scoobie wannabe)got the blood, I mean ball rolling. The big bad seems particularly interested in the scoobies but didn't kill them all when it/they had the chance. Why did they need spike's blood in particular when they seemed to be going in a differnt direction with the pig and then the butchershop blood?

Why can't I let all this slide and just watch?

Anyhow, am I wrong about the evil scoobies? Frankly, I would have tried to wipe them out if I had been on the watchers council.
[> Re: Evil Scoobies Spoiler for "Never Leave me" -- Wisewoman, 08:55:50 11/28/02 Thu

Yep. Lot less explosive required to k-boooom the Summers' house than the CoW building...

Must be some reason it's still standing.

;o)
[> A "Do-it-all-night-Scoobie"?! Can I get one of those?! Great post! -- Marie, 07:32:39 11/29/02 Fri

Just Watched "Amends" (Possible Insight on Season 7 and First Evil) -- frisby, 09:19:57 11/28/02 Thu

After watching "Amends" this morning where we first meet the First Evil I noticed that Angel is attacked not only by morphy-ghost-like characters, but is also attacked "in his dreams" and to my recollection the First Evil has not tried that approach in Season 7 so far -- but might we yet expect just that in the next few epsidoes???

Also, Buffy had a lucid dream within Angel's dream (and the two later had one together, again likely a lucid one). Season 7 might very well develop these themes again. We might anticipate another "Reckless" in which the First Evil imposes the worst possible nightmare on the scoobies.

And last, the possibility of Buffy fighting (perhaps even defeating) the First Evil (or one of his manifestation like the uber-vamp) during a lucid dream [Lucid Dreams are those in which the dreamer retains consciousness of the fact of dreaming, or realizes it during the dream -- often described by participants as extremely enjoyable or at least unbelievably interesting!].

Did I have an insight? Has this connection already been noted? Will I survive the rest of the year given the escalating anticipation I expect will attack me before the next episodes (Buffy 7.10 and Angel 4.8)?

[Off to Thanksgiving Dinner]
[> It's all possible... (speccy spoilery) -- ZachsMind, 13:36:04 11/28/02 Thu

I noticed early on in the season they had Buffy pick up on the deaths of S.I.T.s in her dreams. I figured they might go back to that, but after episodes like "Restless," "Weight of the World" and to an extreme extent "Normal Again" it's very possible that they've gone about as far as they can go inside Buffy's head, y'know? It's all kinda 'been there done that.' In fact, in "Conversations With Dead People" I thought the whole scene between Buffy and her Therapyre was not only the comic relief of the episode but was also a sorta injoke stab at the writers themselves. They were having a laugh at their own expense for our benefit. I mean a lot of Buffy has to do with what's really going on in her head. As Spike put it, "God help me Buffy it's still all about you." The show IS named after her, after all. There's the subplots of Xander & Anya, Willow & her journey as a witch, Giles trying to find his place in the world, even Buffy's love trysts with Riley & Angel, it's ALL second to the primary plot arc throughout the entire series: Buffy's internal struggle with being The Chosen One.

But there's only so much soulsearching and dissecting of a Slayer's grey matter that one can take before one just screams, "ENOUGH ALREADY! WHERE'S THE BATTLE?" When is she gonna really trounce on some particularly nasty heads? The vamps are run of the mill now. Any common run of the mill vamp is horseplay compared to what's in store when she takes on the forces of darkness waging war now. So I think they might back off on the dreams a bit so we can get to some real apocalyptic death and destruction type stuff. I mean admit it. It's a lot more fun than wandering around in their heads. Although "Restless" is one of the best episodes they ever put together, you can't do a whole half season like that.

I recently reviewed "Primeval," "Restless" and "Buffy vs. Dracula" again. It's interesting how so much of that can still be read into what's going on now. You think you know what's to come. What you are. You haven't even begun. Buffy is JUST NOW starting to really grasp it. When she talked with Spike in "Never Leave Me" and admitted that she no longer hates herself. Or anybody. When she apologized to that lady at the end of "Sleeper" who owned the house but she was a vampire now. "Sorry lady, but it's my job." She's not killing vampires out of hatred or fear anymore. She's doing it out of duty. It's her responsibility. Buffy's taken seven years to get here but she's really finally growing up now. The scene at the end of "Buffy vs Dracula" when she honestly comes to Giles and asks him to be her Watcher again, so she can understand the history of her lineage and her destiny. What we're seeing now is that she's ready to take the final exam. Season seven's finale will be the equivalent of an all new "Graduation Day" where she's graduating not from high school or college, but from her life discoveries and her journey of being a slayer. It's all coming to a head.

The concept that Buffy's powers are rooted in evil, as Dracula tried to explain to her three years ago. The fact she came back from death in season six "wrong." Then we've got Cordy in the tv series Angel spending time floating around in all that hopefulness and light, and Joyce comes back (maybe as the BBW maybe not we don't know yet) glowing in all that hopefulness and light, and in "Once More With Feeling" Buffy admitted she thought she was torn from that hopefullness and light in heaven cuz what little she does remember about being dead the second time is that normal life feels like hell compared to what she felt after she died. It's all going somewhere. How they're gonna tie all this up in a nice red bow by next spring is anybody's guess, but the present plotline is definitely dealing with issues as far reaching as season three. If you throw in the relationship between Willow & Giles today compared to where it was at the start of the series, we can say the threads being woven together now go as far back as the first or second season.

It's like watching a tapestry being woven together. Pretty kickass writing, as we've come to expect from these guys.

And back to "Amends," the blinded harbinger guys in the robes were hanging out in a place beneath, and nothing could grow above or below them which is how Buffy figured out where they were. SIX Christmas trees were dead immediately where Buffy found the way into their underground lair. And this season it's all been from beneath you it devours so the same themes are playing over again in different ways. They were giving us clues that this is The First Evil as far back as "Lessons." We just didn't know absolutely for certain until Buffy admitted it herself at the end of "Never Leave Me."

Okay. I suspected back in Lessons personally that we were dealing with The First, but then I'm a spoiler whore. I also predicted that the women being killed by the dudes in robes were potential KEYS not potential Slayers. So my batting average in predictions isn't much better than most.

Giles referred to The First Evil in Amends as "The First" if memory serves, and Buffy referred to it as "The First" in "Never Leave Me." Back in "Restless" they referred to the First Slayer in a similar way. I'm beginning to wonder if what's really going on is if they're the same thing. If the First Slayer IS the First Evil? Buffy was able to defeat the First Slayer in "Restless" by admitting that she is not Buffy's power: "You're not the source of me." So maybe after Buffy died the first time, the power of the First Slayer immediately transferred to Kendra, and the power that Buffy has had for the past six years is something else entirely. Or maybe The First is jealous of Buffy, because Buffy's the first Slayer in history ever to die twice and come back swinging. Why? She's got FRIENDS and it seems like The First is more interested in making Buffy friendless than she is in making Buffy dead. The First Slayer never had a Watcher. She never had any friends. She slept on a bed of bones. It was her and a dark heart of power facing the forces of evil all alone. I doubt even the priests of her village who performed the encantation to make her The First Slayer were capable of being her peers. No one understood, and now several millenia later here's this upstart named Buffy who's able to do everything that The First Slayer did AND have a life AND have friends and family.

This could all boil down to jealousy. That Buffy has no idea how great she's got it. That she actually has peers she believes in. People who believe in her. Something which The First never had.

Like I said, it'll be interesting to see how they tie everything up by season's end. Unfortunately we have to wait until after the holidays to get another glimpse.
[> [> Re: It's all possible... (speccy spoilery) -- aliera, 15:49:04 11/28/02 Thu

Starting w/ frisby: "After watching "Amends" this morning where we first meet the First Evil I noticed that Angel is attacked not only by morphy-ghost-like characters, but is also attacked "in his dreams" and to my recollection the First Evil has not tried that approach in Season 7 so far -- but might we yet expect just that in the next few epsidoes???"

It's interesting that Buffy has had a dream of the slayer deaths this season which was coming from where?…in a sense the scope of the season has expanded beyond Sunnydale to the world or at least it seems most of her dreams in the past were related more to her. Did you notice any thing else…I guess I'm a little confused about the nature of the First Evil right now…was he morphing in Amends or is there a logic behind who he has appeared to this season Spike, Andrew, Willow perhaps Buffy perhaps Dawn (if Joyce was the First but if not it's just the first three.) He just doesn't seem to much like the what I had heard of the First. Another questions were the harbingers part of Amends is that how Buffy knew right away what was behind it (or thinks she knows would be more accurate I guess.)


frisby [Off to Thanksgiving Dinner] ...and I'm just back after the cleanup Too which I'm "thankful" is done with two pies cooling on the stove for noshing later.


From ZM
" When she apologized to that lady at the end of "Sleeper" who owned the house but she was a vampire now. "Sorry lady, but it's my job."

Just a weird side note this is the second more "mature" vamp this season and I can't remember any from before.

"Buffy's taken seven years to get here but she's really finally growing up now. Season seven's finale will be the equivalent of an all new "Graduation Day" where she's graduating not from high school or college, but from her life discoveries and her journey of being a slayer. It's all coming to a head."

And full circle there have been references to both seasons 1 and 2 also. Killing Angel. Xander's lie. The Master. It sure feels like a big wrap-up. Just hoping most of the favorite ones walk away also like Graduation.

"The concept that Buffy's powers are rooted in evil"…here's the puzzle piece so many of us (me too!) have been waiting on since Drac. How are they rooted in evil?

"And back to "Amends," the blinded harbinger guys in the robes were hanging out in a place beneath, and nothing could grow above or below them which is how Buffy figured out where they were. SIX Christmas trees were dead immediately where Buffy found the way into their underground lair... They were giving us clues that this is The First Evil as far back as "Lessons." We just didn't know absolutely for certain until Buffy admitted it herself at the end of "Never Leave Me." "

Whoops there's one of my answers…but the other question…he just didn't seem strong enough to be the BB. And too, I think we're accustomed to (excepting season 1?) having to wait on this. Being thrown a few red herrings first…a little bad or two?

ZM: "I'm beginning to wonder if what's really going on is if they're the same thing. If the First Slayer IS the First Evil? Or maybe The First is jealous of Buffy, because Buffy's the first Slayer in history ever to die twice and come back swinging. Why? She's got FRIENDS and it seems like The First is more interested in making Buffy friendless than she is in making Buffy dead. The First Slayer never had a Watcher. She never had any friends. She slept on a bed of bones. It was her and a dark heart of power facing the forces of evil all alone. I doubt even the priests of her village who performed the encantation to make her The First Slayer were capable of being her peers. No one understood, and now several millenia later here's this upstart named Buffy who's able to do everything that The First Slayer did AND have a life AND have friends and family. "

I don't disagree with this but we also saw the first slayer in Intervention and I thought the message was quite different then so I don't know…how do you think they might be the same? Somewhere there had to be a separation or a changing? One connection is the blood Buffy's blood was used to close the portal and it seems to have a transformational power or maybe I'm reading too much into what happened to Spike in Sleepers? Any further thoughts on this bit? :- )
[> [> [> Re: It's all possible... (one small correction) (speccy spoilery) -- frisby, 18:48:58 11/28/02 Thu

One small correction. In 5.1 Dracula does not say the source of Buffy's power is in evil, but in darkness, and in 3.9 the First Evil identifies itself as the thing the darkness fears (meaning it is beyond the light/darkness thing). Buffy "does" fight the forces of darkness, but they share their fear or opposition to the First Evil, and so temporarily might become allies. This also connects nicely to other "schemes" or "dramas" wherein light and darkness must join together to defeat a greater enemy (Zurvan? Compare _Demian_ by Hesse? See end of Nietzsche's _Beyond Good and Evil_?)
[> [> [> [> thanks frisby -- aliera, 20:16:28 11/28/02 Thu

I'm on the Jung site reading Wake Up Neo now...I think the evil bit was where I was quoting Zach (or his mind) or building off his post (my view is a little different) and if it's not too much trouble could you link me to the latter references you made? I very embarrassed to say this here but I haven't read Neitzsche, just allusions to his writings...guess this is a blind spot for me.

"and in 3.9 the First Evil identifies itself as the thing the darkness fears (meaning it is beyond the light/darkness thing). Buffy "does" fight the forces of darkness, but they share their fear or opposition to the First Evil, and so temporarily might become allies..."

This is new to me also...perhaps I need to visit pysche next! I only have the six eps from the boxed set (and they are favorites!)for season 3 on tape. And I don't see darkness and evil as synonymous but that's a personal flaw.

Do you have anything in particular in mind for the Alliance or just a sense of the possibility of this? I'm not sure what to think currently (although extremely happy with the season to date) the COW has always been ambiguously portrayed and now very possibly is gone. Just not a whole lot out there on the side of light and or Buffy right now.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: welcome, but which specific references? -- frisby, 20:55:18 11/28/02 Thu

I'd be glad to supply references but I must say I'm not exactly sure to which ones you're requesting ("the latter references"). Nietzsche is hard but also entertaining and very rewarding, in my opinion. Jung met weekly to discuss Nietzsche for a decade and most of it is published under his _Nietzsche_ (I think, maybe a bit different title). More than though, my personal opinion (which others share of course) is that Nietzsche is the one author most important to read today to understand where things are in the world with all of us. He's most notorious for his word: God is dead (by which I think he simply means these are now modern times). Yes, I use the Psyche website often to check the transcripts of the episodes and get the correct quotes. On the alliance that will be necessary to defeat the First Evil, I think (besides the uber-buffy, and the gang at Angel Investigations) that Dawn (as the key), Giles (as the strategic intelligence behind their endeavor), and Willow (as the channel for the good powers of the earth, including the Wicca covens) will play crucial roles, but that the key to the final success will be the love Buffy and Spike have for each. That love will be the source of the power that wins the hour! Does that help?

By the way, there are several avenues into Nietzsche's thought, but the core resides in what he called its entrance: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: welcome, but which specific references? -- Dariel, 09:41:41 11/29/02 Fri

...the key to the final success will be the love Buffy and Spike have for each. That love will be the source of the power that wins the hour! Does that help?

Was wondering why you think this. Is it something you can point to on the show, or are you just an unrepentant B/S shipper, like me?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: why I think it. -- frisby, 12:31:15 11/29/02 Fri

For the most part, because of my unrepentance, but I also think for reasons outside the drama itself, Spike has usurped the role of Angel, who you will remember was there from the beginning, their unique relation proving to be the primary glue holding everything together, second to nothing else including her relation with Giles, I would contend. Also, as Joseph Campbell claimed, the ideal of romantic love is perhaps the leading theme of humanity today, leading (I would contend) towards pair-bonding (making marriage the institution upon which the destiny of humanity will turn) instead of tournament-species (like King David with his hundreds of wives). What we've seen developing over the past several seasons (as Buffy said 7.9) is Spike fighting the monster within to become a better man, an almost impossible heroic task never witnessed before anywhere, a task Buffy not only feeds and causes, but also admires). The other side we've only seen aspects of yet is how Spike will be the impetus for Buffy learning (and also becoming) that which she has no idea of yet (from Restless et al). I see Buffy transcending the uber-buffy of 4.21, and becoming cosmic in her scope (defeating the first evil), and the key of Dawn will play a part, but her personal key will be Spike's redemption, which in turn will fuel her own self- actualization and even transcendence. I don't really know the origin of that term "B/S shipper" although I've read plenty about it, and suppose I likely am one, but more to the point, I think Joss and Co have slowly developed that situation themselves, and they're now to the point where really great things have become possible (if they don't back off and just sacrifice Spike to a lesser goal). Spike went toe to toe with a god for her sake, and endured the extremest of trials to regain his soul for her sake, and she now believes in him, and her belief will enable her own love to finally issue into fruition and she will then "tell him" (as Cassie predicted) of her eternal love. The romantic ideal (from Campbell) then transforms into the eternal archetype of the great father and the great mother and their child, the world. (Unrepentant hell, I'm downright obstinate, rebellious, and even insolent -- as Nietzsche said at perhaps his most important point, "that will which is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation."
[> [> Re: It's all possible... (speccy spoilery) -- frisby, 18:42:31 11/28/02 Thu

Interesting. The fact though that the "uber-buffy" of 4.21 was actually referred to as such (I forget where, but also again by Xander in 5.12 as super-buffy), along with the fact that the credits of 7.9 refer to the "uber-vamp" lead me to think Buffy will yet truly become what she has not even dreamed. I also think (and perhaps also hope) that the war will move from the merely physical realm into the psychic, and that Buffy's psychic powers as the uber-buffy will also expand such that during a lucid dream there will be a battle of power at the highest level. The First Evil is the thing the darkness fears (3.9) so the uber-buffy will need to unite the forces of light with the forces of darkness to create the Final Good to defeat the First Evil, or so I dream, however un-lucidly.
[> Re: Amends and NLM comparison- Angel and Spike -- Silky, 07:36:04 11/29/02 Fri

What struck me while watching Amends was that Angel was willing to give up - to die - because it wasn't the demon that needed killing but the man inside of him. Buffy tried to tell him he needed to fight, but only the snow saved him.

Spike wants to fight - and has been even before he had a soul - and asks Buffy to help him. But, William was a good man.

They both love(d) Buffy. They both chose to do good because of Buffy. Buffy cares about them both. Yet, Spike was more willing to fight than Angel was.

Unformed thoughts are all I have at the moment, but the similarity in some of the themes in the two eps was striking. Drew Goddard definitely did his Buffy homework.
[> [> Re: Amends and NLM comparison- Angel and Spike -- slain, 16:11:19 11/29/02 Fri

Drew Goddard (assuming he exists ;)) is definitely a big Buffy fan, I'm sure - I've noticed that fans-turned-writers often work well with continuity, whereas writers who were never originally fans tend to add something new, but lose some of the continuity.

I don't think Spike is more willing to fight than Angel - rather, I think the parallel goes deeper. Both of them wanted to die, Spike by stake and Angel by sunrise, but love, compassion or other mystical forces saved them. Clearly the First Evil has a special power over soulled vampires, and I think the only reason Angel escaped it was because it decided to leave him alone (or was driven out by the PTB, who can say?). Spike is now facing a continual onslaught, and I think he remains as willing to die as Angel was in 'Amends'.
[> [> [> Re: Amends and NLM comparison- Angel and Spike -- frisby, 00:47:44 11/30/02 Sat

Yes, but after Amends, Angel was no longer willing to die, but instead had a mission, to fight as a champion, and it was due partly to the miracle of the snow but also partly to the wisdom of Buffy with regard to the meaning of his overall total judgment in the eyes of eternity, so to speak. Spike as you say is in a similar boat, and again, we need a miracle. The question for us is whether the miracle of the snow in Amends was due to the powers that be or not.
[> [> Re: Amends and NLM comparison- Angel and Spike -- frisby, 00:43:00 11/30/02 Sat

You make a very good point to consider. Spike or better William "was" a good man before his vamping while Angel or better Liam was at best not really bad but just not exceptionally good. Angel was a drunken lout who fought with his father and had problems with his church. William was also more intelligent than Liam. Now that both have been vamped, and have become uniquely singular in that they are also the only vampires ever with souls, and have both fallen in love with Buffy, it does mean something to compare how and why they fight. It seems to me that only after the miracle of the soul in "Amends" does Angel really become the champion who fights for the good, and that before that the "human" aspect remained a bit weak, while on the contrary for Spike, who was weak (perhaps not even knowing how to throw a punch) before his vamping but who thrived on the good fight afterwards, and who now that he has regained his soul has become unsure again, willing to die. Buffy must again appeal to the man in the Spike/William constitution and inspire him to fight (although often the spiritual fight is much more difficult than the martial physical form of the fight, of course). No, I think your thought is not at all unformed, but holds great promise if carefully enucleated. Angel became a champion. What will Spike become? Perhaps a master? A master of his fate and captain of his soul? Due in part to his love of Buffy and her faith in him? And if so, what might she yet become?
[> [> [> Re: Amends and NLM comparison- Angel and Spike -- Silky, 08:39:12 11/30/02 Sat

Thanks for the responses and input. It also occurred to me that Buffy is responding to a similar situation in NLM as she did in Amends - and the First wanted both Angel and Spike to bite Buffy - but with 4 more years of maturity and knowledge in the mix. Certainly has given me much to ponder.

Will Spike become a chmapion? I think he may, at least for Buffy , the Scoobs and SunnyD. Mostly, I was surprised how seeing Amends again has increased my interest and fascination with the theme of S.7. That old skin tingly, jaw dropping feeling...
[> [> [> [> Re: Amends and NLM comparison- Angel and Spike -- frisby, 11:53:10 11/30/02 Sat

The thing that got to me (after watching Amends again, and which I already posted, but which deserves mention again) was the way the First Evil was attacking Angel in his dreams (something we've not seen in season seven yet) and that Buffy had a lucid dream in which she not only knew she was dreaming but in which she knew she was "in" (or observing) Angel's dream. The insight here for myself is the realization that we may very likely see more of this in season seven (where nightmares or lucid dreams)! I hope to see another episode of "Restless" caliber. And it might work out to have part of the season (and maybe series) finale take place in the dream world (lucidly).

Current board | More November 2002